Handcuffs

The house where the party was that night was attended by the weird, alternative people with lots of piercings in unlikely places. They seemed to all be majoring in philosophy and psychology and wore a lot of black. I wasn’t one of them per se, but I found them better company than the run-of-the-mill undergraduate. They were a hell of a lot more interesting than anyone I was likely to meet at a frat.

The theme of the party was crime – cops and criminals. I’d decided to go the criminal route. I wore my grey-and-white striped shirt with numbers across the left breast written on athletic tape. I’d posed on the cold December pavement so the people throwing the party could make a chalk outline of my body. I’d been upset about how square the tracing looked. I always think I’m taller and thinner than I am.

When she slapped the handcuff on my right wrist, I was a little drunk, but not drunk to the point of incoherence, which is not to say that I wasn’t trying to get hammered. I was leaning on the kitchen counter to keep myself near the large ice bucket that was cooling the font of beer. Unfortunately, the keg we’d all gone in on was filled with Milwaukee’s Best, better known as The Beast. It had been a quantity-over-quality decision. I knew I’d have a vicious hangover the next day, but I was buzzed enough so I didn’t care all that much.

“You got me, copper,” I said, pathetically attempting to imitate Jimmy Cagney and failing. She was unmoved. She wasn’t even looking at me, but I felt that I had earned the right to look her up and down, which I did. She was wearing a black dress that showed lots of leg and lots of cleavage. She was dark-haired, like me, and a little thick, also like me. She was pretty. The other half of the handcuffs was secured to her left wrist. There were a lot of less desirable people to be handcuffed to.

“What are you supposed to be?” I asked.

“Undercover,” she replied.

“I’m Carl,” I said, introducing myself.

“Bethany,” she said, smiling. Her teeth weren’t the straight white American standard-issue teeth. They were yellow and a little shrunken-looking. Maybe she’d been raised in England. They were straight, though. It wasn’t too bad.

“I’d shake hands, but…” I held up my right handcuffed hand. She lifted her left along with me. I shook my wrist.

“But you’re my prisoner,” she finished.

“It kind of works both ways,” I said. “’Every cop is a criminal.’”

“Sympathy For The Devil,” she said, identifying the lyric without a pause. She was quick. “It doesn’t necessarily mean that every criminal is a cop. I could draw you a Venn diagram.”

“I’ll take your word for it.”

There was an awkward silence. I could feel her skin radiating heat next to mine.

“Where’s the key?” I asked. I’d tried not to ask, but I couldn’t resist. There was a certain amount of anxiety attached to the handcuff that was attached to me.

“Safe,” she said. I would have thought she’d tease me about it, but she didn’t. I had pictured it in her bra between her breasts and half-expected her to dare me to retrieve it.

“Well, can we at least move closer to the keg?”

We did. I filled my Solo cup. Great things, Solo cups. I offered to draw her a cup, but she declined.

“Let’s sit down,” she suggested. I followed her to the house’s living room, and we sat on the couch together at a discreet distance from one another – except for our arms, of course.

The party was beginning to fizzle out. The people who hadn’t left were probably paired up in the bedrooms. The living room was all ours.

“What do you do?” she asked. The question took me by surprise. It was a college town. I had pretty much assumed that everybody went to school.

“I go to school,” I said. “Don’t you?”

“Yes, but it’s not what I do. It’s someplace I go. So what do you do?”

“Well, when you put it that way, nothing much. I read books, play darts and pool, drink, and…” I cut myself off.

“And what?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Come on,” she said. “Be honest.”

“And I try to get laid,” I finished.

“What kind?” she asked.

“The regular kind.”

“Of books. What do you read?”

“What they tell me to read. Sometimes I grab books out of the stacks at random. Everything except People Magazine. So what about you?”

“I’m a poet,” she said.

I groaned inwardly. No one had ever said that to me and then read me a decent poem. Granted, people who write poetry, even bad poetry, are better than people who write no poetry at all, but bad poetry is still bad poetry, and I was the epitome of a captive audience.

“Have you published?” I asked, hoping that the question would take some of the wind out of her poetry sails and perhaps spare me a recitation.

“Yes.”

“Really? Where?”

“The New Yorker.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“That’s awesome. I’ve never been chained to a real poet before.”

“Do you have to be published to be a real poet?” she asked, her question pointed all over like a cactus.

“It helps,” I said, not backing down. “I could call myself Emperor of the Milky Way Galaxy, but if no one takes my orders it doesn’t mean a whole lot.” I paused. “Was that the right answer?”

“Not bad,” she said. “Are you trying to get laid?”

“Right now I’m more concerned about getting my arm back. I’d hate to leave without it.”

