The Ashtray

Beth Weeks

The munch wasn’t anything like Cody had expected. For one, he didn’t think a casual gathering of BDSM enthusiasts would take place at an Olive Garden. Two, he hadn’t expected to leave the meal with a recommendation for a professional sadist. A woman named Rosa gave him a phone number, saying, “He’s expensive, but he does good work. Text, don’t call.”

Cody opened his laptop to google the social norm for initiating conversation with a sex worker, but the results were disappointing. He did a reverse phone lookup, but received only confirmation that the owner of the number lived nearby.

He wondered if he’d be able to invite the sadist to his place or if they’d have to rent a hotel room. Cody’s apartment was embarrassing—he lived above an empty space rented out by an improv theater troupe that met three times a week. All of his possessions came from estate sales that he frequented out of boredom, except for his décor, which consisted of shadow boxes filled with bloodied gauze pinned like an entomologist pins butterfly wings, and the date of the wound written neatly underneath. He’d always considered these pieces creative, but looking at them now from an outside perspective, he thought they might be off-putting. He just couldn’t imagine a high-priced sadist would want to work surrounded by moth-eaten furniture and knock-off Tiffany lamps.

He clicked around aimlessly on his phone until it notified him that his battery was almost dead, which he took as a sign he needed to act. He pulled up a new message and input the number from the piece of paper, double checked it, and typed, I received your number from a shibari practitioner named Rosa at an Olive Garden munch. Would it be possible to set up an appointment with you?

He ground his teeth as he sent it, and went through all the normal stages of cold texting someone: disbelief that he’d managed to send the text in the first place; an overwhelming desire to retract it just as the word Delivered appeared under the message; fear that it went to the wrong person and some fourteen-year-old staying up past her bedtime was now confusedly googling shibari; furious disdain that his life had come to this, needing to re-budget the next few months of expenses to figure out how he might afford to be consensually beaten; and finally, acceptance. This was his life now. He was an asexual masochist, and it was nothing to be ashamed of.

He had never spoken his truth aloud before today’s munch, partially because he didn’t quite believe it about himself, given that he received no sexual gratification from pain. S&M pornography made him cringe and cover his eyes when anything harsher than nipple clamps were being applied. On the frequent occasions he cut himself, burned himself, or purposefully flung himself down flights of stairs, he felt only an immense wave of existential relief. He had considered a career as a stuntman, but thought it required too much athleticism and coordination. As such, his day job consisted of troubleshooting password resets at a call center for a major car insurance provider. He often leaned back in his squeaking ergonomic desk chair and made his fingertips go purple with rubber bands. On bad days, he jammed the ends of unfolded paper clips into his nail beds, or stapled the webbing of his fingers.

At the Olive Garden, Rosa had sat beside him, the only person who spoke to him the entire meal. She had silver hair cut into a dramatic bob and wore a blouse that looked like it came from a junior girl’s section of a Walmart circa 2002, all neon flowers and a wide, unflattering neckline. Some of her burgundy lipstick had made its way to her teeth. Her hands trembled as she pierced her breadstick with gelled, French-tip fingernails.

“Let me guess.” She bumped shoulders with him. “Sugar baby?”

Cody scooted oily iceberg lettuce around his plate. “No.”

“I do shibari,” she offered.

“Shibari?”

“Being tied up, but fancy. I like suspension too.” She took a bite of breadstick and wiped her shaking fingers on her napkin. “It’s a spiritual practice.”

He imagined Rosa naked, tied in artful knots and hung from a loft-style ceiling in front of a white background: the shapes and shadows of her matured body, silken rope pressing divots into her skin, joints contorted into painful stillness. It was not an arousing or even erotic thought, rather one that resonated with him on a profound level he had never before encountered during the appetizer portion of a chain restaurant meal. The image opened something in him, and he found himself saying for the very first time, “I’m a masochist.”

Rosa smiled at him in a fond, slightly condescending way, as if he needed to be more specific, so he added, “I’m not into it for, like, fucked-up reasons. I don’t hate myself or want to die or anything. I just want someone to beat me.”

She nodded wisely. “Unless you could settle for a light spanking, I don’t think you’ll find what you’re looking for here.”

