Read Online The Other Side of Desire by Daniel Bergner - Free Book Online
Authors: Daniel Bergner
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back with the Girl: rigging her face with horse blinkers and a ball gag, binding her limbs, instructing two assistants to cane her. As she was caned, the Girl screamed in a choked-off, high-pitched way from behind the gag, which propped open her jaw at an impossible angle. Her eyes lost focus. The Baroness didn’t take direct part in the beating, because the Girl was about to serve at her annual Christmas party, and the Baroness, who tended toward the extreme, didn’t want her marked.
There was Greg, a window-washer, his face rugged below short brown bangs, handsome in the manner of a cigarette ad. He wore a black T-shirt, a creased and faded leather jacket. It was easy to place him in a common pornographic scene: washing a large bedroom window, then beckoned inside by the woman sprawled on the bed. When he arrived each afternoon at the boutique, he presented himself to the Baroness, as he’d been trained, just inside the front door: on his knees, arms tight to his sides and wrists bent back so that his palms and straightened fingers were parallel to the floor. His hands looked like paralyzed flippers. She would direct him to hold this posture for several minutes, correcting him if his wrists started to droop.
At last allowed to stand, Greg started to polish the front door’s metal frame, a daily task, the weather quickly replacing any blemishes he managed to burnish away. As he polished, the mailman came. He and Greg said hello, exchanged pleasantries, a pair of simple working men.
“Have you rented Remains of the Day ?” the Baroness asked Greg one afternoon. He’d just knelt before her, hands in position, to ask what his next task should be, after an hour at the door frame.
“No, Baroness. Forgive me, Baroness.”
“You didn’t expect me to ask?” Two weeks ago, she had instructed him to watch the story of the faultless, self-effacing butler.
“It’s a hard movie to find, Baroness,” he pleaded.
As he knelt, knees slightly splayed, she kicked him with terrific force in the testicles, connecting with the tip of her red boot. He shuddered and bent but made no sound. Next, he vacuumed the boutique. In the back pocket of his jeans he kept a small spiral notebook, as required, in order to take notes. “Please serve obey” were the words printed on one page. Another unpunctuated page read: “Always wear black when serving the Baroness never interrupt the Baroness always clean the front of the shop sweep wipe down never talk to the Baroness eye to eye.” And a third: “When trying to get the Baroness’s attention always be in position to accept any discipline the Baroness feels I deserve.”
After vacuuming, he returned to his knees to pour her a glass of champagne in the basement. Another trainee was bathing her feet in a little plastic tub before giving her a pedicure. The Baroness thought the pedicurist was more promising than Greg; she considered the pedicurist a slave-in-training while she doubted that Greg would ever rise above the level of servant. “The cerulean blue,” she said, choosing a color for her toenails. A pretty young apprentice named Kathleen, whose father was an executive at a billion-dollar food company, and whom the Baroness often led around the city on a leash, leaned over a worktable, making a pillbox hat. There was a technical problem. The latex wasn’t providing enough structure. She brought the hat to the Baroness, and they stared together at the internal band, talking over the design—colleagues.
The Baroness directed Greg to move a cabinet from a corner of the workshop, her tone straightforward, not harsh. She said that the pedicurist should join him. Within their two-man team, Greg took easy charge. “You just lift,” he said in a street-corner accent, nonchalant, confident. “One, two, three.” Deeper into his notebook, he’d written: “Reasons why I want to serve the Baroness. To fix her seamed stocking while she cracks her bullwhip. To make things easier for
There was Greg, a window-washer, his face rugged below short brown bangs, handsome in the manner of a cigarette ad. He wore a black T-shirt, a creased and faded leather jacket. It was easy to place him in a common pornographic scene: washing a large bedroom window, then beckoned inside by the woman sprawled on the bed. When he arrived each afternoon at the boutique, he presented himself to the Baroness, as he’d been trained, just inside the front door: on his knees, arms tight to his sides and wrists bent back so that his palms and straightened fingers were parallel to the floor. His hands looked like paralyzed flippers. She would direct him to hold this posture for several minutes, correcting him if his wrists started to droop.
At last allowed to stand, Greg started to polish the front door’s metal frame, a daily task, the weather quickly replacing any blemishes he managed to burnish away. As he polished, the mailman came. He and Greg said hello, exchanged pleasantries, a pair of simple working men.
“Have you rented Remains of the Day ?” the Baroness asked Greg one afternoon. He’d just knelt before her, hands in position, to ask what his next task should be, after an hour at the door frame.
“No, Baroness. Forgive me, Baroness.”
“You didn’t expect me to ask?” Two weeks ago, she had instructed him to watch the story of the faultless, self-effacing butler.
“It’s a hard movie to find, Baroness,” he pleaded.
As he knelt, knees slightly splayed, she kicked him with terrific force in the testicles, connecting with the tip of her red boot. He shuddered and bent but made no sound. Next, he vacuumed the boutique. In the back pocket of his jeans he kept a small spiral notebook, as required, in order to take notes. “Please serve obey” were the words printed on one page. Another unpunctuated page read: “Always wear black when serving the Baroness never interrupt the Baroness always clean the front of the shop sweep wipe down never talk to the Baroness eye to eye.” And a third: “When trying to get the Baroness’s attention always be in position to accept any discipline the Baroness feels I deserve.”
After vacuuming, he returned to his knees to pour her a glass of champagne in the basement. Another trainee was bathing her feet in a little plastic tub before giving her a pedicure. The Baroness thought the pedicurist was more promising than Greg; she considered the pedicurist a slave-in-training while she doubted that Greg would ever rise above the level of servant. “The cerulean blue,” she said, choosing a color for her toenails. A pretty young apprentice named Kathleen, whose father was an executive at a billion-dollar food company, and whom the Baroness often led around the city on a leash, leaned over a worktable, making a pillbox hat. There was a technical problem. The latex wasn’t providing enough structure. She brought the hat to the Baroness, and they stared together at the internal band, talking over the design—colleagues.
The Baroness directed Greg to move a cabinet from a corner of the workshop, her tone straightforward, not harsh. She said that the pedicurist should join him. Within their two-man team, Greg took easy charge. “You just lift,” he said in a street-corner accent, nonchalant, confident. “One, two, three.” Deeper into his notebook, he’d written: “Reasons why I want to serve the Baroness. To fix her seamed stocking while she cracks her bullwhip. To make things easier for
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