Fifty Shames of Earl Grey: A Parody by Fanny Merkin (reading an ebook .TXT) 📗

he says. “I’m sorry. I care about you. Ponyboy just wants to get into your pants. I have to protect what’s mine.”

“So I’m yours,” I say curtly.

“If you want to be, yes,” he says. “I’ve already told you how I feel about you.”

And I was going to tell you, until you crashed us into the flipping Space Needle. “What happened to make you this way?” I ask, avoiding the L-word for the moment.

He ignores me. We walk into the Starbucks inside Eddie Vedder’s house. Earl orders a Pike Place Roast from the barista, and then looks at me expectantly. “What will you have? Your usual?”

I nod. “Earl Grey. Hot.”

After he pays, we take our drinks with us and sit on the patio overlooking Seattle. The sun is still setting. “Is it this beautiful every day in Seattle? I always thought it was supposed to be cloudy and rainy,” I say.

Earl laughs wickedly. “That’s all part of the city’s anti-tourism campaign,” he says. “The truth is, it never rains in Seattle.”

I sip my Earl Grey tea. It’s hot, but not as hot as Earl Grey. “You never answered my question,” I say. “What happened to you as a child?”

“You want to know why I’m so sadistic. Why I take pleasure in causing pain.”

“Yes.”

“My father was killed in a drunk diving accident when I was an infant. My mother raised me by herself,” he says. “Unfortunately, she was a gambling addict. She practically lived in casinos. In fact, I barely have any memories of her except for a few snippets of her with feathered hair. I remember feeling very lonely.

“When I was four, my mother lost me in a high-stakes poker game to Bill Gates. Mr. Gates brought me to Seattle, but had no interest in being a father to me, this helpless gambler’s son. He gave me sixteen billion dollars and set me up with a foster family.”

“I had no idea how rough you had it,” I say. “Where is your mother now?”

He shakes his head and gazes into the setting sun. “I tried to look her up once, but found out that she died of a gambling overdose.”

“That’s so heartbreaking,” I say.

“Dr. Drew says that when I tie up women and spank them, I’m acting out the anger I feel towards my mother.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know,” he says. “I was lost for years. I was a marshmallow addict and chocoholic; my grades suffered at school. When I was twelve, a classmate introduced me to AD&D.”

“AD&D?”

“Advanced Dungeons and Dragons,” he says. “A role-playing game. By pretending to be someone else, I was able to escape my chaotic life. Once I became a Dungeon Master and started orchestrating our scenes, I found that I liked being the one in control. I wasn’t at the whim of foster parents or Bill Gates.

“Alas, the good times didn’t last forever. As my friends started meeting girls and having sex, they stopped role-playing. My own hormones soon started raging as well. That’s when I discovered BDSM—Bards, Dragons, Sorcery, and Magick. Erotic live-action role playing.”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me all of this upfront,” I say.

“I told you I have fifty shames,” he says. “Role playing is one of them. Things like Nickelback and Olive Garden are others.”

“Why do you need to feel ashamed at all?”

“A rich guy like me isn’t supposed to enjoy these things,” he says. “I’m supposed to drink three-hundred dollar bottles of Pinot Noir and listen to classical music. My pleasures, however, are of the guilty variety. I can’t share them with the other rich people at the country club. Feeling shameful is the only way I can reconcile my desires with the pressure to fit into the box society puts its aristocratic class in.”

“Can’t you just, I don’t know, like the things other rich people like? Would that be so hard?”

Earl shakes his head. “We can’t choose the things we like any more than we can choose who we love.”

“Have you ever had a normal relationship?”

“You’re my first,” he says. “And, hopefully, my last.”

“The way you say that sounds like you’re planning to kill me,” I mutter.

He laughs. “I would never kill you,” he says. “I might pay someone else to, but I would never do it myself.”

“That’s reassuring.”

“It’s true. I can’t hurt you,” he says.

“What if I want you to?”

“Hurt you? Why would you want me to do that?”

“I want you to do your worst. I want to feel the full fury of the sadistic bastard Earl Grey. If you’re asking me to move in with you, if you’re asking me to love you, I need to know how dark things can get.”

He narrows his gray eyes. “You’re sure you want to do this,” he says.

I nod. I realize my index finger is buried in my nostril up to the second knuckle, and remove it before Earl can admonish me.

He shakes his head. “I would say, ‛What am I going to do with you, Anna?’ but I know exactly what I’m going to do.” He grabs me by the wrist and marches me back to his stock car, then drives like a Cullen toward downtown Seattle. I know what the next stop is: the Dorm Room of Doom. We’re finally going to role play.

Chapter Twenty-five

WE’RE BEING FOLLOWED,” Earl says, glancing in the rearview mirror. I look into the passenger-side mirror. There’s a solitary pair of headlights closing in on us.

“How do you know they’re following us?” I ask. We’re on a two-lane highway en route to Seattle, and there’s little room to pass, thanks to the frequent curves. “Could just be some asshole tailgating . . .”

Earl shakes his head. “It’s the same silver PT Cruiser I saw earlier when we were heading up to Eddie Vedder’s place. They kept driving when we pulled into the driveway, so I didn’t think twice about it.”

“You should have told me,” I say.

“And frighten you for no good reason?” he says, stepping on the gas. Now we’re taking the curves