Bucket List of an Idiot Read online

  One day not long after this photo was taken Bridget fell off a stool in the lounge and hurt her arm, which caused her to cry uncontrollably. After a while Mum pulled out the popular seventies line—‘Stop crying or I’ll really give you something to cry about!’ Back then, that line was about as common as threatening to put the kids on the naughty step is now—if the Supernanny was doing her telly show in that era I’m pretty sure she would have used it too.

  Bridget didn’t stop crying. Mum went to the second drawer down and discovered she was in between wooden spoons, so she gave Bridget a Chinese burn instead . . . on her sore arm. That did little to stem the tears (surprise, surprise). Eventually Mum took Bridget to the doctor and that is when it was discovered that Mum had given Bridget a Chinese burn on a broken arm.

  I think Mum felt pretty stink about that one.

  This may all sound a bit horrible by today’s standards. And maybe time-out or the naughty corner or whatever other methods parents use now are more effective ways of disciplining kids. But I can tell you one thing—we always tried to be on our best behaviour because we didn’t want to be hit. And we didn’t want to be hit because it was bloody painful! You learned pretty early on where the line was and how far you could push it.

  Growing up in New Zealand in the 1970s there was one place where you could avoid the belt and that was in the car—the seatbelt, that is. I can’t remember when the law changed and it became compulsory for all passengers to be buckled in, but I don’t recall ever wearing a seatbelt as a young fella.

  On one occasion I fell asleep in the back seat and leaned against the door of Dad’s car. When he drove round a corner the door, which had not been properly shut, flung open and I fell out. That woke me up pretty smartly. I remember rolling across the road for ages, my little body being cut, scratched and grazed all over before coming to a halt.

  Other family members commented afterwards that it was just good luck that I was not hit by another car. That is wishful thinking, really—this was Levin in the late seventies. There was probably more chance of seeing a man with no arms in a glove shop than there was of seeing another car on the road.

  It was years after that incident that the Harvey kids started using these seatbelt things. Not on Mum and Dad’s insistence, either. It was actually the great philosopher Ronald McDonald who got us onto the whole seatbelt craze. McDonald’s launched a big campaign called ‘Make it click’ with a catchy jingle. I can still remember most of the lyrics off the top of my head:

  When you’re in the car, make it click

  Going near or far, make it click

  Front seat, back seat, anywhere you sit,

  make it click

  Belt up quick, that’s the trick

  Before that campaign came along I remember going on road trips in Dad’s company car, which was a station wagon with a big CNG tank in the back. It was not uncommon for me and Dan, my brother, to sit in the boot area, unrestrained.

  Thanks to McDonald’s fewer Kiwis are dying in car crashes. But more Kiwis are probably dying of obesity-related illnesses. So, swings and roundabouts really.

  I don’t recall the particular moment captured in the photo. But I do remember the paddling pool and the toy I am chewing on. I loved that toy. It was a sponge and I used to love playing with it in the pool and then sucking the pool water out of it—along with skin cancer, nobody knew much about germs or hygiene back in the seventies. But the three-year-old me thought it was the second-best thing ever. The best thing ever would have been my plastic Womble mug with a picture of Tomsk on it. I like this photo. It reminds me of a less complicated New Zealand. When you reflect on how far we have come as a country I reckon there are many things we are doing a lot better. But there’s also cool stuff that we’ve lost along the way. These days it is possible to live right next door to someone for years and not even know their name. Hardly anyone pops next door for a cuppa and a chat anymore. Come to think of it, you can’t even knock on someone’s door because you were ‘just in the neighbourhood’ anymore. It’s considered polite to text first to check if it’s okay to come and visit. That’s a bit sad, I think.

  VISIT A DOMINATRIX

  I am a big believer in knocking things before trying them. People say it all the time, ‘Don’t knock it till ya try it,’ but let’s be truthful, there are many things in life that you just instinctively know you will not enjoy before you bother going through with them. Visiting a dominatrix was one of those things for me.

  I hate the idea of being smacked. I wish I didn’t. It would have made my childhood a bit more fun. As I explained in the previous chapter, there was no naughty chair, step or corner in our home when I was growing up. As a kid of the seventies and eighties I was subjected to plenty of discipline, so to me the idea of bondage, discipline and sadomasochism (or BDSM for short) sounds like a nightmare. I struggle to understand why any sane person would want to pay top dollar for someone to humiliate or hurt them. I can come up with a long list of people willing to provide me with those services free of charge and I usually go out of my way to avoid running into those people.

  But on my quest to complete my ridiculous bucket list, I discovered there are people who are cut from a very different cloth. People who wake up in the morning and say to themselves, ‘Today I think I’ll pay a stranger a handsome sum of money to put her fist up my bottom.’ Yes, these people who pay for pain and humiliation are a very small minority, but they do exist and there are places they can go where their dark and twisted fantasies can be fulfilled.

  I found Mistress Dior through a Google search. Her website was a real eye-opener. It listed the many services she offered and even included a photo gallery that I wish I hadn’t clicked through! Damn you, IT department . . . You blocked Facebook at work—how the hell did you miss this site?

