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Defiance 23 Chapter 1 Defiance Bodies, Minds, and Marginality It was the last committee meeting. Tomorrow was the big event. We had rented three floors of a large hotel. One floor was going to be devoted to educational classes throughout the weekend. One floor was going to be devoted to vendors of SM and fetish products, and one floor was to be the dungeon. It was being designed and set up by a man who owned an SM club in another city. I had heard very good things about his work. It had taken seven months of almost weekly meetings, several hours each. And the IMs and the emails. God, the emails. Seven months of general snippiness and petty arguments. Seven months of asking Noah to relax and imploring Amy to be nice, and trying very hard not to tell everyone to stop acting like the rise and fall of civilization was entirely wrapped up in this event. The communication was abominable. At each and every meeting lately, I found myself wondering why everyone was so snotty. Was I the only one who noticed? How did they get away with talking to people like this? All of it was driving me nuts: the tension, the drama . . . the body odor. Wearily, I looked around the room. Maggie is cross-eyed, and her hair looks as if she never washes it. Jacob weighs over 350 pounds. Dottie is a six-foot-four woman who weighs nearly as much, and Robert has both of them beat by about a hundred pounds. Liam has a severe overbite, and twenty-seven-year-old Malcolm is five-foot-one. Adam cuts off the sleeves of his T-shirts—so that they’re what we once called “muscle shirts”—and wears the collar of his jacket turned up. Ellis rocks back and forth when he talks. Trey talks with his eyes closed much of the time. Ronny practices tae kwon do moves whenever he’s standing. He smiles a lot at no one in particular. 23 24 People I started to sigh, but instead I laughed midway through. I couldn’t help myself. Sometimes it all seemed surreal. And really, this event was a big deal. It was a four-day, nationally publicized SM gala, the first for the organization in several years. Though the process had been infuriating and thoroughly draining, I had enjoyed it. I was proud of the planning and the troubleshooting and, ultimately, the pulling it off, with this group of volunteers who found this important enough to devote such tremendous time and effort to it. I was sharing a room with Adam, Liam, and Phyllis. Faye was going to spend a night on our floor. On Thursday and Friday, I ran around like a maniac, sleeping for a couple of hours here and there. By dawn on Saturday, every inch of my body was desperate for bed. I dragged myself back to my room. I changed my clothes and slipped into bed beside Adam, whose last shift had ended not long before mine. I sunk into the mattress and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, Liam’s alarm went off. I groaned. From the bed next to ours, Liam rose. Clink-clank, clink-clank. Clink-clank! “Liam, what the hell?” I said. The room was dark. “Sorry,” he replied. “I have to be at the programming desk by six.” Adam sat up in bed beside me. “And the programming desk needs the Tin Man?” he asked. Adam switched on the lamp on his side of the bed. I groaned again, but I glanced in Liam’s direction. He was wearing only black briefs and heavy chains around his wrists and neck. “You wore those to bed??” Adam asked, incredulous. “Yes. She told me not to take them off,” he said. He headed for the bathroom. Clink-clank, clink-clank. “Come on, Liam. Just take them off while you’re getting ready. They’re so loud. We just got back!” I pleaded. “No, I’m not taking them off! I’m honored to be wearing them. I’ll be quiet,” he assured us. I sighed and closed my eyes. A few minutes later, he walked back into the room. Clink-clank. Clink-clank. “Are you kidding me with this?” Adam said. I hurled a pillow at Liam. He stepped aside. Clink-clank. I continued to try to reason with him, though Adam assured me it was futile. Somehow Adam managed to fall...

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