are you from Beauty Girl?” Diana asked, offering her tea.
“L.A., but I’ve been back east for several years at school.” Lupe was flattered by Diana’s civility. She had often wished that her day-today existence could be as pleasant as one long, on-going Jane Austen novel, only with sex. That lifestyle never seemed more within her grasp.
“Where did you go?” Diana asked her.
“Braemar in Massachusetts.”
“In Random Point?” her hostess cried.
“That’s right.”
“I know the place quite well.” Diana said, not setting too much store by the coincidence.
“I loved it there,” admitted Lupe wistfully.
“Me too,” agreed Diana, “but probably for different reasons. Well, this is your first day at school. Do you have any questions?”
“Actually, I was wondering whether there was anything like a B&D support group on campus,” Lupe murmured.
“Not at the moment,” replied Diana with the greatest astonishment. “Perhaps you and I should start one!”
Two weeks later, after the posting of a flier campaign, Vassar’s first B&D support group met in the parlor of Cushing, the beautiful Tudor style dorm in which the girls resided.
Lupe and Diana arrived a few minutes early to fill bowls with chocolates and nuts while Diana’s other protégé, a handsome junior named Carl-Adam Johanson, carried in a keg and tapped it. His trim waist, remarkable shoulder spread and chiseled profile caused Lupe to stare, but Diana whispered, “Alas, he’s submissive.”
“All six foot four of him?”
“Oh, Lupe, look who just walked in,” Diana whispered, “that gorgeously eccentric Clarence Gerard. I’ve suspected for quite some time that he might be in the Scene!”
Lupe had already learned to admire that absurd creature. He wasn’t precisely gothic, had no long fingernails or deadly pallor. But he would affect breeches, top boots and waistcoats over shirts most days. He wore his light brown hair long and though it suited him, Lupe found it difficult to resist the impulse to pull off the black grosgrain ribbon that bound his elegant ponytail.
He was a history major, music minor, captain of the fencing team and avid devourer of two hundred year old novels. On set crew at the Powerhouse Theatre, Lupe had been watching him rehearse one of the lead roles in The Rivals for the past two weeks and was already fixated on the flamboyant junior.
She murmured to Diana, “His dad is a Silicon Valley magnate yet he himself won’t even pick up a mouse. He writes out everything in long hand and pays some scholarship kid to key it in.”
“I’m becoming more charmed by the moment. Wouldn’t he be perfect for you?”
“Bet you he’s a sub,” guessed Lupe.
“You’re probably right,” Diana sighed, “though in all probability he’s a switch.”
“I hate long hair on boys. It only serves to me remind me that my parents wore bell-bottoms,” the girl from Los Angeles reflected with a shiver.
“But what hair, he’s looks like the lead singer from The Cult.”
“You mean to say you admire his affectations?” Lupe demanded.
“He’s very appealing.”
“At least he doesn’t seem to be pierced or tattooed,” Lupe granted.
“And mar that flawless skin?”
“He’s noticed us looking at him.”
Diana waved at the young man, who immediately crossed the room to them.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m so glad you could join us! My friend Lupe and I were just trying to guess your orientation.”
“Really!” This was pronounced with such irony that Lupe waited for him to produce a quizzing glass to scrutinize them through. Instead he merely asked in the same haughty tone, “And what was your conclusion?”
“Submissive!!” Lupe cried, causing Clarence’s eyebrows to jump.
“I was going to say it was too early to tell,” Diana chided her friend.
“Submissive!” Clarence rounded on Lupe, a fine color rising in his face.
“Not submissive?” Lupe replied innocently. Clarence glared at her and stalked off to take a seat behind the piano, whereupon he began to play jagged airs from Kurt Weill’s German period with excessive violence.
“He looked like he wanted to slap your face,” Diana murmured to Lupe. “I wish he had!”
“Thanks!”
“I’m sorry, but that kind of thing turns me on.”
Diana chaired the meeting while Lupe took the minutes, Clarence remaining at the keyboard to accompany Diana’s opening remarks with the overture to Peter and The Wolf.
Nearly thirty students had arrived, with an even number of men and women. When Diana observed that they were numerous enough for a party, she received a roomful of blank looks, yet the word germinated in all of their brains as she spoke in practical terms about the dungeons and sex clubs of Manhattan.
Then the concept of a party was revived. They wondered with one voice whether they could have a party on campus?
“Out of the question,” Clarence snapped, abruptly ceasing to play.
“And why is that so?” Lupe demanded.
“The noise would disturb the other students,” he pointed out.
“Any boom box will drown out a whipping,” Lupe observed.
“The feminazis will prevent you,” he warned.
“Really, Clarence, in spite of what you may choose to believe, we’re no longer living in the 18th century,” Lupe casually remarked, flushing his fair complexion for the second time. Instead of retorting, however, he simply narrowed his eyes at her, subsided on the piano bench and fell to playing something gloomily Russian.
“I quite understand Mr. Gerard’s concerns,” said Diana judiciously, “and I believe they may be minimized by holding the proposed party in one of the townhouses facing the woods.”
“I live in a townhouse,” Carl-Adam volunteered.
“Would your roommates object to a party?” Lupe demanded.
“Certainly not!” replied the flaxen haired youth with conviction.
“What might occur at such a gathering?” queried one thoughtful girl.
“Well, what would you like to occur?” Diana threw out.
There
