Fragile Delicate Things

I don’t have to imagine the wickedwednesday prompt because I lived it. In the mid nineteen 80’s I was stationed in Hawaii. When we were in port life was actually quite boring; there is only so much softball you can play and beer you can drink. I started taking jobs in various places that had dubious reputations.

At different times I worked in a backroom poker club, a brothel that catered to Japanese tourists, and a few different bars on Hotel Street. That area was pretty much what you saw on Miami Vice, only not so pretty. There were gangs, hookers, drugs galore and lots and lots of bar girls. I forget exactly how I got the job at one club, but it was basically to pull beer from the stockroom, change kegs and to smack sailors who got out of line with the girls upside the head with a sawed off pool cue and deposit them on one of the bus benches along the street.

The club I worked at closed once a month and held a private party. I was not allowed in, but I worked the door. I allowed in the folks with the right invitation, and nudged the others to different bars. I knew what was going on inside though. It was one aspect of the Hawaiian leather scene.

I asked the owner about it, she deflected my questions for a long while, but she knew I was very interested in the goings on inside. One night the owner asked me to stay late. The bar closed at two, so staying late meant next to no sleep before the next day on the ship. The owner was Jae and she whispered to me, “It will be worth it.”

Once the drunks were out the door, and the bar girls paid their due the owner locked the door. “You want to be one of us, show me you know what to do.” She laid out several implements on the pool table. I knew what they were of course; a flogger, a cane and a crop. I had never used one on a woman before. I was a farm kid who was barely past virginity and the only instances I had ever used anything remotely like a cane or a crop was to move livestock along.

Soon came out from the back room in a red robe. She dropped it once she stood in front of the pool table. I’d seen her naked before, when one of the other girls was sick she’d often dance on the stage, or keep the customers busy. This was entirely different. Jae said something to her in Korean and she laid herself across the end of the table.

Jae glared at me then the implements. I chose the crop since it was the one I was most used to and I began on Soon’s ass. I was using light taps. When you use them on livestock the entire idea is to not bruise them and to be frank; my upbringing taught me that women were these fragile delicate things; that they were weak and needed to be protected.

Yes I know that’s a very sexist attitude…now anyway… but that’s what this lesson was all about. Jae said a number of things in Korean that I knew were not very complimentary and she grabbed the crop from me and put a full armed swing into it. It was like a gunshot going off in the small bar. I could see Soon’s face in the mirror along the wall.

I saw it in her eyes, in the way her mouth formed around the noise coming from her. Jae shoved the crop back into my hand and scolded, “She is not some flower, treat her with respect.”

It took several moments but I eventually raised my arm with the crop, I remember the moment perfectly. We locked eyes in the mirror the moment before it came down. I saw it in her, she wanted it hard. She was almost encouraging in the look she gave me. I brought it down then watched mark rise.

I’d learned the lesson, in my life, there would be no more thinking of all women as fragile delicate things.

Wicked Wednesday