Cody glanced at their table fellows, twelve in all, who sat silently listening to a man in a cowboy hat laugh at a joke he’d just made. A young-looking woman wearing cat ears and a baby doll dress kept both feet tucked under her and was typing something on her phone. A guy who looked like a paunchy Pat Sajak—if Pat Sajak wore threadbare Hawaiian shirts and constantly breathed through his mouth—had his hand balled at the back of her neck, the way people pick up cats. The rest of the attendees sat tightly in their chairs staring at their menus, unspeaking. The breadsticks were getting cold on the center of a line of tables that had been shoved together.

“I know someone you might like,” Rosa said, and pulled her enormous purse into her lap. She fished around in it and took out a crumpled receipt and pen, then wrote down a phone number. Her hand shook so much that the numbers were barely legible. Cody wondered if she had Parkinson’s, and that was why she liked being tied up.

Now, hours later, waiting in anticipation for the recommended sadist’s reply, Cody’s phone died. He scrambled around looking for his charger and plugged it in, and when the phone turned back on, he had a message waiting for him. It read, Name? Looking for what?

Cody wavered between taking some additional time to reply so as not to seem over-eager, and wanting to be a good consumer. He prided himself on things like the stillness with which he sat while getting his hair cut, the width he could open his mouth at the dentist, and the speed he managed to organize change into his wallet in busy cashier lines.

Cody. May I have yours?

He typed and retyped the next part of the message, not sure how to put it, whether he should be clinical or raunchy, specific or vague, and settled on, I would like you to hurt me.

The man responded right away: You can call me Todd. Blunt, sharp, burn? Or mental?

Todd the professional sadist. The absurdity of it was captivating, that it was probably not his real name, and out of all the names he could have picked for himself, he chose Todd.

Cody pulled at a hangnail on his pinky until a thin line of blood formed around the cuticle. He had never considered psychological pain as a service he could pay for when the world seemed to serve suffering for free, but he was curious as to how a person might go about mentally yet consensually torturing someone. He wondered if the only difference between a traumatic and nontraumatic event was the level of consent provided and subsequently acted upon. Perhaps suffering was only the inevitable result of overstepped boundaries. He wondered too what it said about him that he didn’t know what his limits were, and if so, in what way could he ever truly suffer?

His options suddenly and happily overwhelmed him. He pictured, not the process of pain itself, but the aftermath: putting a caller on hold at work the next morning to lovingly trace whatever wounds had been left on him, picking or pushing at them, forcing them to hurt worse. He unlocked his phone again and replied, I’d like you to choose.

Todd came back with an address, a time to meet, and simple instructions to rent a room. The fee was to be left in cash on the bedside table. Cody googled the address. It was a Red Roof Inn.

* * *

Cody arrived for his appointment nearly an hour early. In any other situation he would have felt self-conscious, but he supposed someone like Todd wouldn’t be too critical of enthusiasm in his line of work. Maybe he even appreciated it.

The room’s king-sized bedspread looked like an abstracted bisexual pride flag, and the carpet consisted of a disorienting pattern of circles. The highway could be heard a few dozen feet from the building; the rush-hour traffic was deafening. He supposed it was a good choice because he didn’t know if he would scream. The thought thrilled him: to hurt enough that it had to be vented via a wordless shout. He wondered if he would cry, or beg, or if he’d finally find a line he didn’t want to cross. If Todd wanted to sever his pinky finger, would he really say no? Would the no be the result of convenience, knowing his life would probably become somehow more difficult in lacking a pinky? Or would he only fear the spectacle of it, spending his entire life noticing the quickly averting gazes of people thinking, That man is missing a finger.

Cody didn’t think those kinds of boundaries really counted. He wanted to find a limit as proof he cared about something enough to protect it, not fearing inconvenience at its loss. Then again, maybe that was what it meant to care about something.

Todd arrived three minutes late. He knocked on the door. It occurred to Cody that he should have prepared somehow, or at least googled it beforehand. Maybe he should be naked. Maybe he should have been wearing something nicer than a button-down and slacks. Maybe a button-down and slacks was too nice.

When he opened the door, Todd was staring at his phone, jaw working a piece of gum, a backpack slung over one shoulder. He was wearing dozens of beaded bracelets on each wrist. Most of his fingers had rings on them. His olive-colored t-shirt complimented his tanned complexion. He had one of those modern haircuts: black hair long on top, shaved on the sides. His stubble looked like the result of forgetting to shave rather than being intentionally groomed. He was a couple inches shorter than Cody but broader in his chest and shoulders. A generous guess put him in his late thirties.

