[serial] Coping Skills, Part 1 of 4
A young woman seeks out a CNC relationship for the wrong reasons, while her dom hides his developing feelings for her.
Welcome to my first attempt at posting original fiction on the internet! “Coping Skills” initially appeared in my short story collection Zucchini which went on submission in 2021 and didn’t sell. I’ve since revisited Zucchini and made some major changes to it (including the title), one of which was removing “Coping Skills.” Not because I think it’s bad, but because it no longer fit my idea of the collection and there are already a number of stories whose summaries are basically “white woman has sex problems.” I cut this one to make room for pieces that have different ambitions.
I’m posting it here rather than trying to publish it formally because in terms of my own goals, my interest is in sharing my work with the right audience, and I think this audience is the best one for this particular story. It’s long and porny and takes a lot of risks, and I think anyone who subscribes to this newsletter probably digs that.
In Zucchini, “Coping Skills” is told in two parts: the part you’re about to read, about 3k words long, and a second part that’s over 10k words. I broke up the second part into 3 posts so that all of them are in manageable chunks. Here’s the posting schedule:
Part 2: May 26
Part 3: June 16
Part 4: July 14
Warnings
BDSM, cockwarming, CNC (consensual non-consent), bad BDSM etiquette, unhealthy relationships, past abuse, past illness
Skylar is hot, but at what cost? He’s been talking for nearly an hour about Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy and its superiority to every other Batman—nay, every other film—ever made. Lindsay’s phone lights up. She shoots a quick glance to it.
You’re pathetic, Ben Shepherd tells her, replying to her earlier text: Seeing someone else tonight. Does that bother you?
The next rolls in: Come over.
In her defense, Skylar didn’t have a bio, just a picture of his flexed abs, and another of his dog. Lindsay swiped right. They met up for a beer. He’s wearing the jersey of a hockey team she’s never heard of. A pair of aviators is perched on his shaved head and he’s on his third IPA. If they were to have sex, which they won’t, it would be fast and mediocre.
“Have you seen The Prestige?” he asks.
“No.” She unlocks her phone. I’ll think about it, she tells Ben.
“Have you seen Interstellar?” Skylar asks.
“No.”
“Have you seen Memento?”
Ben comes back with a shot of his dick, rigid and curved to the left, circumcised, familiar. His coffee table is in the pic, covered in empty beer cans and ashtrays needing to be emptied. The image of his cock does nothing for her; it never does, yet he keeps sending dick pics and she keeps responding to them.
“I’ll be right back,” she says.
She locks herself in the dingy bathroom that smells like commercial cleaner and shit. The walls are covered with unintelligible graffiti. She tugs her dress beneath her tits, lines up a shot in the mirror, and takes a pic. She has a double chin and tries again, gut sucked in and back straight, neck and lips protruding like a goose. Close enough. She sends it and returns to Skylar.
“Dunkirk? Tenet?” He sounds frantic. “You have to have seen Incep—”
“I’m gonna go.” Without sitting down, she chugs the rest of her beer and leaves a twenty on the table.