Calmese Brennan

Chapter 1: Hot Johnny

 

John <jjr41@protonmail.com>:  I’m in the lobby

Kayla K <masterkayla@gmail.com>:  Be right there.

I make a left out of my room and follow the outdoor hallway to the elevator bank.  It’s early evening, but the sun has long since set.  I press ‘down’ and look over the edge at the guests on the second floor lounge, curled like cats on corduroy couches in cashmere throws.  The air is soggy with coastal brine, and my nose fills with the smoke of cedar rising from fire pits below.

The elevator bings.

I ride down smiling at a video message from my lover telling me to Have fun, babe.  I don’t know what he knows about my job other than it exists and I do it.  Same as my marriage.

I step into the lobby, but I don’t see my client.  I pull up my email for his phone number to text him.  I don’t like having to do this - my mind rests easier knowing that all of my clients are at a safe cyber distance.  I long for a burner phone in these moments.

- Hey it’s Kayla, I’m at the elevator, where are you?

- I’m at the elevator.

There must be a bonus bank around here somewhere.  He probably entered through the spa.

I had sprung for the luxury hotel.  The one with the tan youthful staff that wear ecru linens and canvas sandals and greet you up and down with cartoon smiles.  The one with the rooftop pool oasis overlooking the Pacific with half-moon mohair alcoves that scream YOU CAN’T SIT WITH US!  The one with geometric wall sconces and live-edge oak coffee tables and the occasional form-over-function piece to remind us, This Is Art, and we’ve hired an interior designer who has her own Ted Talk to prove it.  I walk past a gold-plated armless dining chair with a wingback made of driftwood - a shimmering statement of her genius.  Unsurprisingly, it’s empty.  I walk past guests who’ve correctly chosen the goat suede beanbag alternative.  It’s 1920s New York Regency meets Mid-century Malibu Beach house.

Finally, I see John.

John is a hunk.  He has doe-eyes encased in courtesan lashes.  He makes bald work.  His abs are ripples in water, and they are visible through his sweater.  It’s almost as though he’s wearing a muscle suit.  His bulging body looks like a reaction to being picked on as a kid.  Maybe for being a computer geek before we even really had computers.  Maybe for being black.  Maybe he was chubby.  Whatever it was, his shape has a prove-them-wrong quality.  It’s nearly grotesque.  You can see the neuroticism behind the fibers.  And soon I’ll be watching each one flinch with fear as I work my way through my sadistic John-specific repertoire.

We hug.  Our elevator ride is stiff.  This isn’t how I like to greet clients.  Mostly because this isn’t how clients like to be greeted.  Out in the open, vulnerable to onlookers who can almost certainly smell the transaction.

“This is a nice place,” he says quietly as he sets $750 and two plastic pints of chopped fruit from Whole Foods down on the birch credenza.  His mixed berry offering had become an important feature of our sessions dating back to our first meeting at the LAX Westin.

The room is 10 or so different shades of sand.  Tranquil, filled with rounded edges.  Even the Bluetooth speaker is wrapped in a linen casing.  This is maybe what insane asylums should look like.  I hit go on a playlist I named ‘Johnny.’  It’s exactly 90 minutes long, the length of our session.  That way I don’t have to look at the clock.  Or rather, John never has to see me look at the clock.

I excuse myself to the bathroom to give him a chance to change clothes and settle in.  I text my husband:

- Hot Johnny’s here, I’ll call you when he leaves.

- Yeah, Babygirl, you speedbag those nuts.

The bathroom is the size of most Manhattan apartments.  It features a marble vanity and a travertine shower that you could easily sleep in.  The sunken shelves are loaded with Aesop products, which you can tell are expensive because of the deliberately undecipherable brand copy.

Nonperturbing formulation with a suite of sophisticated ingredients enhanced with Frankincense and Panthenol, to cleanse strands and scalp, and help effect soft, shiny, fragrant hair.

This is confirmed by a notecard on the sink that reads:

Proper is pleased to offer a selection of Aesop formulations to lend pleasure and elegance to your daily ablutions.  Your room features a curated selection of travel staples, including exceptional hand, body and hair care.  We invite you to take these products on your onward journey.  Available for purchase at the front desk.

