Fetish

 My fetish site started as a joke.

My daughter and I were discussing ways to make money. Laughingly, over our regular visit and cup of tea at her place, we started discussing crazy ways to supplement the spotty crop revenues. We are part of a family farm and it’s been a rough few years. No rain and lots of wind, crops struggling to break through a dry, crusted earth. Both of our husbands leave the house each day, mouths tight with grimaces, returning in soot-covered dust and looks of resignation. It sucks.

She asked me what I was good at, and I told her: “Yelling at men.” I laughed heartily and she joined in.

Then I got serious, “No. Really, Anna, I have a lot of anger bottled up. Mostly against men.”

“You do.” Her eyes bore into mine, “You may have something there.” And the seed was sown. A new crop was about to emerge.

It took some time. We spent our visits surfing the internet for fetish sites that offered verbal belittling. There were several, but I was confident I could compete.; I’d had years of practice, starting as a youngster watching my mother tear a strip off my father. Often, my young mind thought it undeserved, but it was colorful and entertaining, nonetheless.

So, I came by it honestly; “Learned Behavior,” right? I started small, lashing out verbally at boyfriends who pissed me off in high school, visualizing my mother’s anger, her rigid stance, her quick comebacks. I worked on it, getting the enunciation of each expletive perfectly right, homing in on each boy’s weakness and highlighting it in loud, colorful language. Belittling. I was good at it and over the years, I got better.

By the time I reached my mid-twenties, I was an expert and took the skill with me into my first marriage (and the second), using it whenever the need arose. It did the trick and I usually ended up getting my own way, or a simpering apology, at least. This was a specialized skill set. I had it and I could make money from it.

Anna created my website, did my marketing, handled the tech end, or when she couldn’t, tapped into our small, carefully extorted start-up fund and contracted outside help. Anonymity was paramount and we found an expert to help us. Considering this was our first venture, we had a surprisingly good set-up; anonymous verbal belittling by a Queen Bitch (that was my web name) who could punish any man (or woman, but that traffic was much slower) for a competitive, per-minute fee.

Our husbands didn’t know about it. They were both cut from the same cloth, small-town, Baptist upbringing. The shit would hit the fan. Anna and I handled all the administrative and clerical work on the farm and Al and Warren were tech illiterates, which made hiding our enterprise easy. We made sure the funds were siphoned slowly, discreetly. A separate bank account at a branch in the city; a small amount of cash sidled into each of our purchases.

The seed was planted because we needed the money, but truthfully, it was fun. I got to vent years of anger against men - boyfriends who took advantage, a father who thought his word was final and more important than his wife or daughter’s, bosses who abused their power for sexual attention, even mechanics who lied and overcharged. The list was endless, and I tapped into it every time I “serviced” a client.

Things were going smoothly. Anna was supplementing her grocery budget, her clothing budget, even started getting her nails done at a salon. The quality of her shoes improved, she got better haircuts, nicer cosmetics; nothing a red-necked husband would notice, but I did, and so did she. I was the same way; happy I could ease our financial burdens and enjoy some of the finer things. Carefully.

Then it got complicated: I started to take my work home with me.

Like I said earlier, the “service” I offered was anonymous. Clients were given a phone number, they phoned in, got me on a burner phone I turned on whenever Al was out of the house. They would introduce themselves, confess a few sins, or if they preferred, did not, and my punishment would commence. I didn’t care who they were, or what they were telling me; I was in it for the money. The satisfaction I got telling them off was just a bonus. But as I started to get increasingly more repeat clients, clients who began to honestly confide in me, my belittling, and my anger, became more genuine. The years of rage I had contained and grown into a skill were inside of me for a reason, and my clients’ confessions were pushing my past and some bad feelings to the surface. They were breaking through a thick crust formed through years of hardening, forming cracks, stems of outrage emerging.

