When Nora and I started our final year at City College, we were both still on the student newspaper The Salient. In the two years since our break-up, we talked to each other at times, but we didn’t have a lot of interactions elsewhere. Mostly we saw each other in the office on the third floor, and that was about it.

One day in early October she came up to me and said, “Paul, I’d like to talk to you about something. Let’s go down to the snack bar if that’s okay with you.”

We knew the food there was mediocre at best, so we both got sodas and sat at a table facing each other. In recent years, Nora managed to look dressed up even when she was trying to be casual. On that day, she was wearing a short-sleeved, button-up pink shirt and tight gray trousers.

Nora got right into her topic, “So I talked to you a little about my new career, I suppose.”

She had told me a bit about her meeting with Gilda Wasserman. “You said something about working as a dominatrix, I believe.”

“That’s right, and I started about a month ago.”

I called her out about that, “I thought you were out of that life two years ago.”

She launched into an explanation that sounded like a justification to me. “But this is completely different. It’s professionally run and I don’t have to do, you know, what I used to do. And the money, it’s just amazing.”

I think I knew what she meant, but I asked her anyway. “What is it you used to do?”

“I mean, they can pay to masturbate while I watch, but I don’t have to, ah, deal with their splooge in any way.”

I remembered her own rules when she was a freelance hooker in her freshman year. She wouldn’t do vaginal sex for any price, but oddly enough she would do anal. But I make them pay through the nose, she had said about that, which seemed an amusing way to put it.

Also, she wouldn’t be submissive herself; in other words, she wouldn’t allow clients to spank her. Of course, as her boyfriend, I got to do that to her, and she seemed to like it a lot. And, to be fair, she had done it to me a couple of times.

I decided to fill in her blanks, “So you don’t have to blow them or jerk them. So what is it that you do then?”

“You know what dominatrices do. I usually spank them or paddle them while chiding them for their mostly imaginary misdeeds. The scolding part is probably the most important aspect of it all.”

I hadn’t been her boyfriend in nearly two years, but she was still willing to talk to me about this in great detail. This chick is fascinating as well as being a great lay; I’ll never meet another one quite like her.

“So do you restrain them?”

“It depends; it’s negotiable.”

“And do you have any female clients?”

“Not yet, but it is possible.”

I decided to give her a hard time again. “You know, Nora, it was your interest in money that you regretted the first time around.”

She immediately had to justify herself again. “But it’s only until I graduate in June, and I can save up something by then. It’s hard to get anywhere as an office temp.”

“Or as a fast food girl.” I remembered her stint at Burger King.

“And I needed to get a new car.”

“So, no more green Mustang convertible?” I remembered going for rides with her, like to Bear Mountain or the Jersey Shore.

“No, I’m keeping that one, but I’m putting it into lighter duty. I already bought a two-door 1974 BMW. And, I’ve rented an apartment on the Upper West Side. Nothing special, but it’s all mine.”

“Thus no more Uncle Tony in Maspeth.” Maspeth was an obscure neighborhood in southwest Queens.

“Yes, but the weird thing is, I feel kind of lonely in this new place.” Was that what she had brought me here to discuss?

“Don’t you have some guy going now?”

“No, actually I don’t.” That was news to me.

“So that guy, the one after Mister Triumph Stag, he’s gone too?” The Triumph dude was the one she had abruptly dumped me for back in the fall of 1974. At that time, I didn’t have a car and I still didn’t have one.

“That next one, we broke up over the summer.”

Oh, poor Nora; she never seemed to know exactly what she wanted. I tried joshing with her. “So take me on, I’m still willing.”

“You just met a girl, that Donna Azzato person.” I had met Donna over the Labor Day weekend at a party.  “And I’ve seen her. She’s really nice, and I think she’s a good one for you.”

“So, you could be my side girl.”

Nora didn’t realize I was kidding her. “I’m not a side girl for anybody. Either you are with me or you are not. And frankly, you were gone a long time ago.”

I tried another joke. “So I’ll get rid of Donna for you.”

Surprisingly, she still didn’t get it. “Oh please, that’s ridiculous.” Then she shook a finger at me. “I’ve seen the way you look at me at times. You’d still like to get into my pants, wouldn’t you?”

“And what nice pants they are, indeed.”

“And you’ve had, what, three girlfriends after me and before Donna showed up?”

“Yes, but they all dumped me.”

“That’s not my problem.”

“Nora, I’m not serious; don’t you get that? So is this what you brought me here to talk about, I mean your lack of a boyfriend?”

“No, that’s not actually it. I wanted to talk about my reaction to the dominatrix job.”

