Bad to the Bone (29 page)

Cold calculation.

Just the image I wish to project.

A sudden thought. My autobiography has become a journal. I’ve caught up with myself. Which makes it quite interesting. I now record decisions before the results of those decisions become manifest. The creature to emerge, should I screw it up, would be little more than a buffoon. Of course, I could always do a quick rewrite (or a leisurely rewrite, since my autobiography will not be published in my lifetime), but I’m much too
honest
for that. Of course.

Inspired by my resolution vis-à-vis Marcy Evans, I set out to deal with three problems: the pussy problem, the poochie problem and the fat detective (plus fat bitch) problem.

Curiously, my primary project, the manufacture and distribution of two hundred pounds of PURE, is ahead of schedule. The manufacturing phase will be completed within two weeks. (My safety deposit boxes, on the other hand, will be as empty as the space between the fat detective’s ears.) The finished product will then be removed to secure locations in a dozen cities. Finally, piece by piece, PURE will be turned over to Wendell in exchange for cold cash.

Wendell the Wonderful claims to have pre-sold three quarters of the product. His phone, he says, is ringing off the proverbial hook.

Most of his clients are black. This pleases him immensely. The Italians, he says, had their turn. The Colombians came next. Now it’s the time of the brothers. Which, since blacks consume most of the drugs, is only fair.

I asked him what fair has to do with it. I lectured him on the beauty of individuality. “Don’t limit yourself with unnecessary labels,” I advised. “Don’t put yourself in a box.”

Nevertheless, he retains a blind loyalty to his race. In fact, he declared his intention to buy the PURE formula. How much did I want for it?

Naturally, I refused to forego the obvious benefits of a competitive auction. I made only one concession. I agreed to sell the formula to Wendell for fifteen percent less than the highest bid. Is this love? Or what?

I expect—I
will
—come out of this with twenty million dollars. I shall take the cash and flee to Brazil until the fallout (should there be fallout) settles. I shall wait until PURE rules the American drug scene, then journey to Colombia. Faced with a shrinking market, the cocaine cartels will be eager to acquire the PURE formula. Their access to chemicals (a problem which Wendell has yet to recognize) will make the switch from cocaine to PURE a simple matter. Whereas Wendell might be able to produce a hundred pounds per month, the cartels will produce tons of PURE.

But on to the pussy problem.

With Marcy gone (the only thing she’ll be sucking is Long Island sand), I suddenly became the most eligible celibate in Hanover House. When I told my poochies that Marcy had elected to pursue her own ends, the response was overwhelming. Instead of asking questions, the females projected lust.

The Queen is dead. Let’s fuck the King.

Ordinarily, I admire ambition, but I was busy formulating a plan to shed my poochies and I was sorely tempted to limit my sexual expression to a handkerchief. (Could the fat detective be right, after all?)

On the other hand, I recognized that sex with Marcy had been an important part of the bonding process Wendell and I had gone through. I
need
Wendell.

After long and deep consideration, I developed a set of criteria that allowed me to leave the frying pan without jumping into the fire. The new bitch would be hot enough.

I wanted a female who would be utterly obedient. When Marcy first came to Hanover House, she was a shy and frightened little girl. So drab as to be almost devoid of personality. She huddled in corners, avoiding even the pretense of friendship. I took her under my wing and personally created the flamboyant, uninhibited woman she became. Under my tutelage, Marcos life was enormously enriched. And far preferable, despite its brief duration, to the life she would have lived without me.

If the first criterion was obedience, the second was a female without close ties to the other poochies. Wendell is a bit of a mystery to the Hanoverian community. Whereas the average poochie rarely has access to my genius, Wendell comes and goes at all hours. The last thing I need is a bitch jumping off his cock to “share” with her sisters.

Finally, my new consort had to be sexually interesting. Both Wendell and I were accustomed to unfettered sexual expression. A frigid bitch who laid beneath us, unmoving, simply wouldn’t do.

Or would it?

If I wanted a shy, obedient female, how could I expect sexual experience?

The solution was to go the other way. To find a bitch whose
lack
of experience, in combination with obedience unto death, would hold our interest. For a month or two.

