The best part about sex and violence is that each makes the other twice as
enjoyable.  The bad part is that sometimes your temporary sex object has a problem
getting the proportions right.
	I like sex with strangers, especially with women who lack a certain tidiness about
them.  Not rank, just a missing button or two.  Hair that could stand more than a
once-over combing.  Blazing red tacky lipstick beginning to smear.  Cheap laces on an
expensive pair of shoes.
	All of which describes Sheri Coursier to a tee.  Except that I haven’t mentioned
the black leather duster she was wearing that night, the one with a slight tear in the lapel. 
Or the fact I didn’t learn her name until I saw it three days later, along with her picture, in
the Brubeck Dispatch’s obituary section.  Died at home.  In her sleep.  No sign of forcible
entry, yet there were bruises on her head and on her back.  I know what you’re thinking. 
Yes, I put them there.  But as to whether I killed her, it all depends on what you call
consensual sex.  
	Eroticism isn’t all gauzy close-ups and ineffable sighs.  Some people like a little
slap with their tickle.  More than a little.  I saw her come into the club twenty minutes
before closing, out of breath and looking one drink shy of loaded.  She immediately went
over to the bar, slammed down a couple of shots and looked at the available talent.  I’d
been watching her the entire time from my perch on the windowsill.  Too-blonde hair that
didn’t go with her olive complexion, the bemused air of someone who used to be jailbait
and never got over it.
	You don’t go to Ludy’s Startime to make a new friend, so I knew Sheri was there
to score an overnighter.  The only question remaining was, did she like it rough?  There
are tops and bottoms, daddies and boys, masters and slaves, and then there’s me, their
worst nightmare.  They take me home, expecting a complaisant lover, then I turn the
tables on them.  Their sweet little bootlicker rips the cuffs out of their hands and barks
them into submission.  Two hours of reps each morning makes me one deceptively strong
thrillkiller, able to disarm the occasional violent drunk or shimmy down the fire-escape
ladder if the situation warrants. 
	I want it real, no props, no rituals to distance me from my intended, and if the
rough stuff goes both ways, that’s alright.   I walked over to Sheri Coursier, ran my
fingers through my butch cut, and said, “Give it to me.  I can take it.”
	She looked at me, the tiny silver handcuffs dangling from her left ear, surprised by
this particular come-on.  “Believe me, you don’t want it.”
	I leaned on the bar beside her.  “You came in here tonight to find me.”
	“I don’t even know your name, sweetmouth.”
	“You just gave me my name.”  I cocked my head toward the door.  “You ready to
take charge?”
	It was that easy.
	She’d come by taxi, she left with me riding shotgun in my pickup, slithering my
fingers up and down her thigh, to which she pretended to pay no attention.  The living
room was messy yet the bathroom was spotless.  As for the bedroom, it was awash in
burgundy and black, the tools of the trade already laid out on an ornate brass bench in the
corner.  
	Sex is negotiation for most people.  Who starts it, who controls the action, what is
and isn’t allowed.  The wine, drizzling down my starched white shirt, felt wet and warm,
like blood.  “Naughty sweetmouth, you messed your shirt.”  She said this even though
she’d been the one to tip the glass.
	“Don’t punish me, ma’am, please don’t punish me,” I whimpered, seeming afraid
to get off my knees.  Out came the dog collar, snapped around my neck and quickly
attached to her leash.  A dog collar.  How predictable.
	“Take off that nasty shirt, slave,” Sheri commanded.   “Make it snappy.”
	I unbuttoned far too slowly for her taste.  The next slap had meat to it.  What she
lacked in imagination, she made up for in dedication.  Time to change the script.   I rose to
my feet, posture straightened.
	“Whaddya doing, slave?  Get back on your knees and lick my boots,” she
demanded.
	“Lick your boots?”  The adolescent whine to my voice had disappeared.  “Can’t
you come up with anything better than that?”  I grabbed a hank of her hair and pulled its
owner closer to me.  This was the tricky part.  Either they went with it or they put up a
struggle, however brief.  “I’m in charge now,” I whispered into her disbelieving face, then
pushed her backward onto the black velvet bed.