His most remarkable characteristic, however, was scarring that had taken over half of one eyebrow and marred his cheekbones. The deepest cut ran from his temple to his jaw on the left side of his face.

He looked Cody up and down in assessment, and said, “You’re young.” He pushed past, shut the door, and attached the chain.

“Am I supposed to be older?” Cody asked.

Todd ignored the question and tossed his backpack on the table by the door. “You somebody’s sugar baby?”

“Why do people keep asking me that?”

“You’re pretty and like getting hurt. Lot of money in that combination.”

“I’m pretty?”

“Take off your shoes and socks.”

Cody sat on the edge of the bed and untied his shoes. He slipped off his socks and balled them inside. The gaudy carpet scratched the soles of his feet pleasantly.

Todd groped around in his bag and nodded toward the bed. “Lie down. On your back.”

The bi pride duvet felt like unyielding plastic underneath him. He clasped his hands over his stomach, and looked toward the ceiling, which was plastered with gold specks of glitter.

Todd’s face hovered into his view. “This isn’t sexual for you.”

“How can you tell?”

“You’re not…” He made a vague gesture over Cody’s body, “You know, acting.”

“Am I supposed to?”

“That’s part of it, yeah.”

“Maybe I’m just new.”

“Nah, you got different needs is all.” He moved to the end of the bed, a thin reed of bamboo in hand.

“What’s that?”

“Cane.”

It occurred to Cody they hadn’t once made eye contact. Todd managed to look all around his eyes but not into them, as if Cody were an abandoned building that needed careful demolishing.

“You a screamer?” Todd asked. “Need a gag or anything?”

Cody thought a gag might jinx it, so he replied, “No, I should be fine.”

“Safeword?”

“Can I just ask you to stop?”

“Sure. Ready?” Todd put his hand on Cody’s shin and lifted the cane.

“Yeah,” Cody said, and Todd struck the soles of his feet.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Cody floated above his own body as Todd delivered one final blow. His face was covered in dried tears. Beads of sweat had accumulated across his brow. He grunted and grimaced but didn’t scream, and his feet felt like he’d trekked across a desert of LEGOs. Away from himself like this, it was hard to tell if he found the sensation pleasurable.

Todd let go of Cody’s leg and returned the reed to his backpack. He came back with a bottle of purple lotion, then knelt at the end of the bed.

“What are you doing?” Cody’s voice echoed in his head. He wondered if his skull had emptied, his brain having leaked out with all the tears and sweat.

“Stay still,” Todd said, tone softened.

Todd dug his lotioned thumbs into the underside of Cody’s left foot, which evolved from numb to a warm throb, bordering on painful without quite making it there.

After a few minutes of this—a foot massage, Cody finally figured out, though why it was happening, he had no idea—he dwindled back into himself, but not enough to censor the statement that found its way to his mouth: “This isn’t sexual for you either.”

“Nope.”

“What is?”

Todd made a thoughtful sound and said, “My wife.”

Cody felt a cold drop of disappointment, followed by pleased surprise that he could feel anything at all. “Does she know about the sex work?”

“Yep.”

“And she’s cool with it?”

“Yep.”

Cody forced himself to realign his perspective of Todd. He didn’t realize he held so many assumptions about professional sadists. “Any kids?”

“Three.”

“Do you mind me asking personal questions?”

“Nah.” Todd let go of Cody’s foot for a moment, presumably to put more lotion in his hands, then returned to massage the right foot. “Most people don’t give a shit.”

Cody could no longer feel pain in his feet, but he was acutely aware of every rattling pulse in his body, blood traipsing through his limbs, neurons cycling their transmitters, hair follicles crushed against the now-sodden pillow.

Todd stood and touched Cody’s ankle gently. “Sit up. Slow. There you go.”

The room tilted as Cody sat upright. He wiggled his toes and looked at them. They were burgundy like Rosa’s lipstick.

“Need anything else?” Todd asked. “Praise or anything?”

Cody turned his attention from his toes to Todd’s face. The room continued spinning in the edges of his perception, as if Todd were the centrifugal force of the universe. “Why would I want praise? I didn’t do anything.”

“People like to know they handled it well.”

“Did I?”

Todd lifted Cody’s chin and pressed his thumb in its divot. Their eyes finally met, and Cody felt vulnerable and exposed in a good way, as if someone had entered his apartment and found his bloody shadow boxes artful instead of discomfiting.

“You did,” Todd said.