If she had been anyone else, I don’t know if I would have cared that much. But I knew Nora would have an interesting take on it and that I wanted to hear.

“Okay, tell me about it. You do this in your apartment now?”

“No, listen to me, Gilda handles all of the arrangements, including most of the financial ones. She, or rather somebody with her, has rented space in a loft building in Chelsea.”

“You mean like a dungeon set-up?”

“Only part of it is like that; the rest of it looks like a club or bar, I’d say.”

“If I may digress a bit, who is this Gilda representing? I mean, who are you actually working for?”

“I don’t need to know that, so I’ve never asked. I get an envelope with cash in it each week, which is what is important to me.”

“It sounds like it could be the Mafia or something like that.”

“I’ve considered that, but I’ll never meet them so I don’t care.”

I hoped Nora never did meet them because that would mean she’d be in some kind of trouble. I fretted a bit that she’d just disappear one day and no one would know what happened to her.

But the same kind of thing could have happened to her during her freelancing days when she was alone with clients. She was very wary of going to a client’s residence, but she was sometimes in their cars. Even her uncle’s house in Maspeth was not that safe because she’d be alone there with men during the day.

“So, you were also going to tell me about your first client which was, what, a month ago?”

“He was this fairly young guy, about thirty I’d guess, and well-dressed. His hang-up – who knows if he made this up or not? – was that he was cheating on his girlfriend and he needed to be punished for that.”

“As if that would make a difference.” I already knew that a lot of such guys would make up a pretext, play a role in fact, so that some stern lady would punish them.

“I just said, I don’t know. Maybe getting a spanking simply added to the frisson of his cheating. So he had worked this out with Gilda; I’d beat him on his bare ass with a tawse.”

“What is a tawse? I’ve never heard of it.”

“It’s this leather belt that was invented in Scotland or England or some such place. It usually is divided on the business end into two or three ‘tongues,’ I’d call them. It delivers quite a good wallop.”

“Sounds like it definitely would.” Nora had smacked me with some implements at times, and I knew that she put some force into her strokes.

“So, on my own initiative, I tied him to a wooden trestle. He didn’t protest, however.”

“So it was just a routine gig, then.”

“That’s the thing, it wasn’t. I felt – well, I felt sorry for him, and that was connected to the fact that I felt lust for him, I mean intense, instantaneous lust.”

“You told me you’d often get horny doing dominance gigs back in the old days.”

“That was different. That came from wielding power over those pathetic twerps; it made me feel like a bitch-goddess to make them squirm. But this guy – I actually wanted him, for some reason. It was even worse because he got a huge erection during the session. It was all I could do not to grab him and throw him down the couch.”

“So why not just do that?”

“Because there is sort of a code against it – well, really I was worried that Gilda would somehow find out.”

“Yeah, her Mafia bosses might have had you whacked.”

“I highly doubt that. More likely I’d be fired. So, anyway, I’ve been getting increasingly ambivalent about doing this job.”

“Then just quit.”

“I can’t, I sort of made a commitment to Gilda that I’d stick it out until I graduated next June.”

“Why are you so concerned about this Gilda person? Is she really some Mob girlfriend?”

“I already told you about the money I need, especially with the major I’ll have when I graduate.” Nora was studying history, just like I was. “There’s been some other manifestations. You want to hear about those?”

“Sure, of course I do.”

“All right, I’ve been having these weird fantasies recently. It may be connected to feelings of guilt, but I think this job must be messing with my head. I wonder too if I’m becoming a sadist.”

“Hey, don’t worry, you’re in good company.” I had done just about every possible sexual act with Nora during those five months I was with her, so I had no hesitation in asking her, “Are these masturbatory fantasies?”

“Yes, they are. One of them is that, back in the old days – I mean 1974 – I got arrested on the City College campus, you know for solicitation. And my fantasy was that they’d collect all the busted whores each day and take them down to Central Booking.”

“Don’t they really do something like that?”

“But in my fantasy, the next morning, the girls are punished and then, if it was one of their first three offenses, they were let go.”

I got the gist of where she was going, but I had to confirm it. “What do you mean by ‘punished?’ ”

“The way I pictured it, I was taken to this room, right there in 100 Centre Street. Then these burly female guards held me down, lowered my jeans, and gave me a severe caning on my bare little heinie.”

“Sounds very British. And you get off on this weird idea?”

“Oh God, yes. When I use that scenario, I’m lying all over the apartment, sticking my fingers into my cunt, plus whatever else is handy, and I keep climaxing until I’m completely drained.”

