("`-''-/").___..--''"`-._ `6_ 6 ) `-. ( ).`-.__.`) (_Y_.)' ._ ) `._ `. ``-..-' _..`--'_..-_/ /--'_.' ,' (((' (((-((('' (((( K R I S T E N' S C O L L E C T I O N _________________________________________ WARNING! This text file contains sexually explicit material. If you do not wish to read this type of literature, or you are under age, PLEASE DELETE THIS FILE NOW!!!! _________________________________________ Scroll down to view text ------------------------------------------------------- This work is copyrighted to the author © 2014. Please do not remove the author information nor make any changes to this story. All rights reserved. Thank you for your consideration. ------------------------------------------------------- Sexual Power for Women by Georgeann Cross (no address provided) *** Women, if you tie your partner down so he's helpless, he knows his bad-ass act is no longer credible. If you make love to him, slowly, giving him time to open up; and you look into him deeply enough, you'll find the long-lost little boy in him. You'll see it. You'll recognize it. (MF, d/s, toys, oral, anal, fetish, orgy, bdsm) *** *** Chapter 1, In which Patrick is enslaved It was early Saturday afternoon and Patrick, my lover of two months, had just arrived in my apartment. I led him to the kitchen and we chatted while I finished putting away the dishes, then he backed me up to the counter and pressed against me as we kissed. He was horny as I had hoped, but I wanted to make doubly sure. I pulled away, opened the refrigerator, and got out a bar of Swiss dark chocolate. Positioning my behind against the counter again, I broke the end of the bar into fragments and opened the wrapper. "Antidote for my omelet," I explained, putting a bit in my mouth. I took a larger piece and fed it to Patrick as he pressed against me again. I savored the bitter sweetness of the candy, the feel of Patrick's cock straining against me through his jeans, my anticipation of what I had planned for the afternoon. When we'd swallowed, we kissed some more. It made his cock strain harder. I gave us each another dose of chocolate. Then another kiss, another bite, another kiss, another bite, until he was saturated and wouldn't take more. I pulled away again and put the remains of the chocolate back in the refrigerator, then looked down at the bulge in Patrick's jeans and ran two fingers along its length. "I know what you want." I looked up into his eyes. "I'm going to tie you up again." "God! You're kinky!" He wasn't objecting — had no reason to — had no idea just how kinky I was or what he was in for. He expected the same thing I'd done each of the other three times I'd tied him up, and those three occasions weren't all that different from the nine other lovemaking sessions we'd shared so far. "Get yourself comfortable and lie down on the bed." He headed for the john while I went into the bedroom and got out the restraints. The first time I'd tied him up, I told him to start with an empty bladder because it might be a while before I let him go, and he'd learned well. Now he would be gone several minutes; he was too aroused to urinate and would have to cool himself down. While I waited I undressed. A few minutes went by and he came in carrying his clothes, his cock at rest. I was sitting on the edge of the bed. "You are beautiful!" he said, looking at me briefly. Then he busied himself setting down his things. His clothing didn't really need that much attention and I knew he was fussing just to control his lust; he wanted to avoid the embarrassment of letting me see his cock grow to full erection while he was still standing, especially since he knew my propensity for teasing. That shyness was one of the things that attracted me to him, just as my teasing was one of the things that attracted him to me. "Thank you." I was flattered by his compliment and knew he meant it. I don't perceive myself as beautiful, and I know I don't conform to the standard of beauty promoted by the media, but I've got used to the idea that there are men who honestly see me that way and I enjoy it. Patrick lay down on the bed and positioned himself in the middle. He knew the procedure. I took a length of nylon webbing and tied it around one wrist, using a knot that neither tightens nor comes undone when pulled. I took another length and did the same with the other wrist. Then I tied each one to a leg of the bed so his arms were fully extended to the sides. I lay on top of him and kissed him, lightly at first, then deeply, then lightly again. His cock responded from the first. "I love making love to you when you're helpless like this and can't do anything but turn on to me." I repositioned myself so he could eat my pussy. I straddled his face, resting one knee on either side of his head, my feet below his armpits, my hands on the headboard. I was horny myself and I knew his mouth would have to satisfy me for the day, so I was going to get all the pleasure I could from it. Patrick had given me head several times before. Once, the last time I'd tied him up, it had been in just this position. He always did it well, and on this particular afternoon I had more than a dozen orgasms. I let him go on much longer than last time, but I doubt that it led him to suspect anything. He enjoyed my pleasure along with me, telling me sometimes when I came that I was beautiful that way, then setting out to make it happen again. When I'd had enough and one more, I moved backward and sat lightly on his chest, supporting most of my weight on my legs. "Like my pussy?" "Definitely. It's the prettiest I've ever seen." "How would you like to be my love slave?" "I don't know. What does that involve?" "Well, let's see... You'll have to be completely faithful to me and not have sex with anyone else; you'll have to take off as much of your clothing as I tell you when we're alone together and let me touch any part of your body any way I want; you'll have to touch me any way I tell you, or not touch me if that's what I say; you'll have to let me tie you up whenever I want; you'll have to play with yourself while I watch if I tell you; you'll have to tell me all your secrets and fantasies... I guess that about covers it, but if I think of anything else I'll let you know." I could feel his heart beat faster and faster as I spoke, and he looked absolutely panicked when I mentioned the possibility of his having to masturbate while I watched. "Oh, yeah!" I added. "When we fuck, it'll almost always be with me on top." He took a long time to answer, his heart beating so hard I could hear it. "I like the relationship we've been having." "So do I. It's not my intention to stop doing that. I like having you as a friend and companion, and I like us to cuddle with both your arms around me instead of tied away, but sometimes I want a sex toy I can play with just for fun. "It's way too kinky for my taste. You've got me scared half to death just talking about it." "I can understand your being scared; you'd be giving up a lot of control to me. But you know I'm a decent person, and you know I love you, and you must have a pretty good idea that I'll make sure you enjoy it." He thought a while. "Still, I can't agree to that." "Oh, you'll agree to it. Tied up like this, you don't have any choice." "What are you going to do?" He sounded really worried. I climbed off his chest and knelt on the floor with my upper body inclined across the bed, resting on my elbows. I stared at his cock, now just a short way from my eyes. It had been frightened back to its resting size and position. "I'm going to play with my new toy here until you agree. You know how, once you come, your cock gets real sensitive and you need for it to be left alone for a while?" I gave him time to say something, but he didn't. "Well, first I'm going to make you put on a little show for me. I'm going to play with you, and you aren't going to be able to help but come, and I'll get a real close- up view of how your cock does its thing." It grew and stiffened in response, and started to angle upwards. It was still lying against his upper thigh, but bigger than it had been, and pointed in my direction. "I see the idea turns you on. Neat! Well, after you come, if you still haven't promised to be my slave, I'm going to keep playing with it until you do. I don't think it'll take very long to convince you." I lubricated my index finger in the drop of fluid at the tip and slid it over the frenum. His cock jumped and came to rest against his lower abdomen, grown again to its full size. "You were trying to hold that back, weren't you?" Again I gave him a chance to answer, and again he didn't. "See? I know how exciting this is for you. Of course if you really don't want to be my love slave — if the idea really turns you off — all you have to do is keep from coming. After an hour or two I'll get the message and let you go." I got some tissues and knelt alongside his right hip. I wiped the end of his cock, then used my thumb and forefinger to squeeze the rest of the fluid in his urethra out into one of the tissues and wiped again. "I think you'll agree to it though. When you're ready, just let me know and I'll stop what I'm doing. No sense torturing you any longer than necessary." I took his cock between my hands and started milking. I knew that the situation itself excited him so much, he would come in less than a minute no matter how gentle the stimulation, but I wanted to get in a few words to make sure we'd be on the same wavelength next time we saw one another. "We'll be doing a lot of this kind of playing, now that we both know how it turns you on. Next time we get together, I'll probably tie your hands behind you and drop your pants first thing, then press against you and kiss you like we were doing before, until your cock is sticking straight out in front of you. Then I'll back away and just look at it." I let go of his cock and stared at it. "My sex toy!" He had been breathing heavily, still was, and now his cock twitched its enthusiasm for my attention. "Yummy! Nice fantasy, isn't it?" I waited for an answer again, still not touching him. Nothing. "You're going to have to get used to sharing your thoughts and feelings with me. It's part of being my love slave." Still nothing. There was no sense making an issue of it; by our next date he would have had an unbearable excess of time in which to rehearse the secrets he wanted to share with me, and he'd have plenty to say. "I know the thought of that scene turns you on, even if you're not used to admitting it, just like I know you're turned on by the idea that I'm going to watch you spurt." I resumed my stroking. In seconds he was panting. I felt his cock stiffen and I knew he was at the point of no return. "You're losing it, Patty!" And he did. His panting turned into a stream of short cries and he dug his heels into the mattress, lifting his bottom off the bed. His cock relaxed for a fraction of a second, then stiffened again, sending a gob of come splashing onto his cheek. "Ooh, sperm!" I continued milking his cock, keeping pace with the rate of its throbbing. "That must feel so good!" After half a dozen spurts I reminded him, "Now, you just let me know when you're ready to make that promise, and I'll stop." I continued stroking at the same rate. Even before he ran out of fluid, his breathing turned to a kind of whimpering, and the sound intensified as he realized he needed the stimulation left off. He tried twisting his lower body to get his cock out of my reach, but I followed along and continued my stroking. Soon he was squirming continuously and begging me to stop. I didn't answer, just went on doing what I was doing, enjoying the sense of power I got from holding him in that state, loving him in his helplessness. He endured it longer than most men are able, but at last he gave in. "I'll do it! I'll do it! Just stop!" I let go as soon as the first, "I'll do it!" registered. As I'd told him, I saw no sense in torturing him any longer than necessary. Besides, trust is essential to any good relationship, and I wanted to show him that I keep my word. "Good. I knew you'd see it my way." I smiled at him, lovingly, the way I felt. He looked back at me shyly, trying to compose himself. I could see in his eyes how much in love he was, and the embarrassment he felt, and his confusion at it all. "I got to watch your come." He lay there looking at me for a moment. "I guess you did. God! I love you. I don't know what to make of it, Georgeann, but I love you." "I love you too, Pat." I looked into his eyes a while longer, then broke away to get a towel. "Clean you up!" I said, making a display of my thoughtfulness. And I made the cleanup as intimate and affectionate as I knew how. First I wiped away the puddles of come, then, with short strokes, I dried and fluffed his pubic hair. After that, I squeezed the residual come out of his urethra onto the towel the way I'd got rid of the lubricating fluid earlier, and lastly I wiped the end of his cock dry again. I put the towel aside and admired him, looking at his body, gazing into his eyes, just enjoying his company. Finally I took hold of his cock again. "My sex toy!" "I guess I am. I've never loved anyone this completely." "Neat! I'll do my best to help you enjoy it." I undid the knots in the nylon webbing and lay down next to him. We cuddled, spoke again of our love, kissed, napped. When we awoke, it was evening and we were hungry. We dressed and set out on our customary walk to Francescas Pizza, where we shared an agreeable dinner of Francesca's simple but honest food. Sitting there together, we looked for all the world like a wolf guru and his brainwashed waif, except to Francesca, who knew me too well to be fooled. *** Chapter 2, In which the author gives an account of herself and this work There was a time when acetylsalicylic acid and penicillin were called drugs and a woman who exercised, ate a moderate and balanced diet, and avoided alcohol and tobacco was said to be looking after her health. At that time, if one had been permitted to talk about such things at all, I might have been called a dominatrix. The old words have since been taken over by the hard stuff, so that only the likes of heroin and cocaine are called drugs, while people take care of their health with such medications as acetylsalicylic acid and penicillin if they haven't followed a wellness program or it has somehow failed them. A dominatrix wears a costume of black leather with metal studs. It includes an uplift bra and spike heels. She has a severe hair style and carries a whip that she uses with terrifying frequency, apparently because she's always angry. She ties her victims into the most uncomfortable of postures and subjects them to hideous tortures. To top it off, she gets paid for all this. By the people she mistreats! It's beyond strange. That's not me. I don't look like that, I'm seldom angry, and I don't beat or torture people, though I do use the word — sometimes as a playful exaggeration and sometimes as a convenience. I don't own an unusual amount of leather, little of my clothing is black, and I favor neither black nor leather when I anticipate making love. I rarely wear a bra and almost never high heels. I don't have a whip. I'm in my forties, slim, of moderate height. My breasts are small; my hair hangs a bit below my shoulders; I keep my nails short; my ears have never been pierced. I usually wear jeans and sneakers with a T-shirt in summer or a sweatshirt in winter. I'm gentle by nature, friendly, easy to talk to. I don't like to hurt people. I've never even spanked any of my lovers. I drive courteously and with regard for the rights and safety of pedestrians, even when visiting the Great Northeastern Megalopolis. And I'm an amateur. I've never been paid for sex, nor has anyone ever offered to pay me. If someone did make such an offer, I wouldn't respond favorably. That sort of transaction shocks my conscience, though I don't presume to judge the people who do things that way. Am I, then, really a dominatrix? The word is convenient, so I'll continue using it whether I'm entitled or not. Genuine dominatrix or mere pretender, I'm a woman who enjoys sexual power, and this book is offered so that you, and other women like you, may be empowered in the same way if you so choose. I'm including this account of myself so you'll be able to judge whether my advice is worth considering. I was born, raised, and educated in California. I've worked my entire adult life in the computer industry of Silicon Valley, writing technical manuals. I've never married, partly out of a determination to remain childless and partly because I rebel against allowing the state to license my living arrangements and love life. I've had a number of relationships with men, one at a time, and some of those relationships were very much like marriages in closeness, intensity and duration. They ended because of my fear of parenthood or because of my partner's need to move to another part of the world or for other ordinary reasons. The only real difference between my relationships and those of so many other women is that I openly took control of the sexual aspect of each one and, just as openly, used the leverage that that gave me to direct the relationship as a whole. As more women read this book and discuss it, the pattern will become common. When I took control of my first relationship, though, there was no book to guide me. I got started differently. It's commonly recognized that our sexual appetites are shaped by our earliest adventures, and it was a chance occurrence at the age of fourteen, before I had any real sexual experience, that sparked my interest in female domination. I was spending a few summer weeks visiting a friend who had moved to Maryland the year before. One afternoon we were at the home of her neighbor, Beth, along with a few of Beth's other friends. There were six of us in all, fourteen to sixteen years old, and we were skinny- dipping in the enclosed backyard pool as we'd done a couple of times previously. At some point my friend approached me in the water and quietly told me that our hostess had noticed a boy hiding in the bushes near the garden hose, spying on us. Beth wanted us to close in on him slowly, pretending not to have observed his presence, then grab him. I don't know how well we pretended not to notice him, but we did manage to get hold of him and pin him to the ground. He was about my age. Beth asked him why he was hiding in the bushes and he said he didn't know. "Yes you do. If you didn't know why you were doing it, you wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of getting in here and hiding. You wanted a chance to see us without our clothes on, didn't you?" He admitted that he did. "I'll bet you were going to brag to your friends about it afterward, and then they'd all be teasing me for the rest of the summer." She thought a moment. "We're going to show you how it feels to have someone staring at you when you're naked." She bent down and removed his shoes and socks, then told Rena, who was sitting on his chest, "Let's get that shirt off." The two of them unbuttoned it and I made sure that his right hand, which I'd been holding against the ground, didn't get loose when we bent his arm and slid the sleeve down. When the shirt was off, Beth grinned at him and said, "Soon you'll be as naked as we are." Then, to Rena, "Help me get his pants off." They pulled the pants down slowly. He was wearing undershorts and they were pushed up in front like a tent by his stiff cock. I couldn't wait to see it uncovered. My pussy was congested and I could feel the pulse beating in it. Beth and Rena got his pants clear of his feet, Beth supervising to make sure neither of his legs got loose of the girls holding them. Beth looked at the tent in the undershorts, then up at the boy's face. "You have a hard-on. You're really going to be embarrassed when those shorts come off and we all get to see it." The two of them took hold of the elastic waistband of the shorts and slowly pulled them down. I still remember every detail of how his cock came into view — the glimpse I got by peering between the waistband and his body as they lifted the elastic clear; the frantic effort he made to free his wrist from my grip as he realized that if he couldn't stop us, six girls would see, the way it stood so stiff, as I now know only a young boy's does, when the shorts were down below his bottom. I remember everything about it — its color, its texture, the way the few strands of hair sparkled in the sun. It was the first erect penis I'd ever seen and I was utterly transfixed. Soon the shorts were pulled over his ankles and every inch of the boy's body was bare. "See how embarrassing it is?" Beth teased. "You shouldn't have spied on us." Rena giggled and gestured toward the boy's cock. "Let's play with it till he can't stand it." Beth licked her lips. "Go ahead!" Rena took it between her thumb and forefinger and began stroking it with a milking motion. The boy struggled a bit, then gave up. His breathing turned into a heavy panting, and then, all at once, about twenty seconds after Rena had started, his whole body seemed to convulse and his cock spurted. "It's broken! I'm dying!" He struggled again to free his arms even as he bucked his hips and continued to ejaculate. I watched, fascinated. I had read descriptions of the male orgasm, but I'd never seen it happen. I hadn't expected that the amount of fluid was so great, or that it was expelled with such force. When the fireworks were over and Rena withdrew her hand, the boy was half crying, a bewildered expression on his face. "Let me go! It's broken!" Beth answered him. "No it isn't. Didn't that ever happen to you before?" He shook his head and said no. "Well, that's what happens when a girl plays with your thing." She pointed at the white liquid on his chest. "You wet all over yourself." He looked where she was pointing and blushed. "I guess we might as well let you go now. Don't tell anyone you were even here, or we'll say you took your own pants down and played with yourself in front of us. Then they'll think you're a real sickie and put you in an institution." We let him up, we all got dressed, and we escorted him out. Sex, for me, became that scenario. When I was horny, what I fantasized wasn't conventional courtship and the sort of passive lovemaking that was expected of girls in those days, but my rendering some boy helpless and teasing him sexually. (In fact I still enjoy replaying my recollection of that day in Maryland and, understanding now that our sexual tastes really are shaped by our early experiences, I get a particular kick out of thinking that somewhere in this world there's a man my age whose favorite sexual fantasy is his recollection of how he was held down and made to have his first orgasm by six curious teenage girls, one of them me.) As I grew up through my high school and college years, I became involved in a series of relationships with young men, as any young woman does, and in a few purely sexual adventures besides. I met my partners in the usual ways — by being in the same classes, through shared interests, or accidentally — and until I was twenty my relationships were almost completely ordinary. They differed from those of other lusty young women only in that I contrived to tie up each of my partners at least once and sexually toy with him. After all, it was my favorite fantasy. I got my partners to go along by whatever means necessary, though only a couple seemed sufficiently enthusiastic to do it repeatedly. I didn't try to sexually enslave these young men, and for a very simple reason: I hadn't yet any idea that such a thing was possible. Then, during my junior year of college, I met the man who was to become my first love slave, and my preferences set the tone of all our lovemaking. That relationship showed me what was possible, and since then I've sought to sexually enslave every one of my lovers. I've almost always succeeded too, and I've become so sure of my power that I simply won't continue seeing the occasional man who refuses to do things my way. I know what I need and I know I can get it. Over the years I've learned a great deal. I've learned the anatomy and physiology of male sexual response, and its psychology as well — especially what happens inside a man's head when a woman takes control and toys with his sexuality. I've learned technique and developed it into an art form. What does all this mean? What does my history tell you? What use can you make of the knowledge I've gathered? At one extreme, you know that female domination isn't for you. It involves taking on a role that's somehow contrary to your core personality. I can't dispute that — you know your own nature — but I invite you to continue reading anyway. You'll find out how it is for me and for other women like me, gain some insight into men, perhaps even pick up one or two techniques that turn out not to make you uncomfortable. At the other extreme, this book is just what you've always been looking for. You're as enthusiastic about female domination as I am, and you're going to use the techniques I recommend, along with any others you hear about or think up, to take control of any relationship you get into. You're reading this as a technical manual and it won't disappoint you, even if it doesn't tell you how to be the dominatrix in the fetish magazines. Most likely you're at neither extreme. You're committed to a relationship, perhaps a marriage, and its sexual aspect is nothing at all like the sexual aspect of my relationships. You're interested in the potential value of my advice but you're skeptical, and well you should be. To start with, I seem to have gone to school in a different world. I told you I arranged to sexually toy with every one of my high school and college lovers, and that seems unlikely. When you were that age you knew any number of young men with whom such behavior would have been unthinkable. I knew them too. There were only a few of them. They avoided me or I, them. I have a confident manner and a natural talent for teasing. That attracts men who are psychologically well suited to my agenda and repels most of those who aren't, though unfortunately it also attracts the sort of man who has a need to become involved with a woman he regards as a bitch and beat her into submission. I have an instinctive dislike for thugs and an intuitive ability to recognize them, so I've always managed to avoid men who might react to me with violence. If you're sure none of your male schoolmates could have been maneuvered into that kind of scene, it's probably because you're unaccustomed to considering the possibility, or because you were taken in by their macho posturing and bluff. Most of them could have been, and most grown men can too. Even if you grant that, you still have good reason to be skeptical. I've told you my rule is that my relationships go my way or they don't go; I'm willing to take the risk that a new lover will reject me as too kinky. Your priorities are different. Your existing relationship is important to you and you suspect that if you tried doing the things I've done, the consequences would be disastrous. It's certainly something to consider. There are indeed relationships that would be irreparably damaged by an attempt to apply my techniques, and men who would react with the ferocity of a cornered animal. Contraindications are almost always obvious though, and if you heed them, you can pretty well avoid serious risk. Besides telling you how — and why — to take control of your partner and make a devoted love slave of him, I'll be telling you how to recognize situations in which it's better not to make the attempt, and I'll even show you how it's possible to use my techniques to improve a relationship without going as far as I do. Though it might seem that my gung-ho attitude and limited stylistic repertoire should have given me little opportunity to learn such subtleties, that's not at all the case. Over the years I've made a great many friends. Some have been men, two have been celibate (one finds everything in California) and a few have been consistently happy with their partners. Most, though, have been involved in at least one difficult relationship with a man at some time during our friendship. Whenever one of my friends told me of a problem she was having with a husband or lover, and the problem seemed to be one she could solve by using the power of her femininity, I'd describe my qualifications (if she didn't already know them) and offer advice. If she was interested, I'd give her all the gritty details she needed to bring her man under control. Some friends took my advice and some didn't. Those who did usually told me how it went. Some thought up techniques of their own, experimented, and shared the results with me. Through years of this sort of vicarious experience, I've learned quite a bit about what can happen when a woman attempts to take control of an established relationship. I've learned to predict the success or failure of the attempt with reasonable accuracy, I've learned what kinds of problems can be alleviated by female domination, and I've learned what kinds of problems can be caused or aggravated by it. In recent years, several of my friends have made repeated attempts to persuade me to commit my knowledge to written form so that it might be available to any woman who wants it. As you see, they succeeded. The result is the book you now hold in your hands. One thing I beg. Before you attempt to use any of the advice I offer, please read it all, cover to cover. Many important points are presented only once to avoid boring you with repetition. Backward references are frequent while forward references are almost nonexistent, so reading from the beginning is easier than skipping around — the first time, anyway. Reading to the end will save you from acting on incomplete information; topics that seem to have been covered completely are sometimes further elaborated after the introduction of new but related material. More important still, nearly every strategy and technique I recommend is unsuited to certain situations or types of men, and most of the warnings you need are clustered in the later chapters. If you read everything before acting, you're less likely to find yourself confronted with unexpected difficulty. My fondest wish is that this work will affect people only to the good — that relationships between women and men will be improved, that individual women and individual men will be happier, and that no harm will come to any person or any relationship. Gung ho! *** Chapter 3, In which we examine the Loop During Patrick's fateful Saturday afternoon visit with me, I set up a situation that demonstrates a little- considered truth about the relationship between the sexes — a truth of prime importance to a woman seeking sexual power: If a man is horny to begin with, and the sexual chemistry between you is such that you naturally turn him on, and he's physically unable to resist, you can make him have an orgasm; his will alone can't prevent it. It's easy to see why this truth is so obscure. The situation doesn't come up in most people's lives. A man is rarely put in a position where he's unable to resist what a woman might do, and when it happens, it's not in the presence of a woman whose intentions are sexual. Even among couples who play at bondage the situation is rare; when the man is tied up, the woman doesn't create in his mind a need to resist the stimulation she offers. Besides, we've been acculturated to a view of masculinity that tells us that men are always eager for sexual release. We're not used to thinking that a man might be subjected to sexual stimulation and try to resist it. This in turn feeds the rarity of the occurrence; the situation has so seldom been set up because only a few women have thought to do it. Not all societies share this view. Anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski, in his 1929 tome, The Sexual Life of Savages, describes the yausa of the southernmost villages of the Trobriand Islands — a ritual sexual assault committed upon a man by a group of women. According to Malinowski's informants, the group would first tear up their victim's pubic leaf, so that he would have to go naked afterward and be unable to conceal what had happened to him. Next they would hold him down and display their genitals and stimulate his penis until it got hard; then one of them would mount him and fuck him until he came. If that didn't exhaust him, another woman would take a turn. Eventually the man would be completely worn out. When he was, the women would urinate and defecate on him, paying particular attention to his face, and often beat him as well. This sort of pastime is a bit much for so gentle and fastidious a person as me, and I wouldn't like to see it become common in California, but it does prove my point. A victim of the yausa, once set upon by the gang, knew the script. It was, after all, a ritual, and notorious throughout the islands. Still, even though these women had destroyed his pubic leaf, even though he knew the pollution to which they were going to subject him, he couldn't help but get hard when the right sort of stimulation was applied, and he couldn't help but come when he was fucked. The power of femininity is truly irresistible. There are two reasons it's important to understand that you're irresistible. One is that it builds confidence. Confidence gives you an even sexier aura and makes you even harder to resist — an effect that's magnified still further when your man is unable to interfere with what you might do. Confidence also keeps you from being bluffed off course. If you set up the sort of scene that I did with Patrick, especially if you do it for the purpose of gaining leverage in dealing with a problem in your relationship, many a man will try a bluff to get you to stop as soon as he sees what you're up to, and he'll do it even while tied naked and helpless. He'll ask in a disappointed tone, designed to make you feel guilty, whether you're "that kind of person." He'll tell you that what you're doing turns him off, hoping to stop you before you've had a chance to make your own observation of the intensity with which it turns him on. He'll tell you you'll never see him again. He'll tell you more things than I can warn you about. Whatever he tells you, it's best met with a confident demeanor. You won't always succeed this way, but almost always. If you lack confidence — if you let yourself be bluffed — you'll never succeed. The other reason it's important to know you're irresistible is that if you're to control your man completely, he has to know he can't resist you, and he has to know that you know he knows. It's actually necessary to demonstrate this to him, as I demonstrated it to Patrick, and to do so repeatedly throughout your relationship. It might not be all that obvious that Patrick was trying to resist me. He certainly made no great show of it, but that's because if he had, he would have been all the more embarrassed when the inevitable finally overtook him, and he knew from the outset that it would. Patrick was trying not to come for several reasons, all of which I had given him for the purpose of creating resistance that I would defeat. One was that I was going to continue playing with his cock, in its state of sensitivity, until he promised to be my love slave. Continued stimulation would be distressing. Being forced to submit and make the promise would be embarrassing in itself, and it would also open up the possibility that I might use his sensitivity again in the future, either coercively as I used it that afternoon, or simply as a toy. He had never before had a lover who was aware of that possibility, much less interested in it, and it made him feel terribly vulnerable. Another reason for his resistance was that I was going to watch him ejaculate, and that embarrassed him too. Sure, he had come in my pussy a dozen times, but I don't have eyes there. Sure, he'd had other lovers, and it's certain that some of his previous lovemaking had included manual stimulation that led to orgasm. Sure, it was obvious from my age and skill that during my life I'd witnessed the ejaculations of many men, and many times each. Still, on that afternoon, his emotional reality — the scene as it felt to him — was that he'd been tied up by a curious teenage girl who was going to make him have an orgasm so she could watch him ejaculate. And she would tease him about it afterward. There was yet another reason for Patrick to resist, and it's the big one: His orgasm would confirm that what I was doing to him was indeed an irresistible turn-on. It would confirm that he was turned on by the idea of being my love slave, by the fantasy of having to stand before me with his cock sticking out, by the expectation of having me watch him come, by the awareness that I knew how sensitive his cock gets after he comes, by my intention to play with that sensitivity. All these things were running through his mind and, because of what I was saying to him, he knew that I knew. He was embarrassed in the extreme at being so obviously turned on by all that, and he was turned on by his embarrassment — by the feeling that all my attention was on him, that I'd taken control of his body, that I knew his most private thoughts and feelings, that he had no place to hide, that he was so intimately exposed to me in every way. Stripping the last bit of commentary from that explanation, we're left with the simplest possible description of the psychological Loop in which a man finds himself when placed in that sort of situation: He's embarrassed at being turned on and he's turned on by his embarrassment. I call it the Loop because that's its shape — a self-reinforcing cycle made up of two components, each of which fuels the other. The way I take control of a man's sexuality is to set up this Loop in his mind and feed it, doing this to add to his sexual arousal and that to add to his embarrassment. Reduced to ultimate simplicity, the Loop might sound silly, far-fetched. With an appropriate context of circumstances and events though, like the circumstances and events of the afternoon Patrick promised to be my love slave, it becomes quite credible — different, to be sure, from what most people are accustomed to, but as credible as any obvious truth. In the coming chapters, you'll find a number of scenarios that illustrate the sexual dynamics of female domination, and the Loop figures prominently in all of them. You'll also find a wide range of technical advice, and much of it will be focused on the Loop. Perhaps some of the scenarios will be built on circumstances that so closely match your own that you'll be able to enact them almost as presented, and with good results. You'd do better, though, to use the scenarios only to help you understand the Loop and its possibilities, then steer your own course. Your circumstances, after all, are at least somewhat different from those of any couple described in this book, your personality is certainly different from that of any other woman, and your partner's personality is different from that of any other man. If you develop a good understanding of the Loop, you won't have to follow a recipe; you'll know what you're trying to accomplish and you'll be able to find your way as you go. An understanding of the Loop also enables you to feed it optimally — to say and do all the right things to enhance your lover's perception that you control his body, that you know his most private thoughts and feelings, that he has no place to hide, that he's intimately exposed to you in every way. Of course! If you want to create the impression that you know a man's most private thoughts and feelings, nothing could possible help so much as actually knowing them. If that were the whole story of the Loop, its potential would be awesome enough, but there's more. First, the Loop has a way of getting burned in — it quickly becomes a man's habitual mode of arousal. If you press your body against his and kiss him, not only does his cock get hard, but he gets embarrassed by knowing that you can feel it. Without additional prompting he gets further excited by his embarrassment, by knowing that you know he's embarrassed, and by imagining what you might do with both his hard cock and his embarrassment. Even your smile, by itself, teases him about the secrets you know and becomes a powerful erotic stimulant. Second, the Loop is addictive. Your lover begins to fantasize, even crave, scenarios in which his loss of control turns out to be especially embarrassing. His fantasies keep him turned on, and his awareness that it's you who transforms fantasies into reality keeps him turned on to you in particular. As a consequence, his need for you is much stronger than it would be in an ordinary relationship. Because he needs you, he wants to please you. And his addiction to the Loop (and to you) can sometimes be made to compete with other, destructive addictions he might have, giving you a degree of leverage in getting them under control. Third and best of all, the Loop can make a man love you with truly phenomenal intensity. We women have traditionally been more in love with our men than they, with us. This is because we've opened ourselves up to them, shared our secrets, and been accepted. At least that's how it was early on, when love was new. Later, if things went according to the usual pattern, we continued to share what was important to us, and our words were barely heard and dismissed as trivial. Not as good as what we started with, but a pretty fair substitute when you consider the alternatives: it's better than being rejected and it's better than feeling obliged to keep everything inside as men do. At the beginning of their relationships with us, men, too, open up and share their secrets. Love involves an exchange of vulnerabilities, and a relationship that doesn't begin with mutual self-disclosure doesn't get off the ground. Men, though, are raised to seek mastery over everything they encounter, including their women, so they soon find it necessary to erect barriers against us, hide their vulnerabilities, and do what they can to control us. In the process they lose the feeling of being in love, and it's a great loss. (Women who are bitter about being downtrodden will argue that men have done immeasurably more harm to women — stripped us of our humanity to a far greater degree — than they've injured themselves. I don't disagree, but the question doesn't interest me. Men don't dominate me; I dominate them. And I do it to the good of both and the injury of neither. One of the thoughts with which I nourished my enthusiasm for writing this book was my conviction that few women who take control of their men will be so stupid as to follow the male pattern of depriving themselves of the closeness that initially made their relationships appealing.) The Loop is a vulnerability that your man has to share with you. Unless he goes to the unlikely extreme of ending your sexual relationship, he can't avoid the Loop; you can make it part of any or every sexual encounter. And once you've got him turned on, he can't refuse to share his feelings; even if he's as reticent as Patrick, his body will tell you everything. When you comment on what it does, even if only by saying, "Mm- hm," he'll know that you know. It might be less than clear that the Loop is a vulnerability. We women are more matter-of-fact about such things, but men invariably experience it that way. A man is supposed to be in control — of himself, of his woman, of his whole world. The Loop is a loss of control over his own body and psyche that, unlike passing out in a drunken stupor, isn't socially sanctioned. It isn't regarded as common, either — at least not yet — so he worries that he's perverted. Horrors! He has a dark secret! Other people might find out! Maybe it shows! He can find any number of reasons to feel vulnerable and insecure. And so there you are, the two of you, and he's sharing a significant vulnerability with you. He starts feeling that he's in love with you. If you let him know that you find the Loop an endearing part of him, if you let him know that you don't care that he's perverted, if you let him know that his arousal and embarrassment together make a neat plaything, if you let him know that you can be trusted — that you appreciate being trusted — to give him a safe place to enjoy what he's feeling, he'll definitely fall in love with you, and in a big way. Don't go so far as to tell him he's not perverted, or that you wouldn't want to lose such a neat plaything, because that will dilute his feeling of vulnerability, and with it the feeling of sharing his vulnerability with you, and with that the feeling of being in love. When your man is both habituated to the Loop and in love with you, his love becomes a part of the Loop. When you say or do something that intensifies his embarrassment, he feels a rush of love as well. If you see this happen, you can tease him about how he can't help but love you for embarrassing him. Do this with acceptance and affection, and it feeds the Loop, adding further to his arousal, his embarrassment, and his love. There's another way in which the Loop helps build a man's love for you — one that's more primitive. Love is nourished by sharp images of the beloved — snapshots etched in the consciousness, if you will. That truth is probably as little considered as the truth with which this chapter opened, but truth it is nevertheless, and if you think about it, you'll recognize it as such from your own experience. When you set up the sort of scene I did with Patrick, one of the things that happens is that your man pays attention to you. He doesn't close his eyes and get lost in his own world, as men so often do during ordinary sex. He watches you. He listens to you. He builds a sharp mental record of everything that happens. When it's over, he remembers every word you said, every move you made, every detail of how you looked, sounded and smelled. And for reasons buried deep in our brain stems, it makes him love you. Patrick continued his relationship with me, as my love slave, for twenty-seven months. Obviously the reason wasn't that he felt bound by the promise he made while tied to my bed. He stayed because I was the most sexually exciting partner he'd ever had, because he was more intensely in love with me than he'd imagined he could be with anyone, and because he felt more loved and accepted than ever before. That's what the Loop can do. *** Chapter 4, In which we examine the anatomy, the physiology, and some of the psychology of male sexual response, from a practical point of view If you want to sexually enslave a man, it helps to start with a good understanding of the workings of male sexuality. In all likelihood you already have most of the knowledge you need: you've read other books, gathered a good deal of practical experience, and refined your skills as a lover. Still, there are a few things I feel I ought to mention — things that aren't in those other books because their authors don't share my perspective — things that may have escaped your notice as you accumulated your experience, perhaps because the men in your life were trying to avoid being known too intimately. I'm going to fill in what the other books leave out, and I'm going to try to do it without repeating too much of what they say. Let's start by considering a man in the most ordinary of sexual states. It's been a while since his last orgasm, but not so long that he's starting to get horny again; sex isn't on his mind. Still, it's been long enough that he'll respond favorably to sexual stimulation; he won't feel bothered or pressured by it; rather he'll enjoy it and turn on. Surrounding the neck of his bladder and the upper portion of his urethra is the prostate gland. It's slowly producing one of several fluids that will be mixed together and pumped out the next time he ejaculates. The prostate is spongy (though firm) and the fluid it produces remains within it until it's expelled. Another fluid is secreted by the testicles. This fluid carries sperm cells and, unless the man has had a vasectomy, travels through two tubes (the vasa deferentia) to a pair of reservoirs called the seminal vesicles, there to await the next earthquake. The seminal vesicles are located above the prostate and behind the bladder; their outlet passes through the prostate and into the portion of the urethra that the prostate surrounds. Besides storing fluid produced in the testicles, they secrete a fluid of their own. Over time they fill, pressure within them builds, and they distend. They're drained only by ejaculation. If the man encounters no sexual stimulation, the production of sexual secretions continues at its usual slow pace. When enough time has gone by, and enough pressure has built up in his seminal vesicles, the man starts having sexual feelings and fantasies. He's horny — perhaps not extremely so, but definitely horny. What seems to happen (though it's unproved by the scientific standards of the medical world) is that pressure in the seminal vesicles is felt as a need for sexual release, as lust. If, instead of letting this happen by itself, you sexually excite the man, the process is speeded up. When he's aroused, more fluid is produced in a shorter time and the seminal vesicles fill faster. Prolonged stimulation also leads to a feeling of congestion throughout the reproductive system and a dull ache in the testicles. The man becomes desperately horny, often in less than an hour, and he'll do almost anything to have his lust satisfied. If he's like most men, he'll let you tie him up no matter what he fears you might have planned, just so it includes emptying those reservoirs. If you stop stimulating him, perhaps because the demands of the real world separate you, and if he has things to do that take his mind off sex, the feeling of congestion and the ache will dissipate, but his seminal vesicles will still be full and he'll respond readily to stimuli that are even vaguely sexual. If he sees a line drawing reminiscent of a nude woman, for example, he'll feel a twinge of arousal before the cause registers in his consciousness. He'll easily drift into sexual fantasy, which will cause another erection, accelerate again the overfilling of his seminal vesicles and, if continued for any length of time (as is likely), bring back the feeling of congestion and the ache. Prolonged stimulation or fantasy also leads to the production of a clear lubricating fluid by Cowper's glands, located near the base of the penis. This fluid doesn't accumulate, but is secreted into the urethra and, if there's enough of it, leaks out the tip of the penis without producing any sensation along the way. Men are highly subject to arousal by psychological stimuli, including their own fantasies and the Loop. Almost none, though, can reach orgasm through psychological stimulation alone. Furthermore, men have few erogenous zones, and stimulation of these, though arousing, won't induce orgasm. Orgasm is reliably brought on only by a specific form of stimulation of the penis. Still, erogenous zones are fun to play with and therefore worth looking for. The common ones are the scrotum, the perineum, the anus and the nipples. The scrotum is best stimulated by lightly running a couple of fingers along its surface, parallel to the middle of the body, in either direction or both. If the perineum is erogenous the technique is the same, likewise the anus. The effects of nipple stimulation vary greatly. Most men exhibit a strong erotic response to having their nipples played with by hand, sucked or licked. Some don't respond at all. A few find any stimulation painful. One of my lovers could tolerate only the lightest licking, but found that erotic. At the other extreme are men who are aroused by having their nipples pinched, bitten or even clamped. Experimentation will let you know what works best on your man, and you'll have a lot of fun finding out; just don't start at the rough end of the spectrum or you may undermine your partner's trust. Though stimulation of erogenous areas other than the penis will almost never of itself induce orgasm, it may do so when combined with a level of penile stimulation that alone would be just as insufficient. If, for example, you're fucking your man slowly and with short strokes — which you know from experience won't make him come unless you keep it up for a long time — sucking his nipple at the same time might put him over the edge in seconds. The penis is designed to be effectively stimulated to orgasm by friction with the vagina, but the details of that design aren't at all simple. The penis is a large organ, and only two small parts of the surface have sufficient sexual sensitivity so that stimulation will reliably induce orgasm. One is the frenum, where the glans (or head) meets the undersurface of the shaft and seems to be split in two by a continuation of the slit in the tip. The other is the corona — the protruding ridge at the edge of the glans where it flares out from the upper surface of the shaft, diametrically opposite the frenum. During sexual intercourse, regardless of the position used, these two areas are stimulated by the walls of the vagina, and it's that stimulation that precipitates the man's orgasm. If you're on top, you can control the intensity of the stimulation by varying the length and speed of your strokes and the tightness of your vaginal muscles. From a physiologic point of view, it doesn't matter whether you apply the stimulation with your vagina or your hand; stimulation of the frenum and corona induces orgasm, and does so reliably. This is a different matter from the question of how a man likes his penis handled. That varies. One likes to be gripped tightly and pumped roughly, the skin dragged along to rub against the underlying tissue; another likes only a fingertip touch along the undersurface. For every gradation in between, there are men who like it. If I'm involved with a man, I try to learn his preference, but it doesn't really matter because most of the stimulation I apply is psychological rather than physical. When I'm ready to make him come, one of my own favorite techniques will always work. The most effective of these — reliable even when used on a man who's only moderately horny — is to lightly massage the undersurface of the penis with one hand, brushing the frenum with each stroke and sometimes running the fingers over the scrotum, while lightly massaging the upper surface with the other, brushing the corona with each stroke. This approximates the stimulation his penis would receive in your vagina. Your hands may be synchronized or not, or synchronized some of the time, depending on how exotic you want to get. Another technique — a more effective variant of Rena's — is to position the lower segment of your thumb against the upper surface of the shaft, crosswise, just below the corona; wrap your index and middle fingers loosely around the shaft; then move your hand smoothly up and down so that with each stroke the thumb slides over the corona while the pads of the lower segments of the index and middle fingers slide over the frenum. Adding to the stimulation, the web of skin between your thumb and index finger will naturally tend to brush against the protruding ridge on one side of the glans, while your fingertips will brush the protruding ridge on the other. If you're right-handed and the man is lying on his back, this technique is most easily practiced from his right; if you're left-handed, from his left. With either of these techniques, the lubricating fluid that the man secretes can become a nuisance. It dries partway and gets sticky, interfering with the free motion of your hand. This isn't a problem if there's too little of it to notice, or so much that it can't dry, but most men produce just enough to be troublesome. There are two ways of dealing with it. You can squeeze it out of the urethra and wipe it away before it starts to dry, or you can use a lubricant that overwhelms it, such as mineral oil. (Mineral oil packaged as baby oil has a scent, even if the label says it doesn't, that turns some men on and others off; there are very few to whom it does neither.) If stickum becomes a problem and you don't want to use mineral oil, you can clean it up with a damp cloth or your tongue. (This seems like a good opportunity to explain why I have so little to say about fellatio. I regard it as useful for just a few very specific purposes, such as cleaning up half-dried male lubricant or inducing an erection. Otherwise I avoid it because it limits communication: you can't talk; you can't see your lover's face nor he yours; you can't even get a good view of his cock.) My third technique for inducing orgasm by hand is the least reliable. It works only on a man who is very horny and lying on his back, but it has two advantages, one of which is that the stickiness of drying lubricant doesn't get in the way. What I do is rub my palm against the frenum and nearby portions of the underside of the penis. The motion of my hand, of course, is parallel to the axis of the penis, not crosswise. What makes this technique so appealing is that since the man's cock isn't held in place, its responses are put on display. At moments of particular excitement, its rigidity increases and it presses against my hand, which amuses me greatly and embarrasses my partner to the same degree, especially as I tease him about it. And there again we have the Loop. As a man approaches orgasm, the muscles of his pelvic floor contract and his cock stiffens. If stimulation is withdrawn as this starts to happen, the man will usually, but not always, slip back from the edge; the muscles will relax and his cock will lose its extreme stiffness and become only ordinarily hard. If stimulation is continued, though, orgasm begins. The fluids stored in the prostate and seminal vesicles are pressed into the upper portion of the urethra. The man feels a tingling inside and knows he's coming; he's going to ejaculate and there's no longer any way to prevent it. Semen starts flowing into the lower portion of the urethra — the part that runs from the base of the penis to the tip. At some point the muscles of the pelvic floor relax for a fraction of a second, releasing the extreme stiffness of the man's cock. Then they contract again, giving the urethra a hard squeeze. His cock stiffens again and spurts at the same time. The pressing of the components of the ejaculate into the urethra continues until there's nothing left to deliver or until the ejaculatory spasms end, whichever comes first. The ejaculatory spasms continue for some minimum number of spurts if stimulation stops immediately, or until stimulation is withdrawn (which may not be until long after the supply of fluid has been used up) or, in extreme cases, until exhaustion sets in. The spasms are spaced four fifths of a second apart. After the first spurt, the muscles of the pelvic floor relax again, exactly four fifths of a second after they did the first time; then they contract again, and a third stiffening of the man's cock coincides with a second spurt four fifths of a second after the first. If the man has been trying not to come, but loses control and feels the upper portion of his urethra start to fill, he can delay ejaculation only so long as he can keep the muscles of his pelvic floor contracted, holding off that first momentary relaxation. It won't be very long. Sometimes he can do it long enough so that some semen traverses the entire length of the urethra and leaks out the tip of the penis before the first spurt, though that doesn't signify a strong effort to hold back unless you know it's unusual for that man. Once the muscles of the pelvic floor take that first little break, the spasms follow each other uncontrollably at intervals of four fifths of a second; the man can't delay the second spurt as he can the first. Each of the first few spurts causes the man an intense thrill of pleasure. It doesn't matter how desperately he may have been trying not to come or why; he'll still experience that thrill with each spurt. And (unless he's both uncommonly inhibited and in a position to prevent continued stimulation) once the first spurt has overcome him, he can't help but want to pump out the rest. This, too, happens regardless of how hard he was trying not to come, or for what reason. Say he got himself in a spot like that boy in Maryland, but he has more experience. He knows what might happen, and he fixes in his mind a determination to maintain control, to preserve some measure of dignity. First he tries not to come, and of course he fails. As his cock stiffens and he feels that tingle, he resolves to put on an air of detachment and remain as still as possible even as he ejaculates. With the first spurt, though, his resolve is obliterated. He arches his back and thrusts his hips, overwhelmed by a mad desire to do what he must, no matter how embarrassing. This desire is separate from the reflex contractions of his ejaculatory muscles and separate from the pleasure of each spurt. It takes possession of him completely, a primeval force that's been around longer than fur or feathers, but which is still him, and more genuinely so than the complex personality it displaces. Not only does a man's attempt to hold back his orgasm fail to diminish its intensity, it actually makes it more powerful. It's like building a bigger dam. When it finally bursts, everything in the path of the flood is devastated. If a man has been wanting an orgasm as if to scratch an itch, it might amount to little more than a sneeze in his penis; an orgasm that he's been trying to resist will overwhelm him. His whole body will convulse; his emotions will go bonkers; his mind will be wiped. It's something to see! At some point during a man's orgasm, fluid stops being pressed into the urethra. In some men, this ends the process of ejaculation, and continued stimulation of the frenum and corona has little or no effect. In most, though, it brings only a need to end the process of ejaculation, and continued stimulation keeps the reflex spasms going, accompanied by a feeling of distress at being unable to stop them. Few women get the opportunity to observe this phenomenon; a man whose orgasm has gone on long enough is usually in a position to end the stimulation without making his partner aware of his vulnerability. Some men, though, become so sensitive that when they fuck, they need to pull out immediately after ejaculation; the continued pressure of the vaginal walls on the frenum and corona, even in the absence of motion, is too much to bear. If you've had such a lover, you've had an unusual opportunity to observe the male need to protect the penis from prolonged stimulation, though he might never have explained what was happening. (Men, as we've seen, tend to be secretive about their vulnerabilities, and there's many a man who would rather leave you feeling puzzled and rejected by his hurry to put some distance between you than let you know that his cock is too sensitive to leave in your pussy.) Most men don't become quite that sensitive, but continued active stimulation of the frenum and corona causes them distress. You'll see it if you're fucking your man from above and you hold his wrists down, tighten your vaginal muscles, and continue thrusting after he's come; or if you tie his arms away as I did Patrick's and continue rubbing his frenum and corona with your hands after the spurting of fluid stops. If you want to hold your man in this state — and I recommend that you do, at least occasionally — there are four things you should know. First, it can't do any harm. The distress of continued stimulation isn't pain (though some mean may call it that) and it doesn't reflect tissue damage — not even temporary damage. When you stop, your partner's distress ends immediately, and that brings us to point two: When you stop, even for a few seconds, the ejaculatory spasms also stop. If you resume stimulation, it will have little or no effect, so don't take a break until you're sure you're done. Third, the stimulation you apply must be specifically to the frenum and corona. The nerves that end there are the only ones that reliably force continuation of the ejaculatory spasms; if you milk the shaft alone, the spasms will end, comfortably, when the supply of fluid runs out. (If your man is an exception, great! But don't expect it.) Fourth, your man's cock itself will give you some help. You can feel the continuing spasms and use them to time the motion of your hands, which makes for a much more effective sort of stimulation than a random beat. And for as long as you keep the spasms going, the process of detumescence is slowed, giving you a convenient degree of resistance to rub against. Usually you can even continue fucking if you don't give your partner clearance to pull out. For a period of time after a man has an orgasm, he's physically incapable of responding to sexual stimulation. The length of this period varies from one man to another, and isn't always the same even for the same man. It tends to be shorter in younger men and ranges from seconds to hours. In my experience, five to twenty minutes is typical. During this time, a man has no sexual desire and is likely to find any attempt to stimulate him irritating, both physically and emotionally. This refractory period is followed by a time during which arousal is physically possible, but stimulation is still likely to be perceived as an annoyance. The man just doesn't want sex. Even if he's tied down and normally finds you irresistible, you might not be able to make him come. If he isn't tied down and you make advances, he's likely to develop a severe attack of performance anxiety. He gets worried that your continued acceptance of him is dependent on his meeting your sexual demands of the moment, and that not being horny, he'll fail. That worry kills whatever capacity to respond he may have had. Perhaps he starts a petty squabble so he can reject you over some silly issue of his own choosing rather than be rejected himself as sexually inadequate. I've always taken care that my lovers don't fall into this unpleasant state. My method is simple. I don't attempt to arouse a man who isn't ready for it. I'll be affectionate. I'll cuddle. I'll let him know that I love him and that I appreciate his love for me. But I won't lick his nipple. I won't take hold of his cock. I won't put my pussy in his face, or even suggest he play with it. I won't do anything that says, I want sex now, until I know he's ready. My reason goes beyond a desire to save him from performance anxiety. I want my lover always to think of sex with me as something he craves, so I keep the supply at least a little behind the demand, sometimes way behind the demand. That keeps him in the habit of wanting me, and the possibility of not wanting me doesn't enter his mind, even though I know there are times he doesn't. What would happen if, for example, I were to have him eat me when he was sexually satiated? He would experience the sight, smell and taste of my pussy objectively, as sexually neutral. I don't want that to happen. I want him always to look forward to the opportunity to see, smell and taste me, and to find me a turn-on every time. I don't want to give him one chance to be objective about my pussy because I don't want him to learn how. The obvious question is, What's the good of having a love slave if you can't use him as you please? A simple answer is that I can use him as I please, but the relationship will go better and last longer if I'm considerate, realistic and sensible in my demands. A more complete answer is that sexually enslaving my partner allows me to manage the relationship, and I can manage it better than he can, precisely because I know better than to use him without regard for his feelings. One of the reasons I advocate female domination is that most women, given the opportunity, manage their relationships better than men do. We take a more balanced approach. We're more mindful of our partners' needs and desires even while looking after our own. My respect for my lover's need to rest from sex is an example of this. If I subjected him to sexual demands when he needed to be left alone, he would come to resent it, just as many women come to resent the ill-timed sexual demands of their men. A relationship controlled by a woman who fails to consider her man's needs will deteriorate just as rapidly, into just as deep a state of misery, as a relationship controlled by a man who does the same. With power comes responsibility. Inevitably. *** Chapter 5, In which the reader is invited to take an inventory of herself for the purpose of gauging how well female domination might suit her Female domination suits some women and not others. Would it suit you? Let's ask first whether it appeals to you. We tend to do well at what arouses our enthusiasm. Some women are so far from enthusiastic as to reject female domination outright. Their reasons are diverse, but they're all valid. I can assure you that if you know female domination isn't for you, you're right — it isn't. Some women are interested — maybe even more than interested — but they're committed to relationships so nearly perfect as to discourage tampering. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. Perhaps, but if your relationship is so solid as to be unbreakable, you won't really be taking much of a risk; if your interest in female domination is strong, acting on it might be worthwhile. Maybe your partner even has fantasies of becoming your love slave. Perhaps when you met, he sensed that you're the sort of woman who's capable of enslaving him and that's part of what attracted him to you. Of course it's hard to be sure, but you might suspect it, especially if he gave you this book. Women who try female domination usually do so out of either enthusiasm or desperation, sometimes both. Enthusiasm is simple — That's for me! Lemme at him! Desperation is more common. A woman is committed to a relationship that her partner is making insufferable and she needs a way to overcome his stubborn refusal to change. Women who try female domination out of desperation are sometimes enthusiastic, but not always, and desperation is certainly nowhere near as good a predictor of success as enthusiasm. A woman who is desperate without being enthusiastic will often succeed if she still has some affection for her partner, likes sex, has the personal attributes that make an effective dominatrix, and is reasonably comfortable with both the idea and the techniques of female domination. A woman who has come to hate her partner, dislikes sex, feels there's something unnatural about female domination, or is disgusted by the techniques of female domination, won't succeed. Unfortunately, though revulsion guarantees failure, enthusiasm doesn't guarantee success. Enthusiasm makes success likely, but it's possible for a woman to believe in female domination as an ideal, even fantasize having a love slave, yet still find the actual doing of it so alien to her nature that she can't. What I'd like now is to invite you to assess yourself for the purpose of forming a realistic opinion of whether you could succeed at sexually enslaving a man. Perhaps the results will temper your enthusiasm; perhaps they'll overcome your doubts if you're unenthusiastic but desperate; perhaps they'll reinforce your doubts; perhaps they'll even reinforce your enthusiasm. What I'm hoping is that an objective personal inventory will help you overcome both the contagion of my own enthusiasm and the discouraging influence of society's conventions, so that whether you decide to use my techniques or reject them, your choice will truly be right for you. The first thing to consider is whether you're constrained by a taboo that puts these techniques beyond your reach. Let's look at a couple of taboos. Some women, even after twenty years of marriage, can't walk around naked in their own homes. Can't! Could such a woman use the power of her femininity to take control of her marriage? Maybe. It depends on what else she can and can't do. Here's a taboo that's more remote, not even sexual: Some women (and more men) can't make an honest and wholehearted attempt to correctly pronounce a foreign language; they have to deform it into the sound system of their own. Taboo goes beyond reluctance. It's absolute. It makes a behavior not just difficult but impossible. If you can't use the techniques of female domination, you can't. Sorry. If no taboo prevents you from using the power of your femininity to control your man, there's still the question of how you feel about it. Think about what I did to Patrick that Saturday afternoon and imagine doing the same. If the idea sexually excites you, or even if it just seems like fun, female domination will very likely suit you. If you would feel ridiculous — if the slightest difficulty would make you feel like a fool who should never have tried such a silly stunt, while a perfect performance would make you feel like an actress in a play by Georgeann Cross rather than a real woman in a real relationship — then you're not ready. You may want to practice by doing other things that present the same sort of challenge. If you learn to handle them well, it's likely that you'll also be able to manage female domination. If it would make you feel like a guard in a Nazi concentration camp and therefore bad, you're probably bumping up against a dogma that's lodged between your feelings and your perception of them. Try to work your way around the dogma. You may find it helpful to pay special attention to the autobiographical material in this book. I'm a dominatrix, but I'm no Nazi — not even close. As you get to know me, you'll see where the differences lie. If you have a strong need to be dominated, and playing the dominatrix would leave you with a terrible sense of loss at having foreclosed the possibility of getting that need satisfied, your choice is clear: go for what you need. The purpose of this book is to help other women (and their men!) develop relationships that will make them happy, not lure you into one that will make you miserable. If the idea of playing with a man's cock until he comes bores you — if it never interested you very much to begin with, and you've done it too many times with one man or another to whom you felt obligated, when you couldn't bear to let him inside you — putting yourself in charge isn't going to make it any less boring. Even if it's obvious that you need to do something to take control of your relationship, that need won't make up for your distaste. Your feelings will be apparent to your partner and negate the effect of your attempts to turn him on. If you feel as I do that a man's cock is just about the neatest plaything ever invented; if you can't imagine ever getting tired of it; if you like the way it responds to your touch, the way your play opens your partner up to you, the spectacular show when he comes, the implicit affirmation that the power of your femininity is too great to resist and that that's what makes it all happen, then you'll probably derive even more pleasure from sharing aloud the understanding that this wonderful plaything is truly yours, that the power of your femininity really overwhelms him, that you make him come. I haven't covered the whole range, but you get the idea. If you honestly find female domination appealing, not just as a political ideal but as something to do, you're off to the best possible start. Consider now whether you have the qualities that make it a realistic option. Trustworthiness One attribute that's absolutely essential is trustworthiness. We can examine it in either positive or negative terms, and though I prefer the positive, we'll start by looking at the negative. If a man distrusts you, he's not going to be your love slave, and he'll distrust you if he has reason to suspect that you mean him harm. If he distrusts you, he certainly won't let you tie him up (unless he's in a suicidal depression) and, while you might not want to tie him up very often anyway, his acquiescence is symbolic of the degree to which he's willing to give himself over to you. If you want to sexually enslave your lover but he doesn't trust you, you'll have to earn his trust or you can't succeed. Coercion alone won't work, at least not for any length of time. It's certainly a useful tool for overcoming a man's initial resistance, but it won't hold him. True, a token level of coercion may always be necessary to keep your relationship from reverting to the conventional, but if your lover has any means of escape at all, the only way to keep him enslaved over the long haul is to lead him to the belief — his own belief!— that he's best off as your love slave. He won't believe that if he distrusts you. Let's look at the positive side now — at what you and your lover stand to gain if he trusts you without reservation. He'll share his most secret thoughts and fantasies with you and love you for accepting them, as well as for using what he tells you to make your control over him all the more complete. He'll regard you as a safe haven where he can be loved for himself without having to worry about the judgments of the world outside. When you make decisions for the both of you — the kind that men usually make so badly in conventional relationships — he won't feel resentful because he'll know you care for him and have his needs at heart. If you treat him lovingly and keep his secrets, he'll respond with a level of devotion that's rarely seen. He'll try to do even more to meet your needs than you do to meet his. Many times a man has told me, as we rested together after I'd teased him to exhaustion, "That was so embarrassing!" My answer depends on my mood and on the effect I want to create. "Mm-hm!" "I know." "Neat!" "Wait till you see what I do Saturday!" Occasionally I answer more seriously. "I'm happy to be able to give you a safe place to enjoy it. Thank you for trusting me to know you like that." That sentiment is as much a part of me as the teasing is, and sometimes I feel the need to say it. It always brings a warm response, and the exchange affirms the caring and respect behind the kinky sex. It's one of the benefits of trustworthiness. Empathy Another quality you need in fair measure is empathy, so you can read your lover's feelings quickly and respond to them effectively. You'll be teasing him a great deal, and you have to learn what kind of teasing turns him on, what kind is perceived as mean, what kind has to be avoided because it triggers the recollection of some childhood horror unique to him. You'll make mistakes, and sometimes you'll have to apologize for a hurt and administer emotional first aid. Women in general are good at this. The development of empathy is part of our basic training; we've always been expected to take responsibility for our relationships, even when we weren't permitted to control them. If you skipped basic training though, and never made it up, and now find that you can't always tell whether someone is laughing or crying, it will make for difficulties. From a positive perspective, a high degree of empathy enables you to play the Loop perfectly. You'll be able to gauge your partner's responses accurately, you'll know where his attention is focused, and you'll always be sure of what to do and say. Empathy will also make your lovemaking more spiritually rewarding; you'll be able to read not only the more obvious of your partner's responses, but his every fleeting emotion. And you'll know that each one is something that you caused — a gift of feeling from you to him, perhaps exquisitely subtle and complex, made possible by the power of your femininity. How empathetic are you? If empathy is alien to your nature, please hesitate, at least, before proceeding. If, on the other hand, you're Empathy Personified, a relationship that you control should be most gratifying to both you and your man. The ability to communicate effectively A dominatrix has to be able to communicate well. You'll be aiming to produce a certain psychological effect in your lover, and this effect is achieved almost entirely by a combination of speech, facial expression and posture. If you're to succeed, you have to speak well, mug well, and carry yourself well. If you talk in a monotone, if there are words you can't bring yourself to utter, if your face has the blank look appropriate to a high-stakes poker game, if you carry yourself as though you're waiting in line to be guillotined, then you're going to have problems in any relationship and lots of problems in one that you try to control sexually. If you're to feed the Loop, you have to be able to tell your man what you're going to do to him, exclaim over the reactions of his body, and leave no doubt that you know what he's feeling. If you want him to know that he's safe with you — that you accept him for the person he is — you have to say the words. Whatever you tell him will be more believable if your tone matches the content of your message, and all your speech will be more effective if it's well-modulated. Your face is also a means of communication. Its expression can convey love, curiosity, determination, enthusiasm, and a host of other feelings. If you know how to control it you'll accomplish a great deal. Your posture can project confidence or betray fear. It can express lust, boredom or hostility. Adjust it purposefully and the message your lover gets will be the message you intend. As you take control of the nonsexual aspects of your relationship, you'll have to let your partner know what you want and need from him, what he must and mustn't do. If you fail to do this clearly, then punish him for misunderstanding you, he'll develop resentments that will undermine the relationship. Consider how well you communicate. Do people often misunderstand you or misread your mood when you think you're being straightforward? read you too well when you're trying to deceive? If so, it might be a good idea to take a couple of courses in communication and acting at your local community college before you try the role of dominatrix. If you already communicate effectively and know it, you're all set to go. The ability to act strategically To take control of a relationship, it's necessary to act strategically. To maintain control of a relationship it's necessary to continue acting strategically. You need to gather and remember information about your man, implement long-term plans without arousing suspicion, and generally do the right thing at the right time. Let's look at some of the preparation that went into my afternoon with Patrick. During our first two months together, I learned his bowel schedule. When I tied him to the bed, I knew he could comfortably stay put for as long as I might need. Until that day, I took care never even to mention any form of lovemaking except fucking. That created a context in which he was virtually certain to be embarrassed at having me bring him off by hand while I watched — and not just a little! It also ensured that he would find the varied sex play of the following months exotic and exciting. The second time we fucked, I got on top. I wanted to see how he liked it, and I found he liked it just fine. I began our fifth session by telling him I was going to tie him to the bed and fuck him. He couldn't feign skepticism, because he knew from experience that I could manage the female superior position. Happily, he didn't argue, panic or ask whether I'm into whips. It was on that occasion that I first advised him to empty his bladder before I tied him. There are three reasons I bother with this. First, it's intimate, it shows that I'm comfortable discussing so personal a detail, and it invites him to be comfortable initiating such discussions with me. Second, it ensures that for as long a time as possible, he won't be distracted by a full bladder. Third, it shows that I'm concerned for his comfort, from which I hope he'll infer that I'll treat him well while he's tied. I didn't pull any surprises, just tried to gauge his reaction to the experience. It was all I had hoped for. He was excited in the extreme, he couldn't take his eyes off me, and his orgasm was the most intense we'd yet shared. The eighth time we fucked, I tied him again. When he came, I continued thrusting my hips a little longer than I had previously. I kept it up just long enough that he started to squirm but not long enough to make him suspect I was doing it on purpose. That's how I learned he was one of those men who need the stimulation stopped when they run dry. I found out without letting him know I was interested and without having to make him come by hand before I was ready. I tied him yet again for our tenth fuck and had him start by eating me so he wouldn't find it unusual in the future. I didn't do anything else that could have struck him odd, and I certainly didn't make him squirm again. The next two times, he was on top and of course not tied. Ask yourself whether you can manage this sort of thing. Are you a natural spy? Do you have the patience to time your moves strategically? If so, you'll have much more fun with female domination than if not, and most everything you try will succeed. A talent for teasing Because of the nature of the Loop, you'll find female domination easier if you have a natural talent for sexual teasing. Teasing can probably be learned, and ordinary skill can certainly be perfected to the level of an art, but natural talent makes everything easier. There aren't any objective criteria by which you can gauge your talent for teasing, but every woman with whom I've discussed the matter knew whether she had it. Some who knew they had the talent had a way of using it that was too mean to be sexy, but that's a different issue. Ask yourself whether you're a natural tease. If you are, you have much of what you'll need. If not, perhaps you'll pick up enough pointers here to do reasonably well. If teasing is bad... well, give it another look. Maybe, when you've read further, you'll decide it's okay. Attractiveness What about attractiveness? There's no such attribute. Every woman is attractive to some men and repulsive to some. A man won't become your love slave unless you turn him on, so if you're looking for a man and you know you're going to want to enslave him, choose one who finds you irresistible. If you're already committed to a relationship, your attractiveness to your partner becomes very much like an attribute; it's what you have to work with. Indeed it becomes an essential attribute. You can't enslave a man who won't turn on to you. But that doesn't mean that just because your man doesn't get instantly hard at the sight of your body, you should give up without trying. We'll explore what it does mean later, when we discuss the differences between committed relationships and uncommitted ones. Confidence After you've considered all the other traits that make an effective dominatrix (or better yet, after you've read this book all the way through) there's one more question to ask: Can I really pull this off? Confidence at this point reflects a belief, based on objective consideration of your other qualities, that female domination is for you. Confidence is also an asset in itself, making you more difficult to resist. If you're obviously confident, your lover won't try to rebuff you with a hostile or impassive front. He'll know it won't work. He'll know that you know that the power of your femininity is too much for him — that sooner or later he'll have to submit. It's a loop that feeds his Loop. You succeed because you're confident and you're confident because you succeed, and he turns on because he's embarrassed by his inability to keep from turning on. *** Chapter 6, In which we explore the advantages a man may find in being a woman's love slave If a man doesn't want to be your love slave, he can avoid it; and if he doesn't want to be any woman's love slave, he can avoid that too. In extreme cases, the costs of refusal may be prohibitive, but extreme cases are rare. I've sexually enslaved a fair number of men, and my friends, among them, have enslaved a large number. Almost every one of those men made a voluntary choice to remain in a relationship where he knew he would be controlled by his partner. They stayed because of what the relationships offered them. The advantages men find in sexual slavery are diverse, and the important ones vary from one man to another. Let's look at some of the most common. Sexual excitement The most obvious advantage of sexual slavery is that it's tremendously exciting. After a while, a man in an ordinary relationship becomes sexually bored with his partner and comes to regard lovemaking as more duty than pleasure. If he's not committed to the relationship, he seeks a new and therefore more exciting partner, then repeats the pattern until he makes a commitment before getting bored. When he gets bored with a partner to whom he's committed, he stops making love. If his libido was weak to begin with, he becomes impotent. More commonly, he delivers brief, mechanical sexual performances devoid of emotion. Many women blame themselves when this happens. Some blame their partners. In actuality, blame is inappropriate. Men are wired to lose interest in a partner who's always available. They can't help it. Fortunately they're also wired to turn on to the techniques of female domination; they can't help that either. And the power of these techniques to excite is far greater than the tendency of monogamy to bore. If your man can't have you whenever he wants, if he gets to experience that yummy little thrill only on your terms, boredom never sets in. He remains always a bit insecure, always eager to please you, always horny for you. A love slave spends much of his time in a state of sexual arousal. He may find this frustrating at times, but always exciting and never boring. I've heard of two love slaves in their seventies who were vigorously potent, and one of them had given up on sex in a conventional relationship fifteen years earlier, believing he was too old. A particularly introspective man might appreciate this, as might a man who has been rescued from sexual boredom without a change of partner, but a man of ordinary self- awareness who is sexually enslaved early in a relationship will likely attribute his state of continuous arousal to his lover's attractiveness alone. And so much the better for her! Love Like sexual excitement, being in love is a delicious feeling. Men, control freaks that they are, rarely seek it; they seek sexual flings instead. Nevertheless men do fall in love early in their relationships and feel a loss when they assert dominion over their partners and the feeling goes away. Eventually a man reaches a point in his life where he becomes aware that he's no longer in love with the woman he married and, unless he ends or at least risks his marriage, he's doomed to live out his days without ever experiencing that feeling again. Grim. Female domination saves a man from that. A love slave is, first and foremost, in love with his partner, and the feeling doesn't go away. Many factors contribute to this, among them the same insecurity that keeps him sexually excited, her sharing of his vulnerability with respect to the Loop, and his eidetic recollections of her teasing. As with sexual excitement, only an uncommonly experienced and introspective man will understand that his enslavement is what makes him love his partner with such enduring intensity. The average man will be aware only of being in love. Both will be emotionally committed. Intimacy Men crave intimacy but fear it. Generally fear wins. A woman who sexually enslaves her lover can tip the balance so he can enjoy being known by her. Early in a relationship, when a man is in love, he wants to share all his thoughts, feelings, fantasies, beliefs, hopes, dreams and fears. He rehearses what he'd like to say, but typically can bring himself to voice only a small fraction of what's inside. He's learned to keep it all to himself, and the learning is of a sort that's difficult to overcome. As the relationship matures, he feels obliged to control it. The necessity of confronting his partner as an adversary when they have differences (for that's how he sees it!) now makes self-disclosure impossible. The enemy might learn something she could use against him. This is war, and he has to win — has to expand and consolidate his control. From her point of view, the most appealing aspects of his personality have disappeared behind an impenetrable wall. From his point of view, he's involved in a relationship recognized as the ultimate in intimacy by his friends, colleagues, church and state, and he's emotionally isolated. Sexual slavery makes it easier for a man to talk openly with his partner about matters of emotional significance. It does this in several ways. If she uses her sexual power to take control of all aspects of the relationship, making whatever decisions there are to be made, he doesn't have to be ready for battle. There isn't going to be a battle, so there's no tactical disadvantage in having a history of intimacy. If she considers his needs in making her decisions — and she would be foolish not to — he'll learn that it's in his best interest to let her know what those needs are. He'll learn to prioritize them honestly as well. Some things matter to him a great deal, others only a little. There are preferences he might insist upon in an ordinary relationship that aren't his at all, but represent instead what he thinks he owes his family or what he hopes will impress his buddies. If she considers his stated needs in good faith, her decisions will suit him best if he's been honest with her. Intimate self- disclosure thus becomes a way of getting what he needs and wants. The Loop, by being a significant vulnerability he can't help but share, gets him accustomed to being intimately known. Other secrets no longer seem so dark as to be worth hiding. In time, he learns his partner isn't dangerous and he gets comfortable enough to talk openly about anything. Eventually he realizes she knows him quite well and loves him for who he is, rather than for the image he was trying to project when they met or for some utilitarian advantage. That's a truly exhilarating high — one that the conventionally dominant man will never reach. Because he's in love, he wants to share his thoughts, feelings, fantasies, beliefs, hopes, dreams and fears, just as at the beginning of a conventional relationship. And the love inspired by sexual slavery lasts, so he actually has a chance of communicating it all, then going on to share the changes that come with maturity and age. Happily ever after. Escape from responsibility Responsibility is strenuous. Some men, particularly those in high-pressure jobs that require them to make decisions that have profound effects on the lives of others, carry far more than is good for them. Such a man often feels relieved if his woman takes control of their relationship and assumes all responsibility for the part of his life that she shares. Permission to reject overwork Some men, once married, spend too much of their lives working and too little at home. They do it partly because it's a socially acceptable way to avoid the terrors of intimacy, partly because they believe their wives value the financial rewards of their industry above their companionship. A few, sadly, are right. Most are wrong but refuse to change their ways no matter how their wives beg. A woman who sexually enslaves her husband is in a position to require that he spend a reasonable amount of time at home. If she states a willingness to accept the resultant decrease in his income, he has no choice but to believe her. He's almost always happy with the results. Motivation By way of contrast, there are men who can't motivate themselves as they would like; they find it useful to have their partners oversee their endeavors, spurring them on with sexual rewards and punishments. I've known women who used the power of their femininity to push their men through a program of weight loss, a course of study leading to a master's degree, training for a marathon, and the completion of a book of photographic essays. The men themselves chose their respective goals and were happy for the motivational assistance their partners gave them, though they grumbled a bit along the way. This sort of arrangement has an extreme form, considerably darker. I've known two women whose husbands developed gambling addictions so severe and damaging, it seemed suicide was the only way out. When each of these men hit bottom, his wife scraped him up, sexually enslaved him, and used the leverage that that gave her to pull him back to a semblance of sanity. The men seemed as happy as those who chose their own goals, if only because they weren't abandoned to financial ruin and social disgrace when they knew they deserved it. Indeed they grumbled less about their treatment, even though it was considerably harsher and they had no real choice but to accept it. Now back among the living, they could free themselves if they wanted to, but neither has tried. Knowing what's expected A man in a conventional relationship is often troubled by the feeling that his partner is unjustifiably annoyed with him — that she blames him for neglecting something important to her, for somehow failing to meet her needs. But she hasn't actually said that, and she certainly hasn't given him a list of things he's neglecting. Her rule seems to be, It's no good if I have to tell you, and he suspects that she changes the secret desideratum whenever he comes close to identifying it. He finds this frustrating. The relationship between a dominatrix and her love slave doesn't work that way. She tells him clearly and truthfully what she needs, wants, and expects of him. He delivers it because he loves her. She thanks him. Simple and fair. Instead of feeling frustrated he feels appreciated. Avoidance of performance anxiety A man in a conventional relationship often falls into the worry that his partner will be horny when he's not, and that she'll react unpleasantly if he's unable to fuck her on demand. This worry kills what little desire he might have had, setting up a loop that can lead to chronic impotence. A love slave doesn't have that problem — not unless his partner is foolish enough to demand sexual arousal from him. Instead he has the opposite problem — that he'll be embarrassed by his inability to keep his arousal under control — and that mind-set precludes performance anxiety. If she finds herself in desperate need of sexual satisfaction when he's absolutely incapable of arousal, she can always have him eat her or finger her, warning him beforehand what he's in for if he lets his cock get hard. Afterward she can congratulate him on his rare self control. I don't recommend this because it gets him used to the possibility of sexual contact without arousal, but it does get her needs met without inducing performance anxiety. Altered consciousness Since time immemorial, we humans have tried to gain a perspective on our own nature and our role in the larger scheme of things. In pursuit of this goal, we've sought ways to escape ordinary reality, retaining just a vantage point from which to observe what happens to us — who we become — when the world goes weird. The aids most commonly employed to achieve such alteration of consciousness are botanicals such as marijuana and hashish, iboga and ayahuasca, peyote and magic mushrooms. Some people get comparable results from yoga or fasting; others from such pursuits as skiing, hang gliding, rock climbing or sailing. Sexual slavery can do it too. It splits the personality the same way, into the objective observer and the kid taking the trip on the ragged edge of the impossible. The kid on the trip is out of control, can't say no to his partner, can't help turning on, can't help loving her. The observer looks on in wonder. Wow! Is this really me? I never would have imagined it possible! Dave was a man with whom I went climbing in Yosemite a few times one summer. He liked to lead, while I preferred the relative safety of seconding, and we were comfortable with climbs of the same length and difficulty, so we made a well-matched team. He said that what he liked about climbing was that the alien environment, the exertion and the risk brought back the person he used to be before he grew up — the boy exploring the world for the first time, the simple human being who had been born and who would someday die. We developed a strong mutual affection and a sexual relationship that expressed that affection. Since we always had ropes and webbing at hand, our lovemaking was kinky from the start, and I quickly discovered that once Dave had been drained of come, his cock would go into that wonderful state of sensitivity I'm so fond of. Just as quickly, Dave discovered how much I enjoy playing with that sensitivity, and what a tease I am. One evening, a couple of weeks after we had first made love, I tied him down in my usual fashion and wondered aloud whether, if I kept playing with him long enough, he'd get past the sensitivity and come a second time. He told me he wouldn't, that it would just hurt, and I told him I intended to find out. He pleaded with me not to, so I said that if it was going to be so terrible for him, he should just not let himself come the first time and I'd quit trying after about twenty minutes; but if he came once — and I told him I knew he would — I was going to try for twice. Actually I didn't expect to be able to make him come twice; I wasn't even going to make a genuine attempt. I just wanted to show him he couldn't resist me and then make him squirm long enough so he'd make a serious effort to resist again next time. I used both hands on his cock and occasionally bent down to suck his nipple. Soon he was at the edge of orgasm, looking into my eyes with an expression that begged me to stop. "Georgeann, you're really doing it to me!" I felt his cock stiffen. I was about to say something, but — "Georgeann, noooooooo!" His hips lifted into the air and the first spurt went flying before he had quite finished his protest. He was still looking into my eyes. I couldn't look away even to watch my toy. "Georgeann, that's me you're seeing! O, my! That's all me! You know me!" It was all happening at once. He said it as he came, and he started to cry as he said it. I started to cry too. "It's okay," I said. I continued stroking his cock for as long as I knew he really wanted it. I let go. "It's okay," I repeated. Still crying, both of us. "Beautiful man!" I untied him as quickly as I could and we lay together and talked. He told me what I already knew: I had revealed, to Dave and to myself together, the same person he sought to know through his climbing — the real Dave, who had been born, who would die, who held on to life in the form of a little nubbin of rock when holding on was impossible but there was no alternative. By motivating him to resist his sexual responses, I drove a wedge between those aspects of his adult personality that thought they were capable of such resistance, and the real Dave, who wasn't. When he came, everything in him that had been trying to resist was swept away. All that was left was the male human being who couldn't help but want to come all the way, couldn't help but want to be completely known by the female human being who was making him happen. What made him cry wasn't fear, wasn't even embarrassment; it was just the beauty of the trip we were sharing, and the intensity of the sharing itself. *** Chapter 7, In which we meet a couple that eschews female domination but still makes good use of some of its techniques Francesca and Roy, one of my favorite couples, used to have a problem. Francesca had — still has — a chronic yeast infection, and fucking aggravates it. (Some of her nutritionally knowledgeable friends have advised her to go off her diet of pizza and beer, but she craves these things, and spends most of her waking hours running her pizzeria, so their advice is impractical.) She needs an average of a week between times to recover, sometimes twice that. If she doesn't wait as long as she needs to, the infection flares up to disabling proportions and recovery can take a month. Her appetite for fucking far exceeds what the yeast will allow; in fact it closely matches Roy's. They each want sex about every other day. Sex is an issue to Roy. He sees sex as ultimate acceptance and its refusal as ultimate rejection. If Francesca were to say no to him, he would at best sulk, complain he couldn't sleep, and treat her for days as estranged from him. At worst, he'd leave her immediately, unalterably convinced that it was her own wish that he never return. Even if he were only to sulk, Francesca would be unbearably distressed; besides, she believes that withholding sex in marriage is wrong. It wouldn't do for Francesca to deny Roy; therefore she can't enslave him. A woman who enslaves her man has to let him know that sex is available only on her terms; she has to use his desire for her as an incentive to obedience. Not Francesca and not Roy. Now, Roy isn't a bad man. In fact he's a very good man. He's totally devoted to Francesca, works hard, and never even gives another woman a lustful glance. He doesn't drink, smoke, gamble or use hard drugs, but he still doesn't begrudge Francesca her beer. He respects her individuality and isn't at all domineering. He's very nearly a perfect husband. The only thing about him that ever seemed to need changing was his unfortunate tendency to aggravate Francesca's infection. Even in that regard, he was never really villainous. He understands Francesca's problem and expressed a willingness to have his sexual needs met by oral or manual stimulation, and a further willingness to meet her needs by gently licking her clit without stirring up the yeast or adding to the irritation. Unfortunately Roy is powerfully built and easily gets carried away in the heat of a sexual encounter. Francesca gets carried away too, and finds it difficult to hold her determination to resist him. Far too often, he fucked her when they'd agreed he mustn't. Even when he set out to satisfy her orally, he often let his enthusiasm overcome his judgment; he likes to insert a finger (or two, or three) into her vagina to massage her g-spot, which stirs up the yeast almost as much as fucking does. It was a sad state of affairs, especially for so close a couple. Francesca often endured terrible discomfort while Roy tormented himself with commensurate guilt. Eventually Francesca discussed the problem with me. I prescribed female domination much as the physicians of my youth prescribed penicillin, which was what she'd expected, and I gave her quite an extensive series of lectures on the subject. She described the problem of Roy's rejection button, then went on to explain her view of sexual morality. It struck me odd, probably in much the same way that my own sexual morality strikes others odd, but I understood it and acknowledged that female domination wasn't for her. I suggested an alternate approach — one that didn't involve ever quite saying no to Roy, but that still employed many of my favorite techniques and offered their inherent advantages. Francesca liked it, tried it, made it work, and fine-tuned it until it met their needs perfectly. The first night, when Roy had started into some heavy sexual foreplay, she asked him to wait a moment, got out of bed, and retrieved the two lengths of nylon webbing I'd given her. "What's that?" "Nylon webbing, like mountain climbers use." "What are you going to do with it?" "Tie your wrists to the legs of the bed, so I can make love to you and you won't do anything that will stir up my yeast infection." "You don't have to do that. I'll be careful." "Maybe. Sometimes it works that way. But if I tie you up every time you want to make love, you won't have to be careful and I'll get well enough so I can let you come inside me." He looked doubtful. "I'll make sure we have a good time." "Okay, I'll try anything once." She tied his wrists and went back to kissing and caressing him, then knelt astraddle his face so he could tongue her clit. She found it easy to control the level of stimulation so as to get exactly what she needed. When he'd satisfied her perfectly, she turned her attention to his cock. She played with it, took it in her mouth, swallowed his come, then untied him. "That wasn't so bad, was it?" "No! You're great!" Two nights later, Roy was ready for more. Francesca was pretty sure she's be well enough to fuck after just one more night's rest, so she tied Roy down and simply made him a present of the same treatment. The next night, Francesca was indeed well enough, and horny besides, and made the first move. They fucked, with Roy on top, and Francesca was left as satiated as ever, but Roy's lust seemed to lack its accustomed urgency. Though that probably contributed to Francesca's physical satisfaction by allowing him to keep going longer than usual, it still disappointed her. Three days later, Francesca and I discussed Roy's lack of enthusiasm. Was he already so jaded by bondage that he couldn't turn on fully without it? Maybe, but we decided it was more likely he'd been drained by the previous night's play and needed two days to recover. Undaunted, Francesca undertook to expand her repertoire of techniques. The fourth time she tied Roy down, she made him come using the two-handed technique that focuses on the frenum and corona, and she kept up the stimulation until he started to squirm and tried to pull away. "Oh! You can't stop till I let you." She let go. "That will be fun to play with." "Wow!" Nothing more. She untied him. Two nights later, she was ready to fuck and she let him know. They went at it with Roy on top. He was enthusiastic as ever, not jaded at all. The next time he was horny, she tied him again. She used the same two-handed technique and decided to see how long he could take it. After he came, he squirmed, tried to pull away, started to whimper, and finally realized that it wasn't going to end until he admitted to his woman that she could be too much for him. "Let me stop!" She released his cock, bent down, and gave his nipple a quick going over with her tongue. His scream was just barely controlled. "I didn't know you are so sensitive. It makes you so much fun to play with." "You're torturing me." "No I'm not. And you don't look like someone who has been tortured." She untied him and they cuddled and slept. Two days later he was horny, but apprehensive about letting her tie him down. "I'm afraid you're going to torture me again." "I never torture you." "It hurts when you keep playing with me after I'm done coming." "I don't believe you. You just can't stop till I let you and you worry when you have no control." "Could you just not do it like that?" "I don't know." I like it, just like you like to keep massaging my g-spot so I can't stop. Besides, I never turn you down. You can let me have some fun." "Please!" "I'll tell you what. I won't make you keep coming tonight, but I won't promise for next time." She tied him down, had him eat her, and went to work on his cock. She started with the two-handed technique, then changed over to brushing one hand lightly over the frenum. His cock rose repeatedly to press against her palm, and she exclaimed her delight at its response as she kept rubbing. Finally his breathing turned to panting and his cock rose with the stiffness of impending orgasm. She continued rubbing it until the first momentary relaxation of his muscles let it drop to the level of his pubic mound, then she quickly pulled her hand away. "What I get to see!" His cock stiffened and rose again, splashing his chest. "Oh, nooooo!" His cock plopped down again, then bounced back up and spurted a second time. Again. And again. And yet again. And a few more little twitches after that. When it finally came to rest, she contemplated his shamefaced demeanor and decided there was nothing to do but confront the obvious. "You must be so embarrassed!" "Oh, wow! You know it!" "I'll bet it will turn you on all day tomorrow, when you remember that, and think I may do it again." "Oh, wow!" She untied him. He needed to be held. It made her feel loved. It made her aware of the intensity of her love for him. I had coached Francesca in detail on that technique and its probable effect. It's one of my favorites, and men find it embarrassing in the extreme. If a man comes with nothing holding his cock, it bounces obscenely with each contraction of his ejaculatory muscles; and if his hands are tied out of the way, there's nothing he can do about it. As each contraction begins, he feels and sees his cock stiffen and rise an inch or two. As it rises it spurts. A thrill of pleasure runs through him, accompanied by a rush of embarrassment at knowing that the woman next to him is watching him with a distinctly feminine mix of curiosity and amusement. When his muscles relax, his cock falls against his lower belly with a wet slap. It all unfolds for him in slow motion because the upward and downward movements of his cock seem to add to the time taken by each contraction. They don't really, and they might not even seem to if he weren't so exquisitely aware of the female attention focused on him, but the attention is there and each contraction becomes a long, slow exploration of the depths of sexual embarrassment. The technique has a useful tuning knob that few techniques do. The way Francesca did it that first time with Roy, the man's orgasm decays quickly. The number of contractions is relatively small and the amount of fluid expelled by each contraction (beginning with the third) is less than it would be if stimulation were continued. The result is that the seminal vesicles aren't drained to the usual degree, so it's likely to take less time until the man gets horny again. You have the option, though, of making the orgasm last longer, thereby emptying the seminal vesicles more completely. Just stimulate some area of the man's body that's erotically sensitive — a nipple, perhaps, or his scrotum — and he'll keep coming until he's drained. It will seem like an eternity to him. He won't keep coming after he's drained, as when stimulation of the frenum and corona is continued, but it will still be quite a show. Francesca took every opportunity the next day to tease Roy in little ways, reminding him what she'd seen and how it embarrassed him. She could see that it turned him by the time the day's work was done, he obviously needed her. Since she was well enough, and half crazed with lust herself, she invited him to fuck her. He accepted eagerly and did his part with great enthusiasm. I'm sure a number of factors conspired to make Roy so much more enthusiastic after only a day's recovery than he'd been the previous time: he hadn't been drained as thoroughly; his recollection of the previous night's embarrassment excited him; Francesca's continued teasing added to that excitement; and he felt that a missionary fuck would restore, if only symbolically, the balance of power in their sexual relationship. The next night, in a calmer mood, Roy told Francesca they needed to talk about the weird sex they were having. He focused on her propensity for torturing him, but it was obvious that that was only a small part of what was troubling him. She told him that what they were doing made it possible to keep her illness under control. Besides, she said, she'd taken a liking to it and didn't want to stop. He acknowledged what was really bothering him: He felt that this new style of lovemaking was perverted and he was afraid Francesca would lose respect for him if he continued to go along with it. She assured him that what they were doing was a perfectly reasonable adaptation to their circumstances, that she appreciated his help in dealing with the infection, that his allowing her to tie him up made her feel loved and trusted, and that it intensified her love for him. "Remember the other night, when you were so embarrassed by the way I watched you come, and you needed me to hold you after I untied you? Holding you like that was such a loving feeling, like people who have been married so long usually don't get." Roy didn't try to dispute that, but took issue with the propriety of a style of lovemaking that involves such great embarrassment. She pointed out that it turned him on, and he made a face. "Look, we have both found that being embarrassed turns you on. We would be stupid to waste it. We have been together a long time. We love each other. We know we can trust each other. Will our marriage be happier if I don't make love to you a way I like, and you refuse to enjoy something that turns you on like when you were a kid?" It was a convincing argument, but that's not why Roy bought it. He bought it because it was reassuring. It promised him a safe and loving environment in which he would be accepted for the man he'd just discovered he was, and in which he could freely enjoy being that man. Francesca chased the last bit of doubt from Roy's mind by giving him a magic word that he could use if her tortures got to be too much for him — a word that would let her know that he needed her to stop immediately. He found that reassuring too. It made her tortures less worrisome, though I'm sure they haven't become any easier to take. And he's never actually used the word to stop her. Eventually there came a day when Francesca was ready for a good fuck and hadn't got around to telling Roy before he made his own need known to her. She decided to complicate his expectations by tying him down in her usual fashion and fucking him from above. "This is neat!" she said as she mounted him for the first time ever. "You get to be inside me and I get to be on top." Their sex life settled into a routine, but certainly not so dull a routine as most couples live with. When Francesca is horny and well enough to fuck, and Roy hasn't made the first move, she'll do so herself and they'll wind up fucking with Roy on top. He's figured this out, and since it's still his favorite way of making love, he tries not to make the first move unless he's too horny to sleep. If Francesca is ready and Roy makes the first move, she'll sometimes let him fuck her the same way, but other times she'll tie him down and get on top. If she's not well enough to fuck, and doesn't expect to be well enough the next night either, and he makes advances, she'll tie him down, have him eat her if she's horny, and then bring him off. Sometimes she plays with his cock or eats him just until he's comfortably done coming. Sometimes she plays with his cock way too long. Sometimes she lets go of it when he reaches the point of no return and plays with his nipple. Sometimes she lets go and just watches. That's what she always does when she expects to be ready the next night. She's determined to keep him from figuring out that part of the pattern. If he were to know that she's going to be ready on a certain night, he would wait for her to make the first move, eliminating the possibility of his being tied down for their fuck. For that reason, she mixes up the things she does, and he never knows what to expect. If she uses her mouth, it doesn't mean she'll still be using it when he comes; if she uses two hands, it doesn't mean she won't let go when he reaches the point of no return. It excites him to consider the possibilities as she brings him closer and closer to the edge. They're a very happy couple. Their one big problem is solved, they both get all the sex they need and still aren't blasé about it, and most impressive of all, they're still in love even though they've been through years and years of marriage. *** Chapter 8, In which we consider the logistics of bondage Comfort, food, drink and drugs The main reason for tying a man up before subjecting him to sexual stimulation is to keep him from physically resisting you. This presupposes that if you make physical resistance impossible, everything will go as you like. That's not always the case. Circumstances can inhibit a man's sexual responses, and sometimes (three hours after his last orgasm, for example) psychological resistance is easy. If everything is conspiring against you, bondage is futile. Postpone your plans until a day when physical resistance is your only potential problem. Before you set about restraining your lover, be sure he's horny — very horny. He should be comfortable too, not ill nor in pain, and not troubled by allergies that will keep him sneezing or itching. His bladder and rectum should be empty and you should have a reasonable expectation that neither will fill soon. The place where he's to be tied should be warm, perhaps even too warm. Physiologically, a cold environment inhibits sexual response, especially when the stimulation offered isn't the cuddly sort. Psychologically, bondage can be frightening, and a person placed in a situation that's both sexually stimulating and frightening has a choice, usually made pre-consciously, between turning on and getting scared. The close link between cold and fear is part of your own experience: it's easier to get scared when you're cold, and fright gives you chills. To keep your man from being distracted by either of these creepy twins, be sure he's warm. Food can be a problem. A man won't be nearly so responsive with a big meal in his stomach as without it. Alcohol, barbiturates and narcotics are disasters. I advise against restraining a man for sexual purposes if he's had so much as a single drink. He'll find you too easy to resist. His attention is impaired, so he may tune you out. At the same time, the nerves that carry sensation from his penis to his brain are at least somewhat anesthetized. If he succeeds in resisting you, it may damage both your confidence and your credibility, so it's better not to take the chance. Even if he can't resist you, he may later refuse to take your interaction seriously, dismissing it as the result of his chemical state. And of course, there's the obvious objection to engaging in any form of lovemaking with a man who'd under the influence of any depressant drug: He isn't capable of fully appreciating you and he isn't fully present for you to appreciate in return. Some drugs, on the other hand, enhance a man's responsiveness and make you harder to resist. Three that deserve consideration are coffee, chocolate and cannabis. Coffee contains caffeine, which is a powerful nervous stimulant. It enhances both sexual sensation and the psychological processes of sexual response. Unfortunately it's also a strong diuretic, while the substances that give coffee its flavor are powerful bladder irritants. To top it off, coffee is almost entirely water. The result is that a man dosed with coffee will soon experience a strong need to urinate, which will cause considerable bother if he's tied in place and distract him from sex whether he's tied or not. The effect will be somewhat mitigated if he was dehydrated to begin with, especially if he's young and healthy with a large, resilient bladder. Chocolate is much better. Its active agent is theobromine, another powerful stimulant, but not so strong a diuretic as caffeine. Chocolate doesn't irritate the bladder and is easily consumed without water. Only the strongest chocolate contains enough theobromine to be useful as an aphrodisiac. Milk chocolate won't do, and most men won't eat baking chocolate because it's too bitter. That leaves semisweet, also known as bittersweet or dark. Even most of this is inadequate; you have to know which formulations really work. The bittersweet chocolates imported from Switzerland and Holland are excellent but expensive. Most American chocolate can't compare, but a few brands can, and at a reasonable price. See what's available in your area and try it on yourself to make a selection on which you can come to rely. Besides being an aphrodisiac, chocolate is food and chocolate is fuel. If a man is hungry, but a meal will inhibit his responses, a dose of chocolate will relieve his hunger enough so he isn't distracted, but it won't fill him up. It will also warm him as it's metabolized, decreasing the likelihood that he'll be turned off by cold or fear. An ounce of dark chocolate will make a significant difference in the sexual responsiveness of a man of average size. Two ounces will make a big difference. It's hard to get someone to eat more than that unless he's very hungry. Cannabis, whether in the form of marijuana, hashish, hash oil, space cakes or whatever, has one major drawback: it's illegal in the United States, though less so in some states than others. Despite its illegality, it's so readily available that its usefulness as an aphrodisiac is worth examining. Cannabis enhances sensory appreciation. If you subject your man to sexual stimulation, his attention is more strongly drawn to that stimulation and he feels it with greater intensity than without cannabis. Cannabis also encourages the belief — usually delusional — that one's thoughts and feelings are obvious, and at the same time it discourages reality testing. This combination makes the Loop inescapable. Once you start teasing him about his inability to resist you, a man under the influence of cannabis knows you can read his thoughts and feelings, and he won't test that knowledge for fear that whatever he says will only move the conversation in a direction that will embarrass him all the more. Consider, though, the cliché of the double-edged sword. The use of cannabis is traditionally a social ritual; you don't administer it but share it. You get stoned too, and that can make it difficult to maintain a confident demeanor in the face of adversity. If you pull a shocker like trying to get your man to agree to be your love slave, or telling him for the first time that some terrible consequence will befall him if he allows himself to ejaculate, he may not take it well. Though he's less likely while stoned to make a conscious effort to bluff you off course, he may truly be outraged or turned off, and not know that if you were to begin stimulating him, confidently and teasingly, his orientation would quickly and dramatically change. If he tells you you're a bad person or makes threats against the future of your relationship, you're likely to find it exceedingly difficult to remember that he can't see how worried you are, and even more difficult to test the reality of the situation by going ahead with whatever it takes to turn him on. For this reason, I advise against using cannabis when your agenda includes anything new and surprising that your man may take badly. If that means you can't give it to him either, so be it. There are exceptions of course. Some people are so used to cannabis that they can handle anything; if you're such a person, you already know that my cautionary advice isn't for you. Going one step further, you and your partner may be sharing a continuously stoned existence. In that case, avoiding cannabis before a particular lovemaking session would be so unusual that it would become an issue in itself, creating more of a problem than anything else that may have developed. But again, if you're living stoned, you already knew that. The only other problem with cannabis is that it drops the blood sugar way down, causing phenomenal hunger and increasing the likelihood that your man will get cold or scared rather than turned on. It may also make your hands cold enough to shock his skin. All you can do is make sure you're in a very warm place and have some good dark chocolate on hand to satisfy the munchies. The chocolate will raise your blood sugar, keeping your hands pleasantly warm; it will raise your partner's blood sugar, keeping him from the shivers and the terrors; and it will act as an aphrodisiac in itself. The combination of cannabis and chocolate, incidentally, is great for sex even if you have no interest in female domination. Positions, materials, knots, toys and safety The position in which I most often tie a man is on his back with his arms extended to the sides. Almost always, he's on a wide bed, and I tie his wrists to its legs — the pair near the head end. Occasionally, outdoors, I've tied a man in this position between two trees. I don't normally restrain a man's legs. Unless he's unusually large, strong or flexible, tying his arms is enough to keep him from going anywhere or doing anything. Tying his legs is even counterproductive. When he comes, I want it to be spectacular. I like to see him dig in his heels, lift his bottom, and thrust his hips. He can't do that very well if his legs are tied. If I continue to stimulate him when he's run dry and needs me to stop, I want him to be able to squirm and thrash about, trying to pull away. It affirms my power over him. Most important, I want his orgasm to overwhelm him, and if I choose to play with his sensitivity afterward, I want that to overwhelm him too. If his legs are tied, he can maintain some measure of composure by straining against the bonds and concentrating on the act of straining. If I leave them loose, he can't do that; he gets completely caught up in whatever sensations I inflict on him. Sometimes I put a man in that position and then decide I want to watch him masturbate while he's tied. It wouldn't do to simply release one wrist; that would be the same as untying him completely. Instead I tie his ankles to the nearest legs of the bed, not so tightly as to cause discomfort but tightly enough, then untie his more skilled hand. If I feel the need to discourage him from trying to free himself, I tie the hand to the same leg of the bed as his ankle, leaving enough slack so he can reach his cock but not his opposite wrist. Sometimes I tie a man's wrists together behind his back without tying him to anything. Occasionally I tie a man's wrists together in front of him, then tie them to something overhead so that he's standing with his arms extended upward. Usually I use a hook that's screwed into one of the studs that support my ceiling. When I'm not using the hook for bondage, it supports a potted plant in a hanging basket. If you try such a thing there are a couple of things to beware of. First, use only an anchor