“And I’d hate to get stuck with it,” she said.

“What happens when one of us has to go to the bathroom?” I asked. “Like me. Right now.” I figured the question would earn me my release.

“We go everywhere together,” she decreed. “There is no chance of escape. We shall avert our eyes.”

It was time to call this bluff.

“Okay,” I said, standing up. “But I have to warn you that soloing with lefty could have dire and messy consequences…unless you’re into that kind of thing.” She laughed.

June, one of the hosts of the party, was just coming out of the bathroom as we approached it, wearing a t-shirt and panties. I was mildly shocked by her state of undress. She slipped into the bathroom before we could get there.

“Do you know my new b-best friend, Bethany?” I asked June when she emerged, trying to play it cool but stammering despite my best efforts. “And do you have a handcuff key?”

“Of course I do,” June said ambiguously. I didn’t know which question she was responding to. “I didn’t know she was into bondage, though.”

Bethany shrugged. Maybe she was into something kinky. What the hell. I was inebriated enough to lose some inhibitions, and I didn’t mind learning new things.

June winked at us and went upstairs. I was very proud of myself for not trying to look up her t-shirt and she mounted the steps. As she climbed, I realized that her bedroom was actually downstairs in the basement. I wondered absently which of her housemates was getting lucky.

I went into the bathroom and Bethany followed me. We looked at each other for a few moments. It was tremendously awkward.

“Key?” I broke down and asked.

“Still in a safe place,” she said.

“Okay,” I said with a sigh. I opened my fly with my left hand and managed to awkwardly take out my dick. There was a lot of fumbling. I peed in the potty, making extra sure that my grip didn’t slip and make me hose the bathroom down or, more importantly, myself. I don’t know if Bethany was looking or not because I didn’t want to chance looking back at her and making a mess. It was over soon, and I tucked everything in and zipped up again, one-handed. Trying to completely close a zipper with one hand is a real pain in the ass.

“My turn,” she said. She lifted up her dress and began pulling her underwear down with her one free hand. I turned away and looked at a cobweb on the ceiling. Laughing, she began to pee, and I thought she would never stop. Her bladder must have been the size of a lake. Finally, she was done. She wiped.

Instead of fixing herself up with only her right hand, she jerked my arm down so she could use both hands to pull her underwear up and her dress back down. I couldn’t help but brush against her a few times even though I tried not to. It was exhilarating. Then we dribbled some water on our hands and opened the door.

“Now what?” I asked my captor as we moved back toward the living room.

“I’ve been trying to figure that out for years,” she responded.

“Let’s start with the basics,” I suggested. “Food, for example.”

“Are you hungry?” she asked.

“And kill my buzz? No.”

“Then I guess we move on to clothing and shelter.”

“It appears we have both,” I observed.

“Let’s move on to the intangible,” she said. “Like love.”

“Yeah, I tried that once. It wasn’t as great as you’d think it would be, given all the hype. I’ve been avoiding it ever since.”

“What your crusade to get laid?” she asked. “Isn’t that a form of love?”

“I think that depends on who’s doing it and why,” I said after careful, slightly intoxicated consideration. “It could just be lust.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Lust is self-gratification,” I said. “Love is mutual.”

“Let’s go to sleep,” she said. I didn’t object. We went downstairs to June’s room and appropriated her bed. I was afraid June would be pissed, but that fear didn’t last because it didn’t take long for the kissing and fondling to start. It was impossible to completely undress with handcuffs on, so my shirt and her dress and bra were jammed down around our wrists. Despite that minor impediment, we soldiered on until we were both satisfied. Once we were done, we laid on our sides and admired one another. There was a lot of smiling, and even some pillow talk.

“I used to be a heroin addict,” she said after a while. I had been drowsing, but that perked me right up. I understood why she had bad teeth. Fortunately, I had used a condom, the one for emergencies I carry in my wallet and frequently rotate out, unused.

“Okay,” I said slowly. “Why?”

“No one’s ever asked me why before.”

“There must be a reason.”

“There was a gap in my soul. I couldn’t fill it, and I couldn’t cross it. Heroin made it easy to ignore it. At least at first.”

“And then?”

“Then I was just another junkie looking for my next fix. Then detox. And here I am.”

“How did you close the gap?” I asked.

“I didn’t. I just accepted it. Just like I accept the gap between people. Speaking of which…”

Bethany produced the handcuff key from somewhere in the pile of clothes gathered around her wrist and removed the cuffs. I took the opportunity to shrug off the rest of my clothing from my arm.

“The gap reopens,” she said sadly.

“Does it have to?” I asked.