Sitting at a bar, of course

The bar your date chose has a ton of possible ways this could go wrong. There's the three drunk yuppie-looking girls sitting at a nearby table discussing something - the only thing part of their conversation you can hear is "I hate men!" - loudly. There's the bartender, a little older than you, dressed in a modest black shirt and slacks. There's a single waitress, who looks too baby-faced to work here, sliding around to tables all over.

Your date plopped herself on a barstool, ordered the single most expensive drink on the menu, and started in on it before you even got a glass of water. It takes you a second, but you remember that last time you went on a real date, where you had to treat a woman like a person, the man was expected to pay for the woman's meal. If you hadn't been sure that you could charm the bartender into a hundred percent discount, this would have been a dick move; as is, it's cheeky in an amusing way. It feels like a small stone thrown in front of an armored car.

"Okay, so - let's be real here. I", she says, taking a drink "am not an easy girl." She could say that again. "I want to be clear. You're not taking me back to your place at the end of the night. You're not even going to walk me back, or to know where my place is. I'm here because you asked me out, get it? And maybe this'll work out, or maybe it won't, but don't come in with expectations because you're too dumb to understand what we're doing here."

You nod, and somehow the conversation manages to flow smoothly after that. Both of you talk about hobbies, jobs, old and funny stories, and whatever else comes to mind. The waitress does not come up to you and offer to chop off her ass and serve it to you because your food is late. The bartender does not insist you put a bottle between her asscheeks and drink out of it. The yuppies don't decide to become human barstools.

You still have normal moments every day, of course. When you don't need something, girls don't offer it to you. But you'd been worried anyway that this date would be interrupted and ruined. You know that Mark, for example, takes it pretty casually that you've had his sister tied to a wall as your breastmilk dispenser for six months. But you're not sure how far your "normal" extends - whether a girl suddenly dropping to the floor and sucking your dick on your date will ruin it. You don't even know why Rosa isn't affected by your power, you can't be sure how she'll interact with people under it. And if this goes badly, you don't know how many other girls you'll find who are single, attractive enough, and not under your sway.

"So", Rosa says. "I hate small talk", she continues, as if she hasn't been contributing to the small talk too. She is clearly, visibly wasted at this point - her breath smells more like **** than the **** does. "You don't get to know each other like that, right? You don't - you don't - what's the word? Understand each other. You don't understand. You get all these small stories and stupid questions and blah blah blah. Tell me something you can't bring up in normal conversation."

Even wasted, she stares at your with unnerving focus, as if you're a stone she's examining to see if it's a gem, and she'll throw you back on the ground or toss you in her backpack based on what she sees. Weird seeing a woman look at you like that.

"I...", Well, there's one thing that you could broach. See how she reacts. If it goes poorly, you'll know that for next time. "Some women throw themselves at me. Literally throw themselves at me, if I want. I walk up to a cosplayer at a convention and tell her I need to use the bathroom, she lets me pee in her mouth. I don't have something to carry groceries in, a girl stuffs them in her vagina and declares that she's my personal bag forever. I once messaged a girl on OnlyFans and asked her for money, and she gave me that immediately. And then she told me I could always Venmo request her if I wanted more! I could walk up to a girl and tell her to jump off a bridge, and she'd ask which one. I have sex with tons of women, all the time, any way I choose, anywhere I want. And it's surreal, because nobody seems... to... care..."

Focus has turned to boredom. She looks so disappointed you're having flashbacks to middle school. "That's not really something you can't bring up, though. I mean, it's obvious. And you're right, nobody cares, because it's boring -"

You desperately grab at a way to turn this conversation around. "Fine, then give me an example. Tell me something you can't tell anyone else."

The words take a while to get from her ears to her brain, but her bored face turns into something... odder... as she processes what you said. A mixture of arrogance and vulnerability. "I", she declares, "live for myself. I might be nice to people sometimes, but it's because I choose to. Because when I choose to be nice, I'm the one in control. When I'm with a man, or woman, or group,", you can't tell if she means that sexually or not, "I'm the one who chooses what we're doing. I'll let people be happy if it pleases me, but that's also for the sake of my pleasure. If I want to hurt somebody - like I do half the time I'm with other women - then that's for my pleasure too. And more than that, I -"

In an old-timey cartoon you watched once, when a character slipped on a banana peel, the show would go into slow-mo. You'd see the character's face draw back into a look of surprise as they fell. And that's exactly what happened when the waitress, carrying Rosa's order of something expensive and saucy and visibly steaming, walks by where you're sitting and trips.

