Punishment With Kisses Part 5

I didn't speak, but mimed to her, allowing my mouth to slack open and pressing my flat hand over the O to indicate surprise at her very large blue and white marbled member that was clearly so happy to see me.

Playing along, Shane kept quiet, or to put it more accurately, she did not talk, although she was soon making quite a racket. As was I.

I pushed her onto her back and climbed aboard like a harlot who wanted her (wo)man-meat and nothing else. I drew the long scarf from my neck and instead of using it on myself, as Ash had done in the video, I used it on Shane.

But I had no experience with bondage or erotic asphyxiation, and I hadn't been a Boy Scout. Nor had I paid much attention to the knots on the riggings the few times I'd been out on friends' sailboats. Not knowing the difference between a noose and any other binding, and not ready to risk my lover's life for one night of pleasure, I decided to start slow. I tied Shane's wrists to the bedposts. She was compliant and tested the bindings to demonstrate their effectiveness in restricting her movement.

I rode her hard, watching her wince and moan and strain against the scarf that prevented her from grabbing me by the hips and positioning me where she wanted. Instead, I s.h.i.+fted my weight around, judging from the look on her face and my own pleasure to determine the best angles.

I was riding her and slamming my pelvis up and down around the shaft of her c.o.c.k, and all at once I pictured whipping her with a riding crop and imagined her riding me this way with spurs. The notion brought me right to that point where I was about to blow, and I could see from Shane's face that she was just as ready as I, and right before I let go, I turned and smiled at the camera.

June 1 I'm worried about kiddo. I think Megan wants to be like me, to emulate me and my life. But it's a life of such dreadful emptiness and need I wouldn't wish it on anyone, especially my beautiful sister. I feel like I have a huge hole in the middle of my soul that I've been trying to fill with an endless parade of lovers: women, men, going back to, h.e.l.l, how long has it been? I don't know, since I was a teenager, for sure, since the big one, the first one, the only one that really mattered. Sometimes I'm numb. No, usually I'm numb. Sometimes I want to feel pain, just so I can feel something. Choke me, f.u.c.k me, hit me, burn me; but do it with a hint of tenderness. I want to feel something besides empty pain. A punishment with kisses.

I've slept with over a hundred women at this point, especially if you count all the Dinah Sh.o.r.e festivals and Michigan madness and the play parties and that one weekend. Oh, that weekend. But all those notches on my lipstick case aside, I still feel empty. With all the s.e.xual exploration I've engaged in during my twenty-six years, my life still feels so devoid of intimacy it's a f.u.c.king joke. It's so crazy that I still believe in love, still want to be with The One. But will I ever? I envy Megan for her innocence, her naivete. I hope she never becomes who I have become. I hope she never has to go through what I've been through. I hope she never sees the world for what it is, the stinking cesspool of filth and betrayal.

Chapter Nine.

There was a new girl at the office, a reporter named Paula, with hair so curly it seemed like it had been transplanted from another part of her body. h.e.l.lo, Hair Club for Men. She called it a jewfro, though she was Irish, so I was not really sure if it was okay to repeat her colorful language. Was it racist?

I nicknamed her Curly Q because she was bubbly and quirky with perfect little features-the upturned nose, the sparkling violet eyes, the puckered lips, and perpetually rosy cheeks. Paula seemed like she liked me. She'd been hanging around my cubicle every day at work, bringing me Twizzlers and mocha and asking me out to lunch or drinks. I a.s.sumed she was. .h.i.tting on me, and I was enjoying it, playing various kinky scenarios in my mind like a series of short p.o.r.no trailers for a best of compilation, until we went out to dinner and I discovered her true motive.

"I know about Shane and Ashley," Paula revealed almost innocently. I was immediately appalled to hear anyone mention their names together. I was particularly perturbed that a colleague from work would bring them up.

"I'm sorry, what?" I honestly didn't know where this was going.

