Read Purely Professional for Free Online

BDSM.” She sipped from her drink to soothe her mouth, which had gone dry again. “I thought maybe I could do some research, but Helen said it would be better to talk in person to someone who actually knows something, someone ‘in the scene,’ as it were. Plus, most of what my research turns up is either pornography or encyclopedic. I don’t want to write a boring Wikipedia page. I want something more personal. Helen, I guess, thought you would be the person to talk to.” She was still talking too fast, so she turned the conversation to him, asking the question that had been at the forefront of her mind since she spotted the top of his head. “So how do you fit in here, exactly, Max?”
    He took another sip of his coffee. “You want someone active in the ‘scene,’ as you call it. I’m active in the scene.”
    Bridget had hoped he would elaborate on his own, but it seemed he wanted her to ask. She looked around, suddenly self-conscious, glad the Starbucks was mostly deserted. “Active…how?”
    “I’m a Dominant. I have some playmates, other members of this community.” He gestured vaguely with one hand. “Nothing very serious. Women who are submissive who enjoy being dominated. We get together for fun.”
    “Oh.” Bridget wasn’t exactly sure if she said the word or if her mouth just formed the shape. “So…fuck buddies?”
    “Not necessarily. It’s not always sex. But if it helps you to think about it that way, I suppose you could make that comparison. It’s accurate in that I don’t have relationships with these women.”
    “I don’t really understand,” she admitted, although she thought that the strange cars in his driveway were beginning to make sense in the Bigger Picture of Things.
    “All right, I’ll explain.” When she waited, he gestured to the bag on the floor. “Don’t you want to take notes?”
    “Oh, right.” She set her digital recorder on the table between them. “Is this all right?”
    He winked at her. “Hoping to keep a record of my voice to play in bed?”
    That was so quintessentially Max that she had to laugh. “Of course.” She relaxed a little and turned on the recorder.
    “BDSM is a multipurpose acronym,” he began, and it was easy to see that he was a professor. His entire demeanor changed when he was teaching. “It means many different things to many different people. There are stereotypes, but they’re usually wrong. Probably a lot of things you’ve read on the Internet have given you the wrong impression. Shock sells, of course.” She nodded and let him continue. “The acronym breaks down into three different pairings: bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadism/masochism. Not everyone who considers themselves ‘into’ BDSM is into all of those things. In fact, most people aren’t. There are also many degrees of interest. At one end, you have the extremes…live-in slaves, body mutilation, completely constricting bondage. At the other end, you might have a couple who likes to tie each other up with silk scarves once in a while but wouldn’t consider themselves into BDSM. There is a whole menu of options out there.”
    “Like religion,” she found herself saying, nodding. “You know, how Christianity has so many subsets?”
    He smiled, drawing back a bit. “Well, I can’t say I’ve ever heard anyone make that comparison before.”
    “Go on.” She continued drinking her Frappuccino.
    “There are terms, of course. You’ve probably come across them in your research. Tops, bottoms, switches, slaves and Masters, submissives and Dominants…but it’s hard to find exact labels for people. The more we try, the more complicated it gets. It’s much better to ask someone ‘What are you into?’ than to try to categorize them. We don’t fit into neat boxes.” He sipped his coffee again, his hands wrapping comfortably around the mug. Were his fingers as strong as they looked?
    “So what are you into?” she asked after a moment,