Free Eighty Days White by Vina Jackson

a man on all fours staring at the floor and clad in just a pair of rubber hot pants with ‘She’s Slave’ printed across their arse cheeks in hot-pink lettering. Mostly She ignored her slaves, but every now and again she would give one of their chains a tug and a smile would pass over her face.
    ‘That’s different,’ I said firmly.
    ‘How is it different? Why is it different?’
    ‘I don’t know. It just is.’
    Richard’s questions were beginning to make me feel uncomfortable.
    The front desk was dead quiet when I returned to my place behind the counter. I had hoped that we would have a busy patch to distract me from the thoughts crowding into my mind, but it was getting late and past the time that most of our patrons arrived, unless they’d been to a house party or another club beforehand.
    I had no moral reservations about women cowering down to men, providing that everyone involved was an adult, fully aware of what they were getting themselves in to, and doing it for enjoyment’s sake, even if I couldn’t relate to the pleasure that they experienced or the mindset that drove them.
    I could more easily understand the dynamic between She and her slaves. That seemed to be more like a different sort of government than a sexual game. Like a matriarchal society with She as Cleopatra. And that was a system that I could appreciate. In fact, the feminist in me thought it entirely sensible. Men in power had been screwing things up for centuries.
    Leonard sometimes gave me instructions in bed. Or held me in place when I wriggled away from an intense sensation. But he was so gentle, and it always seemed that he could somehow read my mind and was giving me what I wanted rather than forcing me to acquiesce for his own gratification. And more often than not, he looked at me as if I was something to be worshipped. Sometimes so intensely that it made me look away. I didn’t feel that I was worthy of the sort of attention that She received. But I was certainly not a chattel to be used.
    I could no sooner imagine Leonard wanting to whip me until I screamed or tie me so that I couldn’t move any more than I could imagine Neil doing it.
    A vision of Neil dressed in full leather regalia and looming over me with a riding crop flashed into my mind and I laughed out loud.
    ‘Maybe it’s time for you to go home,’ piped Sherry, the girl who was helping with cloakroom duty tonight and who had caught me giggling to myself as she popped out for a cigarette. ‘Nearly closing anyway and I’ll cover for you. You look shattered.’
    Sherry wasn’t her real name, any more than She was She’s real name. Most of the club’s staff and the guests used pseudonyms or ‘scene names’ to refer to the fetish side of themselves. Partly this was a way to preserve anonymity and avoid any trouble that the unveiling of their private lives might cause, and partly it was a way to step from one persona into another, like putting on a new pair of shoes or changing into a party dress.
    When I signed onto the club’s payroll, I had been asked what I wanted to call myself and after little more than a moment’s thought I had decided to stick with Lily. I’d had so much trouble figuring out my own identity that I had no wish to add any more complications to it now. I didn’t want to be fragmented into the good-girl Lily and the bad-girl Lily, pre-tattoo Lily and post-tattoo Lily, Berkshire Lily and London Lily.
    Right then I decided that I would just be Lily. The club was one place where I felt that I was truly free to be myself, whatever that was on any given night, and I didn’t want to confuse matters by giving another name to some identitythat I felt was the ‘real me’. I wanted to be me all the time. Just plain old Lily.
    London was just beginning to stir when I changed out of my latex waistcoat and into plain jeans, a sweatshirt and old trainers for the journey back to Dalston. It was just gone five a.m. and always a strange time of the