I remembered hearing Nora once brag about her dildo collection. I also knew that despite her rule about not being submissive for pay, she had a pronounced masochistic side. It’s a long story, but that played a big part in landing her as my girlfriend in the first place.

I offered some opinions. “You’re missing your calling. You should be writing scripts for porno films. This one could be called, ‘Young Hookers in Big Trouble.’ And, frankly, Nora, it sounds like you need to get laid more often.”

“It’s not that easy to go out and just land some guy.”

“The campus is full of horny guys. And it’s a lot easier for a woman than it is for a man.”

“Easy for you. After I broke up with you, you went pussy-crazy for a while.”

I was glad to get the opportunity to talk a little about myself. “That’s not quite true. My attitude was actually, ‘I don’t care if this works or not.’ And surprisingly, it did work pretty well – I mean projecting the air that I was not trying that hard with any particular girl.”

“You must have been right because you picked up two of them on the campus in like, ten or twelve days.”

“With the second one, I just wanted to see if my theory was correct. And damn, it certainly was. This chick was just sitting on a wall on Convent Avenue, reading The Naked Ape of all things, and I just sat next to her and started talking about the book. I assumed she’d think I was a pervert perhaps but, no, she had her own rather unusual take on the book and she quoted some stuff from it.”

“That was Andrea, I met her once. The most notable thing about her was her beautiful ass. That, plus she was a Queens girl like I am.”

“Yes, she was living in Astoria. Actually, the memorable thing for me was, well, on one of our first dates she took me in her car and gave me a handjob. In fact, she masturbated in front of me first. That was at night, parked somewhere in your Maspeth I remember.”

“You have a knack for finding women with their own cars, and yet you don’t own one yourself. Anyway, the first one – Michelle Hanley – she lasted a long time with you.”

“Yet another Queens girl; the Princess of Bayside. It actually occurred to me that I might marry her, or at least I’d consider the possibility.”

“But the way she got rid of you, that was pretty cold. I mean, at least I had some discretion, but she just picked up somebody right in front of you.”

“Did I ever tell you that story?”

“A little of it. It was in a bar, right?”

My tale was a bit complicated, but I knew Nora would like it. It was actually a role play that Michelle and I tried one evening in an East Village bar. We would walk in separately, pretend to be strangers, and I would then try to pick her up. The Pick-up Game; I’ve heard of others who did it.

 Nora said, “But with Michelle, it was a sure thing already, correct?”

“Not really; I’d have to put some effort into convincing her. She could elect to turn me down if she chooses to do that.”

That bar game happened in November 1975, just after Halloween. Michelle did surprise me by wearing a sort of costume. Most of it was in the form of a wig; it was of black hair that covered her real brown hair and it gave her a sort of Bettie Page look.

I got there first, and it was quite crowded by the bar as I ordered a drink for myself. A few minutes later, Michelle came in with her new hairdo. She played the game well, and she pretended not to notice me. But she did notice another man, someone about thirty in a nice suit. It seemed that he spoke to her first, and they hit it off immediately.

I told Nora, “I heard later that he was a stockbroker or something like that on Wall Street. What is it with you ladies, you’re always going for these financial types, like that Triumph Stag guy was one of those?”

“Because, Paul, money is honey and those guys are getting a lot of it with the potential for even more in the future. Haven’t you ever seen that number, ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend?’ ”

“The one with Marilyn Monroe? Yes, I’ve seen it. But I don’t think Monroe was quite my type.”

“Well, sweetie, had you been around back then, I don’t think you’d be her type either.”

“How about Arthur Miller?”

“Then start writing something and be successful at it. You can write; I’ve seen your stuff in the paper.” That was The Salient, which I had joined in 1973 and I invited Nora to join the following year.

I said, “Did you ever see pictures of her as a teenager when she worked at a munitions factory in California? She looked completely different back then. For one thing, her true hair color was reddish-brown.”

I had strayed far from my role-play story, so I got back to it. While Michelle was talking to the man in the power suit, I tried to get her attention. She made gestures shooing me away, although Mister Wall Street never noticed anything amiss.

Nora said, “She was probably getting pussy tingles at that point.”

“Because of him, or because of his money?”

“Does it really make any difference?”

After a while, I simply ordered another drink and sulked for a bit. Perhaps I should have started talking to another woman just to – I hoped – bug Michelle, but I had no experience in picking up women in bars or clubs and I didn’t want to start then.

