Chapter Two

There were a few days of bliss, Corey happy-go-lucky excited to be alive, filled with all the fresh vigor of our first days together. We spent hours in bed and I listened to him sing, and he listened to my poetry, giving me constructive criticism. I told him I wanted to go back to college and he thought that was really cool. We made the trek to SF State to get admissions forms and my life started to take some shape—at least for a while in my mind.

I went to anti-war rally meetings on the sly. It wasn’t hard to fit one in after work when Corey thought I was putting in overtime. He was so busy writing songs and practicing his music he paid little attention to me, except those times when he demanded I stay close like I was his puppy on a leash.

It was ten o’clock one night when I finally came home, as late as I’d ever been, funny how time slips between the cracks when your mind is elsewhere. Corey was sitting in his chair smoking a joint, an old leather belt lying across his lap.

“Where’ve you been?”

“At work?” my reply so tentative, I knew he felt the lie.

“Where’ve you been?” he asked again. “The coffeehouse closed two hours ago. Someone had your cunt?”

“No. I was at a rally meeting.”

“Rally,” he repeated, his face was a blank sheet of detachment—not one I’d ever seen—not angry, not annoyed, but certainly not at peace.

I heard little around me but the sound of Corey’s wrath-filled voice, until two members of his band walked into the room from the kitchen, beers in hand.

“You want to help me punish my girlfriend?” Corey asked them.

“Punish how? Going to spank her ass?”

“You can too, Asia loves it, don’t you?”

What could I say? The sight of the belt made me tremble and my cunt turn to a molten liquid heat.

“Tell them you like it, babe,” he said.

“I, uh …” I stared from one to the other.

“I’d be happy to watch,” Reid tried letting me off the hook.

“But you’d like it even better giving her ass a few hot ones from my belt,” Corey assumed.

“Hey, man, anything you want.”