that will bear a heavy load. A hook driven into wallboard alone won't; an expansion bolt in plaster won't; a shower head won't. Second, the position can be so uncomfortable as to inhibit a man's sexual responses; worse, it can dangerously interfere with the circulation in his hands after only a short time. Leave enough slack in the line between his wrists and the anchor so that his feet are under his shoulders, his elbows are somewhat bent, and the rest of his body is relaxed. Any number of materials can be used for bondage: stockings, neckties, plastic wrap, rope and clothesline are some of the most common. Stockings and neckties usually have to be tied together and can't be used for much else afterward. Plastic wrap should be food grade rather than industrial because the latter may contain poisons that can be absorbed through the skin; multiple layers are needed to ensure resistance to stretching and tearing, and it can't be reused. Rope and clothesline are almost perfect, but can dig uncomfortably into a man's wrists. My favorite is tubular nylon webbing. I became acquainted with it when I took up rock climbing, and its suitability for bondage was immediately apparent. It's like nylon rope, but flat. Then again, it's different from flat webbing too. Flat webbing is truly flat and isn't used much in climbing; it's made into the belts and straps found on knapsacks and heavy-duty dollies. Tubular webbing is shaped like a drinking straw that's been flattened. It's softer and more flexible than flat webbing, and it's readily available in stores that sell climbing gear, as well as by mail. It tends to be colorful and comes in a variety of widths; the most convenient for bondage is one inch. It's easy to work with, and if tied correctly it's quite comfortable and doesn't cut into the skin at all. I buy it in twelve-foot lengths. Twelve feet is long for most purposes, but just right for others, and if I have to cut someone out of it in an emergency, I still have a length I can use. When you buy it, it's cut by being pulled across a red-hot wire. If you have to cut it yourself, it's a good idea to use a hot knife so that the filaments melt together to prevent unraveling. Use a worthless knife that you're never going to use for any other purpose, because heating will discolor it and you'll never get it clean. Alternatively you can cut the webbing with a cold sharp knife or a pair of scissors and either let it unravel or try to seal the frayed end by holding it over a candle or stovetop burner. The end may or may not seal correctly, but it's sure to release a cloud of noxious gas which will somehow aim itself directly at your nose. I think it's still worth it; bondage is truly a labor of love. If you want to use the sort of material that has to be tied but you don't know much about knots, get a book on the subject, study it, and practice. Also study the descriptions I'm about to give of my own favorite knots and practice those. Use your own ankles to substitute for your man's wrists. You may be tempted to improvise knots rather than studying them. It won't go well. For each purpose, you need a knot with certain characteristics. To bind a man's wrist, for example, you'll want a knot that will neither loosen nor tighten when pulled. You won't be able to make it up as you go along; you have to know the knot. You also have to know your knots well enough to untie them. If you manage to invent a knot as you go, you won't know what you did and you'll have trouble getting it out. It may turn out to be so complex that it has to be cut. If you cut knots frequently, you're likely to give up bondage because of the expense. If I want to tie a man's wrist, I take my twelve-foot length of webbing and circle the wrist three times, taking care that the webbing lies flat against his skin for all three go-rounds. The short end of the webbing is about a foot long; the long end, about nine feet. I hold the short end out straight and I tie a half hitch around it, very near the wrist, with the long end. This involves pulling nine feet of webbing through the loop that becomes the half hitch. I do the same thing a second time. The knot in the long end now has a definite shape and can slide freely along the short end. (If only the short end were held, the wrist would be in a noose; the knot would tighten when pulled. If the long end were pulled instead, the loops around the man's wrist would loosen and the short end would eventually come through.) I slide the knot so that the wrist can't come out of the webbing, but I don't make the loops uncomfortably tight. Then I hold the long end of the webbing out straight and use the short end to tie a half hitch around it. That's it. The knot will neither tighten nor loosen when pulled, and no part of it touches the man's wrist — his skin touches only the soft loops of webbing. When I'm ready to secure the wrist to the leg of the bed, the first thing I do is see to the man's comfort by making sure that the knot lies in the natural path that the long end of the webbing will take from his wrist to the leg of the bed. His wrist shouldn't be resting on the knot, nor should the knot be forced against his wrist; these conditions cause discomfort at first, then later correct themselves in such a way as to slacken the bonds. When I've rotated the knot to the ideal position, I run the long end of the webbing just once around the leg of the bed and tie first one half hitch, then another. It's not much of a knot, but it won't come out unless untied on purpose. When I want to untie it, I can do it quickly. I take care to put the half hitches right up against the leg of the bed and not leave a big loop. Since two half hitches make a noose, a big loop will tighten to become a small loop when the man pulls, leaving him much more slack than I intended — perhaps even enough to get loose. To tie a man down, it's best to tie both wrists, then both legs of the bed. This lets him scratch itches for as long as possible. To untie him, it's best to untie the legs of the bed first. The knots there come out more easily, and once you've undone one, he can help with the knots at his wrists. If I have to tie a man to a bed that's on a platform instead of legs (most motel beds are on platforms) I take a length of webbing and tie a bowline in each end. The bowline is a knot that includes a loop that will neither tighten nor loosen under tension. I run that length of webbing crosswise under the mattress about three quarters of the way toward the head of the bed, then use the protruding loops as if they were the legs of the bed. The wooden frame of a futon can be fitted with eyebolts. If you sleep on a mattress on the floor, you can screw eyebolts or hooks into the wall at the level of the mattress. (Find the studs first!) If you own your own home and don't value the floor, you can bolt cabinet handles to it. When you bring a new partner home for the first time, such fittings make for interesting conversation. If I want to tie a man's wrists together, I start by tying one of them as if I were going to tie it to the leg of a bed. I run the long end of the webbing back and forth between his wrists in a moderately tight figure eight, then wrap a few loops of webbing around the middle of the figure eight in the third dimension, and finally tie the loose end with a couple of half hitches. There are alternatives to learning how to tie knots. One is plastic wrap, which sticks to itself so well that you don't need good knots. Because multiple layers are needed, it's best tied using techniques that rely on its tendency to cling, and such techniques are easy to improvise. (Quite the opposite of nylon webbing!) Since plastic wrap can't be reused, you can cut it when you're done and not feel wasteful; indeed you probably won't be able to undo it any other way. Another option is the purchase of ready-made restraints, either at your neighborhood adult boutique or by mail. I don't use them. First, I don't need to; I'm proficient with webbing. Second, webbing feels natural to me, probably because I handled so much of it during my rock climbing days, while ready-made restraints feel alien and would seem to be intruding into my lovemaking. Third, I don't want to spook a new lover with hardware that's likely to remind him of that mean dominatrix in the fetish magazines. If you're considering ready-made restraints because you find knots daunting, the first two of those reasons are irrelevant to you. The third will be irrelevant if you and your partner have been together a while; he'll know that your interest in kink is new. It will also be irrelevant if kinky toys are consistent with the image you want. I don't recommend metal handcuffs. They can tighten painfully unless double locked and they're uncomfortable to lie on. Neither do I recommend anything that the wearer can easily remove; many of the toys one finds in an adult boutique are just ornaments and suffer from this deficiency. The one toy that's most useful is an apparatus for tying your partner to a bed. Typically it consists of two wrist cuffs and a length of flat nylon webbing that can easily be anchored to the bed. The wrist cuffs are usually leather, often padded. They close with either a buckle or hook-and-loop tape. The closure is simple enough that the wearer could easily undo it if his hands weren't separated. The cuffs attach to the band of webbing by means of a pair of quick-release fasteners. These fasteners take a variety of forms, but most commonly they resemble either the clip by which a leash is attached to a dog collar or the flexible plastic buckle on the waist strap of a knapsack. They're secure only because they're beyond the wearer's reach when the apparatus is set up properly. Another useful toy is a pair of soft handcuffs — again, usually leather and often padded. If soft handcuffs are to be secure, the closures and fasteners have to be much more tamper-proof than those on a tie-to-the-bed apparatus because anything on the wearer's left wrist is within reach of his right hand. The really secure models rely on small padlocks. I never put anything around a man's neck while he's bound, nor even allow anything with hazardous potential to remain there. (If he's just seen a vampire move, I hang his crucifix from my own neck.) I never leave him alone for more than a few seconds, nor do I allow a locked door to come between us. I almost always have a pair of surgical scissors within reach — the kind with a blunt end. They're sharp and they cut well, so if I have to release my partner quickly, as in case of fire, I can. The blunt end makes it possible to force the blade between his skin and whatever material he's tied with, without cutting him. Such scissors are a necessity if you use plastic wrap; they're superfluous if you use a ready-made apparatus with quick-release fasteners. The most likely emergency is sudden illness. Digestive viruses strike with frightening speed. It's unpleasant enough to have a bed messed up, but it would be devastating to have a man I care about choke to death on his vomit while I fumble with my knots. The police in my part of the world have encountered kink before and would accept my explanation, but I couldn't. Safety first! When I've settled into a stable relationship with a love slave, we agree on a word he can use to let me know he needs to be released immediately. Francesca gave Roy such a word after tying him down only half a dozen times; some couples who set out to experiment with bondage agree on a safeword before the first knot is tied. I wait longer because when I get involved in a new relationship, I like to keep my agenda hidden at first and reveal it one surprise at a time. Also, a man will normally use his safeword the first time a woman plays with the post-orgasmic sensitivity of his cock. By the third time, he's learned he can take it — and even if he can't, that's not what the word is for. I wait until the man is emotionally committed to being my slave and knows that that's what he wants more than anything else. That's what I think is necessary to prevent him from using a safeword frivolously. But when we've got that far, I don't wait longer; I make sure we have a word. A safeword shouldn't be one that might be uttered accidentally, such as mirror or birthday, nor, obviously, should it be something like no or stop; those would interfere with the natural flow of conversation. Madagascar or periwinkle would be good, but both require a degree of composure to pronounce. Rhubarb is just about perfect unless you or your partner eat it or grow it; likewise smallpox unless one of you is studying it. *** Chapter 9, In which we survey some of the ways a man might be persuaded to accept sexual slavery in a new and uncommitted relationship Getting a man to accept sexual slavery is easier in a new and uncommitted relationship than in an established and committed one. When the relationship is new, he's turned on to you, concerned about pleasing you, probably in love with you. You don't have to overcome established patterns of interaction that are inconsistent with female domination, and he's encouraged by the thought that if the experiment goes badly, he can cut his losses and flee. On the downside, there's a much greater risk that the mere attempt will scare him away for good. In a committed relationship, you'll have to work harder to enslave your partner and there's a greater probability that you'll fail, but the chance that the attempt will end the relationship is slim. In an uncommitted relationship, the least likely of the three possible outcomes is that he'll refuse to become your love slave but remain willing to negotiate some other arrangement. I enslaved all my lovers early. Since I wasn't interested in any other sort of relationship, I didn't worry about scaring them off. Only two ran, but don't let that encourage you more than it should. Remember, anyone can see before getting involved with me that I'm a tease. Remember too that I'm rarely attracted to a man unless my intuition tells me he's well suited to my agenda. If the same number of partners had been assigned to me at random, I'm sure at least three would have run. What I'm getting at is that my advice is based on the assumption that you're not worried about losing your man. If you are, be forewarned that I haven't taken that into account. You may lose him. Use your priorities, not mine, in deciding whether to accept the risk. The way I invited Patrick to become my love slave is just one possibility among many. You would likely set up a different scenario. Its exact nature would depend on your age and experience, your partner's age and experience, quirks of your personality and his, the degree to which you're worried about venereal infection, and so on. We'll look here at some of the possibilities — not all, by any means, but a few that seem generally useful. I'll proceed from the assumption that you're truly determined to enslave your man. This will permit me the corollary assumption that you're willing to wield the one threat that underlies all female domination: Your man can't have you except on your terms. You have to be willing to make that a rule, make it clear, and enforce it. If he won't do as you say, put some distance between you and leave him sexually frustrated, accepting your own unsatisfied lust as an unfortunate necessity. We began our survey of invitations to sexual slavery with the story of how Patrick was persuaded to accept mine. Let's expand our perspective by looking at the major crossroads that Patrick and I negotiated as we made our way toward his acceptance. The earliest was our decision to fuck without a condom. I don't divide that into a decision to fuck and a decision to forgo a condom, because I never use condoms. If I don't feel comfortable fucking a man without a condom, I don't fuck him at all. I might enslave him anyway, just as a young virgin trying to save herself for marriage might enslave her boyfriend, but the techniques I would use, like those the virgin would use, exclude fucking. If a man is wearing a condom, the stimulation inflicted on his cock by my pussy is dulled to such a degree that he can resist it. I can't make him come against his will as I can when he's naked, and once he's come, the condom dulls the effect of further stimulation, masking the sensitivity that most men experience after orgasm. If my sexual relationship with a man includes fucking, it's while fucking that I like to find out whether he's subject to that sensitivity. I can't do that if he's wearing a condom. And once I've found that his cock does get sensitive when he comes, I can't play with that sensitivity while fucking him through a condom. The second major crossroads in the unfolding of Patrick's enslavement was my discovery that he was, in fact, one of those men who can't bear continued stimulation after orgasm. Had I found out differently, I would have had to change my approach. The third and last crossroads was Patrick's refusal to acknowledge his enslavement that Saturday until after I'd made him come. Had he voiced his assent a few minutes earlier, the rest of the afternoon would have gone at least a little differently. Those three crossroads aren't the only ones anyone ever encounters; they're merely the ones that stand out most clearly in my relationship with Patrick. Men often open up other possibilities by what they do in the course of a developing relationship, or by how they respond to what their partners do. We'll look at a couple of such twists soon, but first let's explore the alternatives arising out of the last two of the three choices we've identified in the story of Patrick. We can start by putting me back where I was that first Saturday afternoon: sitting on my lover's chest, inviting him to be my slave. What if he says yes? It happens quite often; more men have said yes than no. "Ooh, yummy! I know just how I'm going to have you seal that agreement!" I tie the man's ankles, untie his hand, and tell him to play with himself until he comes. I watch closely. I tease him about the show. I talk about how we'll both always remember, to his great embarrassment, that I watched him do this. I point out that as my love slave, he'll have to give me a repeat performance whenever I want, and that he'll always be aware of the possibility. I feed the Loop every way I can. If his nipples are erogenous, I set to work on the nearest one as he approaches orgasm, and I keep playing with it until he's done. This adds to the intimacy of the experience and prevents him from limiting his stimulation to an intensity that won't overwhelm him. Through that nipple, I can completely destroy his composure. If he were to refuse to play with himself, I'd warn him that he'd get very uncomfortable after lying there a few hours, and that if he doesn't prove his willingness to be my love slave by doing as I say, our sexual relationship is over. Then I'd stimulate him lightly in an attempt to make him desperate for release. When I evoked some obvious response — a moan, a twitch of his cock — I'd say, "You like that, don't you? You're going to have to bring yourself off the rest of the way or you'll never get to feel me do it again." I've never had to go that far. Every man with whom I've gone this route has sealed the agreement as I asked, and with very little argument. Now imagine that during my third sexual encounter with a man, I start licking his nipple without touching his cock, and he starts playing with it himself. It would be silly to try to seal a contract of sexual slavery with such a man by having him masturbate while I watched; the gesture would be meaningless. Taking this to its extreme, it's possible to imagine a man whom I couldn't invite to be my love slave at all, because I wouldn't be able to think of anything I could have him to in that role, and if he agreed and kept his promise, I wouldn't be able to tell. Fortunately I've never had that problem because I'm not attracted to that sort of man. Shyness is one of the qualities I need to turn me on. It doesn't really impose much of a limitation on my choice of partners because almost all men have learned at least a little sexual shyness, even if they pretend otherwise. What if my lover turns out to be the sort of man who experiences no discomfort at all when I continue to stimulate his cock after he comes? What I do then is pretty much what I did with Patrick. I get him used to eating me while tied down, and I wind up presenting him with the same invitation in the same way. If he accepts, I tie his ankles and tell him to seal the agreement by playing with himself while I watch. If he declines, I explain that I need him to accept or I can't continue our sexual relationship; that's just the way I am. Once a man's refusal is confronted in this way, there's a good chance he'll reconsider and accept. It makes no difference. If he accepts only after the choice is put to him in this manner, you can't have him seal the agreement by masturbating then and there because he'll be playacting. Your teasing will be directed not at him but at the character he's portraying to satisfy your demands. He'll go his way not as your genuinely devoted love slave but as a cynical womanizer rehearsing stories to tell his buddies about the kinky scenes he's been acting out to satisfy your weird tastes. He'll continue his relationship with you out of curiosity and because he expects you to continue to satisfy most of his sexual needs until he finds another woman, not because it excites him as he never imagined his own embarrassment could, and certainly not because he loves you. If he claims to have reconsidered — to be willing to submit to you — tell him he needs to think about it a few days and then you'll get together if he's still sure he wants to go through with it. Other than that, don't tell him what to expect. He's still horny, still tied down. Straddle his cock and put it in your pussy. Sit still and tell him that if he decides not to accept your invitation, this will be your last fuck. Embellish your speech with as much affection and sentiment as you honestly feel, and by all means encourage him to make good his acceptance. Etch in his memory a picture of you that he can love while considering. Then let your pussy do its thing, and enjoy. I went this route with two men. Two friends tried it with one man each. One lost the man immediately. Two of the men came back to see whether their relationships with my other friend and me could continue under more conventional protocols. I said no, but the other relationship was salvaged. One man came back to me as my love slave. Drew called me at work three days after he initially refused, then hastily reconsidered, my invitation. He told me he hadn't been able to get me off his mind, that he needed me, that he was worried I had already written off our relationship. He wanted to see me — that evening if possible. I surmised he was both desperately in love and desperately horny. Beautiful! I was glad to hear from him. I loved him and I was horny myself. I regretted that I wouldn't be able to share my own orgasm with him that evening, but I knew what had to be done. My satisfaction would have to be the solitary sort, after he had gone, but at least it would be spiced by the fresh recollection of the coming evening's adventure and the happy thought that in time I would again feel him inside me. I asked him when he could be over, and he suggested picking me up for dinner at seven. I told him I'd meet him at Francescas. I had no use for the elaborate courtship ritual I was sure he had in mind; I preferred the comfort of my own stamping ground, an early evening that would leave me rested for the next day's work, and a meal light enough so as not to inhibit our sexuality. I left work more promptly than usual, drove home, walked to the pizzeria, chatted briefly with Francesca and a couple of other friends, then settled into an empty booth. Drew arrived soon afterward. He greeted me enthusiastically and told me how happy he was to see me again. I assured him I felt the same way. We shared a stromboli, playfully cutting bite-sized pieces and feeding one another. He drove me home and I invited him in. We took off our jackets and shoes and stood hugging and kissing until I could feel the straining of his cock. He took hold of the hem of my sweatshirt, making ready to lift it over my head. "Unh-unh," I said, stopping him. "You don't want to make love?" "Not until I'm sure you're really into being my slave, and love me even if I keep my shirt on." "What do you want me to do?" "How about you take off your clothes?" "If that's what turns you on. Okay." If he had been dealing with the dominatrix in the fetish magazines, the tone of that remark would have earned him a whipping, and she would have stomped him with her spike heels for good measure. I didn't even comment; he would adjust his attitude soon enough. As he undressed, I sat down on one end of the couch. By the time he was out of his clothes, his erection had subsided. I invited him to lie down with his head on my lap. He did. "What made you decide to call me? Getting horny?" "I called you because I love you and I couldn't bear the thought of losing you." "Do you love me even if I keep my shirt on?" "Yes. I wish you'd take it off, but I love you whether you do or not." "Do you love me enough to give me that toy between your legs, to play with as I like, even if I don't let you put it in me, or touch me, or even see me naked again?" It grew just a little. "Yes." "Mmmm!" I smiled affectionately and looked into his eyes briefly, then I added an expression of curiosity to that affectionate smile and shifted my attention to his cock. I watched it with interest. I felt, deliberately but genuinely, the affection and curiosity that my expression showed. It's truly awesome what that look does; it's one of my favorite examples of the power of femininity over the male psyche. His cock grew, angled up, and stood fully erect, just clear of the mound, pulsing slightly with the beating of his heart. I kept watching it with the same expression, looking briefly into his eyes every few seconds. He took my hand in his and tried to move it into position to relieve his lust. "Unh-unh." I pulled my hand away. "You don't want to play with your toy?" "I want to watch you play with it." He tried to reckon how much negotiating he could get away with. None, and he knew it, but he tried one request. "Would you take off your shirt while I do it? "Maybe next time." I put new enthusiasm into my expression of affectionate curiosity and stared at his cock again. He wrapped his hand around it and began stroking, watching my eyes as he did. When he seemed ready to come, I started lightly rubbing his nipple with the back of my hand. I was still staring at his cock when it erupted, but I could see the desperate, questioning look on his face as he struggled, through his embarrassment and his pleasure, to make sense of what was happening, understand its significance to me, guess what it might mean to the future of our relationship. "Big come!" I observed as his orgasm subsided. I stopped rubbing his nipple. He let go his cock and lay there, looking at me questioningly. "I do love you, Drew. Don't push to have things your way, and we'll have a lot of fun together. Both of us. Wait here a minute." I got a towel, then put my lap back under his head. I set about cleaning him up. "You were horny! That was a big load you had saved up." "I couldn't get you out of my mind since Saturday. Thinking of you does that." "I can imagine! What were you thinking about me? "Just loving you, wanting you, missing you, worrying about whether we could get back together, wondering what it would be like to be your love slave." "I guess you've had your first taste of that. How do you like it?" "I don't know. It's better than not seeing you, but not as satisfying as what we used to do." "I'm sure some of what we do will suit you." I'd got him clean and dry. "I'll have to send you home now. I have to get an early start tomorrow." He stood up and started to get back into his clothes. "Can we get together this weekend?" "You can call me at work on Friday. We'll see then." He finished dressing and I led him to the door. We held each other for a moment and kissed. "One more thing before you go. Wait here." I started back into the apartment as if to get something, then stopped about eight feet away and turned around. I lifted the hem of my sweatshirt and let him see my breasts. Four or five seconds' worth, then I covered up again. "Bye-bye, Drew. I love you." "Bye-bye, Georgeann. I love you too. And thanks." What I emphasized in that session with Drew was very different from what I emphasized when I enslaved Patrick. Patrick knew he was getting into something more exciting than he had ever experienced before, so I encouraged him in a purely positive way, teasing him to help him become acquainted with how his embarrassment fed his excitement and his love, and promising him unprecedented pleasure in an atmosphere of intimacy and acceptance. Drew felt he was being coerced into taking a demotion. He suspected I didn't really love him and that I was taking advantage of his love for me so I could use him for some nefarious purpose. If I belabored his embarrassment at having to masturbate, he might well have picked up and left, so I hardly teased him at all. Instead I played on his insecurity about the future of our relationship, motivating him to go along in the hope of being rewarded the following week or the week after. I knew, though, what the events of that evening would do to him. By the time he called Friday, he would have replayed them in his mind countless times. He would have come to appreciate how exciting it had been to feel me stare at his cock with that smile of affectionate curiosity, to know I was watching it get hard, to know that I knew it was getting hard because he was embarrassed by my staring. He certainly wouldn't have lost interest in fucking me — that wasn't part of my plan; I wanted to fuck him again as much as he wanted to fuck me — but he'd also know he wanted more of what he'd had that evening. He'd been led into the Loop, and it's addictive. Of course I fucked him again, and I embarrassed him again too, and I did both at the same time. When there was no longer any doubt about his being my slave, I stopped playing on his insecurity; and as he became more secure, I began teasing him openly about his embarrassment. And of course we both enjoyed it immensely. *** What do I do with a man who, like Drew, declines the initial invitation to become my love slave, but unlike Drew, refuses to reconsider when told that the only alternative is the end of our relationship? I do the same thing. I invite him to get in touch with me if he changes in mind and I fuck him good-bye while he's still tied down. I do it lovingly and hope he reconsiders. Does he? I've tried it exactly once, with a man named Chuck, and he didn't. Two friends also tried it, once each, and one of the men reconsidered. The other relationship ended. I've said that my relationships go my way or they don't go, so if Chuck refused to be my love slave, why did I fuck him? Why didn't I just untie him and send him on his way. It wasn't because I hoped that during the days that followed he would reconsider, though of course I did. Rather it was because I loved him, because I knew he loved me, because we were both horny, because it was the decent and loving thing to do. We had discovered an insurmountable incompatibility between us, one that would make it impossible for us to continue, but neither of us was to blame for that incompatibility, and it certainly didn't necessitate denying ourselves one last expression of our love. Most women have more reason than I do for fucking a man with whom they find themselves in such a situation; few are as committed to female domination as I am, and most don't really want to scuttle an otherwise workable relationship for no better reason than that the man refuses to be enslaved. If you secretly hope that your man, having rejected sexual slavery, will come back and ask you to continue in a more conventional relationship rather than just disappearing from your life, do take care to treat him decently. *** Chapter 10, In which we continue our survey by tracing two unusual routes to female domination Denise was a gregarious and aggressive young woman who had been involved in a series of stormy associations with a succession of gregarious and aggressive young men. We met during her relationship with Tim and we became friendly enough that she freely described its difficulties to me. I suggested she might make Tim more tractable by using the techniques of female domination, and described to her, over time, my ways of controlling men. She seemed interested in what I said but disinclined to act on it. Before the last of their many fights split them up permanently, I chanced to meet Denise and Tim at a party. He was every bit as unpleasant has her most antagonistic descriptions, and I took a strong dislike to him. She soon began a similar relationship with Joe, another gregarious and aggressive young man, whom I disliked as much as Tim. I continued telling her about female domination, convinced she would try it eventually. It seemed clear that she liked to fight and chose men with whom she had that in common. I was curious what she might do with my techniques. Inevitably she broke up with Joe. When she was sure he wouldn't be back, she told me, "Next man I get mixed up with, I'm gonna do all that stuff you've been telling me about." The next man was Tony. She made sure I met hm early in their relationship, and I could see that her new agenda hadn't inspired the slightest adjustment in her selection criteria. Tony had the same defects of character as his predecessors, and I found him just as obnoxious. The beginning of their relationship was unremarkable. Denise set out to prepare Tony for enslavement much as I later prepared Patrick, and everything went according to plan until just after the first time she tied him to the bed. He obviously enjoyed it, but the next time they got together, he wanted to fuck her in the ass. That didn't appeal to her, and she refused. He took the position that since he had let her tie him up, she owed him. She didn't see it that way, and they wound up shouting at one another. During the course of their shouting match, she told him that not only would she never let him into her ass, but if he wanted to go on seeing her, he'd have to let her tie him up every time they got together. He left mad, and when she and I met the next day, she asked what I would do in her place. Curious though I was to see where their relationship might go, I answered honestly. I told her I would hope he was discouraged enough to stay away, and that if he wasn't, I would end the relationship myself. I would figure that since he had made such a fuss about it, anal sex must be as important to him as female domination is to me, and he would never be happy without it. Sure, he could be enslaved, and once that was accomplished he could be forbidden to make an issue of it, but I like my relationships light and easy, and I want my partners to be completely happy with me, so I would wish him luck in finding a woman who likes anal sex and I would find a man who doesn't. That advice didn't suit Denise. She wanted to win her battle with Tony, enslave him, and tease him about never getting into her ass. Fine! I could deal with that. I would have preferred that he be condemned to a life of celibacy, but since that wasn't going to happen, he certainly deserved what Denise was planning. I would help in any way I could. Now, Tony was the sort who'd bump a stranger on the sidewalk, apologize, then give him the finger after getting out of range. We realized that coercing him into promising to be Denise's love slave while he was desperately horny, or while he was being tortured, wouldn't work. He'd feel obliged to renounce the promise even if he wanted to keep it, just as a matter of pride. What she'd have to do was turn him into her love slave, then get him to acknowledge that that's what he had become. After a few days, Tony called her. He apologized for his boorish behavior and asked for a date. Denise accepted and they got together. When he started making moves on her, she reminded him that the only way they were going to make love was with him tied to the bed. He protested that she couldn't be serious, and she said she was. He agreed to let her tie him. She told him to take off all his clothes and lie down. When he did, she tied his wrists to the legs of the bed, undressed, straddled his face, and had him eat her. When she was satisfied, she sat herself near his hip with her legs folded under her. "You know, some day you're gonna be my out-and-out sex slave. You're gonna do every little thing I tell you, you're gonna do it my way, and you're gonna be happy about it. When that's the way it is, I'm gonna tie you up just like this, and sit on that dick, and fuck you silly." "What about today?" "What about it?" "I let you tie me up, didn't I?" "You're a long way from being any kind of slave. I'll know when you're ready." "You gonna untie me?" "I'm not that mean. I'll give you a good come first. But instead of getting to put it in my pussy, you're gonna have to let me watch it go all over you." She made it happen just that way, and she teased him about it again as his ejaculation began. "Uh-huh! All over you!" She kept stroking until he tried to pull away. "Stop!" She did. "Sensitive, huh?" He took a moment to collect himself, then lay there looking at her. "You come good?" "Yeah." "Good! That means you're gonna be wanting me to do that for you again someday." She untied him and started dressing. "You know, next time I'm not gonna stop that soon. I'm gonna keep playing with you for a good long time, no matter what you say." "You're crazy!" "That why I'm gonna do it?" "What makes you think I'll give you the chance?" "Intuition." "Fuck you!" "No, you're gonna be tied up, and I'm gonna fuck you, but it's not gonna be anytime soon." "You bitch!" "Thanks, but you ain't seen nothin' yet. You're gonna find out just how much a bitch I am." She finished dressing and left. They had lunch together a couple of times during the days that followed, but neither of them mentioned what Denise had said. She got the impression that either Tony didn't take her seriously, or he was hoping she would forget, or he expected her to be overcome by a desire to have him fuck her. The next time they were alone in his apartment, he came on to her as always. When the time seemed right, she told him, "This isn't gonna go any further without you being tied up." "Shit! You're crazy!" "Okay, but I told you that's the way it's gonna be. If you want, I'll go home right now." He decided to do it her way. She tied him to the bed, finished undressing, and sat down on his chest, one leg on either side. "You like looking at this, don't you?" No answer. "If you don't, I can cover it up for good." "I like it." "I thought you do. Like I told you, it's gonna make you my slave. You're gonna do everything I say, just because I've got this pussy between my legs and you know what a thrill it can give you." "I'm not going to argue with you." "Good! I can think of something much better you can do with your mouth." She repositioned herself so he could do it and had him go on until she was satiated. Then she sat next to him as she had the previous time. His cock was more than hard; it was pulsing and dripping. She looked at it with obvious interest. "You do like my pussy!" "Sure I do!" "Remember what I told you I was gonna do?" "You said you were gonna tie me up like this and fuck me silly." "Yeah, I said I was gonna do that some time. Remember what I said I was gonna do this time? "No." "I told you I'm gonna keep playing with your dick after you come and it's all sensitive. You remember now?" "Yeah." "That's what I'm gonna do. And next time I tie you up I'm gonna do the same thing again, and I'm gonna ask you first whether you remember, and if you don't, or you don't want to tell me, we're gonna have to do it again the time after that. You understand?" His face looked like he wanted to let loose a stream of curses, but his cock kept pulsing. "Yeah." "You ought to forget about being mad about all this. You knew what was gonna happen tonight. You didn't have to invite me up here." "I couldn't believe you meant it." "Next time you're gonna know, and you're gonna let me tie you up anyway, and then we're both gonna know it's because you want it." She went to work on his cock, and he came in just a few seconds. "Ooh, you know what happens now!" She milked him until he was in such a pitiful state, she felt sorry for him. "I bet you wish you never even thought about getting into my ass." "I'm sorry. I won't ask you about it anymore." "That's good. I'm still gonna do this same thing to you whenever I feel like, and I'm gonna do it for sure next time I tie you up, just like I said." She untied him. He tried something new: he thought before speaking. "I love you, Denise. I didn't mean any harm when I wanted to do that thing. Can't we make love again without you hurting me?" "After a while I'll only hurt you sometimes, but first you gotta learn your lesson, and you gotta be my slave." He didn't argue. She cuddled him and he responded "almost like he was civilized," as she described it to me a couple of days later. When he started drifting off to sleep, she dressed and went home. He asked her to stay the night, but she declined. She didn't want to be there in the morning when he might be horny enough to want sex but not so desperate as to need it on her terms. The next weekend they went to a football game, then wound up in his apartment again. This time he didn't start pawing at her. "I guess if I want to make love with you I have to let you tie me up and hurt me again." "You got it!" "Okay, I'm ready when you are." She was tempted to lie down and have him eat her before she tied him, so she could relax completely while he was doing it, but she knew that that would give him an erection, and she wanted to see whether a discussion of what she was going to do would have the same effect all by itself. "Good!" she said. "Get those clothes off your body and lie down." She tied him in place. His cock wasn't completely flaccid but not really hard either. She was still dressed. She sat next to him. "I'm glad you're learning you have to do things my way. How do you like it?— being tied up like this and knowing what I'm gonna do to you?" "Christ! Ain't it enough that I'm letting you do it? Do I have to tell you I like it too?" "You have to tell me the truth. That's part of being my slave, and you better get used to it if you ever want to get in my pussy again." He glared at her. "I think this is sick!" "Maybe it is. How do you like it?" He glared at her a while longer, but the hostility slowly faded from his expression and soon he appeared to be simply at a loss for words. "Do you know how you like it?" "No." "Okay, we'll see how you like it." She looked at his cock. "You know, with you tied down like this, all naked, your dick is mine. I can rub it until it gets hard, and I can keep rubbing it and make you come, and I can keep rubbing it after that, so you know what pussy power is. And all the time before you come, you'll be thinking how it'll feel to have me keep rubbing it like that, you not being able to stop it, and it'll turn you on so much, you'll have to come, and I'll get to watch you hump the air like you was fucking, and you'll have to hump, too, 'cause you'll be coming so good from knowing what comes next." His cock was growing. "See? You do like it! I'm gonna have to do this sometimes after you're my slave, it turns you on so much. Won't that be something?— being my sex slave, and me knowing you get a hard-on for having your dick rubbed and rubbed after you're done coming." His cock was fully erect. "You know, next time we're gonna do this same thing again, and I'm gonna ask you how you like it, and you better give me a straight answer. I mean, if you like it, tell me. If you're embarrassed but it turns you on anyway, tell me that. But you gotta tell me something. You understand?" "Yeah." "I better make sure I get something out of this." She undressed, straddled his face, and took her fill, then resumed her seat at his side. "You start getting used to what I said: your dick is mine." She started stroking it. "Enjoy that as long as you can; you know how it's gonna feel once you let yourself come. And I get to watch the whole thing!" In a few seconds he was panting. His cock stiffened and he arched his back. "Ooh, you're gonna be sorry you let go!" His orgasm was as spectacular as she'd told him it would be, and she kept rubbing his cock for as long as she'd said too. He seemed on the verge of tears when she finally stopped. She untied him, dried him off, held him in her arms. "I'm hungry," she said at last. "You gonna buy me dinner for doing that?" He groaned. "Yeah." Tony treated Denise respectfully after that, without the undercurrent of hostility that had so often been apparent before. When they made their next date, it was clear that he expected her to put him through the same treatment. She got the impression he was even looking forward to it. As she'd promised, Denise asked him, once he was tied down, how he felt about what she was going to do to him. "Embarrassed. Turned on at the same time." "Good! I'm glad you learned to talk about it. What embarrasses you about it?" "I think how you're gonna hurt me after I come, and it makes me so I have to come." "Heavy, huh?" "Yeah." "You think you're my sex slave yet?" "Yeah, I must be, if I'm going along with all this." "Next time we'll see if you really are. I got some plans for you to prove yourself." "Oh, Jesus!" She made him come, made him squirm, made him beg her to stop, untied him, held him. It was going well. The next time they were alone together, she had him take off all his clothes as soon as the door was closed behind them. She hugged him and kissed him until he was hard, then backed away and teased him about how he looked with his cock sticking out in front of him. She told him to lie down. "You gonna tie me up again?" "You'll see." He lay down and she sat next to him in her usual position. "I have my period today. I don't want to even get undressed." She stopped talking. "Oh." She waited a bit longer, then told him, "What I want to do is watch you play with your dick yourself, until you come." He looked like he was thinking about arguing, but he didn't. Instead he asked, "Do I get to stop when I'm done?" She laughed. "Whenever you want." He started stroking his cock. "You ever done this in front of a woman before?" "No." "See how good it is to be my sex slave? You get to try something new!" His breathing was getting heavy. "How does it feel to have me watching you?" "Embarrassing as all hell!" "Ooh, yeah!" He kept at it a while longer and came. "Ooh, is that how you do it? You pull the skin back all the way and stop, so it feels like you're pushed all the way into a woman's pussy." "It was something!" she told me afterward. "When I said that, he had this extra little thrill, kind of like a shiver. I saw it go all through him, then he let go his dick and just lay there with his eyes closed." The first chance she got after her period was over, she tied him down again. "What are you gonna do to me this time?" he asked. "You'll find out. Maybe the same thing we've been doing, maybe something new." She had him eat her as always, then took her usual seat near his hip. "You sure you're my sex slave?" she asked, trying to sound as ominous as possible. "Yeah, I'm sure." "You want a chance to come in my pussy?" "Yeah!" He sounded surprised, enthusiastic. "I'll give you a choice. You know how I've been playing with your dick after you're done coming?" "Yeah?" "I can do that with my pussy, too. If you want me to fuck you, just tell me, and I'll do it, but I'll keep humping you like you can't imagine! If you don't think you can take it, I'll do you like I've been, but I'll stop before it starts hurting." "Jesus!" "You gotta make up your mind." "I want you to fuck me." "I thought that's what you'd want." She put his cock in her pussy and fucked him with long, slow strokes, keeping her body near his. "Remember this good; you might have to play with yourself ten more times before I do it again." Soon he was panting. He arched his back, pushed himself all the way into her, spurted. She came with him, but managed to remember her mission before he was finished. She pressed him down to the bed and continued thrusting, keeping herself low enough so he couldn't pull out of her. He tried, but she had him pinned. She tightened her vaginal muscles and kept at it, watching the pathetic expression on his face. "It's something, ain't it? — what a woman can do to you!" "Please stop," he sobbed. But she couldn't. She was starting to come again and he had to take it. When it was over, she sat up with his cock still inside her. She watched him gather himself together — almost — then she reached back and tickled his scrotum with her fingertips. "Aaaaaaagh!" That shiver again. "That's what it's like when I fuck you silly. How do you like being my sex slave? "I like it! Whatever you want!" "You know, you never will get to put your dick in my ass." "It's all right. I'm sorry I said anything." "Good! I better untie you." She climbed off him and undid the knots. Tony was hers for quite a while. They parted, still on good terms, when Denise moved east about a year later. Tony's path to sexual enslavement took an unusual twist because his domineering and belligerent style presented Denise with a challenge that she transformed into an opportunity. Some men have quirks that are very different, but still offer opportunities — often great opportunities. At thirty-one, Stephan was president of his third corporation. He'd founded a high-tech company in Silicon Valley when he was twenty-three, sold out at a tremendous profit three years later, founded another within a year, and repeated the process. He was a millionaire twice over. The company was a small one, but its product was a sure success, and that was enough for Stephan. He liked presidencies and he liked making money, but he didn't feel a need to risk everything he had. Outside his office sat my friend Linda, twenty-seven years old at the time, beautiful and uncommonly intelligent. Stephan had hired her as a receptionist, secretary and status symbol. Though he wasn't explicit about it during her interview, he clearly intended that she satisfy his sexual needs as well, at least when he couldn't spare the time to chase down someone else. He was a notorious womanizer. I knew his reputation and had told Linda what she could expect. Inevitably they became lovers. She found him competent but unimaginative. He liked to fuck in the missionary position and did it well, but he resisted her occasional attempts to get on top. Still she liked him and enjoyed their relationship. Whatever his reputation as a womanizer, he treated her as a human being, not an object, and she appreciated it. She did her job well enough to become indispensable, and she was a more interesting and personable companion than any of his previous secretaries — probably than any other woman he had ever known. In a few months, he was in love with her. When she felt sufficiently secure, she told him one evening as they undressed that she was going to tie him to the bed. He objected, but she said it was that or nothing, so he let her. When she finished tying the knots, he was obviously frightened: his heart was pounding and he showed no sign of sexual arousal. She straddled his face and had him tongue her through one orgasm, then repositioned herself to see how his cock was doing. It was ready. "I see my pussy still turns you on. Neat!" She straddled his cock, held it in place, and lowered herself onto it. As it slid into her, an expression of panic crossed his face. For a moment he stopped breathing. Then he looked at her pleadingly and ejaculated. "Oh, how embarrassing!" she said, lowering herself all the way. He lay there helpless as his cock continued pumping. "Wow!" she said, "I can feel every little twitch!" His chagrin was plainly visible as his orgasm subsided. She remained where she was, holding his cock in her pussy, looking down at him. "I know what happened to you. You started thinking how embarrassing it would be if you lost control and came too soon; and the idea of having me see it happen was so exciting, it made you come." "I'm sorry." "I'm not! I think it's neat!" She smiled affectionately and thought. "You know, you'll never be able to fuck me like you used to after this, because now that we both know how excited you get at the thought of letting me see you lose control, you'll get so embarrassed every time you try, it'll make you come right away like you just did." Alarm! "You mean you won't let me make love to you anymore?" "I didn't say that. We'll make love plenty, but we'll have to find other ways to do it, especially if I'm going to have a chance to come too." "It was probably just being tied up like this that made that happen. All we really have to do is go back to doing things normally." "I'm not sure I want to do things normally. It's fun being able to turn you on so much that you can't control your come. It'd be a real neat secret for us to share." He looked worried. I'll tell you what," she continued. "Let's see what happens. Next time I'll let you try making love to me the way we've been doing. If it goes the same as always, we'll know that it was tying you up that made you lose control; but if you come right away, you'll let me figure out what to do about it. Okay?" "Okay." She raised herself up and untied him. Linda had developed a good working knowledge of Stephan's biological rhythms, so she was able to make sure he was especially horny the next time they made love. She simply arranged to be unavailable the evening she expected him to be ready, so he'd have that much greater a need for release the next day; then she took care to arouse him as much as possible before they finally made their way to bed. She'd been trying for days to figure out what she could do to make him come right away. It would have to be something little — nothing as blatant as teasing him about what had happened when she tied him up, nothing that would give him cause to cry foul, preferably nothing that he would even notice. Well, maybe he could notice, but certainly nothing he would admit to noticing. What she wound up doing was so subtle, she herself was never sure it had any effect. She lay on her back to receive him as always, and when he had penetrated her about halfway, she put her palms against the outer reaches of his buttocks and pulled him the rest of the way in. Her intent was to make him feel there was no escape from what her pussy was going to do to him. It might have been a superfluous gesture, but if it wasn't, it worked. The same progression unfolded a second time: the panic, the pleading look, "Linda, I..." the splash of his sperm against her cervix. "I get to feel it again! Every little twitch!" She took his face in her hands. It was an expression of love for the helpless little boy inside — she really did love him — and it also kept him from avoiding her eyes. "See? You've really lost it for good." "Linda, I-I... don't know what happened. I..." "Yes you do. We both know. You imagined how it would feel to lose control like that, with me here to share it, and the thought was so exciting, it made you come right away." He looked at her with the same pleading expression. "Be honest with me now." She was still holding his face, looking into his eyes. "Isn't that what happened?" It was a while before he could bring himself to speak. "O my God! This is so embarrassing!" "Well?" "You know." "Sure! I knew last time. I told you then, I think it's neat that you get so turned on to me." "Are you still going to let me make love to you?" "Yes, but maybe not like this." "What do you mean?" "Here, let's get more comfortable." She eased him off her and he lay on his back next to her. She took his hand in hers. "There are lots of ways to make love," she said. "I'd like to show you some of my favorites." "That sounds like an offer I can't refuse." "Well, maybe you can. What I want is for you to be my love slave. That might scare you." He hesitated. When he spoke again he sounded scared. "It does. What do you mean, be your love slave?" "I mean, I decide when and how we make love, you don't have sex with other women, you answer me honestly when I ask you questions about your sexuality — that kind of thing. I guess the feel of it is, we both know I can turn you on uncontrollably, and it's a lot of fun, so you give yourself to me to turn on whenever I want, and you trust me to make sure we both enjoy it." After a long silence, he asked, "Can I think about it?" "Sure. You'll have to agree before we make love again, but take as long as you like." A couple of days later, Stephan left on a trip to take care of an emergency that smelled like a complete fabrication. Linda knew intuitively that it was to be a sexual adventure, and that his reason for traveling so far away was partly so word of his infidelity wouldn't get back to her and partly so that if he came right away, word wouldn't get around to anyone else. She didn't ask him about it, or even let on that she understood, and she never had a clue as to whether he came right away with whomever he picked as his partner. If he did, he decided to return to Linda because she accepted him that way and he loved her. If he performed normally, he must have found it dull. What was important was that when he came back, he gave himself to her just has she had asked. He gave himself wholeheartedly, and their love was like something out of a fairytale. Ten months later they were married, even though Linda made it clear that she might choose never to fuck him again, and indeed they didn't fuck during all those ten months. When they had recovered from the ordeal of the wedding, she tied him down and told him, "I guess we're supposed to celebrate our marriage by making love the traditional way, so I'm going to have you come in my pussy this one time." His cock twitched in response. "Do you think you can stand a couple of minutes of me, or are you going to come as soon as you're inside?" "I don't know." "I'll tell you what. After I get you all the way in, if you can take one more stroke, I'll let you fuck me once more after today. If you can take two strokes, I'll let you fuck me twice, and so on. If you come while you're just getting in, or before I start moving up again, it might be your last come in my pussy." She squatted over him, put the head of his cock in her pussy, and started down. He gasped and came, thrusting his hips to get all the way inside her. "Ooh! Exciting, isn't it?" she teased. Then as his body started to relax and the embarrassment showed on his face, she added, "I guess my pussy's just too much for you." I spoke with Linda occasionally during the years that followed, and when last I heard, she and Stephan were still happily married. He was still in love with her and still accepted his role as her slave. About once a year, near their anniversary, she would tie him down and fuck him. He always came immediately and she always teased him about it. Because she was so quick-witted and understood the Loop so well, Linda was able to make the most of the opportunity presented by Stephan's loss of control that first time she tied him down. With only that as a start, she built a very comfortable life for herself. She might like to fuck a little more often, but maybe not; after all, if she really wanted to, she could. *** Chapter 11, In which we make a microscopic study of some valuable psychological techniques In the scenarios we've looked at so far, we've repeatedly seen the use of certain psychological techniques that are so powerful as to be indispensable, but we haven't yet examined them with the thoroughness they deserve. It's time. We'll look at four of these techniques, see how they were used in our little collection of familiar scenarios, and entertain ourselves with a couple of new scenarios that illustrate them further. You'll recognize these same techniques — and their power — as they make repeated appearances in the chapters that follow. Suggestion Some experts say that hypnosis consists in one person acting out the role of hypnotist while another acts out the role of subject, making it, in effect, a play that two people perform together. This doesn't mean it's a hoax or that it doesn't really work; it does work. What the experts are saying is that it works because both players know the rules governing their roles. A hypnotist gives her subject suggestions — that he'll stretch out his arm, brick in hand, and hold that position without tiring; that he'll remember the plate number of the getaway car; that he'll lose his craving for tobacco — and the subject does as directed. Of course hypnotism doesn't always work. The hypnotist has to be competent and confident, the subject has to be at least ordinarily suggestible, and the suggestions have to be reasonable: they can't go beyond the realm of possibility, nor can they violate the core personality of the subject. A man can't be made to lift a fire truck, permanently lose interest in food and drink, or remember the number on a license plate he didn't see (though he can be made to believe, incorrectly, first that he saw it, and then that he remembers that it bore a number suggested to him). One of the ways a dominatrix controls her love slave is through the same kind of suggestion. She tells him what he's going to do, how he's going to respond to her, what emotions he's going to feel, and he does. This happens even though it requires his cooperation, and even though he might have started out unwilling. Her confidence and the power of her femininity make him accept the role she defines for him. A man can be told what will happen in a few minutes, or what will happen in a few days, or what will happen whenever certain circumstances arise, or how things will be in the indefinite future. Suggestions are given in the course of ordinary conversation, with no particular preparation or emphasis. They're best stated as simple declarative sentences, usually in the future tense, sometimes in the present tense: "One evening next week, you'll realize you got through a whole day without even thinking about having a cigarette," or, "You must be getting thirsty." Suggestions aren't commands and oughtn't be phrased as if they were. Commands inspire resistance. If you have good control over a man, he'll obey your commands even when he dislikes them, but he'll have a negative feeling about it. A suggestion, when it works, makes a man feel either that he's acting of his own free will or that he's lost control of himself; it never makes him feel that he's following an order. You can make a suggestion more powerful by phrasing it as a presupposition. To a man in a hypnotic trance, "You may notice that you're getting thirsty," is a much more effective suggestion that, "You must be getting thirsty." The question is no longer, Am I thirsty? but, Do I notice? The thirst is presupposed. To a man in a state of ordinary awareness, though, the phrasing of the suggestion as a presupposition sounds weird. His reaction isn't, I'm thirsty, but What's going on here? The simpler version is better because it sounds natural — a thoughtful and caring remark with no ulterior purpose. Presuppositions don't always sound weird, though, and when they fit the flow of conversation, they can be used to good advantage. Let's go back to the afternoon of Patrick's enslavement and look at the suggestions I gave him. When I had finished describing what was involved in being my love slave and he said, "I can't agree to that," I gave him a highly suggestive answer: "Oh, you'll agree to it. Tied up like this, you don't have any choice." It worked; he agreed. When he asked what I was going to do to him, part of my answer was, "I'm going to play with you, and you' aren't going to be able to help but come." That suggestion worked too; he came. The dominatrix in the fetish magazines, by contrast, shrieks at her victim, "You can't come without my permission! If you do, it's twenty lashes with the rosebush!" That suggestion also works, producing the opposite effect from mine — the man finds himself able to hold off his orgasm until she gives the word, no matter how intense the stimulation. Most men, in the absence of suggestion, can delay orgasm but not prevent it. A few can prevent it, while many can't even delay it. A suggestion that orgasm is inevitable shifts the balance so that almost no man will be able to resist completely, and most will come after relatively little stimulation, having lost the ability to slow their responses. After a suggestion that resistance is both possible and necessary, on the other hand, many men will be able to resist completely, and almost all will be able to manage a delay. If you want to destroy a man's ability to resist sexual stimulation, it's important to use the right kind of suggestion. The difference can be subtle, because it depends on just what is said and in what tone, rather than on the consequences threatened. A gently teasing, "I'm going to play with you, and you aren't going to be able to help but come, even though I'm going to give you twenty lashes with the rosebush afterward," will make resistance difficult, while an angry, "We both know you can control yourself, and you'd better, because if you come I'm going to keep playing with your cock until you promise to be my love slave," will make control easy. Of course neither of these little speeches is credible. Let's bring our examples back to reality, still using the situation in which you want to play with the Loop by teasing your lover about how he can't help coming even though he knows you're going to toy with the post- orgasmic sensitivity of his cock. It wouldn't be a good idea to say, "You're going to have to use every trick you know to make sure you don't come, because if you do come, your cock will get all sensitive and I'm going to keep playing with it anyway." That suggestion would inspire him to remember one of those tricks you so thoughtfully mentioned, and he would use it to keep himself from coming. Worse yet, the trick is one that normally doesn't work; its power comes entirely from your suggestion. A much better thing to say is, "I'm going to make you come, and when you're done and your cock gets all sensitive, I'm going to keep playing with it longer than you can stand." That implants in his psyche the belief that the success of your agenda is a foregone conclusion and makes him cooperate. I gave Patrick a few more suggestions that afternoon. Two were contained in the single sentence, "We'll be doing a lot of this kind of playing, now that we both know how it turns you on." The first suggestion was, You will cooperate in this kind of play, and the second was, This kind of play turns you on. Just the mind-set that makes a good love slave! And note the presupposition! If the suggestion left any question at all in Patrick's mind, it wasn't whether my kind of play turns him on. Then I gave him an example. "Next time we get together, I'll probably tie your hands behind you and drop your pants first thing, then press against you and kiss you like we were doing before, until your cock is sticking straight out in front of you." That prepared him to cooperate with the particular bit of play I described, and it ensured that he would respond erotically. Again, his response is presupposed. There was still a chance he would put up some token resistance to letting me tie his hands, but once I'd got that out of the way, my pressing against him and kissing him was certain to make his cock hard. "You're going to have to get used to sharing your thoughts and feelings with me. It's part of being my love slave." He did get used to it, and much sooner, I'm sure, than he would have without that suggestion. And there was one more: the repeated exclamation, "My sex toy!" Suggestion played an even greater role in Tony's enslavement by Denise. Her first suggestion to him was that brilliantly worded announcement, "You know, some day you're gonna be my out-and-out sex slave. You're gonna do every little thing I tell you, you're gonna do it my way, and you're gonna be happy about it." It set him up not only to accept sexual slavery, but to like it. To be sure, most men who are sexually enslaved do like it, but Tony wasn't one for liking anything or anyone, so telling him, "you're gonna be happy about it," was important. When she'd finished making him come by hand the first time, and discovered that he couldn't stand to have the stimulation continued, she said, "You're gonna be wanting me to do that for you again someday." Though he argued with her agenda after she untied him, that suggestion helped bring him back for another go. When she got her next shot at him, she displayed her pussy and said, "It's gonna make you my slave. You're gonna do everything I say, just because I've got this pussy between my legs and you know what a thrill it can give you." When she then made it clear that she intended to follow through on her promise to keep playing with his cock longer than he liked, and he said he couldn't believe it, she said, "I think it turns you on, too, knowing I'm not gonna stop and you have to come anyway." Before she said that, it hadn't occurred to Tony to be turned on by that prospect. Though almost all men have the potential to be led into the Loop, most are unaware of the possibility until the first time it happens. Tony wasn't yet turned on by the idea of being obviously unable to resist Denise; he was cooperating only because he found her extremely attractive and hoped to restore their relationship to normalcy. Her little speech suggested the Loop — told him what to feel. At the time, of course, Denise couldn't be sure that Tony hadn't fallen into the Loop himself — that was revealed months later, after she taught him how to engage in relaxed and intimate conversation — but if he had fallen in, what she said was still perfect for the situation since it would have fed the Loop by telling him she knew what he was feeling. On top of all that, she suggested the inevitability of his orgasm by presupposition, making it virtually impossible that he'd be able to resist. Immediately after that, she told him (referring to her intention to torture him), "Next time you're gonna know, and you're gonna let me tie you up anyway, and then we're both gonna know it's because you want it." That suggested, first, that he was to cooperate with her agenda of tying him up yet again, and second, that he was to cultivate a positive attitude toward both being tied up and having the sensitivity of his cock toyed with. He was to develop an appreciation of the degree to which the scenario turned him on, and even a conscious desire to have it repeated. When they got together again, it was obvious that Tony was no longer a stranger to the Loop. Denise tied him down and told him how turned on he was by his anticipation of what she was going to do to him, and the response of his cock proved her right. "See? You do like it! I'm gonna have to do this sometimes after you're my sex slave, it turns you on so much. Won't that be something?