(If you missed Part 1, you’re gonna be confused)

The night after we met, Lauren invited me to hit up a few Hollywood goth/fetish clubs. Despite having lived in Hollywood for about 4 months at that point, I’d never actually gone exploring. When I picked her up, she got into the car wearing a corset, fishnets, and a single-ring bondage collar. She handed me a leather leash and said “I’m your pet tonight. You decide when and where we go, and I will follow”. She asked if I preferred Sir or Master – though I was tempted to say “Call me God” – I settled on Sir.

While I love a good D/S play¹ in the bedroom, I’m a little weird about public displays of affection even in that context. Moreover, I’m not big on roleplay, cause I always need the ability to crack a joke or step outside the fantasy to look at the reality for a moment and just enjoy or laugh about it. But, as I said before, I was gonna go along on this ride cause she was just so beautiful and so fun and I knew I’d fuck it up sooner or later.

Despite having carried someone on a leash a time or two before, I’d never done it for an extended period of time. And it was a little more awkward because I hadn’t a fucking clue where we were going. It’s a real “tail wags the dog” scenario. What I did was just turn my head slightly and say “is this the place?” or “do I take a left up here?”. From there, she pretty well figured out that she could just speak rough directions and we’d be on our way.

The first club wasn’t that special. It no longer exists, and I think I only went there this one night, but I remember a big open room with  a low ceiling, black walls, and a few bright lights spinning around. It was in this club that I figured out how to navigate things like poles, other people, and dance floors while making sure not to wrap a human-person leash around or on any obstructions. I also met the man who was previously in the Spongebob costume, now just a dude in a goth club. His name was “Alan”.

Lauren asked if I wanted to go to a bigger and better club close by, named Bar Sinister. I’d heard of it a million times, but I guess I psyched myself up too much about LA goth clubs – like they’d be in some different league and my lame former-Phoenix-goth ass wouldn’t be welcomed. I was, thankfully, very wrong. I walked Lauren down to the next street and we waltzed on into Bar Sinister. In retrospect, that’s odd because Halloweekends at Sinister are fucking insane and there’s been a line outside there every year since. But I don’t recall a line that night.

We went in, and I wanted a drink. When I asked her what she wanted, she said “your pet drinks what you tell your pet to drink”. I s’pose I could’ve gotten creative and ordered something like an Adios Motherfucker, I just said “two rum & cokes!” so she was drinking what I was drinking.

She introduced me to her friends from the night before. The nun was the girlfriend of a guy named Logan², and I forget the name of the 50s starlet. I’d later come to find out that Logan and his girlfriend barely knew Lauren, and he always thought something was “off” about her. I guess she was friend-of-a-friend status, through the 50s starlet (who I never saw again after that second night).

While enjoying the sights and sounds of Bar Sinister, Lauren said into my ear, “Sir, I need to be excused to the ladies room”. I knew better than to hand her the leash or just say “okay! go pee!”. I grabbed her collar, we made out for a minute, and I unlatched her collar from the leash as we were kissing. While holding the ring on her collar, I said “you’re to stand outside the ladies room when you finish, and I will pick you up”. She said “yes, sir” and off she went.

I walked around and just took in how fucking cool I felt. I was celebrating my birthday weekend, I was out with a beautiful, fun older woman (she was 32 at the time, and I’d just turned 26) who asked if she could be my pet of all things, and I was finally chillin’ in a Los Angeles goth/fetish club. It was a slice of heaven. I even found Lauren standing, with her hands folded, just outside the bathroom. Smiling. Waiting. As I walked up, I saw a guy start to hit on her and she loudly pronounced “I am his property, until he says otherwise”. I gave the guy a look of “yeah, sucks to be you pal” and did the “now scram!” thumb gesture.

We again finished the night back at my apartment. She still had the collar on, so I gave it a slight downward pull and – right on cue – she dropped to her knees and did wonderful, filthy, lovely things with her mouth. She had, at some point, told me her reason for getting all those tattoos was to hide scars from some huge car accident she’d been in that almost killed her. She even had a few bones replaced with surgical aluminum³. When we fucked that night, I had her hands tied up, and she writhed her body in such a way that her metal rotator cuff made a *clink!* noise. I said “what was that?” – and she said “that’s just my rotator cuff going back into alignment”. In that moment, I felt something akin to love, if that didn’t sound absolutely insane for someone I’d only known for less than 36 hours.

The following night, I went to the WeHo Halloween party, which is a fucking blast and if you’ve never been then you owe it to yourself. It’s fantastic. Alas, Lauren couldn’t come along, but we also dually worried about one or the other of us getting sick of the other too soon.

When I got back to work on Monday, I started my day with an email from her. That would set off a chain of us emailing back and forth throughout our workdays. Since I rarely ever delete things⁴, I can tell you that our email chains amounted to roughly 2400 emails over the course of our 4 months of dating.

We went head-long into this shit. Guns blazing. Souls bared. Or so we thought, and we were so fucking wrong.

1. Dominant/Submissive, if you don’t know the terminology. You can google this shit if you care enough, this isn’t really the time or the place for me to explain it all ↩

2. I’d use a pseudonym, but.. fuck it, he and I are friends now and he loves this story ↩

3. or is it titanium? Look, I’m no doctor. I just remember it was an alloy of some kind ↩

4. one might theorize I’ve been planning a massive project like this my whole life, which is partially true ↩