  With the most well-equipped dungeon in New Zealand, I can make all your fetishes/fantasies and wicked dreams a reality. Mistress Dior will cover all the following and any other special requests you may have:

  Castration fantasy

  Corporal punishment

  Caning

  Cross-dressing

  Exhibitionism

  Erotic bondage

  Fetish

  Leather

  Foot/boot worship

  Flogging

  Gags, hoods

  Verbal humiliation

  Adult baby

  Medical play

  Mummification

  Nipple play

  School mistress

  Sensory deprivation

  Suspension

  Sissification

  Slave training

  EDUCATED—EQUIPPED—DISCREET

  I did an informal survey among my mates and 100 per cent of us agreed that a ‘castration fantasy’ is something none of us ever want to experience!

  I only saw the scrotum torture and anal stretching photos on the website for a split second but I doubt I will ever be able to forget them. They are definitely not photos you would want to get mixed up with your summer holiday snapshots.

  I decided I liked the sound of the verbal humiliation service. I could get the dominatrix experience without any physical pain. That’d be perfect for a wuss like me.

  I emailed Mistress Dior and explained I had a bucket list and would like to make an appointment. She replied the next day and told me to call her to talk further. She insisted I call from a phone number that was not blocked.

  I called and could hardly hear her when she picked up. In the background there was screaming and a loud echo. After introducing myself three times I gave up and told her I would call her back later. I didn’t know what she was up to, but I guessed she was probably in the middle of an appointment with a client.

  That made me nervous—imagining some poor bloke in a gimp mask with his nipples being held in clamps while this mistress took time out to answer the phone.

  I called back the next day and asked what had been going on during our previous conversation.

&nbs
p; ‘I was at the pool with my kids,’ Mistress Dior explained. I laughed. ‘Even a mistress needs to teach her children about water safety,’ she said. Fair point. It was just hard to picture someone in this profession being a mum. More on Mistress Dior and her home life later.

  We chatted for a bit and it didn’t take long for Mistress Dior to work out that I was a ‘vanilla’. In this context I think it means someone who is a bit conservative or closed minded. I don’t think I am either of those things. I reckon I’m just ‘normal’ . . . I like women to be kind to my genitals.

  Our phone call ended with an appointment. I would visit Mistress Dior’s dungeon at 3 pm on the following Wednesday.

  I didn’t know it at the time but I was being screened during this phone call. Even though I was asking most of the questions, Mistress Dior was treating the chat as a speedy character assessment. She does this with all new clients, and if she doesn’t like the sound of someone or gets a bad vibe, she will not take a booking or give out her address. She had nothing to worry about with me—I’m just a boring old vanilla. It’s some of the other flavours you need to be wary of—those rum and raisin men are the worst.

  Mistress Dior’s dungeon is in suburban Auckland, not too far from Mt Smart Stadium, where the Warriors play. Like me, the building that houses the dungeon could be described as vanilla. I had walked past this building many times before and had never given it a double look. It is in a crowded industrial street and looks just like all the other buildings. Made from concrete blocks painted white, the front of the place is windowless and free of any sort of signage.

  I parked my car and pressed on Mistress Dior’s buzzer. A few seconds later she opened the door. She opened it that way you open the door at home if someone knocks when you have your undies on. I could see the top half of her face but the rest of her was shielded from view.

  Before I had the chance to speak Mistress Dior started doing what she does best—bossing men around.

  ‘Quick! Get in so I can shut the door! There are people across the road.’

  I turned to see. There was a busy warehouse across the road that had front row seats to the dungeon door. They could see every single client arriving and leaving.

  Mistress Dior’s rear entry.

  Nowhere near as dirty as it sounds.

  I wondered if they had any idea what was behind this door on the other side of the street.

  She shut the door behind us and we both stood in the poky foyer area. This was when I got my first good look at Mistress Dior. She looked forty-something, maybe closer to fifty than forty. She had brownish hair which was teased up. Her earrings and necklace were all miniature handcuffs and her D-cup breasts were bursting their way through the low-cut leather top she was wearing. This top was so low I could see a glimpse of her nipples. She had a matching leather skirt so small I could see her black G-string and the cheeks of her bum when she walked in front of me.

  Her outfit was like something from the costume department of Xena. She was definitely more intimidating than sexy.

  I had seen photos of the dungeon on Mistress Dior’s website but nothing could have prepared me for the moment when I saw it with my own eyes. It looked like a gym full of things that will cause you discomfort (or turn you on—depends on how you roll).

  The dungeon was a huge rectangular room, like a garage that would be big enough for about ten cars, I reckon. The floor was concrete, painted black. The walls were red and so were the bulbs in the various lamps scattered about the place. Mistress Dior told me she had been a dominatrix for seventeen years, and everything she’d accumulated in that time, all of her tools of the trade, were housed here.

  The dungeon was clean and well organised and had no obvious smells. One of the first things I noticed was the sound of the birds chirping outside on this summer’s afternoon. If I could hear the birds on the outside, I reasoned, then surely people passing by would be able to hear the screaming from in here during a session?

  Dior led me to the only corner of the dungeon that didn’t look terrifying—a lounge area with a two-seater sofa. Also in this corner was a small tank with some goldfish in it. Good choice of pet to have living in a dungeon—one that only has a seven-second memory span.