— being my sex slave, and me knowing you get a hard-on for having your dick rubbed and rubbed after you're done coming." "You do like it!" is just a tease to a man who has enthusiastically accepted sexual slavery. To someone in Tony's position, especially someone with Tony's hostility, it's a suggestion. His inclination might be to feel resentful of the way control of his body is being taken from him, and he might not infer from the reaction of his cock that he likes what's happening. It helps to tell him. Her last sentence implanted in his mind a fantasy that he was directed to nurture — just the sort of fantasy that makes the day-to-day experience of sexual slavery so continuously exciting. She went on to tell him that when they repeated the same scenario yet again, he would be required to answer her question about how it made him feel. "I mean, if you like it, tell me. If you're embarrassed but it turns you on anyway, tell me that." Her coaching suggested the right answer and directed him to cultivate a conscious awareness of what was happening to him. I'm embarrassed by the way I can't help but turn on and by how obviously I keep seeking to repeat this scenario, and I'm turned on by the way she embarrasses me when I'm with her. Her coaching also demonstrated to Tony that the Loop can be spoken, and directed him to rehearse his own description so he could recite it to her on demand. If I've repeated too many pieces of the story of Denise and Tony, it's because so very much of what she said to him was suggestion. It had to be; Tony started with almost none of the attributes that make a good love slave. Denise turned him into one by implanting a series of electrodes in his brain, one at a time, and connecting them all together — only she used suggestion instead of a drill. At the other extreme, Linda enslaved Stephan with just one suggestion, but it was such a knockout that nothing else was necessary except the formality of inviting him to be hers. "You know, you'll never be able to fuck me like you used to after this, because now that we both know how excited you get at the thought of letting me see you lose control, you'll get so embarrassed every time you try, it'll make you come right away like you just did." Suddenly she was the most exciting woman he had ever known. Of course, it helped that he was already in love with her, that he opened the opportunity by losing control, and that she had the presence of mind to recognize her chance and think so quickly of the right thing to say. Even with all that going for her, there was no guarantee that her words would have the desired effect; suggestions do sometimes fail. But she had nothing to lose and a great deal to gain, and it turned out that she succeeded perfectly. She repeated her suggestion in a shorter version the one time they fucked in the missionary position afterward ("See? You've really lost it for good"), and again just after they consummated their marriage ("I guess my pussy's just too much for you"), and often enough thereafter to ensure that it remained true. Staging struggles for control Time and again, we've seen how a man can be made to struggle, and inevitably fail, to maintain control of his sexual responses. In all but one of the scenarios we've looked at so far, the man was one who experienced distress if stimulation of his penis was continued after orgasm, and he was told that that was just what was going to happen if he came. In the last, it was made clear that the consequence of premature ejaculation would be denial of the privilege of fucking the woman who caused it. Orgasm isn't the only response that can be toyed with in this manner. A man can be told that he mustn't allow his cock to get hard, that he mustn't allow it to leak its lubricating fluid, that he mustn't allow it to twitch. The consequences of losing control are limited only by the imagination. The technique itself is simple and straightforward. The man is told what it is that he mustn't allow to happen and he's told the consequences of losing control. Then he's subjected to stimulation sufficient to cause the forbidden response, teased about his loss of control, and punished as promised. We've already examined the most obvious reason for using this technique — the Loop. If the man is to be punished for responding, he'll try not to. When he responds anyway, his inability to control himself embarrasses him. His embarrassment and his partner's obvious enjoyment of it combine to turn him on all the more. We've seen how this can enhance the intimacy of a relationship, how it can intensify a man's love for the woman who puts him through it, how it can lead to the sort of alteration of consciousness that men have sought from time immemorial. But even when all this has been explained, many a woman is skeptical. I recommend that she occasionally put her lover in restraints and tell him that if he lets himself come she's going to play with the sensitivity of his cock, then bring him off and torture him; and she asks, "How could a man like that? Why would he let me do it more than once?" The answer to the first question is easy. He doesn't like it. He finds the idea a tremendous turn-on until he comes, even until he's drained, but only until then. The continued stimulation afterward is uncomfortable. The duration of his discomfort, though, is brief compared to the time the idea acts as a turn-on; and it's the idea, not the actual torture, that fuels his fantasies between sessions. The answer to the second question is of greater complexity, encompassing everything we've already discussed and more. To gain an understanding of the more — the part of the explanation we haven't yet considered — we'll begin by contemplating the doings at our local video arcade. This strange place is inhabited by human beings, most young, almost all male, many in a frightful state of degeneracy, playing video games. They've come here for that purpose and they're paying for the privilege with their time and money. The average player concentrates on one game, three at most, improving his skill by long and repeated practice. The typical game has two main components — a set of goals to be reached (usually a primary goal and several secondary goals) and a set of hazards that get in the way. Some games have a hero who pursues the goal under the player's control and with whom the player can identify; others allow the player to confront the fantasy world on the screen without an intermediary. The hazards can be villains or they can be pitfalls or they can be a mix of both. These details of implementation don't matter except in that they attract slightly different types of players. The player scores points by reaching the primary goal, reaching a secondary goal, or making progress. Being overcome by a hazard brings the end of the game closer or, if it's already very close, ends the game completely. Reaching a goal, even the primary goal, doesn't. The player is rewarded with the opportunity to try again in a more hostile environment where the goal is more difficult to reach, the hazards harder to avoid, and the point values of the successes greater. All the really good video games — the ones the players enjoy most, the ones they play over and over and nourish with coin after coin — have one important feature in common: they don't always play the same. The variation is generally in the behavior of the hazards. They appear at different times and in different places and they do different things, though the times and places of their appearance, as well as what they do, are always consistent with their nature. This means that the player can't perfect his strategy by rote, but has to conceptualize the hazards and develop an understanding of the essence of each — a much more interesting type of learning. It also means that a game occasionally ends much sooner than the player thinks appropriate for his level of skill, owing to an unfortunate encounter with a hazard whose behavior was unexpected. A player to whom this happens will almost always play again right away, hoping to leave a more fitting score on the machine. Video games, especially those that offer variation in play, are addictive. They hook the player's need for a feeling of accomplishment and mastery. It's that feeling that the owner of the arcade is selling, albeit within the most limited of contexts. And it doesn't matter that the context is so trivial as to appear ludicrous to a person with any sense of reality. An addicted player still pours in dollar after dollar, hour after hour, day after day, for months on end. So why, I again ask rhetorically, returning to the real subject of my discourse, would a man make a habit of putting himself in sexual situations where he might be subject to treatment that's distressing, embarrassing, or both? Why, to continue using my favorite example, would he repeatedly allow himself to be tied up by a woman who has shown an interest in playing with the post-orgasmic sensitivity of his cock? Because he's in love; because it's the price of continuing in a relationship that offers other sexual activities that are more to his liking, as well as a variety of nonsexual benefits; because, distressing and embarrassing though it may be, it's a tremendous turn- on. These reasons mustn't be forgotten. But another factor is his craving for the feeling of accomplishment that comes of getting better at the game — the game in which his goal is to experience as much sexual pleasure as he can, preferably in the course of the sexual activities he likes best, while avoiding, insofar as possible, such hazards as physical distress and embarrassment. Is he really playing a game? Certainly not in the sense of the degenerates who inhabit the video arcade. Sexual slavery wasn't his idea, and he wouldn't object if the woman he loves were to announce an intention to turn their relationship into a conventional one. Still, the relationship, strange as it is, offers its benefits, and he's in love, and sexual slavery is an incredible turn- on, so he makes the best of his circumstances. Those circumstances include the elements that make a good video game so addictive: a goal he craves and hazards that are unpredictable within understood limits. Making the best of his circumstances means pursuing the goal while trying to avoid the hazards, so he finds himself in the position of having to play a game with addictive qualities, and inevitably it captivates him. Obviously this would be the case even if video games had never been invented. My only reason for discussing them at such length is that they embody the addictive qualities that interest us, and in a context so far removed from reality as to isolate those qualities for easy contemplation. For convenience then, and certainly with no intent to trivialize human affection, I'll continue using the metaphor of the game as we discuss the love slave's quest to maximize his sexual pleasure while minimizing the punishment and embarrassment his partner so often combines with it. At the outermost level of the game, the love slave seeks to induce his partner to choose his own favorite sexual activities while trying to avoid either long periods of abstinence or activities that are likely to cause him discomfort or embarrassment. He seeks to motivate her to fuck him without tying him down, and he tries to avoid bondage and torture. However wide their repertoire of sexual activities, he has his order of preference among them, and he always aims as high as he can. If, on a particular occasion, his partner's choice matches his preference — if she leaves him untied and fucks him, for example — he counts himself successful. If she chooses a direction less promising, the game continues at a lower level and he aims for the best outcome possible in light of her choice. If she ties him to the bed, there are still several possibilities. Maybe she doesn't intend to torture him; maybe she just wants to fuck him while he's tied down. Of course she might keep up the stimulation after he comes, using her pussy, but at least that would spare him the indignity of having an obscene display made of his ejaculation. Besides, if she plans to torture him with her pussy, he might be able to change her mind by talking to her lovingly while she fucks him, so as to catch her up in a different mood. No? Maybe she'll be so overwhelmed by her own orgasm that she'll stop thrusting her hips. Maybe he'll be able to end the torture by wriggling out of her. Even if she ties him down and states a clear intent to make him come by hand and then continue the stimulation, maybe she'll be overcome with lust and wind up fucking him. Maybe he'll somehow be able to keep himself from responding and she'll give up and try something more to his liking. Maybe he'll manage to talk her into a gentler approach, or maybe she'll change her mind herself. Maybe her technique will be a little off when she tries to torture him — maybe she'll just milk the shaft of his cock and miss the frenum and corona — and he won't be so distressed as usual. Maybe, whether she uses her hands or her pussy, he'll be able to ignore the sensations if he counts to himself by thirteens. If you've paid careful attention to everything you've read here, you're probably being nagged by a discrepancy. When I first described the Loop, I said it's addictive — a man comes to fantasize, even crave, situations in which is loss of control turns out to be particularly embarrassing. Now I'm in the midst of describing a great metaphoric game in which the same man has the goal of achieving as much sexual satisfaction in as ordinary a manner as possible, while keeping his embarrassment to a minimum. I owe you an explanation. Both things are true. The man is addicted. He does indeed fantasize and crave situations in which his loss of control leads to extreme embarrassment. On any given occasion, though, he dreads the realization of those fantasies. He wants to be embarrassed like he wants to go to heaven — not right now. Think of a little boy visiting a zoo and coming upon the cage of a particularly exuberant lion. He approaches the lion and runs away, but he doesn't go far and he doesn't keep his distance. He approaches the lion again, then runs again, then approaches, then runs. Often he shrieks and laughs; his approaches and flights are fun. He's playing and he knows it. And he winds up spending a good deal of time near that lion. The man inevitably becomes obsessed with his partner and her diverse erotic possibilities. His mind, when not focused on the hardships of daily life, is constantly occupied with fantasies of what they might do together, and those fantasies keep him horny. That's why a man of seventy who has been sexually enslaved exhibits the sexual enthusiasm he had at thirty. When a woman varies the technique and emphasis of her lovemaking, her man comes to appreciate how each sexual encounter takes its own peculiar twists and turns, offering its own promises, raising its own fears, imprinting his consciousness with its unique blend of excitement, affection, embarrassment, pleasure, distress and intimacy. With her in control, and with the understanding ever in his mind that his sexuality is her toy, no sexual act is ever simple or routine. Each becomes, at least in part, a heroic struggle in which he hopes to reach his goal without being overcome by hazards, and the context is far from trivial. He tries to develop his skill. The major part of developing skill consists in learning what motivates his partner's sexual choices. What makes her choose to fuck? What makes her choose to tie him up? What makes her choose to torture him? What makes her choose to leave him sexually frustrated until another day? A man will be able to answer these questions more easily, to the detriment of the quality of the game, if his partner is using sex to get control over some difficult aspect of his behavior — his neglect of parenting, perhaps — because she has to tell him quite clearly that unsatisfactory behavior will be punished by forced abstinence, while his favorite activities will be chosen with any frequency only when his behavior has been exemplary for a long while. But even if she finds it necessary to take this approach, the sexual aspect of their relationship needn't be governed by a rigid schedule of rewards and punishments. She can still leave herself a great deal of flexibility in deciding the when and the how of sex, and she can inject as much playful variation into their sexual interaction as she would if he had no bad habits. This keeps him hopeful of figuring out what motivates her deviations from quid pro quo, with the result that he takes an active interest in the game rather than just accepting it as a temporary hardship imposed because of his faults. A woman who isn't using sex to correct her man's behavior can base all her sexual choices on her mood of the moment, tempered by consideration of her partner's needs. This leaves him less sure of what to expect than the man who's undergoing a program of reform, and his attempts to figure her out and influence her choices will be more interesting. Any man's success at figuring out and influencing his partner will depend on her predictability and his ingenuity. To keep him from getting bored with the game, indeed to keep him from slowly taking control of the relationship, it's necessary to do the unexpected often and remain ever vigilant against attempts at manipulation. What about the other extreme? Is it possible to behave so randomly that a man loses interest? No, and for three reasons. First, as we've already noted, the addictive nature of our metaphoric game is only a small part of what makes the relationship appealing. Second, there's more to his play of the game than trying to predict and control your choices: he hopes to control his own responses. The technique we're discussing, after all, is that of making him struggle to control himself, and his play of the game overflows into an attempt to influence your choices largely because he realizes that he'll lose fewer struggles for control of his responses if he manipulates you into staging fewer. When you do stage such a struggle, he recognizes that he's no longer at the outermost level of the game. He has to keep his body from responding to your femininity or be punished. He'll probably try to make you lose interest, but he still has to control himself long enough to accomplish that, so he has no easy way out. When you tell him that if he comes in less than twenty minutes, you'll keep playing with his cock in its state of sensitivity, he'll try not to come; and when he does come, he'll try to find a way to keep the continued stimulation from getting to him. Sometimes he'll seem to have pretty good control, if only for a while. Rarely he'll even succeed, whether at holding off his orgasm or at suppressing his discomfort, and these occasional successes encourage him. That brings us to the third point — he doesn't have to get better at the game to feel encouraged. Maybe on one occasion he manages not to come because he started out less horny than you thought. That's an accomplishment, but it's a transitory accomplishment because it will alert you to the possibility and you'll take care to prevent a recurrence. Maybe on another occasion he experiences only minimal distress when you keep rubbing his cock after he's drained. He had a headache two hours earlier and dosed himself with an analgesic that's still in his system. He's not aware that that's the reason and he won't figure it out. Such happenings encourage him, but they don't represent a lasting improvement in his ability to control himself. His attempts to manipulate you are even more subject to random success. It's inevitable that you'll frequently choose to do what he's hoping for. Often you simply want to fuck. Maybe once or twice when you've decided to bring him off by hand and torture him, you're so overcome with lust that you change your mind and fuck him while he's still tied. These little victories convince him that he's gaining a measure of skill at manipulating you, and they whet is interest and encourage him. What he does is manufacture an illusion of skill. He manufactures it from random successes, just as a gambler addicted to roulette manufactures an illusion of skill from the occasional winning streaks inherent in all games of chance. His successes keep him interested in the game, but a man who's turned on to you and horny has no more chance of resisting the power of your femininity than the gambler has of beating roulette over the long term. His sexuality is truly yours to play with as you like, and he has no choice but to love you for what you do to him. Let's broaden our perspective on this technique by looking at another scenario from my relationship with Patrick. Of all that was encompassed in his new role as my love slave, what Patrick obviously dreaded most was the possibility that he might be required to masturbate while I watched. I was determined to put him through it, and repeatedly, but I was in no hurry. Months went by before the perfect opportunity presented itself. It began with a sore throat — a sore throat so bad that I was driven to seek the services of a nurse practitioner. She prescribed a course of antibiotics that allowed it to heal but, as often happens when I take antibiotics, I developed a severe case of vaginitis. When I finally let Patrick visit me, my throat was recovered but my pussy was in a sad state. I hadn't let him near me in almost two weeks because I didn't want to infect him, so he was very horny. When he arrived, we shared a hug and spent some time talking, gradually drifting from the doorway to our usual seats at the dining room table. In answer to his inquiry about my health, I gave him a sufficiently detailed account to let him know that any sexual contact between us would have to be limited. When we'd brought one another up to date on the details of our lives, I stood up and headed for the living room. "Come on in here and get naked! I want to see my toy." I took a seat at one end of the couch. He got out of his clothes, then sat next to me and held my hand. I told him to lie down with his head on my lap, and he did. "Remember when I told you I might want you to play with yourself while I watch, and you'd have to do it?" "Yeah?" He'd learned that silence wouldn't do. "Well, this seems like the perfect time." "I'm really not comfortable with that." "I know. It would embarrass you more than anything else we've done together, but you're going to have to do it." "It's been a long time since we've seen each other. Wouldn't you rather you play with me? We'd be a lot closer that way." "It's a nice thought, sure! But I just want to watch." "Why?" "Because it'll embarrass you so much. Because I know that if it embarrasses you like that, you've never done it for another woman, and it'll be something special between you and me. Because I want to be able to remind you that you did it, and how you have to do it again anytime I want, and see you get all embarrassed and turned on." The Loop. The idea made his cock grow with a little twitch. "Can we put it off for another time while I psych myself up?" "We'll do it another time too, but I'll tell you what." "What?" "I'll give you a chance to escape, just for today. We'll play a little game to see who has to play with your cock. How does that sound?" "What kind of game?" "We'll stay here like this for a while, and if I can make your cock drip without touching it, you have to start playing with it right away and keep going until you come and you won't argue any more. If you can keep it from dripping for twenty minutes, I'll play with it today, but you'll still have to do it another time. Okay?" "Okay." "Good. It's 7:18. "Hey, this isn't working out badly at all! No matter who wins, I'm sure of getting to see that sexy fireworks display of yours, and you get to feel that yummy thrill that goes with it." As I spoke I fixed my gaze on his cock. I loved it. I loved Patrick. I let all that love flow through me, and at the same time, I wondered what response I would see. A smile came to my face — the same smile that had had such a powerful effect on Drew in similar circumstances. Patrick's cock grew rapidly and aimed itself upward. "Exciting thought, isn't it?" "Yeah." "You know, I really like the way your cock reacts to the idea that I'm going to watch it spurt. I mean, it's neat that it turns you on, and it's really neat that you can't hide that it turns you on." I continued feeding the Loop with that kind of talk, and with almost constant staring at his cock, for eleven minutes. That's how long it took for the first drop of fluid to make its way to where I could see it. When it appeared, I bent my head toward it and stared hard, not saying anything at first. Then I turned so we were face to face. "What's that?" I glanced back toward it to show him what I meant. "Nothing!" He said it emphatically but playfully and I loved him for it. "Mm-hm! You're dripping. You know what that means!" "I guess so." He did as he'd promised while I continued to tease him, and his orgasm was everything I'd been looking forward to — a spectacular show that left him totally embarrassed. I rarely make a man masturbate without first staging such a struggle. Even as a dominatrix, I see no need to be unpleasantly domineering. My partner will agree to play that game, or one like it, even after a history of repeated losses; and having agreed, he'll pay the bet without complaint. He learned about bets long before he met me, and he's so deeply committed to their rules that everything stays light and easy between us. It may seem that if a man has promised to be my slave, he should do what I tell him without my having to win a game, but that's not a practical attitude for me to take. Even from my perspective as a confirmed dominatrix, playing the game is a lot more fun than simply ordering him to masturbate, and it's more fun no matter who wins. But it's not just my own perspective that I have to consider. If I want the relationship to last, I have to be mindful of my partner's needs, and I have to keep him interested in me. If I repeatedly order him to masturbate while I watch, it will get old fast. He may even start to feel mistreated. Eventually I'll make the mistake of ordering him to masturbate when he's less than unbearably horny, and he'll refuse and set out to find a more exciting and considerate partner. The game avoids such an unhappy ending in two ways. First, it holds my partner's interest, partly by being inherently addictive as games are, partly by offering the possibility of a reward more to his liking than the privilege of having me watch him masturbate. Second, the criterion by which we decide that he's lost the game is such that when he has to bring himself off, he's horny enough that he really needs to. Once he's dripping, he's way past the stage where he can walk out in a huff. Though it would be a poor idea to make a habit of simply ordering a man to masturbate, the possibility is important because it ensures that he'll play the game. It was clear to Patrick that as my love slave he had no choice but to masturbate if I insisted, so when I offered him the game, he had nothing to lose. That he had almost no chance of winning didn't matter; he knew he had more chance than if he didn't play. I played that game with Patrick a number of times afterward, interspersed, of course, with other forms of lovemaking. Eventually he won one, and I brought him off by hand. He lost a couple more and then won another. I brought him off by hand again, but this time, I released his cock just as he crossed the threshold of ejaculatory inevitability. It was a new experience for him and I know he would have been terribly embarrassed even if I'd done nothing more than watch, but I teased him mercilessly all through the show. After that, he never won again. Maybe he wasn't sure he still wanted to, considering what it might get him. More likely, though, his contemplation of the two alternatives that lay before him, both so embarrassing, always proved such a turn-on that control became impossible. The ultimate tease Another interesting feature of those video games we looked at: When the player is defeated by a hazard, the machine generates sound effects and visuals that rub it in. The people who build the games discovered that a machine that produces such effects garners more coins than one that doesn't. I use the same principle in my lovemaking. When a man has an orgasm under circumstances that make for even a little bit of embarrassment, I add to his chagrin by teasing him about it, and I do it right then, while he's coming. I always tease him if I've given him a reason to resist, I usually tease him if I get to watch him spurt, and I sometimes tease him even if he comes in my pussy, especially if something I've done makes him lose control unexpectedly or his experience is more intense than he's comfortable with. I'm not merely trying to emulate a video game, nor is it just that I love teasing (though of course I do). I want to leave my partner no doubt that I know what he's thinking and feeling, and teasing does that. More important still, I tease him because I know that later, when he's alone, he'll conjure up the memory of what I said, the sound of my voice, and he'll relive his embarrassment. He'll turn on, if only a little, and love me for being such a tease. A man is rarely so open and vulnerable as he is at orgasm, so it's the perfect time to make a memory. Time. As we've seen, orgasm isn't compressed into a single instant, but spans two distinct stages, each of which lasts a number of seconds. During the first stage, the urethra has begun to fill with semen and the man knows that ejaculation is inevitable, but the thrill of the first spurt hasn't yet hit. The second stage begins with that first spurt and, just by virtue of being so spectacular, offers a great deal of raw material for teasing. A man can be teased about having an obscene display made of his ejaculation, the intensity of the pleasure and embarrassment he can't help but feel, the thrusting of his hips, the motion of his cock — there's a lot happening! It's best to start your teasing early — by the second spurt if possible. Your partner is most sensitive to it then. The first couple of spurts shatter his defenses, open him up, keep him from starting to rebuild. Also, a good tease will have a profound effect on his emotions all through the rest of his orgasm; if you hit him with it early, you color the entire experience, including the part that's naturally most intense. It should come as no surprise, then, that the most powerful teasing is that which is done during the first stage of orgasm, before ejaculation begins. It's not just the timing, though. A special kind of teasing belongs here — a kind of teasing that blows a man's mind completely. "You're losing it, Patty!" O my God, she knows! His effort to hold off his ejaculation wasn't casual. His whole being was focused on it, about to be swept away by that final loss of control. And even though he knew he was coming, he clung to the belief that it wasn't over because I didn't know. After all, I wasn't in his head; I wasn't in his cock; I hadn't yet seen him spurt. As long as he could keep that from happening, he had a chance. Then I teased him and suddenly I was in there with him — in his head, in his cock — I had got myself all the way into his soul. He was coming and I knew he was coming. I was sharing his struggle to hold off the first spurt, sharing his tingle, sharing his embarrassment. The display of his ejaculation for my amusement would still be humiliating, but it was no longer the criterion by which we would know I had made him come. The tease showed him that delaying the first spurt by a few seconds wasn't enough to hide what was happening, not even for those few seconds. I knew him too intimately for that. I had confronted him with proof, when he was least able to deal with it, that I understood the secrets of his sexuality better than he had imagined any woman ever could. And then, with all that going on inside him, he lost the contraction and spurted. What a thrill! Though it may be less obvious, the same thing happened to Tony the second time Denise tortured him. Just before he started to spurt, she hit him with, "Ooh, you're gonna be sorry you let go!" He already knew that. He had clearly consented to Denise's agenda, which was that she would bring him to orgasm and then torture him. Still, he couldn't help but be anxious about the degree of distress and embarrassment she might inflict, and her tease was directed to that anxiety. Since the anxiety would still be there after his ejaculation was under way, she could have waited until then to tease him. Indeed the first time she tortured him, she had done just that, even using a similar line — "Ooh, you know what happens now!" The lines could have been interchanged without altering the quality of either experience. A tease about the consequences of a man's failure to resist orgasm is effective whether it precedes or follows the start of ejaculation. Still the two experiences were different for Tony, and the timing of Denise's teasing is what made the difference. When she said, before he started to ejaculate, "you're gonna be sorry you let go," one of the things she was telling him was that she knew he had already let go — that he was coming and could no longer stop, not even to save himself from the torture that she now implied would be worse than he had expected. She brought him to the sudden realization that she knew him too well for comfort, and it added immeasurably to his embarrassment and sense of vulnerability. He had prepared himself to deal with the rest of the experience, but not this twist, and it overwhelmed him. The first time Francesca let go of Roy's cock as he started to come, she teased him about the show he was going to give her. "What I get to see!" It was a good tease, but it would have been even better if it had come a few seconds earlier. The way it actually went, she started speaking as Roy's muscles relaxed in preparation for the first spurt. She waited that long because she wasn't sure she could recognize the onset of ejaculatory inevitability and because she didn't yet understand how much more intense Roy's experience would be if she spoke sooner. By removing her hand and saying the same thing just as his cock reached maximum stiffness, she would have catapulted him suddenly into a trip very much like Patrick's. Faced with the prospect of having to ejaculate with nothing holding his cock, he would have made a desperate attempt to regain control. It would have been impossible, and he would have had several very long seconds in which to experience the conflict between his egoistic compulsion to save himself from embarrassment and his physical need to ejaculate. During that time, he would have been acutely aware that his cock was sticking up, not just in a normal state of erection but obscenely, and that if he relaxed the muscles that held it that way, even for a moment, they'd immediately contract again and his cock would bounce back up and spurt. Not only that, but he would have felt Francesca in there with him the whole time, fully aware of what he was going through and intending every bit of it. Though it's valuable to understand all this, there's no cause to lament Francesca's actual timing. She did what she knew how, and Roy was thoroughly embarrassed and loved her for it. Even had she fully understood the potential of an earlier tease, she might have chosen to do as she did, then adjust her timing on a subsequent occasion so as to again give him more than he was prepared to handle. *** Powerful as this sort of tease is, you're unlikely to use it often. I don't. It's appropriate only when a man is restrained and has a reason to resist coming. Most lovemaking — even most of my lovemaking — isn't like that. Bondage involves a fair amount of work, and few women have Francesca's motivation to do all that work every time. Besides, we all like variety and spontaneity in our lovemaking and a steady diet of bondage limits that. Usually then, when you tease your partner during his climax, it will be after he's started to ejaculate. To get a clear picture of the effect this produces, let's review the teases of this type that we've seen so far. As soon as Patrick lost it, I teased him again. "Ooh, sperm!" I was confident that I had a good read on his emotional reality. He felt as though he had been tied up by a teenage girl who was making him have an orgasm to satisfy her curiosity about what she would see. My tease hooked that feeling. It was just what I might have exclaimed if I had actually been a curious teenager who had heard a description of the process of ejaculation but never witnessed it. Even if I was wrong about his emotional reality, it was a good tease for the circumstances. Not only do I get to make you feel this delicious thrill whenever I want, I get to know exactly when you're feeling it. Because even if you manage to lie perfectly still, you splash that white goop all over. My Obvious enthusiasm gave him cause to worry that he'd be put on display in the same humiliating way again and again. I wanted Patrick to have a full album of memories by which to remember his enslavement, so I heaped another tease on top of that. "That must feel so good!" Orgasms are like that. Despite his anxiety about the impending torture, Patrick couldn't help but feel the pleasure I'd forced on him. I knew, and it added to his embarrassment. The first time Denise tied Tony to his bed and made him come by hand, she said, "Uh-huh! All over you!" One of the reasons a man is so embarrassed when you tie him down and bring him off by hand is that the wet reminds him, at a deep psychological level, of the accidents he had during his toilet training. What Denise said to Tony was aimed at that association. I don't recommend this sort of tease unless you're sure your partner won't take it badly. It isn't really necessary because he knows he's wetting himself whether you mention it or not, so teasing him about some other aspect of the scene, such as the show he's giving you, is no less embarrassing. If you imply that he's soiling himself, he's likely to conclude that you regard his semen as dirty. Almost any man will be put off by that, the Loop notwithstanding. He'll take it as a rejection of his physical self and infer that you don't love him or even that you dislike him. If you know that your partner is turned on by the idea of being made to soil himself (some men are), then by all means tease him in this manner. But if he's like most, or if you're unsure, there's no reason to tread so close to the line; there are plenty of teases that carry no implication of rejection. The first time Linda tied Stephan down and he came just as she was putting his cock inside her, she commented on it right away. "Oh, how embarrassing!" She knew it was, and she knew that that remark would make it even more so. "Wow! I can feel every little twitch!" O my God! Of course she can. She's not moving; she's not all worked up; she's just sitting there savoring the feel of my cock throbbing in her pussy. She made me come before I wanted to, and I'm so embarrassed, and she's entertaining herself with my come and my embarrassment and teasing me about it. The next time they fucked and he lost control like that, she echoed the same tease. "I get to feel it again! Every little twitch!" The first three words let him know that she was pleased with the way things were turning out, that she was happy that his loss of control was giving her another opportunity to relaxedly enjoy the sensation of his come. He was embarrassed, and he knew that she knew he was embarrassed, and she wasn't doing anything to relieve his embarrassment; instead she was making it more intense by so obviously reveling in his situation. She spoke as soon as he started to spurt, so he knew she wasn't talking about what she had already felt happen inside her, as she had the first time, but she was instead expressing enthusiasm for what would inevitably follow. Now that you've started to come, I get to feel every twitch. You can't stop until you're done, and you can't pull out even though you're not restrained this time, because it's in your nature that once you start coming you want to be all the way inside me even more than you want to escape your embarrassment. Besides, if you pulled out, I could move myself around to where I could watch the rest of your come, and that would be even worse. Did she really think all that when she spoke those nine words? Of course not. But every bit of it and more went through his head when he heard them, even as he came. It made for a truly overwhelming experience and an extremely strong bond of affection, and it undoubtedly contributed to his decision to spend the rest of his life as her love slave. One more — this one from just after Linda and Stephan were married, when she tied him down again, put his cock in her pussy once more, and made him lose control the same way. "Ooh! Exciting, isn't it?" Not every tease has to be a work of creative genius. Almost any tease will make a memory, and a tease that's reasonably consistent with your partner's thoughts and feelings (as this one certainly was) will make him feel you've found your way inside all his thoughts and feelings. And that's what teasing is about — making your partner feel that he's known as intimately as a person can be, and making memories. It works. If you used to think that all teasing is bad, I hope you're reconsidering. Teasing can be done lovingly, with no trace of hostility, and without inflicting pain. It's a natural part of making love. Attention I live not thirty miles from another woman who, like me, fancies herself something of a dominatrix. I've never met her, but over the years, her rumor has reached me a number of times. My best source was a friend whose lover had had a brief liaison with her four years earlier. Because my friend knew of my interest in female domination, she gathered all the information she could and passed it along. Then there was anecdote here, an impression there, and I was able to assemble quite a clear picture. Though her nickname might suggest otherwise, Killer seems to have no more predilection for violence than I do. She chose that quaint moniker because she believes that her techniques cause men to fall painfully in love with her while she herself remains aloof and unattached, changing partners frequently and leaving behind a trail of broken hearts. In actual fact, men hasten to disentangle themselves from her even more rapidly than she, from them. They find her style of lovemaking unsatisfying and quickly come to regard her as a kook. A typical encounter, described from the perspective of my friend's lover, went like this: After she tied me to the bed and mounted me, she put her hands on her hips and starting bouncing up and down and talking about how I was falling in love with her. She was saying, "you," but she really seemed to be talking to herself, and she was looking straight ahead at the wall. I couldn't get into her rhythm, either; it was choppy, more like a machine than a woman. I figured I'd better try to go along, so I got off by thinking about someone else. When I did, she said, "Made you come!" and let out a cackle. I guess it was supposed to be a giggle, but it was kind of loud and crazy-sounding. She was so weird that when she untied me without hurting me, I was surprised. Of course that's a paraphrase, and my friend had to ask a few questions to elicit the details, but I'm sure it's substantially accurate; it's consistent with everything else I've heard about Killer. Clearly this woman is enthusiastic about female domination and derives a great deal of enjoyment from her fantasies of being a dominatrix. Just as clearly, her relationships with men are so poorly rooted in reality that they can't be sustained. Sure, she gets men into bed with her, and even into her, but she ignores them in favor of her fantasies while preventing them from ignoring her. This turns them off. The really good ones move on in search of partners with whom they can be truly intimate, while the rest find partners they can tune out in favor of their own fantasies. If Killer were less involved in her fantasies, she might be an effective dominatrix. More important, some man might fall in love with her, as she now only imagines they do, and she could get to know him — discover the soul behind the body. I'm sure she'd find it much more satisfying than what she's been doing. The key is attention. Attention is an absolutely essential technique of female domination. Naturally. Attention is an absolutely essential technique of everything we do, or at least of everything we do well. A Zen master might go so far as to say it's the only technique, but I have no more real knowledge of Zen than I do of the internal workings of my motorcycle, so I'll confine my pontifications to female domination. Perhaps you suspect that Killer is a caricature I invented to illustrate a lesson. Obviously she's a caricature, but I didn't invent her. She's real and I've described her as accurately as I could. She made herself into a caricature by neglecting attention, and I seized the opportunity to illustrate my point, though if I hadn't heard about Killer, I don't suppose I'd know that the point needed to be made. Attention is necessary to any relationship because it allows you to know your partner. That's simple. If you don't pay attention to him, you won't know him. If you do pay attention, you learn his likes and dislikes, what turns him on and what turns him off, and countless other details — some useless but lovable, others useful. How much time without sex does it take to make him obsessively horny? What sort of teasing does he take as too mean to be sexy? Which of your behavioral quirks does he find particularly endearing? On and on. He may even let you know, perhaps unintentionally, how best to dominate him. His conversation will suggest scenarios, and those scenarios will often turn out to be the ones that have the greatest erotic effect on him, that bond him to you most strongly. One of my lovers, for example, told me that as a child he had been repeatedly tickled into helplessness by his two sisters. It turned out to be a good thing to do to him, and highly erogenous, though it isn't a good thing to do to most men even if they're ticklish. When making love, attention enhances the accuracy and clarity with which you perceive what's happening in your partner's body and psyche. You're better able to gauge the effects of your words and actions, and the feedback you gather helps keep those words and actions on target. Your attention can be perceived by your partner as well. He knows whether you're focused on him, and his experience is more intense if you are. Your attention grabs his, and turns what might otherwise be just an experience of his own sensations into an experience of you, in all your complexity. Ultimately the Loop itself depends on your attention, because your attention is an essential part of your partner's embarrassment. Just as nothing can embarrass him when he's alone, nothing will embarrass him if he's being ignored. It's the feeling that your attention is focused on his loss of control that causes his embarrassment and his arousal to run away with one another. Consider the technique I used to excite Drew before he masturbated for me, the technique I use to make Patrick drip when he was trying not to. Attention. Pure attention in the case of Drew; attention augmented by teasing in the case of Patrick, but pure attention would have been enough. With all that in mind, perhaps we can strike a compromise with Zen: Attention is the only technique, but we won't neglect the others. *** Chapter 12, In which we conclude our survey by looking at relationships with no history of sexual penetration Before I made any move to enslave Patrick, we fucked and, as is my custom, we did it without a condom. We were in love, not just trying to have a good time, so we wanted our first sexual communion to be as intimate as possible; each of us wanted to completely know the other and each wanted to be completely known. Fucking is perfect for that, and our age and experience made anything else seem unnatural, especially since we were sure of one another's health. Fewer and fewer sexual relationships begin in such circumstances. Often fucking is obviously foolish, and even when it isn't, a good case usually can be made for substituting some other mode of gratification. Sexually transmitted diseases were frightening even when I was young: they hurt and left internal scars. Now they're worse. There's no completely effective protection except abstinence, with monogamy and the use of impermeable barriers the only alternatives that come close. I don't find any of these acceptable except monogamy, and my life just hasn't worked out that way. I'm serially monogamous, but that's a long way from safe, and my search for a new long-term partner can be an epidemiologist's nightmare. When unattached and horny, I've occasionally entered into a liaison that I knew would last only weeks, and one bad winter I did three in a row. To improve my chances of staying healthy, I fuck only those men with whom I'm in love and with whom I expect a lasting relationship. The rest? I have them finger me and eat me, and I bring them off by hand. Safe sex? Hardly, but not as dangerous as fucking without a condom. Maybe my risk of catching something from any one man is cut in half. Though my approach has limited value, I recommend it, and for the most selfish of reasons: If I use it, and my latest lover's previous partner also used it, my risk of catching anything from her is cut by three quarters. It's something to think about. When I'm turned on to a man but not really in love, I'm more comfortable limiting our activities to exclude fucking, and I'm sure I'd feel this way even if there were no sexually transmitted diseases to fear. There's many a man with whom I can happily engage in sexual play, but fucking him would be inappropriately intimate. I've discussed this with other women, and most feel as I do, though if they don't apply the techniques of female domination, they almost all wind up succumbing to pressure and fucking men they oughtn't. I'm over forty. If I'm interested in a sexual relationship with a man but I don't want to fuck him, I have to be tough about it, and so I am — though in my own gently teasing way. If you're eighteen, you have other options because your youth makes them credible. You can be a virgin saving yourself for marriage; you can have a severe case of body shyness; you can be inhibited by parental injunctions; your behavior can be circumscribed by the rules of a cult that promises nirvana at the end of this lifetime. And if none of it is true, you can pretend and you'll still be believed. If you're young enough that you've just recently become sexually active, I have a particular interest in reaching you. You'll probably be the first love of at least one young man and possibly several. Because our sexual tastes are largely determined by our early experiences, you're in a perfect position to make a real difference for the better in the way men of your generation relate to women throughout their lives. If a man's first love sexually enslaves him, he'll tend to prefer similar relationships ever after, even though that preference will give each of his partner's tremendous leverage in controlling his nonsexual behavior. Indeed he'll come to relish, in a good-humored sort of way, the control women can exert over him, much as a macho drunkard relishes his hangovers and jokes about them. The sexual enslavement of even a quarter of a generation of young men will do more to destroy patriarchy as a social institution than will passage of the entire wish list of feminist legislation. Legislation changes only written rules; sexual slavery changes men, giving them, somehow, a genuine concern for the interests of women. Just how does a woman go about enslaving a man she's never fucked? It depends on her age and experience, and on his as well. The techniques I use now are different from those I used when I was twenty. Let's look first at some techniques that are suited to youth. I never met Paula. I didn't even hear very much of her story — certainly not the steamy details — but what I did hear is worth repeating. She was the cousin of a friend to whom I had advocated female domination, and my friend passed along some of what I told her. Paula was young, inexperienced, shy but curious, and seriously in love for the first time. Jimmy was equally inexperienced and returned her love with a tragic intensity. They'd spend hours kissing, gazing into one another's eyes, and confessing the depth of their feelings. They did a fair amount of groping too, but Paula limited it because she was scared. She feared that sexual penetration would hurt; she dreaded pregnancy; she worried more about disease than Jimmy's inexperience warranted; she was frightened by the loss of control inherent in sexual excitement. Their petting sessions often ended with Paula going into a panic, pushing Jimmy away, and rolling herself into a ball. Jimmy was visibly hurt when this happened. He was a genuinely decent and sensitive young man who acknowledged Paula's right to set limits with which she could be comfortable, and he felt he deserved to be trusted not to harm her. Their last aborted grope session took place on a Friday evening after they'd already made plans to get together the following afternoon. Their difficulties left them frustrated and insecure, but still needing one another. Come Saturday, Paula told Jimmy she had an idea for how they might avoid such upsets in the future. She proposed that he agree to be her love slave, and explained that it would allow her to get comfortable with is body by exploring him at her own pace while remaining in control. He agreed and the arrangement worked well. Paula got a good practical education in male anatomy and physiology, she became comfortable with Jimmy's body, and she stopped going into panics. Jimmy was no longer hurt by those panics and discovered that the sexual aspect of the relationship became more satisfying and less frustrating. Not every man can be sexually enslaved by merely inviting him to accept the role. The technique can work if a man is young, inexperienced, and in love in the simple way that's possible only for the young and inexperienced. It can also work if a man knows that his own preference is for sexual slavery. In all other cases it will fail. Either the man will refuse or he'll only pretend to accept, just to see what develops. Even with such a limited range of applicability, the technique has one impressive advantage over all others: it requires very little effort and no skill. And within its limited range, it works. In high school I became friendly with a girl whose sexual appetites were similar to my own. We used to swap stories, fantasies and insights into male sexuality. We went on to different colleges, but not far apart, and we kept in touch until we graduated and for over a year afterward. In college Suzi developed an outrageous but successful technique for recruiting love slaves. She advertised. Not in the student newspaper or on the bulletin boards, but by making loud and frequent mention of her sexual preferences as she talked with her peers in the cafeteria, in coffee shops, and in other public places where small groups gathered. "We missed you at the meeting yesterday," an acquaintance might remark. "Oh, I went with Michael to watch them tear down the old Samson building." "How was it?" "He wanted me to go to bed with him, but he wouldn't let me tie him up, so he still doesn't know me as well as he'd like." Suzi was sufficiently entertaining that the young lady who had missed her at the meeting usually wouldn't mind being used as a foil, but a few of her colleagues positively hated her. Some young man might invite her to a movie, and she'd answer, loudly enough to be heard by everyone in the vicinity, "Okay, but if you want me to come back to your room, you'll have to give me your key and let me tie your hands behind you before we go in." When she succeeded in recruiting a love slave after being without one for a few days, she'd tell those of her acquaintances who knew him, taking her usual care to be overheard, "Jeremy agreed to be my new slave." Those who didn't know him were told, "I have a new slave. His name is Jeremy. Do you know him?" Since they didn't, she'd have to bring him around and introduce him. "This is Jeremy. He's my slave." Acquaintances who were initially unfamiliar with Jeremy were thus played for two ads apiece, and rumors of Suzi's sexual preferences spread rapidly. After all, Jeremy wouldn't last forever, and one of today's passersby might turn out to be his replacement. When Jeremy finally moved on (it usually took about seven weeks for her trivialization of his feelings and motives to become intolerable), Suzi would lament his departure loudly enough to attract the notice of his successor, greeting each of her acquaintances with the same tragic announcement: "I broke up with Jeremy. I need a new slave." The only environment in which this strategy can succeed is a large urban college. For one thing, that's the only environment in which one finds a sufficient concentration of the sort of men on whom it will work — young men who are inexperienced, shy, curious, and quick to fall in love. In that environment, though, Suzi's brand of advertising is surprisingly effective. Young men are horny, and Suzi's kind of chatter makes them more so. Many are curious and inexperienced besides, and they'll accept almost any terms that promise the satisfaction of their lust and curiosity. A man who can resist today, whether out of pride or some preconceived idea of what a relationship ought to be, may succumb when his fantasies have been nourished by a month or a year of constant exposure. Suzi's advertising reached a large audience; passersby heard her little speeches all the time. When she attracted a man's interest, he would talk with her. She had invited him, so he could proceed even if he didn't think of himself as a skilled conversationalist. Indeed one of the great things about advertising is that it makes even the shiest of men willing to attempt an approach, and these were the men Suzi most wanted to attract. In general, their shyness had kept them from intimate physical relationships, and their inexperience had in turn fed their shyness, since they'd had no opportunity to develop confidence in skills they'd never tried. Suzi was