The Denim Dom

Chapter Three

Shayla began her research for the article series on BDSM the next day despite how tempting she found it to procrastinate.

The sooner I do it, the faster I can move on to something else.

She looked at the printout Kimberly had shared from the local BDSM group’s webpage. They advertised a monthly Munch at a local restaurant, in addition to having parties every month.

Sounds like a good place to start.

She sent an e-mail to the contact address on the page before turning her focus to other projects.

Part of her hoped no one would get back to her. That maybe there was some sort of code of silence. Like in the mob.

She silently swore when she checked her e-mail an hour later and found a polite reply from the leader of the group, a man named Ross.

Sure, I’ll be happy to answer your questions and put you in contact with people to interview. I can also arrange a tour of a local club, and interviews with instructors, if you’d like.

She stared at his response.

Instructors?

She had no idea there were such things.

There went my easy excuse.

She tapped out a quick reply detailing what she was looking for and hit send.

Deliberately ignoring her e-mail until just before lunch, she found another reply from Ross. He and his wife, Loren, were a Master and slave couple.

First of all, I’m going to state what’s probably obvious, and that is while we don’t mind you quoting us, please do not reveal our real names, or any information that would out us to the general public. I’ll do my best to answer some of your questions, but it might be better if we meet to talk in person. Some of this doesn’t make sense unless you can actually discuss it face-to-face.

What we do is completely consensual. Although Loren is my collared slave, she does have limits, which I respect. We are not poly. While I sometimes do play with others, it’s nonsexual in nature. We’ve been married for over twenty years, and our BDSM dynamic is nearly as old. There is a very active BDSM community in the Tampa Bay area. The local club we’re a member of here in Sarasota has frequent classes anyone can pay to attend, although to come to dungeon playtimes you must be a vetted member. I’ve included a list of classes for you, one of which is taking place this week. My cell number is 941-555-1246 if you’re interested in setting up a time to talk in person. Feel free to call or text.

Ross.

Her rapidly pounding pulse caught her by surprise. Quickly, she punched her mouse button to close her e-mail.

I’ll deal with it after lunch.

Shayla had packed her lunch that morning. She took it to the meeting room, along with a book to read.

Bill Melling stuck his head in the door. “Not going out with us?”

Shayla held up her sandwich. “No thanks. I’m good.”

He glanced down the hall before stepping inside and pulling the door closed behind him. “You okay? You look a little… My grandmother would have called it ‘vexated.’”

Crap. “I’m fine. I already started my research on the BDSM piece. I got an e-mail from a guy who runs a local group. He’s going to put me in touch with some others to talk to.”

He nodded. “Good. So you’re okay working on it?”

“I wouldn’t be doing the research if I wasn’t.” She hoped that didn’t come out as snarky as it felt in retrospect.

Must not have, because he smiled. “I’ll leave you alone with your vexation, then. See you later.”

She tried to lose herself in the book, a quirky, lighthearted vampire romance, but couldn’t. Her mind bounced back and forth between the porn images she’d discovered James had downloaded, to the seemingly harmless and forthright e-mail exchange she’d had thus far with Ross.

Classes? It made it sound like a community college course.

After ten minutes of rereading the same three paragraphs, she dog-eared the page she was on and closed the book. She slowly munched on grapes from her zippy bag full of them and thought about how to approach the article.

How could any woman want to be a slave? It didn’t make sense. Women had struggled for decades to gain equality and independence. What made them want to throw all that away?

Then again, she’d been willing to forgive and forget James the first time around in exchange for what she thought would be love and security.

She gathered her things and headed back to her desk. Before she did anything else, she put on her big-girl panties, pulled up her e-mail, and replied to Ross.

When can we get together in person to talk?

Shayla had spent the better part of the night before doing web searches on BDSM and trying to come up with something more substantial than the porn sites or sensationalized news articles about the Fifty Shades of Grey books that wanted to show up. She also didn’t want to rely on fictional books for her research. She’d spent over an hour reading essays on one site she discovered, Leather and Roses, including a heartbreaking account written by a slave whose Master husband had died in the 9/11 attacks.

It put a human face on the issue she never considered before. It certainly wasn’t the cut-and-dry kinky porn of the sites James had visited.

These were people. Real people, passionate about what they did.

She mentally smacked herself. I need to forget about James and focus on my assignment.

Despite her misgivings over accepting the assignment, she was determined to be as unbiased as possible. To that end, she looked up the classes Ross had mentioned and sent an e-mail to the listed contact e-mail address to reserve her spots. She’d be attending Submission 101, Beginning Ropework, and Whips for Fun, whatever that meant. The first, Submission 101, would be held late that Saturday afternoon. The other two were a week from Saturday, the whip class first, followed immediately by the ropework class.

She met them at the Village Inn on US 41 the next evening. Shayla waited for the couple in the front foyer of the restaurant. “Ross and Loren?” Shayla tentatively asked when a couple walked in, looking like they were waiting for someone.

The man offered her a friendly smile and a handshake, as did Loren. “Yes, that’s us,” he said. “Shayla?”

“Yes. Nice to meet you.”

