A thirty-ish woman in a baggy shirt offers me a glass of cranberry juice, sans vodka. No alcohol is available on the premises. This makes perfect sense since a drunk dominatrix could be dangerous, but a sober submissive like me is a very shy creature indeed. Deprived of my favorite social prop, I resort to other party tactics: I go to the bathroom. If no other amusement is available, at least I can fluff my hair. The juice lady tells me that the bathroom — the one for peeing alone with the door shut — is downstairs, where Grey didn't take me.
As I tread down the stairs, I hear a familiar laugh. I poke my head into a narrow room and see Amy and Max sitting together on a bench. "Come on in, sweetie, we're finished in here," Amy says. She stands up to greet me. She's wearing designer motorcycle boots and a black velvet thong. I've been at the beach and in the public dressing room at Loehman's with her, but I've never had the chance to just gape at her abundant femininity. Amy is a woman-sized woman, with pillowing curves and a tiny waist. The breasts that I've seen peeking out of tank tops and V-necks are now fully exposed. Her ass is monumental, round and high up on her body. She's well outside the envelope of conventional straight-chick beauty, and undeniably
The butch aims a precision lash, and the femme lets loose a luxurious groan.
gorgeous. Max is tucking his strap-on back into his jeans and wearing a T-shirt that says "It ain't gonna suck itself."
"Hiya!" Max says in a southern accent. He buckles his pants and gives me a friendly hug. He's almost six feet tall and looks naturally masculine, with broad shoulders and solid thick legs.
Amy asks if I'm having a good time. I explain that not much is happening upstairs but the eating of cookies. "Typical," she says with a world-weary sigh. She slides back into her skirt and a black velvet bra. The bosom is now bobbing in front of her. We wander back to the Oreo alcove. The gravitational pull of those cookies is unbelievable. The same dozen women are milling around. Amy knows most of them, and graciously introduces me.
I shake hands with a woman named Mindy, who sees erotic possibilities in my long, pliable hand. She folds it into a streamlined phallus and declares I was born to fist. Amy concurs that I'm a natural, albeit on the small side. "I guess it depends on which type of fisting you're into," Amy says authoritatively. I have a Beavis & Butthead moment — she said into — but I keep it to myself. Sticking my fist into some woman's womanly parts, whether aft or fore, is quite a bit farther into the S/M lesbian briar patch than I planned to go tonight.
The dungeon is still empty except for the same pair of women. The butch aims a precision lash and the femme lets loose a luxurious groan. Amy asks me if I've checked out the upstairs. I tell her that yes, a very nice butch named Grey gave me a two-minute tour. Max and Amy murmur approvingly. Grey, they tell me, is a much sought-after top. "Did he ask you to play?" Amy asks.
"No," I sigh. "He didn't seem the least bit interested."
Amy rolls her eyes. "Shy butches. You need a net and a tranquilizer gun to get them to do anything." She laments that when she and her old friend Melinda, who (you guessed it) just got a job at our company, started on the scene a few years ago it took months before anybody would play with them. "Really, it's amazing that someone even talked to you."
"Now sweetie," she asks, switching from her catty drag-queen voice to her
"Max or I could top, if you want," she says.
sensitive, motherly tone, "do you want to try anything?"
We're standing in an alcove near a gigantic wooden X that tilts against the wall.
"I like this much better than handcuffs because it supports the body," she says. She demonstrates by spread-eagling herself against it. "You can really let go. Do you want to try? Max or I could top if you want."
I reply, "Uh — "
My hands are fluttering from my hair to my skirt to an imaginary cigarette. Yes, I want to try, but with a stranger, not a friend. That being the case, I should get back to the alcove where people are socializing, but the social dynamics here confound me. I know how to flirt with straight men at a regular party: just stand there and look cute, and eventually someone will talk to me. I don't know how to approach a strange woman when I'm cold sober and ask her to perform highly specific sex acts with me right now. But that, it seems, is the key to participating in the S/M scene: asking in very precise terms for what you want until someone agrees.
As the minutes tick by, my nervousness tips into impatience. My first wild lesbian fetish party feels like a junior-high school dance, with all the boys lined up on one side of the room and all the girls lined up on the other. Except here, in spite of the butch/femme division of labor, everyone is female. At a high-school dance, the boys would be shy and awkward, but they'd also be full of testosterone, which would serve the supremely useful function of driving them across the room and asking the girls to dance.
