Read Online Whip Smart: A Memoir by Melissa Febos - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Melissa Febos
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continued on to Bed-Stuy. Listening to my headphones for the following thirty-minute ride home, I studied my own reflection in the train window and the dark tunnel behind it. I could not have articulated anything other than the glow of hope, throbbing like a vague, sweet ache in my limbs.
7
AFTER THOSE FIRST NIGHTS , I mostly worked the day shift. Sensual sessions intimidated me less, and daytime clients wanted them. I adjusted quickly to my new routine. Four mornings a week, I’d pack up my schoolbooks and leave the apartment by 9:00. I loved the subway ride from Bed-Stuy, chicken bones rolling across the subway car’s floor as the C train’s ungreased wheels shrieked the forty minutes to West 4th Street, where I transferred to the F. Squeezed between the hips and elbows and briefcases of the late-morning crowd on their way to work at 9:30 a.m., I loved passing as one of them while knowing I wasn’t. I loved the hard glare of sunlight reflected off car windows and dark sunglasses as the weather grew colder, my cheeks prickling as I climbed up out of the Herald Square train station.
Each of those mornings that I worked was the same: the same train ride, the same crush of grimly purposeful bodies carrying me up the steps to where the cold splashed my face and excitement gently writhed below my diaphragm. They knew me by name (Justine!) at the café where I bought my morning coffee and peach branmuffin. Midtown is lousy with places just like this one: shiny tiled floors and smiling immigrant workers behind polished glass display counters bearing baked goods, create-your-own-salad stations, and hot pressed paninis that look a lot better than they taste. Inevitably you get stuck in line behind the guy who pulls a crumpled envelope out of his paint-splattered pocket that has all the orders for the whole crew of the construction site across the street, or the woman whose latte cannot be got right: it’s vanilla when she wanted hazelnut, skim when she wanted soy, foam when she wanted less foam. These assholes I loved, too; they made me privy to the kind of adulthood (sighing, hurrying, heeled) that I admired, in the childish way I still enjoy writing checks and parallel parking, but could not stomach actually experiencing. It was playing at a role that I wasn’t sure I believed in and was fairly certain I wasn’t qualified for. Passing through the realms of normal folk and clutching a secret. At this I was already an expert.
Coffee and muffin in hand, I would make my way across Sixth Avenue, dodging bike couriers and the less agile café deliverymen on their battered mountain bikes with wide, shallow baskets and naked handlebars. It wasn’t uncommon that I’d run into one of my bleary-eyed coworkers as I approached the building whose second floor housed the dungeon. Poking my tongue out at the intercom above the doorbells where the tiny eye of a camera led straight up to Fiona’s desk, I would wait for her to buzz us in. Also in our building was a nursing school (a laughable coincidence), a soon-to-fail yoga studio, and sundry other offices, the employees of which were indistinguishable from one another. It was never clear how much the denizens of the other floors actually knew about us. Suspicion was probably as far as their thoughts ever got on the subject, as Remy, the manager of the dungeon, ran a fastidiously tight ship so far as discretion was concerned. If a new domme carelessly happened to fetch her food delivery in a pair of fishnets and a robe, it was the last delivery ever dispatched to us from that place. Still, that suspicion was sometimes apparent when you got stuck on theelevator in mixed company. God forbid you fail to recognize a client and end up sharing the elevator with him.
After Fiona came to retrieve me from the vestibule between the elevator and the first set of doors, we made our way back in through the following two, which magnetically locked. I would follow her into the office to
7
AFTER THOSE FIRST NIGHTS , I mostly worked the day shift. Sensual sessions intimidated me less, and daytime clients wanted them. I adjusted quickly to my new routine. Four mornings a week, I’d pack up my schoolbooks and leave the apartment by 9:00. I loved the subway ride from Bed-Stuy, chicken bones rolling across the subway car’s floor as the C train’s ungreased wheels shrieked the forty minutes to West 4th Street, where I transferred to the F. Squeezed between the hips and elbows and briefcases of the late-morning crowd on their way to work at 9:30 a.m., I loved passing as one of them while knowing I wasn’t. I loved the hard glare of sunlight reflected off car windows and dark sunglasses as the weather grew colder, my cheeks prickling as I climbed up out of the Herald Square train station.
Each of those mornings that I worked was the same: the same train ride, the same crush of grimly purposeful bodies carrying me up the steps to where the cold splashed my face and excitement gently writhed below my diaphragm. They knew me by name (Justine!) at the café where I bought my morning coffee and peach branmuffin. Midtown is lousy with places just like this one: shiny tiled floors and smiling immigrant workers behind polished glass display counters bearing baked goods, create-your-own-salad stations, and hot pressed paninis that look a lot better than they taste. Inevitably you get stuck in line behind the guy who pulls a crumpled envelope out of his paint-splattered pocket that has all the orders for the whole crew of the construction site across the street, or the woman whose latte cannot be got right: it’s vanilla when she wanted hazelnut, skim when she wanted soy, foam when she wanted less foam. These assholes I loved, too; they made me privy to the kind of adulthood (sighing, hurrying, heeled) that I admired, in the childish way I still enjoy writing checks and parallel parking, but could not stomach actually experiencing. It was playing at a role that I wasn’t sure I believed in and was fairly certain I wasn’t qualified for. Passing through the realms of normal folk and clutching a secret. At this I was already an expert.
Coffee and muffin in hand, I would make my way across Sixth Avenue, dodging bike couriers and the less agile café deliverymen on their battered mountain bikes with wide, shallow baskets and naked handlebars. It wasn’t uncommon that I’d run into one of my bleary-eyed coworkers as I approached the building whose second floor housed the dungeon. Poking my tongue out at the intercom above the doorbells where the tiny eye of a camera led straight up to Fiona’s desk, I would wait for her to buzz us in. Also in our building was a nursing school (a laughable coincidence), a soon-to-fail yoga studio, and sundry other offices, the employees of which were indistinguishable from one another. It was never clear how much the denizens of the other floors actually knew about us. Suspicion was probably as far as their thoughts ever got on the subject, as Remy, the manager of the dungeon, ran a fastidiously tight ship so far as discretion was concerned. If a new domme carelessly happened to fetch her food delivery in a pair of fishnets and a robe, it was the last delivery ever dispatched to us from that place. Still, that suspicion was sometimes apparent when you got stuck on theelevator in mixed company. God forbid you fail to recognize a client and end up sharing the elevator with him.
After Fiona came to retrieve me from the vestibule between the elevator and the first set of doors, we made our way back in through the following two, which magnetically locked. I would follow her into the office to
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