  She offered me a coffee, which I declined, and then invited me to take a seat.

  She sat down next to me. Close. Giving me less personal space than I would ideally have liked. She intentionally sat so her arm was touching mine.

  I asked her if I could tape our session on a voice recorder.

  She agreed, but on the condition that I never broadcast it or posted it online anywhere. Then she explained why: her kids and her husband have no idea what she does!

  I found it impossible to believe her husband didn’t know. She has her own dungeon stocked with New Zealand’s largest collection of sex toys and torture devices, and the whole set-up was probably worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars. I thought her husband would have to be some sort of a mug not to know.

  ‘He knows I’m into a bit of bondage and some kinky stuff but I only take appointments during the day when the kids are at school and I buy all my gear with money I make from clients. Maybe he chooses not to know what I do.’

  It seemed plausible. But what would happen if she was at the mall or the grocery store and she bumped into a client?

  ‘Most of my clients are very wealthy and successful men—pilots, lawyers, CEOs, politicians, that sort of thing. They’ve got just as much or more to lose than me, so if they saw me in public, they’d stay well away.’

  In my mind I ran through a list of all the high-profile Kiwi politicians I could think of. It wasn’t all that hard to imagine most of them on all fours wearing women’s underwear and licking Mistress Dior’s boots.

  Dior shared the safety word with me—‘Mercy!’

  She explained that during a session that is the ONLY word that will get her to stop what she is doing.

  ‘A customer might be screaming and saying, “Please stop, oww, please stop!” but they don’t actually mean it.’

  I asked if she would consider stopping if someone said, ‘I CAN’T REMEMBER THE SAFETY WORD BUT PLEASE STOP!’

  She rolled her eyes but didn’t answer my question.

  ‘You want verbal humiliation, right?’

  I nodded.

  ‘Riiiight,’ she replied, in a drawn-out, thinking-out-loud way which suggested that particular option was going to be a problem. ‘There’s a very thin line between turning someone on and totally turning them off. And it’s different for different people. Something that turns one person on can turn another person right off. For example, some people love the thought that what is being done to them is against their religion. Other people, you mention their religion while you’re doing something and they’re just, “Nup, not into it.”’

  Dior continued talking and I continued giving her my full attention. It was already a sort of master-and-slave relationship we had developed in a very short time.

  ‘Some people like the idea of their boss or perhaps their wife finding out. Other people, you mention family and it’s, “Nope. Don’t like this.” So for me to give you a good session, for you to have a good time, we have to talk about things that are a no-go area for you. You need to tell me what you don’t want mentioned. For example, some people looooove small cock humiliation, but others really don’t.’

  I burst into laughter. The nervous and uncomfortable kind.

  ‘Seriously! I’ve got guys with huge cocks who want to be told that their cocks are useless. I’ve got guys who want to be told they can’t get their cock up. “What’s wrong with you? You’re not a man, you’re a little pussy. You haven’t even got a cock worth looking at.”

  ‘Other people want to be told they look and act much more like a queer than a man, so I make them dress up. Force them into women’s underwear and call their cock a clit and basically treat them like a little sissy bitch. Or I might say you’re not a big boy, you’re a little baby,
and make you wear a nappy and force you to drink so much water that you pee your pants while I’ve tied you up so you can’t move.’

  Man, this was some weird shit. Where’s the appeal? It wasn’t sexy . . . just weird. Or was I just too vanilla for my own good?

  ‘Here you are, laughing out of nervousness. One thing I ask from you? Keep your mind open, cause you never know, you might just enjoy yourself.’

  It was unlikely.

  ‘And you do know I’m going to do stuff to you, don’t you?’ Dior asked. She had been heading in this direction, warming me up, and now the bombshell was about to come—verbal humiliation was not something that could be done as a stand-alone service. Dior lowered her voice so it was only slightly louder than a whisper. ‘Yes. You know. You know that, don’t you?’

  ‘Oh, well, I . . . No. You know . . .’ I stammered.

  ‘I’m not going to do anything you won’t like,’ Dior said. ‘And I’m a professional. So if you say you don’t like it, I’m going to stop.’

  ‘Am I going to be your first ever customer to say “mercy” while still sitting on this couch?’ I joked (with just a pinch of seriousness).

  ‘I actually had someone who went to get money out of the bank and never came back, which was quite fun.’

  My left foot and knee do this uncontrollable bouncing thing whenever I’m real nervous. Once it starts, it’s impossible to stop. Not even leaning forward so my elbow is resting on my thigh can suppress it. This leg spasm must have given Dior an inkling that being treated like a 194-centimetre-tall baby and being forced to urinate in a nappy was not an idea I relished.

  Dior got to her feet and invited me to do the same. I followed her to another section of her dungeon.

  ‘These are all the medical things,’ she announced, waving her hand toward an area well stocked with a wide variety of rubber tubing, forceps, wheelchairs and other hospital paraphernalia. Then she pointed to a rack of big hooks—huge silver steel things that you would find at a freezing works, holding up gutted sheep. These things were massive.