“Locked & Cranked”: Meeting Damon Rayne
This was the first time during writing L&C that I’ve had to stop because I started sobbing uncontrollably right in the middle of Ivy’s diary entry. I got my mother to sit up with me at 4 a.m., and I cried in front of her, for the first time since the morning we found out Martin was gone. I sobbed for nearly 2 hours, and I was sure I couldn’t finish writing, even though I was barely 1,000 words in, and I’m still behind in my word count. But I let it all out, and sat back down with my laptop…and somehow managed another 3,400 words. It’s hard to force myself to remember the moments upon which I’m basing these entries. But here it is, all the same. I’m hoping that’ll be my one major breakdown, and that I’ll cross the 50K line on the 30th with a feeling of accomplishment, rather than sorrow.
~~~~~~~~
December 1st, 1997
I can’t believe I’ve waited this long to update you, dear reader! So much has happened!!! Oh, my GOD, so much, so so so much is different now. I never thought that one email could set off such a domino effect and change my LIFE, but, well, here I am!
Where do I start?? Okay…well…I finally printed off that first email I got from Damon, so I’ll put it in here for safe keeping. Whatever happens now, at least I’ll always have this to look back on and smile like an idiot!
To: Ingrid
Date: September 5th, 1997 04:21 EST
From: Damon Rayne
Subject: RE: You don’t know me, but…
Yes….of course I want to read it….send it on…..don’t make me wait…..any longer….
-DR
— Original Message —
To: damon@razr.ca
Date: September 4th, 1997 22:26 EST
From: Ingrid
Subject: You don’t know me, but…
…I thought you might like to know that you’re the reason I got an A on a paper today. I’m sure it sounds kind of insane, since you have no clue who I am, but bear with me. I was given an assignment during the spring term to write a piece of erotica, which I was to turn in at the start of this term (as in, now!). I’d had a pretty uninspired summer, but the one person who managed to get my imagination working was you, even just via the radio waves. So…I took what little I know about you, and what little I’ve seen, and used it as the basis for my piece…and it would seem you’ve served your purpose well, if an 84% is any indication!
Anyway, I suppose this note is just to say thanks. For giving a girl something to think about. And if by some chance you happen to want to read what I wrote, I’m sure I could be persuaded to send it your way.
~I~
Yeah, yeah, I know, I was a chicken to not let him know what my real name is, but Lily and I both agreed that it made just as much sense as anything else that I use the pen name I’ve been using since I was, what, 13? She’s convinced I’ll be famous under that name someday anyway, so why not let my first official piece of work, meant for someone’s eyes other than my professors’, have “Ingrid” blazing across the top, right??
Well, it got a bit complicated…but that’s jumping ahead again. Oh, god, I’ve got butterflies just thinking about this again! And that was two months ago!!! I have a feeling I’ll never stop getting butterflies over this man. Especially now. (Oooh, look at me, the master – or should I say “mistress”? – of foreshadowing! HA!)
Okay, so, I sent it to him. My last entry, as I can see from flipping back a page, was mostly me squealing and scrawling all over the place, not really putting much down for posterity. So the short version is this: HE LOVED IT. What he doesn’t know, of course, is that I actually had to change quite a bit of it from the original version, since the way he looked when I DID meet him on my birthday didn’t quite match up with what I’d written for the assignment. But it’s just as well that he got the new and improved version, since he’s been such an enthusiastic audience…
God, am I jumping around here or what?? But, seriously, dear reader, if you could see this man…you wouldn’t be able to write in order either. Hell, I’m not even sure how I’m holding a pen. Do with THAT what you will!
What I could never have foreseen, despite Lily saying she knew that first message to him was going to start a snowball effect (as if), is that it actually got us – meaning me and Damon (oh my GOD do I ever love even WRITING that) – involved in a regular back-and-forth correspondence via email. And all along, he had no idea that this Ivy chick who would occasionally be at one of his club nights was, in fact, “Ingrid.” I didn’t hide it from him on purpose; I just never really thought it would matter. “Never the twain shall meet,” or however that old saying goes. I’m not sure if I’ve ever been more wrong about anything, unless you count my entire relationship with Jeff, but…forget about that. Ancient history! Onward and upward!