"Look, I'll be honest with you, Megan. I have an ulterior motive in befriending you," Paula confessed. "I want to write a book about your sister's murder and I'd like your cooperation."

Apparently Paula had true crime aspirations from her time on the police beat at the Oregonian, and when she discovered she could be working alongside me at the Willamette Week, she was determined to use that connection to write and sell her own based on real life In Cold Blood style thriller. Paula said she'd already had interest from a publisher, particularly regarding the love triangle angle.

"Love triangle?" I could feel my cheeks burn. Ash. Cynthia. Shane. I couldn't help but picture their naked bodies entwined. I tried to push the image away, replacing it with Shane holding me, explaining what happened that day. I told myself eyewitnesses were unreliable, even when they were me.

"I know you and your sister were fighting over your girlfriend, Shane-"

"So you think I killed her? My own sister? Jesus." I shook my head until my teeth rattled. How could anyone think I was capable of murder?

"I didn't say that," Paula protested. "I just think it's an intriguing element to the story. You don't think your love triangle played a part in her death."

It wasn't a question, but I answered as though it was. "Look, Paula, I don't know what the f.u.c.k you think you know, but you've got it all wrong." In the eighteen months since Ash's death I'd become familiar with many of the local reporters, their style and techniques, and I had developed a way of dealing with them all. But Paula's insinuations-her straightforward accusations-threw me. "Get this straight, I did not kill my sister!"

"Hey, Megan, I'm on your side, I'm not saying-"

"Bulls.h.i.+t you're on my side. I can't believe the preposterousness of you taking me to dinner to do research for your book. And then you accuse me of being the cause of Ash's death."

"You mean murder."

"Her murder," I repeated. "Neither I nor Shane had anything to do with her murder. And if you knew anything you'd realize that Ash would never fight with me, or anyone else, over one of her many conquests."

"You're right," she said in what I thought was an apology. "I understand your sister was quite the s.l.u.t."

"You b.i.t.c.h!" I shoved the table away and flung the remains of my blended mocktail on Paula's smug little perfect face.

She smiled. "Of course," she said, dabbing the drink from her brow with a napkin, "I can't imagine it was your sister who was the jealous one." Paula smirked.

Wow, this b.i.t.c.h is unflappable. Meanwhile, I was shaking and my voice started cracking when I shot back, "I'm getting a restraining order in the morning." Like that was going to happen, and then I burst out crying and couldn't get out of there fast enough.

I ran from the restaurant and tumbled into a cab where I sobbed all the way back to the apartment. I was still bawling when I got there, hoping that Shane would do her part to soothe me. Instead, there was a note on the fridge: "We're in production, had to go back to the office. See you tomorrow. Love, Shane."

f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k, f.u.c.k. f.u.c.k it all to h.e.l.l. I had a dead sister, a cold girlfriend, a calculating reporter, and a father so rigid he wouldn't know empathy if it bit him on the a.s.s. I couldn't believe all of this was happening to me. I mean, I recognized that I was the sister who lived, but I still couldn't bear feeling like no matter what I did, I couldn't f.u.c.king win. Sometimes I wished I were the one who was dead. The dead had it easy.

The next morning I had to be at the paper before our family attorney's office was open, so I hoped I could just avoid Paula until I talked with him about the possibility of getting a restraining order based on nothing but a few rude comments and her blaming me for my sister's murder. Maybe this could be one of those times where Father's money and standing in the community would grease the wheels of justice and shake loose the paperwork I wanted.

In the meantime, surely I could at least tell my boss, right? But Paula was an experienced reporter and I was just an editorial a.s.sistant, so who would a publisher keep? Probably her. I just read submissions, answered complaint letters, and wrote calendar copy. You didn't need talent or a degree to do that. But Paula had bylines. Plus, she wasn't the one refusing to work within five hundred feet of another employee. Still. I was here first.

