A Very Bad Experience

I had been talking to a Domina, Mistress Ann, for a while during one of the times where I felt "unowned" and agreed to do a website for her rather than paying her for her services.

We agreed to meet at her place in order to discuss the site. I had asked her to go through various websites and pick out what she liked from color to style to various subsections. I also had a few things in mind myself as I had done a Domme's website years before. When first getting into web optimization and cross-browser coding I had taken on the site for Domina Verushka. She was, um, interesting in her requests and I did a fairly good job though I felt that I never quite got what she wanted and eventually resigned from the job.

Anyway, I met with Mistress Ann about a potential site at her house. Rather than a deluge of ideas, she has a dearth. It was just plain painful to watch her surf and try to pull up websites. Even my mother was more web savvy. She insisted that AOL is the only window to the world and had never heard of a "web browser" -- not even Internet Explorer. I won't call her a Luddite but it was incredibly frustrating sitting next to her as she struggled to find some of the websites she wanted to show me.

It was around this time that her boyfriend got home. I felt very awkward suddenly as I had been led to believe that after discussing her site that Mistress Ann would give me a taste of her professional abilities. That her boyfriend was here, and that he was as quiet as a monk, struck me as rather off-putting. Perhaps as a peace gesture, he came in and sat down with us and lit up a spliff. Not one to turn down a few free puffs at a joint, I didn't poo poo it when it was passed to me.

Eventually I tried to switch gears and get her to tell me what she'd like to see as her primary headline font. I love typography and sometimes a font can unlock a look and feel all on its own. To that end, I typed a few sample headlines and started going through the various fonts on my laptop. I have a few hundred fonts and she looked at and commented on each. Along the way she started talking about all of the features she wanted her site to have including e-commerce, a chat area, a tie-in to a phone service, and about two dozen other "pie in the sky" features. I kept trying to say that we'd look at each in turn but to worry about getting up a bare bones site first so that she could have a better web presence.

As I talked, I realized that I was speaking loud and fast. Was I nervous? No, I don't think so. Finally, it dawned on me that the marijuana was really affecting me. It was odd as usually it didn't do much for me and, when it did, it was more of a source of relaxation, not excitement. And, did it seem like the edges of my vision were getting a bit blurry? Was this just me getting tired and especially drained due to Mistress Ann going on about selling panties and other used items online?

I stopped talking and just listened for a while, my mind still reeling from the odd sensations. Maybe I could wait out this high... I had only taken a few hits and even the best weed that I ever smoked didn't last that long for me. However, things seemed to be getting worse rather than better.

Confounded and disoriented, I gathered up my notes and said that I had enough to go on for a starter site. I said my goodbyes, trying not to talk too much, and left. The cold night air slapped me in the face a few times and I hoped that it would get me out of my stupor. No luck. I got into my car, rolled the windows down, and started creeping through her neighbor out to the nearby freeway. Why I did this, I don't know. I think I just wanted to get away.

I had driven impared in my life. As a young man I had driven drunk a couple times in the wee hours and I had once even driven under the influence of LSD. Those were cakewalks compared to what I was doing now. I was paranoid, hyper, disoriented, and couldn't quite focus right. I kept having to step on the accelerator as I was allowing myself to get slower and slower. Finally I realized that I was either going to die or get arrested for my driving so I pulled over at the next exit. In an attempt to soak up whatever poisons may have entered my system, I went through the drive through at a Burger King and sat in the parking lot eating and trying to clear my head.

There's simply no way that the joint I smoked could have been just simple weed. To this day I'm convinced that it must have been dipped in something. More than scared, I started getting angry. It felt like they had "slipped me a mickey." Now I knew how Mike Hammer, Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade must feel.

I don't know how long I sat in that parking lot. More than getting sober, I was getting bored and frustrated. I finally started up and went the rest of the way back home, driving with caution. The strangest thing about this whole experience? I never heard from Mistress Ann again. She never inquired if I made it home okay or even about her site. I never heard from her again... I'm glad about that.