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I sense it the moment I wake up this morning, the exact instant the balmy summer heat has simmered down to a cool breeze on the cusp of autumn. I decide to layer a denim jacket over my t-shirt before I leave my apartment. Outside, people quicken their paces, eager to escape the chill, their breaths visible in front of them, a red flush to their cheeks.
The cafés outside left their tables outside, lining the bustling sidewalks, their stubborn stand in vain. Courageous patrons sip on their lattés and cappuccinos, trying to sneak in the remainder of the ephemeral afternoon sun. The crowd affords me anonymity as others' eyes attempt to locate people they recognize, or simply to stare and people-watch. The wind kicks up my waist-length red hair as it flies Medusa-like around my face, the dying sun making the loose strands take on an even more fiery glow.
Not for the first time, I wonder what people see in me as I stroll by. Pale white skin, almost transparent, with deep-set emerald eyes that betray my Mom's Irish heritage. Long-legged, small-waisted, reasonably proportioned. Attractive, surely. I'm young, I could be a student like so many others walking around this area. Maybe a lawyer, or teaching assistant, bank teller or business woman. I don't know what they see out in the Real World. I feel almost naked without the confines of my usual working environment around me, occluding light, encasing me in the protection and solitude of my willfully chosen trade.
I poke through the offerings of colorful fruits and vegetables from various baskets, steering clear of the other shoppers milling around me. Mostly I can pick out the housewives from the mothers and the career women, all silently musing what they will be making for dinner for themselves or their families. I think of their husbands and boyfriends, the secrets they keep from them. Wonder whether I have met their men already, if they ever set foot past my threshold, venturing forth into my rented dungeon space.
My clientele is normal enough. The only pattern is their typical normalcy, in fact. I see entrepreneurs, lawyers, politicians, doctors, teachers. Some of the upper castes of mankind, some of the most educated, albeit some of the more profoundly disturbed. Over the years, some of the better-known members of society have entrusted themselves to me, assured that I will do whatever I can to work them into the position of humiliation and degradation they so ardently and privately seek. In my trade, discretion is priceless.
I am not their psychologist, despite my education for it, but I am as close as one could ever get to these men, who would never see a shrink. A psychologist would deem these men's fetishes, inclinations and obsessions unhealthy, and try to eliminate said behaviors entirely. These men pay me handsomely to indulge their whims, to enable their fantasies; and, to the dismay of all shrinks, I positively reinforce these behaviors and normalize them, making my customers more inclined to return for more of my services. And I am a shrewd business woman. My manipulation tactics are formidable-- this is fact, not a matter of ego. These skills help me make each customer's preferred scenario a very believable reality. Mind games, indeed.
A woman jostles me from behind as I pay the vendor for some ripe tomatoes and peppers, and apologizes, gathering her young daughter closer to her. Your husband could be my four o'clock, I muse to myself as they wait in line to pay. It surely was possible. These wives would never know. He could walk in the door of his cookie-cutter home at six o'clock after a session with me, and kiss his loving wife and kid dutifully like any other normal husband, never letting on that he'd just been tortured. I know these men better than their wives and girlfriends and mistresses. I have seen a side of them they would likely never reveal to anyone else, a persona the diametrical opposite of their public identity.
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