How I met R

R arrived from New York early on New Year’s Eve.

I had met her at the Pleasure Salon in the basement of a bar in the Bowery in December and found myself kissing her almost before we’d spoken. It was her friend’s fault.

I was at the bar next to a tall, funky brown woman wearing black leather boots with impossibly high heels. I admired them and suggested that they were the kind of footwear that many people would be happy to kneel at and kiss. I asked whether they’d ever been serviced in this way and, if not, to christen them myself. She said that she’d consider my offer and agreed that the boots brought out the dominant in her.

To demonstrate this, she starts to issue some commands. She tells me to introduce myself to her friend R, then to kiss her. After demanding to be kissed herself, she redirects my attention to R.

“No,” She tells me. “You can do better than that. Kiss her like you want to fuck her.”

The kissing spreads; I find myself in a passionate embrace with Sandi, a gay guy I’d met earlier in the day. I had never understood that stubble could be erotic and it’s something of a revelation that in some circumstances it’s ok not to shave.

As the evening progresses I lose touch with R but as I’m leaving the bar I find T, the tall woman, looking for me.

“There you are,” she says. “I was worried you’d gone”. She pulls me into the upstairs bar where R is nursing a glass of white wine. “I want you to take her home with you”. I look at R. She thinks it’s funny but she’s not saying ‘no’.

“Of course I will”, I say. “If you insist and R wants to”.

“I do and she does. Go.”

It’s freezing on the streets of New York and we take a cab the three blocks to my hotel. The cabbie clearly thinks we could have walked.

In my room, we undress quickly. I kneel by her on the bed.

“Tell me what you like,” I say.

She speaks so softly, I can barely hear the reply.

“I like to be spanked”, she says.