* * *

Cody lasted about twelve hours before texting Todd again. It was early at the call center, and he had no calls in his queue. His cube-mate Virginia was downstairs getting coffee. He pressed his feet into the soles of his shoes and revelled in the sting that shot up his legs. Then he took his phone out and texted, I’d like to make another appointment.

They met again on Tuesday at the same Red Roof Inn but in a different room. While waiting for Todd, Cody took his shoes and socks off in preparation. He put his ankle on its opposite thigh and twisted his foot to look at the underside of it. The sole was a bluish purple in some spots, yellow in others. He was pushing into the darkest bit with his thumbs when Todd knocked on the door.

Today he was wearing a white t-shirt but otherwise looked the same as the first time, down to the texting and lack of eye contact. He ordered Cody to take off whatever articles of clothing he was willing to remove. Here Cody hesitated, being uncomfortable naked in front of people, but managed to shed his shirt and pants. He kept his boxers on.

Todd’s implement of choice was a leather paddle, which at first seemed uninspired. Afterward, Cody was so overwhelmed with pain that he retracted his judgment, especially when the resulting massage involved Todd’s hands over nearly his entire body. Cody was floating again, tethered to earth by Todd’s scratchy calloused fingers digging into the welts he had created.

To his surprise, after the massage, Todd climbed into bed and rolled Cody into his embrace, lethargically spooning him.

“What are you doing?” Cody asked. Todd’s arm was draped over his middle, knee between his legs.

“Part of the process,” Todd muttered. His lips were pressed against the back of Cody’s neck. He sounded tired. “Make you feel bad, then good.”

“I don’t like feeling good.”

“Yeah you do.”

* * *

They began to meet weekly after that, every Tuesday evening. Cody had to dip into his savings, which he had been accumulating for years in hopes to put a down payment on a house so he would no longer have to live above an improv theater. Their sessions lasted an hour and consisted of twenty minutes of pain, twenty minutes of massage, and twenty minutes of cuddling wherein they also had deep, emotionally validating conversations. Cody learned that Todd originally started his career in high school, where he built a reputation for picking up odd jobs, mostly beating people up for money, and later in life, selling drugs, but he found a happy medium in professional domination, which he considered the most morally sound outcome of his potential career trajectory due to its focus on consent and making people happy.

Two months into their arrangement, during the snuggle portion of the evening, Cody asked, “Would you cut off my pinky if I asked you to?”

“Sure,” Todd said. “But I’m not driving you to the hospital. You want that next time?”

“It was just a thought.”

Todd’s resulting mm noise vibrated against Cody’s skin. After the first twenty minutes of each session, they had begun touching each other with an unprecedented amount of affection—a swiped lock of hair, the trail of fingertips down an arm, occasional hand-holding. Cody wondered if he was special, or if these acts of fondness were part of the package.

“Would you have sex with me if I asked you to?” Cody asked.

“Sure. You want to?”

“Just another thought.”

“Got a lot of thoughts for a guy who just took a beating.”

“Guess you’ll have to try harder next time.”

Todd let out a rasped laugh that made Cody’s chest tighten. He turned over in Todd’s embrace and pressed their foreheads together.

* * *

At the start of their next session, Todd shut himself in the bathroom and began running the tap in the tub. Cody took the opportunity to root around in Todd’s backpack for a wallet or family picture or anything that would give him some insight. He found only a membership ID for a gym about ten minutes away. It had Todd’s unsmiling picture in the corner, and the name beside it read Francis Rowan.

Cody put the ID back in the pocket he had found it in, at the same time Todd—or Francis, or Frank, or Frankie—opened the bathroom door. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to notice Cody’s small trespass. He gestured into the bathroom. “Come on.”

Towels covered the bathroom floor and the tub was filled with water, sans bubbles.

“Get in,” Todd said.

He didn’t specify for Cody to take off his clothes, and Cody had already divested himself of his shoes, socks, wallet, and keys, so he stepped in the tub and lowered himself into the water, fully clothed.

“Scoot forward so you can lie down,” Todd said.

For the first time since they’d started seeing each other, Cody asked, “What are you going to do?”

“Drown you.”

“Oh.” He thought about it. “Are you going to kill me or something?”

“Do you want me to?”

“No.”

“Then I won’t.”

Cody thought that might have been a joke, but he made a mental note to research if assisted suicide were some kind of kink he’d never considered. It didn’t seem worth it, since you could only do it once.

“Okay.” He moved forward so that his knees bent to his chest. “No brain damage either, please.”

