Page 37 of Interview with a Sadist
Old Bree was a great journalist who knew how to approach her career. New Bree keeps thinking about how good it felt to embrace pain and succumb to her impulses and desires. New Bree craves the thing that brought her to life, and that is her masochism. New Bree doesn't know how to pick up the story that Old Bree started, because the thought process is completely different now. Unlike Old Bree, I’ve experienced the sensation of being flogged and made to orgasm. I’ve witnessed the beauty behind the curtain of BDSM. I’m not some naive girl approaching the story with an uneducated pessimism. I’m wide awake with lessons I’ll never forget, and I can’t write this story the way Old Bree planned to before Nolan and The Black Collar came into the picture. I have to start anew. Unfortunately, I don't know what the fuck that means.
As I stare at the screen in front of me, I’m bombarded by memories from Old Bree’s life with Melissa and Teagan. There were some really good times back in college, and it saddens me now that everything has shifted so quickly. None of this was on purpose, so to approach the table today with a mindset that I never saw coming was as much of a shock for me as I’m sure it was for them. Before Nolan, I could never relate to anyone living a lifestyle I'd never encountered, but seeing things in person forces one’s perspective to shift.
When Chase handed me this assignment, it was never my intention to discredit The Black Collar. As closed-minded as I was, I went into the story as receptive as I could possibly be, intent on gathering the information and seeing it all for myself. Obviously, I didn’t think seeing it would result in experiencing it, but now that we’re here, I think a shift is required.
“Girl, you look like you’re in here stressed to the max,” Octavia’s voice booms into the cubicle from behind me. When I spin around to look at her, all the stress I’m feeling must be written across my face in bold letters, because she flinches when she sees me. “Damn, Bree. You okay?”
“Hi. Yeah, I’m fine. Just a frustrating lunch,” I admit, but saying it out loud somehow makes me feel worse. It’s okay to think it, but saying it out loud makes it real.
“Oh?” Octavia says as she pulls the chair from across the aisle to sit down. “What’d you do, work through lunch?”
I scoff. “I wish. That would’ve been better than spending the hour arguing with Melissa and Teagan about how muchI’ve changedsince I started The Black Collar story. After today, I’m not even sure if the three of us are still friends. Well, there’s no separating those two, so I guess I’m the odd one out.”
Octavia huffs and leans back in her chair, arms crossed. When I look at her face, I can see she’s thinking hard about something. Her eyes bounce back and forth between me and whatever far-away thought she’s envisioning, and I’m sure she’s struggling with what to say about my so-called friends. Octavia has always been nice to me, but I’m not dumb—I know she has never liked Melissa and Teagan. However, out of respect for me, she has kept those feelings to herself. While I’ve always appreciated it, I’m ready to hear how she really feels.
“It’s okay,” I tell her. “I know you’ve never liked them. It’s cool if you’re honest about it. Your perspective might’ve kept me from a lot of heartache in the past.”
Octavia exhales, still looking at me suspiciously, before chuckling. “Well, if youinsist. You’re right, I’ve never liked those bitches! Girl, they’re so bougie. I don’t know how you stand it, because I’ve never thought you were anything like them. Ever since they looked at me funny at that damn Christmas party, I’ve felt some type of way about them. They don’t deserve you, Bree, but I understand they’re your college girlies. Sorry, let me dial it down. I know they’re your friends. But, I mean, you didinsist.”
Both of us laugh at the expense of my friends …ex-friends, which is exactly what I needed. This day has been annoying enough, so it’s good to smile at the ridiculousness of it all.
“I know they’re a mess,” I say, still smiling. “But I’ve known them a long time, and we sort of grew up in the same way, so we had that in common. Their problem is that they never learned another way to think. They’re stuck seeing the world the same way they did when they first went off to college. But, things change—at least they’re supposed to. At some point, we have to learn how to break away from only considering the things we were taught, because what I’ve come to realize is that a lot of the stuff I was told as a kid was actually bullshit. I had to evaluate things with my own eyes to see them as they truly are. Melissa and Teagan just aren’t capable of that, and it sucks that I can’t tell the women I’ve known for so long that I’m going through something drastic. At the time I need to talk to them most, they don’t have my back. It just sucks.”
Octavia places a hand on my knee, and I’m suddenly surprised at how serious she becomes. Not that I expect her to always be in a joyous, playful mood, but she usually is. I’m not sure Octavia realizes how much she brightens up our entire office, so to see her suddenly switch gears catches me off guard.
“I know you haven’t known me since college,” she begins. “But if you’re going through something, you can always talk to me, Bree. So, let’s forget all about the office right now. Fuck Chase. Fuck the stories. Fuck these ugly ass people who keep walking past us looking in the cubicle being nosy. Fuck everything else. Let’s just talk. Tell me what’s up.”
I smile, because all this time I’ve been stuck on Melissa and Teagan, when Octavia has been the best friend in my life since I started working here. I just didn’t realize it until now.
“You’re awesome, you know that?” I say, beaming.
“Oh, I know,” Octavia quips. “Now, for real, what’s up?”
“Okay. So, you know I’ve been working on finishing up the story on The Black Collar.”
“Of course.”
“Well, things have sort of shifted between the owner and me.”
Octavia’s eyes bulge. “Shifted how?”
“Like … we’ve done a little more than talk about the club and his lifestyle. He hasshownme a couple of things.”
Octavia pinches her lips together as she stands up and walks into the aisle with her hands on her hips. I fight back a laugh as she walks into the cubicle next to mine, sits down, exhales, stands up, and comes back to my cubicle, reclaiming her seat.
“What was that? You okay?” I ask.
“Oh, I’m fine,” she replies. “I just needed to keep myself from screaming, and that was the only way I could think to use up the energy. I’m good now. So, you hooked up with the club owner?”
I lean in to whisper. “Well, not exactly. Over time, I’ve just become more and more fascinated by everything he has shown me and talked about. I started to feel like I was going to implode if I didn’t experience some of it for myself. I was intrigued beyond measure, and I needed to know. So, I asked him to show me about the thing I was interested in.”
“Don’t you dare hold out on me,” Octavia whisper-screams. “What was the thing you were interested in?”
I hesitate momentarily, knowing she might lose it, but I’ve come this far. “I wanted to experience some pain, so I asked Nolan to flog me.”
“Girl,” Octavia says, before stopping herself and getting up again. She walks out of the cubicle and down the hall, before reaching the end and doing a U-turn to come back. Once she’s seated again, she continues. “Cool. Cool. So, then what happened?”
Giggling, I go on. “Well, he agreed, and said we wouldn’t do anything other than what I asked for. I was totally fine with that, so he asked me to bend over on his couch. Then, he flogged me … while forcing me to hold a vibrator on my clit … until I came … really fucking hard.”