Lily and I have been back to the Cathedral a few times, and we’ve gone with friends to Zenith twice on Damon’s nights (you should see Lil flirting with Leumas – I swear, if it weren’t for her professing her adoration for Charlie with every other breath, I’d be convinced things were heading somewhere mighty intense there…but she says it’s just something to keep her occupied while we’re not tearing up the dance floor, which in all fairness isn’t very often…). And I’ve talked to him – Damon, I mean – a few times, too, since he seems to remember me from my birthday (he must, ‘cos he’s made reference to the fact that I “can’t hold my liquor” more than once, and I can only assume he’s talking about whatever that awful shooter was he bought for me that night… I don’t think he understands how Lil and I can have such an amazing night out every time when we’re only ever drinking ginger ale!). But despite him making me feel like a 12-year-old with a massive crush, and despite the countless times I’ve felt like a moron while trying to make casual conversation about the newest single from whichever group we both love (we have an awful lot of those in common), things have been pretty normal. Casual, even. Just a sort of “hi, how are you?” relationship that he probably has with hundreds of the people who hit his clubs every weekend. And that was enough for me…especially when I’d go home at 3 a.m., and by 4 I’d have an email from him, to “Ingrid,” that was TOTALLY different from how he and I talk when I’m just me. I’ll have to print off the greatest email EVER and put it in here at some point, but suffice it to say that, when I asked him what he thought of my paper, he wrote me quite the lengthy message in return, telling me (in surprisingly not-graphic and gentlemanly terms!) about the “ahem…physical reaction” it had inspired in him. You can just imagine the look on my face while I was reading THAT. I was blushing so much, even though I was all alone at my computer. And then, the first time I saw him in person after that – with him still having no idea that I am who I am – I got all tongue-tied, because I could all too vividly picture what he was describing in that email, and…yeah. Wow.
So now I get to the good stuff. Yes, it gets BETTER.
Lily and I were at the Cathedral just this past Thursday night, and we had a fantastic time, flirting with these two adorable security guards and dancing up a storm to the awesome stuff Leumas was playing (and don’t think for a second that I don’t tease Lil about how much better the music gets as soon as he sees her on the dance floor), but Damon was pretty scarce. I saw him for maybe two whole minutes the entire night, and all we did was exchange a little wave, but he was off with some friends playing pool or something, which is all the way down on the first floor. The good music is on the third. Lily and I weren’t going to sacrifice that just so I could go and feel awkward horning in on Damon’s conversations with other people. When we’d had our fill for the night, then, we simply left, even though Lil tried her damnedest to convince me that I should stop by the pool tables long enough to at least say good night. It seemed stupid and…needy. I mean, yeah, do I have the hots for the guy? Sure. But do I want to be one of those stalker fan-types who imagines she has a relationship with a guy she barely knows? Uh…no. Been on the receiving end of that more than once, as you well know, dear reader. I’m not up for having it the other way around either. So…we left.
But imagine my surprise when I got home… I’d taken a shower and gotten into my Pjs, grabbed a drink of milk, and was still kind of wired, so I figured I’d check my email before I tried going to bed. And wouldn’t you know it?? In the time it had taken me to get home and ready for sleep, Damon had obviously left work and gotten back to his place, too. Because there was a message from him. And it blew my mind.
I’m paraphrasing here, but the gist was this: “I’m starting to get a little paranoid…..you know who I am, but I don’t know you….so here’s what we’re gonna do. You’re going to come to Zenith this Saturday night, and you’ll be on my guest list….so come up to the booth and introduce yourself, finally…..I want to put a face to your words…..see you then….”
OH. MY. GOD.