Before I could march into the publisher's office, my cell phone rang with a call from a girl I was fairly collegial with at Just Out, the local gay newspaper.

"Have you seen the blogs?"

"No," I honestly replied. "What's up?"

She inhaled sharply, as though deciding how much to tell me. I was nervous as h.e.l.l. "Just tell me! What's going on?" The pregnant pause was freaking me out.

"All right. Someone posted something on SheWired.com alleging that you've been in a long-term relations.h.i.+p with the number one suspect in your sister's murder!"

That b.i.t.c.h, Paula.

"A bunch of local bloggers picked it up and are reprinting it. And so did Perez Hilton."

"Wait, what? Who? "

"They're all anonymous posts, but the blogosphere seems pretty captivated by it. Even our bloggers are posting the gossip and, well, I heard the police were paying attention too. I just thought you should know."

Oh, my G.o.d, how was this even possible? Obviously, this was Paula's doing. But how could she just have made something up and then posted it anonymously and instantly get it accepted as fact? G.o.d, it was so f.u.c.king unfair.

"Wait, why would Perez Hilton reprint it? It's not like we're celebrities."

"Oh, well, uh," my tipster stammered, clearly uncomfortable blurting out the problem. "Well, you should read his, um, it's, I think you should read it. Look, Megan, I gotta go. I just wanted to warn you, okay? Hang in there."

With that, she was gone. I snapped my cell phone closed and ducked into the nearest Starbucks-in Portland never more than a few feet away-where I was lucky enough to find an empty terminal and log on to Perezhilton.com. As soon as it loaded I wanted to put my hands over the screen to hide the page from the other patrons. It wasn't a PG image. At first I thought I'd stumbled onto a pop-up ad for a p.o.r.n site. Then I looked closer. I recognized the star on the x.x.x video still. We happened to have DNA in common.

The story was there too, right on the front page, above the digital fold.

Well, well, we have news from the naughty today as insiders tell me that Ashley Caulfield, aka p.o.r.n star Pookie Michaels, was involved in a lesbian love triangle with her own sister! The younger sister, Megan Caulfield, is a reporter at the Willamette Week in Portland, Oregon. Meanwhile, the third leg in this sordid triangle, Shane Ryan, a female editor at the Women's Poetry Journal, is Caulfield's on-and-off-again lover (currently on). Michaels, who came to fame (pun intended) in the amateur film m.u.f.f Diving Miss Daisy, was stabbed to death last July. No one has officially been named in connection with her murder, though Ryan is apparently considered a suspect. No word yet on the Sapphic sister's involvement in the homicide, but talk about sibling rivalry! Crazy lesbionics!

I couldn't help but read it over and over again. Then I Googled my name and discovered links to at least a dozen other blogs. Gossip spreads like wildfire on the Web. I wasn't sure what was worse: being implicitly named a suspect, being romantically linked to an overt suspect, or discovering my sister was an amateur p.o.r.n star. G.o.d, I hope she was an amateur. This would totally kill Father if he found out. I'd never thought about whether Father was a p.o.r.n aficionado or not. I mean, I a.s.sumed he watched p.o.r.n, even if I couldn't imagine where or when. He must've, though, right? Didn't all men? Still, it was disturbing to think about Father stumbling onto scenes starring Ash. But that's exactly what I had done. And having stumbled onto my sister's homemade s.e.x videos, I didn't destroy them, didn't take a hammer to the DVDs and reduce them to shards. No, I deliberately watched them. And then I acted them out. I felt like vomiting again.

Clearly, Paula had been one busy beaver last night, planting gossip on blogs to stir the pot and lend credence to her own theory of the crime-that Shane or I killed Ash. In doing so Paula might have given my lawyer more to work with, but how could I counter her allegations? They were preposterous, but everyday folks wouldn't understand that. At best, they'd think I was the s.l.u.t banging my dead sister's girlfriend, when it had been the other way around, and at worst, they'd think I was the killer myself.

