Page 78 of Pierced

So… that was one of the weirdest nights of my life. Which is saying a lot, I realize. Because my life was weird from the first breath of air I breathed. Librarian mother meets lion-tamer father. I mean, that right there is the stuff ridiculous sit-coms are made of.

Only it wasn’t a sit-com. My parents are serious to the nth degree and I guess with that kind of atmosphere permeating my formative years, there was no chance of me turning into a something other than what I am.

The way I look at it, I had two choices. One, be a mousy academic who hides her true self away in shelves of books. Or two, fall into the trap of adrenaline-induced exhilaration and spend the rest of my days wondering when my lifestyle was going to kill me.

To be fair to them both, they came out of it just fine.

My father has navigated his dangerous lifestyle very well. He’s still alive, so that’s saying something. And he’s happy, as far as I can tell. Maybe even extremely happy. Not many people get to live the dream like he has.

And my mother has settled down with a sensible man who accepts her for who she is and won’t be eaten by carnivorous animals one day at work.

Both of them just live their lives in a way that makes sense, but I never quite got the hang of that.

I fell into both those worlds at one point. If you looked at me at age fifteen you’d have said with one-hundred-percent certainty that I’d grow up to be just like my mother. And if you had seen me at age twenty-three, you’d have said my lifestyle was going to kill me just like it did the designer who made my dungeon queen outfit.

There was, at no point before I came to Le Man Magazine, any kind of… intermediate middle. I was one or the other and it took a long, long time for me to realize I didn’t have to be one or the other. That I could just be myself.

And for the past several years that’s who I truly thought I was. Myrtle Astrid Rothschild, executive assistant to Pierce Chevalier at Le Man Magazine.

Myself.

But it’s not true and it took Pierce promoting me to VP to realize it. I took my job as his assistant too seriously. I realize that now. I based my whole new identity on that role and so it was inevitable, that when it was taken away from me, I’d be lost.

That’s how I feel now. That’s where I’m at.

Lost in an identity crisis.

It was nice. I do admit that. Being with Pierce as a woman who might be starting to understand who she is, was nice. We didn’t have sex. In fact, after he basically said he was satisfied just looking at me in this new way, he and I made our plans for this afternoon and he left. I accompanied him to the door, opened it up still mostly naked as the cold night wind wrapped around my body, and watched him walk away.

He was already at work when I got here this morning. He looked up from whatever he was discussing with Valerie when I paused at my office door and smiled at me. And for a moment I debated if I should say something. But then he took his attention back to work and I didn’t.

I didn’t know what to say.

Thank you felt appropriate, but I’m just not sure what I’d be thanking him for.

Relieving me of my corset? Unbinding me? Allowing my true self the opportunity to spill out?

I’m just not sure.

I live with danger every day. Down the hill from my house live thirteen lions, eight tigers, six mountain lions, two jaguars, and a snow leopard. They are all tame in their own way, but still, deep down inside they know who they are. They know what they are. And at any moment one of them could just decide… you know what? This is not who I am and I’ve had enough. I need a reset.

They could have an identity crisis too.

I understand this. Have lived with it my whole life. That’s why there’s what constitutes a cage surrounding my home. That’s why there’s a guard at the gate with a small arsenal of firearms locked in a safe behind her. That’s why we keep tranquilizers in the fridge and hundreds of pounds of fresh meat in the freezers.

I was taught at a very early age that the proper precautions can save your life and maybe I took that too seriously too? Maybe I applied it with too much rigor? Maybe I, like Pierce, really am all the toos?

Maybe the corset is my cage? Maybe the whip is what keeps them tame? Maybe the blindfold is my hope that one of them won’t wake up one day and have an identity crisis?

Of course, I’m not talking about the cats. I’m talking about the men in my life.

Or lack thereof these days, because Pierce is the only man in my life. Has been the only man in my life for a couple years now. I used to date when I first came to work at Le Man, but I stopped. I don’t even know when that happened, exactly. I just know it’s been a while now.

And up until that morning when he pointed his finger at me and told the whole world I was the Sexpert, I was happy. I really and truly was.

And since that day I’ve been sad. Because it was a wake-up call. It was a sharp slap in the face that nothing I thought was real, is real.

I’m sitting at my desk running all this through my head when my phone buzzes.