Eventually, the new lovebirds went out the front door and I followed them. They were out beyond the parked cars and in a few seconds, they got into a northbound taxi. I watched the taillights disappear, but I had no idea where they wound up. Back then, I had a part-time job that Michelle had gotten me at a typesetting firm. The following week I confronted her as she sat at her machine. She was not nasty, but she was surely quite cool as she explained that I was now history.

I said, “Another thing is that she set up Judy with one of his broker friends.” Judy Weinberg was a plump little girl who was Michelle’s best friend. I’m sure that I had deflowered her when I banged her for the first time earlier that year.

During the summer of ’75, we all had a bout of craziness in which the three of us – me, Michelle, and Judy – would indulge in some threesomes, usually at Michelle’s Long Island City apartment.

I said, “After all of that poon including, well, you, it was kind of hard to face a long dry spell.”

“Nobody actually needs to have sex.”

“Yet it felt like being a freshman again. Or high school.”

“I know how you coped with it.” She smirked at me, “Did you go back to using the restrooms in Wagner and Stieglitz?”

That was a sore point with me. “I don’t want to talk about that.”

“All right, I’m sorry. So, do you have any advice for me?”

Actually, I didn’t, but I winged it. “How often do you have to do these sessions?”

“About twice per week.”

“And what did you do back in your freelancing days?”

“With domination? That was maybe a few times a month I think. As for regular tricks that averaged about three times per week.”

I decided to advise her as best I could. “So stick it out. It’s relatively comfortable and safe, the money is good, and as you said, you don’t have to handle, ah, male emissions.” I don’t know why I had to be so clinical about it.

”Yeah, some of those guys would get it all over me. Like on my lap once, or on the back of my skirt or pantyhose if they paid me to fluff them.” Fluffing meant that she would grind her ass, sometimes when bare, into a guy’s crotch until he ejaculated.

She had given me one of those as a freebie on my third date with her and, believe me, she knew how to do it. No man could resist the enthusiastic swiveling and gyrating of her pelvis. One guy bet her that she couldn’t make him come if he kept his trousers up and thus he wouldn’t have to pay her. Needless to say, he was completely wrong and he had to pay the fluffing fee.

“I didn’t know you had a distaste for male fluids.”

“Not if I love the guy. With a stranger, a client, it’s very different.”

“I remember the first time you said that you loved me.” We had been drinking vodka at the house in Maspeth.

“Paul, that was a long time ago.”

I sensed that she was about to wrap up that meeting and I didn’t want her to go just yet. “Come on, let’s go for a drink like we used to back in the day.” Now I find it amusing when I hear young people say “back in the day” when they mean two years earlier.

“You can’t be serious; I’m not going on a date with you.”

“It’s not a date; it’s just two friends talking.”

She had a prim look. “I don’t think you’re a friend. I’d call you an acquaintance at best, perhaps.”

My feelings were hurt; Nora had the ability to get on my nerves, although not as often as she used to. I just wasn’t around her as much.

She made a show of looking at her watch. “Anyway, I have to get back upstairs. One thing, I want you to walk up with me.”

I felt ornery. “No, I feel like staying here and having another soda. Why does the staircase matter?”

Her response surprised me. “Because I know you’re going to sit there and watch my behind as I leave.”

Jesus, what’s gotten into her? “Yeah, I need to store up some memories for my next dry spell, and your sweet little butt is perfect for that.”

“Well, I see then.” She got up and turned around without saying goodbye. She went a few steps and then she shook her gray-clothed covered ass at me. Then she briefly looked back and frowned at me in disapproval. God, she can be so annoying at times. I was tempted to give her the finger, but I restrained myself.

When she was gone, I sat there and tried to pull my thoughts together. I soothed myself by thinking about Donna. I had only known her for a month but she was quite low-key compared to Nora’s roiling emotions. And she was sexy as hell, although she wasn’t the type that would turn heads in the street. That was fine with me; I knew what she was really like.

I thought about her thick dark hair, and then I considered some of her advantages. For one thing, she lived only about two miles from me, not out in Maspeth, the ass-end of Queens. And she had never turned a trick, selling her body for cash. I had never judged Nora for what she had done – I would have to judge myself as well – but Donna seemed like such a nice normal girl compared to her. Nora had so many skeletons in her closet; I should call it her room of bones.

I sighed because I had to go back to the office; I had left my books up there. When I walked in, Nora was in the corner typing away. She didn’t say anything to me; she didn’t even look at me.

What is her fucking problem today? She had become so gratuitously nasty at the end of our meeting. All I had tried to do, it seemed, was be a good guy, or at least that was the way I saw it. I had learned long ago that being too nice around her sometimes backfired.

