She is a Dark Mistress, people said, although I have no idea what they mean by that. She has a queue of would-be slaves, they said. She treats them like shit, they said. The best around, they said. A sadistic whore, they said.
I munch on some peanuts and say nothing. My initial embarrassment overcome, I am left only with my own shyness. I try to look out through the blacked out windows but see only my own reflection - a hollow, haunted face, drawn out, looking older than my forty-three years, worn thin by a horrid divorce. Now like some middle-aged junkie, I am here looking for a fix of a fantasy drug that I have yet to try.

The salt from too many nervously eaten peanuts burns my lips. I search around for my drink and I see her looking at me from across the room. My cheeks become red, she laughs and turns back to her friends. She ignores me for much of the evening.

Dear reader, to move back a step, I am at my first BDSM munch, having no real experience to speak of, but full of fantasies that I am too frightened to live out. And, like many newbie subs, I mentally fixate on the most experienced Mistress around in the vainglorious hope that she would accept my list of fetish ideas and fantasies and help me live them out in some pre-determined way of my choosing. How wrong I am.

Once some years earlier, I came home from an office party having had too much to drink and I suggested to my wife that we try some bondage.

“Bondage,” she said. “Being married to you is like being in chains all the time.” She laughed at me and my fantasies retreated back inside my head into some dark corner waiting for some Dark Mistress one day to bring them out again just when I least expected it.

I didn't realize at the time but I enjoyed the humiliation that my wife dealt out. I felt that I deserved it for the perverted thoughts I kept hidden in my head, for the dreams of chains, of leather and of pain. The pain I that I so selfishly desired. I did not realize the other more dangerous and terrible desires that were hidden still deeper within me. As I lay in bed afterwards next to my cruel and snoring wife, I began to realise that I had married the wrong woman.

Back to the munch. I had found the details on the internet, surfing during my lunch-hour at work. The others in my office were frightened to do personal things on the internet fearing that the boss might find out. But I found the idea that our boss could find out to be rather exciting. She was not a beautiful woman but she was strong, pushy and authoritative and I liked that. I sometimes fantasized about her coming to me after work with a printout of the sites that I had visited.

“What the fuck do you think you are doing ?” she would shout at me, “I am not paying you to visit fucking porn sites you pathetic little pervert !”

Sometimes I would stand and stare through the dividing wall into her office, through soundproofed glass panels with a blind on the other side. I would stare at her desk and imagine being forced under the desk to lick her feet while she was working, taking calls, chastising other employees over the phone while I would be under the desk lapping at her feet like a devoted puppy.

Unfortunately, this never happened. My boss never said anything about my internet use and never made me into her puppy. Then one day, when I came across the local munch timetable I was shocked. Can it really be so easy, I thought to myself. I jotted down the details and thought about what to wear.

Something submissive or something normal, I wondered. How do other people dress?

And so in a few seconds, I had gone from marginalised pervert to just one of the guys down your local sm club, trying to fit in, wondering about dress-codes. As it happens there was no dress-code for the munch so I dressed as I normally do when I go out. Well, actually that is not true. I never go out, not before and not after the divorce.

So I wore what I wear to office parties and, in fact, exactly what I wore to that office party before the humiliating non-bondage incident with my ex-wife. A quiet blue shirt, open at the neck, no tie and a pair of smart jeans. I added a metal-studded leather belt that I bought from a local market stall especially for the munch.

"Yer wife will luv that," the stall holder said, winking. "Dead dominant," he added.

Dominant, I thought … I wore it anyway.

And now here I am at my first munch. I arrived too early, only a few people were here and I walked up to the bar to order a gin and tonic. I walked around with the drink in my hand trying to make eye contact with the hardcore people. An old and wrinkled woman came up to me.

“You into sadomaso, son ?” she asked me.

"Emma no, I mean yes," I mumbled.

“Welcome,” she said and took me to meet the others.

Introductions over, time passes and I am now left alone with my thoughts as my reflection looks back at me from the dark windows. Maybe I made a mistake in coming here, I think. This is not from me, no, not for me, chained to a cross in a smelly and disreputable basement club. Not for me.

“Another drink ?” I hear.

A voice, soft like velvet, gentle and caressing. I turn and I see the Dark Mistress smiling at me.

It is late. We are driving across town. I look out of the car window at the rain. The airflow pushes the water across the glass in complex but predetermined patterns. Everything suddenly seems clear. It all begins to make sense. I am the passenger, the submissive. The Dark Mistress smokes a cigarette quietly as she drives us to her home.

We had talked for a long time at the munch. She had turned out to be a great listener and I chatted away enthusiastically, carelessly spilling my inexperience into her lap. I ignored the glances people were throwing my way, the shaking of heads at yet another victim happily wriggled in her sticky web, merrily awaiting a sharp, venomous and slow fate.

Arriving at her place I get out of her car into the rain. She is waiting in the car. I wonder if she has changed her mind. Suddenly something clicks and I walk around the car to open the door for her.

“About time,” she says, “I can see you need to learn some manners.”

“Sorry,” I mumble feebly.

She rings the doorbell and opens the door with her key and pushes the door open. “Enter,” she commands.

“Why did you ring the bell ?” I ask.

She raises one eyebrow at my question. “I do not live alone,” she says, “I share my life with another Femdom.” Shocked by all the terrifying implications of this, I look down at the floor.

“Come forward and meet her,” she says. I enter the main room and there, on a sofa sits my ex-wife. She stands up and stares open-mouthed at me. I too stare. She looks great in a tight leather mini-skirt and high-heeled boots. Slowly she regains her composure.

“Good to see you again,” she says and smiles.

I smile back. “Small world,” I say.