My guy pal and frustrating mentee Alex Zola and I are out with Jessica, a mutual friend visiting from the Midwest. A psychologist and life coach, she specializes in working with men and women who have difficulty meeting each other. Yes, there are people who don’t even have pick-up lines. After leaving two packed restaurants because real New Yorkers don’t wait on line, we end up at The Black Duck on 28th Street between Park and Lex. It isn’t over-crowded; we can talk. (The food is excellent.)
And Alex does talk.
Jessica is a Marilyn Monroe look-alike. Many men babble in her presence. The Zola, however, with no overt encouragement from her, describes exactly how his last girlfriend liked to be fucked. He’s repeatedly told me he promised her that he wouldn’t talk about their sex life. Having known him for many years, I take all his nondisclosure agreements with a grain of salt. Just like a blabby girl, he spills secrets he promised not to reveal. Yet I am still surprised to hear him, with little prodding, tell us just where poor little Chrissie liked to be poked. Who expects a man to tell sex details like a woman does? (Yes, it's true: Men talk as much as women do, given the opportunity.)
Our conversation is already focused on kink—the strangest sexual behavior Jessica read or heard about or I witnessed as a sex journalist.
“I saw photos of women tied up like roasts, basted with oil and tied to barbecue spits,” she says, her big blue eyes open wide.
“I watched a dom spend three hours putting a man in a rubber suit into extreme bondage,” I say. “He breathed through straws inserted into his nostrils.”
Alex suddenly says, “You remember Chrissie?”
I nod. She’s the pretty girl who dumped him in March. I usually remember the spankees' names for three months. Well, not always.
“She liked extreme bondage and hot wax,” he says.
Jessica’s eyes light up because she loves the sexual confessions. I look slightly askance at Alex. He ignores the look and continues to describe Chrissie’s sexual predilections.
“She liked her hands tied tightly behind her back, wrists bound together, fingers splayed out. She begged me to pour hot red wax—always red wax—all the way down her back to the tattoo at the top of her crack. Then she asked to be flogged until the red lines from the whip matched the red wax.”
“Wow,” Jessica says, laughing.
“Then she wanted me to masturbate, turn her over and come on her face.”
They continue to chat about Chrissie; and I sip my wine—a fine Aligote from Washington state; Zola knows his wine. This is not the first time Zola has ratted out an ex-lover. I remember hearing him make fun of another lover whom, he said, moved side to side rather than up and down on his penis in rear entry position. I wonder how he would feel about the women in his past speaking disparagingly—and for the sake of a laugh—about what he did after his pants came off. Also I wonder: How funny might those stories be?
Where is the loyalty he’s always proclaiming he has for friends? Does it not apply to former lovers? Will he do anything for the sexual laugh at their expense? Is Alex so critical of these women because they’re alpha babes and he’s a beta male—and is this his way of leveling that playing field? These judgmental questions do not stop me from drilling for more details.
“Did Chrissie also like to be spanked?” I ask. (Regulars readers of both our blogs know that Alex has an erotic specialty, spanking.)
“Oh, yes, she did!” He is relishing the tale. “She also liked a riding crop across her ass.”
“What did she do for a living, Alex? I forgot.”
“She’s a corporate VP.”
Right. Another Alpha babe. Zola has been through a string of those, albeit in relationships so brief, there was no time for relating. Jessica explains that high-powered women often like to be treated rough in the bedroom. Apparently, he’s got that part down.
“It releases some of the tension they hold in their bodies from power positions at work.”
But why do they turn to beta males for erotic discipline?
“That’s a good one,” Zola says. “Maybe it’s because we’re readily available and willing. Some alpha men want the same treatment.”
A much smaller percentage of alpha men than women want their butts whipped; and the men pay doms to get it done right. They don’t want to risk their authority and power status with the women they actually know. In fact, male submissives are generally betas.
“I’m the spanker, not the spankee,” Zola says, putting his hands up in mock protest.
This is the essential Zola dichotomy. He lets an alpha woman ask him out, pick up the check and generally call the shots. Then he takes down her panties, puts her over his knee—and wallops her. Hearing about it messes with my head. A dominant male is, or should be, a dominant male. I don’t like my gender confused.
“Do you like spanking women, Alex?” Jessica asks.
He gives his demurring answer: the ambivalent shrug followed by the protestation that he’s only supplying the kink they crave.
“But do you enjoy it, Alex?” she persists, crossing her lovely long legs and leaning forward across the tiny table so that he cannot fail to drop his eyes to her lush cleavage. “Well?”
“I do,” he finally confesses.
At last! The truth. It only took an extraordinarily beautiful woman’s breasts to get it out of him.
But here is my question: “Zola, what do these women see in you?”
Jessica laughs. Zola blushes. I want the answer.
“Well?” I demand. “I want to know.”
“Well, thanks, Sus.”
“Control,” Jessica answers for him. “She can control him in the areas that are important to her, like making social plans and, later perhaps, deciding on how and where they would live if they got married. But she can trust him erotically in that power exchange.”
The Zola nods. He seems satisfied. I, however, am not.
The conversation continues on his blog on Sunday. You may be surprised at how it ends.
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