Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel (4 page)

Well, I thought, he had, after all, used the word "slave"
out there on the balcony. But, you know, I'd thought of it differently then, more as in "slave of love" or something equally
silly. I hadn't thought of him seriously inspecting, evaluating
the merchandise. My face, and most of the rest of me I guess,
flushed deeply, and I started to weep with humiliation. I was
horribly embarrassed to be exposed as silly, shallow-missing meanings that should have been clear as day. Mostly, though,
there was the obvious humiliation of being chained, helpless,
open, obvious. Not only was I doing this, I was mortified to
realize, but I was unmistakably turned on by doing this, soaking wet inside, in fact, and of course he could feel it. And I
didn't even know if he cared one way or another.

Finally he let go of my ass and turned me back around.
Then just leaned back and watched me cry, as though that
were interesting, too.

When I'd calmed down a bit, he asked quietly, "Do you
like to be looked at?"

"Yes, Jonathan, I do," I sniffled, but I was surprised by
the certainty that underlay my weepy voice.

"Good," he said, and pressed the button to loosen the
chain.

"On your knees," he continued, "but keep your back
straight up and down and your chin up. That's a position I
like." He pinched my nipples, hard, and he slapped my breasts.

"Have you ever been whipped or beaten?" he asked.

"No, Jonathan," I said.

"You will be," he said. "Enough to leave marks but not
enough to scar or break the skin or injure you in any other
way."

He pulled off his belt, doubled it, and stroked my breasts
with it. He traced the outline of my mouth with it, and the
smell of the soft leather was overwhelming. I drifted off into
the sensations I was feeling, my eyes closing, and began to
moan.

"Quiet," he said sternly, and then, "Get back here and
pay attention." I opened my eyes wide, startled by the new
tone in his voice. He looked at me for an instant and then continued in his polite, somewhat pedantic mode, "That's the
sort of thing you'll learn not to do. I'll teach you. I have canes
and whips. You can trust me to give you just a little more pain
than you think you can stand. I'll beat you if you break the
rules or for any lapses in form or sensibility, and sometimes
I'll just do it for fun."

"Now," he continued, freeing my hands, "crawl over to
the other side of the room and make sure you keep your ass
high in the air. Pick up that rattan cane from the chair over
there in your mouth and crawl back over here to give it to me.
And don't slobber over it."

"Yes, Jonathan," I said, and did it. The cane was about
thirty inches long, just a flexible reed that was a little thicker
on the end he reached for when I came back. He told me to
kneel up again and to put my hand out.

"This is the most painful thing I'll use," he said, "and only
to punish you. So I want you to know what it feels like. It's
what they used in all those famous brutal faggy English boys'
schools."

It really did whistle through the air and it really did hurt
like hell, raising an angry livid welt immediately. I gasped
again, but this time I held back the tears. I can't keep from
crying if he hits me again, I thought. But I didn't think he
would. After all, the point of this blow was to communicate,
not to punish. It was to introduce me to the currency we'd be
dealing in. At least that's what he'd said, and I realized that I
believed him. I guessed that was a good sign. Still, I realized
that, while precise, his message was also intentionally and
profoundly ambiguous, because I knew that he wouldn't tell
me how many of such blows I'd be receiving.

"Get dressed," he told me now, "and sit down over there.
Do you want some coffee?"

I nodded.

He spoke into an intercom. "Mrs. Branden, could we
have a pot of coffee, please? Thanks."

Mr,. Brazziezz? I hurried to get dressed and sat down in a
straight chair nearby. He picked up the remote and retracted
the chain back into the ceiling. Thank God. I hadn't thought
I could concentrate on talking to him with it swinging ever so
slightly, a few feet from where I was sitting.

"Okay." He smiled. "Now, let's make a deal. But first,
ask me anything, everything. Address me any way you want.
If you sign on, you won't get this chance very often."

A pleasant-looking woman in her late forties came into
the room. She wore a tweedy sweater and skirt and some
antsy jewelry, and she carried coffee and cookies on a tray.
She looked like a hip legal secretary, I thought. "Hi, Carrie."
She smiled.

"Hi," I managed, and she smiled again and left.

