I woke after a deep, dreamless, refreshing sleep. As happens when you wake sometimes, I had a moment of disorientation before memory flooded back.

I rolled over, being careful to move slowly, about half afraid it had all been a dream.

But there she was.

In sleep, completely relaxed, she shed years. Oh, she wouldn’t be asked for an ID card in a liquor store but no one would question her if she gave her age as 50 either. Part of it was her hair, long, luxuriant, and a mess right then, giving her sort of an innocent look. Part was the way those tiny lines around her eyes smoothed. Part was the little smile on her lips making me wonder if I was part of her dream.

I lay there, just watching her sleep, fantasizing about spending the rest of my life with her.

Nature, the cruel bitch, took over and my need to pee forced me into action. I rolled out of bed, again careful not to wake her, and padded naked to the bathroom. I closed the door and sat to pee wanting to be as quiet as feasible. Finished, I looked in the vanity and found, praise the lord, a bottle of Listerine. I swished and rinsed, looked at myself in the mirror, wondered “not bad,” and headed back to bed.

“I had a bad moment,” she said, as I walked in, “when I woke up and you weren’t there. But then I heard you moving around and realized it hadn’t all been a dream.”

I smiled, crawled into bed with her, kissed her, and said, “do you happen to have any dynamite?”

Suddenly there were those little lines between her eyes again as she considered my question.

“Umm, no,” she said.

“Then you don’t need to worry, because that’s what it will take to get rid of me,” I said.

Her smile made that weird word “beatific” come to mind.

“Come here,” she said, holding her arms out wide in invitation.

Okay, my own smile was probably pretty over the top too as I crawled into bed and into her embrace.

She felt just as good in my arms in the morning as she had last night.

And the kiss was as good.

“Mmmmmmmmm,” she said, “let me go baby before I wet the bed.”

I enjoyed watching her leave. Yes, she was leaning, hard, on three-quarters of a century. But she still moved with a dancer’s grace. And she still looked good, a smallish heart-shaped ass moved nicely as she left the room.

I laid back, enjoying the feeling of warmth on her side of the bed, realizing how much I had missed that.

When she came back to bed I caught the faint scent of Listerine and smiled.

Our morning kisses were gentle. Not tentative at all, our tongues touched lightly. But gentle, as we lay close, fingertips, and lips exploring. I found a small spot of softness right at the top of her thigh, almost out of place in the general firmness of her body. When I squeezed it gently she giggled and said, “you like my saddlebag.”

I laughed at that and said, “more like a small clutch purse, but yes, I like it.”

We kissed and nuzzled and played like we hadn’t done when we were teenagers. For those few minutes, I was 18 again.

My fingertips wandered to her back and I began tracing the ridges there. As I did she tensed at first, then relaxed and hummed a soft little “mmmmmm” against my chest.

I pushed us aside enough to focus on her eyes and liked her smile in response.

“Tell me of your first time,” I said, and traced another of those welts with my fingertip, “how you entered The Life,” and I hoped my intonation made the capitalization obvious.

“Oh, God,” she breathed, “that’s ancient history.”

I smiled and kissed her.

“I WAS a history major,” I said.

I watched her face, wondering how this would go. I had spent my time in The Life and I wanted, hell, I needed to hear her story.

Finally, she drew a deep breath and I could see she was ready to begin talking.

I brushed a few stray hairs away from her face.

And I waited.

She took a deep breath and started.

Bonnie’s Story – –

It was my husband, of course. He was the guitar player in our band and we had regular arguments, you know, what they euphemistically call innovative differences in the magazines.

We were having one of those. Heck, I don’t even know what it was about anymore. Something to do with the show, the arrangement, something.

And yes, we were drinking. We had done pot and coke too so we were pretty fucked up.

Anyway, he said something like, “stop acting like a baby or I’ll turn you over my knee,” and I said something like “promises, promises.”

You know how things like that go. We started grabassing. Hell, I got the giggles. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t really withstand when he grabbed me by the hair and pulled me across his lap.