It was after 4 in the morning. There was nobody I could call to shriek and panic with, not even Lily, who is the lousiest “night person” I’ve ever known. I forwarded the email to her, obviously, but still…it was HOURS before the sun came up and I could freak out about the fact that MY COVER WAS ABOUT TO BE BLOWN. I was seriously riled up about this. How insane was I going to look to him??? I’ve been one thing in his presence for the past few months, and now suddenly I had to admit that yes, we’d met already, however casually and briefly, and that I’d never bothered to tell him that it’s ME who is behind the naughty little emails…???
I’d already sent him a message back, saying I would come – it’s not like I could say no at this point! And would I even want to?? – before I got a message from Lil. Damn it all. She was as hyped about it as I was, but she was GOING AWAY for the weekend, and that meant I was going to have to do this without her. That terrified me even more. What the hell kind of night was this going to be without my support system?? I NEEDED her to be there…but she was stuck. Some family thing. I don’t even think I asked for details, since it didn’t matter why. All that mattered was that she wouldn’t be by my side on what could be the most terrifying night of my entire social life. Even with her phone call later that day to coach me on what to wear – she has very distinct opinions about which colours look best on me, and which outfits in my closet are her favourites, so I have to trust her on these things – I didn’t feel even remotely secure about this whole thing. Damon was going to label me a headcase and have me banned from every club in the city. I was sure of it.
So now you’re caught up to this past Saturday. I think I’m still suffering from a completely scrambled brain, days later. Ready? Here’s hoping I can do the night justice before my hand falls off.
Not only was I being abandoned by Lily, there was also a snowstorm completely wrecking the roads by sundown. And the only person I could convince to come with me? Mick. Yeah. I know. Of all the people to have as your “wing man” on a night such as that, your high school boyfriend is probably last on the list. But I’d tried everyone else, and nobody wanted to venture out because of the weather, or they already had plans, yadda yadda. It’s not that I don’t have a good time when Mick and I go out, but there’s still some residual weirdness that I don’t think ever really goes away after you’ve been with someone for 3 years and things end the way they did between us. Anyway, that’s all beside the point. He was willing to come with me, even knowing the story behind what it was I had to do that night, and while I could tell he was less than pleased with the idea, he was still good enough to pick me up and do all of the stunt driving it took to get us to the club. He even helped me over the ice in my insanely high heels (I was, obviously, all decked out for the occasion. I wore red, just as Lily had made me promise. Low-cut and red. I looked good. I felt petrified).
I hardly remember anything about the early part of the evening; I think I was scared witless by the time we walked up to the entrance. And sure enough, “Ingrid” was on the guest list. I’d thought about maybe emailing Damon and confessing that it wasn’t the name on my ID, just in case I got asked for it and there was some kind of problem at the door, but…I just couldn’t. So I took my chances, and as it turned out, the security guys who asked for my ID were different from the staff in charge of the guest list, so I was lucky. And I think Mick was quietly impressed with the whole VIP treatment thing, even though he didn’t say as much. I gave him my jacket and sent him off to the coat check, and started taking deep breaths to calm myself down, getting ready to make the introduction of a lifetime.
The club was EMPTY. I mean, there MIGHT have been ten people there other than us. The weather had obviously kept a lot of people home…and we were there pretty early, too, since we’d left ourselves a lot of time to get downtown in that blizzard. It was only about 10:30 when we got there. I figured that meant I’d have a bit of time to decide how best to work up the nerve to walk up the two flights of stairs to the DJ booth and confess my sins…but as it turned out, I’d barely sent Mick away with our coats when I stopped in my tracks. Right there, just inside the doorway to the retro room that housed the pool tables, was Damon.
And he was alone.
Oh, god.
I knew it would be easier to approach him if there weren’t other people around, because I had no idea how he was going to react, and if it was bad, I really didn’t want there to be a bunch of witnesses, or anyone he could turn to and say, “Do you believe this psycho???” On the other hand, if it was just the two of us, I had nobody to back me up if I forgot how to speak English or whatever other disasters might befall me. I had a hard enough time talking to the man when it was about completely inconsequential things. This was not inconsequential. Not to me, anyway. And I had a hard time imagining he’d think it was, either.
