I met with Kel Bowles—aka Darknyss—and Greg Kummets—alias GK—at the Finer Things Café Saturday morning, in a corner where hopefully we wouldn’t be overheard. I was still pissed about Friday night, and I really wasn’t in the mood for Teatime with Tops. But I needed to talk to them.
Kel and GK had opened Riddle three years ago. I always thought of Greg as GK, but I could never bring myself to think of Kel as Darknyss. They were both only in their midthirties, but very experienced. They’d taught workshops all over the country, and they did their best to make Riddle an educational forum as well as a play space. They were simultaneously wicked and parental, total badasses and yet such a normal couple. Kel would have been my number one choice if I’d ever decided to get my het on—gorgeous curves, blinding smile, mess of black hair piled in the most interesting configurations on her head. GK had the goddamned softest-looking brown skin. Dark eyes, long lashes. And he looked dashing in leather.
They’d never liked me much, but they loved Gould. If my friends and I really were a boy band, Gould would be the one GK and Kel had posters of on their wall. And they’d know his whole backstory too—that he wasn’t simply the shy one, but also the one who’d survived some rare childhood disease. Gould just had a face like he’d struggled to overcome some unthinkable obstacle in his past. Even though I was pretty sure the only thing he’d ever actually struggled through prior to a year and a half ago was God of War III in Chaos mode.
Kel and GK bought me a tea and asked how my job was going. I forced myself to be polite and asked about their jobs and about the latex conference I’d seen on Fetmatch that they were attending next month. But I couldn’t relax, and finally I blurted the reason I’d asked them here. “Bill was at the party last night.”
Kel scratched her mug with one long, purple nail. “We know.”
“Why?” I needed some help with this one. “Why the hell would he be there?”
GK exchanged a glance with Kel before turning back to me. “Because we reinstated his membership.”
“Are you kidding me?” I would have accepted literally any other explanation for Bill’s presence in Riddle last night, from Spider-Man’ed up the side of the building to apparated. “After what he did?”
Kel could barely look at me. “Dave. It’s been almost a year since the trial. He wants a chance to be part of the community again.”
“You can’t be serious. He killed Hal.”
GK winced. “I know this is hard. It must have been a shock to see him.”
To put it mildly. “Gould’s not allowed to be within a hundred yards of him! Gould could have been arrested just for being at the club last night.”
Kel made what I thought was supposed to be a sympathetic face. “We really didn’t know you four would be there. You haven’t been around in so long.”
“Aren’t you afraid he’ll hurt someone again?” I demanded.
“Bill has made a huge effort over the past few months.” Kel was intensely interested in her mug. “We’re keeping an extra-close eye on him to make sure he plays safely and responsibly.”
“Hal’s death was tragic,” GK said. “But it was an accident.”
“I know. I can’t count how many times I’ve accidentally strangled someone during a sex game.” I looked around and offered an air high-five to several people in the café who were staring at me. “Amiright?”
“David.” Kel’s voice was quiet but firm, and she was finally looking at me. “I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s been like, trying to restore Riddle’s reputation. We lost ten percent of our membership last year, not to mention countless potential members who won’t choose our club because they’ve heard what happened there. And what we went through when the court was trying to determine our liability—”
“How many more members do you think you’ll lose by keeping that fucker around?” I was so furious I was shaking. “And since when is this a numbers game?”
“Listen. We want to try to repair the rift in the community. Reach out to anyone who needs help understanding and processing what happened. And that includes Bill Henson.”
“No.” I stood, jostling the table, and watched GK make a dramatic grab for his coffee mug. “It does not include reaching out to a murderer. What you need to do is send a clear message that Riddle won’t tolerate unsafe players by never letting Bill through your door again.”
“Bill had been in the scene for years without hurting anyone.”
“That you know of.”
“Mistakes do happen in this lifestyle.”
“Quit calling it a mistake! A mistake is when you send your mom a text meant for the guy you’re fucking. Killing someone is a crime.”
The hipster at the next table glanced over at us.
