In the morning, I have breakfast with my mother in her sunny Southern California dining room. I say “goodbye” and “love you” and “I’ll be back late,” and she hugs me and says “have fun, even if it’s weird fun,” and I climb into my rental car and head south.

***

In the afternoon, I am scheduled to do a spanking workshop for a largish audience at a BDSM clubhouse in Los Angeles. I haven’t met my model before, but she turns out to be a former porn star, now married to the venue’s owner (a six-and-a-half-foot retired Marine who doesn’t smile at all).

I find out five minutes before we go on that it will be the first time in their marriage of several years that she has been allowed to play with anybody but him. No pressure, right?

We are up on a stage in front of a hundred or so people. She is over my lap and I am smacking her firm little bottom, realizing that I am accustomed to slightly plusher targets and that my hand is starting to feel a little bruised. But the audience seems to be enjoying both the spanking and the speaking: “If you want them to come back for more, you focus your spanks on the sweet spot,” I lecture, fitting the word to the deed. “If you want to show them a really good time, you aim your spanks up from below and keep them good and thuddy so that all their parts get jostled, like this.”

I hear her soft husky voice from somewhere down around my left ankle. She is breathing hard and quivering. “Daddy doesn’t do it like this,” she is murmuring. “I wonder why not?”

Swallowing hard, I finish the demo, sell and sign a few books, then do my best to remove myself from the premises as soon as possible afterward.

I will not be invited back.

***

I drive farther south, as the sun sets.

My son’s girlfriend has invited me to lecture about polyamory and open lifestyles at the college dorm for which she is an RA. It is not lost on me that my son is part of the audience, but I firmly push that awareness out of my mind so I can do my job.

“… How do you make sure you don’t catch a disease?” one of the students asks.

“Well, if you’re in a steady relationship, you can do what’s called ‘fluid-bonding’.” I explain the agreement to use barriers outside the primary relationship and they nod sagely, but I am aware that few of them have reached their twentieth birthday and that trustworthy steady relationships may be several years in their future.

“Or,” I add, “learn to give a good hand job.”

“But how?” one of the girls asks. “We know how to do blow jobs, not hand jobs.”

I feel my eyebrows go up. “This is a state university, my tax dollars at work, and they’re not teaching you how to do hand jobs?!”

Heads are shaken solemnly. Taking a deep breath, I launch into a quick description of anatomy, technique and proper lubrication, adding, “Better yet, get him to masturbate while you watch, and then you’ll know exactly what he likes.” Judging from the wide eyes around me, the idea of side-by-side masturbation is daunting. Nobly I refrain from suggesting that someone who isn’t ready to masturbate in front of a lover is probably not ready for non-monogamy, and go on to finish the lecture.

Afterward, I munch chips and dip with my son. “I hope that wasn’t too embarrassing for you,” I tell him.

His expression is a fascinating mix of fondness, exasperation and the desire to go hide for a week or two. He says with aching sincerity, “Mom, you’ll never be able to embarrass me again after that.”

I try not to view that as a challenge.

***

By the time I drive back to my own mother’s, I am quivering with exhaustion, but she’s waited up to hear about my day. I tell her all about it.

“God, you lead a strange life,” she says.

Reprinted with permission from Chapter 35: DAY of Impervious: Confessions of a Semi-Retired Deviant by Janet W. Hardy (SinCyr Publishing). Available from Amazon and Bookshop.