looking for inexperience as much as shyness because she found that inexperienced men are uncommonly susceptible to sexual stimulation; most of them would get hard and drip at nothing more than the sight of her bare breasts, and there wasn't a one who was ever able to keep from coming when she wanted a porno show. Shyness offered advantages too, inexperience aside. A shy man knew that he had a tremendous obstacle to overcome in his search for a new relationship, so he would choose to endure Suzi's constant insults far longer than a man with ordinary social skills. Better yet, shy men fell in love with Suzi. What did it was the way she spoke so lightly and freely about her sexuality, her emotions, the problems and joys of her everyday life. Men whose early training in the male role had driven them to the opposite extreme — those for whom that kind of talk was impossible — were overwhelmed by her openness, by the vulnerability they saw in that openness, by the way she seemed to trust them with what ought to have been secrets. They couldn't help but want to give themselves to her. Suzi didn't fuck her slaves. She believed that her virginity had to be preserved so she could exchange it for a wedding ring, and in fact she made such a trade shortly after she earned her degree. She married a man who wasn't at all shy and whom she claimed to respect for his cynical attitude toward her style. In her relationship with him, she used none of what she knew about female domination, and their marriage was unhappy and brief. It confirmed my attitude toward the blessings of convention. Before her commitment to convention did her in, though — while she was still recruiting slaves in college — Suzi's advertising included frequent affirmations of her virginity, often coupled with lamentations over the necessity of guarding it. Prospective slaves knew she was determined not to fuck them, but they were intrigued by the mystique she wove by so often wishing aloud that she could. Each hoped that something about him would overcome her determination, and though none of them ever did get into her, each took tremendous pleasure in the sexual and emotional intimacy of being her slave. Indeed her slaves probably enjoyed Suzi more than they enjoyed the women they eventually fucked, and more than the man she married enjoyed her. Suzi's style went far beyond the pale, and there are only a few women who could comfortably adopt it; I certainly couldn't. Outrageous as it was, though, she maintained a certain modicum of decency. When she said she needed a new slave, she'd talk about her desire to tie him up, and having recruited Jeremy she'd introduce him as her slave, but she'd never make public mention of tying him up in particular nor describe any other details of their lovemaking. She wouldn't talk about his sexual or emotional quirks and she wouldn't make disparaging remarks about him even after they broke up. She would never have more than one slave at a time. Though Suzi took care to be discreet even as she reveled in notoriety, she did share her stories with me, and she taught me a great deal for which I'm eternally grateful. It was she who led me to understand that sexual slavery might be a lasting arrangement on which a couple could agree. I had long enjoyed sexually toying with the young men in my life, but my indulgence had been limited to seizing an opportunity here and an opportunity there, encapsulated in otherwise ordinary relationships. Suzi showed me the possibility of insisting on a rule that made it my right at all times. All I had to do was disentangle her principles and techniques, which I've been using and refining ever since, from her outlandish style. It was Suzi who introduced me to the simplest way I know to encourage fidelity in a man who might be inclined to stray, and it was she who introduced me to the technique of letting go of a man's cock just as his ejaculation becomes inevitable. She told me about both as part of the same story. Barry was a virgin and Suzi wanted to keep him that way, but when he'd been her slave for three weeks, she noticed he was spending a great deal of time in serious conversation with a woman named Maureen. Displays of jealousy weren't part of Suzi's style, and she certainly wasn't going to raise a ruckus, but she was determined to protect her interests. What she did was tie Barry to the four corners of her bed and say, "I've decided that from now on, you're going to be my little boy." She got out a pair of scissors, a safety razor and a can of shaving cream, and added, "I'll have to take off your pubic hair so you'll look like a little boy." She cut the hair short, then shaved it down to the skin, rinsed off the residual shaving cream with a wet towel, and admired the effect. She found it quite a turn-on. Shaving does make a man's cock look bigger, and there's something incredibly sexy about the curve of a bare mound. She told him he'd have to keep himself shaved for her, that if she ever found his hair growing back he'd be sorry. She straddled his face and had him eat her, then pulled her jeans back on. She untied his wrists from the bed and tied them together in front of him, untied his ankles, and told him to stand up. "See, little boy? I got you naked and now your pee-pee is sticking out and I get to look at it." She had him stand with his back to the wall, just under a hook she'd placed a few inches below the ceiling. She stood on a chair and fastened his wrists to it. "I get to play with it, too." She sat on the chair and milked him, using one palm on the undersurface of his cock and the other on top. When she knew his ejaculation was inevitable, she said, "I think something's going to happen." She let go. Barry panted and gasped, his cock sticking up at a forty-five degree angle. Suddenly it dropped almost to horizontal, then sprang back up as it spurted. "I made you wet! Your pee-pee is doing its thing!" It bounced and spurted several times more, then came to rest, still erect, pointed just a little downward. She tweaked his nipples with her fingers and it bounced again. "Oh! Little boys' nipples are connected to their pee- pees just like girls'." She watched his cock as it shrank. "You must be so embarrassed, having to stand here all naked in front of a girl, with your pee-pee dripping like that, remembering how I watched it bounce up and down while you wet." "What a trip!" "You know, some day when you grow up, you'll have a wife to fuck whenever you want, and you'll wish that instead, she'd tie you up just like this and play with your pee- pee. Too bad you'll be too embarrassed to let her know." "Maybe it'll be you." "Just because you're in love with me, that doesn't mean I'm going to marry you. Here. I'll untie you now." She stood on the chair again and released him from the hook, then got down and untied his wrists. Barry didn't spend nearly so much time with Maureen after that. He kept himself shaved and Suzi never left off teasing him about being her little boy. He probably never suspected that Suzi was even aware of Maureen's existence. What he did know was that if he undressed for Maureen, his missing hair would be difficult to explain. Besides, Maureen couldn't possibly turn him on as Suzi did, no matter what liberties she might allow. No woman could. As it turned out, his relationship with Suzi lasted fourteen more weeks, for a total of seventeen. That was ten more weeks than average and thirteen more than could have been expected if she hadn't shaved him, so the shaving trick really impressed me. The technique of letting go of a man's cock as he reaches the point of no return became one of my favorites. The variant I learned from Suzi is even better than the one Francesca used with Roy; the show is more spectacular when the man is standing, so his embarrassment is greater. His cock sticks out farther from his body; it swings through a wider arc, splashing its goop across the room; and it's left dripping obscenely at the end. The reason I don't use it so much now as when I first learned it is that my partners are older. They're not so readily turned on as younger men, and they're easily distracted from their lust by the discomfort of being tied in a standing position. I have a policy of never trying anything that may fail, lest my partner's belief in my irresistibility be eroded, but when I've got a man horny enough, I still sometimes tie his wrists to the hook in my ceiling and put him through the rest of it. He always loves me for it. A few days after Suzi told me the story of Barry, one of my friends invited me to a party celebrating her brother-in-law's acquittal on a charge of demonstrating against the Vietnam War or, as the prosecutor had called it, trespassing on government property. The party was at the house of a friend of the former defendant, and the host had hired a rock band to entertain. I found the drummer extremely attractive and struck up a conversation with him during the first break. His name was Steve and his parents owned a store that sold musical instruments. He spent much of his time working there, especially during the hours when people our age were most likely to come in; his father thought that Steve's ability to speak with young people in their own language was good for business. Playing in the band interested him more, but since he and two of his three colleagues were too young for the bar scene, gigs were hard to get; the band was pretty much limited to playing parties, and parties thrown by people who knew them didn't come along that often. I resolved then and there that I was going to use Steve as a proving ground for the ideas I'd picked up from Suzi. I was going to enslave him, and I was going to do it without fucking him. If I succeeded... well, I'd play it for all it was worth. I chose Steve mainly because he turned me on, but there were other reasons besides. He wasn't one of my schoolmates, and we didn't seem to have many friends in common, so if everything possible went wrong, I still wouldn't pick up a reputation that would make future relationships difficult, at least in my usual circles. His being a rock musician made me even more certain of that, because it led me to infer that he had already had more sexual partners than he could remember; he would dismiss me without a second thought if I wound up offending him. I also regarded him as a challenge: I knew I had no idea what I was doing, and I thought it would be a great accomplishment to start by sexually enslaving such a connoisseur while refusing to fuck him. As it turned out, I overestimated Steve's experience. He'd done enough heavy petting so he knew how to give a woman a great deal of pleasure, but he was a virgin. His parents had kept him under fairly tight rein, partly out of an old-fashioned view of morality, but mostly out of the paranoid fear that some young lady would set him up for a shotgun wedding so she could get control of the family business. Steve had too good a sense of reality to buy into their delusions, and he was pleased that I approached him at the party. He saw me as an opportunity to pursue his own objective — getting cured of his virginity. Of course I learned all this only after Steve and I were deeply involved. We made our opening moves laboring under the greatest of misapprehensions, our respective agendas tucked well out of sight, each pretending to be interested only in enjoying the other. So it goes. The conflict between our goals was such that it would take time to surface; it would remain hidden until Steve made a move to fuck me or I made a move to enslave him. Indeed the sexual aspect of our relationship developed normally for about three weeks; our exploration of one another's bodies became increasingly intimate and we allowed ourselves greater and greater degrees of arousal. The usual. One afternoon, we had progressed to where we were lying in bed naked, his hand doing delicious things to my pussy while I played with his cock. We were face to face on our sides, sometimes kissing but mostly just watching the reflections of the yummies we were giving. When he thought I was horny enough, he moved closer and positioned his cock so that it was pressed against the outer lips of my pussy, ready to enter me. I kept my legs together while he tried to make some sort of headway, and of course he couldn't. "I'd like you to keep playing with me, and I'd like to keep playing with you, but you're not going to put that in me." "Okay." We went back to what we'd been doing, and after a couple of minutes I said, "I think I'd like to just relax and enjoy what you're doing for a while, then take a turn playing with you." He went along with that and fingered me through several orgasms, obviously enjoying the show. When I'd had enough, I let him know and we spent a few minutes cuddling and kissing, then I told him to lie back and relax. I knelt alongside him and stroked his cock until he came, then a little more until he was done. Then some more cuddling, kissing, and the pleasant sort of talk that naturally follows a good come. By the next time, he'd engineered a fiendish little strategy around that scenario. He encouraged me to lie back and relax while he fingered me, then he moved down and ate me. Soon I was soaking wet at the edge of orgasm. He lunged forward and tried to get in. I managed to avoid him, and by the time he reoriented himself I was off the bed. I told you, you're not going to put that in me!" I scolded. "Why not? It's only natural." "Because it's my body and I say no! I'm tired of guys trying to use me. My last boyfriend tried to do the same thing, and the one before him too. Nobody cares how I feel about it." "I wouldn't mind if you tried to use me like that." "That's you, and you probably haven't really thought about it anyway. We were having such a good time. Why did you have to mess it up?" "I didn't think I was messing it up. I didn't think it'd upset you." "Well, it does. It really turns me off." I started dressing. Steve watched me with a hopeless sort of sadness, then did the same. "I'm really sorry I upset you," he said when we were dressed. "I made a mistake. I wish there were some way I could fix it." I shot him an exasperated look and thought a moment. I tried to look like I was considering what he'd said, but what I was really doing was trying to figure out how to steer the conversation so as to get him to agree to be my love slave. "It's probably just as well you can't fix it. If you could, you'd just look for another opportunity to try to rape me." "I didn't try to rape you. I'm not like that. I thought you wanted the same thing I did." "I told you last time, I don't want that." "I thought you changed your mind." "If I'd have changed my mind, I would have told you." "I didn't know that. Look, I am sorry I upset you, even if there isn't a way to fix it." I knew this was the best opportunity I was going to get. If I was going to make anything of it, I would have to be as outrageous as Suzi. Now or never, George! Palms sweating, heart racing... "Maybe you can fix it. Something you said gives me an idea." "What did I say?" "You said you wouldn't mind if I tried to use you like that." "Yeah?" "Okay, so how about we make an agreement that I use you instead of you trying to use me? We'll say that you're my love slave and I'll control all the touching we do. You touch me when and how I want, and only when and how I want, and I touch you when and how I want, and you don't argue about it." He looked kind of like the movie version of Bob Cratchit, in the scene near the end where Scrooge tells him he's going to raise his salary. "Okay." I felt a tremendous sense of relief myself, though my hands were still clammy and my heart went on pounding. I'd been sure Steve was going to tell me I'd set up the whole situation for the sole purpose of coercing him into accepting my perverted agenda (which of course I had), and I'd worked myself up into a bad case of the terrors. Now that he'd given his assent so easily, everything was right again. But relief lasted only a moment. Then I started having doubts. Was he really unaware what I'd done, or was he just playing along? Perhaps he was putting me on, still scheming to get his own way. How could I be sure? I couldn't. But Steve looked so bewildered, I decided to put my worries aside. If he became difficult, I could deal with it then. I realized I had to say something — I was in charge — but what? I certainly wasn't going to pick up our lovemaking where we left off; my anxiety had squelched my desire and left a most unkissable taste in my mouth. "How about coming over tomorrow at the same time? That'll give me a chance to get over being mad at you and also finish some work I need to get done for my lit class." "Sure." He was usually more talkative — probably afraid of making another mistake. "Maybe then I'll show you one of the things that can happen to a love slave who misbehaves." "Umgawa! I don't think I want to know." He waited for a response, but I just smiled. "You know, I haven't even had time to misbehave since agreeing to be your love slave." "Well, maybe I won't show you. I'll see whether I still need to work out my annoyance over today." "I'll see you tomorrow," he shrugged, and he was gone. I wondered about his not having tried to kiss or hug me on the way out. Had my anxiety left me smelling that bad? Was he being careful not to break my rule against touching me unless I told him to? Had he stopped liking me? I had exchanged my familiar world for a new one, and I didn't know how to navigate anymore. The next day, Steve showed up in a sweat-suit. It was just perfect for acting out one of the fantasies that had been running through my mind that morning, and I told him so. I led him to the bed and sat down. He made a move to do the same. "No, just stand here in front of me." I hooked my fingers into opposite sides of the collective waistband of his sweatpants and undershorts and pulled them both down to his knees. "Umgawa! What are you doing? You didn't even kiss me hello!" "I know. Kissing turns you on, and then by the time we get your clothes out of the way, you're all hard. I want to watch you get hard." "Wow! It looks like being your love slave sure is going to be different!" "I'd have to be crazy, not to have some fun with it." When I first exposed his cock, it was already bigger than when he'd got dressed after the last time I made him come, and now it grew and stiffened rapidly as I watched. Soon it was sticking up at an angle, fully erect." "How does it feel to have me watch that happen?" "It's exciting! I can't wait to see how you use me next!" I had him finish getting out of his clothes, then I got out of mine. "Come lie down with me." We kissed, we cuddled, he made love to my breasts with his mouth. He fingered my pussy, then moved down to suck and tongue my clit while he stimulated my nipples with his fingers. I came repeatedly. "Come on back up here and let's cuddle some more," I said at last. He did as I said and we wrapped our arms around one another. I delighted in the urgency of his excitement; the pulsing wetness of his cockhead affirmed the power of my femininity and boosted my confidence. "That felt so good, Steve! I really like the way you do that." "Thanks. I like the way you like it. It's groovy seeing you so turned on." "I believe it. You're dripping on my tummy." I sat partway up. "Here..." I took hold of his cock and swirled the slippery liquid around the head with my thumb, studying it as I did. I spread the little slit between my thumb and forefinger and examined that, then tried sliding the tip of my thumb back and forth in it. "I know what I want to do!" I jumped up and heard Steve ask, "What?" as I retrieved a tangled heap of rope, webbing and carabiners. "Guess," I answered, undoing the tangles as fast as I could. "You're gonna tie me up?" "Mm-hm!" "Sufferin' succotash!" he exclaimed, affecting a Looney lisp. "I don't know what to say! This is so sudden! Nobody's ever taken such an interest in me before! My gosh, I haven't a thing to wear...!" He went on like that, but I missed most of it — some because I was concentrating on the tangle and some because I was laughing so hard at the bits I caught. When I had enough ends free, I set about tying him to the bed. I used climbers' knots to secure first his wrists, then his ankles (I hadn't yet perfected the knots I use now, nor had I realized that there's no advantage to binding a man's legs, but I'm sure my clumsiness did no harm). It was a while before I was satisfied with my work, but his cock was still hard. "How does it feel, being tied up like that, knowing I can do anything I want to you?" "It's exciting! At least, so far it is." "Aren't you a little worried about what I said yesterday — that you might get what you deserve for lunging at me?" "A little. But you might decide to be nice to me. I think that's the kind of person you are, and I've promised to be nice to you." "Maybe I should show you what might happen if you're not nice, just to be sure you don't change your mind." "I'll be nice to you. I won't even try to tell you what to do; I'll just be yours, like we agreed." "Okay, I'll think about that. Meanwhile I want to find out what turns you on." I explored his body, lightly caressing in turn his thighs, ears, neck, cheeks, lips, nipples and scrotum, watching his cock for a response. I didn't get much, so I started massaging his cock with both hands, and that increased his arousal considerably. When I thought he was close to orgasm, I stopped and stroked his thighs. Nothing. I rubbed his cock some more, then kissed him teasingly on the mouth and tried his ears, neck and cheeks again. Nothing there either, so I went back to his cock to warm him up for another go. When he was in the same state as I had him before, I stopped and ran a couple of fingers along is scrotum. His cock gave a little jump. "Ooh, that's something!" "Yeah, it excites me." "It didn't do anything before." "It excited me then too, but I wasn't turned on enough so you could see it." I did it again, and his cock stiffened and relaxed the same way, still more noticeably. The thought occurred to me that he must be terribly embarrassed by what we were doing; I knew I would have been, had our roles been reversed. I was tempted to ask him about it but decided not to. I was happy to be getting such a good education, and I was worried that inviting him to complain about his embarrassment might bring a response that would oblige me to slow down. I went back to stroking his cock, and when he was all fired up again, I stopped once more. "I wonder...," I said, and I ran both index fingers around his nipples in tight circles. He reacted even before I touched him, pulling at all the bonds at once and jerking his hips. Once I made contact, a broken groaning noise began deep in his throat, his cock started bouncing, and his hips bucked twice. "That's really something!" I continued circling his nipples to see what would happen. His cock kept twitching, but less often and with less force, and his hips were still. The noise in his throat stopped when he ran out of air. He swallowed hard and his breathing became more regular. I withdrew my hands and waited for him to regain his composure. He closed his eyes. How did that feel? He opened his eyes again "Exciting! I don't think I can describe it." I couldn't resist any longer; I had to say it. "I'm glad you told me you don't mind if I use you, 'cause otherwise I might worry how embarrassing this must be." "I guess you were right when I said that; I never really thought about how it would feel if something like this happened. I never thought something like this could happen. This is embarrassing, but it's still exciting." "Suppose I tell you, being my love slave is always going to be this embarrassing. Are you still going to be my love slave?" I had set out to project confidence, and I don't think I got off to too bad a start, but I wound up sounding like I needed reassurance, and in fact I did. It meant so much to me to have hm there, tied naked and helpless for me to play with, that I couldn't bear the thought that he might not give himself to me like that again, that his embarrassment might make him quit after this once. He closed his eyes again and stayed like that for a long time, then looked at me. "It's an embarrassing question, too," he said. And suddenly I knew he was in love with me. It had come over him just then, as he lay there. I could see it in his eyes. A softness, a caring — there was no mistaking that look, especially since it didn't match our conversation in any way that I could yet understand. I was drunk with power. Wow! I made him fall in love with me! Onward! First, all the men of this little city! Then Montréal! By the grace of God, the feeling passed in a moment. Then I needed to understand. What just happened here? What, precisely, did I do? But no, that could wait. Steve was more important. Here he was, in love with me, and I didn't know what I had done, didn't know what I was doing. It would be so easy to hurt him now, just by being careless, just by mistake, and it would be so horribly wrong. He swallowed again. "I'll still do it." I realized I was looking back at him the same way he was looking at me, not just toying with him as I'd planned but genuinely loving him. I hadn't expected such intensity of feeling and it seemed incongruous with the situation — with his being tied up like that — but I couldn't deny what was happening to me. I'd puzzle it out later. Now I had an agenda to follow, a role to play, an opportunity too rare to pass up. I managed a smile. "Neat! I'll try to see that you enjoy it. Most of the time, anyway. Today I might still want to pay you back for what you did yesterday." I took hold of his cock again and rubbed it with both hands until he came. The previous time had been nothing, compared to the show he put on for me now. He let out a stream of forced guttural noises, his hips jerked wildly, and he seemed to unload more than an ounce of fluid, and with such force that some of it splattered on the wall behind him. "Wow! Big one, isn't it?" He raised his head, looked into my eyes, and nodded slightly. "Uh-huh." Orgasm had convulsed his face into something beautiful, his left cheek splashed with come. I appreciated how much effort he put into answering me in that state, how he must have craved the intimacy of that little gesture. I nodded in response and I knew he could see the love I was feeling. Soon it was over. His hips settled down, his breathing grew quieter, and the throbbing of his cock became less forceful and ejected no more fluid. Confused though I was by the complexity of my feelings, I was determined to hold to my plan. I kept up my stroking. I knew that most men need the stimulation discontinued at this point but I wasn't yet sure about Steve, which is why I'd told him only that he might be subjected to some sort of ordeal rather than promising it as a certainty. Now, though, I was finding out. His breath started to catch in his throat again and he squirmed and tried to pull away. "Ooww! Let go!" "Unh-Unh," I teased, following the twisting of his hips with my hands and milking him steadily. "I warned you something like this might happen. See? This is one of the things I can do if you misbehave like yesterday. I tie you up, and I play with you until you have an orgasm, and I don't let it end." He was thrashing as much as the bonds would permit, bucking his hips frantically. I wondered whether it was all an attempt to pull his cock out from between my hands, or whether it was a reflex response to the stimulation, or whether it was some of each. He made the most piteous noises the whole time, and at last he took a deep breath and let out a long, mournful, "Ooooooowww!" "Okay, I'll stop." I let go, studied him affectionately as he tried to pull himself together, saw the love in his eyes when he was finally able to look into mine, watched him grope for words. "I don't know what to say." It was funny, in its way, and I appreciated the humor; I also liked the honesty and precision of it. "You don't have to say anything. Just relax. I'll untie you." I undid the bonds, retrieved an old shirt from the laundry bag and dried him off, then got into bed and cuddled him. "You're a lot of fun to play with. I'm going to like having you as a love slave." "I think I'm happy to hear that. I love you. I want to keep seeing you. I didn't know that until today. I figured I'd just try to get to know you and see how things went, but I do love you. Only I don't know how much of this treatment I can take. It hurts." "Well, I don't think I'll do it too often. I don't even think I'll tie you up very often, and some of the times I tie you up, I'll stop playing with you when you need me to. Of course sometimes I'll do it just like today, and when I first tie you up, you won't know which it'll be." "Oh, wow!" He held me tight. After Steve had gone, I took an inventory of the pieces I had of the puzzle. I wouldn't be able to rest until I'd assembled them into at least a partial understanding of what had happened, and then I would have to see whether anything was missing — anything I still needed to discover if I was to grasp it all. What, in our brief interaction, had had such a powerful effect on Steve? Why had he fallen in love with me? I could identify two possible causes. One was his embarrassment at my exploration of his sexual responses; the other was my peculiarly phrased request for reassurance. I suspected that each had played a part. Embarrassment. When Steve knocked on my door that day, I had no understanding of its power. The possibility of the Loop had never occurred to me. All I knew, beyond what any woman knows, is that men can't resist sexual stimulation. That knowledge had fueled my most enjoyable fantasies and shaped some memorable sexual encounters, but I had no idea that a man's embarrassment at his loss of control could itself be a turn-on. Now I had two pieces of evidence that made it seem likely, and I was on my way to my earliest understanding of the Loop. When I'd exposed Steve's cock, it got hard just from his knowing I was watching. I hadn't expected that. I thought I'd have to stimulate it if I wanted to see it get hard, and I was impressed by the way it grew and stiffened in response to my gaze alone. The obvious conclusion was that what turned him on was his self-conscious awareness that I would get to witness his arousal — his embarrassment at being put on display to satisfy my feminine curiosity. Whenever I had seen an erect penis before, I could find some other explanation for the excitement it reflected. Even when I reminisced about that summer day in Maryland, I had always assumed that what so aroused the boy in the bushes was the sight of our naked female bodies. Now I wondered. Sure, all those erections could be explained otherwise than by embarrassment, but perhaps some of those explanations were incomplete. Maybe a few were even wrong. Then there was that fascinating remark Steve made when I asked him whether he would still be my love slave even though he found it embarrassing. It was while considering that question that he was struck by Cupid's arrow, and what he said when he looked at me so lovingly was, "It's an embarrassing question, too." That utterance didn't make a whole lot of sense when first I heard it, but I was sure there was meaning in it and I was determined to find it. I pondered long, trying to figure out where Steve was coming from, trying to imagine what state of mind could be reflected in those words. Why was it an embarrassing question? I could come up with only one explanation. My question was embarrassing because Steve was turned on by his embarrassment, and he felt that an affirmative response would let me know that. Admitting to being turned on by his embarrassment would be embarrassing in itself because he thought it would mark him as a pervert and because it would encourage me to embarrass him all the more in the future. There was an obvious flaw in his reasoning. He might be embarrassed by my toying and not be turned on by his embarrassment — indeed he might even find it unpleasant — but still be willing to accept it because our relationship was important to him. So an affirmative response didn't necessarily let me know that he found his embarrassment exciting, but his state of mind was such that he didn't see that; if he had seen it there would be no credible explanation at all for his remark. I could easily relate to that state because of my own experience the previous day, when I had been so anxious in my certainty that Steve was about to accuse me of setting him up to be coerced into sexual slavery. Realistically I had no reason to expect he would react badly even if he knew for sure. We human beings are like that; we tend to think that others know where we're coming from. Usually they don't, and that takes some getting used to. But wait a minute! Maybe Steve understood that. Maybe he didn't think I knew where he was coming from. There is a credible explanation for his remark in that case, after all. Maybe he wasn't afraid I would know he was turned on by his embarrassment. Maybe he wanted me to know it, even if it might mark him as a pervert, either because he hoped I would use the knowledge to turn him on in the future, or because he had fallen in love with me and wanted me to know him that intimately, or (most likely) both. Wow! Of course, I had no way of knowing whether he feared my understanding or desired it or (again) both; but in any case, the Loop seemed a certainty. Then there was my request for reassurance. I hadn't intended it to come out that way. The words were going to be different and the inflection stronger, but I turned a weak phrase, spoke too softly, and let my pitch rise too steeply. It sounded just pathetic. What did it say to Steve? I know I seem really kinky, and playing like this embarrasses you, but I hope you like it well enough, like me well enough, trust me well enough, to want to continue sharing it with me. Right now you're tied down so I can toy with you, but that doesn't mean I can disregard your feelings; they matter to me, and I need you to reassure me about how you're taking all this. Yes, I'm kinky. I'm also a lot more, just as you're all that you are, and I hope you'll accept me, that you'll want to go on knowing me, that you'll say something to encourage me right now so I can get over this worry and get back to enjoying you. That's powerful stuff, I realized, and I was glad I'd lost control of my voice and said it. Though at that age I might not have been able to express it as clearly as I can now, I'd begun to understand that nothing arouses love quite so strongly or reliably as sharing our vulnerabilities freely and non-defensively. I'd seen it work for Suzi, I'd felt it in my previous relationships, and Steve's openness that very day had made me fall in love with him just as he'd fallen in love with me. I thought about how the Loop and my request for reassurance might have reinforced one another, and I tried to reconstruct what went on in Steve's mind as he lay there on my bed with his eyes closed, deciding how he was going to answer me. This is so embarrassing, but it's also such a turn-on that I don't want to lose it, and Georgeann doesn't seem at all mean. I think I can trust her. Like, I'm completely at her mercy and she's asking me in that scared little-girl voice to reassure her that we can still do this kind of thing, as if what I say really matters to her, even now. She must really care about me. And I don't want to hurt her. Silly thought when I'm tied up like this, but I don't want to hurt her. I care about her too. I love her. I want to trust her to do this kind of thing, just as she seems to want to trust me to know and accept her kinkiness. I even want to trust her to know that my embarrassment is a turn-on, and her tone tells me I can trust her, that she wants to use it in a way I'll enjoy. I still didn't know whether he believed that agreeing to continue as my love slave would itself confirm that he was turned on by his embarrassment and felt that it would be stylistically better to confess it up front, or whether he told me what he was feeling because he wanted me to know and figured that that was the only way. It was something to wonder about, but it really didn't matter anymore. There was a far more interesting question to consider, and I turned my attention to that. What had given the day's play such a high emotional charge? My previous relationships had been rather ordinary. Carl and I liked one another right off, became more and more intimate physically, grew to love one another and fucked many times (I had lied to Steve). We were close and our feelings were often intense. Eventually I insisted on doing a scene with him that, outwardly at least, was very much like today's: he ate me, and then I tied him down and played with him until he came. I didn't try to enslave him; I hadn't yet decided to try that sort of thing at all, and since I hadn't yet any inkling of the Loop, it would have seemed silly to try to take control of what was already such a loving relationship. Silly was Carl's word for the whole idea of tying him, and he went along with it only to please me. His reaction to the experience seemed close to what it would have been if he hadn't been tied, but contaminated by disdain for the cumber of the bonds. I enjoyed toying with him, but I certainly can't say I was emotionally overwhelmed. I loved him as always, and I appreciated his accommodating me, but that was all. I'd had a number of experiences like that, and a few that were more exciting. The most exciting had been purely sexual flings with young men I didn't love. In high school, for example, I once got hold of a copy of an exam that was yet to be given, and offered it to a fellow student in exchange for the privilege of tying him up and tickling him. Gene insisted on keeping his undershorts on, but once he was tied I cut them off (a snip down each side is all it takes) and teased him, first about having me see him naked, then about not being able to help but get a hard-on, and finally about having to let me watch him spurt all over his tummy. That was far more exciting than the scene with Carl even though I didn't get to come until I returned home. No love, of course, but I hadn't expected any. What made the flings so exciting was that they were real. I felt free to do whatever turned me on; I didn't have to hold back to avoid damaging the relationship because the fling was the relationship. I didn't worry with Gene, as I did later with Carl, that he'd reject me, or love me less, if I exceeded his tolerance for teasing; Gene, after all, hadn't loved me at the start. Today's fantastic session with Steve combined the best of everything. We hadn't begun our sexual relationship because we were in love, but at least our mutual attraction had led us to become friends. Because of our friendship, and because my sexual agenda would take longer than a single day to pursue, I was concerned about how Steve would react to my kinkiness, but not paralyzed by anxiety as I would have been if I were in love and already committed to a conventional pattern of interaction. It turned out to be an explosive brew, and by the time Steve left, we were both in love. Suddenly everything I ever wanted was right there, all together, and it was real. I had a love slave to play with as I liked, and he was in love with me and I was in love with him. He was really my love slave. There was no way it usually is to go back to when our play was over, or to fall back on if things went badly. I hadn't limited myself with promises of what I would or wouldn't do while he was tied up, or at any other time either. All he had for security was his trust in my gentle nature. I'd done what I wanted, and together we'd discovered that my exploration of his sexual responses was itself a turn-on. Now I would always know that about him, and he would always know I knew, just as we would always know that along the way, I'd got worried about scaring him off and asked him for reassurance, and he'd given it freely and loved me for asking. I loved Steve for sharing his embarrassment and for continuing to offer himself to me. I knew that what he felt was more than lust because when I was done torturing him and told him I might do it again someday, he wasn't horny anymore but he still loved me for it. He didn't have to let me know that, but he did, by the way he held me, and it made me love him all the more. Our time together had been just filled with love, and it had been real from beginning to end. End? There was no end, not in the sense that there had been an end to my fling with Gene or my single venture into kink with Carl. Soon Steve and I would be together again and we would continue. Not from some dull normalcy, but from where we were. It was an exhilarating thought and I could hardly wait. After that, Steve and I spent all the time we could together. When we were alone, I almost never let him keep his clothes on. It didn't take much to excite him, and I was always teasing him about having to walk around with his cock sticking up. Most times we were together, I had him give me several orgasms, and many of those times I choreographed some pretty kinky scenes; but no matter what the circumstances, he always did me lovingly. I usually made him come too, always teasingly, but with affection I couldn't have hid if I wanted to. I was lucky it was Steve who was my first love slave. Not only was he a lot of fun to play with, he was uncommonly communicative. If I asked him to describe his feelings, he would respond honestly, freely and in detail. This allowed me to learn a great deal very quickly without having to guess or rely on inferences. Steve readily acknowledged, for example, that he was embarrassed by his inability to keep from turning on to me, that his embarrassment added to his sexual excitement, and that he loved me for embarrassing him. The Loop was no longer mere conjecture but confirmed reality. He verified much of what I'd suspected about the physiology and psychology of male sexual response but hadn't previously had anyone I could comfortably ask — that pressure in the seminal vesicles is felt as lust, or at least as increased susceptibility to arousal; that sexual stimulation seems to make the seminal vesicles fill more quickly; that there's a high correlation among the subjective intensity of an orgasm, the amount of fluid ejected and the force with which it's expelled. He also cooperated with my attempts to learn things that he himself hadn't been aware of; it was on Steve that I first learned that the frenum and corona are the only parts of the penis whose stimulation irresistibly induces orgasm, and that they're the only parts whose stimulation causes distress when continued too long. I nailed down this last bit of information over the course of a couple of weeks of experimentation. I'd play with Steve's cock until he came and then keep rubbing it, after one fashion or another, and he'd let me know whether it bothered him. He wasn't tied down, and I never tried to prolong his distress, but it was plenty exciting for both of us, especially since we both understood that the knowledge I was gathering had only one possible use. It was more than exciting. Half an hour after I'd finished the last of my experiments, we were cuddling, satiated, and Steve got up to go to the bathroom, then came back and lay next to me. "Well, Yum-Yum, now I know exactly how to torture you if you decide to misbehave. How does that make you feel?" He considered for a while, to see how he felt, so he could give me a real answer. That's how he was, and that's how we talked. "It's embarrassing that you know my body that well, and it's embarrassing to be talking about the possibility that you might torture me that way, and it's so exciting, it's giving me a hard-on even though I just came." I saw that it was true. "Neat! Doesn't it frighten you a little too?" He thought it over. "No, not really. It's you, and I know that even if you do torture me you'll do it lovingly. "You know, sometimes I feel like we're really one single piece of God's creation, and we were made to seem like two just so we could enjoy loving each other. Looking at it that way, being embarrassed makes sense but being frightened doesn't. I mean, it's good that I get embarrassed because it's a turn-on; and what my embarrassment really is, is the feeling of being known really well in whatever way we're paying attention to at the time. That wouldn't feel good if I thought you didn't like what you were knowing about me, but you always do, so I wind up grooving on it. Being frightened wouldn't feel good like that, so there's no use to it. It would be useful if you meant me harm; then I could be frightened away from you so I'd be safe. But you're not like that. I don't think you can really want to hurt anyone, just like I can't; so except for being embarrassed, which is a turn-on, I feel comfortable with you." It sank in slowly, all warm and fuzzy. I started to cry quietly and he looked over and saw me and slid his arm under me and pulled me over top of him so I was looking down into him and he up into me and my tears were falling on his face and he cried with me like that and we knew. We had come a long way since concocting our separate agendas, each secretly scheming to use the other. It had been a twisted path, but it didn't matter anymore. I had never before loved anyone as I loved Steve at that moment. Several days later, feeling playful again, I had Steve strip as usual and told him I planned to make him come, but only if he could control himself for a couple of hours and keep from getting hard until I was ready. As I had expected from my understanding of the Loop, his erection was more persistent than ever. I asked him for an explanation, partly to be sure I had it right and partly because I knew that having to talk about it would add to his embarrassment. "Well, first, when you tell me I'm not allowed to get hard, I know you're watching, and that turns me on all by itself; and second, you know I'm trying to control myself, so I get embarrassed by knowing that you know I can't control myself, and that turns me on even more. It's some trip! You're one exciting girl!" I had him eat me before I sent him on his way, and I told him not to do anything to relieve his lust before we got together the next day because I had plans for him. When he returned, he was desperately horny and I inflamed his lust still further by having him eat me again. Then I tied him to the bed and strongly hinted I was going to repeat the torture of that first day as punishment for his failure to control his arousal. I massaged his cock until his ejaculation was inevitable. "You're in for it now!" I kept rubbing. He lifted his bottom off the bed and a slight trickle of come oozed out the end of his cock. His muscles relaxed for one brief instant, then his hips jerked and his cock stiffened again, splashing another souvenir onto my wall. "Ooh, yeah! Do it, Steve!" He did. His hips bucked wildly; animal-like grunts and cries came from his throat; he splashed the wall twice more. "Beautiful, Steve! I love you." He came and came. It took at least a dozen spasms to drain him, and he wound up covered with sperm. When he finally ran dry, he started to look worried, and when I saw that, I stopped. I kept one hand on his cock, holding it gently; I wiped the other on the bedding, then used it to caress his cheek and rub his shoulder. "That was exciting, wasn't it, thinking I might really torture you again?" "It sure was! I've never come that hard! Thank you! You're so good to me!" "How do you feel now?" "Like a little puddle of Steve. Contented. Totally in love with you. Wow!" I smiled and nodded. God! I loved him... "I'd better get these ropes off you." I untied one knot and he started to help, twisting his body so that the come dripped down his side and onto the bed. I got a towel. "Here, lie back a minute. I'll wipe you up." I did the best I could and we finished undoing the knots; then I lay next to him and we held one another a long time. It was after that, that I asked Steve about his sexual history and learned he was a virgin. The surprise, besides giving me a good lesson in the folly of stereotyping, led me to reflect on his skills. I had always regarded him as a good lover, and now I was even more impressed. He was much better, at least at what I had let him do for me so far, than men of considerably greater experience. The reason, I reflected, was that he cared about his effect on me — cared about the quality of the experience he was creating for me — so he paid attention to what he did and he paid attention to my responses. It wasn't just that he was on his best behavior because he was afraid I would torture him or because he hoped one day to fuck me. He cared about his effect on everyone and treated even strangers with as much kindness as they would allow. I loved Steve deeply and I wanted to fuck him. At the same time, I wanted to wait — even though I had satisfied myself that, yes, I was capable of enslaving and holding a man I refused to fuck. I expected to be spending the rest of my life with Steve, and while I knew I couldn't allow him to remain a virgin for long, I also knew that this portion of our time together would be our only opportunity to explore the special kind of anticipation and teasing that his virginity made possible. Something I particularly wanted to try was the bondage trip Suzi had run on Barry, and I created the opportunity one unusually warm day in early spring when I led Steve to a secluded spot in one of my favorite woods. I found a big pine tree with a fallen log under it, tied Steve's wrists together in front of him, took a length of rope and tied it loosely to the loop of plastic that kept the top of my water bottle from getting lost, then threw the bottle over one of the lower branches of the tree. I untied the bottle and instead fastened the end of the rope to the figure-eight between Steve's wrists, then pulled the other end until his arms were extended upward, and finally lashed the free end to the tree trunk. I undid Steve's belt and dropped his jeans. "I've been wondering, Steve, whether you could get your ejaculation under control and stop coming after just a couple of spurts if you tried really hard. What do you think? "Of course I couldn't. Remember how you did all those experiments on me? And proved that I can't stop until you let me?" "What if I stopped rubbing as soon as you started to come, and I just held your cock without doing anything?" "I don't know for sure, but I don't think I could stop anyway." "Well, I want to find out, and I want you to try really hard to stop, so I'm going to offer you a big incentive to succeed." "Uh-oh! Are you going to torture me again if I can't do it?" "Oh, no! Nothing like that! What I had in mind was that if you can stop, in three spurts or less, then sometime in the next few days I would help you get rid of your virginity." "Umgawa! What if I can't?" "Well, then you'll just have to go on living with it." His cock had become hard as we talked, and now I sat on the log and went to work on it. I rubbed it gently between my hands, one on top and one on the bottom, making sure to brush the frenum and corona with each stroke. When he seemed about twenty seconds from coming, I repeated the rules of our game. "Now remember, you have three spurts to get it under control. The fourth one means you might be a virgin for a long time." I milked him until I was sure the first spurt was inevitable, then let go. "There, Steve, I won't even hold on." He answered with a kind of broken sobbing. "You're going to watch..." His voice gave out as his pelvic muscles started pumping. His cock swung down, then sprang back up and spurted. "One," I counted. "Two." "Three." He didn't even slow down. "Whoops! There goes your chance to fuck me!" Then, "Five." "Six." "Seven." The seventh spurt was really the last, though his cock twitched hard two more times before settling into the gentle pulsing with which it shrank and softened. "What an exciting display! Your sex makes such a neat toy!" "I'm glad you like playing with me. You're one imaginative lover!" "Thanks. You know, I have one more thing planned for you while you're still tied like this. I hope you don't mind." "What's that?" "I want to hear how you felt when you pumped out the fourth spurt." "Ooo-eee! I have to think about how to explain it." I waited, watching as a drop of residual come caught the inside of his thigh and trickled slowly down, leaving a thin strand of viscous fluid connected to the tip of his cock. Everything around us was so wonderfully green, smelled so wonderfully green. "Well," he began, "the whole thing was really embarrassing and really exciting because I knew you wanted to watch my cock move like that and I had to let you. I mean, when you let go, it was too late to keep from coming, and I couldn't hold my cock still while I came, or make it move only a little, so I had to let you see it move a lot, and it's really embarrassing, having a girl watch that. At the same time, each spurt felt really good, same as it always does; that's just the way a guy's orgasm is. "I really wanted to hold back the fourth one, but I couldn't. It was just part of coming, and since you wanted to know, it looks like I can't get it under control once I start; it just has to die down by itself. "How I felt... I felt like I was telling you how I felt, just by spurting, and you could hear me. It was like I was saying, Here, I need to move my cock for you to see and I need to let you know how much it embarrasses me. I love you and you turn me on so much that I need to give you everything you want, right now, even if it means I don't get to ball you." His words were somehow permeated with the green smell. Turned on as I was, I felt strangely peaceful, almost spacey. "Really?" I asked. "Yeah." "That's beautiful. I love you too, Steve. I hope you know that." "Yeah, I do. It's nice to hear you say it. Thanks." I stood up and unhitched the rope. He lowered his arms. I untied his hands. We hugged, then walked back to civilization. I had more teases planned for Steve's virginity, but I never got to them. He was drafted. He showed me the notice and the world ended. What would he be when he came back? a corpse? a vegetable? a psychopathic killer? No, never a psychopathic killer, no matter what they might do to him; at least I knew that about him, but the other possibilities weren't much better. We had a month before he was due to report. I decided, first of all, that he was going to lose his virginity to me, not to some whore surrounded by a mob of drunken soldiers; second, that we were going to wait for one another, write to one another, and continue our relationship when he returned home — if he returned home; third, that my panic wasn't going to make me release him from his promise to be my love slave. I wanted that to be forever. It all happened as I decided. We promised to wait for one another; we promised to write; I kept control of the relationship. I fucked him nine times before he went in. The first time, I tied him down and surprised him; the other eight, I didn't tie him, but I was on top anyway. When he completed training, he came home and we spent whatever time we could together. I mourned the loss of his hair, but I didn't mention it to him. He was still the same person and I loved him dearly, hair or no. I told him I'd wait for him, he told me he'd be faithful to me, we promised to continue writing, and I fucked him eight more times. Then he was shipped to Vietnam. In three weeks he was dead. If, back then, the wives of enough congressmen had known the techniques described in this book, I have little doubt that they would have prevented the bloodbath that took Steve away from me. Women are universally distressed by the slaughter of their children, unlike men, who are distressed by it only when they can't exact vengeance. We're also distressed by the slaughter of other women's children. Men, with only a few exceptions, seem to revel in it; massacre is a male bonding ritual. For the most part, I think I have a realistic idea of what I can accomplish with this book. My aim is to empower women sexually, one at a time, and I expect that that will happen — a goodly number of women will be sexually empowered by reading this. I hope that each of those women will use her newfound power to improve the relationship she's in, or her next one, and that her partner will benefit as much as she. I expect that even that will happen — maybe not in every case, but often. Beyond these expectations — expectations I regard as realistic — I have a dream. Perhaps it's a grandiose dream, but I want to share it with you anyway. I'd like to empower women as a gender so that among us we'll have enough leverage to make basic human decency a guiding principle of society. I'd like my skills to become so widely known and practiced that no heterosexually active man can escape them. I'd like every young man falling in love for the first time to have to face the certainty that the young women he loves knows how to use the power of her femininity to make him her slave — the certainty that if she loves him, she will make him her slave. I'd like so many women to take control of their men that female supremacy becomes the accepted social norm, much as male supremacy was the norm in the nineteenth century. Ultimately my dream is of a world in which we, as women, can see to it that love stories don't have to end so sadly as the one I just told; a world where children, women, and even men are no longer murdered by testosterone-crazed psychopaths; a world of peace and mutual respect. Sharing my grandiose dream isn't going to make it come true, but sharing my skills may, so I'll step down from my soapbox and, thanking you for your indulgence, get back to what I know best. I got Steve to agree to become my love slave by leading him to believe that under no other circumstances could our sexual relationship continue. That's a fairly simple and straightforward approach, and it often works. In fact the only thing unusual about the way I enslaved Steve is that I did it so artlessly. When we've seen this approach before, the details have generally been more elaborate. The techniques for sexually enslaving a man can be reduced to three basic approaches, which can then be regarded as the corners of a triangle and combined in various ratios to fit the circumstances. One of these approaches is the one I took with Steve back in the days of the troglodytes. It's the same one I took with Drew years later, the one Denise took with Tony and the one Linda took with Stephan. We've seen one of the other approaches as well — that of leading your man, without coercion, to believe that being your love slave is what he himself wants. That's how I enslaved Patrick and how Paula enslaved Jimmy. The case of Paula and Jimmy can hardly be debated. When she asked, he simply gave himself to her. He did it out of love, and with the expectation that the arrangement would be pleasant for both of them. Sure, he wanted Paula to stop going into panics, but her panics hadn't been strategically staged as a form of coercion; they were real panics. Jimmy's wish that the panics would end was an aspect of his love, and Paula's relief from the unpleasantness of the panics was a part of his gift. It may not be so clear that Patrick wasn't coerced. Obviously he was coerced into promising to be my love slave, but he could have renounced his promise when I untied him. If he had, I certainly would have let him know that our relationship couldn't continue unless my conditions were met, but I didn't have to go that far; by the time he was untied he wanted to be my love slave. Perhaps he wouldn't have argued if I told him we would go back to doing things as before, but neither did he argue about the kinkier path I actually chose. (Suzi's advertising is a blend of the two approaches, and its most novel feature is that it was applied so early: We can begin a sexual relationship if, and only if, you'll agree to be my slave. Will you?) If a man is to be held in sexual slavery for any length of time, he has to be made to like it. Coercion may be necessary to get him to accept the role initially, and a nominal degree of continued coercion may be necessary to keep him from reasserting his view of normalcy, but coercion alone can't keep him enslaved for long. If a man finds nothing pleasant in sexual slavery, the amount of coercion needed to hold him will keep increasing and he'll eventually free himself, even if it means ending the relationship and even if ending the relationship involves great hardship. It's especially important to keep this in mind when taking the third approach to sexual enslavement. This approach, of which we've not yet seen any examples, consists in the use of coercion whose subject goes beyond the discontinuance of the sexual relationship. It's appropriate only in the context of a marriage that's become intolerable, but whose sexual aspect is still worthwhile, where a man may do almost anything to avoid divorce because the nonsexual costs are too great. It isn't of much use in the sort of relationship that's easily dissolved, but I have had one occasion to try it myself. The story is a weird one, and I certainly can't say I'm proud of it, but the times were such as to drive people to extremes, and my emotional state was heavily influenced by my recent loss of Steve, so I hope you won't judge me too harshly. I met Corbett at the start of our senior year of college, when we both enrolled in the same advanced class in expository writing. He was a short-haired conservative and had his sights set on a prestigious eastern law school. To improve his chances of acceptance, he had got himself elected to the student senate by an organization called Vincent, chartered the previous year as a peer support group for virgins who chose, as a matter of principle, to resist the temptations and pressures of the recently begun sexual revolution. We talked some, and he found himself drawn to me in much the same way that so many young men were attracted to Suzi. I was friendly, I was open about my feelings, and he couldn't help but like me. At the same time, my politics, indistinguishable from those of the vast majority of our fellow students, were from his point of view scandalous. As my contemporaries will remember, those were strange days indeed. A young person typically adopted a large cluster of beliefs en bloc, along with a matching style of dress and grooming. That was the Rule, no matter that the clustered beliefs were unrelated and even logically inconsistent, and no matter that the universally recognized matches between philosophy and style were arbitrary. The Rule made it possible to infer a great deal about a person from very little information, and when such an inference was obviously wrong, it was drawn anyway, with the public blessing of the vice president of the United States on the one side and his bitterest enemies on the other. Corbett couldn't make sense of me. I believed in personal liberty and social welfare, opposed the war in Southeast Asia, and smoked dope. At the same time, I worked hard at my studies, presented a pleasant demeanor even to people whose politics were anathema to me, bathed frequently, and never used the words for sexual acts as expletives. He regarded me as exotic and became fascinated. I told him how I'd lost Steve, and it drew him to me even more strongly. He regarded Steve as a hero, and though it didn't matter, he was probably right. He regarded me as a trauma victim, and there he was certainly right; but he took it too far, attributing all my beliefs and preferences to my bereavement. He saw my politics as excusable, even deserving of his indulgence, but best got over and replaced with the authoritarianism that would match both my civility and my status as a war widow. I liked Corbett. He was pleasant company and the sexual shyness that had kept him a virgin for so long was a turn-on. Still, I had only a little more respect for his beliefs than he, for mine: I didn't try to explain them away, but they were definitely in need of fixing. I decided I was going to enslave him and make the necessary repairs. If I couldn't change his views, I would at least take control of his vote in the student senate. Right now, I can't explain why that was important, but it made perfect sense at the time. It was easy to ask Corbett about his sexual philosophy early on. Vincent had about thirty members and only three were men, so his position as an officer of the group invited that sort of discussion. He admitted to having joined for the purpose of getting himself elected to the student senate because it would look good on his record, but he also insisted he was a genuine virgin and professed the belief that that's what everyone ought to be until marriage. His reasons were a mix of old-time religion, economics and public health policy, with a peculiar twist added on: He said he wanted the woman he married to be a virgin so she would be all his, and it seemed that the same should apply to him. I was sure it was all a smokescreen for his shyness, but since he had to conceal that, even from himself, I was also sure he believed every word of it. I was able to learn that he had no objection to sex play that didn't include penetration, as long as it took place in a context of affection, and I certainly found that encouraging, but he was evasive about his own experience. "I don't know," I said when his explanation was done... "It sounds awfully strange to me. But I shouldn't be too critical; my tastes are pretty strange too." "Really?" "Really. You'd be shocked." "Would you tell me about them?" "I don't know. Are you sure you want me to?" "Yeah, you've got me curious." "Okay, but don't say I didn't warn you. "Back when I was fourteen, I was visiting a girl who had a backyard pool. There were four other girls there too, and we all stripped to go swimming.