Thankfully, when he walked back into the room, he seemed too distracted to notice how I looked. He was pinching the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger, face downturned. "I swear to God. My brother. They could make an HBO melodrama series about his life, and it would fit right in."
"Less incest, I hope," I quipped, before I could stop myself. Instantly, my face turned an even deeper shade of red. Why did I say the most inappropriate things when I was nervous?
Ben just laughed. "Perv."
"Hey, they're the pervy ones. Not me." He hardly even seemed to notice I still had his computer, breezing right past me and plopping down behind his desk. He was searching for something in the drawers and piles the paperwork. I breathed a sigh of relief. "What's going on with your brother?"
"I probably shouldn't say," he said. "But relationship problems run in the family - we'll just leave it at that."
Laughing, I relaxed into my seat, trying not to think about what I'd just seen. "They can't be worse than yours."
His mouth quirked up as he turned to look at me. "You'd be surprised. So - find anything promising in there?"
It took me a few seconds to remember what he was talking about.
Right. The auditions. Shit.
I couldn't do this. I couldn't sit here and have a casual conversation with this man, pretending I hadn't seen what I saw. I needed to know. I had to find out what it was. The room suddenly felt stifling, horrifyingly so.
Swallowing hard, I looked up at him. "Actually, um, I'm kind of tired. Could you point me towards my room?"
Chapter Ten
Jenna
Sleep eluded me.
I had to know what the hell that website was about. And I was drawing the line at sneaking back down to his library and looking at the computer again. I wasn't a complete degenerate.
Was he?
Was it some kind of sex thing? Or was it really some kind of lifestyle that somehow revolved around spanking? Was it some combination of both?
I laid there in the impossibly plush bed, staring at the glow of my phone, my thumb hovering over the web browser.
Finally, I typed it. Letter by letter, so slowly, until Google helpfully auto-completed it.
Domestic discipline.
I hit "Search," and immediately wished that I hadn't. The glut of information hit me faster than I could absorb it, conflicting terminology and ideas swarming - corporeal punishment, spousal abuse, Christian domestic discipline, erotic spanking. Holy shit.
Taking a deep breath, I tried to focus in. BDSM. Okay, so that was something I knew about - obviously. Not exactly something I'd ever thought about doing, but I knew plenty of people did. I guessed it was normal for them, even if it didn't make any sense to me. But this? This was something different. Weirdly specific. I couldn't wrap my head around it.
The one thing I was quickly learning was that it meant different things to different people. For some, it actually was a reflection of their spiritual beliefs. Ben didn't really strike me as the Born Again type, so I figured that was unlikely to be it. But the motives were unclear. It was all about someone being in charge, and someone else being taken in hand - which, as far as I could tell, meant they were treated like a disobedient child who needed to be punished when they stepped out of line.
My skin was crawling. The word consensual kept coming up. Consensual, consensual, consensual. This was something that both people wanted, every blog article and op ed piece assured me. Except for the skeptical ones, which I had to admit I was leaning towards. Was this just some thinly-veiled way to hurt the one you loved? Or, at least, act out unhealthy relationship impulses?
I started scanning through the articles available on one of the biggest websites. I hadn't yet been able to bring myself to seek out the forum I'd seen on Ben's computer, but I was moving in that direction.
The titles of the articles were all I could swallow, for now. My eyes started to glaze over.
When to Stop Spanking - how to tell when your punishment is effective
Knowing Your Roles
Asleep At His Feet
I set my phone down quickly, my heart squeezing in my chest. This was what he was into? Were Maddy and Daniel into it, too? That little gleam in her eyes seemed to hint at something, not to mention Ben's not-so-private conversation with Daniel at the club - but I couldn't imagine the girl I knew in college willingly becoming a domestic servant. I mean, what the fuck.
This wasn't something people did anymore, was it? I mean, as much as I didn't really understand BDSM, I accepted that it was fun for everybody involved. This didn't seem fun. It seemed way too serious, too reverent of a cultural norm I didn't believe it.
My curiosity outweighed my cringing, and I returned to my search. I kept going back to the repeated use of consensual. But how could someone consent to a relationship that was so uneven?
I didn't get it.
How could anyone live like this all the time? I didn't like the idea of roles. What if I didn't want a role? What if I just wanted to be a human being? I was seeing stories of spouses who felt like they had to adopt this lifestyle, because it was what their other half "needed" - and they claimed to be happy, but it felt hollow to me.
I mean, how? Why? I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be treated like an adult.
Taking a deep breath, I squeezed my eyes shut for a moment. It didn't matter. The terms of my agreement with Ben had nothing at all to do with his private bedroom activities. But I still felt like I needed to know. Maybe because it seemed to speak to his character. If he really was so attached to the idea of subservient women, could I even pretend to be married to him?
Opening my eyes again, I saw an article called "In Defense of DD." An acronym that - I had recently learned - referred to domestic discipline.
I opened it.
My eyes scanned over the words, seeing them all, but absorbing almost nothing. Then, I reached a paragraph that made me stop.
Look at it like this: people choose to be married. They choose to live as a couple, in the same home, sharing so many aspects of their lives. Raising children together, usually in monogamy. Many women choose to take their husband's last name, and even wear a ring that declares his "ownership" of them. It's only recently that men began wearing wedding rings with any regularity. And even today, it's quite rare for a man to wear an engagement ring - yet it's considered commonplace for women to display this symbol that hearkens back to the days of women as commodities.
These are all choices people make, based on nothing but traditions they feel they should reenact. Those who buck the trends are considered strange. But divorced of cultural context, there is nothing objectively stranger about living in a DD partnership than living in a "normal" one. It's not a 24/7 sex game. It's simply another way to live, and for the people who find fulfillment in it, it's beautiful and natural.