Snare Hit

Warren here. I'm twenty-eight, and for going on five years I've been the drummer in a band called Snare Hit, which is a stupid pun but the name stuck. Camille is our lead singer and the one who runs the whole thing, and she's twenty-seven. We met at a studio open mic three years back and we've been trying to one-up each other ever since. It's a good rivalry. It keeps me sharp.

Anyway, what I'm about to tell you happened on a Tuesday, and it started with me still in my postal uniform because I'd come straight from my route. Blue shorts, the shirt with the patch, the whole thing. I didn't even change. The session was at the label's basement studio in the warehouse district, and I'd been carrying this plan around in my head for a few months.

For the band's anniversary, I ordered a road case. A real one, black, with our logo stenciled on the side. Inside it, instead of pedals or cables like you'd expect, I had a custom restraint system built. Leather and chrome. Four cuffs, padded, decent hardware, the kind of thing you order from a shop that takes its craft seriously. It cost me three weeks of overtime pay. I had it all set up in the green room slash lounge behind the control booth, tucked against the old couch, and I told Camille I had a surprise for the anniversary and to go open the case.

She went. She came back out into the live room holding one gleaming leather cuff by its buckle, and her face was doing something I'd never seen it do before.

"You actually think I'm going to let you strap me to that couch?" she said.

She was holding it up between two fingers like it was a dead rat. Behind her, the road case sat open on the lounge floor with the other three cuffs laid out on the cushion, all neat, all the work I'd done last Sunday while the band thought I was at my mom's.

"Okay, hold on," I said. "That's not what you think it is."

"It's a cuff, Warren. It's four cuffs. It's cuffs and straps and it's sitting next to my couch." She turned it over. "There's a note in here. There's an invoice in here."

"The invoice is part of the gift," I said, which, out loud, in that room, was maybe not my best material.

She walked past me into the control booth and picked up the paper off the mixing desk. I stood there in my postal shirt sweating through it while she read. It took her a while, because the invoice was detailed. Custom order. Safeword protocol printed on it, because the shop makes you pick one and write it down. And a note in my own handwriting that said "for the snare queen," which is a nickname I'd been calling her on stage for three years and she'd never once told me to stop.

"Snare queen," she said. She said it flat.

"It's a nickname. You like that nickname."

"I tolerate that nickname." She put the paper down. "Custom restraints. A safeword protocol. Ordered by Warren. Delivered to our lounge." She looked at me. "This is a trap. You rigged the case, didn't you. You wanted me to open it in front of the label guy and look like a freak."

"Why would I rig a case to make you look like a freak at our own anniversary show?"

"Because you've been trying to knock me off my perch since the day I met you."

That stung a little, because it was true in general and completely false in this specific case. I set my mail bag down on the floor by the booth door and tried to figure out how to say the actual thing.

"Look," I said. "I wanted to impress you. That is the entire dumb truth. I've had this, I don't know, this thing in my head for months, and I figured the anniversary was the right time to show it, and I wanted it to be good, because you're always good and I'm always the temp guy with the day job."

"You're not a temp. You've been our drummer for five years."

"I mean in my head. In my head I'm the guy who delivers mail and then plays drums." I rubbed my face. "The cuffs were for me, Camille. They were a gift. For you. To use on me. I wanted to hand you the case and say happy anniversary, tie me up if you want, no pressure."

She stared at me. The little green light on the mixing board was the only noise, that faint hiss monitors make when they're on.

"For months?" she said.

"Since like March."

"And you spent, judging by this invoice, a disgusting amount of money on it."

"Three weeks of overtime."

She picked the invoice up again, and I watched her read it a second time, slower. I could see her working through it, the same as I'd worked through it for months. Whether it was a joke. Whether it was a challenge. Whether it was anything at all.

"Say the safeword out loud," she said.

"There's one on the invoice, the shop makes you write one down. And on top of that, 'amber' if it's a warning, 'red' if it's stop. That's what the shop recommends."

"That's a traffic light system."

"That's what the shop recommends," I said again.

She put the invoice down and walked out of the booth, and I followed her into the lounge like an idiot following a person into a lounge. She closed the lounge door. She locked it. There's a little bolt on the inside because the label uses this room for, I assume, arguments, and I heard that bolt slide and my brain went very quiet.

"If this is a gift," she said, "you submit. Now."

I want to tell you I said something smooth there. I said, "Okay." That's what I said. Okay.

She picked one cuff up off the couch cushion and took my wrist, and she clipped it on. It fit well, which was a relief, because I'd guessed my own measurements off a tape measure in the break room at the post office. The leather was warm from the room. Her fingers were cool. She looked at me while she buckled it, not at the buckle, at me, and she said, "Tell me why, and tell me the truth, or I stop here and we burn the case."

"Because you're the most in-control person I've ever met and I wanted to know what it felt like to hand it over," I said. "To you specifically. That's the truth."

"That's a decent answer." She took my other wrist. "Red means stop. Amber means slow down. I'm going to use them too. Nod if you understand."

I nodded. She clipped the second cuff, and that's where I'll stop describing the setup, because what came after is the part people actually read this site for, and it went like this.

She pushed me down to sit on the couch. My hands were clipped together in front of me by a short strap between the cuffs, so I wasn't going anywhere. She stood over me with her arms crossed, still fully dressed, still in the flannel she'd worn to the session, and she said, "Take off your shirt." I got it unbuttoned with cuffed hands, which took some doing, and she watched me struggle a little, and I'd swear she almost smiled.

Then she knelt over me on the couch, one knee on either side, and said, "I'm going to kiss you. Yes or no."

"Yes," I said.

She kissed me like she does everything, which is like she's already three steps ahead. Her hand went into my hair and she kissed me until I forgot about the rivalry and the invoice and the overtime. When she pulled back her face was kind of flushed and her voice had gone lower. "This stays