The day after the pub quiz Gareth had a long, good lie-in. He didn’t have any pressing matters to get on with, and his next shift at the bar wasn’t until the evening. He had dreamt in the night that he was in a cemetery. He was naked and tied to an old oak tree. The drunks in the cemetery were taking no notice of him; they did business as usual, staggering around the place and vomiting. A group of women came from nowhere and approached Gareth. They pointed and laughed at him, and then one of the group began hitting him with a stiletto-heeled shoe. She looked extremely fierce.

‘That’ll teach you for messing with me, you fucking wanker!’ she shouted

‘I think wanker’s the operative word!’ another woman said, mockingly

‘Let’s do him!’ whispered a third. With that, they untied him. A fourth member of the group appeared. She asked Gareth to bugger her. He didn’t argue. She moaned with pleasure when his prick penetrated her arse.

‘I think he’s doing well!’ the woman with the stiletto heel said, excitedly.

After Gareth finished what he had been instructed to do, he tried to make his way off. The woman who he had just buggered stopped him. ‘Where are you going?’ she asked, ‘You’ve passed the test. From now on, you’re going to be our slave.’

Gareth woke up and immediately began masturbating. He took barely a minute to come. He had what was possibly one of the most intense orgasms of his life.

On re-waking, he pondered the dream he had had. What did it all mean? He had obviously been severely aroused by it. Perhaps he had some inner desire to be dominated? And why had he been called a wanker? Then he remembered last Saturday night and begun to realise that could be something to do with it. He was obviously better off being dominated rather than doing the dominating. This was to make him reconsider his approach to getting girls in clubs, as well as his chat-up lines.

 

At 5.30pm on Tuesday, Chris got out of work. He walked to the Café Espresso, where Robert was going to be. The streets were quiet, as they generally were at the close of trading, though were a few groups (and the occasional individual) making their way to the pubs, bars and restaurants. Chris had been to the Café Espresso several times before. It was his favourite after-work haunt. Usually, he went on his own. The coffee was good value for money and the atmosphere was welcoming. A group could be more fun but it was never boring being in there.

On arriving at the café, he couldn’t see any sign of Robert. He ordered a cappuccino and looked for somewhere to sit. A few of the regulars were about. He considered having a chat with them but wanted to keep the table space free for Robert. Just when he thought he’d decided where to sit, someone tapped him on the shoulder. He looked round, surprised. It was Robert.

‘Hello! Long time no see’

‘Robert! What a surprise! Good of you to make it.’

They sat down at one of the smaller tables, which were suitable for two people. Robert was dressed in his usual kind of outfit: a black Motorhead t-shirt, leather jacket over the t-shirt, and ripped jeans. He took his jacket off and draped it over the chair. He then went off to get a coffee. While Robert was at the bar, Chris checked the messages on his mobile phone. He had one message, but it was just some rubbish about him having ‘won’ a trip to Euro Disney. He deleted the message. Robert came back with a café latte and took his place at the table again.

‘I haven’t seen you in ages!’

‘Likewise, Rob. What you been up to all these years?’

They had last met in 1998. Then, Robert had just retired from the rock music scene. That was a miserable time in his life; he had really been going downhill, unable to cure himself of his cocaine habit and going through a divorce with Margaret, who had been his partner for eight years. She had started to gently suggest that he might want to seek help, as she was doing for her addiction to alcohol, but gradually became abusive. She began kicking him and screaming at him every time she found cocaine in the house. It culminated in Robert being forced to sleep on the streets. He was deeply ashamed of what was happening and he wanted to please her but no matter what he did, he just couldn’t get off cocaine. He would start being abusive to her about her alcohol habit, which compounded his shame further. In the end, he decided it just simply wasn’t working out. He was given a council flat in the end. With help from like-minded people he bore the withdrawal symptoms and officially came clean in 2000, though he still had the odd cravings for it. Most of all, he missed Margaret. He had tried to get in contact with her but she just didn’t want to have anything to do with him. The last time he had tried to phone her, a male voice answered. He simply made up the excuse that he had got a wrong number. He cried himself to sleep that night.

