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What bothered me the most was that the room appealed to me so much.
Nobody was doing anything special that evening I went up there to clean up a sticky juice spill. A few Doms—or I should say Daddies—were sitting around on the sofas, watching their boys, who weren’t doing much of anything either, but just playing with the toys or sitting next to their Daddies or in their laps. Some had pacifiers in their mouths, and some were sucking their thumbs. A few had sippy cups, and some had bottles. I tried my best not to react in any way or even look at them.
Have you ever tried not to look at something? It just made you think about it even more and I almost strained my neck in an effort not to stare. Not because of anything they were doing, but because they were so open about it. So free to act the way they wanted, with no judgement coming from anyone.
Nothing sexual was going on—this didn’t seem to be the place for that. For one moment, I wished I could be there with them, with my own Daddy.
It was funny how Doms and submissives were often stereotyped, even in a club like Lucifer’s Den with some people thinking Doms were tougher with their beards and tattoos and that subs were smaller and weaker somehow. I’d already learned that both of them came in all types and body shapes and sizes, and you definitely couldn’t tell just by looking.
Most people took one look at me, for example, and if they judged only by my looks, they might assume I was a young Dom. I liked to work out, so I had some muscles, and when I was extremely drunk my sophomore year in college, I’d gotten a tattoo on my shoulder. It was pretty awful, because it was so cheap—I should have known better. I finally had to save the money up to get it fixed by a good tattoo artist, and he did a little more than I’d intended him to. He’d said he’d had to in order to cover it up. Anyway, I liked the way it looked, so eventually, I saved up and got a whole sleeve, and a few more too, because it became kind of addictive.
I’d met a lot of the submissives in the club by now, and they didn’t fit any kind of mold that I could see either. Some were as muscular as me and even more so. Some had beards and tattoos and piercings…there was a whole range of types. It was only the Littles that I’d met that sometimes seemed a bit more delicate, but that could have just been my perception. And probably wishful thinking on my part. It helped me to be able to look at myself in the mirror and think, “Okay, you may like the idea of it, but there’s no way you’re like them. You wouldn’t fit in and that’s why you can’t join them.”
And then there was the fact I didn’t have a Daddy.
I did try doing a scene or two with a couple of different Doms over the next few months after work, though, as I settled into the new job, just to see—and to stop them from asking all the time. Neither of them had really worked for me.
I didn’t mind kneeling for them. I enjoyed that part, honestly. It was easy for me to sink into a place where my mind quieted down, and I could relax and take a deep breath. It was the one thing I really enjoyed. One of the Doms who helped me had taught me how to rise and lower myself at least semi-gracefully, and how to stay on my knees for a long time if the Dom wanted me to and how to properly respond with respect when spoken to by a Dom. All that was easy enough, though I didn’t really feel the respect for those guys, so in some ways that part was just a lie.
What I really wanted? I wanted someone strong enough to make me do what they told me to do. Not physically or in a harsh way, but by the strength of their personality. I liked the idea of a stern Daddy who was also caring and kind. I thought a lot about Michael and how understanding he’d been that one and only night we’d spent together. I wanted someone like him, only with no need to inflict spankings on me, for pleasure or otherwise. Someone who could give me rules and make me stick to them whether I wanted to or not, though. Who could tell me what to do, and with one look, I’d feel the need to comply. Because he made me want to and not just because he’d told me to. Because he was my Daddy.
It was a big order to fill, I guess.
What I really wanted was someone to look out for me and help me when things got too hard and stressful, like the times when I felt some of the old panicky feelings coming back that I’d had since I was a child. I wanted the comfort and the feeling of security I could only get from sinking into that safe space in my head.
I still remembered the feeling I’d had that first night with my first foster mother. She held me in her lap that night, because I wouldn’t stop crying. I missed my mama, because it didn’t matter if she ignored me most of the time—she was still all I knew and all I had. The foster mother gave me a pacifier and a stuffed toy to soothe me and reassured me I was going to be okay. I remember being on her lap as she rocked me. All the noise in my head quieted down, and I was finally able to fall asleep.
Since that time, I knew what to do to shut off my brain for a little while. I never forgot it. I tried to hide the pacifier under my mattress, once my foster mother thought I was too old for it anymore. But she found it and threw it away. That night, when I got really desperate, I found out my thumb was a pretty good substitute. I kept my teddy bear under my pillow and didn’t take it out until everyone else was asleep. Even then I kept him hidden under the covers. It was my secret, and I knew the others would tease me and call me a baby if they saw me. So, I learned to hide to protect myself.
And sometimes, all alone in my apartment, I’d put on my special clothes, like my little t-shirt or pajama pants with little cartoon figures on them and maybe some warm socks or big fuzzy slippers. All my comfort clothes. I even had a few stuffed toys I liked to hold while I stuck my thumb in my mouth and watched mindless TV shows and just didn’t think about anything.