	Bouncing back up, she cursed my parentage as she made for the prop table, where
a bullwhip laid curled up in a generous crystal bowl.  But when she turned back toward
me, I saw an ornate--and functional--dagger in her hand.  “I’ll be damned if I let some
punk greaser run my show.”  Evidently not one to tolerate any deviation from form.  
Mentally slamming myself into gear, I grabbed for the knife with one hand, pushing back
on her body with the other.  The knife took a wicked dive inward before I wrestled it free,
slashing a line of fire on my thigh.  Real blood this time, flowing down my jeans.  I gave
her another push and watched her fall onto the table, owner and props tumbling to the
floor.  Dropping the dagger to the overly plush carpet, I inspected the wound, which hurt
like hell.  Would need a few stitches, nothing serious.  As for Sheri, she didn’t move for a
while.  I suppose that’s when I killed her, when I knocked her into the table.  But neither
of us knew it at the time.  She was conscious and still spoiling for a fight, but weakened
and, though she would have denied it, in a considerable amount of pain.  
	“Can I help you up?”
	“Go to hell.”
	“Maybe later.  Can I--”
	“Get your ass out the door before I plug it full of holes.”  This was not the time to
speculate on where she kept her gun, so I left her, with her eyes transmitting pure hatred,
though it should have cheered her up that I was leaving a bloody trail all the way out the
door.
	My alleged fish-gutting accident taking twenty stitches to close, the emergency
room crew sent me home with a few pain pills so I dozed most of Sunday.   Sheri was
dead by the time I woke up.  I don’t know if she realized she was feeling bad, if she had
any warning, or if she simply slipped away from the shore and didn’t float back.  Either
way, I don’t care.  You don’t want to hear that, but it’s true.  She was a bad sport.  
	Oh, I know what you want me to say.  It was self-defense.  She came at me with a
knife, I was drunk, my parents beat me when I was a kid, sex games can get pretty nasty,
so on and so forth, but all I’d had to drink was a Long Island Tea when I first got to the
club, and as for my childhood, it’s none of your damn business.  
	Where are my manners.  I do apologize.  But if you want to represent me, you
can’t pull the victim routine, and you can also forget about playing up the temporarily
insane angle, which I know you’re considering.  I’m no rapist.  If they really fight back,
I’m gone, but most of the time, they don’t.  Maybe the police will find some individual to
dispute that, but we can’t help that now, can we.  Miss Coursier suffered from an excess
of  rigidity in her thinking, which I’m glad to see you don’t share.  
	You’re right.  It was consensual, totally consensual, right down to my allowing her
to get away with almost killing me.  Tell the truth:  what is so wrong about making sex as
alive as possible.  I’m not referring to the rough stuff.  Do you want it real, or you want a
fantasy?   If I’m being too personal, forgive me, but we need to understand each other.  I
can tell that you’re a self-made woman; you weren’t born upper middle.   Still trying to
make it, still on your way up.  It’s hard, isn’t it, to give up control of any aspect of your
life.  I’ve been with partners like that, who thought they wanted to be on top, literally, but
when I went real on them, it liberated them.  Frightened them at first, then it got so much
better, so much more exciting.  They always want to go out with me again.  That’s not
what I’m after.  It has to feel new, feel unpredictable everytime.
	It’s like--do you mind answering a personal question?  Are you in a relationship at
this time?   Used to be.  There’s nothing surprising about your partner after the first time
you have sex together.  Oh, the particulars might change, but the essence, what they have
to offer, is the same, no matter how you dress the scene or change the order.  The B&D
or S&M crowd is all about the ritualized acting out of their particular fantasy, which they
think of as being taboo, whereas my fantasy, if you wish to call it that, is built on
unstructured physicality, emotional extravagance, a sidecar of danger.  Of the moment,
like spot photography.  
	Did I target Sheri Coursier?  As a victim, no, but as a participant?  Yes.  They have
to learn, they have to be given the chance to learn how constricted they have made their
lives.  You might call me an ad-hoc tutor.  
	That’s fine.  Voluntary manslaughter, probation--if they offer the deal, take it.  I
won’t agree to anything more punishing.  On to more important subjects.  What is your
opinion on lawyer-client relationships?



Copyright Kelly Sinclair. The above work may not be used without the written consent of the author.

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