Jonathan poured coffee. "Mrs. Branden's my housekeeper. And yes, she knows exactly what's going on. It's okay,
though."

I turned to him in fury. "What do you mean it's okay?
I thought we were alone," I sputtered.

He offered me a cup of black coffee. I nodded and took
it. And he laughed a little. "That, you've got to get used to.
You will, though. This is pornotopia-it's a place, Carrie, a
place where people live like this all the time. This afternoon
and all the times we'll spend together in the future are normal
here. Normal depends on strict and absolute rules that everybody agrees on ahead of time, and it also means that it's not a big hush-hush thing. There are witnesses. That's part of the
point and the pleasure. Total environment, or at least a convincing facsimile. Virtual reality."

I tried to think fast, but my mind felt dull and sluggish.
So I swallowed some coffee and took a deep breath.

"Wait a minute," I said. "Let me get this straight. Mrs.
Branden works for you. She knows what you do in here. She
thinks it's okay."

"Do you think it's okay?" he asked.

I had to consider that one. "I don't know," I stammered.
"I do know that it scares me a whole lot. I mean, well, I mean...
I mean, I don't really know whether something that can make
me feel so...so...make me feel like I feel right now... could
really be okay. The only thing I know for sure is that I want
it. Maybe I'll just have to wait to find out whether I think it's
okay." I was astonished to hear myself say that I wanted it,
but I knew it was true.

He nodded. "That's fair," he said, "and brave. And smart,
too. But then, that's partly why I want you, because you're
smart."

He seemed to specialize in this sort of friendly, matterof-fact remark, lobbing them into the conversation like
grenades aimed at demolishing every bit of cool I had left.
I didn't know what to say next. What were we talking about,
anyway. Oh, yeah...

"So, Mrs. Branden," I said. "Is she into it? Does she like it?"

"How would I know?" he said, laughing. He had a surprisingly pleasant, ordinary laugh. "I've never asked her.
I haven't got the slightest idea. I pay her a lot and we're very
nice and friendly with each other. It would be a whole lot
harder for me to keep all the rules I like to keep without her. Listen, Carrie, I can see that Mrs. Branden was a shock to
you, but don't you want to know anything else?"

"Okay," I said, "tell me some of these rules you keep
around here."

"You are always here when you say you'll be here. With
school, what would you say that means? Two weekday evenings, late Saturday afternoon through midday Sunday?
I won't take more time than a boyfriend. Less, probably.
You come to the side door. Mrs. Branden lets you into the
kitchen. You undress, and she puts on your leash and collar
and whatever else I want you to wear. She leads you in here.
You're tethered and waiting at attention for me when I come
in. And then you do absolutely everything I say. That's the
easy part."

"That's disingenuous," I said, trying to hide my discomfort and, yes, my excitement. Tethered and waiting...

"You're right," he said. "It's not easy at all. But I think
it'll be worth it for you. I'm a very responsible, methodical
person. Stuffy, when you get right down to it, but the good
side of that is that I'm consistent, detail-oriented, and very
dependable. It's a good deal, really-you do everything I say,
and you get a lot, quite a lot, of what you want."

"How do you know what I want?" I asked.

"Well, it doesn't take a rocket scientist," he said. "I mean,
you're here, aren't you?"

I nodded grimly.

"Sorry," he smiled, "that was a cheap shot."

"But I do know whatyou want," he continued, "in essence
if not yet in all its particulars. I can recognize it in your eyes
and in your open mouth. You do like to be looked at: admired
or belittled, adored or punished. You want to be daze to, by a desire that's more selfish and specific than your own. You
want that blank, floating moment of release, of submission, of
knowing that it's useless to resist. Free fall, happening faster
than even a motormouth like you can describe it.

"And you'll put up with the trite details, the silly redundancy of what we'll do, because I'll be showing you ways to
capture that moment, again and again and again. I'll give it
narrative shape, I'll keep it going, I'll figure out the particulars as we go along. And I'll stay ahead of you. You won't
have to worry about that."

The fire hissed just then, and one of the logs fell over,
punctuating what he'd said with a little flourish and fanfare of
sparks. I sat stock-still, trying my damnedest to believe that
this was really happening. I rubbed the painful welt on my
hand, glad to be reminded of corporeal reality. I looked at him
hard and he looked back serenely. He knew he had me.

