Hard Out There for a Gimp
Dec. 9th, 2015 01:32 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jack_babalonYeah, I was a gimp once. Didn't have much else to do at night back then, minimum charm kept the honey's away and a dearth of cash removed the drug booze oblivion option. My early twenties found me isolated. I couldn't breach a biological alienation that kept me from bonding with the other walking dead that toiled down at the Cube Farm. Yet when I clocked out from my Nein to Jive hustle, immediately found myself jonseing some form of human contact that eluded me otherwise. Such was life before the Internet. Luckily an old navy buddy of mine ran a night club of the whips and chains variety and it just so happened to be that he had an opening for a Club Gimp.
For a few drink tickets, my name on the guest list, and a few bucks to score a dime my job was to sit there in a rubber suit along with a black mask you needed zippers to see or speak out of and accept whatever madness came my way.
In this suit I would assume a sloppy Buddha lotus position on top of a speaker that pumped out industrial death rock. It was up to the amusement of the passersby that I remained flogged, cattle-prodded, clamped, rubbed-on, licked, smacked, and used as an ashtray. All of which I took in stride, the drinks numbed the pain of flesh, the drugs the wounds of spirit. The rest was all humiliation and the mask took care of that. The mask muffled the screams or blinded the eyes when the damage got too much. After awhile the crowd would feed me drinks, offer me bumps of varying powders, pop pills down my throat, and occasionally use my lap as a pillow when crashing from their own trips.
It didn't matter. They saw a gimp, but me, I felt like an astronaut floating in an alien world there in my black rubber suit all shiny under the alien strobe lights. When I came down I couldn't lay on my back because of the welts and I was smuggling urine into work in case of random piss tests and the drugs were starting to make me trip out of blue and it was getting to be that I felt naked without my rubber suit so I started wearing it to work. At first under my clothes, so I could vibe like I was some kind of Clark Kent. Then come Casual Friday I would walk in with the full outfit all squeaky and shiny - mask included.
Still it got me out of the house and kept the pistol off the lips, so I kept on keeping on. Every night I went home with a different woman's scar but never her number and it made me feel so god damn romantic. Baudelaire me I figured and tried to write the story the damage told or tell the myths those precious phone numbers might have revealed. When I wrote I found that I didn't feel lonely anymore. After awhile I found I enjoyed writing about the damage more than I did taking it.
My visits to the club dwindled. My patience for the madness dwindled as the drama it ensued grew ever more clear in my reflections. Soon I stopped going all together except for the occasional nostalgia fix and to delight in the pretty Nosferitas. There I always saw the new club gimps, sitting stoic, taking the hurt and offering up the necessary canvas. Some better than others, but secretly all I wonder is if they were better than me. Not now, then. When it counted.
Yep, the gimp suit still hangs in my closet and the stories it could tell a black light I'm sure. Some nights I miss it. Being the club gimp, the theatre gimp, even the insurance gimp. But gimpings a young soul's game and the soft skin wouldn't fare so well under a weekend's lashing. Still, occasionally, late at night when I'm several pages deep into this life unreadable... I'll pause to light a cigarette or a pipe and only then realize that I've been wearing the old gimp mask all along.
That's the beauty of masks though I suppose, no matter the years or weight gained, you never truly can outgrow them.
For a few drink tickets, my name on the guest list, and a few bucks to score a dime my job was to sit there in a rubber suit along with a black mask you needed zippers to see or speak out of and accept whatever madness came my way.
In this suit I would assume a sloppy Buddha lotus position on top of a speaker that pumped out industrial death rock. It was up to the amusement of the passersby that I remained flogged, cattle-prodded, clamped, rubbed-on, licked, smacked, and used as an ashtray. All of which I took in stride, the drinks numbed the pain of flesh, the drugs the wounds of spirit. The rest was all humiliation and the mask took care of that. The mask muffled the screams or blinded the eyes when the damage got too much. After awhile the crowd would feed me drinks, offer me bumps of varying powders, pop pills down my throat, and occasionally use my lap as a pillow when crashing from their own trips.
It didn't matter. They saw a gimp, but me, I felt like an astronaut floating in an alien world there in my black rubber suit all shiny under the alien strobe lights. When I came down I couldn't lay on my back because of the welts and I was smuggling urine into work in case of random piss tests and the drugs were starting to make me trip out of blue and it was getting to be that I felt naked without my rubber suit so I started wearing it to work. At first under my clothes, so I could vibe like I was some kind of Clark Kent. Then come Casual Friday I would walk in with the full outfit all squeaky and shiny - mask included.
Still it got me out of the house and kept the pistol off the lips, so I kept on keeping on. Every night I went home with a different woman's scar but never her number and it made me feel so god damn romantic. Baudelaire me I figured and tried to write the story the damage told or tell the myths those precious phone numbers might have revealed. When I wrote I found that I didn't feel lonely anymore. After awhile I found I enjoyed writing about the damage more than I did taking it.
My visits to the club dwindled. My patience for the madness dwindled as the drama it ensued grew ever more clear in my reflections. Soon I stopped going all together except for the occasional nostalgia fix and to delight in the pretty Nosferitas. There I always saw the new club gimps, sitting stoic, taking the hurt and offering up the necessary canvas. Some better than others, but secretly all I wonder is if they were better than me. Not now, then. When it counted.
Yep, the gimp suit still hangs in my closet and the stories it could tell a black light I'm sure. Some nights I miss it. Being the club gimp, the theatre gimp, even the insurance gimp. But gimpings a young soul's game and the soft skin wouldn't fare so well under a weekend's lashing. Still, occasionally, late at night when I'm several pages deep into this life unreadable... I'll pause to light a cigarette or a pipe and only then realize that I've been wearing the old gimp mask all along.
That's the beauty of masks though I suppose, no matter the years or weight gained, you never truly can outgrow them.