- Classic Shampoo (17 fl oz) $49.00

- Classic conditioner (17 fl oz) $49.00

- Geranium Leaf Body Cleanser (17 fl oz) $45.00

I’m scared that if I use it, I’ll do it wrong.  I’ll accidentally touch it the expensive way.  I needed guidance, but I am too embarrassed to ask my 2 star hotel question to a 5 star hotel concierge.

Plus, I’d already wasted my inquiry on the surfboard issue.  I sniff my wetsuit hanging in the shower, wishing I hadn’t forgotten to toss it onto the balcony.  It smells like a fish market at the end of a hot day.

Before I pulled the trigger on my Landmark Premier King room, I did a bit of waffling on account of how I’ve never spent this kind of money on a place to sleep.  So I scoured the amenities.  The website reads, Surf boards at the ready!  There’s no further information, but I tried to imagine how else to interpret that sentence.  Surfboards at the ready.  And that’s what did it for me.  It was the surfboards.  At the ready.  But they were not, in fact, at the ready, a concierge member clarified.  What they meant was that they can connect me with a local surf shop for lessons, and would I like them to do that for me?  They have since removed this ‘offer’ from their site.

But John is right.  This is a nice place.  I paw through my toiletry bag in search of something mundane that I can convert to a torture device.  I find my flathead hair brush - good for walloping.  It makes a dramatic whizzing sound when I slice the air with it.  Perfect.  I return to the bedroom with the brush behind my back.  I slide it covertly onto the credenza.

“Back for a rematch?” I taunt lightly, peeling my layers off to reveal my standard workwear: a hot pink sports bra and blue paisley spandex shorts.

“Yes,” he manages to mutter.  He’s not a big talker.  His eyes are already wide with a mist of anticipation and fear.  I give him a shove, and he falls back onto the marshmallow bed with a soft puff.  The headboard is a plush arch the color of mountain dust.  It casts over him like a beige halo.

“Why aren’t you fighting back, huh?  Are you afraid of me?”  He answers my goading with a decent attempt at a tackle.  I push his head into the mattress and swing my body around to his back.  I snake my arm between his chin and his clavicle for a rear naked choke.  He taps.  I ease up, but I do not let go - something I know he likes.  The problem with John is that nothing I say or do is truly realistic.  He wasn’t like my other humiliation clients who tended to be easy targets - unattractive, old, phasing out of relevance, not even in view of my league.  John was hard to push around.  Anyone could see that he wasn’t weaker than me.  He looked like he could lift a truck under the right kind of pressure.  And he wasn’t a blockhead either.  He was sharp, self-aware, and philosophical.  And if he’d picked me up in the wild, instead of on Session Wrestlers dot com, we might be winding down a dinner date with some good ol’ fashioned sex.

With John I have to be creative.  I let him feel like he’s shaking me off, only to catch him in a triangle on my way down.  I hang around his neck like those thick dog collars for aggressive breeds, and I bring my face close to his and begin to mock him.

“You look so tough, what’s the problem?  Are you secretly a weak little bitch?”  He squirms.  He lets the insults ignite him.  He tries harder to pin me down and wrestle out of my noose, but his confidence has already started to wane.  I slink around his body and contort him into knots that hang by mechanical threads.  Holds that don’t feel inescapable until you try to escape them.  I pinch his nipples through his tank top and he kicks his legs in protest.

“These muscles are just for show.  How pathetic that you have to wear this bullshit armor to signal your strength.  All of this bulk is impractical, Johnny, and it won’t help you now.  All those hours at the gym…wasted.”  He responds only with a look of dejection.

He begins to wear out, as expected.  It’s as much a mental deterioration as it is physical.  Partly he’s already experienced an adrenaline dump just by walking through the hotel doors.  And I know he didn’t sleep the night before our session, because he emailed me about thirty different notes around 3am.  Relinquishing control can be difficult, even when you’re paying good money for it.

I sit on his chest with his arms pinned beneath my shins, and I play a game of hand-over-mouth.  With a sinister grin I pinch his nostrils between my index finger and my thumb.  I take my other hand and slowly cover his mouth.  I delight at his discomfort.  I’m careful not to let up as he shakes his head back and forth.  I am his nightmare.  A femme fatale draining his spirit, controlling his vitals.  Tears well in his eyes.

I release my hands and hiss, “Underneath all of that brawn, you’re just a scared little dork who wouldn’t have the balls to try and stop me at this point.”  Right on cue, I pinch his balls through his shorts.  He gasps and writhes, but he’s stuck in the web of my body.