Ross looked like a regular, everyday middle-aged guy. He stood a little over six feet tall, with sandy brown hair and brown eyes and an average build. He wore khakis and a light blue Oxford shirt with the sleeves rolled halfway to his elbows. Loren, a good six inches shorter than him, wore black jeans and a pretty turquoise and magenta blouse that perfectly matched her reddish blonde hair and hazel eyes.

After they were seated and had given their drink orders to the waitress, Shayla pulled out her notebook and a digital voice recorder. “I’ll be honest that I don’t have any idea where to start,” Shayla said. “Is it okay if I record this?”

Ross nodded. “Like I said, as long as you don’t use any information that will out us, you’re free to quote us.”

Shayla nodded and activated the recorder, setting it on the table between them. “Okay. I did some web searches last night. I’m really in the dark here. I think everything I read left me more confused than when I started.”

Ross looked at his wife. “You’re usually the designated newbie whisperer,” he teased with a smile. “You want to talk and let me fill in later?”

She gently elbowed him in the side. “Okay, let’s start like this,” Loren said. “Forget all the hype and bullshit and negative radical feminist hyperbole. And the porn. Definitely forget the porn.”

“I wish I could,” Shayla said as she reached for her glass of water. “I don’t think there’s enough eye bleach in the world to wash away some of the stuff I saw.” Not just from last night, but some of the images she found when discovering what James had been up to were indelibly burned into her mental corneas.

“Probably not,” Loren agreed. “But remember, what the porn producers put out there is designed to make money. Or it’s exhibitionist amateurs getting their own kink on. There is very little in between that’s an even slightly accurate representation of what the average person does when they’re involved in BDSM. In other words, it’s not what most people would call real. Or realistic, at least.”

“Fair enough.”

Loren clasped her hands together in front of her on the table and lowered her voice after glancing to a nearby table where an older couple had just been seated. “I’m going to give you what everyone teases me is my ‘Newbie 101’ spiel. Just like everything in life, from golf to fishing to fantasy football leagues, to any pastime you can think of, there is a bell curve.

“Now, on this bell curve, you’ll have at the one end, let’s call that the vanilla end, the people who only dip their feet in every once in a while. You’ll have at the other end of the bell curve the really hard-core, extreme edge players who make some of the porn you watched look like a Disney cartoon. Then you’ll have the hump of the curve, where the majority of participants fit.

“The biggest misconception out there is that all people involved in BDSM are sex maniacs and swingers and every gathering is basically one big free-for-all sex party. And going by the bell curve theory, yes, you’ll have a few people like that, and maybe even a few gatherings like that. But they are the exception and not the norm. While sex is a big part of play for some people, for others, sex doesn’t have anything to do with their play or their dynamic. And again, there are people everywhere in between.”

Shayla nodded, her notepad and pen lying forgotten in front of her as Loren talked. This woman, if Shayla had to describe her, did not fit any kind of mousy, abused spouse stereotype she was aware of. In fact, if she didn’t know Loren was her husband’s slave, she would never have thought it. Not from the strength of her voice, or the intensity of her words, to the direct way Loren’s piercing gaze didn’t flinch from her own.

She didn’t know what Loren did for a living, but she suspected she was a formidable opponent when crossed.

“So we get all that fantasy crap out of the way for starters,” Loren continued. “There are people in the lifestyle from all walks of life and all economic backgrounds and all ages. There are professionals and blue-collar workers, everyone you can possibly think of. From college-aged to retirees.”

Ross spoke up, a quirky smile on his face. “There are an inordinate number of nurses.”

Loren laughed but gently nudged him again. “Yes, our local group does count more than our fair share of nurses amongst our ranks, but there are a lot of hospitals and doctor offices and senior citizens in this area. It’s a retirement and snowbird haven. Meaning a high demand for nurses and other medical professionals. If you’re in a large steel town, there are probably a lot of steel plant workers in the local lifestyle.” She glanced at him. “Are you done interrupting me?”

Shayla caught the twinkle in his eye. “Yep.”

She nodded at him and returned her attention to Shayla. “And as you can see from us, there are times we’re just a normal husband and wife. BDSM is one facet of who we are. Yes, it’s a large part of our lives. But first and foremost, we’re people. We never lose sight of that fact.”

“Why do people want to be in this lifestyle?” Shayla asked, unable to contain the question. “Why do it?”

Loren shrugged. “Why not?” She smiled. “Sorry. I don’t mean to come off sounding flippant, but the truth of the matter is there are as many reasons for being in the lifestyle as there are people in the lifestyle.”

“I just don’t get what makes a person want to be beaten is all.”

Ross burst out laughing and clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle it when the nearby couple looked at him. He lowered his voice. “Loren doesn’t want to be beaten.”

“Not all the time,” she said with a grin.

He glanced at her but picked up his thought. “Impact play is only one part of our BDSM dynamic, a small part, and not everyone is into impact play.”

Shayla tried to wrap her head around that. “Huh?”

He nudged his wife. “Use the diving metaphor.”

Loren nodded. “Are you familiar with scuba diving?”

“Um, not really. A little. I’ve never done it. I’m originally from Minnesota, and went to college and lived in Ohio the past several years.”

