Chapter Two

In case you hadn't noticed, this memoir has a very specific purpose. My Master, whom I used to call my husband after calling him my employee for several years and then my clandestine lover until we came out of the closet, has commanded that I tell the story of my current fall from grace into my own special version of Hell. He has instructed I go as far back in my history as necessary to explain who I am and why I am in the rather painful predicament you are about to discover. He suspects that there is an audience out there who would find this sort of sordid tale interesting, perhaps even arousing. Thus, I am to meditate upon the likelihood that a certain lusty minority of consumers of erotica will get turned on by my tale of woe, and perhaps even pleasure themselves while imagining the scenes I am ordered to depict as frankly as possible.

Dev knows me so well, far better than I had ever imagined in my narcissistic reverie before he woke me up with his short, sharp shock of discovery. And so he relishes the humiliation of who knows how many unknown strangers imagining the many embarrassing incidents I am ordered to describe in the most intimate detail possible. And if I shortchange my readers by leaving a single mortifying detail undiscussed, well, you can guess what the consequences might be for a backside that is already chronically very sore.

I suppose that outside of my parents' antideluvian disciplinary practices my childhood was very typical of girls like me growing up in my slice of the 1% of 1%. In addition to very demanding private schools straight through, I was carted by my nannies to intensive after school and weekend activities designed to expand my body and mind. Thus, ballet and equitation were a weekly, and eventually daily, part of my life from earliest memory. I was also schooled in the fine art of tennis, both from weekly lessons and sojourns at a fancy kids' tennis camp in Carmel Valley for six weeks every summer. In addition, there were Spanish and Mandarin lessons, since I was being groomed for great things, and Mummy and Daddy deemed the ability to communicate more globally as a non-negotiable prerequisite.

As I recount this rather packed schedule, the fact that I rebelled a bit up to third grade is not exactly surprising to me. But after I drank their Kool-Aid, both my developing mind and body were whipped into remarkable shape for the next decade until I headed off (of course) to Stanford at age eighteen. And given the genetics of extreme good looks passed on to me from both sides, it should not come as a surprise that boys found me sizzling hot from the time I hit puberty. Here, at least, Mummy and Daddy were a good deal more modern. She took me aside when I started high school and said, “Gwen, honey, it's time we had a chat about sex. I'm sure you've figured out that Daddy