As my little tortures continue, his mind shifts into survival mode.  He stops trying to fight back.  He’s using the word ‘please’ often and it’s beginning to take on a tone of desperation.  Other than that, the only sounds out of his mouth are quivering exhalations.  He’s realized that his best course of action is to try to appease me.  If he’s a good little boy - a good little toy - maybe I’ll show mercy.

I command him to massage my glutes.  There’s no need for holds anymore.  I’m straddling his torso, exposing my back.  I no longer believe him to have the gall to try to push me off.

I gather both of his testicles into my grip and instruct, “Harder.”  His massage takes on a new level of enthusiasm.  I lean into his fantasy that he’s now my favorite plaything.  I let out moans that signal I’m gaining enormous pleasure from this usurious and imbalanced dynamic I’ve established with my bare hands.  But I’ve already gotten the real pleasure out of this session.  It’s across the room stacked neatly beneath the fruit.  This isn’t to say that I’m not enjoying myself.  It’s just that I wouldn’t do it for less than 500 an hour.

His massage slows.  I whip my head around to face him.  I am stern, I am pissed.

“I wasn’t done.”  I shock him with a tight nipple pinch.  He nods and gets back to it.  I use his minor act of insolence as an excuse to punish him with more ball torture.  I look at him over my shoulder and ask with psychopathic curiosity, “What if I just plucked it right off?”

His eyes widen with terror and his mouth gapes open as he shakes his head no.  I squeeze harder.  “No?” I ask, pretending to not quite understand the severity of the situation.

There was a time, not too long ago, when I couldn’t have fathomed being flown cross country to make a few big men feel small.  I couldn’t imagine that my dominance - whether genuine or performed - would be worth real money.  In the beginning, I didn’t understand the value of the service.

I place both of my hands around his throat and squeeze.  He pretends to pass out.  I use this break in the action to retrieve my hairbrush.  I reverse mount him and keep his legs spread by hugging one of his thighs to my chest.  I look over my shoulder at him with the brush raised above my head.

“Wake up, you pathetic little boy.”

I let him register the object.  I narrow my eyes and give him a smile that says I’m about to cross a line, and I bring the hairbrush down full speed.

THWACK.  It hits the bed a few inches from his crotch.  For a split second he’s not sure if I’ve just crushed his manhood into a pulp.  He lets out a whimper that is half relief, half panic.

“I fucking own you,” I say calmly, with one eyebrow raised.

He nods as his body quakes.

“Wasn’t that so generous of me to not destroy your worthless little balls?”

He nods much faster this time.

The final song on the playlist draws to a close.  The minimalist synth vamp fades out, and I climb down from the mountain of his body.  I stretch myself casually on the settee, legs open, maintaining an air of informality.  An air of I-don’t-care-how-that-made-you-feel while I open the first pint of fruit.  The session is over, but there’s no need to rip him from the world we’ve built.  I chew loudly, flaunting my snack and my indifference toward him, but I’m sneaking glances his way.  He’s staring at the ceiling with his hands covering most of his face.  He’s breathing deeply and repeating at slow intervals, “Oh my God.”  Occasionally he cuts his eyes at me.  ‘Terrified’ has been replaced with ‘Mind-fucked.’  I evaluate the blueberry between my fingers.  I continue to feign disinterest in John’s condition.  After a few minutes of this comedown game, he catches his breath and he looks at me again.  I wink.

1: STORY STATEMENT

Fresh out of undergrad, *Callie wants freedom from the expectations placed on her by everyone but herself.  That, plus money.  But first, she must confront her own relationship to dominance in the equally fringe but ethically opposite worlds of Brazilian Jiu Jitsu and Fetish Wrestling.

*Likely all names will be changed, but for now I'm using my real name (Callie) and my real professional name (Kayla)

2: ANTAGONIST/ANTAGONISTIC FORCE 

*Part 1

- Social voices and relational expectations:  Southern upbringing of repression (represented mostly by Mom).  The inherently antagonistic experience of making money in an ethically questionable manner.

- Mom:  represents social and parental expectations, social inheritance, the first voice of “no one will love you the way that you are.”

