the harness

She dragged the chest out from under the bed and opened it. This after a real-estate agent kind of tour. The kind that educates you about the taps in the bathroom and points out the finer details of the recycling. We had moved through the study, the linen cupboard, the toilet that was for my use and the one that I should not use. Everything neat and shiny like a homewares magazine. The new season sofa, the glasswear fresh out of a box, the ethnic rugs spread out like the wings of exotic butterflies and pinned to the floor with non-slip tape.

"If you're going to live here then you might as well know about this in advance."

She opened the box and I knew what would be in it. It suddenly made sense of her perpetually conservative clothes, her heightened sense of order. Her fondness for me despite my habit of slouching through life two steps behind her enthusiastic march.

She had put some effort into the collection. She pulled a harness out from amongst the neatly placed, folded, rolled implements and I could smell the craftmanship. That fresh leather tang. Perhaps she treated the leather regularly, the way she waxed the furniature. She held the spidery thing out and I weighed it, all creak and jingle, heavy in my palms. I had a box like this myself. My box was cardboard, an old shoe box. Hers was something of brass and wood. My harness was a length of hardware store quality rope, variously knotted. My gag was a scarf. I reached into the box and ran my fingers over three purpose built gags. One with an imposing rubber ball riveted into the mouth piece, one of red silk with gold embroidery, one a bone-shaped piece of wood, a bit, like the kind you might use whilst riding.

The tour of the house took on a different pace. There were hooks. She showed them to me. One with a potplant balanced in it's ornate claw, one that held nothing but was fixed into a supporting beam Major constructions. Nothing makeshift about any of it. A fortune spent on the art of bondage. This was designer bondage. All of my vague attempts at containment and sensory deprivation suddenly became craft projects. Oh so Tonya Todman. She had somehow turned the art of S & M into a consumer project. I had never seen equipment of this quality. I ran my fingers over rubber and leather and silk. I touched every manner of restraint. I followed behind her neat skirt, her perfectly aligned ribbed stockings, her little court shoes, so perfectly beige and suede. There was paint on my jeans, and my boots were scuffed and when I put my bag down on the carpet she held her breath as if I had tipped a glass of wine on the pale shag pile. It's true. There would be dust and sand and dirt trickling from the creases of my suitcase. I was messing up her place just by stepping inside the house.

"You'll sleep in here," she told me. The room with the solid hook behind the painting of the ballerina. Degas. I liked degas but for some reason the ballerina in the blue tutu made me feel uneasy. A print. I had never slept with a print on the wall before. I had torn photographs from newspapers. I had paintings from my friends and relatives. I painted on stretched canvas and rested them against the walls of my room. I lived with art, but I had never lived with prints framed with expensive mat board. My own paintings would remain in bubble-wrap, languishing in the garage. Dungeon, I thought, languishing in the dungeon. My new doona cover had little coffee coloured flowers on it. The pillows were white. I knew that my hair would leave a dark imprint on the pristine purity of the cotton. I knew that a ghosting of my body would seep out through my oily skin and discolour the sheets. I knew that sooner or later I would bleed without warning and I would be up for a new set of sheets with a frighteningly high thread-count.

We returned to the beginning, the loungeroom. I had placed my book on the arm of the couch, a torn peice of paper marking my place. She lifted the book off her couch and handed it to me.

"You might want to put this by your bed, now you know where it is."

I imagined that sooner or later, she, and her neat, short be-suited husband would ask me to remove that ballerina by degas, would hog-tie me and winch me up the wall. I shuddered at the thought of the expensive harness with it's new-leather smell. I longed for my own makeshift ropes and multi-purpose ties. I longed for my casual sprawl of a house, the noisy D & D playing boys who left their empty pizza boxes to stain the old carpet. I looked around my magazine showpeice of a room and wondered if all yuppy couples had an expensive and imported chest under their beds.

I set a fake smile onto my lips and wandered back into the immaculate loungeroom where my host, my friend, my landlady had set a pot of steaming jasmine tea on an elegant coaster amongst a nest of matching cups.