You’re in a musty hotel room with a person you barely know, unbuttoning your shirt in full view of an office building packed with people. Your excitement is evident in the pulse that throbs visibly high up on your elegant neck.
To think it had all started with a Rufus Wainwright song.
Our online flirtation had been going on for a few weeks. You, a New Yorker born and bred; I, a transplant to the Mid-Atlantic. Amid all the gossip about mutual acquaintances and revelations about past relationships, we discussed shared interests: ice fishing, oral sex, thin-crust pizza, cults, the Rufus Wainwright song “Rebel Prince.”
*Where is my master, the Rebel Prince? / They’re breaking everything trying to get to me / In this two-bit hotel / Just to me before this windowsill*
If you hadn’t confided that it was that song that sparked your burgeoning and as-yet largely unexplored interest in kink, we may have never made the reservation at the venerable Roosevelt Hotel. You may have never found yourself standing on the windowsill, your curves illuminated by the afternoon sunlight careening off the Midtown skyscrapers.