XXLBoss, one of my first clients, became a regular. Several sessions later he began to relax, began to trust me, and told me his real name. Harley Winston Barnes was the owner of a medium-sized packaging company. He had a staff of over two hundred and they all knew he was the boss. he made sure of it. Initially, his requests to me were general; three minutes of standard “Woman Berating Man.” I would tap into one of many template speeches I had prepared. But as Harley became a regular, he began to relax, let his guard down, trust. He began to confess his indiscretions in detail, and I became hooked. I started to customize my templates just for Harley. It was easy and quick, I didn’t need to stop and think to compose, the creative blasts streamed out. I was lashing out at Harley and years of suppression and male dominance. He was my fertilizer to an angry crop waiting silently under the surface for its chance to spring.

Harley’s sins started at his office. He has been preying on assistants and subordinates for years, but now, a clerk in particular, a young woman in her twenties who joined as part of a work experience program has become his victim. He has been pressuring her, engaging often in small talk, making suggestions of having drinks and getting some personal time outside of the office, of becoming good friends. He knows she’s intimidated; knows she’s trying to get through college and succeed. He knows this and he’s using his power to get what he wants. My apathy and desire for money and nothing else is gone. I don’t like Harley, and his confessions bring back memories. Every woman has them, those moments where she feels pressured into doing something she doesn’t want, but seems necessary to get ahead, to keep someone pleased, to keep the peace. My verbal attacks on Harley are getting vicious, and he likes it. And so, do I.

What Harley doesn’t know, like I said, is that I’m taking my work home with me. When I lay in bed at night, I think about him. I lay in the dark, eyes wide open, stare into the blackness and re-examine his confessions. His selfishness, his tyranny, his reign of overbearing terror isn’t being punished enough. He is all the men who have pushed me. He is all the wrong things I have done for what I thought were the right reasons. I hate him.

I picture Harley sidling up to this young woman’s desk, placing his hands on each corner and facing her, leaning in so she has no escape. He asks her how her job is going, asks if she would like to get together after work to have a drink and discuss it. I remember a boss, doing something similar, leaning in toward me and telling me my hair was much prettier down, not in a bun the way I had recently taken to wearing it. I remember him cornering me in the elevator, telling me I smelled nice, his body blocking my escape until the “ding” of the elevator’s arrival on the main floor rescued me. I hated him. And I hate Harley, too.

I need to do something about the crop of anger that has grown inside of me. I have seeds that have lay dormant for years, but Harley and all the others like him have fertilized them, allowing the seedlings to bust through the surface, to erupt in a corrupt blossom that will be their downfall. I will retaliate. Too young and scared then, older, and angry now. They will pay.

And so that small seedling has multiplied, erupted, and the crop has mutated. Now, I have a new venture. This is a venture of which Anna will be no part: Harley must truly be punished. This is a start, and this is for all the Harley’s out there. Men so often underestimate the rage of a woman. I am smart, Harley is not. No one knows who I am. No one can link Harley and I together. When he disappears or is found dead in a ditch somewhere, there will be many suspects because of his nature. But I will not be one of them.

It takes several sessions, but I get enough information out of Harley to find out where he lives, where he plays, where he does his morning jog - a secluded recreation area outside of town, several spider-legged, dense, wooded trails. No cell service, no CCTV, few passersby. I will get him.

I sleep better at night, exhausted by planning over my solitary cups of tea I drink in bed as I fall into slumber. This is the first time in years I sleep through the night, so I know this seed of an idea, cultivated slowly and carefully, is the answer to ridding me of my anger. This is my new revenue crop. A new business, Taking Care of Old Business, and my clients, those who I feel are genuine sinners, will be punished.

I wait for him. I have been sitting, crouched along one of the many stem-strewn dirt trails he has mentioned in our sessions. I was here yesterday, too, and the day before, but he didn’t cross my path. Now, though, I hear something, the steady crunch of shoes hitting a gritty path. My cold hands grasp the ax handle tightly, ready. If it is him, I will pounce, jumping out of the brush in front of him and thrash him repeatedly, mowed remains left to cover the earth, seep in, and grow into something new, fresh, and pure, in the Spring. It will be brutal; I will get as much anger out as I can, purging these seeds that have rotted inside of me. They will burst through my flesh into the ax handle, and their energy will sling down upon him with fury.

Taking care of Harley will ease my anger, and I will continue until all the Harleys in the world are gone. I will do this again, and again, with every client I can track, until the rage has left me, and no seedlings remain.