Submit (Songs of Submission) by CD Reiss Read Free Book Online

her chin and into the bowl. Plink, plink.
    I caught sight of her eyes in the crease under the blindfold. She looked away when we made eye contact. I realized then that she could see through it. The blindfold wasn’t there to protect her identity, nor was it to protect her from seeing us look at her, but to protect us from seeing how turned on she was.
    I wasn’t her.
    That was submissive. I wasn’t that. No, no, no.
    Kevin and I had gone home, and neither of us ever brought up the drooling girl. We never judged. We were too sophisticated and cosmopolitan for that. We were too fucking cool to even let on that we’d noticed. I hated us. The people we were had been hateful snobs who never asked questions about anything real. Like why a woman would want to drool her master’s load into a metal bowl and show her wet cunt to everyone.
    So there I was, shaking in my Honda, because Jonathan had seen that girl in me. On his command, I’d opened my mouth as big as a castanet so he could fuck my throat.
    Stop it.
    I had to stop. I had to sing. But every time I heard the plink of rain on my hood, it was a pistachio shell, and I was drooling Jonathan’s load into a metal bowl.

CHAPTER 6
    On the way to the 101, I realized I still had that stinking diamond in my navel. It felt like a harness. I’d drop it at Hotel K after my session. My phone danced on the passenger seat. It could be Jonathan, but it wasn’t as though he was the only thing I had going on. I was really glad I looked at it—WDE.
    “Hey, Monica.” Trudie said.
    “Yeah, I’m on my way up there.”
    “We had a change. The set’s at DownDawg in Culver City, not Burbank.”
    “Oh. Did you call Gabby?”
    “Yeah, I talked to her. Here, let me give you the address.”
    I pulled over and wrote it down. I was glad I didn’t need to call Gabby because it would probably take me an hour to get there without yacking with my pianist for twenty minutes, dissecting all the possible reasons for the venue change.
    I did take a second to scroll through my recents. Nothing from Jonathan. Both my relief and disappointment were palpable. Then the phone dinged and buzzed in my hand.
    — I’m calling you now. Answer. —
     Oh, wasn’t that just a juicy command? Answer the phone. Spread your legs. What was the difference?
    When my cell rang, I rejected the call and sent a text.
    — I have to go to Culver City. I can’t talk —
    — Let’s talk about it again. I’ll use different words —
    He was no one to me, really. If I never saw him again, my life would be no different than it had been a month ago. No, that wasn’t true. My life would be the same in all the surface ways. I’d live in the same house and have the same friends. But somehow I’d changed. He’d woken me from a dreamless sleep, and I couldn’t roll over and close my eyes, because in my wakefulness, I’d started dreaming.
    I read his text again. I could think about what he said, but I couldn’t answer him. I couldn’t be who he thought I was, but if I couldn’t be that, then who would I be? I couldn’t go backward, and somehow, in such a short time, he’d become the conductor of my forward motion.
    I am not submissive.
    I am not submissive
    I am not submissive
    I chanted the mantra all the way to Culver City, deaf to the buzzing phone and any thought for where I was headed or what I was to do there.
    I didn’t get my head back  until I parked the car.
    My name is Monica, and I am not submissive. I stand six feet tall in heels. I am descended from one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. I can sing like an angel, and growl like a lion. I am not owned. I am music.

CHAPTER 7
    DownDawg Studios wasn’t some little grunge house with egg-carton Styrofoam on the walls. It didn’t smell of tobacco and fast food, and it most certainly wasn’t a place we could have afforded on our own. There were three in Los Angeles. Burbank, which spent a lot of time servicing Disney, Santa Monica—home