- Lisa:  the ‘madam’ figure of the fetish wrestling agency.  Protective and helpful at first, but the relationship devolves as Lisa’s own personal issues affect her business sensibility.  Ultimately reinforces the damaging lessons that Callie learned from her mother.  Kayla finds herself in precarious situations with unscreened clients, and ultimately finds Lisa to be a high pressure merchant whose interests are primarily self-serving.

- Babs:  false father figure.  Head professor of the dojo, the moral compass.  He presents as a man of the world but really man of his own rigid thinking.  Also a long-term clandestine sexual partner, creating enormous confusion and messy boundaries in the dojo and Callie’s romantic life.

- Fabio:  failed parental figure.  The owner of the dojo.  Enormous, but quiet.  Generous but resentful.  His own issues with women make it impossible for Callie to be taken seriously as a professional within the Dojo.

- Rio:  false partner.  Callie feels she’s finally found a partner with whom she connects.  A couple of months into the relationship, she discovers that he’s a sociopath.  He reinforces the theme of role-playing, but from a different, less pro-social angle. 

*Part 2

- Keith:  Ornery and challenging client with a surprisingly paternal side.  Lines blur and personal boundaries are crossed, causing complications that extend well-beyond the job.

- Brian:  High-rolling client who wants more than anything to feel out of control.  When he isn’t able to bring himself across that line, he blames Kayla for taking a deep role-play session too far.

- Jason:  A much younger lover who leans submissive.  It is the first and only relationship in Callie's romantic life that is characterized by dynamics she's only known with clients.  For Kayla, the role is familiar.  For Callie, it is a mind-melting departure from what she knows herself to desire.  The relationship is as fraught as it is expansive as they struggle to find peace with their attachment to each other.  

*At this point, there are two clear narratives that resolve at different points in the overall narrative.  It's unclear to me whether it needs to be two separate books or simply two parts.  Part 1 is primarily concerned with Callie's need for liberation, and her journey toward liberation through playing roles as Kayla.  It resolves with her choice to leave the fetish wrestling agency and the dojo she's been with for 7 years.  Part 2 delves more into the sexual psyche and the labyrinth of intimate relationships.  It concludes with the unexpected death of one of Kayla's long-term clients, who has also become Callie's friend.

 

3: BREAKOUT TITLES

1: Roleplay

2: Roleplay: How I Became Myself While Being Others

3: Muscle Worship

 

4: GENRE

Insider memoir, memoir, narrative non-fiction

COMPARABLES:

1: Pretty Baby, Chris Belcher:  A highly reflective memoir of a dominatrix.  

2: Three Women, Lisa Taddeo:  Addresses nuance of the female experience - neither feminist nor antifeminist.  As a writer she tends to approach the mother/daughter inheritance conundrum with brutal honesty without pushing for redemption.

3: David Sedaris:  He is a humorist without sacrificing the humanity, narrative interest, and philosophical opportunities of a story.

 

5: LOGLINE

 

A promising young woman burdened by the court of family and social opinion steps off the well-worn path to find herself navigating the complex world of the fetish industry while balancing her personal relationships and her Jiu Jitsu practice.

She seeks personal and financial independence through the sexual economy and discovers the inner workings of the human psyche in the process.

As she begins to monetize her ability to play different roles for different people, she begins to understand her true consistent self.  As she monetizes her sexuality, she begins to embrace her own power and proclivities.

 

6: INNER CONFLICT & CORE WOUNDS

- inability to separate self from others, constantly falling into relational patterns

- fear that she won’t be accepted for her depravity and willingness to live on fringe

 

6a: SECONDARY CONFLICT

- Callie is unwittingly seeking and accepting false parental figures.  She creates more restrictions for herself from which she must be once again liberated.  She is playing out old conflicts with new characters, inching closer and closer to becoming an integrated person who has mastery over all of her selves.

- The constant concern about being ‘found out’ by people outside of the fetish world.  Callie can’t be all of her selves and expect to be accepted in her circles.

 

7: SETTING

- New York City: Transient city where you can get anything you want and become anything you want.  You can hide in plain sight.

- Jiu Jitsu Dojos: A place of non-sexual extreme physical intimacy.  A place with very specific old-world rituals, hierarchy, and power dynamics.  A visceral space of heat, sweat, exhaustion, physical danger, and power exchange.

- Sex-work Studios: The workplace of a domination wrestler.  Often crammed into unsuspecting spaces like office buildings, commercial walk-ups, and residential apartments.