—" "Are you going to tell me you're queer?" "No — not like you mean it, anyway. Much more shocking than that." He studied me intently. "You want to hear more?" "Sure!" "Well, while we were there, somebody noticed that there was a boy in the yard, hiding in the bushes, spying on us. He must have been about as old as me — probably curious about what girls' bodies look like, you know. We passed the word around and kind of surrounded him, but we were careful not to let on until we were real close. Then we all rushed him and grabbed him and wrestled him down. When he stopped struggling we told him how uncomfortable it made us feel to be spied on like that. Then we said that to show him how it felt, we were going to take off his clothes. He tried to struggle some more, but he couldn't stop us and we stripped him. He must have been excited from seeing us all naked, because he had a hard-on, and one of the girls wanted to play with it, so the rest of us kept hold of him while she did." I paused. I could tell Corbett was turned on. We were sitting on opposite sides of a granite table with a chessboard embedded in the top, so I couldn't see whether his cock was hard, but he was breathing faster, his lips were fuller, and his nostrils and pupils were more dilated than when I'd started. "What happened then?" The words caught in his throat. "He had an orgasm, with all of us watching. Then we got dressed, gave him back his clothes, and warned him not to tell anyone what had happened or we'd say that he'd broken in, pulled down his pants, and masturbated; and he'd probably wind up in an institution." "That's some story!" "Yeah, I guess it is. Anyway, it left me with a taste for that kind of thing. What I like to do with my boyfriends is tie them down and play with them." "Tie them down?" "Well, yeah... I can't hold them down like I could when there were six of me, because there aren't six of me anymore." "Do you whip them? stuff like that?" "No, that kind of thing doesn't interest me at all. I can't even understand why anyone would want to do it." "You're not a virgin, are you?" It took me a moment to make the connection. "No, most of my relationships have been real ordinary, except once in a while I'd tie the guy up — if I could get him to let me. Men are so paranoid about that kind of thing; they won't go along with it until they're real comfortable in a relationship, and that usually means we have to have fucked a few times first." "You do say that!" "Huh? Say what?" "You said fuck." "Oh. Yeah. Sure I did. I say it when I talk about fucking. I don't use it as an expression of negativity because I have a positive view of sex and I don't want to cooperate with the conspiracy to give it a bad name." Corbett shook his head in bewilderment. The world wasn't like this. Women like me didn't exist, and here he was falling in love with one. Another of life's many tragedies was under way. We took to spending a fair amount of time together, mostly talking. He tried to get me to understand his view of the world, and he tried to learn mine well enough to prove it wrong, but I wouldn't be reduced to a political philosophy, nor would I be tricked into reducing him to one. I stubbornly remained a complete human being with feelings, dreams, vulnerabilities and all manner of complexity. He would bait me intellectually and I would pull him into my depths and he couldn't help but loving me for it, a little more every day. Sometimes, when the feeling overwhelmed him, he would put his arms around me and kiss me, and I would put mine around him and kiss him back, and his cock would get hard and press against me, and I'd back away and pat it affectionately through his clothing and say, "Someday I'm going to tie you up and have some fun." Then he'd blush and pull me close again, pressing his cheek against mine so I couldn't see. I knew it was only a matter of time before he agreed, and I wanted to be prepared, so I set aside four pieces of nylon webbing and kept them ready — that is, I didn't tie them for use as climbing slings and I didn't let them get tangled. What I did instead was work out the knots I would use. I had become pretty sure that I could improve on my climbers' knots and it turned out I was right. I designed the knots I've been using for bondage ever since, and I practiced them every day. There was one other preparation I needed to make. By asking just about everyone I knew, I managed to inherit an old headboard from an acquaintance of an acquaintance who was moving. With a little help, I got it to my room. I bought some tools, a gallon of wall patch and a quart of paint that was almost the color of my wall. When I had everything I needed, I cut out the piece of wallboard that bore my souvenirs of Steve. Then I did a bad patch-and-paint job and hid it behind the headboard. Now I was ready for Corbett, my memento safe. I sanded its edges until they were smooth, then sat and looked at the faint splash-and-drip pattern on the pale beige background for more than an hour, crying the whole time. Eventually I was able to get a frame for it and I cried a lot more, but that was months later. (Yes, I still have it. The discolorations are almost invisible now, but I can still pick them out if I look closely. And yes, I still cry over it.) Over the course of a couple of weeks, my suggestion to Corbett evolved from, "Someday I'm going to tie you up and have some fun," to, "Let me know when you're ready," which had the advantage that it could be used as a casual farewell even when he wasn't excited. Then, one day in early October, I took him on a picnic in the woods, choosing a spot where I was sure we'd be alone. I kept him turned on the whole time, and I did it in a way that suggested my kind of kink. I sat on his chest with one knee on either side of him. I unbuttoned his shirt. I pinned his wrists to the ground and teased him. I kissed him, licked his nipples, teased him more about the way he shivered in response as they stiffened, kissed him again, and on and on for hours. When the temperature started to drop, I brought him back to my room. He seemed frightened but too dazed to take evasive action. I sat him on the edge of the bed and took off his sneakers, then his shirt. I got out my four lengths of nylon webbing and tied one to each wrist. I laid him down and secured his arms. I pulled off his socks, pants and undershorts. I secured his ankles but left a fair amount of slack in the webbing. His breathing was rapid and shallow, his cock shrunken. I sat next to him. "You're terribly frightened, Corbett. Do you know why?" "No." "That's hard to imagine, but somehow I believe you." I studied his anxiety. "Have you ever been naked in front of a woman before?" He seemed to have trouble breathing. "N...not...not since I was a little kid." I looked into his eyes and nodded. "Thanks for trusting me to be the first. And thanks for trusting me to know I'm the first. And for trusting me to tie you up. I don't think this'll mean much if I just say it, but there's really nothing to be frightened of. I'm not going to hurt you; I just couldn't. I think you already know that or you wouldn't be here. We've talked a lot. Two hours ago we were kissing in the woods." He was starting to look better. "Do you remember all that?" He took a deep breath. "Yeah." I waited to see whether he'd say anything more. "I'm just nervous I guess." "That's okay. I'll just start kissing you again, and you'll remember who I am and how much we like each other, and we'll both have a real good time. And if you don't remember, that'll be okay too; I'll untie you and I'll still like you." I gave his shoulder a squeeze and he responded with a brave little smile and a slight nod. At least he wasn't terrified anymore. Apprehensive, but not terrified. I sat on his tummy, one knee on either side. I looked at him a few moments with a mixture of affection and lust, then lay down on him and kissed him. He smelled of anxiety but I could deal with it. I had to deal with it; he was so fragile, I didn't dare let on. I lifted myself so my face was about four inches from his and I looked into his eyes and smiled. I kissed him again. This time he kissed me back. I raised myself up for another smile. He was relaxing and turning on. Three times more and he was returning my kisses urgently, trying to raise his head to follow me when I pulled away. His breathing too had taken on the urgency of heavy lust. "Remember me now?" He nodded as much as his posture would allow. "Yeah, thanks." He smiled. There was sadness in his smile, embarrassment too, but it was a real smile. I smiled back at him, playfully, and quickly bent to lick his nipple. I watched the shiver echo through his body as I sat up. "You do have sensitive nipples. Here, I'll let you see mine." I pulled my shirt up over my head and let it fall on the bed. He was transfixed. He lay there for the better part of a minute, just staring at my breasts, breathing heavily. Then he glanced at my face and realized I'd been watching him stare. "Sorry, I just —" "It's okay. I intended for you to look. I'm glad you like me." "You're just so beautiful!" I doubted that it was so much my beauty that made him stare as his curiosity, but it didn't seem decent to say so. Besides, I liked the attention either way; it was what I'd been hoping for. "Thank you. It makes me feel good to hear you say that." I looked down at my chest, then back at Corbett. "Would you like to feel them in your mouth?" "Yeah. C...could I?" I leaned forward and positioned my left breast so the nipple was almost touching his lips. He licked it, then raised his head and sucked it. I lowered myself further so he could relax his neck, and he tongued the nipple inside his mouth while sucking gently. The feeling made my hips move and I rubbed my pussy against him through my jeans. I gently pulled the one breast away and gave him the other. He mouthed it the same way and my hips responded again. I slowly sat upright. "Yum! You made me wiggle. Nice feeling!" I patted his ribs. "Wait here." I climbed off the bed and noticed that his cock was hard. I'd expected it to be, of course, but I'd also feared that it might not. I stood facing him. "You did remember how much we like each other. I get to see you naked with a hard-on, just like Trespassers William." "Trespassers William?" "The boy hiding in the bushes near the pool." "His name was William?" "Oh, I don't know. That's just a name I gave him. I got it out of a book my father used to read me when I was little. Winnie the Pooh. Do you know it?" "I've heard the title, but that's all." "I'll have to show it to you sometime when you can turn the pages. Right now I have something else for you to look at." I undid my jeans and stepped out of them as Corbett stared. A couple of times, out of the corner of my eye, I saw his cock twitch. "You're staring again. I'll have to give you a closer look." I got back on the bed and sat on his chest, high up this time so he could get a good view. "What do you think?" "I don't know. I don't think I can think. I know you're beautiful, and I like looking at you like this." "You know what I'd like you to do?" "What?" "I'd like you to mouth my pussy like you did my breasts." He raised his head. "I can't reach." "Let me show you something first." I stood up with my feet apart, near his armpits, holding the top of the headboard with my left hand for balance, then squatted partway down and spread the lips of my pussy with the second and fourth fingers of my right hand. I bent the third finger to show him my clit. "This little thing I'm pointing at with my middle finger is the most sensitive spot. It'll feel like a little button that'll kind of play hide and seek with your mouth. Sometimes it'll seem to go away completely, but everything near it is pretty sensitive too, so don't worry that you're doing it wrong. If I need you to change your focus, I'll move around to make it happen. Okay?" "I think so." I sat on his tummy as I had at first, and leaned forward to kiss him again. He looked puzzled. "We'll do that soon. I just want to give you another look at the part of me you already know, so you don't think of my pussy as something separate." He gave me a little nod. I kissed him, raised myself up a few inches and looked into his eyes, kissed him again, raised myself for another look... "I love you," he said. "I know. I'll try to do what I can to make it pleasant for you." We kissed again, then I gave him my breast and he made me wiggle. I straddled his face so he could eat my pussy. It was delicious. I came repeatedly for about fifteen minutes. Whenever I looked down, Corbett was looking up at me, and I knew he was loving me just for letting him share my pleasure and my femininity. Delightful as it was, I eventually reached a state of exhaustion and slowly lifted myself away. I lay on top of him, resting my elbows on either side of his neck and looking into his eyes. "Yummy!" I said, "You do love me! Thank you so much!" "Can you really tell by the way I did that?" "Yes. There's a feeling of total acceptance that comes through. It's different from skill, just separate. Unmistakable. Again, thanks. I really appreciate it." I kissed him again. He smelled and tasted of me. Underneath, the odor of anxiety was gone. "Before I untie you, I want to play with your cock like I said." I knelt on the bed next to his hip and ran my fingers lightly along this scrotum toward his cock. It reacted with a jump. "Nice!" I said. "I think it's real neat that men are built so they can't hide their responses. Like when you have your orgasm, I'll get to see you splash all over the place; and each time you spurt, I'll know you're feeling a little thrill of pleasure at just that moment. It makes for a real strong connection between us." I took hold of his cock and started stroking it. "I'm glad you like it. You can do this to me anytime you want." "It'll have to include tying you up," I warned. "That's okay." "Great! I'll take you up on that." I kept stroking, looking sometimes at his cock and sometimes at his face. He seemed to be watching my eyes almost the whole time, glancing only now and then at my breasts. As his excitement increased, his breathing grew more labored, then turned to gasping. Finally he ejaculated, thrusting his hips with each spurt. "Isn't it thrilling to know I'm watching?" It was. There was a little more force behind the next couple of thrusts. I stroked him all the way through it, then just enough more to find out that he needed me to stop but not so much that he knew I was doing it on purpose. When we came to rest, I was smiling at him affectionately, gently patting his cock, and he was looking back at me, covered with sperm, breathing irregularly, trying to pull himself together. "You're so in love," I teased. He nodded, then swallowed and licked his lips as if about to speak. I waited for him to catch his breath. "I can't help it," he said, "I know it shouldn't be this way — our values are completely different, everything — but I can't imagine feeling this way about anyone else." "You can try to puzzle it out if you really want to bother, but meanwhile you might as well enjoy it. It can be a really good feeling." He looked like he needed to answer me but couldn't think of anything to say. It was obvious that he was philosophically uncomfortable, and I figured he deserved it. If I didn't release him soon, he'd be physically uncomfortable as well, and that was a no-no. "I'm going to duck down and untie the knots." And I did, leaving only the ones he himself had tied in his head. I half expected Corbett to cop an attitude next time he saw me, rejecting both me and the part of himself that loved me, but he didn't. We were still friends, we continued our political and philosophical debates, we touched, we hugged, we kissed. Before long we had another opportunity to make love. We undressed one another, and he did me before I tied him down. He did me lovingly and well, and he was happy for the opportunity to explore me with his hands as well as his mouth. I was happy too; it's much easier to lie back and enjoy than to do all the work of being eaten from below. When I finally stopped him, we cuddled a bit; then I got out the webbing. "You know what comes next!" Indeed he'd been expecting it, and he cooperated fully. I'd given him the idea that his being tied down was essential to my enjoyment of his pleasure. It wasn't true, but it was what I wanted him to believe, and I was pleased with how easily he accepted it. I made love to him slowly and teasingly, watching every helpless response of his body, until once again he emptied that little reservoir of lust, splashing its contents all over himself. I prepared for our next date by scrounging a tape recorder, the right sort of microphone, and various other odds and ends, which I then set up concealed in my room. When I brought Corbett home, I activated the assembled equipment while he was using the john. When he was done, we hugged and kissed until the stimulation had had its predictable effect. "Whoops! You have another hard-on! We'll have to tie you down and do something about that!" "Like I said, anytime you want." "You'll have to get naked first. Here, I'll help you!" I undid some of the buttons on his shirt while he worked on the others, then I got out the webbing while he finished undressing. I told him to lie down and began the process of tying him. "Oh, yeah," I said as I worked, "We're invited to a Halloween party at All Things Good and Natural. Do you want to go? It's for the employees and their friends, really. They'll be closed for the evening." "When is it?" "Night before Halloween. Week from today at 8:30." "Are there going to be drugs there?" "No, never in the store. And certainly not three days before the election. Nobody can get anything anyway." "Why's that?" "October heat. All the incumbents try to show what a good job they're doing by staging drug busts. Everyone expects it, so nobody keeps anything around. Do you want to go?" "Sure, if you do." "Great! We're on!" I finished the ritual of the webbing and lay on top of him. We kissed for a long time, then I pulled away so my face was a few inches from his. "I'm glad you like being tied up like this. It's such a neat way of making love to you." "Likewise. Something like likewise, anyway." I sat up on his tummy and pulled off my shirt. I leaned forward and kissed him again, gave him a breast to suck, kissed him some more, gave him the other, kissed him yet again. He was breathing hard, trying to follow my breast when I pulled it away, trying to follow my mouth when I pulled that away. I rolled off him and got out of my jeans, then sat on his chest so he could look at my pussy. "Remember this part of me?" "I don't think I'll ever forget it." "I don't think so either. Want to taste it again?" "Sure!" I straddled his face and let him eat me until I'd come twice. Then I pulled away, lay down on him and kissed him again. I supported my upper body on my elbows and looked into his eyes. "I think you know what comes next." "What?" "Your kinky little girlfriend fucks you." "But...but you can't." "Sure I can. You know how it's done. I squat over your cock, I guide it into my pussy, I lean forward on my arms, and I make fucking motions so you slide in and out of me. You get a delicious sexy feeling all through you, and it makes you push way up into me and pump out your come. Sound familiar?" "But I don't want to." "Sure you do! Otherwise you wouldn't be here like this. I'll tell you what — I can't fuck you if you don't have a hard-on, so there's an easy way for you to stop me if you really don't want to." "O God!" I did it just as I'd said. I sat up, squatted over his cock, and guided it in. I leaned forward and looked into his eyes. I wanted to see everything that happened in there, and I wanted him to know I was watching. And I wanted him to see into me the same way and remember. I fucked him with long, slow strokes, looking into him the whole time. I saw feelings more complex than he could handle, among them the feeling that he couldn't handle any of this. I saw that he needed to hide — hide his utter nakedness, hide his shame, hide his soul from my unrelenting gaze — and yet he never could quite bring himself to close his eyes or look away; he was too much in love to break the connection and there was too much he needed to see. He needed the reassurance of seeing my gentleness and affection; he needed to capture the sights and sounds of this precious memory; he needed to see deeply enough into me to understand — at least try to understand — who was doing this to him and why. His breathing went ragged. "Feels good, doesn't it? I teased. "O God! I can't help it." "I know." A few more thrusts and I had him completely. It showed in his face as his cock stiffened. He sobbed, becoming aware of how much his orgasm was opening him up, and then suddenly he needed to open up, needed me to see into him as deeply as possible, needed to feel that he had no secrets, that he had no place to hide, that he was all mine. He raised his bottom off the bed, pushed all the way into me, spurted, spurted again... "I made you want to, didn't I?" I did what I had to, to trigger my own orgasm, and I came along with him; then I sat up with his cock still in my pussy and my eyes still locked to his. I wiggled against his pubic mound, against the upper surface of his cock near its root, and came again, my breasts jiggling as he watched. "Yummy fuck!" "God forgive us!" "I don't feel like we've done anything wrong, but if God wants to forgive us I won't argue. Come to think of it, I won't argue either way." "You're a heathen." There was no reproach in his voice, no admiration either, just a flat kind of wonderment. "I'm at least as religious as you. I just leave out the middlemen and the politics." "What happens now?" "I untie you, same as always. We cuddle, kiss, whatever we like." I sat a few seconds longer, looking at him affectionately, feeling his cock shrink inside me, enjoying the knowledge that I had, in fact, taken his precious virginity, made him love me for it, made him come. "I have a souvenir of you that I get to keep, right in here." I patted my tummy just above the pubic mound. I uncoupled from him, got down on the floor, and released him, surreptitiously killing the microphone while pretending to fumble with the first of the knots. When we'd got him free of all the webbing, I lay down on him again and he put his arms around me. "I got your cherry. Now I know you'll never forget my pussy." I'd longed to tease him about that while I was doing it, but I couldn't because of the tape. I wanted the tape to give the impression that we'd fucked before and that the bonds were at least as much Corbett's preference as mine. I wasn't sure at that moment how it had turned out, and I thought I might still have to tape another session, but I'd finished making the one tape, and I hadn't yet started making the next, and the recorder was turned off, and I was going to enjoy teasing Corbett about his stolen virginity. Not only did I want to, but I knew I had to exhaust the subject before making a second tape lest he destroy its value out of his own need to talk about what I'd done. "No, I never will," he acknowledged. "Not your pussy, not your breasts, not your face, not your voice, not your stories, not your ideas, not anything about you. But I wouldn't have forgotten even if you hadn't done that." "I guess you wouldn't, but it sure must have been a thrill to find yourself being fucked and having to come." "You raped me." His voice was calm, his touch still affectionate. "I feel like everything I ever believed was just taken away from me. It's true that I couldn't keep myself from coming; I can't help loving you either, but that doesn't make it right. It just makes it that much harder to deal with." Teasing him was turning out to be less fun than I'd expected. I was even starting to worry that I was losing him. I decided to risk a desperate move, knowing it might turn him off, but needing to put an end to my insecurity. "You know, unless we break up, I'm going to do the same thing again. Maybe even worse." "Yes, I know. And I know I'm going to let you. Just like you developed a taste for this sort of thing because of your experience with Trespassers William, I've developed a taste for it because of my experience with you. It was really unfair of you to do that to me. You knew that the incompatibilities between us are insurmountable and we're going to have to go on to separate lives, and you knew I'd get hooked on you and your kind of lovemaking. You knew it from your own experience. How am I going to replace you? How am I going to find a wife? There aren't a whole lot of women out there who want to do the kind of thing you've taught me to need." "I guess it'll be a problem." Then the obvious rebuttal struck me. "But you would have had the same problem even if we hadn't fucked. You were already into my kind of kink from what we were doing before, and you really liked it. How does fucking make it worse?" He looked at me as if he thought the answer was obvious. I looked back as if it wasn't. It wasn't — at least not to me. "Because fucking was an exciting fantasy — something to look forward to. I thought I'd meet the right woman, and we'd get married, and we'd fuck, and it would be so new and exciting that it would overshadow everything else I'd ever done — even the stuff with you. Then she and I could enjoy a normal relationship happily ever after, like God intended. That was one of the reasons I wanted to be a virgin when I got married. Now it can't happen like that. Normal sex just can't be as exciting as what you did, and I'll never get over my need for your kind of kink." "I guess you'd better get all you can while we're still neighbors." "You just don't care, do you?" "I do care! If I could, I'd fill the world with enough kinky women to meet your needs for the rest of your life." The look on his face told me that that didn't help. "Can you tell me what I should do to make it right?" I felt his heart pound as he settled on an answer. "You could take a less adversarial view of my philosophy and marry me." It was a difficult moment. I was outraged by the indecency of his proposing so soon after Steve's death and horrified at how much less than Steve he was asking me to accept, but I felt I had to keep it inside so as not to hurt him. I forced myself to think, trying to calm myself, trying to justify him. He couldn't know that his proposal would be such an unwelcome shock; I'd never told him I was planning a lifelong partnership with Steve, and it was all too obvious that I hadn't been troubled by the recentness of Steve's death when I decided to fuck him. It didn't seem the same to me, but perhaps it was. I knew, too, that I oughtn't blame Corbett for faring so badly when I compared him to Steve. Why should he expect a comparison? Besides, he couldn't know what I'd seen in Steve; he didn't even understand what I saw in him. I wondered at my concern for his feelings. By Corbett's reckoning, I had already done him a terrible wrong; and on top of that, I had just made a tape that I intended to use for something very much like blackmail. By most standards, screaming my outrage and horror would have been nothing in comparison. By mine, though, it would have been much worse; it would have been a gesture of violence, and whatever it might accomplish could better be accomplished gently. Corbett, after all, even while condemning what I had done, was speaking softly and holding me affectionately. That gentleness, I realized, was something we both valued and to which we were both committed; it was one of the few things we had in common, though we had never discussed it and probably never would. My ruminations were dragging on, taking too long. But then, Corbett couldn't have been expecting a snap decision. Indeed when I turned him down, he would probably think I hadn't deliberated long enough. For a moment I tried to convince myself that our shared commitment to gentleness warranted a lengthier and more indulgent consideration of his proposal, but I knew it didn't. "No," I said at last, "I couldn't. Can you suggest something less extreme?" He thought for a long while, making several false starts at an answer. Finally he gave up. "No, I guess not." "Looks like we'll just have to deal with things day by day." He sighed in resignation. "Okay." "I'm going to have to send you home now. I have a bunch of things I have to get done." I lifted myself away from him and got up. He roused himself slowly and followed. "Try not to resent me too much, Corbett. Remember, I have a part of you inside me now." I patted my tummy again. He shook his head. "What if you're pregnant?" "I'm not. I'm on the pill." "Nothing is foolproof." "I know. Fools are so ingenious." He seemed to be waiting for me to say more, but I couldn't think what. "What if you are?" "I'll go to New York and get an abortion." "That would be murder." "You poor dear! In less than an hour you've found out first that your girlfriend is a rapist and then that she's a murderer." "It isn't funny. None of this is funny." "Yes it is — some of it, anyway. None of it is as tragic as you're trying to make it, and the funny parts are your attempts at tragedy. If you're determined to make yourself miserable, I can't stop you, but you're not going to drag me down with you. As long as we're lovers, I'm going to enjoy you, even if I have to laugh at your posturing." "You'd really have an abortion." I reminded him of my need to work, pointed out that he could sulk just as well in his own space, and sent him on his way. When I was sure he was gone, I listened to the tape. I was pleased with it and glad I wouldn't have to make another. The next day, Sunday, while preparing my lessons, I made four copies, then hid each one in a different place. We next met in class on Tuesday. I arrived late, so we held our greetings until the end. It was the last class of the day for both of us. "How are you?" he asked with an air of concern that left no doubt that he was referring to the progress of my imagined pregnancy. "Fine!" I replied cheerfully. "I threw up before breakfast yesterday, and again this morning, but a quick shot of heroin fixed me right up both times. How are you?" He didn't like having his agenda derailed, but he couldn't help loving me for the way I did it. He knew I was really asking whether he was willing to leave off sulking so we could enjoy one another, and he found it such a difficult question that there was a long pause before he finally mustered a resigned okay. We started walking and I steered him toward my room. Along the way he mentioned that he had a meeting of the student senate in two hours. I already knew that, but it seemed as good a topic of conversation as any, so I asked what was going to be discussed. He said he hadn't heard, but he expected the usual, which he went on to describe in painful detail. When we got to my room, I dug out a xerographic copy of my favorite passage from Malinowski. "Here!" I said, "You might want to read this. Just in case you think what I did Saturday was too terrible or unique, this'll let you know you've got company, and worse things have happened to other men. It's from a 1929 book by an anthropologist named Bronislaw Malinowski — The Sexual Life of Savages. Maybe it'll even turn you on." I handed it to him and added, "I'll be right back. I have to go change my tampon." He stared at me blankly. "I got my period this morning." His expression didn't change. "Are you disappointed?" Still no change. "It'll be over by Saturday. If we fuck again right away, you can go back to your sulk for a whole twenty-four days — if you really want to." He shook his head in his usual gesture of disapproving wonderment. I put my arms around his neck, smiled, pulled his face to mine, and slurped my tongue between his lips. "Right back! Read that!" I came back with a big hi! and asked, "How'd you like the yausa?" "It's bad," he replied somberly. "I'll bet it turned you on." "It's just bad." "Didn't it turn you on?" "How can you ask me that?" "We're lovers. I want to explore your feelings and I want you to share mine. It's one of the neat things about having a lover." "But you're trying to degrade me." "No I'm not. If the yausa turns you on, it just does. Even if the yausa is bad, the fact that it turns you on doesn't make you bad. It doesn't even mean you want to be a yausa victim. It just means the idea turns you on." "Does it turn you on?" "The sexy parts do. The violence and excremental assault don't; they turn me off and shock my conscience." "I guess I feel the same way." "You answered me! And you're still alive! You don't even look degraded." I peered at him melodramatically. "At least I don't think you look degraded; I'm not really sure I know how to tell. Wasn't that easy?" "No, it made me really uncomfortable." "But I did all the work. Would you like to try again without any help?" "No, I wouldn't." "You don't want to tell me how your cock responded to each sentence as you read it?" "You are trying to degrade me." "Maybe next time you're here, I'll tie you down and read it to you out loud and see how your cock responds to each sentence." "O God!" "I know!" I exclaimed, feigning sudden inspiration, "You can spend the next few days worrying about how it would feel, just in case I do it." I put my arms around his neck and slurped his mouth again, then looked into his eyes with an affectionate smile. "Remember me?" He looked back uneasily. "I don't know. You're different every time." I didn't see Corbett again until Thursday afternoon, but on Wednesday I heard rumors of the student senate meeting, and I read about it in Thursday morning's paper — not the student newspaper, the city newspaper. Someone named Stanley West, representing the Young Republicans, had introduced a resolution calling for the adoption of a policy that would require any college employee, and particularly any dormitory proctor, who became aware of the use or possession of any illegal drug on campus, to notify the police. This was in marked contrast to the established practice of ignoring recreational drug use unless it created a real problem. Indeed it was usual, except during the month preceding the general election, to smell burning cannabis whenever one visited the dormitories or certain other public areas of the campus. The proposal, not surprisingly, was most unpopular and had no chance of passing, but its few supporters, through parliamentary maneuvering, had got it scheduled for a vote at the next meeting of the senate. After class Thursday, I began a discussion of the matter with Corbett. We talked until just a few minutes before the start of his Vincent meeting, then continued after class Friday, talked until two, and still weren't done. Our discussion went on to fill most of Saturday evening, including the time we spent at the party; and when the party broke up, we still hadn't reached agreement. My position was that if Stanley West's resolution passed, many decent young people, including some of my dearest friends, would have their doors kicked in during the early hours of the morning and be dragged off to jail, there to be unspeakably brutalized by drunken sadists. The resolution, I conceded, had no chance of passing, but Corbett, by voting for it, would be ratifying every Establishment atrocity, past or future, committed during the entire course of the Hair Wars, and I made it clear that I intended to save him from thus deeding his soul to Satan. Corbett's position was that the existing policy of toleration had created an environment so completely dominated by the counterculture that students who wanted to live according to traditional values felt intimidated; Stanley West's resolution would merely even the balance. He agreed that it had no chance of passing, but he didn't want to be on record as opposing it, especially with a newspaper watching; he was afraid his vote would wind up in a dossier that would get him rejected by his chosen law school. I argued that even with the newspaper watching, he could simply vote no without joining the debate and nobody would notice; his vote would be just one small pebble in a landslide. But, I also pointed out, the newspaper wouldn't be watching. The newspaper had reported the introduction of the resolution because it had been set up to do so — maybe even enlisted to do so — by the Republican Party, which had timed Stanley West's move so their candidates would be able to rouse the electorate and garner votes by decrying the shameful state of moral turpitude into which the college had sunk. Indeed the comments of those candidates had been gathered with such dispatch that they were included in the very issue of the paper that carried the story, some as part of the story. By the time the student senate got around to voting on the resolution, the general election would be over and neither the Republican Party nor the newspaper would care what it did. Corbett, exhibiting shocking naïveté for a future lawyer, insisted on believing that the newspaper had carried the story solely because it was newsworthy, and he was convinced that the vote would be reported for the same reason. He found nothing odd in the fact that not even one day had passed between the running of the story and the publication of the candidates' comments, nor in the fact that this was the first time in his recollection that the city newspaper had taken the slightest notice of the student senate. We repeated these arguments many times each, but it still wasn't enough to fill the eighteen hours we wasted on our debate. Much of what we said was considerably less germane but carried a much higher emotional charge. I recited a great many stories of police abuse and planted evidence and jailhouse rape, he described the anguish of parents watching their children turn into surly dope fiends, and so on in like manner ad nauseam. During the whole ordeal we dealt with only one issue that had any bearing on our relationship: I assured him that as long as he could be expected to be a frequent visitor in my room, I'd keep it clean of illegal drugs, and I also assured him that I wouldn't carry any while in his company, so he wouldn't be risking his future by associating with me. For what it's worth, I kept my promise. As we said our tired and cranky Saturday night good- byes, I invited Corbett to come over the following afternoon. He accepted and we were all set for round four. When he arrived, we greeted one another pleasantly and I asked whether he had yet decided to vote against Stanley West's resolution. "You know I can't do that," he answered; "I've been explaining it to you for three days." "Dire consequences will befall you if you don't," I warned, giggling. Dire consequences was a phrase I'd picked up from newspaper stories about Cold War diplomacy; it always struck me funny, and for a number of years I used it every chance I got. Corbett had already heard it several times, always accompanied by the same giggle. "What sort of dire consequences?" "At best, the sort of feeding frenzy that befell Julie White last year..." He looked puzzled, so I interrupted myself. "You don't remember her?" "No." "Editor of the school newspaper? Arranged free advertising for her brother's copy shop?" He started to nod in recognition. "Set upon by a pack of hungry hyenas? Tried to point out that she was getting the paper more in free services than the advertising was worth, but nobody wanted to hear it? Torn to shreds? Banished in disgrace from further association with the paper?" "Yeah, I remember." "Student politics is like that. If someone finds a way to challenge your integrity, it gets real ugly — like a piranha attack." "How's anyone going to challenge my integrity?" "Then again, it could be even worse," I went on, ignoring his question. "You could become a victim of the yausa — you know, like you read about last week — and maybe even more than once." "For voting in favor of that resolution?" "For voting on behalf of an organization whose by-laws don't allow you to be a member." He stared at me. "I have a tape of what we did last Saturday." He wasn't a violent man, but I gave him my full attention for a moment to be sure before I went on. "The tape makes it sound like we'd done the same thing before, but even if that was the first time, you were obliged to resign from Vincent by Thursday's meeting." "Your tape could have been made after Thursday." "No, it has an invitation to a night-before-Halloween party a week from today, so it was made October twenty- third. Would you like to hear it? I have two copies. You can even keep one as a souvenir of your first fuck." He was starting to look sick. "O God! What do you want from me?" "I don't know whether you're asking me or God, but neither one of us wants you to give your soul to the Devil." "How can you speak for God?" "Why not? We have a very close relationship — first-name type of thing. Besides, right-wing hate-mongers do it all the time. Do you think God does want you to give your soul to the Devil?" For a moment he tried to think of an answer; then he remembered he had a real-world problem to deal with. "Never mind. Okay, what do you want from me?" "I want you to be my complete slave until we go our separate ways." "Your slave?" "Yes, you do everything I tell you." "Cut classes? neglect my work? use drugs? steal?" "I'm not going to tell you to do any of those things. I already promised not to bring you into contact with drugs, and I'll keep that promise." "What are you going to tell me to do?" "I might tell you to do anything." "That's double talk." "No, it isn't. I might tell you to do anything, but I'm me. I have reasonable limits of my own. I know the difference between right and wrong. I have a positive desire to avoid harming people in general, and I care a great deal for you in particular. Can you understand that?" "How can you say you have reasonable limits, know right from wrong, and want to avoid harming me, when you raped me, made a secret tape of it, and now you're blackmailing me?" "I guess it does kind of damage my credibility a little, but it's still as true as it can be, considering. Besides, I am blackmailing you, so you'll have to go along because the alternative is worse." "What is the alternative?" "I get together with a few of the more radical women I know on campus, one at a time, and explain to them that you and I had a real kinky relationship but I decided to break up with you because I couldn't deal with your fascist hypocrisy; I play the tape for them; I show them the write-up of the yausa if they're not already familiar with it, and suggest that it might be a fitting way to deal with you. Word gets around that you're not really a virgin even though you're representing Vincent, and some radical in the student senate makes an issue of it — probably charges that Vincent was organized for the sole purpose of giving the fascists one more vote. Eventually enough really depraved women find each other, and they rape you for real. Then they make sure word of that gets around too. Maybe it even snowballs to where you get raped several times, or other fascists get raped — guys like Stanley West. "Aren't you afraid it'll backfire?" "No, not a bit." He stared at me. I stared back. "I have to do whatever you say?" "That's pretty much it." "What kind of things are you really going to tell me to do?" "Well, obviously I'm going to tell you how to vote in the student senate, but mostly I'll tell you to do real kinky things that'll be fun for both of us." "Are you going to make tapes of them? take pictures?" "It's tempting to let you worry about it, but no. I won't make any more tapes and I won't take pictures unless you want me to." "Okay." "Does that mean you're going to be my slave?" "Yeah, I don't suppose I have much choice." "You're going to vote against Stanley West's resolution?" "Yeah, I'll vote against it." "Great! It sure is nice not to be faced with the prospect of talking about it anymore. That was such a drag. Now we can have some fun." "What do you have in mind?" "Something kinky. Something really kinky, so I'll know whether you really mean it when you say you'll do what I tell you. You can start by taking off your clothes." He did. When he was naked, I hugged him and kissed him until his cock was hard, then backed away, looked at it, took hold of it. "Mine!" I told him to lie on the bed and tied him down. I took off my jeans, straddled his face, and had him eat me. When I was satisfied, I pulled my jeans back on, then unhitched the leg of the bed to which his right wrist was tied and instead fastened the webbing to the same leg to which I had secured his right ankle, leaving an excess of slack. "I want to watch you make yourself come." "I can't do that." "Yes you can. Do you have to consider the alternative again?" He did it. "Ooh, embarrassing!" I said when he started to spurt. I was expecting the kind of show I'd seen when it was I who made him come, and I was disappointed. He ejaculated a goodly amount of fluid, but he still maintained a controlled demeanor the whole time. Something would have to be done about that, and I was going to experiment until I found out what. "That makes another first you've shared with me — the first time you ever did that with a woman watching." "The last, too, I hope." "No, I'm going to make you do it at least twice more before the vote. It's interesting. I've never had a chance to watch before, and now that I've got a man who has to do it when I say, I'm going to make the most of it. I'll probably even make you do it now and then after the vote." "What about the other kinds of kink you were interested in?" "Maybe we'll get back to those after you've proved yourself. First you'll have to vote against Stanley West's resolution and play with yourself a few times more." I wiped him up and untied him, then got into bed and cuddled him. "Aren't you going to undress?" "After you've proved yourself." We rested a while, then went out for a walk. We saw one another several times that week, and we talked, hugged and kissed, and I teased him, but we didn't make another opportunity to be alone until the following Saturday, when I led him through an almost exact reenactment of the masturbation scene, with just one change. I put myself to his left, and when he started to come, I lowered my mouth to his nipple and sucked it. His control was blown completely. He jerked his hips, thrashed, wildly, screamed. Really screamed. Loud. I raised my head and watched him as he calmed down. "See? I remembered how sensitive your nipples are and made you lose control. You had a real orgasm this time." "O God!" "That's Who designed it. Thanks, God, for giving us such yummy pleasure to share." Corbett gaped at me for a moment; then there were footsteps in the hall and a knock on the door and he panicked. His eyes bulged, he gasped, he pulled frantically at the webbing. I made a gesture to quiet him. "Who's there?" I shouted, walking toward the door. "Adrian, your neighbor. Are you all right?" "Oh, yeah. My friend just stubbed his toe." "Oh, okay." I walked back to the bed. "Adrian is the ultimate loner. You had to scream really loud to get him to come investigate." "Sorry." "It was no problem to me — it was worth it to make you come like that — but that knock on the door gave you quite a scare." I was drying him off. "Well, yeah!" "How do you suppose you would have felt if instead of my neighbor, that had been the police? And instead of knocking they kicked the door down and charged in here waving their guns and shouting obscenities, and you were lying here naked, tied to the bed, with come all over you?" I started undoing the knots. He didn't say anything, so I went on. "I don't think it would have helped even if they hadn't found anything to charge you with; even if we were lucky and they forgot to bring any dope, or smoked it all up during their lunch break; or even if they had the wrong address, as they so often do. Now you know what I'm trying to save my friends from when I tell you to vote against that man of sin, Stanley West, worthy of your utmost hatred. Maybe now that the dread knock on the door isn't just an abstraction to you, you'll understand where I'm coming from." I could tell he was impressed; he wasn't helping with the knots. "You're a heck of a teacher, Georgeann," he said with a sigh. Then, after a moment's thought, he asked, "Man of sin? Worthy of your utmost hatred? Where did you get that monologue?" "Oh, didn't you ever hear that before?" "No." "It's from The New England Primer. It was a book used to teach children the alphabet back in Puritan times. It said, 'P is for that man of sin, the Pope, worthy of your utmost hatred.'" "Really?" "No, I just made it up." "But...but you couldn't have." "Okay, I made it up Wednesday and I've been saving it." "But... Oh, never mind." "It's from The New England Primer. Even back then, the leaders of society knew that they had to teach hatred early, just like you were taught about the evils of marijuana before you could think up any hard questions to ask. Why do you think it has a Mexican name?" "I already promised you I'd vote against the resolution." "I know, but since you're going to be hanging out with me for a few months anyway, you might as well get your view of the world expanded a little." I got into bed and cuddled up to him. We fell asleep. When we awoke, it was evening and I had a craving for Chinese food. I suggested we go get some and Corbett agreed. We took turns going to the bathroom; he dressed; we were ready to leave. I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. "Since you're my slave, there's one more thing I want you to do for me today." "What's that?" "When we walk out of here, limp until I tell you to stop." "Limp?" "You screamed really loud before, and I told my neighbor you stubbed your toe. To justify a scream like that, you should have broken it." He looked at me as though trying to unravel some deep mystery, but when I opened the door and we set out, he limped. That was the only time we made love before the next meeting of the student senate, so the promise I made on Halloween, to have Corbett masturbate at least twice more before the vote, turned out to be an exaggeration. But then, the vote was also an exaggeration. On Tuesday evening, I made my way to the auditorium that served as the student senate chamber to watch the proceedings, as did many of my schoolmates. After half an hour of waiting for the meeting to start, and another half hour of tedious parliamentary ritual, the matter of Stanley West's resolution was called. "Mister Chairman," said Stanley West, getting to his feet. "The chair recognizes Stanley West." "I have something of a confession to make. I introduced this resolution without having properly consulted the leadership of the Young Republicans, and I've since been admonished that what I did was rather ill advised, to say the least. In fact, I find myself in the sad and unenviable position of sponsoring a resolution that lacks the support of the organization I was elected to represent; and so, if there are no objections, and with the chair's permission, I'd like to withdraw it from consideration." The chair called for objections and, hearing none, removed the item from the agenda. The audience cheered, as did most of the senate, and there was a great crunch at the doors as a couple of hundred people all tried to leave at once. It was a brilliant move, I told Corbett after class Thursday. The Republican candidates in the general election got the chance to mouth off at the expense of the college longhairs, and the Young Republicans didn't get stuck having to support a position that would make it difficult to recruit new members. Stanley West's contribution to his party would of course be remembered and rewarded, and it was certainly no surprise that his withdrawal of the resolution was ignored by the press. I confessed my chagrin at having reached the full legal age of twenty-one without also having attained the maturity, the wisdom and, most important, the cynicism to predict the end of the story, but at least I'd been right about the press coverage, and I was learning. Corbett acknowledged, somewhat sadly, that he was learning too. Corbett and I remained lovers until graduation. I babysat him through the Law School Admission Test, the law school application process, and his distress at the necessity of our parting. He had the good sense to decline when one of his fellow virgins tried to nominate him for reelection to the student senate, and the discretion to quietly drop out of Vincent altogether at the end of the fall semester. Until his term in the student senate expired, he continued to describe its proceedings to me. If another issue like the drug policy had arisen, I would have taken a real interest, but as it was, my stated intent to control his vote just gave him an excuse to ramble on in a self-important manner about a lot of really stupid stuff. I never again told him how to vote; nothing ever came up that deserved my attention. Nothing ever came up that deserved his attention either, but it didn't seem polite to mention it. Corbett had a great many ideas about how the world ought to be, and it was his custom to put on an air of judgmental sadness whenever reality disappointed him. I found this a drag, and employed two techniques to discourage it. First, when he did it, I told him to stop. Sometimes that worked and sometimes it didn't. Second, when he'd been overdoing it a lot, I punished him by playing with the post-orgasmic sensitivity of his cock. I tied him down, as I often did even when I wasn't planning to punish him, and after he was tied I told him what he'd done wrong and what was going to happen to him because of it. I also told him that his only chance to avoid being tortured was to keep from turning on to me. Then I milked his cock, teasing him all the while — first about how he wasn't going to be able to help but come even though he knew what it meant, then about his orgasm as it happened, then about his discomfort and embarrassment at the torture as I inflicted it. This regime helped some, but never so much that it became unnecessary. Unfortunately, my refusal to marry him was one of the ways in which the world disappointed him. As graduation approached, he raised the issue with increasing desperation and frequency, and often sulked at my continued obstinacy. I held fast to my position. My relationship with Corbett had taught me — was continuing to teach me — that while I could control most of a man's behavior, any negativity in his personality would find a way to show through. I wanted a man with a positive attitude that made him a joy to be with even when he wasn't making an effort to please me, and whom I could dominate for fun rather than out of necessity. I still liked Corbett, but I hated being his parole officer. I fucked Corbett only once more after taking his virginity. It was early February, about a week before my period. He was tied to my bed and I teased him until he wanted me to fuck him so badly that he begged for it. Predictably, he decided afterward that I was pregnant and made such a fuss about it that I had to torture him four times in eight days. That was enough. While we were together, I did what I could to expand Corbett's consciousness and give him a more balanced view of the world. I introduced him to my friends — a varied lot, especially compared to the limited circle in which he'd moved before. He found himself exposed to a diversity of races, ethnicities, and drugs of choice, and to some unique characters who defied classification. His behavior was always impeccable; he was, after all, a gentleman, and my friends were eminently decent folk. He got to know several and even developed a genuine liking for them, but sadly he wasn't able to extrapolate from his experience. Though he became friends, for example, with a black man and a pothead, he refused to recognize the humanity and potential of the world's other blacks and potheads. They remained abstractions of evil, certainly not possible friends, and too dangerous even to be allowed to walk the streets. Because they were so bad, there was no limit to the force he was willing, even eager, to unleash against them: Send the cops out to round 'em up and shoot 'em! Presumably his few friends would be in his company during the roundup and shooting, and he would have sufficient influence with the rampaging constabulary to protect them. His enthusiasm for this sort of violence contrasted grotesquely with his gentleness at close range and always bothered me. I certainly didn't want to marry a man who had that in him, but neither did there seem to be any use to making an issue of it. His tendency to put on airs of judgmental sadness, his bigotry and his advocacy of Nazi-style solutions for the world's problems were fixed attributes of his personality and would never change. I found it sad that these bits of ugliness had attached themselves to so gentle a soul, but he was what he was. Just after graduation, he made one last pitch at persuading me to marry him. I refused and he returned to his parents' home near the Arizona line to pass the summer before beginning law school. I moved on to my first job as a technical writer in Silicon Valley. I never heard from him again. Learn what you can from the story of my relationship with Corbett, but don't do what I did. It was wrong, and it could have got me in serious trouble with the law besides. Today, in some states, it could get me a life sentence. What Corbett and I referred to as blackmail was in fact criminal coercion, though at the time I somehow deluded myself into believing that it didn't quite amount to that. I could have been prosecuted for it and I was lucky I wasn't. Not everyone who does the same thing can expect to fare so well. The surreptitious recording of a conversation is prohibited in some states even it done by a party to that conversation. The applicable laws change frequently, and it may be that that part of my behavior was perfectly legal when and where I did it; but then again, it may have been a crime — perhaps even a felony. Legalities aside, making that recording was wrong, and it would have been wrong even if I hadn't used it in a blackmail attempt. Similarly, trying to blackmail Corbett was wrong, and it would have been wrong even if I hadn't made a secret recording to do it. At that point in my life, my comical assurance to Corbett notwithstanding, I really didn't know right from wrong. I had my own ideas of what constituted harm, and I believed that I did wrong only if I caused harm as I understood it. It took a while longer before I caught on to the idea that I should also take care not to do another person harm as that other person understands it. Also, it wasn't until later that I developed a full appreciation of the importance of trust in a sexual relationship and realized that there's no short-term goal for which it ought ever be compromised. When I met Corbett, I didn't have much experience getting men to accept sexual slavery and I couldn't imagine that dishonesty and entrapment were unnecessary. My enthusiasm for female domination was so great that I was willing to use such means, excusing my behavior by telling myself I'd do the man no real harm. Well, in retrospect, I did Corbett real harm, and I oughtn't. If I knew then what I know now, I probably could have enslaved him without doing anything immoral. If I couldn't, it's because I shouldn't have been involved with him at all; the right woman for Corbett could have enslaved him honestly. What I did was wrong. Criminal coercion is a serious matter. So is electronic eavesdropping, at least in some states. But a life sentence? Sexual assault. When I was twenty-one, it was legally impossible for a woman to rape a man. Times have changed. Most states, if not all, have revised their statutes to abolish the ancient crime of rape and substitute the new crime of sexual assault, with a definition that's gender-neutral. If you restrain a man, or overpower him, and insert his penis into your vagina or your mouth, or even if you just lick it, over his objection, you commit sexual assault. The penalties are as severe as the traditional penalties for rape. Not worth the risk. In some states it's also a crime just to touch a man's penis against his will. Overpowering a man, even an adult, as we overpowered the boy in the bushes, or restraining a man by deceit, as I did Gene, and then bringing him off by hand as he begs you to stop, could get you in big trouble. I didn't wait for the laws to change before limiting my sexual activities to the purely consensual. Corbett was the last man I violated in any way, and the last whose character I tried to repair. By taking care not to repeat the mistakes I made with him, I've tremendously improved the quality of my relationships and avoided a great deal of unpleasantness. Hey, wait a minute! I hear someone thinking. Weren't you violating Patrick when he begged you to let go of his cock and you kept rubbing it? And didn't you try to cure him of his reticence? Yes, I did try to cure Patrick of his reticence, and I succeeded. But I didn't confront Patrick over his reticence, or punish him for it, or reject him because of it. It wasn't something I needed to change. I would have loved him just as much if he had never got comfortable talking about the more embarrassing parts of our relationship, and I would have shown my love just as freely. As to the question of whether I violated him, no. A dominatrix inevitably becomes involved in a great many consensual transactions that look as if they're not; it's inherent in the role. Indeed one of the reasons I consider empathy an essential attribute of a good dominatrix is that empathy is what makes it possible to tell the difference between a transaction that will truly violate a man and one that will only appear to. I could read Patrick well, and I was sure I had his consent for what I did to him. In fact, when I told Patrick what I was going to do, he didn't object, and afterward he didn't tell me I'd done him wrong. This raises an important point. I've told you that a man is likely to try to bluff you off course if you set out to do the sort of thing that I did to Patrick. He wants to maintain control of the relationship, so he'll object to your plans, even while bound, often in very strong terms. Your understanding of him will probably tell you he's bluffing, and your judgment will probably be right. Sometimes you'll be wrong and you'll wind up violating him. If after a sexual transaction, a man tells you that you violated him, and he really seems to feel violated, take him seriously. I can't offer any advice about what to do, because that will depend on what sort of person he is, what sort of person you are, and the circumstances; but please do take him seriously. The histories of Paula's relationship with Jimmy and mine with Steve and Corbett all demonstrate that a woman seeking sexual control over a young and inexperienced man needs hardly any skill at all to succeed; she barely needs to know what she's doing. When a man is older, it's more difficult to enslave him (unless he's already used to it), and for two reasons. First, he's less horny. At any given time his seminal vesicles are unlikely to be so distended as to color his thinking, and he's become jaded to psychological stimuli. Though sexual slavery will restore the enthusiasm of his youth, it won't do so until he's actually enslaved; meanwhile the effects of aging make him less amenable to enslavement. The second reason is more problematic. A mature man has developed a perspective on his love life. He doesn't become emotionally committed to a new partner so readily as when he was young. If the going gets even a little rough, he remembers there are other women in the world and starts thinking he might do better elsewhere. If I'm in love with a man of my own age and sure of his health, I enslave him as I did Patrick or Drew. I let the sexual aspect of our relationship develop along conventional lines, with just a hint of kink, and then, when he's had a chance to become emotionally committed