Free The Dog Collar Murders by Barbara Wilson

the man cautioned.
    But that was just what I did want. I tried pulling one end of the collar through the buckle. As the clerk looked on in bemusement I felt my eyes popping a little and my breath being choked off. Still, you’d have to be pretty strong to choke someone who was struggling. The end of the collar was quite short for trying to pull it. And Loie was a big woman. If she weren’t cooperating it would be hard to get her to stand still to pull the end of the collar, much less to slip it around her neck in the first place.
    And if she were cooperating? I shook the idea out of my head.
    “Is it working for you?” the man asked sympathetically.
    I hastily pulled the collar off, and said I didn’t think so, that I’d just look around a little more.
    I investigated the videos first and then the magazines. I’d never been in a store like this one before, and after I got over my initial timidity and shock, was more curious than offended. The main thing that had struck me so far was how incredibly expensive everything was. No wonder the porn industry turned over eight billion dollars a year when they charged ten or fifteen dollars for a magazine and asked a sixty dollar deposit to rent a video. But as I looked further I began to feel other sensations.
    I remembered something Mona had said during her workshop Saturday on sexist images. “All the anti-porn movement is protesting is nudity and violence and all they want to do is remove the images of women that are most offensive and blatant. Most of us go along with that, accepting their word for it. But how many of us have ever really taken a good look at what’s available in the pornography marketplace? How do we know that most of what’s sold as pornography is really more offensive than a typical issue of Cosmopolitan or an episode of Dynasty ?”
    I guessed this was my chance to find out.
    Some of the pictures turned me on, I couldn’t deny it. All that lust, everywhere I looked: men doing things to men, women doing things to men, men doing things to women, women doing things to women, everybody with large primary and secondary sexual characteristics and everybody with their eyes bulging out in carnal delight. Still, after a bit, it palled. As Abby had said, there was a lot of bondage and domination. It wasn’t just women being dominated by men however; there were lots of pictures of dominatrixes (in black leather of course) grinding a sharp stiletto heel in some poor slob’s back.
    After about thirty minutes my curiosity had turned from lust to queasiness to a sad feeling that human beings had been created for another purpose than to loll around with their tongues sticking out, having their various orifices and protruberances photographed and sold for great sums of money. I didn’t know what that purpose was—I didn’t think we had been created to participate in television game shows either—but it had to be different from this.
    I was just replacing a magazine called Lesbian Enema Lust on the rack when I heard a familiar voice behind me.
    “Well, Pam, I never expected to find you in a place like this.”
    It was Miko, wearing a short leather jacket, skin tight purple stretch pants and tall, embossed boots.
    I was so taken aback that Lesbian Enema Lust fell from my hand. Miko picked it up.
    “Wow,” she said. “I’ve never seen this one before. Does Hadley know you’re here?”
    “Leave Hadley out of this.” My voice had returned. “It’s my own business what I’m doing here. And another thing, I’m sick of you chasing after Hadley.”
    Miko seemed flabbergasted in her turn. “Me—running after Hadley? You must be imagining things. She’s not my type and even if she was, it’s clear the two of you are a couple. I may not be into monogamy, but I’m not into triangles.”
    “Well, then why are you always flirting with her? And asking her to come see your sex videos?”
    “Oh, I do that with everyone,” Miko laughed. “It’s just how I am.