But putting it off wouldn’t help. So I tried to get a grip, focus, and decide how to go about this. I figured the best way was to sneak into the main room of the club, buy a couple of drinks – one for me, since I’d need it, and one for him, since I’d seen what he normally drank and would at least be able to thank him for the guest list thing that way – and then make my approach. That’s what I did. The bartender probably wondered why I looked like a deer in the headlights, but all I could do was order my rye and a Corona for Damon, and try not to think about how I’d probably never be able to hear the song that was playing again without thinking of this night. It was “Life In Mono.” Just thinking about it now gives me chills…and not the bad sort.
Drinks in hand, then, I took another deep breath and walked for what felt like forever, back to the retro room, and was somewhere between relieved and terrified to see that Damon was still all by himself, completely engrossed in clearing the pool table. I stopped in the doorway and tried to make my heart rate drop to something under 400 beats per minute, but just at that moment, Damon looked up from a shot he was about to make, and he smiled. I felt like I’d been struck by lightning.
“Hey,” he said casually. I lifted the hand that was holding the bottle of beer, as a really lame attempt at a wave, and he managed to sink the 8 ball. I was trying not to shake so much that I’d spill my drink. Once he’d finished his game, he stood up straight and just sort of looked at me, nothing strange about his expression, probably because he knew me to see me and wouldn’t have thought anything of me being there. I cannot tell you how hard it was to take those few more steps toward him.
I held the Corona out to him, and he looked a little surprised, but he thanked me and clinked the bottle against my glass. And in what had to be the worst timing ever, I waited until he had a mouthful of beer before I said, “That’s to thank you. For putting me on the guest list. So…here I am, saying hello.”
Dear reader, you’ve never seen a look on a man’s face quite like the one I got from him. I’VE never seen anything like it. He looked ready to do a spit take, but he managed to swallow his drink and not cough his lungs out before his expression turned from shock to puzzlement to…I don’t even know what.
“Wait…” he said. In that voice. And all I could do was shrug and give him a helpless little smile. He blinked at me a few times. “Waaaaaaait a second. You’re…?”
“I’m…sort of…two people, I guess,” I said, and I felt like a moron. But then the most amazing thing happened. He SMILED.
“YOU’RE my writer??”
I nodded. And took a really, really big gulp of my rye. I have no idea if I winced as it went down.
“Holy shit,” he said. “I had no idea… But…your name is…”
“Ivy,” I told him. “Ingrid has been my pseudonym for years. I wasn’t using it to trick you or anything… I just never really thought about it, or thought we’d have any reason to, you know, officially ‘meet’ or anything.”
His smile – ohhhh, god, that smile – got bigger, and he stepped closer to me. I felt like, even if there’d been a hundred people in that room with us, I’d never have noticed.
“Like I wouldn’t want to get to know the woman who was writing such….uh…flattering stuff about me?” he said, and I was kind of amazed at how his smile could somehow be sweet and completely devilish at the same time. It didn’t help my pulse to slow down, that’s for sure.
“Well…I don’t know,” I said, a bit boggled at the fact that he was referring to me as a woman, when I’d never felt more like a stupid little girl in my life. “I thought maybe you’d think I was one of those crazy sorts or something. That’s why I never told you that we’d sort of met before now.”
I hadn’t even had a chance to wonder if he was going to be disappointed in what he saw, if what he’d imagined me to be was so much prettier, or older, or sexier, or…something…when he seemed to have the same thought. He’d been holding the pool cue in one hand and his Corona in the other, but he set the cue down on the table and then handed me the bottle. I was a bit confused, but then he stepped back and spread his arms, turned all the way around until he was facing me again, and then stood there. Sort of…Christ-like.
“So…” he said, giving me that cute-but-evil smile again. “Does the real me live up to your writerly expectations?”