“Wouldn’t think of it.” Todd pushed the sleeve of his henley to his elbow and wrapped his hand around Cody’s neck. “Do you trust me?”

“Yes,” Cody said without hesitation, and realized it was true.

He took a deep breath as Todd lowered him into the water. Once submerged, he opened his eyes and saw Todd smiling down at him with the glazed, happy expression he got when he knew he was doing good work. His hand was firm against Cody’s throat.

Cody exhaled bubbles slowly, hands gripping either side of the tub. He lost track of the seconds, felt only the pressure on his lungs begging him to breathe. It was a polite plea at first, but as a minute or so passed, the plea turned into insistence, and insistence into begging. But Cody had faith, so he lay still.

Eventually his instincts got the best of him: he grasped at Todd’s arm, writhing until his legs began to thrash, pushing upward with all his might. Blackness crept to the edges of his vision. His chest screamed to breathe.

Todd lifted him out of the water. Cody gasped for air, trembling.

“Again?” Todd asked.

Cody nodded and said, “Please.”

They did it twice more, until the twenty minutes were up and Cody’s brain felt like it had been stuffed with cotton balls. Water clung to his eyelashes and everything looked soft in his peripheral vision.

Todd ran his fingers through Cody’s wet hair, other hand on his chest, urging him to breathe.

“There you go,” he was saying in his easy afterglow voice. “Slow and steady.”

Todd was still looking at him the way he had while Cody was underwater, loving and open. Cody stared at him, into him, feeling his heart pounding its way out of his chest and into Todd’s hands. He couldn’t feel anything but wholeness, a consummate fulfillment he didn’t know he was capable of, and which he thought Todd was directing toward him in kind.

Todd leaned forward and kissed him. They hadn’t kissed before; Cody somehow neglected it as an option, but now it was all he wanted. The kiss made him forget about the stack of money just feet away, and the clock beside it counting down their remaining minutes together.

Cody’s hands gripped Todd’s shirt, soaking it in his wet fists as he hung over the side of the bathtub. He pulled away an inch to breathe again, allowed himself an indulgent look at Todd’s scar. He reached up and ran his finger down the wide crevice of it.

“Someone fought back,” Cody said.

“Lot of people fight back.”

“I don’t.”

“No,” Todd said. He pulled Cody’s hand away and brought it to his lips. “You’re good like that.”

* * *

That night, Cody googled the name Francis Rowan. Predictably, he found a few mugshots from the early nineties. Todd was roughed-up in all of them, black eyes and butterfly-bandaged noses and swollen jaws. Cody saved them to his hard drive to look at in more detail later.

He found Francis’ Facebook, which appeared mostly unused. Frankie Rowan, it said. His profile picture was a cropped photo of himself smiling with a terrible case of red-eye. Cody preferred the mugshots. A woman named Kaitlin Schuster-Rowan tagged him frequently in photos with no apparent regard for privacy settings. She had curly red hair and a round face full of freckles. Their children were pictured with spaghetti catastrophes and unwrapped presents and wide baby-teeth gaps. Cody didn’t get far in his search before he had to close his laptop.

He went to bed early but couldn’t sleep. It was the improv class, he told himself. Poorly edited music clips and strained laughter found its way into his room from the floor below. For the first time in the three years he had lived there, he decided to join them.

Downstairs, he sat on a chair in the back of the room and watched. The theater looked like a gutted Taco Bell, which was exactly what it was. There were a couple dozen people: a handful of actors sitting near the front, switching off onstage, and the family and friends they had dragged along. Most of them were on their phones. The actors’ antics made Cody laugh occasionally, not because they were funny, but out of politeness and a disdain for awkward silence. At one point, an obese man wearing a comically large cowboy hat was whipping a younger man with a purple foam pool noodle. The younger man moaned and said, “Harder, Daddy.” Everyone laughed. Cody was mildly offended.

The leader of the class was the young woman in cat ears Cody had met at the munch. She wasn’t wearing cat ears or a baby doll dress now, though, just black leggings and a t-shirt.

Cody stayed after while everyone folded up chairs and said their goodbyes. He was eyeing the pastries on the craft table, of which there were only crumbs and a quarter of a cheese Danish remaining. Cat Ears came by to sweep it into the trash with the rest of the debris, and did a double-take when she noticed him.