“The point is—” GK lowered his voice “—Bill’s been through a rough time too. Many of Riddle’s members have extended support, and Kel and I have worked with him personally to help him come to terms with the incident. We think allowing Bill back into Riddle might help everyone heal.”
“The incident.” “What happened.” Nobody would come out and call it what it was. Even I had trouble with the word “murder.” I’d go to say it, and there’d be this second where I wondered if it was too intense, too ugly, too unfair to Bill. And then I hated myself for caring.
“Well, get ready to lose four more members.” I snatched up my cup. “Because I won’t play anywhere he’s allowed, and neither will my friends.”
All the stern seventies pornstache daddies in the world couldn’t drag me back into Riddle now.
I trashed my tea in a nearby bin, aware that people were, once again, staring.
I walked out the door.
The story goes like this:
Once upon a time, we were a group of five. Kamen and I knew each other from high school, and were surprised to meet each other again in a leather bar two years after graduation. Miles we found at a munch a few months later, and he knew Gould.
And Gould knew Hal.
Gould and Hal were casually dating at the time. It was a rocky relationship, at least what I witnessed of it. It was hard to imagine anyone having a rocky relationship with Gould, who was disconcertingly innocuous. But Hal and Gould together were explosive. That was mostly Hal’s fault. Hal was Gould’s opposite—tempestuous, reckless, hella fun; you’d slide down the metal rails outside the art museum with him, but you wouldn’t trust him to, like, remember to feed your cat while you were out of town. Yet Gould kept Hal in check, and Hal brought out Gould’s adventurous side, as well as getting under his skin like no one else could. The first time I’d ever heard Gould shout was during a fight with Hal.
Anyway, the five of us started hanging out. We were mostly the same age, and while our BDSM tastes varied, we had a common interest in the theoretical aspects of the lifestyle as well as the practical. We liked workshops and discussions and, in Miles’s case, reading every piece of BDSM literature ever published. Gould and I got along particularly well and had even messed around a little before he and Hal became official. We all joined Riddle the same year and grew, for lack of a better cliché, inseparable.
They were my only close friends at the time. I had plenty of casual friends—I loved socializing, and I could shoot the shit with just about anyone. But close friends, not so much. My parents moved to Canada after I went to college. Just up and left, like they’d been waiting on the edge of their matching leather recliners for me to move out. So Miles, Kamen, Gould, and Hal weren’t just my friends; they were my family. Gould and Hal broke up after a year, and while things were slightly tense between them after that, we’d been lucky in that it hadn’t affected the group dynamic much.
About a year and a half ago, Hal had wanted to play with a new dom who’d been hanging out at Riddle. Bill Henson was tall, scarecrow-ish, reasonably good-looking, and his Fet profile boasted an impressive résumé. Claimed he’d led workshops at leather conferences. That he was experienced with edge play and TPE. But in reality, he was arrogant, and he didn’t seem to think there was anything more to domming than giving orders and getting pissed off if they weren’t obeyed. Hal thought he was hilarious.
“I wanna do a scene with him,” he’d told me that night.
“Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’m serious.”
“He’s the worst!” I steered Hal toward the bar, where Bowser was drinking a Coke. “You want something outside the box? Play with the medicine man.”
Hal hated being told what to do, and later that night, I saw him in Tranquility with Bill. I figured he was doing it mostly to piss me off. So I left him to it and went to the bar for a soda and then outside for a smoke.
Diet Dr. Pepper. I can’t remember what time it was or how long passed between when I saw Hal alive with Bill Henson and when I saw Hal on the gurney. But I do remember enjoying the refreshing taste of regular Dr. Pepper with none of the attendant calories.
I’d been in front of the building when the ambulance pulled up. Two paramedics got out, pressed the buzzer, and were admitted immediately. Morbidly curious, I followed them through the door and up the stairs to Riddle. I kept asking them what was wrong, but they ignored me. When they opened the door to the club, the lights were all on. They strode across the lounge, and I tried to follow, but GK stopped me. “Dave,” he said. “Dave, stay here.”
When I didn’t listen, he put his arms around me and held me in this bizarrely gentle embrace that tightened when I started to struggle. “Stay here,” he said. “Just stay here.”