Once the criteria were established, the solution was simple enough. For some time, I’d been cultivating an eighteen-year-old Cambodian girl. Blossom Nol. My initial interest was purely selfish. I thought it might be amusing to put her with Marcy for an evening’s entertainment. My and Wendell’s entertainment. Of course.

Blossom Nol is an amazing creature. She has the body of a twelve-year-old and the face of an angel. Large dark eyes. Button nose. Soft, heavy lips. Tiny chin. All framed by thick black hair.

Her breasts are so small they make almost no impression on her white blouse. Her arms and legs are pitifully thin. Her hips are nearly invisible and her black skirt falls in a straight line from her waist to her knees.

I’d become her personal Therapist a month before my pussy problem existed and discovered a bizarre life history. Like many Cambodians, her family had fled the murderous politics of the Khmer Rouge. Fortunately, they’d left
before
the fall of South Vietnam, when the competition for U.S. visas was less keen. When it was still possible to bribe Cambodian officials to advance families to the top of the emigration list.

Luckily, Blossom had never experienced the horrors of the new Kampuchea. Unluckily, her father made Pol Pot seem like Santa Claus.

Blossom was unable to recall a time in her life when she hadn’t been routinely beaten.

Her father used a four-foot length of quarter-inch wooden doweling to drive home his personal idea of proper human behavior. He called these lessons “stripes.”

Spill your milk: one stripe. Cry over spilled milk: two stripes. Pee your pants: one stripe. Poop your pants: two stripes. Disobedience meant blood.

The discipline continued as she got older. Despite manifest obedience that, she claims, was immediate and complete. Her only solace was a loving grandmother who died when she was seven years old.

Boo-hoo-hoo.

The grandmother’s death left Daddy Nol with a big problem. He and Mommy Nol (whose only attempt to interfere with Daddy’s discipline earned her a personal set of stripes) owned a small restaurant in the West Village. The economics of immigrant life were such that both were forced to work.

With granny gone to the big rice paddy in the sky, who would supervise young Blossom? Professional child care was never considered. In the first place, the Nols worked at night. In the second and most important place, outsiders would infect young Blossom with, curse of curses, “American nonsense.”

Daddy had even resisted sending Blossom to school. Until Immigration threatened to reject his application for citizenship.

The solution was simple enough. Each afternoon, Daddy Nol left his restaurant to meet Blossom as she came out of school. Ever the concerned parent, he escorted her home, waited while she used the toilet and undressed, then tied her to her bed and went back to work.

Leaving her with a single injunction: “No pee sheet. You pee sheet, you get stripes.”

Blossom spent the
next ten years
tied to her bed. (On weekends she was allowed to scrub the apartment before her parents went to the restaurant.)

She ran away from home when she was seventeen and was raped four times in the first month.

Naturally enough, given her circumstances, Blossom considered suicide, but was afraid to go through with it. Somehow, she wandered into Hanover House. She told me that she knew she’d found a home when her Therapist began to curse her. She didn’t mind the shouting as long as it wasn’t followed with stripes, ropes and rapes.

Blossom spent her first year at Hanover House in routine therapy. The therapy had been worthless, but she’d proven herself a willing worker and our cleaning business always needed bodies.

“You’re a very brave girl, Blossom,” I told her after three or four therapy sessions. “But bravery isn’t enough. You must heal yourself.”

“How can I do this?” She kept her bony hands on her bony knees and her eyes on her hands. She
never
looked up.

“Do you trust me, Blossom?”

“Yes.”

I heard adoration in her voice. I swear it.

“You’ve been running away from your past. You’ll never heal your wounds by running away. Do you understand?”

“Yes. No. I’m not sure.”

“Until you confront the damage done by your family, the wounds will remain open. No matter what happens to you, even if it’s all good, the wounds will continue to fester. By running away from the demon of your father, you keep him alive. You must descend into the abyss and you must do it
voluntarily
. Do you know the story of St. George and the dragon?” My tone, in direct contrast to that of her regular therapist, was kind, almost paternal.

“Yes.”

