Bad Girls by Brooke Stern Page B

long time.’
    â€˜Uh… okay. I guess.’ He said it with such conviction that I was carried away by his words and moved by his guileless sincerity. I’d heard all this before, of course. Legal theory, the social contract, economics 101 and the like hadn’t gone completely over my head. It was just that I had always sort of regarded myself as above all that. It was called rational actor theory, and I had always held onto my inalienable right to be irrational. My shrink seconded me on this, but he wasn’t seeing me since I hadn’t been able to pay, so he’d probably lost his vote. Pete didn’t seem entirely rational himself, but I liked him.
    â€˜So, you know what you have to do?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜What time should we meet?’
    â€˜How about seven?’
    â€˜Sounds good. Do you want to meet here?’
    â€˜Yeah.’
    â€˜Don’t be late.’
    â€˜Or?’
    â€˜Spanking. No dinner. No sex. It’s that simple.’
    â€˜I’ll be salivating at your bell in no time, Dr Pavlov.’
    â€˜A consistent schedule of reinforcement is essential to conditioning new behavior regardless of species, Nicole.’
    â€˜Woof.’
    We laughed, kissed, and fucked again before he had to leave for work.
    Then the most amazing thing happened: I got a job. Actually, I got three jobs. I went places where you could get a job on the spot. Cheap restaurants, warehouses, retail. I just walked down the street and asked everyplace that was open. It was scary at first, but after a while it became easy. If they gave me an application I filled it out exactly as I thought they would like it filled out. It didn’t hurt that I had worked so many jobs that I’d experience at everything from being an artist’s model to a zookeeper (I liked the way I could claim to be experienced at everything from A to Z, though really I was an assistant to the zookeeper’s assistant, but that’s just another A).
    Anyway, I found three jobs and was scheduled to begin tomorrow at whichever of the three I decided to show up for. All three sucked, but as Pete had said, each would reward me for creating value, even if it was only by serving food, lugging boxes, entering data or working a cash register. I had imagined that I would be ashamed to grovel for work that was so below me, but I created a persona for each job and that persona was better suited for groveling than I was. It was like anthropology. Besides, Pete’s weird spanking remark gave me something else to think about.
    The truth was, I kind of obsessed about it. Had he meant it? I had an easier time believing he would give me eight orgasms than believing he would actually spank me. Do people really do that? I always assumed it was all kind of a joke, like swingers or furries. I’d had some boyfriends who wanted to do it to me, and I let one or two. I liked how much they enjoyed it, but it didn’t really do anything for me other than hurt. I hadn’t really thought about spanking since I’d left St. Anne’s in the eighth grade.
    This was different. It felt sort of sexy, but it also felt degrading. Did he think of me like Pavlov thought of his dogs? Did he think he was always right? Was he some sort of upscale wife-beater who disguised his domestic violence as fetish-based behavior modification? Was he like those damn nuns? Who knew?
    I wouldn’t find out tonight, because his doorman buzzed me in at 6:55 with three job offers in my purse, in case he required proof. I was totally curious about the spanking, but also scared to death of it. I didn’t want to disappoint Pete, and I’m not good with pain.
    Dinner and eight orgasms arrived as promised. He was completely adoring to me, a great conversationalist and a hot lover – repeatedly!
    â€˜How is it that you’re still single?’ I asked as we lay next to each other afterwards.
    He reached over to the bed stand and