At first I browsed the “Woman Seeking Men” section, but failing to make a love connection there, I expanded my search into “Casual Encounters” and even into “Erotic Services.” I replied to many ads, dashing off what I thought were jaunty ripostes, but the only women who ever responded were gruff-voiced hookers promising, for a small fee, to rock my world.
Had I not been desperately horny, I would have given the website up entirely, but because I was in a state of near priapism, I made an even riskier gambit: I decided to write to what I considered the Craigslist “freaks,” those submissive women who needed a man to “dominate” them. In truth, I was not a great candidate for the job. I had managed to not get laid in high school only because of my maddening respect for women, when I’d approach every instance of teenage lust as if on a diplomatic mission. “Julie, I would like to kiss you now,” “Julie, may I touch your breast?” “Julie, with your permission, I’d love to place my hands on your buttocks.”
I was quite proud I wasn’t one of those slobbering idiots who forced himself on girls, but eventually even Julie, my childhood sweetheart, couldn’t take it any more. She wanted to have a little fun, not a negotiation, and soon enough cast me aside for a kid down the street whose singular pleasure seemed to be filling her neck with hickeys and wresting her teenage breasts free from her bra. I hated that kid for his boorishness and his luck. In New York 22 years later, however, one of the submissive ads on Craigslist seemed doable to me. The woman wanted a guy who she called a contradiction, someone who was “sweet, funny, affectionate, silly and loyal” (check, check, check, check, check, I thought!) but also “dominant” behind closed doors. Most helpfully, the woman further explained exactly what she meant by that: She wanted a “spanking,” to be “held down,” have her “hair pulled,” and “be told what to do.” That I could do, I realized. I may not have necessarily known how to be dominant, but I could spank, I could hold, I could pull. I wrote to the woman, meticulously planning an email response that would prove me both charming and unyielding. I needed her to know I was capable of wooing her with tender words and spanking her naughty behind, so I wrote my normal amiable email with one added twist: I wrote that I also needed a woman to be “my bitch in the bedroom.” I nearly hyperventilated when I wrote that last phrase. I figured the NYPD was only moments away from kicking down my door, seconds away from tossing me in the Tombs for sexual harassment or assault or maybe even rape. Still, I toughed it out and sent the email, and I was stunned when soon thereafter I got a reply back from Angelica, including a picture of a beautiful, blonde woman. It was a classy photo of a classy woman, and I never would have guessed she was such a dirty girl. We emailed back and forth, and while Angelica was demure I managed (behind the veil of the Internet) to be sexually aggressive.When we voice-verified, however, I thought the jig was up because I was completely incapable of controlling her (or anyone) verbally. Mostly I giggled, my desperation to get laid far superseding my attempts to be dominant. For the next couple of days we emailed, but Angelica seemed to be avoiding me, and finally in a latenight, drunken stupor I sent her a demanding message. She would meet me “or else,”
I wrote, making a vague threat to bend her over my knee. When I awoke in the morning I was hung-over and guilty, sure I’d blown my chance with Angelica and certain the authorities would be arriving soon. Peeking out my front window, I sort of expected to see my mother stomping up the stairs to reprimand me for my staggering lack of respect.
The guilt of my New England upbringing was overpowering, but I ultimately never heard from my mother or the cops. Who I did hear from was Angelica, who sent an apologetic message promising to meet me that very night, in my very bar. She was sorry, she said. My drunken subconscious was smarter than I knew, because my latenight email hadn’t scared Angelica off at all—it had actually seduced her. That night, without so much as a “hello,” I pushed Angelica up against the brick wall of the Christadora House and urgently kissed her, pawing her breasts through her sweater, grabbing her ass, pulling her head back with a handful of hair as I kissed up and down her neck. When I stepped away to wipe the lipstick from my mouth, Angelica looked at me with awe. I grabbed her by the hand and dragged her home, where she slept that night and where she can still be found to this day, her ass cheeks regularly paddled a rosy red and on her face always a blissful smile.
I share this tale not to brag—not to let people know I’m the sort of dude who often has a hot chick bound up and gagged in the bedroom closet—but simply to remind the kind of smug and arrogant guy I once was that just because a woman likes to have a riding crop taken to her pussy, that don’t make her a freak. All it makes her is someone not afraid of her own desires, a lesson I’d have been well served to learn a couple decades ago.
Todd Farley is a New York City writer whose first book will be published in the fall of 2009. He can be reached at off-task@hotmail.com.
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