Karen's Place, Northgate

Saturday, July 24, 2004

Service: * * * * *
Food: * * * * *
Ambience: * * * * *
Babe Count: * * * * *

Okay, so I've got some adjustments to make, aside from things sexual.

See, I'm a cat person. And Karen is a dog person. The redeeming factor is that she has a cat, Norman, who makes up for the five Dachshunds waddling around the place. Norman makes up for the five dogs in sheer bulk.

Norman the cat is about the same size as a thirteen-year-old MacDonalds eating choirboy with a stamp collection.

Norman isn't fat. Norman is immense.

So I'm on the couch with Karen. And two of her artworks are on the walls. And they're works I've seen and admired many years ago when they were on the Martiensen student exhibition at Wits. They're large oil paintings, featuring pigs in strange surroundings. One's at a sort of banquet, and the other is in a large room dangling off a circus trapeze. This woman is an awesome artist. Wow stuff.

And there's a steaming scoop of homemade chicken pie on my plate. Along with browned mashed potatoes. She can cook! Brilliantly!

"Is this your seduction dish?" I ask.

"You're going to propose before dessert," she says. "And if you haven't done by then, the dessert will push you over the edge."

We're sitting side by side on the sofa, listening to the ominous sound of the East German heavy metal band, Rammstein. First time I've heard them, and they're not really as hard as their name would seem to imply. Violins and weird choral stuff. Fairly disturbing, but pleasant. It's amazing to me that I've stayed away from most heavy metal just cos of the names of the bands. Well, not JUST cos of the names. A lot of metal just sucks. But in this case, it's kinda okay.

"Can I borrow this?" I ask, flipping through the pages of a book she took out of her cupboard.

"I insist," she says. "But you've got to promise to bring it back to me."

"You have my word," I say. The book is a practical manual, written by a professional dominatirx who switched to being submissive. It's called EROTIC SURRENDER: The Sensual Joys of Female Submission, by Claudia Varrin. (If you have any thoughts as to whether or not this mode of sexuality is in any way for you, buy this book. At the very least, it'll blow your mind. The link here is to Amazon.com, and I make a tiny commission on it if you buy it from here. Yup. I'll be rich, with everyone flocking to explore this side of their sexuality.)

The dessert almost pushes me over the edge. But Liz says, "Nah nah nah! No proposing! Cos if you do, I'll refuse!" Okay. Off the hook. The dessert is a homemade tiramisu. Oh man. This woman's just concentrated babeage.

And she loves the fact that I went trawling the junk shops for paraphernalia for me to use in making love with her. I've found a lovely, thick, soft rope, which I'm kinda working out how best to employ. The real trick is how to attach it to other bits of rope for maximum... uh... pleasure. She fondles a different piece of rope. It's about two metres long, and is ultra soft. Feels like it could be silk. And it's thick enough so that it won't dig into her wrists and hurt her.

She's not so sure about the plastic cable ties I got from the hardware store. "Whenever you use things like this," she says, "you must make sure you've got a knife handy. Always plan for emergencies."

Safety first, basically. I pull out my Swiss Army knife.

We go to the bedroom and shoo the dogs out. We close the door.