Free The Other Side of Desire by Daniel Bergner Page A

her apartment building, and her husband, Mark, walked her out to the car. He had a sharp nose and a sharp chin, a ponytail and a goatee, and the graceful reserve of men with plenty of height. A photographer, he kept his distance from her world, except to take pictures at the monthly parties she threw. That was as close as he wanted to get. He preferred to take portraits of dogs, which he considered his calling. He’d started a Web site, phodography.com, to advertise his vision: “Your dog is unique. (S)he is loyal. (S)he provides heart-healing humor and unconditional companionship. We understand completely.” He and the Baroness had been married almost a decade before she’d discovered herself. He was still perplexed. Before we drove off he leaned down to her open window; they kissed warmly, devotedly. “Good-bye, handsome,” she said.
    On a hushed country road, Master R lived in a run-down bungalow he called La Domaine Esemar. There were deep puddles in the bald front yard and a feeling of manginess in the rooms within. He was a short version of Mark: a ponytail, piercing features. Wearing black velvet pants, he apologized to the Baroness, saying that because of the downpour the turnout might be slim—his guests tended to drive long distances from other rural towns. Then he led us down to the basement and introduced us to those who were there: a cherubic Asian car salesman; the owner of a restaurant chain and his wife, a hospital administrator; a transsexual in a black slip of a dress, with lush lips and large teeth.
    Aside from the exposed air ducts, the basement was the best-kept part of the house. All was clean and orderly. On blond shelves sat an endless variety of clips and clamps and stainless steel weights to be attached to testicles—all polished and gleaming and aligned in tidy rows. A black box, its bottom cut out, dangled from the ceiling so that a submissive could stand with her head inside. From facial piercings, her lips and tongue, ears and nose and eyebrows could be stretched and fastened to screw eyes that lined the inside of the box. To larger screw eyes on the outside, her wrists could be hooked, so that her hands would remain for hours and hours at the height of her ears. The box hung directly above a revolving platform on the floor. The submissive would be sent spinning with her head in darkness, her hands latched helplessly, and her face stretched to the point of tearing.
    There was a red cross, a trellis of whips, a chandelier of chains from which to suspend subjects, a dentist’s chair, a doctor’s examining bed. Plastic sippy cups, the kind toddlers drink from, were lined on a shelf “in case a slave loses consciousness and needs water,” Master R said.
    The Asian Chevrolet salesman started to bind Kathleen, the Baroness’s often-leashed apprentice, who had come along with us. Using heavy rope, he created a delicate corset, then cinched it tighter and tighter around her ribs like the step-mother suffocating Snow White. The artistry of Japanese bondage, he said, had begun centuries ago, when Samurai policemen devised elaborate ways of roping prisoners according to their social status. The restaurant owner and Master R listened while lashing the transsexual’s back. Wispy streaks of new blood crossed lines of old scabs. She gave out deep groans of arousal, lips and teeth parted wide. Her head lolled forward and wagged. Her groans reached orgasmic levels. They lashed her thighs, which trembled, then pushed her down on all fours. Master R pinned her head to the concrete floor with his boot. She groaned from a yet more central place, utterly animalistic.
    The Baroness was unmoved. “There isn’t going to be any oneness for me tonight,” she muttered; no one here would desire the extremity of pain she needed to give. Two years ago, in Master R’s backyard, she had roasted a horse buyer named Elvis on a revolving spit.
    Soon the hospital administrator, unclothed, had her ankles and wrists