He didn’t know what he was expecting, but it was not a happy, “Hey, I know you!” She leaned in and lowered her voice: “From the munch?” It felt like they were part of some secret club, and not a publicly organized outing for people who appreciated negotiated power dynamics.

“Yeah.”

“I don’t think I caught your name.”

“Cody.”

“I’m Maybelline. Like the makeup.”

Despite the late hour, she invited him for a cup of coffee.

They walked to a diner a block away which Cody had passed every day going to work yet never entered. He thought it would have been a better place for a munch than Olive Garden, given its small customer base and dim yellow lighting. The decor and wood-paneled walls were reminiscent of a 1970s trailer park, and the coffee tasted like it hadn’t been freshened since noon.

“We haven’t seen you around in a while,” Maybelline said. She opened the fourth half-and-half to pour into her coffee. Her hair had a ripple in it where her cat ears normally sat. She perched in the booth with her feet underneath her like she had at the munch, and chewed her lower lip whenever she wasn’t speaking. Her wingtip eyeliner stretched longer on one side than the other.

“I started seeing someone,” Cody explained.

Maybelline moved on to the sugar and poured a significant amount into her cup. “Aw, good for you.”

“How’s your…dom?” Cody asked. “The guy who looks like Pat Sajak.”

She made a disgusted noise in her throat. “I left him.” Her spoon clattered against her porcelain mug as she stirred. “Turns out I’m monogamous. Like, what year is it?”

“Right, yeah.” Cody took a gulp of coffee and tried not to taste it. He wondered if Todd-slash-Frankie had any commitments after their standing Tuesday appointment. The thought was unpleasant in a way he usually enjoyed, but this time didn’t. “Jealousy issues?”

“Combination of things. He wanted slaves, not subs, and I’m not into the blanket-consent life. Harems squick me out, but I thought I’d try it because there are like, twenty subs for every dom, and most doms are shitty.”

“Mine is married,” Cody admitted. “I’m not happy about it.”

She gave him a sympathetic pout. “That sucks, I’m sorry. It’s like, impossible not to fall in love no matter how unavailable they make themselves.”

“It’s almost like the unavailability is part of the allure.”

“Right? Like, we should know better.”

“Yeah,” Cody replied. “We really should.”

* * *

The next session involved a cigar. Cody lay on the bed with his legs apart. Todd repeatedly lit the cigar, took a long drag so the cherry glowed bright red, and put it out on Cody’s inner thigh. Cody needed to be restrained halfway through, but it was worth it for the loving, methodical way Todd burned him.

After, Todd untied him and tended to his burns, sitting cross-legged between Cody’s legs. A first aid kit lay open beside them with a pile of bloody cotton swabs and band-aid wrappers.

“You did good today,” Todd said.

Cody normally would have preened at the praise, but he couldn’t manage it. All he could think about was Maybelline’s reluctant acceptance of monogamy, her holistic selfhood that kept her from being someone’s slave. He gripped the sheets in time with the sting of iodine—it suddenly occurred to him, with horror, that maybe he was monogamous and full of selfhood too. That one day he would no longer be able to afford Todd’s company, and he would have to live the rest of his life without these small kindnesses which validated him so deeply. That for the first time in his life he cared about something—someone—and just the thought of losing him sent Cody into a panic in a way the thought of cutting off his own pinky never had.

“Is this real?” Cody asked.

Todd was shuffling around in the first aid kit for another band-aid. “‘Course it’s real.”

“No, I mean—” Cody sat up so he could see Todd. “I have…feelings for you. Inappropriate ones. I want you to feel the same way about me.”

Todd froze for only a second, expression unwavering. Cody felt like he was being held underwater again, helpless.

“Yeah,” Todd said. “I do.”

The brands on Cody’s thighs burned, bullets to his brain that made everything sharper, including his tone. “Then why do I have to pay for it?”

“Guy’s gotta make a living.”

“You make a living beating people.”

“I make a living loving them.”

“So you do this with everyone else, too. This—” He made a gesture from his chest to Todd’s. “Affection.”

Todd’s face was stern but his words were soft: “I love people the way they need to be loved.”

“Aren’t you afraid of getting hurt?”

“Funny question coming from a masochist.” They sat in silence, Todd gently putting a bandage over the last brand, the one closest to the knee, Cody watching his weathered hands, unblinking.