‘Right now, I’m not doing that much, but I finally got enough money to get out of that shithole, thank fuck. There were always gangs roaming about after dark. It made being mugged seem like a normal thing. I’m just paying a visit to my old friends at the moment. Might come back to live here soon; I’m really beginning to miss this place.’

‘What about your music? Are you keeping that up?’

‘Well, I’ve totally drifted off from rock music, and I was basically too fucked-up to do much for a while anyway. I guess I always put the odd CD on from time to time, bands around in our day, stuff like that. I don’t understand this nu-metal nonsense. It just seems like noise to me. I might do the odd rock or metal thing here and there, as I know how to do it, maybe a night or two down the local. But to be honest I’d rather listen to classical these days.’

‘What exactly made you retire though?’

‘Hmmm…. I guess I got stars in my eyes and it went to my head. I was starting to believe I was invincible because I was this kind of deity who everyone in the scene looked up to. I couldn’t see that I was actually declining. All the money I got from doing it just seemed to go towards cocaine and prostitutes. Yes, prostitutes. All while I was married, I was fucking whores and I didn’t even notice it. I pretty soon got a kick up the arse from Margaret and that’s what made me stop. If I just hadn’t become so corrupt I’d probably have carried on a bit longer, and I’d still be happily married to Margaret. But I guess shit happens.’ he started crying, but stopped himself on account that he was in a public place.

‘I’m really sorry to hear that.’

‘Don’t worry about it, mate, it’s not your fault I became a fuck-up. But I keep on thinking about what might have been, and that really gets to me. It wasn’t only Margaret who was angry at me, everyone seemed to hate me around the time that I retired. The magazines were giving me a real bad rap, the ‘fans’ were sending me hate mail, my parents didn’t even want to speak to me, and I totally fell out with Frank.’

‘Frank?’

‘Frank was my manager. I met him on a tour in the States, back when we started out. He had a very good business brain, and knew all about how to run things successfully. Apparently, he’d been one of the chief directors for some kind of oil company in the past. He seemed a very kind man but I learnt that he used to be quite selfish. He had a holiday home in Hawaii. People over there would complain that he was taking houses people needed and he never even used the holiday home but he just didn’t care. He maintained that the holiday home was special to him. In the end, he rented it out though. There was no evidence that the money was going to anybody except himself, though I suppose he did pool some of it back into his oil business…’

‘But what made you fall out with him exactly?’ Chris interrupted.

‘Well, when he saw how decadent I was becoming, he just kind of flipped. I got sacked from his business and was told personally by him that I was a disgrace and not the kind of example he wanted to see. In the end, we ended up doing all the work. I sent a letter to him a couple of years ago, though, and he did actually reply. Said he learnt a lot from me. That he’d learnt to care about other people. He was sorry about sacking me, but he’d just been so ashamed of my downfall that he decided it was just the best course of action. And he would consider handing the business over to me, as he was so impressed at the way I’d handled my problems. He reckoned the willpower that I had summoned would be absolutely ideal in running a big business such as the one he had. To be honest, I get a bit sceptical about business but this guy’s opinion is an exception to the rule. Avazio is something different from the usual exploitative palaver. So I guess, as they say, there’s always light at the end of the tunnel.’

‘Rob, I don’t know what to say, but that’s astounding.’

‘It sure is’

After a good deal of chatting, they decided to up sticks and leave. They said goodbye to each other and went their separate ways.

A month later, Robert moved into the area. He missed Margaret, but at least he could see his old mates again and he was, on the whole, satisfied with his new life. He started dating a woman called Clare and moved in with her. They were to enjoy many years of happiness.

Frank found that once he started to care about other people and become less entwined in philosophies he had a much better life. In the end, he handed control of his business over to Robert, who expanded it across the globe.

Gareth revised his attitude to pulling (or, rather trying to): this basically meant getting bored of it. He eventually started dating Mary. He didn’t change his mind about being a celebrity, but he did start paying attention to other things. Eventually he got bored with trying to be a celebrity but carried on in celebrity journalism from another perspective: he was now thinking about how it tied in with everything else.

Chris carried on being Chris; he found new friendships that were highly satisfying and moved in with the woman he was dating.

 

And from then on, things were more or less blissful!

 
THE END

 

    * Although the author decided to study business at college, he disagrees with the philosophy of egoism