“If St. George had surrendered to his fear, he would have been haunted for the rest of his life. No matter how fast or far he ran, he would never escape the dragon. The dragon would own his soul. Of course, if he fights the dragon, it
might
kill him. But if there’s no risk, there’s no possibility of gain. Are you following me?”

“I. What? I.”

She shook her head, sending her long, glossy hair swirling about her face. In some ways, she was quite attractive. Suddenly, I found myself looking forward to the night when she would step into my bedroom. Suddenly, I was no longer bored.

“You must five the wounds. You must allow yourself to experience the totality of your pain. Knowing full well that you can walk away any time you wish. Make no mistake, Blossom, it won’t be easy. Your past is a powerful dragon. You must anticipate a long and bitter fight.” A fight, I didn’t add, which would end on the day I became bored with her.

“What do I have to do?” Her voice was high and tiny with just a hint of the sing-song of her native language.

“You must re-create the entire experience. The ropes, the stripes, the obedience. Even the rapes. If you win, if you see the fight through to the end, you will
have
the inner strength you desperately desire. Look at me, Blossom.” I lifted her chin until our eyes met. “Make no mistake, here. This is not a quest to be undertaken lightly. If you make the attempt and fail, the dragon will grow stronger. Don’t try it unless you mean to see it through.”

Just a thought: although I characterized Blossom’s history as bizarre, very few of my poochies enjoyed mainstream childhoods. Blossom was an exaggerated version of the average poochie. She was the archetypal poochie.

When Blossom came to me, she was wearing the white, cotton nightgown common to all Hanoverian females. It covered her body completely, from her shoulders to her ankles. Blossom’s eyes were riveted to the floor and if she noticed Wendell the Wonderful perched on the edge of the bed, she gave no sign.

“Blossom?” I asked.

“I’ve come to fight the dragon.” Her thin voice held all the conviction of a chicken announcing its intention to eat the hawk. Yet I must admit that I took a moment to admire her courage. She had no real weapons and the dragon (meaning me) would surely devour her.

“Come here, Blossom.”

Wendell’s eyes were on fire. I hadn’t told him about Blossom. She was to be a gift and the best gifts come as a surprise. Blossom was my ‘bizarre pussy surprise.’

I was sitting in a leather club chair and I took Blossom on my lap and began to stroke her hair.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Blossom?”

“Yes. I know I must.”

“Are you afraid, Blossom?”

“Yes. I’m afraid that I’ll fail.”

Her body was feather light, yet the sharp bones of her left shoulder and hip pushed against me as I cradled her in my arms.

“Have you ever had sex with a man, Blossom?”

She hesitated and I knew that she was aware of Wendell. “I’ve been raped.”

“Have you ever been with a man for pleasure?”

“No.”

“Were any of the men who raped you black men?”

“Two were black.”

“How did the rapes happen?”

“I didn’t have a place to live and the men told me I could stay with them. I didn’t know I was supposed…That I had to do it with them. When I refused, they made me do it.”

“Are you afraid, Blossom?”

“Yes.”

“Are you going to see it through to the end?”

“Yes.”

I trussed her up like a chicken. I tied her elbows to her ribcage and her wrists to her thighs. She could not lie flat on her stomach. Nor could she lower her legs. Wendell, in the process of shedding his clothes, took a moment to admire her body. Blossom’s tiny breasts were little more than dark circles against pale ivory skin. Her sex was prominent and virtually hairless. With her legs drawn up, her narrow buttocks disappeared altogether.

After we finished (there was more, of course, much, much more, and for only $79.95 and the genitalia of your first born child, I’ll be glad to send you the unedited video), I untied her without comment, then took several blankets from the linen closet and tossed them on the floor at the foot of my bed.

“You will sleep here,” I announced. Having secured her obedience by feigning paternal concern, I switched over to the ‘master mode.’ With all my obligations, I didn’t have time to coax her. She’d already taken enough of my energies.

She started to put on her nightgown, but I took it away from her. “You are not to cover yourself unless I tell you to cover yourself. You’re in a different phase, now, and I must be a proper dragon.” I held up my final surprise, a four-foot length of wooden doweling. “Obedience, Blossom. Obedience or stripes.”