to me, but before he starts falling out of love or taking me for granted, I invite him, in one of the ways I've already described, to be my love slave. If I'm not in love with him, or if I doubt his health, I'm not going to fuck him, and that makes it harder to enslave him. It becomes difficult to hold his interest long enough to get him emotionally committed; his inclination is to go looking for a better deal. Still, on several occasions I've overcome this handicap and persuaded a mature man to become my love slave without first having fucked him. I'll tell you the story of one such relationship. I've chosen it neither because it's typical nor because it's bizarre, but because it illustrates some important principles with particular clarity. Bart was a genius I met at work. He'd supervised the creation of an operating system for a fault-tolerant computer, building the hard parts himself, and it was my job to turn his documentation into a manual the customers could use. Our working relationship was complicated by the fact that Bart thought he could write; in his view, he had already given me the manual in finished form and I was horriblizing it, using something he called George's Instant Horriblizing Cream. Truth was, he actually could write; he could probably have crafted a more precise commercial contract, with fewer unintended loopholes, than ninety percent of lawyers. Unfortunately, his writing, though technically perfect, was so convoluted that half his own staff couldn't read it, so a little horriblizing was clearly needed. Bart had a reputation for going through women quickly. We were acquainted eight months before being put on the same project, and during that time he was involved in three relationships, each of a couple of months' duration, as well as numerous one-night stands arranged at Richard's, a bar near the office. When we were thrown together, we were both unattached and he wanted me and I wanted him, but his history of promiscuity led me to worry about what impurities might be lurking in his bodily fluids. We often had lunch together, and during these breaks, we put aside our work and got to know one another. One Friday evening after a couple of weeks of this, he invited me to Richard's for drinks and I accepted. We drove there separately, met, settled in, and ordered our first round — a tequila sunrise for him, cola for me. "Cola?!" He seemed displeased. I told him I never drink alcohol. He gave me the hairy eyeball and asked why not. "It's contrary to my religious beliefs." He seemed to doubt my sincerity and disapprove of my theology besides, so I rose to the challenge by adding, "I never go to bed with a man who's been drinking either, so if you're trying to seduce me, you're using the wrong approach." "What approach would you suggest?" "It would be awfully hard for you to succeed no matter what you do. You have something of a reputation for getting around, and the AIDS capital of the world is just up the road, so I'd have to be downright suicidal to take a chance on you." "And I'm drinking besides." "Well, yeah, but that's temporary." He flashed a predatory grin. "What if I get myself checked out by a doctor and bring you a report that says I'm healthy?" "It can take six months for the AIDS virus to become detectable. I don't think you're going to wait that long." "I can't believe this conversation!" "Haven't any of the women you've picked up here before had similar concerns?" "Some of them insisted on using a condom." "I don't use condoms." "You don't use condoms," he repeated blankly. "Contrary to my religious beliefs." "You won't go to bed with me because you might catch a disease, and you don't use condoms because it's contrary to your religious beliefs." "That's right." "How's that possible? I mean, I could understand if you said you don't sleep around, but making snap judgments on which guys are risky and which are safe — you're just begging them to lie to you. And they will." "Okay, I don't sleep around. That's really what I said; I just worded it different and added a few details." I watched him replay his recollection of our conversation. "Oh, well!" he said after a moment. "Why don't you tell me about those religious beliefs of yours?" "I don't explain them. It's contrary to my religious beliefs." We shared a good laugh and spent the next hour discussing this and that; then he invited me to order dinner. I talked him into going to Francescas Pizza instead. I told him the proprietor was a friend of mine; I told him the food was great; and I told him that just then, a pizza with peppers, onions and mushrooms, and a salad on the side, was what I wanted more than anything else in the world. I also offered to drive him there, buy the pizza, and drive him back to pick up his car afterward. I could see he was uncomfortable with my assertiveness, but he agreed anyway. He seemed not to want to antagonize me, and after a chainburger for lunch and three tequila sunrises, a good veggie pizza had to be irresistibly appealing. I drove to Francescas and we had dinner. We also had a brief visit with Francesca, who stopped at our booth just long enough to say hello and meet Bart. After the pizza, Bart and I sat and talked another hour; then I drove him back to Richard's. When I had set the parking brake, he moved to kiss me. I stopped him, told him not to move, and gave him a light peck on the lips and a teasing smile. I said good night and he got out and started toward his car. When I was ready for lunch the following Friday, Bart was involved in a meeting. I went out with one of my other colleagues, and when I got back, I found a stack of pages on my desk that I'd asked Bart to edit three days earlier. As always, I'd implored him to make only technical corrections and, as always, he'd been overzealous. The pages were covered with proofreaders' marks, mostly indicating lengthy insertions written in his usual legalese. ("They're all technical corrections," he would say if I gave him the opportunity.) On top of the stack was a note: "Dinner this evening?" I took the note and set out to find him. He wasn't in his office, so I wrote a note of my own on the same piece of paper and stuck it to his computer screen. "Francescas Pizza?" I returned to my office and set to work. After about forty minutes, I took a break to use the ladies' room. When I came back, the note was on my screen. Bart, fallen into the habit of editing my writing, had inserted an apostrophe into my spelling of Francescas and written, "Perfect!" underneath. I took the note and went looking for him again. This time I found him. We agreed to meet at Francescas at 6:30. Then I told him there's no apostrophe in Francescas. He didn't believe me and I reminded him that he'd seen the spelling himself the previous week. He remembered it with the apostrophe. "You want to bet on it?" I asked. "Maybe. What sort of bet?" I closed the door. He eyed me warily. "If you can promise not to drink any alcohol, win or lose, I'll be your sex slave for the evening if the apostrophe is there, and you'll be mine if it isn't. How does that sound?" He made a brief attempt to think, but he agreed anyway. Maybe he didn't want to give me time to change my mind, or maybe he got carried away with bravado — maybe both. It didn't matter. He agreed. "Great!" I said. "I'm sure we'll have a lot of fun. How about we move up our meeting time to six? That way we'll have plenty of time together and you won't be tempted to blow this great opportunity by stopping for a drink at Richard's." "Looking for loopholes already! Okay, six!" I went back to my office, worked until just 4:30, and drove home. My plan was to get everything ready and walk to Francescas so I could greet Bart when he arrived, then ride with him after dinner and direct him to my apartment. I knew it would be easy for him to follow me, but I wanted to make sure he didn't panic and flee. I worried briefly that he'd use the phone book to warn him off, or notice the spelling on the directory sign as he approached the shopping center and head for the hills, but there was nothing I could do about either eventuality. If he didn't show, he just didn't. I arrived at the pizzeria fifteen minutes early and went inside to greet Francesca. I explained the situation and asked for her help in making sure Bart kept his promise not to drink. "No problem," she said. "I'll wait on you myself. Sit there." She pointed out a booth and handed me a little sign made out of folded cardboard that said, "Reserved." I thanked her, put the sign on the table, went back outside, and watched for Bart's car. He arrived almost on time, parked, and started toward the entrance. I set out to intercept him, and we shouted greetings to one another while we were still some distance apart. "How's the name spelled?" he asked when we met. "Come have a look!" I led him toward the pizzeria. The big letters anchored to the stucco said only "PIZZA," and it wasn't until we were almost at the fire lane that he could make out what was painted on the glass. "Oh, shit!" "Come on in," I encouraged —"unless you've lost your appetite. There's a booth already reserved for us. I led him inside and we slid into our seats. I picked up a menu and showed it to him. "See? It says the same thing on the menu. It's not a mistake." "Can I ask you a question?" "As many as you like." "Why isn't there an apostrophe?" "Well, Francesca was born in Italy, and when she was eighteen she moved to Denmark. She lived there for about two years and then she met Roy — that's her husband — and he brought her back to the States and married her. When she named her pizzeria she left out the apostrophe to commemorate her two years in Denmark. She liked it there." He looked as confused as I'd expected, so I told him the rest of the story. "In Danish, possessives are formed like in English, by adding s, but without the apostrophe." "Oh." He pondered. "How do they form plurals?" "I don't know." He studied the menu for a minute or so, then put it aside. Francesca came over. Good evening, George, Bart. It's good to see you again." We greeted her and she asked whether we were ready to order. Bart asked for a mug of beer. "No beer tonight," Francesca answered. "How about a bottle?" "No," she said with a big smile. He looked at me and saw the same smile. "I think you're surrounded," I said. He groaned theatrically and settled for cola. We decided to share the same sort of pizza we'd had the previous week and I told Francesca we were curious about the formation of plurals in Danish. She gave us a brief explanation and left us to ourselves. "You told her about our bet?" Bart asked, indignant and incredulous. "Just that you weren't going to drink if there's no apostrophe. She thinks that's the whole bet." That pacified him and we had a pleasant dinner. While we were eating, he asked about my plans for the evening. I told him he was going to drive me back to my apartment and come in with me, and he'd find out the rest when we were inside. And that's what we did. He headed for the bathroom almost right away, so I didn't have to give him a lot of notice of what was coming. When he was done, I led him to the bed and told him to take off his shirt, shoes and socks. He did. I told him to lie down in the middle of the bed. He did that too. I got out my webbing and started wrapping his left wrist. "What are you doing?" "Tying you down." "I know I promised to be your slave for the evening, but isn't this a little extreme?" "What did you expect? The same thing you would have done? I wouldn't have had to win a bet to get that." He pulled his hand away. "I'm afraid this is going to wind up hurting me." "No you're not. Maybe you're afraid of not being in control, but you can't be afraid I'm going to hurt you; you know me too well to believe I'm capable of it. If it's any help to hear me say it though, I'm not going to hurt you. Now cooperate like a good sex slave and we'll both have a real good time. "I need a drink." "You definitely don't need a drink." "How about some grass? I got a couple of joints in my shirt pocket." "You have a fire to light it with?" He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a disposable lighter. I took it and put it on the nightstand. "How about a roach clip?" "They're made with wired papers." "Okay. Cooperate with me, and the first thing we'll do when I've got you tied down is share a joint." "What about our religious beliefs?" "No conflict at all. I can't afford to keep a stash of my own, given today's prices and political climate, but I do like grass, and my religious beliefs certainly don't forbid it. Come to think of it, it seems wrong to reject a pleasure that God has made available to us." "Huh?" "What's the problem?" "You said drinking is a no-no." "That's not a pleasure." "To me it is." "No it isn't. You just never noticed because you get too drunk to pay attention." He frowned, but he let me finish tying him. When he was properly secured, I started toward the kitchen. "Wait! Where are you going?" "To get an ash tray." On the way, I turned up the thermostat five degrees. I brought back a cereal bowl and set it down near his armpit, then picked up his shirt, found the joints in the pocket, brought one back to the bed and sat next to his chest. I lit the joint and shared it with him, feeding him alternate tokes, watching him relax. It was good grass. Before even an inch had burned away, Bart's manner of looking at me had turned distinctly lustful. Soon his control would be gone completely, along with his ability to orient himself socially, and I wanted to wait until then before I made my first real move. I wouldn't be able to gauge his arousal by his breathing because of the ritual of the smoke, but I would be able to see when his cock got hard by looking through one of the mirrors in the headboard. The trick was to time my glances so he wouldn't notice. Each time I moved the joint toward his mouth, we both had to look at it, but he continued looking down as he inhaled. Often it was necessary for me to do the same, but on those occasions when I was sure there was no danger of a hot ash falling on him, I could take a quick look in the mirror. I was still planning my first peek when Bart bent his knees. It was such a major change in his posture that I could see it without looking, and of course I felt it. The reason was as obvious as the move itself: His cock was getting hard and he wanted to keep his leg alongside it so it wouldn't be so visible. Now I wouldn't need to look in the mirror. I sucked in some smoke and washed it down with a lung full of air. I gave Bart a big, affectionate smile and moved the joint into position for him. He did his part, and when he looked back up, I was still smiling at him the same way. I withdrew the joint and set it down in the bowl, then ran my fingers through the hair at the side of his head. I picked up the joint and took another hit, shook the ash into the bowl, looked back at him, smiled, moved the joint into position for him, watched as he sucked on it, waited for him to signal me with that slight parting of his lips, pulled it away. "Feel more comfortable with me now?" He struggled to find an answer while I took another toke, continued struggling while he took another toke. I gave him a questioning look. "It's kind of complicated." "I know. You're comfortable enough to turn on to me, but you're uncomfortable about not being able to control it. You're worried about how you'd handle it if I turned around and saw your hard-on." He had a coughing fit, then started hyperventilating. I put the joint in the bowl and moved the bowl to the nightstand. He swallowed hard and got his breathing under control. I looked into his eyes affectionately. "If it's any comfort, I'm still not going to hurt you." "This is embarrassing." "I know. It's going to get even more embarrassing. If you do have a hard-on, I'm going to take your pants off, and then you'll be naked with your cock sticking up for me to see, and I'll still have my clothes on." I turned to look. His cock was hard, sure enough — confined in the leg of his corduroy pants but still quite prominent, its shape accentuated by the ridges of the fabric. He wore no underwear. I ran my hand over it and felt it strain. "Mm-hm!" I teased, "You are turned on to me!" I got up and took off his pants, and his cock sprang to its proper position. I inspected it, handled it, swirled the lubricating fluid around the head until it twitched in response. I sat next to his chest again and smiled at him lustfully. "I don't know how you're going to deal with it — seeing me at work every day, still having to guess what my body looks like, and remembering I saw you like this. It'll be some trip!" I gave him a chance to speak, but he would have had a hard time thinking what to say even without the drug. If he thought of something now, he would immediately see its potential to make matters worse and keep it to himself. I was going to have to carry the conversation alone. "After a few days of that, I won't even have to win another bet to tie you up like this. All I'll have to do is promise to take off my shirt." More rapid breathing. "You could become really obsessed with me. Maybe you will wait six months for a chance to get into my pussy." Still more rapid breathing. I noticed that his lips were drying out. "Your mouth must be awfully dry. I'm going to get you something to moisten it. Do you like apple juice?" "Wow! Yeah!" I went to the kitchen, poured some into a little glass, brought it back, and helped him sip it. He drank the whole thing. "Good?" "Yeah! Thanks." I leaned over and kissed him briefly but deeply, running my tongue around in his mouth. "Mm-mm! It is good!" I gave him another lustful smile. "Do you like being my sex slave?" "It's too embarrassing." "Well, yeah, I'm sure it is. Do you like it anyway?" "I don't know." "That's okay. You'll figure it out." "What if I don't like it?" "Then it'll be hard for us to have a relationship, except for working together. If you're ever going to be my lover, you'll have to be my slave the whole time, and you'll have to be mine alone." He thought about it. "You'll have to be sober, too, though this'll do just fine." He thought some more. "Can you untie me now?" "I'm not ready yet. You might be embarrassed, but not near as much as I planned. Besides, you're still horny." He didn't say anything, so I bent over and licked his nipple. He squirmed. I got up on the bed near his left hip and sat facing his cock. I started running my right palm up and down along the undersurface, brushing the frenum with each stroke. It stiffened and rose to press against my palm, relaxed, stiffened again. "That feels good, doesn't it?" "Yeah?" When it seemed that his cock was due to stiffen yet again I stopped what I was doing and ran the fingers of my left hand over his scrotum. His cock sprang up obscenely, then relaxed. "Your sex makes such a neat toy!" I went back to rubbing with my right hand and his cock stiffened against it more and more frequently. "You know, I've been wondering, talking with you over lunch every day, what sort of orgasms you have. I think I'm going to keep doing this until I find out." By listening to his breathing and observing the slight but noticeable thrusting of his hips, I was able to tell just when it began. His cock pressed itself hard against my palm and I knew that the next contraction of his pelvic muscles would pump out the first spurt. I pulled my hand away. "Ooh! I get to see! And without my hand in the way too!" He panted a few times, then his cock relaxed for a fraction of a second, seemed to bounce off his pubic mound, stiffened and spurted. I started running the fingers of my left hand gently over his scrotum, at the same time using my right hand to play with his left nipple. "Just think, Bart... whatever else happens between us, I'll always remember you just like this." It was an utterly humiliating experience for him, but there was nothing he could do; he just had to lie there, waving at me with his ejaculating penis, until he was drained. When it was over, I let go his nipple and rested my left hand on his hip. "How do you feel now?" "I don't even know." "I guess I can understand that." I looked at him affectionately. "Don't panic. I'm going to get something to dry you off." I retrieved Thursday's shirt from the laundry bag and cleaned him up. "There!" I said as I finished, "just one more thing before I untie you." "What?" "I want to tell you something. You think you're ready?" "Yeah, it's just bird shit on the bridle path now." I contemplated the metaphor and laughed. "It's not even that bad. Give a listen; you might even like it. Here: You're here because I like you. I mean, that's why I brought you home and tied you down like this. It's not like I want another notch in my belt or something; it's because I really like you and wanted to make love to you. I know my way of doing it is a little kinky, but it is a way of making love, and if I didn't care for you, I wouldn't have done it. You understand?" We looked at one another for a long time. "Yeah, I think so." "Thanks." In a matter of minutes I had him untied, dressed and sitting with me at the dining room table. "I'm going to have to send you home now. I have to get an early start tomorrow." "What are you going to be doing?" "I have an aikido class." "Aikido? Isn't that one of those martial arts things?" "Yes." "You break boards with your hands? stuff like that?" "No, no boards. It's a defensive art — not real big on attack." "You go to class every Saturday?" "No, just when I don't have anything to do that interests me more, but tomorrow my sensei isn't going to be there and he asked me to teach. Usually I assist." "Who assists when you're not there?" "Sometimes another advanced student, sometimes no one." "I would never have imagined you doing something like that." "People are complex. You want the other half of that joint? I can wrap it in a tissue." It took him a moment to remember what I was talking about. "Oh! No, keep it." "I'll get you the lighter, anyway." I went back into the bedroom and he started to follow me. I met him halfway, handed him the lighter, and led him to the front door. I stretched out my arms sideways. "Hug?" I asked. We must have hugged for a full minute, and with more affection than either of us anticipated. Then I opened the door and he was on his way. When I got to work Monday, I went to say hello to Bart but found his door closed. He always kept it open unless someone was in with him, so I settled into my office to finish preparing the next group of pages I would give him to edit. I'd learned that it would be best to get him started on something new before I did anything with the edits he'd returned Friday; he always seemed most attached to whatever he'd worked on most recently, and I knew he'd argue less about the last batch once he'd got into the next. About ten minutes before our usual lunchtime, I had another dozen pages ready. I went looking for him again and found his door still closed. I knocked. "Come in!" I opened the door and saw him sitting alone at his computer, so I walked in, closed the door behind me, and greeted him enthusiastically. "Hi!" "Hi." "I've never seen you working alone with the door closed. Are you hiding?" "No, not really." "Pretending to hide?" I puzzled with mock fascination, setting the pages on his desk. "You know exactly what you're doing to me, don't you?" He seemed to be doing an impression of a chemotherapy victim. "Uh-huh!" "It's really unfair of you." "Unfair? How?" "You're toying with me, without any regard for my feelings." "Without any regard for your feelings? How did you measure my regard for your feelings?" "How did...Oh, come off it!" "I told you the other evening, I care about you. I do. Sure, I'm toying with you — that's my style of loving; I told you that too — but there's no bad intent in it." "You have an answer for everything, don't you?" "Bart, you're a professional logician. You know that that's neither a statement nor a question." That stopped him, so I went on. "You know what I think? I think you've been toying with women's feelings all your life. You seduce them, you string them along until you lose interest, and you do it all with this cynical detachment, always in control. Now I'm toying with you and you're not in control, and that makes you uncomfortable just because you're not used to it. Besides that, you worry that I'm as cynical and detached as you. It's like you expect the worst because you know you deserve it." He stared at me. "I don't know what to think." "Does it really matter? Either you're going to go along with it or you're not. Probably you will, just like all those women got into bed with you even though they knew better. If you do go along, I can tell you I won't be cynical and detached like you. If you don't... well, either way I'm not going to get pulled into the same kind of relationship as those other women, and I'm not going to risk my health to pacify you." "I didn't ask you to risk your health." "That's right. You didn't." "Then why did you say that?" "So you won't feel I'm implying a promise that I'm not." He regarded me with a pained expression. "What do you want from me?" "First I'd like you to look over this next section of the manual and see if there are any technical corrections that need to be made." "Okay. Besides work." "I'd like us to continue getting to know one another. I'll be more comfortable if you get yourself checked out for every known STD and start turning down opportunities to get yourself infected." "What about the six months it takes for AIDS to show up?" "I guess getting to know one another will have to be slow and kinky." "And I'm supposed to be satisfied with that for six months?" he sneered sarcastically. "If that tone reflected your true feelings, you wouldn't be having any problem at all about me. You'd dismiss me as a kook and find someone better." He went back to looking miserable. "Bart, look: You accused me just a couple of minutes ago of knowing exactly what I'm doing to you, and I pled guilty. I know you want me; I told you Friday you would. I'm not being unfair or cynical about it, and what I'm offering isn't just a poor substitute for the kind of lovemaking you're used to. It's really quite exciting, as you know! It's probably even worth the price I want for doing more of it — you know, having your health checked and getting yourself out of circulation so I don't have to worry about catching SDI. But if you don't want any more of my kink I can stop. I can't undo what I've already done, and you'll have to find your own way of dealing with the memories, but you don't have to be subjected to more. "SDI?" "Spontaneous Disintegration of the Innards?" He laughed, thought, smiled sadly. "Can we get together again soon?" "Wow! Neat! I'm glad you see it that way. I really am! The answer is, promise me you won't get involved with any other women, make an appointment to get yourself checked out, and then we can talk about it." "Okay, I won't get involved with any other women, and I'll make an appointment." "Good! Thanks. I won't get involved with anyone else either. When you've made the appointment, let me know. Maybe I'll tie you up right away! This is exciting!" "Do you ever make love without all that paraphernalia?" "It has happened, but don't expect it." "I don't know why I'm going along with this," he muttered with a sigh. "Yes you do! I made you have the most embarrassing orgasm of your whole life, and it was a bigger thrill than anything that's happened to you since you were a teenager, and you're falling in love for the first time again. You can't help it; it just happens that way. Besides, you're obsessed with seeing me naked because it feels like it'll even things out a little between us. If I do let you see me, you'll find out it doesn't do that at all, but it'll be such a turn-on, it won't matter." "You're determined to strip me of every shred of dignity, aren't you?" "If I love you, I will; but don't worry — it'll be just between you and me." A diversity of expressions played across his face. At last he said, "You do have an answer for everything. I'm going to have to learn to be more careful what I ask you." "Lunch?" "Yeah, sure!" We spent a pleasant hour at an eatery down the street, engaged in the sort of conversation that doesn't have to be hid behind a closed door, then returned to work. About 3:30 Bart came to my office to tell me he'd made an appointment for the following Tuesday afternoon. "Great!" "Can we get together again soon?" "How soon did you have in mind?" "This evening?" I smiled, letting him see my amusement at his desperation, letting him see I loved it. "Sure. Francescas at 6:30?" "I'll be there." "You know not to drink, right?" "Yeah." "I guess I should stop bothering you about it, but don't forget, okay?" "I won't forget." He turned to go. "And Bart..." "Yeah?" "I'm really looking forward to it." He smiled at me, naturally and affectionately, the way men so seldom do. "I guess you know I am," he said. Then he turned again and went. A couple of points in this tale bear discussion. Often a man, alone and horny in a big city but fearful of disease, will pay a prostitute to masturbate him. The woman keeps her clothes on, the man exposes his penis, the necessary ministrations are performed, and the pair go their separate ways. The man feels no embarrassment and certainly doesn't become obsessed with the woman; on the contrary, he's likely a bit smug about the whole business. You knew that, but it's probably remote from your own experience, or even that of your acquaintances, so let's look at a scenario that might be closer to home. In the workplace harassment version, a woman is pressured into masturbating some man in authority, often repeatedly over time, in exchange for the privilege of keeping her job. In another variation, a girl or woman is coerced into doing the same, in exchange for the privilege of escaping forcible penetration. Again, the male is smug rather than embarrassed and develops no emotional attachment to his victim. You knew that too, so perhaps you're wondering why, unlike the men in these all-too-common horror stories, Bart became obsessed with me. Of course the suggestions I gave him helped; my talk with Bart was just loaded with suggestion, and it had a powerful cumulative effect. The big difference, though, is that the more common, uglier scenarios are controlled by the male aggressor, while that in which Bart became involved was controlled by his new girlfriend. My control enabled me to point out Bart's own lack of control and make it a problem for him. With my help, he became acutely and then chronically embarrassed by the fact that I had seen him naked — even watched him ejaculate (and how!)— while my body remained a mystery to him. A prostitute won't make an issue of that nor, obviously, will a woman whose sexual favors are coerced. Bart would have to keep coming back to me until the inequity in our sexual relationship had been put right, and of course I would see that it never was. Sure, he would soon get a good look at my body, but I would always be in control, and he would always feel more vulnerable than me, and there would always be some matter of embarrassment with which I would be teasing him. Then there's the drug. Its influence on our first evening of lovemaking was impressive. If Bart hadn't smoked, I would have had to physically stimulate him to a high degree of arousal while leading him to the Loop by suggesting that his situation must be embarrassing. Stoned, he fell into the Loop as though it were a black hole. All I had to do was notice that it had happened. Indeed my first sexual move wasn't even physical; I simply made a show of reading Bart's mind. I described what was happening to him, I teased him about it, and off we went. Didn't Bart know better than to propose the smoke? Yes and no. He was familiar enough with cannabis to predict what it would do to him, but he neglected to think. What he really wanted was a drink to relax and numb him. Since I wouldn't allow that, he suggested a joint as a field expedient. That would relax him, but he forgot that it wouldn't numb him. Language shapes our thinking. A man may say, "I could use a drink to relax me," and he might even argue that alcohol was given to us by God for that purpose, but he would never say, "I could use a drink to numb me." It's socially unacceptable. The result is that the numbing effects of alcohol go unrecognized. In the mind of the drinking man, numbness is a part of relaxation — an unnamed part. Since Bart was unaccustomed to differentiating the two in ordinary conversation, he forgot how important the distinction is. He settled for relaxation without numbness, and it suited my agenda just perfectly. When I was through with Monday's work, I drove home and walked to the pizzeria. I got there five minutes early, greeted Francesca, ascertained that Bart hadn't yet arrived, and took a seat. Bart came through the door at just the appointed time. We shared a pleasant dinner and returned to my apartment. As soon as we were inside, he took me in his arms and kissed me passionately, exploring my tongue with his mouth. I cooperated and reciprocated, and soon he was mauling one of my breasts. I pulled away. "Yum!" I said. "But if you want to make love, it'll have to be my way — kinky." "Like last time?" "Mm-hm." "You're going to keep your clothes on again?" "Maybe. Once you're tied up I could do anything." "You're a tease." "Are you ready?" "Okay." "I'll tell you what. I'm going to go to the bathroom for a moment. When I'm done, you go, so you'll start with an empty bladder in case I keep you tied for a long time. I want you to come out of the bathroom completely naked and lie down in the middle of the bed. Okay?" He made an exaggerated groaning noise. When I finished in the bathroom, he had already taken off his shoes, and when he came out carrying the rest of his clothes, he found me sitting on the far edge of the bed, still fully dressed and holding a length of webbing. He groaned again. "Put your clothes anywhere and get yourself comfortable." He did, and I tied him in place. I leaned over him. "It's good to have you back here." I lay down on him and kissed him, and his cock responded right away. We kissed, sometimes lightly, sometimes deeply, always lustfully, for at least fifteen minutes. "This has been a little different from last time," I said. "Is there anything else you'd like me to change?" "Yeah! I'd like you to take your clothes off." "Mm-hm. Anything else?" "What are you offering?" "Nothing that might expose me to SDI, but if there's anything you'd like that's safe, you'll have to tell me what it is." "I don't know. You're the kink artist." "You want me to make you come the same way I did last time — let go your cock and watch it bounce around by itself?" "No! Not if you don't have to." "What do you want?" "I want you to rub my cock until I'm through coming." "Uh-huh. What if you can only have one? Say I'm willing to take off my clothes or I'm willing to rub your cock until you're through coming, but not both. Which do you want more?" His breathing speeded up and his eyes took on a crazed look. "Hmm?" "I want you to take off your clothes." "You know, once I let you see my pussy, you're going to have to promise to be my love slave for as long as we're together." "What do you mean?" "Remember I told you that if we're going to be lovers, you're going to have to be my slave?" "Yeah?" "Well, if I let you see my pussy, I expect you to promise to be my love slave. It'd be nice of you to promise right away, but it'll definitely have to be by the end of our next get-together afterward. Otherwise I'll figure you don't want me enough to meet my needs and I'll have to find someone else." "What are the specifications of this job?" "You'll have to be completely faithful to me, but you've already agreed to that. You'll have to undress for me as much as I want, whenever I want; you'll have to let me touch you any way I want, any part of your body, whenever I want; you'll have to touch me whatever way I want, whenever I want, and that'll include a lot of licking my pussy; you'll have to refrain from touching me when that's what I tell you; you'll have to let me tie you up whenever I want — wherever I want, too — I've done it in some awfully strange places; you'll have to play with yourself if I tell you to; you'll have to answer all my questions honestly, and I'll probably want to know all your sexual secrets and fantasies... it's pretty comprehensive. In your case, you might even have to quit drinking. I'll have to see if it gets in the way of your availability." "It sure is comprehensive. You've actually gotten other men to agree to all that?" "Sure! I don't think they'd want me giving out there names, but there have been several." "What happened to them?" "Died. Wanted kids. Moved to Samoa. That kind of thing." He looked at me questioningly, so I went on. "None of them ever left because I mistreated him. One got crazier than me and took up with a woman who whipped him." "You mean he wanted you to whip him and you wouldn't?" "That's right." He looked into my eyes, searchingly, and I looked back, opening up to him, trying to help him understand. "You...know...just... what... you're doing to me. I know you know. You've admitted you know. And I still can't help loving you for it." "Mm-hm. Do you want to be my love slave?" "I think I do." I kissed him again and we got lost in one another. "I'll tell you what," I said when we resurfaced. "We'll give you a few more days to obsess on my pussy and decide whether you really want to be my love slave. You want together like this again on Friday?" "What if I'm ready now?" "Well, then you'll have to do what I tell you and wait till Friday." "Hm! Okay, Friday." I sat up on his chest and pulled my shirt off. He looked at me. I let my arms rest at my sides. "You're beautiful," he said. "Thank you." I leaned forward, offered each of my breasts to his mouth in turn, and savored the sensations he stirred up inside me. Before I got too carried away, I climbed off him, positioned myself next to his hip, and went to work on his cock with both hands. "If you do decide to be my love slave, this is going to be my toy. I get to play with it whenever I want. At work, any place we go together — I don't think you can imagine how kinky it gets." I kept at it and soon he was making fucking motions. A bit longer and his breathing turned to a kind of snorting. A few strokes more and he came, lifting his hips into the air, thrusting madly, splattering all over himself. I continued stroking. Soon he was squirming, making pained noises, twisting his body in a futile attempt to put his cock beyond my reach. "Stop!" he pleaded at last. I stopped. "You're one of those men whose cock gets all sensitive after you come. That's a yummy! Fun to play with!" He gathered himself together. When he was again able to meet my gaze, I asked, "Do you still like me?" "Yes, I still like you." "Thanks. I like you too. I'm going to get something to wipe you up." I dried him, put my shirt on, undid the bonds, lay down next to him. We cuddled. *** During the rest of that week, we continued to work together, continued to have lunch together, and hugged and kissed as much as circumstances allowed. Our working relationship didn't change. I continued rewriting the manual and Bart went on kidding me about my instant horriblizing cream. I shared his laughter, read his edits, discussed them with him, and incorporated those that turned out to be necessary, but only after translating them into English. It had to be that way. Our boss couldn't let the manual go out as Bart had written it, and he would have been most displeased if the customers, rather than Bart, found all the errors and omissions in my own first draft. My goal as a professional was a useful manual, not some shortsighted victory over Bart; and Bart's goal, despite his kidding, was the same. Lunchtime Friday we picked up a couple of cheese burgers at a drive-thru and took them to the park. "Ready for this evening?" I asked. "More than ready. You've got me so horny I can't work." "Wow! I'm flattered. Are you going to promise to be my love slave?" "I already promised." "Well, yeah, but that doesn't mean much. I might tell you to eat my pussy and you might try it and throw up. You're not going to be my love slave that way, no matter what you promise. On the other hand, you might come just from looking at me. Then it'd be just as silly for you to argue that you're not my love slave." "Did either of those ever happen to you?" "No, but they've both happened to other women I've known." "They were trying to get the men to be their slaves?" "No." I took a bite of my burger and chewed a while. "Then again, maybe you'll decide you want to try to continue our relationship without being my love slave." "Would you agree to that?" "No. The next time we got together I'd tie you down and torture you until you promised to do things my way." "I thought you said you weren't into that." "I wouldn't whip you, but there are other things I can do. Like, Monday night I found out how sensitive your cock gets once you come? I could make you come and then refuse to stop rubbing until you promise." He was breathing rapidly and neglecting his burger. I doubted he would get any work at all done that day. He didn't. He spent the next few hours in the office of a colleague, shooting darts. When the afternoon was over, we followed our custom and met for dinner at Francescas, then adjourned to my apartment. I had him strip and tied him down, then leaned over his face and kissed him until his cock was dripping. I sat on his tummy and took off my shirt, gave him a mouthful of each breast, then kissed him some more. "You want to see my pussy?" "Yes." I climbed off him and stood next to the bed. Bart stared as I undid my jeans and dropped them around my ankles. "You...are...just...so...beautiful," he said. "Thank you." I stepped out of my jeans, got back on the bed, and sat lightly on his chest, my pussy spread in front of him. "You like me from this angle too?" "Yes!" "Would you like to make love to me with your mouth?" "Just what I've always wanted!" I straddled his face and lowered myself into position. He ate me eagerly, lovingly, without the slightest hint of distaste, satisfying me as I had so long been wanting him to. When I felt I couldn't come one more time, I lay down on him again and kissed him lightly. "Thanks," I said. "That felt so good! Did you like it too?" "Yes. You're an incredible turn-on." "Do you want to be my love slave?" "Yes." "Are you ready to do whatever I tell you?" "Yes." "Okay, we'll see." I got up and tied his ankles to the legs of the bed. He was puzzled, even apprehensive. I told him not to worry, that he'd find out what I had in mind soon enough. When I was finished with his ankles, I untied his right wrist. "Well, if you really want to be my love slave, we might as well get you started with a big bang. I want to watch you play with yourself until you come." "You are determined to strip me of every shred of dignity." "Mm-hm!" He took hold of his cock and began stroking it. "Did you ever do this in front of a woman before?" "Once." "Is it an exciting memory?" "Kind of, but I've always had an uneasy feeling about how it turned out." He stopped stroking. "Back in high school, there was this girl I was friendly with. Her parents were extremely overprotective, and she didn't know anything about sex, so I didn't chase after her — I didn't think I'd get anywhere — but sometimes we'd hang out and talk. Somehow she managed to pick up a boyfriend in our senior year, and when they were alone, he would feel her up through her clothing and want her to do the same to him. Well, she wound up asking me to show her how I was built so she'd know what she was doing with him. I figured maybe she'd get turned on to me, so I showed her, and there we were — she was staring at my cock and asking questions, and I was trying to play teacher and answer them. One question led to another and she asked me to show her how the sperm comes out, so I explained how she could make it happen and told her to give it a try, but she wouldn't. She said she wanted me to do it myself, so I did. What freaked me out about the whole thing was that right after she graduated, she went into a convent. I don't know if she stayed with it and became a nun, but I sure didn't feel good about where she was headed." "Even if she's a nun, I'll bet she can't keep that memory out of her head for more than a few hours at a time, just like I know I'll never forget this evening. I won't forget any of the other times I make you jerk off either, and there are going to be a lot of them, especially during the next six months. I won't let you forget them either," I smile teasingly and looked at his cock, "or let you get out of them." He groaned and resumed his stroking. "Poor Bart! You used to put your cock in a new woman every week, and now you have to go without for months and months, and jerk off on demand as my private porno show. You can't even be sure I'll ever decide to fuck you, and if I do, you'll be tied down like this so you have no control and it all happens my way. What a fate!" He seemed to be close to the edge, so I started gently rubbing his left nipple with the back of my right hand. He withstood it for only a few seconds before he came. "Neat! You are my love slave!" He had saved up quite a load, and it gave his orgasm an intensity that I knew embarrassed him. When it was over I withdrew my hand from his chest and lay it affectionately on his shoulder, then stroked his cheek. "Not a shred of dignity," I said. "I told you that's how it would be if I loved you; I guess I do." "I could be really happy to hear that. I want to be happy to hear it, but I can't help wondering what it means. Do you love the same way other people do?" "Yes, it's only my way of sexualizing it that's unusual. The caring and affection underneath are common to gentlefolk everywhere." I bent over and kissed him, then looked at his tummy. "I'm going to get something to wipe you up." I made a move to stand up, then stopped and sat on the edge of the bed. "You know, we've got to be less formal about these little errands I run while you're tied down. What I'd like is for you not to panic every time I get up to do something. I'm never going to hurt you, and I'm never going to go further than I can hear, and I'm never going to be gone for more than a minute, and I'd like you to trust in that without my having to tell you what I'm doing each time. Okay?" "Are you mad at me?" "No, I'm just asking for what I need. It's important to me to be trusted. Obviously you do trust me. You let me tie you up, and that takes a lot of trust, and when I tell you what I'm going to do, you believe me. But that first evening you were here, you panicked when I got up to get an ash tray, and that distressed me, so I started giving you explanations so you wouldn't panic. That's made for an improvement, but what I'd really like is for you to trust that I'll always treat you well." "Being tied up is hard enough all by itself. I trust you, but it's scary when you suddenly walk away. I'll try to get used to it, but I'm not sure I can." "I'll tell you what. I'll stop explaining my little errands, and you try not to panic, and if you sometimes feel I'm frightening you, our I sometimes feel you're distrusting me, we'll try to forgive one another. How does that sound?" His eyes misted over as he thought about it. "Sure," he said. "I love you, Georgeann." I bent over and kissed him again, then got a towel and dried him off. By the time I was done, he had untied his left hand, and he set to work on his right ankle while I untied the lower left leg of the bed. Soon he was completely free and we lay down to our first naked cuddle. We slept together through the night, and in the morning I fixed breakfast. When I told him it was almost ready, he stumbled out of bed and started pulling on his pants. I stopped him and said that whenever we were alone together, I wanted him naked. He looked at me groggily, dropped his pants on the floor and made his way to the bathroom. A couple of minutes later, he showed up in the dining room, a bit steadier on his feet and still deliciously naked. After breakfast I showered, then invited him to do the same. "When do you leave for your class?" he asked. "I don't want to hold you up." "I was hoping you could stay the day so I'd get to play with you some more." "Wow! Yeah! I'd like that!" he said eagerly. Then he became more thoughtful and added, "You know, I've never been in a situation like this. I don't know what I'm supposed to say, how I'm supposed to act, anything. All I have to go on is what you said, that part of being your love slave is answering your questions honestly, so that's what I'm trying to do." "You're doing just fine. Answer my questions honestly and be yourself. That way I get the pleasure of knowing you, and if I tell you I love you, you know it's really you I'm talking about and not some act you put on." "Wow! Men would have it a whole lot easier if all women felt that way." "It's tempting to let you think I've invented some great new approach to relationship, but if the truth be known, most women do feel that way. From a woman's point of view, the difficulty is getting men to believe it. Actually, an even bigger difficulty is getting men to pay attention to the message so they can even think about it. One of the good things about making you my love slave is that it gets your attention so we can talk when we need to." "What do we need to talk about?" he asked defensively. I groaned silently. "We needed to talk about how good it is that you be yourself. Right now there's nothing pending." He seemed to recover and I invited him back to bed. He followed peaceably. We played for hours. I'd have him eat me or finger me or both until I'd come several times, then we'd cuddle a while, then I'd tease him to within a few strokes of orgasm, then I'd have him do me again, and so on. By mid-afternoon I was lying on my back with my pussy open, Bart tonguing my clit while massaging the surrounding area with his lips, at the same time rubbing my g-spot with two fingers and using his other hand to play with my nipples. I let him go on and on until I was satiated, and then after another cuddle, I finally brought him off. I didn't tie him down — just took his cock between my hands and milked it until he came, stopping just one stroke short of too much. We lay together almost an hour, then I told him I needed the rest of the weekend for chores and errands. He said he had a few of those himself. I offered him the use of the shower and he accepted. Then he dressed, we said an affectionate good-bye, and he was on his way. Three days later Bart went for his medical evaluation, and by the end of the following week, he had been pronounced clean, pending a six-month follow-up for HIV. Our relationship continued, happy and kinky, for three months. The day the results of his tests came back, we finished the manual. Three days later, I was assigned to another project, but we continued having lunch together three or four times a week, and I would occasionally pop into his office to look at my toy and tease him about how it responded to my attention. Nights and weekends, we were together as often as not. It seemed like nothing could go wrong, but something did. Bart was invited to discuss his work at a military development facility in central New York. Leave Wednesday morning, back Friday night — simple. Through a stroke of good fortune, I was just getting into a weekend of intensive aikido training in Seattle when he returned. By the time I saw him again, he was in the hospital, being devoured by a particularly virulent strain of penicillin-resistant gonorrhea. He told me that Thursday evening he'd gone to eat in a diner near his motel, and a few minutes after he was seated, an attractive woman — a woman he didn't recognize — walked up to him, greeted him by name, invited herself to join him, and came on to him. He played her guessing game about where they'd met before, but he couldn't remember and she never did tell him. He said she seduced him. He started developing symptoms the next day, but didn't seek treatment until Saturday, when he'd got back home and slept a while. The usual remedy was administered immediately, but it proved ineffective. By Monday he was a genuine medical emergency. I felt betrayed and told him so. I let him know I would visit him regularly in the hospital — even run errands for him so his credit rating wouldn't suffer and the Department of Motor Vehicles wouldn't assess its penalty for late renewal of his registration — but our sexual relationship couldn't continue. He was distraught and begged forgiveness, but I knew that if he had been seduced once, he could be seduced again and I wasn't willing to accept the risk to my health. He wanted to talk about it, sick as he was, but I told him we might as well wait until he was healthier because he might not get any healthier and our talk would be wasted. Intuitively, though, I was sure he would recover, and I scrambled to find another job because I knew it would be too painful for both of us to go on seeing one another every day as we had when we were lovers. Gradually his condition improved, and on a Thursday evening, three weeks after his so-called seduction, he announced that his doctor had told him he might be discharged as early as the following Monday. "Great! That's the same day I start my new job." "New job?" "Yes. I found another job. With another company." "Where?" "You don't need to know that. We won't be seeing one another anymore." "You said we could talk about it. Can we?" "I didn't really say we could talk about it, just that talking was no use unless you were going to recover. Anyway, we're talking. What do you want to say?" "Will you give me another chance?" "No." "Look, I didn't set out to find another woman. I was seduced." "You could have said no and you didn't." "I made one mistake and I've learned not to make another like it. Doesn't it matter to you that I intended to be faithful?" "No, it doesn't matter to anyone. If it mattered, you wouldn't have got sick. Your faithful intentions would have saved you from the natural laws of contagion. What were you going to do if you didn't get so spectacularly sick? Tell me on your own that you'd betrayed me? or make it worse by keeping it a secret? Were you going to let me find out the hard way that you'd picked up some ugly bug? Pass your six-month HIV follow-up with flying colors, and then we discover ten years down the line that we've both got AIDS? What did you have in mind?" "I wasn't thinking. I don't know whether I was going to tell you. You could give me the benefit of the doubt." "Giving you the benefit of the doubt means recognizing that you made a unilateral decision that the price I'd have to pay for a long-term relationship with you was being increased from six months without fucking to nine months. And it's only six for you. That's if your betrayal turns out to be a one-time thing. More likely, if I give you another chance, you'll figure you can get as many chances as you want, and soon we get to where you go find someone to fuck every time you get the itch; and each time, I have to wait another six months while you're getting all you want." "I didn't know the wait bothered you." "Do you think I like to go without fucking? I put up with it because your history made it necessary and I thought you were worth it, just like you pretended to think I was worth it. Teasing you about the wait like it didn't bother me was play!" The force of my own voice startled me, and I began to cry. "It was taking a bad situation and finding a way to have fun with it. Now even that's shot to hell, because you're not really waiting; only I am." "Please. I wasn't pretending. I agreed to the wait because you really are worth it to me. I honestly intended to wait. I screwed up. Once. It'll never happen again. Please forgive me. I need you." "Your word isn't worth anything. If you needed me, you knew it before you left on your trip; and that one screw-up was the one you promised four months ago would never happen. All I can expect now is that next time you'll try really hard not to get caught, and that means you won't tell me when you put my health at risk." "You're doing this to punish me." "No, I wouldn't cause myself this much pain just to punish you. I'm doing it to save my life because I realize how little you value it." I left him there — left the hospital — and started walking. A half hour and I'd be fit to drive home. I kicked myself for not shaving Bart's pubic hair. That would have given him all the strength he needed to resist that floozy. I had already recommended the technique to several women with philandering husbands, and they'd had good results with it, but I myself had tried it only once, when I was considerably younger, and its intrinsic violence had offended my gentle nature. Besides, I wanted my man's fidelity to be his own choice. Still, a shave would have saved Bart from a terrible misery. Or would it really? I thought a bit more and decided that kicking myself was useless. There was nothing more to be done about Bart. Soon I would meet someone else, and he would be different. Two weeks later I did, and he was. *** Chapter 13, In which we address the ugly problem of violence Bad men Male violence against women is an old American tradition that's never died. A lot of men, even today, see it as a natural part of any relationship, and many more see it as an option to be kept open for difficult circumstances. If you're interested in using the power of your femininity to sexually enslave a man, a violent response is a possibility you have to consider. The physical violence that men direct against women takes a number of forms, but for purposes of this discussion we can lump all but one of them together under the name brutality. Brutality includes beating, whether accompanied by rape or not; it includes rape effected by the threat of force; and it includes gang rape even if no other injury is inflicted. Brutality is intended to establish male dominance over a woman by hurting, terrorizing, degrading or humiliating her. For simplicity, we'll also give a name to the perpetrators of brutality; we'll call them brutes. There's one form of violence that needs to be differentiated from brutality, so I'll give it another name. The name is an oxymoron that may infuriate you: gentle rape. Hate it? Good! Please bear with me anyway, because that name will help you understand the phenomenon and avoid becoming a victim. There are three ways in which acts of brutality are triggered. The first and most common is that a brute wants something, sees his partner as an obstacle keeping it from him, and vents his frustration by directing an outburst of violence at her. What he wants could be anything — the use of her body, beer, the silence of a crying baby, even her agreement with the abstract idea that he's the boss. Often his belief that the desideratum is under her control is incorrect — the product of a sense of realty as poorly developed as his ability to deal with frustration. He can best be understood as an ill-tempered two-year-old — a two-year- old with the body of a grown man and a bad case of testosterone poisoning. Brutality can also be triggered by the feeling of vulnerability that results from a greater degree of intimacy than the brute can handle. Perhaps he indulged in a momentary urge to open up to his partner as he might if he were emotionally healthy. Perhaps she accidentally discovered something about him he would rather have kept hid. However it came about, he perceives his exposure as a real-world danger and reacts with all the violence that might be appropriate to physical threat. It's scary to live with such a man — like making one's home on the side of a volcano — but no woman has to put herself in that situation. Remember, most men aren't like that. The average man may become emotionally withdrawn when love is no longer new, but if he finds he's made an exception and revealed more of himself than usual, or if he's sexually enslaved and has to change his ways, he'll handle it well. It's the man who can't handle it — the brute — who's dangerous. Why distinguish brutality triggered by a sense of vulnerability from that triggered by frustration? Just to be thorough, really. The difference might be of professional interest to a psychologist, but it has no practical value to a victim, and few brutes care to understand their own motivations. Besides, we're not even discussing two different classes of brutes, just two different ways in which brutality is triggered. The men who get violent when they feel vulnerable also get violent when they're frustrated. Brutes can be recognized and, unless you're already committed to one, avoided. In fact the easiest and most effective way to avoid falling victim to brutality is to avoid brutes. Avoid them even if you have no interest in female domination. What if you're married to a brute or strongly attracted to one? What are your chances of sexually enslaving and taming him? Absolutely none. You can't use my techniques on a man who will respond with violence. You'll get killed. If you're involved with a man who has ever, even once, committed an act of brutality, don't attempt any of the techniques described in this book. If you're involved with a man who commits acts of brutality with any regularity, get out of the relationship! Leave now! Go to a shelter for battered women if you have to, but get out while you can still walk. You've heard this before and it's starting to seem like a recording, but that's because it's the best advice anyone can give you, and everyone who feels qualified to give advice on the subject knows it. If you're unattached and looking toward your next relationship, avoid brutes. Don't imagine that early application of my techniques will protect you from later brutality. It won't. Avoid brutes. Brutes are easy to avoid because they're easy to spot. The signs are many and varied. Some are so reliable that every man who displays one is certain to be a brute, though not every brute will display one of these signs. Others are less reliable. If I give you even a partial list of the more obvious of these, and you apply them rigorously, there'll be thousands of innocent men you'll have to reject. I'll give it to you anyway; you're better safe than sorry, and besides, I know that, like Denise, you'll use your own judgment. Suspect any man who makes disparaging remarks about women in general; who's often angry; who expresses dissatisfaction through crude, cutting, or sarcastic personal insults; who drives aggressively; who hassles the help in restaurants; who spits in public places (other than wilderness); who pushes to the front of a line; who picks fights; who belongs to a football team, hockey team, street gang, motorcycle gang or fraternity; who is or ever was a police officer; or who punctuates his speech with more profanity than is customary for the circumstances. If you're laughing, I'm glad I'm entertaining you. I see a bit of humor in that list myself, but don't discount its value. Stereotypes based on behavior, unlike other stereotypes, are useful. If part of a man's behavior conforms to a violent stereotype, it's a good bet — a safe bet — that the rest of his behavior will also. Three signs are so reliable that you should apply them rigorously. Avoid a man who uses the word bitch as a substitute for woman in ordinary conversation. If a man calls a particular woman a bitch because he feels she's being bitchy, or if he says that a whole class of women are bitches because he's angry with them, or something of like nature, that doesn't signify. It's the unstressed use of the word, without emotion, that spells trouble. How does the man who refers to women as bitches differ from the man who merely makes disparaging remarks about us? I've told you that the one is a brute for sure, while advising you only to suspect the other. Why? The man who makes disparaging remarks may be joking. He may be baiting the proprietors of political correctitude, thinking they deserve to be baited and that no one else will care. He may be upset from reading a newspaper story about a man jailed for a rape he didn't commit. He could have any number of reasons for mouthing off, and what he says may have no predictive value with respect to his treatment of an intimate partner. The man who uses bitch in place of woman, though, hates women for sure, and his hatred is integrated into his psyche at a deep level — as deep as his native language. Some men refer to women as bitches only when talking with other men — some only when talking with men their own age. This makes the sign harder to detect but no less reliable. If you hear it in a man's speech, whether intended for your ears or not, stay away. Avoid a man who hates male homosexuals. His homophobia arises out of insecurity about his masculinity, and that insecurity will drive him to brutalize