Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [97]
Bruce is crying.
“Amex, Master, Visa,” he says through his tears.
Wayne heaves a deep sigh and hands Bruce an Amex card. Then he holds up the re-created one-hundred-dollar bill.
“Bruce, I want you to pay attention. I am giving this bill to this lady because she is a true artist, a true risk-taker. Watch closely.”
And, extracting an old Rapidograph pen, he signs the bill “To Leila with love and blood and guts from Wayne,” then hands the one-hundred-dollar work of art to me.
Bruce hurries away with Wayne’s Amex card.
I decide to go to the dominatrix with Wayne.
Madame Ada lives in a prewar building in the West Village. There is a doorman. Wayne and I travel up to the penthouse level, where we ring the bell of PhD. A white calling card on the door says: “Psychodrama Institute.” Silence.
“I wonder if she’s home,” says Wayne.
I’m relieved she’s not. Then we hear the click of heels on a hard floor, and the door swings back.
A Slavic-looking square-jawed blonde in her forties wearing a white leather skirt, a blue silk blouse, and black stiletto heels opens the door. She shakes my hand firmly, then kisses Wayne on both cheeks, Italian style.
“Hello,” she says, smiling and at once biting off her smile. “I’m Ada,” she says, with a strong Russian accent, “or, to my slaves, Madame Ada.” She laughs. “Come in, come in.”
The large living room is bare, but for a huge leather couch—white—and a few futuristic Italian lamps. The walls are mirrored. There is no art at all. There is, however, an immense terrace, which looks out over the low roofs of the village toward the midtown skyline of New York. A dazzling view. What any struggling Russian émigré in New York would wish for.
We sit down on the leather couch, which makes a U in the middle of the bare room.
“So . . .” says Ada. “Wayne has told me wonderful things about you. He says we’re so alike.”
“How did you get into your line of work?” I ask.
Ada laughs. “Everybody asks the same question.”
She crosses unshaven legs, swings her foot in its black stiletto heel, and laughs her trilling musical laugh.
“Let me tell you what I told Phil Donahue. When I first came to this country from Russia, I was brought by a Mexican friend to a club in SoHo where they did S&M. The Dungeon, I think it was called. I went for curiosity’s sake, like you, not knowing what I would possibly make of it. At the club, I saw men bound and gagged, spread-eagled on bondage tables, their scrotums bound in leather thongs. I saw dominas in black leather whipping these men, allowing them to kiss one toe—or perhaps not even that—and I felt disgusted, detached, fiercely superior toward the people who were doing it. That gave me the first clue that I must be attracted to it. Then, suddenly, I was given a cat-o’-nine-tails and asked if I wanted to participate. I had no special feeling about it, really, one way or the other. A man’s buttocks were bared before me—a young man, young and handsome, with firm buns—and I began to flog him. It was then that I discovered a great heat in myself to continue. I was wild with a passion to do more, and more, and more. I really wanted to hurt him, to draw blood, to lacerate his flesh.” Ada said all this precisely, overaccenting each consonant, giving the vowels a musical Slavic lilt. I was riveted.
“What danger is there, if any?” I asked.
“Ah,” said my professor of S&M. “You ask the right question. This kind of sex can easily make you jaded. It’s a drug. It takes