It was all too much to handle, and though I couldn't wait to ream Paula, I couldn't bear to walk into the Willamette Week offices this morning. I called my editor from the coffee shop and feigned sick. I was pretty certain he knew what was going on, but he sounded sympathetic and told me to "take care of myself now" almost as though I'd never be coming back.

Was he right? Was this it for my career? Just because I didn't need the job-financially-didn't mean I wanted to lose it. Plus, I needed it for my resume, right? Who's going to hire me with a blank sheet of paper? Or worse, once they learn I was fired from the only position listed because everyone thought I was a homicidal s.l.u.t? A friend of Father's? I shuddered at the thought.

Chapter Ten.

By the time Father phoned, inviting me to the house for dinner over the weekend, I had already called in sick twice and avoided Shane a full week. I spent the rest of my time reading Ash's journals and viewing her s.e.x videos. The latest was probably the most shocking to date, and featured a scene I couldn't quite shake.

In it, Ash was wearing a black flapper dress with pearls and what I could only describe as Victorian hooker boots, even though such a thing probably never existed. A black mask completely covered her eyes. A tall, thin, and beautiful woman I'd never seen before held Ash's hand and led her into a room with a mattress on the floor in between four metal posts that looked like modern horseshoe crooks. There were candles everywhere, from the floors to the windowsills.

Inside the room, there were a bunch of other women all partially naked and wearing macabre black and white masks that looked like bird beaks on a yin yang symbol. Some women had gold chains around their waists that linked to rings in their noses or ran down and disappeared in their crotches. Others had pink leather paddles or cat-o'-nine-tails with handles woven in white and pink buckskin. Still others wore ridiculously large d.i.l.d.os, giant ebony c.o.c.ks larger than anything I'd ever seen in real life. The production values on the film were far inferior, but otherwise the video struck me as a cross between Eyes Wide Shut and Lair of the White Worm.

Except there were so many women. Every configuration of woman seemed to have joined Ash in that room: young, old, fat, thin, black, white, brown, yellow, butch, femme. Although some looked vaguely familiar, the masks successfully obscured their faces. I only knew Shane's body well enough to identify in a naked lineup, and thankfully, she wasn't among the women in the room.

A pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs strapped Ash's wrists to one set of posts and her knees inched up to her chest before two women pulled her legs, forcing them down and using another pair of fuzzy cuffs to strap her ankles down at the end of the bed.

Within moments each woman was taking turns doing rather unspeakable things to Ash, their meaty paws tearing the straps off her dress, pulling the top down to expose her b.r.e.a.s.t.s while pus.h.i.+ng the rest up above her waist. She was wearing a gold chain around her waist too but no panties. Was this an initiation? It looked almost like a ritual, but I couldn't tell how much of it was fantasy orchestrated by Ashley and how much was for the pleasure of the other women. Or was this more amateur p.o.r.n from Pookie Michaels?

There was so much I didn't know about my sister, and watching her f.u.c.k half of Portland was only confusing me more. In her homemade videos, Ash could appear submissive but still somehow seemed, usually, to be in charge of her own degradation. I could never tell for sure if she was asking to be violated-to be spanked by that fancy shredded whip while one woman thrust her fist in and out of her at a rapid-fire pace-and how much was Ash ceding control. If she confused pain with pleasure, which was this?

If the scene didn't involve my sister, I could maybe find it arousing, this lesbian version of Behind the Green Door or all-female Story of O, but with my dead sister the center of the erotic attention, I found my body and emotions a jumble of contradictory responses.

The ringing phone broke my concentration, and I felt simultaneously relieved and disappointed. Finding Father on the other end immediately s.h.i.+fted my feelings again, ratcheting up the disturbed dial.

"Megan, your mother would like to see you this weekend," he announced, calling Tabitha my mother, though she never curried to the t.i.tle herself. "Please come to the house for dinner tomorrow."