The next thing I knew my jeans and panties were around my knees and he was spanking me. Not some, you know, “spicy foreplay.” He was spanking me and I was crying.

She took a deep breath then, her eyes on mine, and the word “beseeching” came to mind.

“I didn’t plan any of this, David, I honestly didn’t,” she said and I just nodded.

But there was something about what was happening, the pain and the loss of control and the sheer craziness of it.

David, I was screaming, begging him to stop, my nose was running and when I shook my head tears and snot flew everywhere.

And then I came.

And it was like nothing I had ever imagined.

And I was hooked.

She stopped then, and smiled at me.

“David,” she said, holding my eyes, “I didn’t plan it. I’m not even sure why it got to me like that, but it did.”

I smiled, kissed her, and said, “a spanking doesn’t explain your back.”

She went on.

After a few days I was desperate, you know. We were in our 20s (here she giggled and added, “well, barely”) and full of piss and vinegar and sexual need. And I couldn’t achieve the same kind of pure release as I had when he was spanking me.

So I asked him. No, I begged him because he was reluctant. But that was the last time I had to ask.

Over the next year, the spankings became part of our regular lovemaking but I was addicted, you know? I kept needing more.

He found a club where they catered to, well, okay, it was a BDSM club and that’s bondage, discipline, sadism, and masochism if you don’t know.

We had a 30-day free trial, well, not free since it was a thousand-dollar, non-refundable entry fee, but we had a trial period before the full initiation.

I was hooked. I loved being dressed in leather, you know, collared, my tits or my ass or both on display. One night he put me on what they called the doll stand. It was a pole, mounted to the floor, topped by a big dildo, and when I say big I mean it was like a foot-long beercan shaped like a man’s erection. I had to stand with my feet on the footprints painted on the floor while he put it up my pussy and locked the pole at that height so I was stuck. I couldn’t lift myself off of it, I was just there, on display.

She stopped and took another breath. I had been watching her face and could tell this was getting to her. I kissed her, brushed an imaginary hair away from her face, and waited.

She took a deep breath and went on.

“Have you ever used a TENS machine?” she asked.

“One of those things the physical therapists used to make your muscles twitch?” I asked.

“Yes,” she said.

“Yes, I said.

“Well, you probably used it turned to about 3 to make your arm or leg or whatever twitch. There was an electrode on the end of the dildo and they stuck one to my spine right at my tailbone, and every once in a while it would fire,” she said.

“And it was set to about 10,” she added, “I’d scream and dance for a couple of seconds and it would stop.”

She went on.

And the thing is, when he finally let me off of it, lowered the pole, and freed me, I was standing in a puddle. I loved it. I loved being looked at. I loved being helpless. And I loved the occasional jolts of pure pain.

But you were wondering about my back, and that was part of the initiation.

I was hooked by the end of our 30 days, and Frank, did I mention my first husband’s name was Frank?

Anyway, Frank was okay with all of this so we wanted to be initiated. Well, we wanted ME to be initiated.

For the initiation, a full membership meeting was called and there were, at that time. 27 couples in The Club. The initiation was simple really. We signed these 12 pages’ non-disclosure agreements.

Then they turned me over to two of the women who took me into what they laughingly called the “ready room.”

I had been wearing my hair long, you know, I was gonna be a country music star and big hair was part of the image. They cut it off. They used electric clippers and it was like I was going into basic training. It was a buzz cut and my hair was about a half-inch long when they finished. Then they stripped me naked and dressed me in kind of a jumpsuit, It was long, flowing pants, a wide collar, and, basically, a bib that covered my boobs but left my back exposed.

They walked me out to the stage, and everybody was applauding.

On the stage were two poles and they strung me up. They had wide leather restraints, you know, like you’ve seen around a hospital in case you need to make sure a patient won’t get out of bed that went on my wrists and ankles. Then I was suspended, spread eagle, fully dressed except for my bare back.

Each of the members, 54 of them, men and women, got one stroke with a three-foot length of electrical wire.

I fainted twice while that was going on.

And I came four times.

And now you know.