Oh, GOD. Did he ever. His hair was down, and he was wearing all black, as usual, his shirt’s sleeves just short enough to show off his ridiculously well-toned arms, and I immediately had countless thoughts that would probably get me arrested in most countries. His eyes were so blue, more so than I’d ever noticed before, and the way he was looking at me…it was like he knew what I was thinking. In a way, I guess he did, since he’d already read the story I’d written about what I’d wanted to do to him in the middle of a dance floor…and now here we were…
I’m not even sure if I answered his question. I don’t think I did, because he laughed and took his bottle back from me. “Thank you for the drink,” he said. “It wasn’t necessary.”
“Well, but, it was,” I managed. God, I sounded stupid. “You were nice enough to put me on your list…”
“Yeah, but it was completely selfish of me. I wanted to get a look at whoever it is that can write things that keep me up at night.” He smirked. “In more ways than one.”
OH. WHOA. Hello. In over my head much??? If I thought his emails had made me blush…I must’ve turned five different shades of red right there in front of him.
“So you’re…not freaked out?” I couldn’t believe I had the guts to just come out and ASK that. The answer scared the hell out of me. If I’d let myself think about it for even a moment, I’m sure I’d have stopped myself from saying those words at all. But in retrospect, I’m really, REALLY glad I got it out of the way so early.
“Nope,” he said, taking another long drink from his bottle, and never taking his eyes off me. “Why would I be? Now I know who to ask when I want to read more.”
I stood there, feeling torn between throwing myself at him and bolting from the room. HOLY SHIT. Of every possible outcome I’d expected, this one never entered my mind. Not for one second. That he would like what he saw, and would actually encourage…more???
“Uh…well, I don’t exactly have assignments like that one crop up very often,” I said, probably looking as freaked out as I felt.
“So what if I give you an assignment of my own?”
It was my turn to just stand and stare, blinking at him. “What…?”
“Well. You know. If you’re so inspired…” He put a lot of emphasis on that last word, and the smile that went with it was all devil, no angel. “We can make it a fair trade. You’ll be on whatever guest lists you want, whenever you want, and in exchange you can keep me entertained with reading material.”
I’m still embarrassed to admit it, but I actually said, “Seriously???”
“Dead serious,” he said, and took the last gulp of beer before plunking the bottle down on the edge of the pool table. He crossed his arms in front of him and simply stood there, looking at me, smirking.
“Oh…kay?” I said. What else could I say??
“Good. Deal.” He glanced at his watch. “Look, I’ve gotta go do my thing upstairs, but come up and see me at least once before you leave, okay?”
I just nodded.
“Thanks again for the drink, ‘Ingrid’,” he said with a laugh as he left the room. I watched him go, and only when he was out of sight did I realize that there were at least two dozen more people now milling about by the bar and on the dance floor, one of them being Mick. I don’t know how long he’d been sitting nearby, glowering at the exchange I’d been having with Damon, but at that point I just didn’t – couldn’t – care. I knew once the terror had faded, I’d be flying high, and even the jealousy of an ex wasn’t going to stamp that out.
Wow. My hand is KILLING me. I can’t write anymore tonight! I did end up making that very frightening trip up the stairs to the DJ booth to say good night to Damon, and he asked me when I’d be back. I said I wasn’t sure, but that it would probably be sometime within the next week or two. He gave me a quick kiss on each cheek (LIGHTNING BOLTS AGAIN) and thanked me for introducing myself, which was SO bizarre to me, because what the hell?? But he left it off by saying he “can’t wait” to see what I write next…which is where I’m at as of now. Trying to think up what I can send him before the next time I see him, which, according to Lily, is going to be this coming Saturday. No pressure. Ack!!!
I just cannot believe this is my life. I went from having a crush on a guy on the radio to having him commission me to write for him. And not just WRITE, but write VERY SPECIFIC THINGS that would probably make my mother send me to church or something. I’m so much the Good Girl in every other way, and yet somehow…I’m Damon Rayne’s personal erotica author.
How did this happen???
I don’t even care, really. I’m just going to enjoy the ride. Wherever it leads me.
And with that, I’d best get to sleep. Maybe my dreams will give me the inspiration I need to fulfill Mr. Rayne’s demands…
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Heather V. Swanson 
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