“Just one more thing. You don’t need to decide anything yet. You can meet Frank; play with both of us if you want to; maybe help us find a house and suitable female submissive – and then accept the job if you want it, or help us find someone else. It’s summer now, and we don’t plan to marry until early next year, so you’ll have lot’s of time to get involved with us – or not.”
“Lisa, congratulations!” I answered her. “I don’t think I want to be your houseboy, but I’d love to meet Frank and help you both any way I can. And I’ll be glad to play with the two of you if you want me. I’m not in mourning now, and there’s no way I’m giving up sex.”
“My problem is deciding what I want to do with my life, having lost my teacher and Mistress, and become somewhat disillusioned with the academic life. But it still has its attractions and advantages, and I may still go back to it. Though if I stay in Central Asian studies, it probably couldn’t be at McGill. I’d have to find a new teacher and thesis advisor elsewhere, unless McGill hires someone to replace Sorkin. Much as I love you as part of my family now, I know I can do something more interesting than keeping someone’s home.”
“Mom! If you’re losing Lisa, what about taking me on as your apprentice, or whatever you want to call it? I’d love to train with you or with Myrna Stiles, training subs and Dominants as lifestyle couples. That’s not something I’d need to think about. I’d commit to it in a heartbeat.”
“We can discuss it,” my mother said. “But I want you to hear your father’s offer first, because if you came to work for me, the first thing I’d do is send you to work for him.”
I was about to object, but Dad spoke up before I could open my mouth. “I can offer you a good job at my lectronics firm as a professional BDSM geisho,” he said. “If you don’t go back to academia, you could do a lot worse. Woodruff Electronics just won a bid that will require us to expand the company at least six-fold over the next ten years, helping to design, manufacture and test AI-driven robots and instrumentation for unmanned missions to Mars and beyond – to the asteroid belt and to the moons of Jupiter. Please don’t talk about this with anyone,” he went on. “It’s public knowledge that we won the contract, but only the contracting authorities at the space agency know for sure what we’ll need to do to meet it.”
“How would this contract make work for me?” I asked him. “For a geisho in BDSM? This doesn’t sound like anything I could contribute to.”
“There’s work for you – a lot of very interesting work – because I have a problem in human resource acquisition and management long before it becomes a set of problems in electronics. I need to hire and manage a lot of brain-power – not just warm bodies – who could also get hired, or have already been hired, by my competition. That means I need to make a lot of very attractive job offers, many of which will be accepted, to a lot of well-paid and very busy people.”
“Of course, money will be a big part of those job offers, but to run at a profit, we can’t win these people over with higher salaries alone. The working conditions and fringe benefits will also need to be outstanding, and that’s where you’d come in. To my brightest, most productive or most senior employees, I want to offer lifestyle assistants, housekeepers and sex partners. Along with my VP of Human Resources (who would be your immediate boss), I’ve discussed this problem with your mother; and she has explained to us the kind of training and management that would be required. It would take a trained geisho, specialized in BDSM and with a special interest in lifestyle D/s relationships, who would also have to master the intricacies of HR law and management. It would take someone very much like you.”
“And you’re offering me this job? And Mom, you’re saying that if I came to train with you, you’d send me to Dad to do it?”
“Almost but not quite,” my mother answered. “First, Lisa won’t be leaving me any time soon, so I don’t need a replacement for her, and she doesn’t need an assistant yet. Most of our income now is still from subcontracting to Myrna Stiles to help in training her clients. At this time, I wouldn’t hire you to assist or replace Lisa in any case. I can’t afford to yet, and you’re not ready. It would not be a sound business decision.”