I knew it was wrong, or I felt like it was. Embarrassing and shameful. I felt like something was wrong inside my brain. And if I sometimes wished I had someone who would understand that part of me regardless of all that and take care of me when I was feeling little…who would make all the adult decisions for me and just tell me what to do then that was my problem and nobody else’s.
I knew it would never happen. None of those dreams would ever come true for me. But I also didn’t want anyone to know my secrets and then feel sorry for me and think of me as weird and ridiculous and laugh at me. Some things were just better off kept secret, the way they’d always been. I promised myself I’d never tell anyone.
Then one evening, after I’d been working at Lucifer’s Den for almost a year, and on what started out as a typical Saturday night at the club, everything in my life changed.
Chapter Six
The club was packed like it always was on Saturday nights. We had a part-time bartender named Tommy who came in on weekends when the place was jumping, and we’d been flairing a little to get better tips. We didn’t do it so much that it slowed service, but enough to make it fun and hype people up. It was kind of like a game and really wasn’t that difficult, but it required a lot of practice to be really good and fast at it. I wasn’t all that fast, but I had fun with it and the bosses didn’t mind us doing it.
I’d learned the basic flair techniques in my first job years ago at Gio’s in Orlando, right after high school. I worked as a barback, and the bartender was a nice guy who taught me some tricks in the slow times. Once the various techniques were learned, practice made the moves faster and showier. There were icing techniques, pouring techniques and a lot of flipping and tossing bottles and tins around and catching them behind our backs. Not only glasses and bottles were used, but bar equipment, too, like scoops and mixing tins, and the great thing about using tins was that they were pretty much unbreakable.
Even after I started as a bartender, I kept the tossing around to a minimum, but I loved to do the long pours and palm spins. And because Tommy and I liked the tips, we sometimes flirted a little too. It was harmless enough and again the bosses didn’t seem to mind. We got catcalled and hit on a lot, but it was all in good fun. Most of our customers wore boots and leather pants or vests over naked flesh, and a few were wearing almost nothing at all, with only their genitals covered, according to mandatory city ordinances. Some were wearing collars or slave harnesses, so we really weren’t doing anything that extreme by just leaving off our shirts.
The combined aroma of cologne, liquor and arousal filled the air with wicked promises that particular Saturday evening, and I took a deep breath of it as I looked out over the crowded room and prepared myself for the night. People had crowded into the large main lounge and jockeyed for positions at the bar. We were doing a good business that evening, though many of the Doms and subs weren’t drinking this early in the evening, sticking mostly to sodas and water. We had a lot of mixed concoctions that weren’t alcoholic, though, and we were doing a lot of business with them, along with bar food.
When I had a moment, I looked out over the small dance floor, noticing how the music was pulsing in time with the colored lights. It was only eight o’clock, but people had been streaming into the club for a couple of hours, and I knew it was going to be a busy night. Even better for tips.
My partner at the other end of the bar, Tommy, had been doing palm spins and thumb rolls all night, even a few double rotations on bottles and glasses, catching them behind his back and spinning around, and the crowd loved it. I wouldn’t try that just yet, but I joined in a little with some flashy pours. Unlike a lot of crowds, the ones there that night didn’t just sit and watch. They shouted and clapped and threw money on the bar in excitement that was contagious and fun. And excellent for my tip jar.
If it seemed like I talked a lot about tips, I guess I did. I was way far in debt, especially since I’d had to come up with deposits and moving expenses, so busy nights like this one really helped me out a lot. Tommy gave me a nod that meant he wanted to start flairing together, which would consist of us flipping things back and forth to each other using the one hand, backward catches that were so popular, and the next fifteen minutes or so would take all of my concentration. I glanced over at Tommy, catching his eye and letting him know I was ready.
I’d been getting cruised hard since the bar opened, as had Tommy, but so far no one had been obnoxious about it when we smilingly dodged their advances.
Tommy gave me a signal he was about to start tossing things my way, and I got myself in position. We waited patiently with our hands on the bar for the next order. When a man called for me at the end of the bar, I went over to him and leaned in to take his order for a gin fizz. I grabbed a glass, gave it a little palm spin and sat it on the bar while reaching for the gin. Making sure Tommy was ready, I flipped the bottle toward him behind my back. Tommy caught it, and then he spun around to give it a long pour in a tin before he bounced it so fast that not a drop spilled out.
Meanwhile, I was icing the glass, putting most of the ice inside in the normal manner, but then catching the last couple of ice cubes with showy flips in the air. Tommy added the mixers to his tin, poured it in a shaker and slid the shaker down the bar to me. I gave it an elaborate shake then poured most of the drink in the glass with another bounce and threw in a garnish from behind my back, catching it in the glass and placing it in front of the customer with a flourish.