“Okay,” Loren said. “In scuba diving there is one common thing that unifies everyone in the sport, regardless of how or where or why they do what they do. Do you know what that one thing is?”

“Not drowning?”

Ross laughed again. “I like her.”

Loren smiled. “Besides that.”

Shayla shrugged. “Not really.”

Loren tapped the table with her finger. “The sport of scuba diving is going under water while breathing from an external air source. Got it?”

Shayla frowned, but nodded. “Okay.”

“Just go with me on this and you’ll see my point,” Loren assured her. “Some divers are basic sport divers, clear-weather and clear-water divers who do nothing but go out in the Gulf in the middle of summer when the water is warmest and when it’s clear and when it’s not rough. Okay?”

Shayla nodded.

“Then there are divers who are into spearfishing. Some of them are on the mild end of the scale and will only go out in summer, yadda-yadda. Some of them are avid spearfishers and will go out even in the middle of winter in five-foot seas.”

“She used to teach scuba,” Ross interjected.

“Hush,” Loren said to him. “Some divers are into underwater photography. Some divers are into wreck diving. Some divers are into cave and cavern diving. Some divers are into deep diving for whatever reason and use mixed gases like Heliox, Nitrox, Trimix, or something similar. Some divers are commercial divers. Some shallower commercial divers don’t even carry a tank, they have a line that runs from the surface. Some divers only do shallow dives in water they can stand up in. But what do they all have in common?”

“They have to breathe underwater,” Shayla volunteered.

“Exactly.” She gestured, making a circle with her hands before bringing them together again. “That’s the ‘umbrella’ that encompasses scuba diving. Divers breathe something underwater, regardless of the reason they’re underwater. You with me?”

Shayla nodded. “Okay.”

“So swap that out for BDSM. It’s an umbrella term that doesn’t even fully describe what it is that we do. The unifying idea is that the people participating in it are kinky. Or, not-vanilla. The term stands for bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism. So just like ‘scuba diving’ is a generic term, so is BDSM.”

Loren made the circle gesture again. “BDSM is just a term with a unifying theme. But if I say ‘scuba diving’ with no other context to people who know nothing about scuba diving, a lot of people, depending on their age, they’ll either think Sea Hunt, or Jacques Cousteau, or Navy SEALS, or whatever their frame of reference is. Okay?”

Shayla nodded. “Fair enough.”

Loren clasped her hands together in front of her again. “There are people who, at least when writing it, use an acronym to better describe this lifestyle—WIITWD. It stands for ‘what it is that we do.’ Because you might have people who are kinky but who don’t consider themselves into BDSM. There are some people who’ve known all their lives that they were ‘different’ in some way, but it took seeing something related to BDSM for them to put their finger on what that something was. There are people who stumbled into it and discovered they liked it and they decided not to turn back. There are people who maybe like being tied up in bed, and that’s the extent of what they do. And there are people who spend their lives as dedicated service-oriented slaves, who never get tied up or beaten at all.”

Loren made the circle gesture one more time. “Umbrella of kink. Anything not vanilla when it comes to sex could in some way fit under the kinky umbrella.”

“Okay, now I’m confused. Earlier you said sex isn’t a part of it for some people.”

“Right. Let me clarify. Not just not-vanilla sex, but you could substitute ‘relationship dynamic’ for ‘sex.’ Does that help?”

“Maybe.”

Loren smiled and sat back as the waitress approached with their tray of food. “Don’t worry. It’ll start making sense soon.”

They sat and talked for over three hours. By the time they parted ways in the parking lot, Shayla was both enlightened and more confused than ever. Not because she didn’t understand what the couple was saying, but because of the huge amount of information she’d attempted to digest in such a short amount of time.

One thing was for certain, she knew she couldn’t just slough off and write something based on the talk she’d just had.

She needed to go on-site to the club Ross and Loren were members of, and she needed to attend classes and talk to other people in the lifestyle.

Loren settled into the passenger seat. “I like her,” she said.

Ross nodded. “She seems very nice.”

She glanced at her husband out of the corner of her eye. “I think we should set Tilly up to talk with her. And Leah.” A thought struck her. “Ooh!”

“No,” Ross said.

“What?”

“I know that sound. You want to hand her off to Leah to fix her up with Tony. No. Talk, yes. Matchmaking, no.”

Loren fought the urge to pout, knowing if she did that it would earn her at least five swats when they got home. “Just to talk, Sir.”

They stopped at a red light. He looked at her, eyebrow arched.

“Hey,” she said. “I just said I want to see if Leah and Seth want to talk to her.”

“That’s not exactly what you said. And it wasn’t the tone in which you said it. You guys need to leave poor Tony alone. He’s going to quit coming around if all of you don’t stop trying to fix him up.”

“Well, is he not someone who usually helps mentor newbies? He teaches. He’s a DM. Are you saying we can’t put her in contact with him at all?”

Ross let out an aggravated grunt she knew meant he was trying to figure out a way to admit she was right without admitting she was right.

She let the subject drop and sat back in her seat while hoping he didn’t spot the smug smile on her face.