“You know,” Todd said quietly, “a while back I was thinking about moving on to ‘real’ work.” He stared at Cody’s thigh and ran a finger across a bandage. Pain lapped over Cody’s skin like a wave of fire. “The thing that happened with you kept happening with other people. Thought there was something wrong with me. You see who people are behind the curtain, the difference between what they ask for and what they’re saying. And you can’t keep it cold anymore.”

He closed the first aid kit and set it on the floor, then shifted up in bed. Cody lay down beside him. Their bodies molded together with practiced ease, settling in for the final twenty minutes, Todd’s stubbled chin scratching against Cody’s shoulder.

“What changed?” Cody asked.

“There was this dog—a mutt, barely a year old, half-starved. Darts right in front of my car. I swerve but don’t hit her. She runs into the woods. No collar, but I thought, she’s gotta belong to somebody. Few minutes later, my oldest, Becca, she starts crying in the back seat. I ask her what’s wrong. She says I’d make fun of her for being a baby. I let it drop. All through dinner she’s staring into space, eyes all red. She goes to bed, and I hear her crying again. So I go and ask her what’s wrong. She says, it’s the dog. The dog has a family somewhere and it’s lost and it needs to go home.

“And, you know, my gut instinct is to tell her it’ll be fine. Dogs are smart. They’ll make their way home. But truth is, I don’t fucking know if that dog’ll be okay. So I get her out of bed and we go look for the fucking dog. We find her by the freeway. Stick her in the basement for a few days and look for her owners. No go. Anyway, that was years ago and we still got her.”

Cody rolled over so he was facing Todd. He pooled his fists under the overstuffed, sterile-smelling pillows and said, “I don’t understand.”

“There was a time I was just gonna let that stupid dog die, you know? If I’d been alone in the car that day, I may not have hit her, but I wouldn’t have saved her, neither. Wouldn’t have thought about it for longer than it took to swerve back into my lane. And that’s the day I decided I wasn’t gonna get on my girls for being too sensitive. I wasn’t gonna tell them they had to toughen up. It’s not a weakness at all, to be able to feel the way Becca does, to love without holding back.”

Cody imagined himself crossing the road and getting hit by Todd’s car. He could see his feet being swept out from under him, body rolling over the hood and roof, bouncing on the trunk and then spinning to a stop on the pavement below—skin scraped off, skull cracked, bones shattered. His entire life, these thoughts had brought him relief from a kind of suffering he could never articulate. Now he only despaired that Todd would never stop for him. He wondered if this was the mental torture Todd had mentioned when they first spoke, this agony of homeless devotion.

“I don’t know how to love like you,” Cody said. He inched forward and pressed his lips against Todd’s, appreciating the small space he occupied in his infinite embrace, even if he wasn’t ready for it yet.

Todd kissed him back, too gently, in a way that hurt worse than anything else.

“I think we need to stop seeing each other. Until I figure things out.”

“You’ll get there,” Todd said. “And when you do, you have my number.”

* * *

Cody stopped at the improv class instead of going home. Maybelline looked at him and seemed to know immediately what was wrong. After class was over, she boxed up the remaining pizza from the craft table. They bought a four-pack of Seagram’s and some bags of sour gummy worms from the convenience store next door.

When he let her into his apartment, she picked up the newest shadow box that Cody had yet to hang up. Her eyes widened as she tilted the box side to side under the orange lamplight, inspecting the row of Medline pads covered in dark splotches of blood. At the bottom of the box, Cody had written, Todd.

“This is so fucking cool,” she said.

Cody swallowed the knot that had suddenly tangled in his throat.

She set the box down and asked, “Have you ever built a blanket fort in here?”

He hadn’t, but it was a good use for his stack of secondhand afghans that other people’s grandmothers had probably crocheted. When complete, the blankets spanned the entire living room and engulfed the TV. They ate pizza while lying on removed sofa cushions and binge-watching reality television.

“I lied,” Cody said while waiting for the next episode to load. “Todd wasn’t really my dom. I mean, he was, but he was a pro-dom. I hired him to beat me.”

Maybelline ripped open the bag of gummy worms with her teeth. She held them out to him. “Only thing as old as sex work is people falling in love with their sex workers.”

They were silent until the next episode ended, and Maybelline said, “You should come to the munch next week. I want to introduce you to someone.”

