Page 10 of Shamefully Trained

Alex

I put my phone down as if it had bitten me. I stared at the dark screen for a few seconds, heart beating too hard for something as stupid as words on an app.

Then I picked it up again.

I told myself I wasn’t interested in Porter B. specifically. That would have been too humiliating to admit, even to myself. I was interested in understanding the market, in seeing what kind of men actually used this thing, in figuring out whether there was any version of it that didn’t amount to signing myself over to some polished sadist with a sports car and a taste for spanking young women.

I told myself that story while I kept reading his profile.

Established… discreet… demanding.

The phrases found a place in my mind: one I didn’t give them voluntarily. I disliked their presence especially because they did not seem to enter my thoughts as abstractions, the way I thought they should. The words called up sensations in my body. The remembered sting of leather. The feel of a hand at the back of my head. The awful, melting stillness that had come over me when a man had spoken as if he expected to be obeyed and some buried part of me had answered him before my pride could get there first.

I shut the app.

I opened it again.

I closed Porter B.’s profile and went back to browsing other sponsors, though most of them seemed either cruder or more ridiculous after him. One wanted a ‘sweet little homemaker type’ and listed required grooming standards in bullet points. Another described his ideal associate as ‘college-aged, cooperative, and eager to be improved.’ I hated them all. I also kept reading. By midnight I had done enough of that to make myself feel soiled.

I finally plugged in my phone, set it face down on the nightstand, and tried to sleep.

An hour later it buzzed.

The sound jolted through me so sharply that I snatched it up before it could buzz again, as if someone might somehow hear my desperation through the wall. The notification banner glowed in the dark.

Your associate profile has been approved.

That was all. Not desire. Not rescue. Just approval, as neat and bloodless as a bank alert. Still, my stomach tightened.

I opened the app at once.

A little gold check now sat beside my profile picture. Beneath it, a line informed me that my profile was active and visible to sponsors in my selected area. Visible. The word made my skin prickle. I imagined myself arranged in a display case somewhere only rich men could access: age, measurements, education, little polished headshot, little careful sentences about clarity and respect, all of it translating in their minds into a body they might rent and rule.

I had the urge to delete my profile from the app, and then the app itself, right then.

Instead I checked twice more before sleeping, though of course no one had written in the eleven minutes since approval, and then once again in the morning before I even brushed my teeth.

Nothing.

At work I became ridiculous, at least to myself.

Every time my phone vibrated in my apron pocket, I felt a hot pulse of anticipation and then a corresponding collapse when it turned out to be a delivery update, a spam text, a friend from college sending me a meme I didn’t have the emotional resources to appreciate. I hated myself for checking the app between drink orders. I hated myself more for the little flare of disappointment each time I found the inbox empty.

By ten-thirty I had decided that any serious sponsor would wait at least a day before reaching out, if only to avoid looking overeager.

By noon I had decided my profile was probably too stiff, too obviously written by someone trying not to admit her desperation.

By two, while wiping down the pastry case, I found myself wondering whether Porter B. had seen it and dismissed me in less than a second. Too buttoned-up. Too proud. Not honest enough about my actual need for structure—or, at least, willing to lie about needing it. The phrase had embedded itself in my head like a splinter.

Need for structure. Need for… discipline.

The way that word floated to the top of my mind angered me enough to restore some sanity. I did not have a need for structure, let alone discipline. I had a need for rent money after having made a temporary failure of judgment.

Unfortunately, the app did not seem interested in my preferred distinctions.

I checked again during my break. Then in the restroom. Then on the walk home, with cold wind catching my hair and my feet aching in my cheap work shoes.

Nothing.