"I can't," I said wondering why he said she was mine. Was I somehow responsible for her? If someone had to own her, why wasn't it him? Why didn't he call her his wife? "I'm working this weekend. Sorry."

Expecting him to accept work as a perfectly reasonable excuse and quickly hang up, I was surprised when he hemmed and hawed for a moment before blurting, "Well, listen, young lady, I need to speak with you." Oh no, the young lady bit. It must be serious.

"Okay." I waited for the rebuke.

"I understand you've been seeing this Shane person who was your sister's, um acquaintance. "

Ah, acquaintance. His language made me pine for the days when the euphemism was friend or roommate. Acquaintance was even less intimate, suggesting even less of a relations.h.i.+p between the two parties.

"And how do you know that?" I wondered if he stumbled onto a blog while searching for p.o.r.n. I wanted to scream at him, insist Shane was my acquaintance first, but even I knew that wasn't true. Everyone and everything in my life somehow belonged to Ash first.

"It's been all over the news. We've fielded quite a few media calls at the firm. There seems to be a great deal of interest in your, uh, illicit relations.h.i.+p with this Shane character."

Father couldn't bring himself to say "woman" because that would be admitting his daughter, both of his daughters, were big ol' d.y.k.es. Still, the way he hissed "Shane character" made me cringe.

"I don't think who I see is your business, Father. I am twenty-four, remember?"

"Listen, kitten, your behavior reflects poorly on me, our family, and my business. And since Shane is an actual suspect in Ash's murder, you could be playing Russian roulette with your life. You need to stop seeing her immediately. Out of respect for your sister, and for me. I won't lose another daughter that way."

He spat out the last line with a vengeance.

What way was that? Did he mean he wouldn't lose another daughter to murder or to lesbianism? At this point I wasn't sure. I tried to suss out his motivation. I couldn't tell if he was convinced that Shane was Ash's killer, despite the lack of any proof or motive, or if he only cared about appearances, and as long as a cloud of suspicion hovered over Shane, he didn't want me to go out with her, not even with an umbrella.

"Father," I stammered.

"No, I said drop it. You'll do as I say and end this now." And with that final p.r.o.nouncement, he was gone. I laid there, stunned at his misdirected admonitions and the sheer irony of watching a filthy s.e.xcapade on screen starring my dead sister while Father warned me to dump my girlfriend for fear Shane would ruin or corrupt me in some indefinable way. If anyone was corrupting me, it was Ash. She hadn't let something as minor as being dead and buried keep her from exposing me to the dirty truth. Father probably just wanted to prevent another scandal, or maybe he was even trying to protect me in his brusque and paternalistic manner. Was this his way of saying, "Megan, I love you"?

I hardly wanted to give my father the satisfaction of doing what he'd ordered me to do. But then again, if Father wanted to express his concern for me, shouldn't I take advantage of it? I couldn't imagine it happening again anytime soon.

I debated the idea for a few minutes and decided that I would indeed go to the estate this weekend. I wanted to find out if Father knew something I didn't about Shane's guilt. Maybe he had some kind of proof. I mean, I couldn't believe Shane had actually killed Ash, but I'd always felt she wasn't being entirely honest with me about that night. Shane was always angry and cagey when Ash was brought up. Maybe she did have something to hide and I let l.u.s.t blind me to the fact.

When I arrived at the house, it was Tabitha who looked excited to see me. She was subdued, still beautiful, but definitely unmade, much of her usual artifice stripped away.

"Welcome home! Are you staying for the weekend?" She was speaking in a high voice. I didn't realize I was so badly missed out here at Casa Caulfield. More often than not, the only greeting I got was from Maria.

"Yes, Father insisted I visit so I decided to make a weekend of it. How are you?" I asked politely.

"As good as can be expected I guess," Tabitha said cryptically. "I have something for you." Tabitha ran to the library and came back with a small framed text. As I read I realized it was a weathered copy of George Eliot's poem "Two Lovers" with a scrawl across the bottom.

