"I don't understand," Lisa said, choosing her words carefully. "What does being a willing participant in an S&M scene have to do with what you're doing with me?"
"It has a lot to do with it, if you'll listen."
"I am listening."
"No, you're not." He was standing in front of her, menacing even-in his Gucci loafers and polo shirt.
"Okay," she said, shifting gears. "Okay, I'm listening."
"You're just like all of them," Animal said, looking at her with a sneer of contempt. "All the whiny, pitiful little yuppie fucks who think they can be hip and cool by dressing in rubber and leather at underground fetish clubs at night and be corporate rats by day. You don't know shit. You don't know the first thing of what it's like to feel power over another human being."
"Then tell me!" Lisa said, trying not to sound too demanding.
Animal stepped forward, and at first Lisa thought he was going to strike her. Instead, he hunkered down so that he was looking at her eye to eye. "Let me give you a little bit of my background. I may look like a yuppie fuck to you, and maybe in a way I am. I came from a normal WASPish family. My mother was Miss Susie Homemaker; Daddy worked his nine-to-five like a good boy and came home every night to a home-cooked meal. Mommy and Daddy were also repressed shits who did their best to repress their children. All I heard from them was that sex was wrong, that it was only for procreation. Hearing that warped me, especially when I saw the exact opposite happening at home. My dad coming home drunk after having gone out with the boys from the office, getting fresh with my mom and her slapping him away, and then hearing them fighting over it. The fucking bitch wouldn't put out for my dad, and it pissed him off, you know? Then at the same time both of them are telling me that sex is wrong no matter what, even if it's between two people who love each other."
Lisa didn't know what to say. She met his gaze, not daring to drop it.
"Don't get me wrong," he said. "They never beat me, they never physically abused me in any way, but they did have their way with getting their message across. They were also both extremely domineering. I could only wear the clothes they wanted me to wear, have the kinds of friends they approved of, choose the kind of career path only they approved of. Anything I did on my own, from the people I chose to associate with, to jobs I've had, if they didn't like it they would let me know they were disappointed in me. It was beat into my head at an early age that disappointing my parents was something that was unacceptable with not only them, but to society at large. To disappoint those that had given birth to you, who had created you, was the worst thing a child could do to their parents. For them to be disappointed in me created such a feeling of guilt. And when it came to sex, it was hardwired in me to not disappoint them in that area. Could you image what it would have been like if I had gotten a girl pregnant? My God, they'd go off the deep end and I couldn't live with myself! It was that fear of disappointing my parents, of getting a girl pregnant, that kept me from indulging in whatever normal sexual feelings I had." He snorted back a laugh. As you could probably imagine, I jerked off a lot through high school."
Lisa didn't laugh; it really wasn't funny to her. If anything, it scared her.
"I never felt in control of anything in my life," he resumed, standing up. He turned around and began pacing the room as he talked. "I let all this frustration bottle up inside me, and it wasn't until I began my relationship with Susan that I realized I could let them out. I was with somebody who was encouraging me to act on my fantasies. She didn't disapprove. In fact, the more I told her about them, the happier she got. They were fantasies I wanted to indulge in for real."
"What were they?"
"I thought you'd never ask," he replied. He turned to her, counting them off on his fingers. "Let's see… dominating every single woman or girl that had ever turned me on in high school or college or in the few years after obtaining my MBA. Sometimes I had fantasies about doing similar things to men, but men don't excite me sexually the way women do; the only way I get turned on by hornoerotic thoughts is if I'm torturing another man."
Torturing another man. Obviously torturing women, too. Lisa licked her lips and swallowed, her throat dry, and nodded.
Animal continued. "I tried to deny I was having these thoughts. I thought I could never act on them-normal people don't give in to such urges, much less have them. So for ten years I would occasionally think about what it would be like to strangle the head cheerleader of the high school football team, or castrate the homecoming king and stuff his cock down his throat, or cut my secretary's fingers off with a paring knife and force-feed them to her. And then I would deny that such thoughts excited me. I didn't realize that inflicting pain on these people would be like music to my ears.
"Obviously, when Susan found this out our sex life be come more intense. She encouraged me to get rougher with her, to hurt her. She enjoyed being tied up and whipped. She enjoyed having her ass slapped with a leather belt until I drew blood. She was with me the whole way, and I knew that as long as she was there I could do it. I knew I was safe with her, that our secret would only be between us. I later learned that this is what true S&M is: It is the complete surrender and trusting of your body and emotions to another person. I no longer saw it as something deviant practiced by perverts. Of course, what I'm going to describe to you… if a regular S&M practitioner were to hear this they'd be horrified. Basically, the entire extreme hardcore scene is a very brutal, very underground subculture that lurks within the S&M world. Most S&M participants are either ignorant of the more forbidden aspects of the extreme hardcore world or they don't want to admit it exists. But it's there. The more you get into S&M, the more you get into a local scene in a big city like NewYork or LA, the more you dig into its various subcultures, you'll soon start finding some people that are into some pretty extreme shit."
He paused, his features appeared reflective, then he continued. in a way, I guess we loved each other. We were the perfect partners for each other. We were friends and lovers in the extreme sense. Our sex life accelerated into something I had never experienced before and never knew existed. Previously, I was merely content to play my part in a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am role. I suppose most guys are. With Susan, I was becoming more confident in myself in dealing with my fantasies; she encouraged me to act on them. Our sessions accelerated rapidly until we were getting into some heavy stuff, things I wouldn't have even imagined participating in. She demanded that I hit her harder, bite her harder, whip her harder. And I complied. The harder our ses sions became, the more I would feel that I shouldn't be doing this, that what I was doing was wrong, but then Susan would encourage me." He looked at her. "And the more she pulled me in, the more I found myself liking what I was doing to her."
Lisa looked into his eyes, and what he said next made the skin along the back of her neck erupt in gooseflesh. "We began having regular intercourse less and less. It never really did much for me anyway." He stepped closer to her. "But what we did together? Me playing the sadist to Susan's masochistic fantasies? 'That's what got me off. It's what still gets me off."
Lisa swallowed, and tried not to look away as Animal stared at her. His gaze was penetrating, cunning, predatory. She forced herself to meet it head-on, even as she fought to control her rising fear.
"She introduced me to the underground extreme hardcore scene," Animal continued, not breaking his gaze from hers. "It was at such functions, usually held in private homes, where she told me she often had to go to be completely satisfied sexually. I was a little nervous at my first party, but that didn't last long. As soon as I saw that there were others who shared my fetish, I relaxed around them. Susan introduced me to an underground hardcore porn filmmaker named Alex Pressman-he's the guy that filmed yesterday-who sometimes filmed the parties for private video collections. He asked us that first night if he could film Susan and me in a scene, and… well…I suppose he recognized talent when he saw it." He grinned.