I shuddered, but realized that I was also nodding my
assent. Still, I wasn't ready to stop questioning him. "And
suppose I call it all off," I said.

"Hey," he shrugged, "you know my address. I'll give you
my phone number. I don't have yours and that's fine. I don't
need it. So you can end this thing whenever-and howeveryou want. Write me a letter. Or you can call me up anytime
and tell me you're not coming anymore. You can leave a message on my machine. Fax me, e-mail me, whatever. Or you
can simply never show up again. But when you do come," he
continued, "you'd better be prompt."

He pulled a card out of his pocket, very businesslike now,
and rummaged around the table until he found an envelope.
"Here's my doctor's card. Make an appointment for an HIV
test. Get a complete checkup, too. I'll pay. And here's a copy of my latest HIV test. You can verify it with him. You can see
one from me every month."

"So you get tested every month," I said. "Suppose I start
fucking somebody else?"

"You won't," he said.

I was amazed. "That's an outrageous thing to say. Why not?
I mean, you know how attractive you are, but that doesn't
mean I won't fuck somebody else."

"That's not the point," he said. "I'm very glad you think
I'm attractive, but that's not what I'm talking about. You won't
fuck anybody else-at least, not on your own time-because
you'll be too aching, exhausted, and fucked out to want to
try. Trust me." I did, too, though I wasn't crazy about this
obnoxious gzziezz e,' Ina,; macho little speech. Still, his delivery
was impressive, casual and understated, as though he were
ordering a burrito. "Just a little more pain than you think you
can stand, please. With onions and hot sauce."

He pulled out some more cards from his pocket. "And
get a haircut. Like mine, really short, maybe even shorter.
Very butch, only it won't look butch. It'll look ...well, you'll
see. Anyway, they'll know what I want. Oh, and a leg waxing,
too."

"You pay for that kind of stuff too? Regularly?" I asked.

"Yeah," he said. "I'm rich, or rich enough, anyway. And
I know pretty much what I want, and I've spent a lot of time
figuring out how to get it. When you're rich, price isn't important. The main point is getting things to be the way you want
them. So I pay. Your job is to work that beautiful butt off to
be as perfect as the scenery aroundyou. Oh, speaking of scenery. You know, if this works out, we could go to Provence."

"No!" I shouted, before I was even aware that I was
saying anything.

We were both surprised. "What I mean is," I stammered,
"Provence is a real, historical place, not a fucking virtual
reality. And it's a place I care about and want to learn about
and understand. And when I go there, I go as me, wearing
my glasses and my own clunky shoes. It has nothing to do
with this."

The ironic lines around his mouth deepened. "Rio maybe,
then."

"Maybe," I said.

It took about two weeks to get all the arrangements made -the
doctor, the haircut, all that. Nobody in the expensive, tasteful
places he sent me to seemed to think it was weird when I asked
them to bill Jonathan, though I found it humiliating in the
extreme. They had to know, I kept thinking, these polite and
urbane functionaries. And certainly, the haircutter did seem to
know exactly what Jonathan wanted, and no, it didn't exactly
make me look butch. When he finished, I stared at myself for
a long while in the elegant chromed mirror. I looked terrific,
actually, in a cold, high-tech sort of way. Jonathan must have
a great eye, I thought, to know I'd look this good in such an
extreme haircut, but I also knew that wasn't the whole point.
I looked familiar, but not in a way that I could place.

I stared at myself all the rest of the day, in every mirror
and store window I passed, but I couldn't figure it out. Not
until I woke up, startled, the next morning at about 4:00.
What I looked like, I realized, was a collaborator, one of those
sad French girls who'd slept with a Nazi soldier, and after the
war the whole village takes its revenge, which includes shav ing her head. My god, I thought, was this what he'd intended?
A little message about sleeping with the enemy, brought to
you-and paid for-by the enemy. I paced around for a few
hours with a quilt wrapped around me and a cup of coffee in
my hand, distractedly shuttling between my mirror and the
window, where a cold gray dawn gathered light.