Being something of an asshole could be better when dealing with her. I found that out on that weird night in that very office when we had a long, strange scene together. At least I got my cherry busted then, so I had to give her credit for that.

I went over to the windows and looked out, just to bug her really. I made up a completely irrelevant question. “What do they call those buildings at 110th and Fifth? Frawley Towers? I forgot.”

She sighed elaborately, then she turned to me. “You’re the city planning type, you should know. And you forgot? That’s bullshit.”

I was still staring in the other direction. “Honey, you really have a bug up your ass about something this afternoon.” I felt like putting my dick up her ass just to see the look on her face, but she probably would charge me her anal fee. Anyway, why did I increase my agita by coming over here?

She had a reason or an excuse. “Look, I’ve got a lot of pressures on me, I just told you about that.”

I wasn’t in the mood to be sympathetic. “You just bought a nearly new BMW. And all you do is whack people on their backsides. I wish I could get work like that.”

“No, you don’t. As a man, most of your clients would probably be gay. Does that interest you?”

It didn’t, but I lied. “I could play the mean headmaster gig.”

“Paul, you only have to survive nine more months of me and this place, I mean on this paper.”   Also, it was her idea to talk to me on that day, but I knew that her mood would improve by tomorrow.  She often felt conflicted about herself and what she had done, and she took it out on people around her

I tried to placate her. “I know, you’re right.” It seemed like a good time to leave, so I collected my books and turned toward the door.

Just as I started to move, I heard her say, “I’ve had one of these new fantasies about you. I assume you want to know how it goes.” I looked back at her and she seemed to be talking to her typewriter.

Goddamn Nora, she’s surprising me again. And she knows she hooked me with that statement.

I replied, “Yes, if I’m in, it then I definitely want to hear it. But we can’t talk in here.” There were about three other staffers in the room, which wasn’t that big.

Nora got up and said, “Come with me; we’ll talk in the hallway.”

The plot was that she was a professor and I was a student who had gone to her office to ask for an incomplete. She had made up some vivid dialogue to go along with it. You really are a cheeky little brat, aren’t you? You have some fucking nerve coming in here and requesting an incomplete. Yes, she seemed to know some aspects of her personality quite well, even in a fantasy.

I asked her, “Was this at City College?”

“No, not this dump. It looked like Princeton, perhaps.”

She had re-created herself as a thirty-something professor with what I would call the dominatrix “professional” look. In other words, she dressed like a professional woman but there were some blatant details included. In that case, her skirt was too short and she flashed her black garter and straps at me. Thus she had said, young man, kindly keep your eyes to yourself. Do not try to peer up under my dress.

“You really said that? It’s so bitchy.”

“Well, I thought it, I didn’t actually say it. Anyway, I learned some of those techniques two years ago. The guys that buy these services just love the humiliation that one slings at them.”

The upshot was that I could get my incomplete if I accepted a bare-ass caning from her. We both got sexually excited by the whole episode. However, she spurned me, and then she masturbated on her desktop after I had left. Of course, she was really on the couch in her apartment while doing that.

I told her, “This is another great porn movie plot. It could be called, ‘Young Master. . . ,’ ah, whatever his name is.”

“D’Amato, like your real last name.”

“Okay, ‘Young Master D’Amato and His Wrathful Professor.’ Except, the audience is going to want to see him getting it on with her, and it’s got to end with a money shot. The most likely act is that he ejaculates onto her garter and stockings.”

“I know how these silly things are supposed to go. So, do you have a date with Donna tonight?”

“No, I don’t.”

She smirked, “Thus you are going to be thinking of me this evening.”

She just had to nudge me one last time. “Nora, that really is none of your business.”

That went over better than I had expected. She said, “So, in any case, we’re on good terms now?”

“All right, whatever you want is fine with me.” I should have known better and not cared one way or the other.

Outside, I briefly looked up at the building, a doomed holdover from Manhattanville College days. A little over two decades earlier, nuns and presumably chaste Catholic girls had walked in the hallways and sat in the rooms of that place. Some wild things had happened in there since then. I knew that was true because Nora and I, sometimes together, sometimes not, had done them.

###### 

In the series “My Summer with Nora,” the first chapter, “In Hamilton Heights,” describes Paul’s first sexual encounter with her. “The Tank Room” contains the incident when she first “fluffed” him into an orgasm. Chapter 3, “Maintenance Spanking,” has the scene where they first declare their love for each other, as well as a description of her at the Burger King job.

100 Centre Street should be familiar to viewers of “Law and Order” and other cop shows. It contains, among other things, courts for New York City and County, plus the police department’s Central Booking facility.