on his pipe, letting the smoke out slowly. 'Do you think you'd like to meet the lady in a Victorian bedroom, you know, an old-fashioned setting? I mean in a very ladylike room -- lace curtains, a four-poster, that sort of thing?' 'Oooooh, God. Is this really happening to me?'
Up and up the staircase, through one lovely layer of dream after another. And now, half a year later, where was I headed? The Club.
'It's just what I want,' I had said. I had driven over as soon as I finished reading the rules and regulations, waiting an hour to see him in the little waiting room, glancing again and again at my watch. 'Why didn't you tell me about this place before?' 'You have to be ready for The Club, Elliott.' 'Well, I'm ready for it now. The full two-year contract, that is exactly what I want.' I was steaming as I paced the floor. 'How long will it take to get me in there, Martin? I could be ready day after tomorrow. I could be ready this afternoon.' 'The two-year contract?' he had asked, weighing each word equally as he spoke. 'I want you to sit down, have a drink. I think we should talk a little more about what happened in El Salvador, Elliott. What happened there with the death squad and all that.' 'You don't understand, Martin. I'm not running from anything that happened there.
I learned something there about violence, that it didn't have to be literal for it to work.' He was listening very intently. 'When a man seeks out violence,' I said, 'be it war, sports, adventure; he wants it to be symbolic and most of the time he believes it really is. And then comes that moment when somebody literally puts a gun to your head. And you literally almost die. Then you realize that you've been confusing the literal and the symbolic all along. Well, El Salvador is the place where I learned that, Martin. I'm not running from it. It's merely the reason I'm here. I want violence just as I always have. A sense of danger, Martin. I love it. I think I even want to be annihilated by it all. But I don't really want to be hurt and I certainly don't want to die.' 'I understand,' he had said. 'And I think you put it very well. But for some of us, Elliott, sado-masochism may only be a phase.
It may be part of a search for something else ...' 'So it's a two-year phase for me, Martin. So The Club is the perfect landscape for my search.' 'I'm not so sure, Elliott.' 'It's too much like the boyhood fantasy I had, don't you see? Being sold to the Greek master for a period of years. It's too perfect ...' 'Time doesn't mean much in a fantasy ...' he objected. 'Martin, the die was cast when you told me about the place. Now if you won't sign the papers, I'll find some other way ...' 'Don't get angry.' He had cooled me off at once with that easy smile. 'I'll sign the papers. And for the full two years if that's what you want. But let me remind you that there were a lot of elements in that boyhood fantasy you told me.' 'This is too beautiful!' I said. 'You may be searching for a person rather than a system,' he went on. 'And when you go to The Club, Elliott, the system -- in all its remarkable splendour -- is exactly what you get!' 'I want the system,' I'd said. 'I can't turn away from this! If it's half as good as what you've described, I wouldn't miss it for anything in the world.'
So the contract for two years at The Club with its male and female slaves, male and female guests, its male and female handlers, trainers, staff. All right. Okay. That's exactly what I want. I don't think I can stand it. How could anyone stand it? It is just exactly what I want.
No good to think of all that while trying to refrain. After six days at sea I was like a male dog tormented by a bitch in heat when I finally heard a key in the door. It was afternoon and I was just coming out of the bathroom, showered and shaved after a really late sleep. Maybe they knew that. Saved them work. It was the young blonde-haired kid with the deep-bitten suntan