"Wow, Tabitha, I..."

"You know this was your sister's favorite poem." I didn't know my sister read poetry at all. I thought I was the only literature buff in the family. I a.s.sumed Ash was all TV and tabloids, never venturing beyond twentieth-century pop culture. I should have known, reading her journals, how literary she was. I felt sad at the umpteenth reminder that I didn't bother to know my sister at all.

"I had a scout looking for an autographed copy of the poem over a year ago. You know it's really rare, and well, he called me last week and asked if I still wanted it, and I thought that maybe you would enjoy it as much as Ashley would have."

I smiled not just at the gift but at Tabitha's habit of calling my sister by her birth name instead of her nickname. Suddenly, it was endearing more than annoying. The one positive thing I'd discovered after my sister's death was how lovely a person Tabitha was. I could never see her as my mother, but now, in the wake of all this misery, I could see her for the woman she was. This was probably what Ash saw, too.

"I love it, Tabitha. Thank you." It was ironic how, in the wake of my sister's death, I no longer hated her hand-me-downs. Or Tabitha.

After some small talk, I ventured off to my room, adorned as it always was, and pulled out one of Ash's journals for a quick read before the family dinner. Reading about s.e.x in Father's home now felt beyond perverse.

March 21 I try to explain it to Cynthia tonight, the meaning of punishment with kisses, and she doesn't get it, how I first said it to Father after he spanked me so hard my b.u.t.t blistered and Mother sent me to stay at Grandma's house for a week, but by the time I came back Mom was already dead, the cancer so swift and sudden it took her from us almost overnight.

That night of the spanking, oh how I wished for an alternative, something more loving than the belt. I finally got it. I didn't know then that kisses could be punishment, so it's all the more ironic now that I see they can be. But simple, stupid Cynthia didn't get it either, and I don't have all the time in the world to explain life to her. She's with me constantly, always trying to touch me, to hold me, to own me. I tell her again and again, I don't want her like that. I just want a friend, but she whimpers and whines so much I relent and I spread my legs and let her have a piece of me, the piece I've shared so often and so easily it seems unfair to not let Cynthia have it too. After all, I do so want a friend, someone to confide in. But before I even finish, I stare at her big silly grin and her wide eyes, and I wonder why on earth I let her do that again.

The worst part is when she comes up to kiss me, smelling like musk and p.u.s.s.y and desire and I'm reminded that a moment ago I was making a shopping list while pretending to come just so the poor sod would be happy. If she were my friend, she wouldn't need me that way. She'd help me be happy without diving into my c.u.n.t every time she came over. As it is, we do this over and over again, and I always hate her afterward. I get annoyed and I make her leave and she storms off until the next time, when we repeat the cycle all over again. I'm just afraid now that Cynthia will upset all of my plans with The One. I'll do almost anything to get The One back, including leave all of Daddy-O's money behind. Cynthia is probably the only one who knows, so if it all goes awry, I'll have doe-eyed Cynthia to blame. Poor sod.

I'd always known that Cynthia and Ash were close, and I'd obviously caught them having s.e.x together, but now I was seeing just how close the two of them were. I needed to talk with Cynthia. She probably knew Ash better than anyone. Certainly better than me.

Tracking Cynthia down wasn't hard. She still lived in the same house in Portland's Montavilla neighborhood that was listed in Ash's address book, and when I called she was eager to see me. Which, given the circ.u.mstances, I could sort of understand. After all, she'd been Ash's best friend and we'd hardly spoken since the funeral. She was probably looking for closure. Maybe she wanted an update on the case. Still, even taking that into account, Cynthia seemed oddly eager to reconnect. I wondered what kind of ulterior motive she might have up her sleeve.

"Hi, kiddo." Cynthia met me at the door. "Oh, I'm sorry. I mean Megan. What are you now? Twenty-five?"