Cheese


Samuel is Bunny's boyfriend. He is a talented amateur photographer. He looks like a lanky, old moneyed WASP, but he is actually a lanky middle class Jew. He was patiently arranging me under his lights as I arched my back unnaturally in front of Bunny's white Chinese screen. Her five orange cats crouched and stared unblinking at my contortions. I was wearing a black rubber girdle dress with attached nude,sheer thigh highs and black pumps. My breast were thrust to the heavens and my waist was the size of a Wasp Queen. I looked hot. I WAS hot and uncomfortable. One must suffer for beauty.

"OK Ava, I want you to stretch your toes toward the ceiling, turn your head back over your shoulder and arch your back even more".

I struggled to do as he asked but I had been posing for hours.

"Turn my head back over my shoulder? What is this the exorcist'? Samuel chuckled indulgently but was insistent.

"Come on Mistress you still have a little life in you yet. This natural light is outstanding." As he spoke he fussed with my props, wrapping my Nana's black pearls around my leg. I nodded enthusiastically.

"Sexy!"

I had always hated being photographed as I felt like I was cursed by some quirk of faulty symmetry. I never looked as pretty as I felt. In the past, loved ones would thoughtfully examine candid photos of me, make a non committal sound and pass them on. They thought they were being diplomatic. I knew that my head looked over sized and somehow shaggy, like an Native American ceremonial buffalo mask.

If Samuel were a doctor, he could be described as having an excellent bedside manner. He put me at ease with his grandfatherly and sanitized touch. Under his calm directives I preened and soldiered on but
my mind wandered. I was thinking about the website that I was having designed. I had a friend who was creating it for me on the pay for it later plan. She did the technical work as I have no aptitude for that sort of thing. I did take a keen interest and closely supervised the creative outlay. In fact I gradually wrestled control from my poor friend who didn't really give a damn as she is a good sport.

For months I had been studying not only the websites of well known Dommes, but also those of super exclusive, very high end calls girls. I had been directed to a particular internet board by a client. It catered to this insular and chi chi group of educated beauties who had their own cult of personality, which they marketed to "patrons" or "suitors" as the clients were called. It wasn't Fee who showed me the way, as she shunned the more traditional path of the paid companion. She had no website, just some private referrals shared amongst friends and a few stunning photos by a well known and very popular photographer used in those circles. The man's ego was as big as his talent as he insisted on branding his photos with a giant water mark of his name. Still, he was a genius and totally out of my league. Fee made most of these girls look sick and within four or five long week ends cleared over one hundred thousand a year. And then some. But she was a lone wolf and jealous of her spoils so I couldn't look to her often for private introductions. Besides we did not play the same way.

I had a client (I was quickly getting some private referrals of my own) who liked to explore his dual sexual natural with unflagging curiosity. Sometimes he liked it vanilla, meaning conventional sex. When he did he turned to an absolutely mesmerizing, sleek little red headed courtesan named Jean. He seemed bewitched by her and I wondered if he rhapsodized to Jean about me. I looked at her site and sure enough she had the same wonderful photographer that Fee had used. Unlike most of the Domme sites that I had studied, her website was elegant and mysterious. She never showed her face and it was evident by her text that she was bright and unusually charming. Also uncommonly beautiful. Her rates unflinchingly stated a three hour minimum and she saw no one for less than three thousand to start. According to our mutual client, Jean was worth every penny. He went to Jean when he wanted to feel good and came to me when he wanted to feel bad.

Her site was linked to a treasure trove website of information about the business. Not the business of Domination per say, but the business of marketing and selling sexual promise -not blatant sex itself. I decided to model my own site against type and more on this high end escorting model. I was becoming a Professional Dominatrix and was not a call girl, but I was beginning to consider myself a sort of hybrid. I had begun accompanying my clients to fine restaurants and wine tastings. For some, I was becoming a trusted confidant who was capable of speaking compellingly on a number of topics. A sexy and entertaining business companion who would also inflict great pain. Who could resist?

"Please hold still Ava" Samuel said mildly, interrupting my schemes and dreams to take over the world.

"I've had enough." I stood up, brushing cat hair off my ass and started gathering all my props and pretty things together.

"All right. We have been shooting for almost four hours. I feel really good about this, I think we got some real classic stuff here. I agree with you about the black and white film. I'm going to play around with them in photoshop a little".

"Sure, just try and keep them flattering but realistic, ok? I don't want to raise unrealistic expectations."

"Don't worry-it will be all you Ava. You really hung in there. Good job" Samuel extended his hand for me to shake, smiling wryly, all teeth and sandy hair. I took it and grinned back.

The five orange cats turned their five heads in perfect unison toward the door. A moment later, we heard the key in the lock and the sound of Bunny's weary tread ascending.

"Hi guys." she said as she flopped into the room in an almost palpable fog of exhaustion. Bunny threw herself onto her sofa and was immediately surrounded by a circle of solicitous cats. Samuel offered to make tea which I thought was mighty sensitive of him.

"Long day huh?" I asked sympathetically. She didn't look good, she was pale and under her eyes were purple and gray shadows caused by the daily tedium of survival.

"Oh you don't even know Ava. I've worked fifteen hours today, up at five am
but I missed my train anyway by a minute. I still have about three hours worth of case paper work to do before I can sleep. How did the shoot go?"

Samuel and I interpreted one another with our enthusiastic report of the day, like eager children. Bunny seemed to wilt in front of us as though our high spirits were taking what energy she had left. I pulled her boots off as she slipped sideways and unresisting. I felt a twinge of guilt. Lately I had been sleeping in on expensive linen, carelessly eating in bed and drinking endless cups of coffee from a chic French press that a client bought me. I wasn't exactly rolling in dough yet, having been at the Domina gig for barely six months. But I had been paying the rent by myself with ease in a very expensive city in a hip part of town. I had many clients buy me what I both needed and wanted. After all, money not spent is money saved right? One client took me to Traders Joes, a specialty grocery store where I loved to shop. I had another sub, a more practical sort, who would bring me industrial sized cans of coffee and bags of kitty litter big enough to crush a toddler to death. Other submissives were more romantic and bought me surprisingly expensive jewelry. I looked at Bunny's wan face and recalled my own not so long ago days of being a wage slave without sentiment.

As she relayed her grueling day of appeasing virulent and ego driven office emperors, I suddenly felt even guiltier. I felt freer than I had in years despite the insecurity of not having a corporate safety net. I had lost my dental and health insurance, a bad relationship, a good roommate (something as valuable and rare as a gold artifact) and a well paying but senseless job all in the last six months or so. I was often drowning in my own anxiety and thoughts of an uncertain future haunted me. Yet for the first time in awhile, I was intrigued with my own life again. I was deliberately reinventing myself and in a weird way...I was having fun. I was feeling survivors guilt, because I felt like I was escaping the machine of benign corporate servitude. First a refuge, then a revoked promise, corporate America was an Indian giver.

So turn and smile for the camera.