“Second, I couldn’t just hire you and slot you into Dad’s job. He won’t hire you directly himself. If you want the job, you would be interviewed and hired (if you are) by his HR vice president, to whom you would report, who would train you to do the work. Hiring you directly, over her head, would be a sure way to piss her off, and maybe lose a senior executive of Woodruff Electronics. When your father discussed the matter with me and I suggested you for the job, he told me straight out that he could never just order that you be hired for it. The most he could do would be suggest that his VP take a look at you. Maybe he would also help you tailor your resume. But that VP would surely see other candidates, and the final decision would be hers. Of course, as his son, you would have an inside track; but she might very well give him an argument that someone else was better. And she might not like that her assistant, being her boss’s son, would have her boss’s ear. Your Dad might argue back, but he would leave her the final decision, and make clear that he was doing so. He would have to. It would be dumb to do anything else.”
“It was the same with Mistress Lotte, if you remember. I sent you to her and asked her to consider you, but she accepted you on your merits. If she had turned you down, I could not even have argued for you.”
“I will continue to help you and teach you no matter what you decide now; but if you wish to work in the field of lifestyle D/s and learn from me, my advice is that you consider what your father is suggesting: Without pressure from us, think it over and apply for that job if you want it. Then, if you win it, you’ll be taking classes in human resource management, but Lisa and I will probably be helping you advance your skills in lifestyle D/s training. If you don’t get that job, but still want to work in my field, then I’ll suggest that you apply to Myrna Stiles at LifeMates. She’d certainly have use for you in her instruction and training programs, if only doing gig work until you prove yourself.”
“I’ll second everything your Mom just told you,” my father added. “She’s correct on every point. I’ll help you apply for that job – prepare you with some knowledge you’ll need for the interview, and so forth – but you’ll have to win it on your own. If Judith Arruda, our VP of human resources, prefers someone else, I won’t overrule her and will make sure she knows that up front.”
“That said, I think that someone like you is exactly what we need in the position, and that the credential it will give you – unless we botch the project completely, which is not going to happen – will be a terrific asset on your resume. Arruda is very good at her job, and already has a big reputation. We already have a very strong design team, which is why we won the bidding for this contract; The project itself is spectacular and interesting enough to attract the biggest talents in the industry. Offering its key players the corporation’s logistical and financial support in acquiring and bonding with devoted personal assistants will set an exciting precedent if it works out, as the evidence to-date on the use of D/s couples in high-level staffing suggests it will. And colonizing the Solar System (at least initially) with robots, instead of needy humans, is certainly the way to get it done.”
“Arruda knows all this, and is already sold on the concept of staffing the top levels of a challenging project with devoted D/s teams, but she has had zero experience herself with lifestyle D/s although she is sexually open-minded and has played with power exchange in bed. She’s 42 now, eighteen years older than you are, but still attractive, sexy when she wants to be, and no one you’d be inclined to turn down if she sets her cap at you.”
“She needs someone to do for her, almost exactly what you were doing for Natasha Sorkin before that drunk killed her. My plan – at the right moment, probably about two months from now – is to offer her personal and corporate support in selecting, managing and remunerating a submissive protege of her choice to assist both in her personal life and in staffing up for the Mars project. I will describe you and your background in connection with that offer, and tell her that I’ll be suggesting that you send her a resume. That’s as far as I will go unless she asks for a personal introduction. Fortunately for you, she’s hetero. If she were gay, I’d be suggesting Lisa, not you, as her partner.”
“OK, Dad,” I said to him. “Thanks. I’ll think about this. It really is worth thinking about. Only…, it will be weird coming to work for you after the way my geisho career started.”
“Let me make it little clearer,” my father answered. “I’ll be your Dad at home as I always have been; but at work, if you want the job and get it, you won’t see much of me at all. Most of the time, you can forget that I exist. You’ll be working for Judy Arruda and following her directives. If she tells you something which seems to conflict with something you heard from me, or know about me, you will keep that to yourself and be loyal to her. Both as your father and as CEO of the company, I will know this, and will not feel betrayed. This is a promise I make in front of your mother. You can hold me to it.”
“OK Dad,” I said to him. “That’s fair enough, and it’s an interesting offer. Thank you for making it. And thank you, Lisa, for your houseboy offer, and congratulations again on your engagement. I’m looking forward to meeting your lucky fiancé. Between the two of you, you’ve me a lot to think about.”
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