* * *

The munch was held at an Outback Steakhouse this time. Cody looked around at the lines of hardbacked booths as he was led to the table, imagining seeing Frankie there with his family, Kaitlin and Becca opposite him, his two other kids beside him. They’d be sharing a bloomin’ onion maybe, and Becca would say she doesn’t like onions, and tear at the loaf of rye bread instead. She would text her friends under the table, complaining about being dragged to a stupid restaurant. Kaitlin might talk about work, and Frankie wouldn’t be able to talk about his in kind, but he’d be used to it. Maybe they discussed it before bed. Maybe they didn’t talk about it at all. Maybe Frankie’s phone vibrated in his pocket with clients asking to schedule, and he’d excuse himself to the restroom to reply to them. Or maybe he had a separate phone for work purposes that he kept in a drawer at home.

Cody imagined going up to their table and saying to his family, “I love him, too.”

Here the daydream diverged: Frankie, upset, would tell Cody to get lost. Cody would make a scene until Frankie dragged him out of the restaurant, threatened him, hit him. And Cody would be grateful for it, the familiar misery, the easy fear. Or they’d pretend they didn’t know each other at all. Their eyes would lock and they would glide past one another as if Cody had never known the hard, sweet touch of Frankie’s hands.

This munch was smaller than the last, only seven people. Pat Sajak and his harem weren’t in attendance, but Cowboy Hat looked at home at the head of the table. At the other end sat Maybelline beside an empty chair, and across from her was Rosa. They were both talking to a man roughly the size of an industrial refrigerator. He was wearing the end-of-day remnants of a suit, white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, charcoal gray tie loosened around his neck, a gold watch that probably cost more than Cody’s car.

Cody sat down across from him. The man had a beaked nose and leaned back in his chair with his arm around the back of Rosa’s, legs crossed lazily with the menu open in his lap. His excessive casualness made it seem as if he were overcompensating for something. Cody could feel the man’s attention on him and could tell somehow that he was nervous too. It made the annoying upper-class-businessman vibe bearable.

“Cody, this is Michael,” Maybelline said. She was wearing her cat ears again and another baby doll dress, despite lacking a dom or daddy or whatever she was looking for.

Rosa was smiling at him. He preferred to look at her rather than Michael. His palms were sweating and he wiped them on his jeans. Maybelline didn’t have to qualify the introduction with, Michael is a sadist. Cody could tell, could see behind the curtain now. There was a darkness hanging about him that Cody imagined he held too, the same Frankie dragged door to door. A different kind than Maybelline and Rosa and Pat Sajak and Cowboy Hat carried, all of them loving in their own patterns.

“Good to meet you,” Cody said.

“I hear you’re a masochist,” Michael replied.

Before he could answer, the server came by to take their orders. She landed on Cody, who looked at Michael and said, “I’d like you to order for me.”

Michael hesitated only briefly before he told the server, “He’ll have the porterhouse. Six ounce, medium rare. Steak fries. Side salad, house dressing is fine.” When he passed over his menu, he glanced at Cody and added, “Do you smoke?”

“I do if you want me to,” Cody replied.

* * *

Outside, Michael pulled a pristine pack of Reds and a silver Zippo out of his pocket. He perched a cigarette between his lips and lit it. After a couple drags and a few minutes of small talk, he asked Cody, “So. Hard limits?”

Now that they were alone, Michael’s nervousness was apparent under his feigned calm. He fidgeted and ended all his sentences with a self-conscious baritone half-laugh. Whenever Cody looked at him, Michael looked away and flicked his cigarette. He didn’t have any visible scars, and Cody wondered what that said about him.

“Body modification,” Cody said. “I don’t want you to sever my pinky or anything.”

Michael took Cody’s hand and lifted it to inspect. “It’s a fine pinky. Would be a shame to take it away from its owner. Anything else?” He lowered Cody’s hand but continued to hold it. They were standing too close; Cody found it thrilling.

“I like good aftercare,” he added.

Michael nodded and flicked the ash from his cigarette. “Aftercare’s the best part.”

“And cuddling. And massages.”

“You sound like a terrible masochist.” Michael continued looking at Cody with a curious fondness that didn’t seem like part of the act.

Cody let go of Michael’s hand to push up his sleeve and offer his forearm. Michael smiled, took a final drag from his cigarette, and snubbed it out on Cody’s arm.

 

© 2019 Beth Weeks

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Beth Weeks received her MFA in creative writing and pedagogy from Miami University in Ohio. Her work has been featured in Quarter After Eight and Midwestern Gothic. She has been nominated for a PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and has won the Jordan-Goodman Prize in Fiction. In her free time, she enjoys dissociating in the shower.