When I tell people I work from home, their eyes go screw ball, straight to the back of their head, while making this guttural half-sigh, half-groan - “Oh, GOD, if only I could work from home!”

Sixteen months I’ve been working from home. By now, it’s just as tedious as commuting to that cubicle, confronting that one office chatter-mouth who “can’t wait until Friday, huh?”, slinging cup after k-cup of office java, while spending 65% of the day dealing with forms, reports, and miscellaneous bullshit wondering why you decided to not become an astronomer, a chef, or a rock star’s muse after all. Wait - where did I go just right then?

Don’t get me wrong, working from home has got mad perks. My dry-cleaning bill, for example, has dropped by 80%, and I haven’t had to purchase any horrible pant suits in two years, freeing up scratch for party, party, party dresses and inappropriately high heels. I don’t spend $12 on lunches every day, I don’t swear murderous oaths on too packed trains, and all together, I have a much more zen-like approach to life. Except when I don’t.

The first thing to go when you work from home is your ability to make small talk. It simply disappears and when you are forced engage in this witless interaction, the only thought streaming through your mind is “Just get to the fucking point already.”Patience flees next; no surprise, it’s intrinsically linked to making small talk. When you are used to everything operating on your own terms, it’s nothing short of a bitch when you find yourself waiting on someone or something else, of which you have no control.

Social graces, as a whole, begin to evade you. Belching in public becomes de rigeur, as well as swearing around children (didn’t even see them there!), becoming uncessecarily demanding, caustic, or, conversely, cripplingly shy, paranoid, and awkward - the shrinking violet that you never knew your 6′1″-in-heels frame could become.

Without daily personal interaction, beyond fetching morning coffee, perspective is the next virtue to disappear into the the ether. Since there’s no one to gauge the (in)appropriateness of your reaction or your behavior, the next best thing is TV: Gossip Girls, Desperate Housewives, Mad Men, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Entourage - they become the barometer of what you consider civil society. That is not a good barometer of civil society.

“I just don’t know HOW I’d stay motivated!” is the next thing everyone says. Everyone says it. Everyone. That’s an easy one to tackle; guilt is a powerful motivator. Getting your ass out of bed and in front of the pulsating laptop is not the problem. Shutting off the damned thing and walking the hell away from it before 8 or 9 at night is. But hold the phones! Even if you manage pull the flesh, now seared to the white hot keyboard and get a life, God has given us the blackberry! Now you can keep your neuroses on pins and needles, compulsively checking and rechecking your work email whether at drinks with friends or during cunnilingus with lovers. I’m only sort of joking.

Fortunately, you can drink on the job. Unfortunately, you can drink on the job. Damn you, catch-22!

I just felt like bitching. I actually love working from home and thank God I’m not sitting in some God-forsaken, artificially lit corporate shit show…at least for the mean time [grimacey-face emoticon GOES HERE].

My Date with a Dominatrix, p1

After twenty minutes or so of banal small talk, Mame’s neighbor and friend knocked on the door. I won’t lie - little shocks me and generally speaking, my air of unimpressed aloofness is rarely contrived - but I was damn glad Violet showed up. She was slim, blonde, with an easy smile and vibe of tolerant affection that said she’d indulged Slave and Mame’s fantasies before. We drank our wine in companionable silence.

Three glasses later, conversation was infinitely easier, the tension has slackened, and even Slave was warming up to us. We discussed Italy, where he has a second home, boy trouble, and the wines and villages of Bordeaux. Just before dinner was served, I excused myself to the bathroom to wash my hands. I turned the lock, and let out a long breath I hadn’t realized I was holding. ‘This is really happening,’ I thought. ‘There’s really a middle aged man wearing women’s lingerie with a remote-controlled butt-plug stuck up his ass and my friend from middle school is holding the remote. That’s really happening out there.’

What was really happening in here was that an eighteen inch black rubber cock resting limp in the sink was making it very difficult to wash my hands. I decided that whatever I might’ve picked up from the subway commute couldn’t possibly compete with what I would definitely catch by trying to navigate around that rubber dildo. I gave up and returned to the table.

The first course was a simple green salad which was served by Slave on his knees after passing inspection by Mame. She reprimanded him for sloppy presentation and demanded he replate it. Though she was firm, Mame was kind and affectionate towards Slave, the way an indulgent mother might gently scold her toddler. She threw down a pillow so Slave could be more comfortable kneeling to the left of her, eating small forkfuls of green leaves Mame presented at her leisure. Mame was a benevolent dominatrix: a kind of June Cleaver of the BDSM world.

After our salad plates were cleared, Mame demanded Slave fetch his rope. In the time it took to refill our wine glasses, Mame had rigged slave in a complicated web of black rope threaded through his ass cheeks, ensnaring his balls, gripping his chest and upper arms, up through the metal ring of his dog collar, and ending in a thick lead which Mame used to drag him around the kitchen. Quite simply, I was floored. And his ceviche was to die for.

With all the wine, the claustrophobic apartment, the middle aged man with the butt plug in his ass kneeling not three feet away from me, I was beginning to feel light headed. Violet pulled out a pack of smokes and I asked to bum one, not a little too abruptly. ‘Would you guys mind heading downstairs?’ I was already strapping on my flats, halfway out the door. ‘When you get back, we have a little dessert for you two and I have a surprise for Slave if you care to watch…”

to be continued….