The bowl does not land on Rosa.

The food inside it does.

The food is hot, and Rosa is pulling off her shirt mindless of the fact that she's in a crowded bar. Not in the usual way girls take their clothes off around you, but because that looks genuinely painful. She doesn't get a chance to verbally react before the waitress starts apologizing. "I am sorry, I am so sorry, I hadn't meant to, I mean, I wouldn't, I -" And then she turns to you, and you see a familiar look in her eyes, that of a woman with a man she'd do anything for. "I can make it up to you. I can -"

"You can't", you state. You'd meant it to sound authoritative, but as you hear your voice you realize you must sound deeply angry instead. The poor waitress quivers at your tone. "You can't make it up to us by being our plate for the next round of food, or being a footstool, or being a horsegirl we can ride instead of taking a car. You can't do anything wacky and creative and servile. You can tell the kitchen to replace our order, and then you can get another waiter to serve us and you can fuck off."

"This stain...", your date says, "is never coming out. It'll stain anything it touches. And this outfit was six hundred dollars."

Women's clothing prices must be awful if flannel and jeans was six hundred, but you direct your attention to the waitress again. "And you'll pay her as much money as it takes to replace her full outfit. And we need something to wear for her that won't stain her car seats, so -"

Two of the three yuppies who were nearby earlier have come closer to you when they saw the accident, and when you say that they start stripping. Both are your date's approximate height, and although neither are attractive enough for you to let them do stuff for you normally, they're both pretty useful at this particular moment. One pulls off the jacket she's wearing over her bra and her tight pants; the other, in a tight red dress, pulls it off entirely. Both women offer you the clothes, which you offer Rosa, and the combo of jacket, dress underneath, and pants underneath that give her the same level of modesty that her original outfit did. Both girls, pleased that they could help you, return to their friend in their underwear, and absolutely nobody in the restaurant notices that anything is off.

Rosa, as it turns out, called an Uber while you were yelling at the waitress. You walk out to the curb with her to wait for the car, and are about to apologize for what just happened, when she starts talking instead.

"You know, when you asked me out, I only accepted because I was asked. Someone being chased is in control, right? But you seemed like a kind of boring pushover. What I was going to say in the bar is, I like being in control of specific types of people. People who are difficult to take charge of, but who I know I will win over. If I have to put in effort to control something, or someone, then they're more valuable to me because of it. Diamonds are more valuable than water, even if it's easier to find water, because diamonds are harder to get. You understand what I'm saying?"

"Yeah", you say, and the realization that you're being rejected stings. Not as much as it did last time, before the time you could walk into any building you pleased and fill a random woman up with your seed to destress, but it's still frustrating. You understand her completely on value. "I guess we're not seeing each other again, then?"

"I mean - to be honest, I liked that you snapped at that waitress. That you're not a total doormat, that you have some fire in you, that takes you from unattractive to neutral. I don't really have a strong opinion on you either way at this point, just **** neutrality." The Uber's pulled up, and the driver's a man. He's clearly impatient, and you can't control him into waiting. "I don't know if I want a second date, and I don't know if I don't. In the end, you couldn't even tell me anything you couldn't bring up with other people. How can I form an opinion of you when all we talked about was your surface level?" She starts entering the car, but the window is down, and her voice comes half through the window and half through the partially opened door.

As she sits, something clicks. It surprises nobody that girls want you, that they adore you and throw themselves at you. But there is one thing that still got the sort of reaction that a normal human being should have, when you tested. "I", you say, as she sits down and closes the door, "have girls throwing themselves at me. Offering everything to me. Letting me use them any way I want, even sexually, even if it hurts them. And - If you win me over, I can offer to let you use any woman I control sexually. For whatever pain and pleasure you want to inflict, for your own sake."

The car speeds away before she can respond.

You get a text a few minutes later.

You'll have a second date. She'll let you know when.