you. Because he's insecure, he needs to be always proving he's a man, and his idea of masculinity is badly twisted or he couldn't be insecure about it. (An emotionally healthy man can't be insecure about his masculinity because he sees it as a simple fact of life, like the color of his eyes. Even an emotionally healthy homosexual sees it that way.) One of the ways an insecure man will try to prove his masculinity is by dominating a woman. He has to dominate a woman. The world is watching and the woman is watching too, and if he doesn't dominate her — if he treats women decently — then the world will know he isn't a real man and she'll lose respect for him. The best means of domination, of course, is brutality. After all, he's learned that violent aggression is itself an aspect of masculinity, so each act of brutality that he commits against his partner goes that much further toward proving his manliness. Before you apply this warning as rigorously as I advise, it's important that you understand what hatred of homosexuals is and what it isn't. Hatred is the intense visceral emotion that we all know by that name; nothing less qualifies. A gentle, sensitive, sane and exclusively heterosexual man might be so disgusted by sexual contact between males that if he were to stumble upon two men making love in the woods, he would throw up. Being emotionally healthy though, and not insecure about his masculinity, he doesn't hate homosexuals — not even the ones he threw up over. His feeling is analogous to that of a woman who's disgusted by oysters and prefers not to watch people eat them, but still can't be said to hate those who do. In some parts of this country — Kentucky, for example — a large segment of the population, including some sixty percent of the men you might meet, subscribe to a conservative religious morality. The prevailing opinion is that homosexuality is a sin, that homosexuals seek to seduce children and heterosexuals into their depraved ways, that toleration of homosexuality promotes evil and will bring down the wrath of God on the commonwealth as a whole, and that homosexual acts must therefore be outlawed and punished. Are sixty percent of the men in Kentucky brutes? Hardly. Conservative religious morality isn't hatred. Some of the men who subscribe to that morality do hate homosexuals, and they most assuredly are brutes, but most don't and most aren't. Let's look at another analogy like that of the oysters. Utah is probably the only state in the Union that, because of its conservative religious morality, will never legalize any form of gambling. A majority of the people there feel that gambling is a sin, that the inexperienced are easily seduced by its availability, that toleration of gambling promotes evil and will bring down the wrath of God on the commonwealth as a whole, and that gambling must therefore be outlawed and punished. Now, how many people in Utah actually hate gamblers? Imagine that a casino executive from Reno decks himself out in casual clothes emblazoned with his employer's logo, gets in his car with its Nevada plates, and sets out on a two-week auto tour of Utah. Along the way, he tells everyone he meets what he does for a living. How much hostility would he encounter? Would he get beat up? refused service and lodging? Really. Only hatred is hatred. The man to avoid is the one who gets all agitated and shouts, "Fuckin' queers! They should all be hung!" He's dangerous, and he's more dangerous to the woman who puts herself in his company than he is to some homosexual down the street whom he'd have to go look for. Of course, the man who goes out queer-bashing with a baseball bat, claiming he's doing God's work and hates no one, is also to be avoided. Hatred is hatred no matter what it calls itself, and if you spend much time with such a man, he'll soon be using that baseball bat on you. Men are often what they seem. After my soapbox speech about war, I feel the need to make one more fine point. A professional politician who doesn't hate homosexuals himself, but cynically panders to the homophobia of his constituency, is probably not a brute (regardless of what else I might think of him). If you don't mind his demagoguery, you might want to cultivate a relationship with him; like any man overburdened with power and responsibility, he's likely to respond well to a woman who undertakes his sexual enslavement, welcoming the relief she offers from the pressures of his work. The third easily-recognized brute is the man who rages at the sight of a couple consisting of a woman of his own race or ethnicity and a man of some other race or ethnicity. Why, we might wonder, should this rattle him so? The enemy! They're stealing our women! Oh. What makes this man dangerous is that he sees women as chattels — something like valuable purebred dogs that might be lured away from their rightful owners with offers of meat. If you get involved with such a man and do something that annoys him (like neglecting to stock enough beer for a three-day binge), he'll strike out at you much as he would at a misbehaving dog, and without any idea that he's doing wrong. Some men who exhibit this sign like to give the impression that they're fair and consistent about it, so they make a principle of the belief that sex between people of different races or ethnicities is always wrong and profess an equal degree of hostility toward all mixed couples. The underlying psychology is the same though, so you can be sure that if a man denounces even one person for miscegenation, he's a brute. On the other hand, a man's acceptance of a mixed couple doesn't demonstrate the absence of this sign unless the woman is of his own group, and even then it doesn't prove he isn't a brute. There are plenty of brutes, including many who see women as chattels, to whom ethnicity just isn't an issue. There's one more warning sign I urge you to watch out for, though it's far from absolutely reliable. Many readers will find it counterintuitive and I don't understand it myself, but it's based on stories collected from a goodly number of women, and the pattern revealed by those stories is unmistakable: Beware a man who courts you with flowers. I've heard the tales of a disproportionate number of battered women whose abusers courted them by giving or sending them flowers several times a week. Generally the flowers stopped once the relationship had stabilized, only to reappear again and again as a means of wooing the woman back each time the man got worried that his battering had run her off for good. Better relationships, more consistently free of violence, follow from the more modern approach to courtship in which a couple get to know one another by sharing activities they both enjoy, avoiding extravagant gestures. No matter how well a man measures up against my little catalog of horrors, never ignore the warnings of your own intuition. When getting acquainted, be alert to hints of violence, duplicity and ulterior purpose. If something feels wrong, something is wrong. Always. I promised to describe three ways in which acts of brutality are triggered, and I've only covered two. The third trigger is the perceived opportunity to engage in that most time-honored of male bonding rituals, massacre. This is why any young college woman runs the risk of being raped by the football team. All she has to do is be in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some women, in fact, are raped by college football teams, but nowhere near as many as we might expect. There are two reasons for the low numbers. One is that most women take care not to be alone with a football team. The other is that usually, when a football team has the opportunity to rape someone, even if every member of the team has such a predisposition, nobody thinks of it. Their attention is focused elsewhere and the impulse to massacre doesn't spring to the forefront of anyone's consciousness. A woman who attempts to apply the techniques of female domination, though, is likely to be at substantially greater risk than a random bystander. Let's see how. Our heroine is a freshman at a small college in Arkansas. She becomes intimate with a classmate and attempts to sexually enslave him. Puzzled by what's happening, he asks his big brother for advice. Pig Bruvver, an offensive throwback on the football team, alerts his buddies to the new Menace and they decide to neutralize her. How? Massacre, of course. They'll hunt her down, or set an ambush, and they'll rape her and beat her half to death. Once their attention is focused, massacre becomes their whole purpose. Male bonding is what matters now, and male dominance. At this point any excuse would have served, and though our heroine is at greater risk than anyone else on campus, every other woman's risk increases as well. To a massacre squad, mistaken identity isn't a tragedy to be avoided, but a convenience that speeds their mission. Understand your cultural context. Not every college, to continue with the same example, is like the one where Suzi recruited her slaves. Gentle rape is something else. It's not motivated by a craving for dominance but by sexual desire. It's committed by a man, almost always an acquaintance of the victim, who doesn't understand that no means no. His misapprehension is sincere. He thinks no is an empty gesture required by social convention. So he overcomes it. And he does it gently. He doesn't want to hurt his victim, and he doesn't hurt her, at least not very much. He has to avoid hurting her to preserve his perception that he's engaged in a consensual transaction rather than a rape. He doesn't hit her. He doesn't twist her harm. He may hold her arm so she can't use it to fight him off, but he doesn't twist it. He may push her knees apart, but he does it with little enough force so he can convince himself that he couldn't possibly succeed against genuine resistance. He doesn't know how much stronger than she he is, nor does he appreciate how frightened she is. Many women who have lived through this wonder whether they were really raped. They ask themselves, over and over, what they did to invite such behavior, how their refusal could have been misunderstood. They ask themselves these questions because there's no reasonable explanation for what happened except a failure to communicate. Indeed that's the correct explanation, but the failure doesn't lie with the victims. Does it, then, lie with the perpetrators? They're sure they did nothing wrong, that what happened was consensual. Accused of rape, they assume their accusers are distorting the facts, not that they see the same facts differently. Upon learning that the facts aren't in dispute, they're genuinely puzzled. Though it's unfashionable to say so, the simple truth is that the perpetrators and the victims were taught different rules of communication — given different maps of reality. Gentle rape happens by mistake. Because of this, you can't spot gentle rapists the way you can brutes. You're sure your new boyfriend is no brute, and you're right, but how will he respond when you turn him on and then subject him to a high degree of sexual frustration? Will he accept the frustration and pay attention to your demands? Will he angrily but nonviolently reject you? (He has a right to do that, you know.) Or will he use just a little bit of force and overpower you? The only way to get any indication ahead of time is by discussion. Tell him the story of a friend who was the victim of a gentle rape. Make it up if you have to. His response is almost certain to give you some useful information about him. Countermeasures There's one reliable way to protect yourself from violence — whether the perpetrators be brutes, gentle rapists or muggers — and that's to master the art of self-defense. It's hard work and it takes time, but the ability to protect yourself is so valuable that I urge you to make the investment. There are several martial arts that are effective, but my own favorite — the one I've chosen to study myself and the one I most highly recommend — is aikido. Aikido teaches a set of skills that enable the practitioner to avoid harm without doing harm, and it teaches a moral philosophy to match. Because of this, the study of aikido offers a pleasant fringe benefit — the opportunity to meet some truly excellent people. In case you have no experience with martial arts but want to learn, I'll offer four bits of practical advice on selecting a school. The first three are applicable to martial arts generally and the last to aikido specifically. Follow them and you won't go wrong. The first thing to do when you visit a school is ask the instructor whether the students compete in tournaments. If the answer is yes, or if the answer is that competition is optional — indeed if the answer is anything other than no — find another school. If a school competes, it inevitably becomes so focused on competition that it winds up teaching its students nothing but how to win tournaments. This has disadvantages. Tournaments have rules, which brawls don't. Boxers, wrestlers, and martial arts tournament competitors routinely put themselves in positions where, if it weren't for the rules, they would get an ear bitten off. Only a school that doesn't compete can be relied upon to teach you to stay out of such positions. Technique is another problem. A school that competes may teach, for example, that a crescent kick to the side of an opponent's head is a practical move. Even if you can execute it, it isn't something you would want to do in a brawl; it's too long to be standing on one leg. If you're forty-five and out of shape, you simply won't be able to learn to kick a standing opponent in the side of the head. Don't waste your time with an instructor who'll insist on making you try. You don't have to be able to do that even to protect yourself from someone who can. Avoid any school or class that's for women only. Such a school can't teach you how to throw a big man, but it may give you the dangerous delusion that you're capable of doing it anyway. There's no way to learn to throw a big man except repeated practice. The schools that hire big men to play the role of bad guys, covered with lots of protective padding, are no good. Real brutes are more cunning tacticians than these hirelings, and all men are more agile without padding. It's better to practice on fellow students who are big and male — more realistic. Some of the techniques taught by these schools are effective but too dangerous for use by a dominatrix. You can avoid brutes, so your primary use for martial arts is to convince a gentle rapist that no means no. This can be done without hurting him, and that's how it should be done. Remember, you didn't get involved with him because you thought he was the sort of person who should be maimed or killed. You got involved with him because you like him and it was obvious that he likes you. It turned out that the two of you learned different ways of communicating about sexual issues, so now you need a way of showing him what you mean by no. Classes for women only, unfortunately, aren't real big on this. They tend to be taught by women who see all men as brutes and they concentrate on the most dangerous of techniques, with emphasis on the potentially lethal. Such techniques are good to know, but you need gentler ones too. When you begin martial arts training, you'll feel sore. The mornings after the first couple of classes, you may have difficulty moving. For the first six weeks or so, you can expect to feel as though you'd been severely beaten with a heavy pillow. This is normal. Injuries aren't. Dislocations, pulled shoulder muscles, visible bruises and bloody knuckles are not a necessary part of martial arts training. If your instructor tells you they are, or seems to regard them as commonplace, find another school. If you decide to take up aikido, you'll want to study good aikido — the sort that's most useful. Obviously you're not going to ask the instructor whether he teaches good aikido; I'm going to give you a way to tell the difference. Observe a class or a demonstration, and notice how the instructor throws his opponents. Pay particular attention to the way he stands when preparing to be attacked. His posture should be natural, as if he were walking — upright, relaxed, hands at sides, knees just slightly bent; there should be mo more distance between his feet than you would expect if he were waiting for a bus. The greater the deviation of the defender's opening stance from this natural posture, the less useful the aikido will be. If the defender looks like something out of a martial arts movie — feet wide apart, knees severely bent to bring the body low, hands forward as though prepared to deliver a karate chop — the aikido will be almost useless, regardless of how well it may seem to work when demonstrated. It's intuitively obvious. To be useful, a defensive technique has to be available without adopting an unusual stance. You have to be able to use it from whatever posture you're in when you're attacked. There are two schools of aikido I can recommend by name, and wherever you live in the United States, a dojo of one or the other is probably in the nearest big city. One is Aikido Kokikai and the other is Aikido Shusekai. Both regard competition as contrary to the spirit of aikido, so neither competes; neither segregates its classes by gender; both teach techniques that are practical and useful; and you're unlikely to get hurt while studying either. According to an apocryphal tale, the founder of Aikido Shusekai once ejected a young man from his dojo when, after a couple of lessons, it became apparent that the student had a subconscious desire to hurt women. Excellent people. Wearing the black belt Let's fantasize a bit. A few years ago you got fed up with brutes, so you studied karate and got a job in construction, and now you're ready for Pig Bruvver and all his buddies. If they picked you as the victim of one of their massacres, there would be very little left of them at the end. What should you do? Obviously you're going to do whatever you want; it would take a SWAT team to stop you. What I would recommend, though, is that you avoid brutes and treat everyone as gently as possible. If you have a lover who needs to be shown that he can't make you do what you don't want to, show him without hurting him. Use deadly force only if attacked by someone who means you harm. But it would be so much fun to get hold of one of those brutes and turn him into my sex slave. Every time he threw one of his ugly little tantrums, I'd... You could do that, but you shouldn't. Sexual slavery is a good trip. Every love slave I've ever had, every love slave I've ever heard of, took great pleasure in the role. Even Tony, who was about as nearly a brute as possible without actually being one, liked what Denise did to him. The reason you shouldn't use superior strength or skill to sexually enslave a brute is that he doesn't deserve it. What he does deserve is to be shunned by women, cut off from all sexual pleasure, and denied any opportunity to reproduce his kind. That won't happen soon — certainly not while brutes are still permitted to raise their daughters to seek relationships with brutes — but we can each do our part and we can each ensure our own safety in the process. Safety? What safety? I can break him in two with one hand! Sure you can. But every now and then, you have to sleep. If someone is going to be nearby when you do, make sure it's someone you can trust. So much for fantasy. What's the reality of life after martial arts training? I started studying aikido when I was sixteen, I was reasonably proficient by the time I was nineteen, and I earned a black belt at twenty-two. It's given me a great deal of confidence, but I've never had to use my skills against a lover or a date. Let's go back over the situations in which my training might have played a role. When Steve was eating me and lunged forward in an attempt to put his cock in my pussy, I got out of his way. My training helped me move faster and more deliberately than I otherwise could have, and I knew how to help him toward a position of imbalance that increased his disorientation. Did it make any real difference? Of course not. If my evasion had been clumsy, he still would have got my message and he still would have paid attention, especially when I scolded him. For that matter, just shouting no would have been enough, though I would have lost the dramatic effect of implying that my evasion was necessary. Steve wasn't a rapist, not even a gentle rapist, no matter what I said to him at the time, and I didn't need my skills to get him under control. I thought Corbett might attack me when I blackmailed him. I deserved it and he didn't know I could defend myself, but he didn't attack me anyway. In that case, what my training gave me was the confidence to do wrong. More loss than gain, considering how I feel about it now, but that's not the fault of my training and certainly not what my sensei intended. And that's it! In all my other relationships, my skills played no role at all. I've never even had to resist a gentle rape, perhaps because my penchant for bondage tends to preclude the development of that sort of situation. Not a very impressive collection of stories, is it? In effect, I've protected myself all these years by avoiding brutes and projecting confidence. Under most circumstances, that's enough; but I'm still glad to have my training and I've never stopped practicing. *** Chapter 14, In which we note that marriages are different Marriages and other committed relationships are different from uncommitted ones. By definition, they're hard to get out of. If you try to enslave your husband and fail, there's almost no chance the attempt will end your marriage. This offers you a measure of security, but it also means that if everything possible goes wrong, you can't easily change the history you've written. Unless you're making a final heroic effort to save a marriage doomed by other difficulties, you'll be living with that man and that memory for years and years. There are other differences. You and your husband have likely been together a long time, and until now, you never considered the possibility of enslaving him, nor did he imagine becoming your slave. The two of you built your marriage on a more conventional paradigm and you've grown accustomed to it. To change, you would have to overcome a great deal of habit, and habit is a powerful force. If you've been married more than a couple of years, your husband's feelings for you have matured. He's not in love with you in the passionate and desperate way he once was. He may like you and enjoy your company, and we've already established that he's committed to you, but his affection lacks intensity. In all likelihood, he's also learned to control his lust for you, and you're not quite sure you could lead him into the Loop. The two of you almost certainly live together; setting up a common household is a gesture of commitment so nearly universal that it seems part of the definition. Cohabitation gives the process of sexually enslaving your husband a different feel from the process of enslaving a casual lover. You can't easily separate from him by more than a short distance, nor for more than a brief time, so it takes greater determination to enforce a prolonged period of abstinence: your own lust will tempt you to relent; he can wear you down with almost continuous protest; perhaps he'll even retaliate in nonsexual ways that make your life difficult. These factors operate to different degrees in different marriages, but invariably they conspire to make the average woman reluctant to attempt the enslavement of her husband. Still, some try. What does it take? First it takes motivation. The woman has to want to enslave her husband, and her desire has to be great enough to overcome her reluctance. Second it takes a belief — a strong belief — that the attempt won't harm the marriage even if it fails. There are four circumstances that give rise to such a belief. Your marriage won't be hurt by an attempt to enslave your husband if he's in love with you. He'll forgive you. If he isn't in love with you but likes you a lot, and your marriage is resilient, characterized by good humor, with no undercurrent of hostility, the same is true. He'll forgive you. If your husband is so averse to intimacy that he spends as much time as possible away from you and seems emotionally withdrawn when he's with you, an attempt to enslave him won't do any harm unless he has a girlfriend on the side. If the attempt fails, his behavior won't change whether he forgives you or not. The availability of another woman introduces an element of risk because he'll be driven to seek comfort from her and he may never return. (His aversion to intimacy doesn't preclude his having a girlfriend, just as it didn't preclude is initial involvement with you, because the circumstances of a casual relationship makes it easy for him to limit intimacy to a level that's not a problem to him. If he were to leave you and commit to her, he would soon become as distant and withdrawn with her as he is now, but that's no help to you.) Last and saddest, you can't do any harm if your marriage is already doomed and you're considering female domination because nothing else can save it. This taxonomy is subject to the flaws inherent in all generalizations. Regard it with caution and skepticism. When I advised Francesca to enslave Roy, their relationship was so resilient as to appear indestructible. It was characterized by a high degree of good humor and there was certainly no hostility between them. Still, she was sure that if she attempted to enslave him rather than just making bondage a part of their lovemaking, he would react so badly that she might lose him. I think she was wrong, but there are other women who perceive their situations similarly and they can't all be wrong. Trust your judgment above mine. I've been using a couple of words whose meanings I ought to clarify. When I refer to an attempt at sexual enslavement, I mean a wholehearted effort that won't admit of failure, not a desultory gesture that's intended to be easy to back out of at the first sign of difficulty. The vast majority of married men strongly resist female domination until they've become accustomed to it; a serious attempt expects this resistance and confronts it with determination sufficient to prevail. If your marriage is a happy one, or your timing is good, or you appear to be joking, your husband may agree to become your love slave too easily. If you're serious about enslaving him, you'll understand that it won't be long before he tries to reclaim the control that's traditionally his. When that happens, you'll enforce the agreement even if he fights hard to back out of it. Sexual slavery isn't playacting and it isn't a sometime thing. It works only if it's always and only if it's real. An attempt can fail in several ways. You can give up prematurely. Your husband says, "My father warned me you'd turn out to be a bitch," and you apologize and repent. Or he goes into a sulk and you can't bear to wait it out. Or he ostentatiously books a tour of the brothels of Nevada and you take it as a serious threat. If you're going to enslave your husband, I urge you to decide at the outset that you won't fail in this manner, then stick to that decision. You'd do better not to try at all than to make only a token effort and give up. If you attempt to enslave your husband for the purpose of squelching a pattern of behavior so destructive that your marriage must end unless it stops, the attempt should be considered a failure if the destructive behavior continues or resumes. If your attempt isn't a desperate effort to save a doomed marriage and you don't give up prematurely, it's still possible to fail. Failure consists in being unable to make your husband turn on to you. There are two ways in which this calamity can manifest itself. The first is less painful. You tell him, "We do sex my way or not at all," and he replies, "Well, then, I guess we no longer have a sexual relationship," and all goes on with his life as if that's the reality he's accepted. He may leave you and sue for divorce; he may go on living with you, treating you as a dear friend who's gone slightly mad; he may do something in between. He may develop a novel adaptation all his own. It doesn't matter. If he accepts the end of your sexual relationship as an accomplished fact, absolutely rejecting the alternative of sexual slavery, and if his attitude persists over a sufficiently long time that you're sure he's not faking, you've failed. If he accedes to your demand for sexual control but doesn't turn on to you, you've also failed. If he lets you tie him up but you find you can't make him come unless he cooperates, or worse yet, his cock won't get hard for you, there's nothing to be done for it. He isn't going to be your love slave and you'll have to be satisfied with the more conventional commitment he's already given you. This sort of failure hurts even if you know your partner loves you, but don't blame yourself and don't blame him. These things happen. Some relationships, by their nature, make female domination infeasible. You won't be able to enslave your husband if you've grown to hate him, or if he hates you, or if he finds you physically repulsive, or if you find him physically repulsive. Female domination won't work in a marriage that's become a battleground. If you and your husband are always quarreling, not over one serious issue that's threatening your marriage, but over everything, you may be tempted to enslave him to put an end to the fighting. Not only will the attempt fail, it will become yet another subject of dispute that comes between you again and again. Spare yourself some ugliness. Don't try. There are seven reasons a woman might undertake to enslave her husband. One is that she knows it would be an enjoyable and exciting way to handle the sexual aspect of the marriage, but she didn't think of it, or didn't have the courage to try, before the wedding. Another is that she sees it as a gift to her man. She wants to relieve him of some of the responsibility he feels; she wants to save him from performance anxiety; she wants to create a context in which he'll know that every little kindness she shows him is given freely and lovingly; she knows it's just what he's always hoped for. Whatever the particulars, the marriage is a happy one and her intent is to make it even better. A third reason is that she needs control over the sexual aspect of the marriage because her partner has been managing it badly. Francesca and Roy. She didn't quite enslave him, but she did take control of their lovemaking, and she did it out of necessity. We've also seen elements of this motive in the relationships of Denise and Paula. True, Denise was planning to enslave Tony anyway, but his insistence on anal sex added urgency and focus to the project. An allegation that Jimmy was mismanaging his sexual relationship with Paula isn't supported by the evidence, but she was uncomfortable, and she was able to relax when he agreed to be her slave. Yet another reason a woman might set out to take control of her marriage is that her husband has been tyrannizing her and she wants out from under. His tyranny might be subtle or it might be so ugly as to make the marriage insufferable. He might be micromanaging her life to such a degree that it's no longer hers; he might be verbally abusing her; he might be guilt-tripping her into living by the rules of his church. Tyranny comes in many flavors. A woman might also enslave her husband to pull him away from a habit that's destroying him. Overeating and gambling are two examples we'll see in subsequent chapters. In some cases even smoking can be cured. Drinking, too, if it hasn't yet become a full-blown addiction. The sixth reason is the one I've seen most often. The woman wants her husband's attention. She wants to be as much the center of his world as he is of hers, while he, emboldened by the depth of her commitment, ignores her in favor of other interests. I've seen this so often because men are raised to fear intimacy and seek distance in their relationships with women. It's a cultural norm, and so many diversions are available that it's easy to conform. A man may devote his time and energy to his parents and siblings, to other women, to his job, to a club or hobby — the possibilities are endless, and it takes only one, immoderately pursued, to turn a husband into a stranger. The more moderate pursuit of a variety of interests is harder to argue with, but no less effective as a means of distancing from a wife. If you want your husband's attention, and you apply the techniques of female domination properly, you'll almost certainly get it. Indeed you can get it all. This presents the often difficult ethical question of how much attention you should demand. It would be unhealthy for him to have no outside interests. If your husband is a computer programmer and spends every other evening out drinking with his workmates, it wouldn't be unreasonable of you to interfere. You'd be doing the both of you a service. If your husband is a computer programmer and spends one night a week working a suicide prevention hotline, let him. You may feel he should be spending the time with you, but if you cut the hotline out of his life, and then you cut something else, and then another thing besides, you'll eventually find that you're married to an empty shell. It isn't much fun, and there's no easy way to undo the damage. The issue isn't as simple as judging whether his interests have redeeming value. If instead of a computer programmer who donates one night a week to a suicide prevention hotline, you're married to a psychotherapist who does the same, your situation is quite different. He's an addict — an addict trained to diagnose and treat addiction, for that matter, and to recognize marital neglect — and it's entirely appropriate for you to take action. Say your husband likes to go hunting with his buddies. You've heard them reminisce about their trips, and it gives you a bad feeling. They seem to have been drunk much of the time, even while afield with their guns. That sounds dangerous. They take a lot of shots that miss their intended targets. That sounds worse. You've read a couple of stories about the horde of prostitutes who converge on the hunting grounds every season to service men just like these. You haven't overheard any mention of them, but then, you wouldn't. Should you end your husband's participation in this ritual? It wouldn't be a bad idea. You'd get more of his time for yourself; you might save him from being shot; you might save him from shooting one of his buddies; you might even save the both of you from AIDS. Now say your husband likes to go hunting alone. He hunts remote stretches of wilderness, closed to motor vehicles, that most men won't even try to get to. He scouts his favorite places in advance of the season, studying the terrain and the habits of the wildlife. When he hunts, he travels light. He almost always brings something back. If it's large, he constructs a travois for the purpose and drags it, alone, over whatever distance. He never wastes game. He's built a little smokehouse and makes his own jerky, with which he fuels himself on subsequent trips. He spends about fifty days a year on hunting and related activities, and you'd rather he spent that time with you. Even if you've sexually enslaved him because the idea turned you on, leave his hunting alone. You'll be able to stop him, all right, but the results will be bad. He'll change in subtle ways that don't seem to have anything to do with hunting. Aspects of his personality that you've always loved — little things that defy precise definition — will fade away. Bits of ugliness will creep in. Give him his fifty days and enjoy him when he's with you. With power comes responsibility. Don't destroy what you love. Though I know the stories of eleven women who enslaved their husbands to hold their attention, I won't be recounting any. They don't have much in common, and no single story is likely to offer much that will be useful to the average reader. When I wrote out the best two and reread them, they seemed long but trivial. Neither will I be repeating any stories illustrating the seventh reason a woman might enslave her husband — that is, to control some aspect of his behavior not subsumed under any of the reasons I've already listed. I've known two women who enslaved their husbands to make better fathers of them, and I can't really argue with that, but all the other uses of female domination I've seen in this category have been downright petty. Table Manners. Household Chores. Gawking at attractive strangers. I know we're both agnostics, but he should take the children to church. No, no, no. Yes, you can get away with using the techniques of female domination to short-circuit the ordinary give- and-take of marriage, but only for a while. Then the marriage go pookie. But you promised I'd be able to make all the decisions! Sure I did, but I also said you'd have to take your partner's needs into account. If you set yourself up as a petty tyrant, your relationship will deteriorate into a state of deep misery. I promised that too. I'm not saying you oughtn't use the power of your femininity to force an equitable division of chores. Feel free — if you've enslaved your husband for the pure joy of it and the division of chores gets to be a problem. But divide only those chores that you need done or he needs done, not the ones your parents need done. You're grown up now, and you don't have to keep house to their standards, or pass along their religious traditions either. And if this sort of issue is your primary motivation for enslaving your husband, you're headed for trouble. On the other hand, if the only question is which one of you is going to be the petty tyrant until you break up, it might as well be you. If you're married to a problem child (a compulsive gambler, a petty tyrant, a philanderer), and the marriage seems doomed, you have some serious soul- searching to do before you try to save it by undertaking your husband's enslavement. As I've warned, you'll fail if you've grown to hate him, and that's probably just what has happened. To succeed, you really need to be the sort of saint who's capable of loving the sinner even while hating the sin. When you fantasize your future together, with him as your slave, what are the details? If you see a loving partnership in which the issues that now threaten your marriage have lost their relevance, you have a chance. If you imagine punishing him daily for what he once was, you'll fail. Don't bother trying. Your marriage is truly doomed. Start the process of dissolving it now. Don't give him a lurid story to tell the judge about what you tried to do to him at the end. The other extreme is worse. If you're so desperately in love with your problem child that you can't bear the thought of losing him no matter what, then you won't be able to enslave him because he'll bluff you into giving up. It will be easy for him and painful for you, and it will be over in minutes. Don't make the attempt. My advice about doomed marriages isn't for you; it's for those women whose marriages really must end if not salvaged by the techniques of female domination. If you're willing to pay any price to keep your marriage alive, it isn't doomed. Perhaps it would be doomed if you had a healthy measure of self-respect, but that's not the same. Don't try my techniques — not yet, anyway. Your husband will never let you forget the attempt, and his needling reminders will be pure torture. You can reconsider when he's done enough damage that you're no longer afraid of losing him, but don't be surprised if you go directly to hating him without passing through a period of relative objectivity. Meanwhile see a marriage counselor or psychotherapist. Your husband won't go with you, so go alone. You've probably noticed something missing from my advice. I haven't told you how to figure your chances of success; nor have I told you, if you know your chances, how to use that knowledge to choose a course of action. All I've told you is that under certain circumstances your chances are nil, and I've advised you not to make an attempt that's sure to fail. The omission is intentional. I'm not going to tell you how to choose a course of action based on your chances of success, and the reason is that no one actually does things that way. Women don't take calculated risks with their marriages, and I don't recommend that you be an exception. When considering the sexual enslavement of her husband, a woman asks herself, What's the worst that could happen? If the answer frightens her, she doesn't make the attempt even if the worst is unlikely. My advice recognizes this and gives proper respect to the healer's credo, First, do no harm. Still, I know from proselytizing to my friends that women contemplating the enslavement of their husbands are generally quite interested in their chances; it's a matter they've almost all wanted to discuss, so I feel obliged to present at least an overview of the relevant factors. As we've already noted, you have a better chance of success if you're enthusiastic about female domination than if you're not. It also helps to be empathetic, a skilled communicator, a clever strategist and a natural tease. You're more likely to succeed if your husband is in love with you than if he isn't. Much more likely. Indeed there's a lot to be said for enslaving any man who's in love, while he's in love, simply because he's in love. It's easier then, and it keeps him from falling out of love. It gives you a ready-made handle on any problems that may develop later, and it's much friendlier than waiting for the problems first and then enslaving him out of necessity. You have a better chance if your husband trusts you than if he has doubts. If he actively distrusts you, you have almost no chance at all. To sexually enslave any man, you have to lead him into the Loop, and you can do that only if you turn him on. When a married woman contemplates the enslavement of her husband this is typically what worries her most. If it's obvious that your husband finds you irresistible, you have an excellent chance of success. More likely though, especially if you've been married a while, your erotic effect on him isn't all that apparent. The reasons fall into three categories. First and most dismal is a lack of sexual chemistry. Perhaps you never turned him on but he married you anyway. Perhaps you used to turn him on but he changed. Perhaps you changed. It doesn't matter; there's nothing for it. A lack of sexual chemistry makes female domination unworkable. Second, he may be bored. Men are wired to be progressively less excited by a partner who's always available even if the sexual chemistry is there. This isn't much of a problem. When you set out to enslave him, you'll be making yourself less available and introducing some novel and exciting situations. His boredom will be relieved and he'll want you with all the intensity of the good old days. Third, he may be deliberately concealing the fact that you turn him on. Every man has an idea, gleaned from society at large, of how much lust is appropriate in marriage, and he learns to control himself to avoid the opprobrium of exceeding what's proper. This isn't as easy as he makes it look, nor is his control solid. His techniques are crude enough to be transparent if you know what to look for. He hides his nakedness when exposure would reveal his arousal; he looks away when the sight of you threatens to excite him; he desexualizes the atmosphere, either by dwelling on difficult or depressing subjects or by putting you on the defensive with petty criticism; he eats, drinks or exhausts himself to stupefaction. Pick a good time, tie him up, and his control is gone. Usually, enslaving him turns out to be easy. He himself understands, and has implicitly acknowledged, that if you prove your ability to turn him on, your power over him is nearly absolute; otherwise he wouldn't be putting so much effort into seeming unmoved by your femininity. It may have been society that taught him how much lust is appropriate in marriage, but it's you he's trying to impress. If your husband doesn't seem to find you a turn-on, what's the reason? Lack of chemistry? boredom? a deliberate attempt to present a controlled demeanor? If you wait until he's exceptionally horny and then tie him up and tease him, how will he respond? If you try to enslave him, how will he take it? You know the answers to these questions. Every woman does. Maybe you're not quite sure, but how sure do you have to be? If I set before you a pathway, a quarter of an inch wide and twenty feet long — the edge of a piece of plywood — raised four inches above the surface of an empty parking lot, and ask you whether you can walk it without falling off, you'll be able to give me an answer. If your balance and coordination are about average, your answer will be no and you'll be right. If we widen the pathway to six inches and repeat the question, again you'll be able to answer. If your balance and coordination are average, you'll say yes. That answer will also be right. Contemplating the sexual enslavement of your husband is like raising the pathway fifty feet. The questions become more worrisome. Your uncertainties are magnified. You know it's only monotony that makes him seem uninterested in you, but what if he really finds you repulsive? You know he's easygoing and doesn't hold grudges, but what if you try to enslave him and he never forgives you the attempt? If we're talking about a pathway too narrow for you to walk even four inches off the ground — if you're sure an attempt to enslave your husband will fail for reasons unrelated to your worry — then don't try. If we're talking about a pathway you can walk easily — if you expect that an attempt to enslave your husband will succeed — then take a realistic look at how high off the ground the pathway is. If it's only four inches up — if the attempt can do no harm — then you don't have to be absolutely sure of success. Go ahead and give it your best shot. Do it lovingly, and have fun! *** Chapter 15, In which the first of many young wives take charge When Nora joined the company in June, Ginny and I had already been working together five months. The two of us were the same age — going on twenty-five — and we had become friends in a subdued sort of way, occasionally having lunch together or taking an afternoon break in her office or mine. We would discuss company politics, the public issues of the day, and the ordinary events of our lives, but our conversation had never become intensely personal. Nora changed that. Within a couple of weeks of starting work, she was gathering us up almost daily and driving us to yet another lunching place we'd never tried. She liked to break up the day, she liked to drive, she liked to hang out. Ginny and I qualified as ideal companions by virtue of our gender; Nora believed that her role as a twenty-three-year-old newlywed obliged her to avoid even professional comradeships with men. Nora and her husband were in love and, unlike many of our contemporaries, Nora wasn't at all embarrassed to talk about it. She talked about it often, and her romanticism struck Ginny as immature, foolish, even dangerous — certain to lead to the same sort of disappointment she herself was suffering in her marriage of two years to Peter. Ginny hadn't previously spoken of that disappointment, but now, whether out of envy or altruism or a mix of both, she began to open up, drawing on her own experience and that of her friends to persuade Nora that men's love is of little value and brief duration. At the time, I was involved in a relationship that was to last seven years. Matt and I had been living together since the previous November. I had neither concealed the nature of our commitment nor gratuitously advertised it; there had been no reason to tell anyone what a kinky couple we were, so Ginny and Nora both had the impression that I was just another young woman living with her boyfriend, as indeed I was. "How was your weekend?" I asked Nora as the three of us set out in her car one Monday at the beginning of August. "Real good! We drove up the coast and stayed at a little motel in Fort Bragg. You ever been there?" "Yeah. It's a nice area." "It sure is! We found this really pretty spot on the beach a few miles further up, and we played in the sand, and then we watched the sun go down, and then we made love right there on the beach for, it must have been two hours. It was dark when we finally left, and then we had a real fun time finding our way back to the car; it was dark dark." "That does sound good!" "Jeez, Nora, You're making me jealous. I had to spend Saturday afternoon at another one of Peter's drunken softball games." "Did it kill the evening like last week?" Nora asked. "Oh, yeah! It's never just the game. The team has to hang out when it's over, so I got dragged to Sal's again for pizza and more beer, and this time all the guys — including Peter!— got into clowning around and giving piggy-back rides to their girlfriends. The unmarried girlfriends, that is — not me and not Kandee." "In the bar?" Nora asked. "Yeah. Do you know Sal's? Were you ever inside?" "No, I'll have to check it out someday." "There's a lot of room between the tables, especially when you push a bunch of them together to seat seventeen people. Sal — he's a tough old guy about sixty — he was disgusted. He was watching us the whole time, looking like he was trying to decide when to throw us out." "Peter was giving piggy-back rides to the other guys' girlfriends?" Nora persisted. "Yeah, he's a very physical kind of guy — likes to horse around. He just forgets about me while he's doing it. I guess that's why I'm a little jealous." "Did you want him to give you a piggy-back ride?" I asked. "No, I didn't want to be there at all. I didn't want him to be there either. I would have liked us to be playing by ourselves on a lonely stretch of beach." Nora pulled the car into one of those little strip malls for which California was notorious when no other state had them, and parked in front of an eatery specializing in the kind of lite veggie matter that would soon earn us even more notoriety. We went inside, found a table, studied the menu, made our selections, and continued our conversation. "Doesn't Peter ever get romantic?" asked Nora. "No, he doesn't even kiss me hello and good-bye unless I initiate it, and he wouldn't even do that except he's afraid what I might do if he refuses. He never tells me he loves me unless I complain that he doesn't, and he never so much as touches me unless he wants sex — and then he has to be half crocked." "That's terrible! Was he always like that?" "Pretty much. At first he used to kiss me hello and good-bye, and he put his arm around me sometimes, but he was never very affectionate." "Why did you marry him?— if you don't mind my asking?" "I don't mind." She thought a while, as if trying to figure it out herself. "He was fun to hang out with — do things with, you know. And he asked me." Nora looked too boggled to ask the next question, so I did. "Is he still fun to hang out with?" "Well, he's easy to hang out with; we're compatible that way. But since we've been married, he seems to put all his effort into being fun for the other people we hang out with." "Do you have any idea why he asked you to marry him?" "I guess he liked hanging out with me, and he was ready to get married." Now we were both boggled. We probably would have gone on staring at her stupidly, but the waitress brought our lunch at just that moment — three strange-looking salads, obviously meant to be appreciated rather than enjoyed. "You know, Ginny," I said, after taking a couple of samples from my bowl, "there's something about this that doesn't compute." "What's that?" "Well, you're the sort of woman that half the men in America lust over,—" "I don't know,—" "It's true! I've seen the guys at work drooling over you; sometimes I've even heard the drooling over you, two or three at a time. Right now I'm facing two men sitting in a booth. They're trying not to be obvious about it, but they keep turning to stare at you." She started to look but checked herself. "It doesn't matter. My point is, you are attractive, and you're telling us you think Peter married you for reasons that have nothing to do with that — that he even finds you so unattractive, he can't bring himself to touch you unless he's been drinking." "That's how he acts." She was obviously upset and I regretted being so straightforward. "But men don't do things that way," I said. "What do they do?" "They fall in love with women who turn them on, and they marry women they've fallen in love with. Usually they fall out of love after a while, sometimes even before they get married, and often they stop turning on to their wives, but it's rare that a man will marry a woman who never turned him on." "How do you know?" "By paying attention to the men around me, the couples around me. Also, I've had a few boyfriends, been proposed to a couple of times — I've just developed a feel for how the story goes." The salad was the sort that even a really hungry person might pick through, one bite at a time — not really bad, but not good either — interesting is the word most commonly used. It was a problem; I wasn't hungry anymore — too worried about how badly I'd offended Ginny, who'd stopped eating entirely. I didn't want to be staring at her, so I forced myself to go on taking little forkfuls just to keep occupied. I was relieved when she started talking again. "The first time Peter and I ever tried doing it, he hadn't been drinking at all. We were over at his place, making out on the love seat, and he undressed me, real slow, exploring my body — acting like he really liked me, like I really turned him on. Well, I got all excited and I had this inspiration. There was this big oak table in the dining room, really solid — in fact it's the one we still use now. "Well, I ran over to it and sat on the edge and put my feet on a couple of chairs and leaned back on my elbows like, Come and get it! So he stands in front of me and starts unbuckling his belt, and I remember I said, 'Are you going to show me your cock?' and he took off his pants and I said, 'You have a big one!' He does! Really! It's the biggest I've ever seen! Anyway, he starts fingering me some more, and I say, 'Why don't you just stick it in?' so he stops fingering me and he gets ready to do it, and then he just comes all over me!" Nora giggled. "You must have turned him on a lot!" "He was mortified! He kept apologizing. I felt so sorry for him!" "What did you do then?" I asked. "I told him it was okay, hugged him, sat down with him on the love seat again, reassured him the best I could. What else could I do?" "You want to know what I would have done?" "Yeah?" "I would have teased him about it. As soon as he started to come, I would have said, 'Ooh, I get to see you spurt! You must be so embarrassed!'— just like that!" Nora giggled again. Ginny gaped at me, blinked repeatedly, finally spoke. "You would do that? Why? You always seemed like such a nice person." "It would lay the groundwork for a lot of exciting lovemaking in the future." She gave me a look of astonishment. "How?" The communicativeness of her face impressed me. She could run quite a trip on Peter, mugging like that. "What do you think was going through Peter's mind before he came?" "I don't know." "This is going to sound awfully presumptuous, but I can tell you." "Go ahead." "He was tripping out on the embarrassment of feeling you stare at him like that, with his cock sticking out, and the embarrassment itself turned him on. It turned him on so much that he got worried he might come right then and there, so he started imagining that, and how embarrassing that would be, and how you might tease him about it. And that thought was so exciting, it actually made him come." "No...," she said with a look of grave doubt. "Can you think of any other explanation?" "I guess he was just horny to start with, and then he got overexcited by the show I put on and the way I offered myself to him." "Well, sure, he got overexcited! But the details are what I told you. Think about it! From his point of view, you were teasing him already — talking about getting to see his cock, and how big it was." She looked puzzled again. "For you, his size was a pleasant surprise; and there are some guys who would just be proud of it, but for most it's not that simple. Imagine what it was like for him when he was fourteen or fifteen, on a hot day when everyone was wearing as little as possible, sitting on a bus near some attractive young girls who giggle like Nora's been doing. They're such a turn-on, he gets hard. It's embarrassing! And when he stands up to get off the bus... there's no way he can hide one that big, so they'll see. And that'll be more embarrassing. And then they'll giggle, and that'll be even more embarrassing. Things like that must have happened to him hundreds of times while he was growing up." Nora giggled yet again. "You remember him!" I said to her. She blushed, choked on her laughter, and answered with an exaggerated nod, then buried the lower half of her face in her hands and glanced back and forth between Ginny and me. "I still can't believe that's what made him come." "It's true. And it's consistent with the way he's been acting ever since. You've been torturing yourself with the idea that, just once, he was so turned on by your body and your enthusiasm that he came just from looking at you, and that ever since, he's been so turned off to you that he can't bring himself to touch you unless he's half drunk. And that's impossible! What's really happening is that he finds you an overwhelming turn-on all the time, just like he did then, but he's scared of embarrassing himself again, so he tries to stay out of sexually exciting situations unless he's dulled his senses with drink." "Why did he marry me?" "You turn him on and he fell in love with you. Probably he's still in love with you, and he fantasizes that you'll figure out how much you turn him on and start playing with his sexuality, teasing him about how he can't control himself — maybe even make him your love slave. But he's also afraid of letting you have that much power — you know, afraid you'd misuse it — worried that being a woman's sex toy wouldn't be dignified, even compared to piggy-back rides at Sal's. "Maybe he's even afraid he's a pervert and you'd reject him if you knew. So what he's doing is trying to learn how to keep from being turned on to you. Right now he does it by keeping busy until he's exhausted or drunk. If you don't do anything about it — if you let him succeed — his fantasies will lose their power and he'll fall out of love with you." "You sound so sure of that, and you've never even met Peter." "No, but I've met other men who are turned on the same way. They start out responding to some ordinary sexual stimulus, then they get embarrassed about it, then they get more turned on from being embarrassed, and so on. It's such a common pattern, I suspect there are very few men who wouldn't get into it with the right woman." Nora, who had been listening with obvious fascination, said, "George makes sure that happens to every man with her." I laughed. "You're so astute!" Ginny returned to her salad and I returned to the subject of my moral character. "You know, Ginny, I really am a nice person. There's nothing at all mean about the kind of teasing I do." While Ginny was chewing, Nora asked, "Is Matt your love slave?" "Yes, and so was my previous boyfriend, and the one before him, and the one before him." "How does that work? What does he have to do?" "He has to do whatever I tell him, but I only tell him to do things that are going to be a turn-on or that are going to be good for our relationship." "Why does he do what you tell him?" Ginny asked. "Mostly because I tell him to do things that are going to be really exciting and he's in love with me. Sometimes I have to tell him to do something that he might be inclined to resist, and then he does it partly because I'll punish him sexually if he doesn't and partly to maintain our relationship. That comes down to the same thing: he finds our relationship exciting and he's in love with me." "How do you punish him?" I liked the question. It meant Ginny was already thinking of using my techniques to improve her relationship with Peter, and I was determined to keep her interest alive. Unfortunately a completely honest answer wouldn't have done that — Matt was such a pleasant and easygoing partner, I had never had any occasion to punish him. I decided to fudge it, drawing on experience from previous relationships. "I'll refuse to let him come for a few days, or a week, and then, before we get back to our usual kind of lovemaking, I'll make him masturbate while I watch, just to put him through the embarrassment of it. Or I'll tie him up and make him come by hand and keep playing with him when he's all sensitive and he needs me to stop." Still another giggle from Nora. "That sounds pretty weird, but nowhere near as bad as I thought," Ginny said. "I was expecting you to tell me you whip him or something." "I don't even own a whip. I'm such a nice person!" Ginny laughed. It made me feel much better. "How did you get those guys to go along with something like that in the first place?" Nora asked. "Different ways. With Matt it was easy. We were making love one time, with me on top, and I pinned his wrists down and gave him a little time to get into the feel of it, and then I said, 'You know, I'm going to make you my love slave.' And he said okay, so I figured he wasn't taking me seriously and I said, 'I mean really. You do whatever I say, and I get to do whatever I want to you. Always.' And he said, 'I can accept that. You're worth it.' And that was it. He's been my love slave ever since. A couple of guys, I let them know early on that the only way they could continue any kind of relationship with me was by agreeing to be my love slave, and they agreed. Then there was one I got with that sensitivity trick I mentioned. I tied him up and told him I was going to make him come and I wouldn't stop playing with him until he promised to be my love slave; then I teased him about how he couldn't help turning on to me even though he knew what was going to happen." Nora erupted again. When her giggling had subsided, I went on. "I'll bet that approach would be just perfect for you and Peter. You might have to do some follow-up enforcement, but probably not a whole lot." "He'd kill me! I don't know how you got away with it! Most men would beat you up if you tried something like that, or leave and you'd never see them again." "He wasn't a violent man. Peter probably isn't either, or you wouldn't have married him, and if you'd guessed wrong, you'd have found out a long time ago. The reason Jerry didn't leave was, what I did to him was the biggest thrill of his whole life, and he was in love with me. That's why he became my love slave, not because he promised." "He left eventually, didn't he?" "Yes, but we knew at the beginning he was going to. We met while he was doing an internship as part of a work- study program at the place I worked two years ago, and he'd already made an agreement that when he graduated, he'd go to work for a company up in Washington where his cousin is a development manager." Ginny looked at her watch with a start. "We'd better get back! I have a 1:30 meeting with I've-given-that-a-lot- of-thought." "That's too bad," I said, digging for my share of the damages. We littered the table with portraits of dead presidents and set out to resume our respective tasks, advancing the primitive art of computing. Along the way, we discussed the less pleasant qualities of Ginny's boss. The three of us went to lunch every day that week, thanks mainly to Nora's efforts, and our conversation kept returning to female domination and its techniques. I answered questions from both Nora and Ginny, describing what I did and why it worked, trying not to proselytize too strongly less I frighten Ginny off. She was interested in the possibilities, and that was enough. It wouldn't be long before Peter did something intolerable, and then I would make my pitch. The weekend came and went, and then it was Monday. A couple of minutes after noon, Nora rounded us up as usual and we headed off to lunch. She chose a Mexican place that day — a neighborhood restaurant three miles away that served food rather than pretense. "How do you find all these places, Nora?" I asked. "I look for ads in the newspaper and I read the phone book and I scope them out on the way to and from work." "How do you stay so thin?" asked Ginny. "The only meal we eat is lunch." "That sounds like a tough diet to stick to," Ginny said. "Only at first, then you get used to it. How did Peter behave over the weekend?" "Well, I'll tell you what happened. Saturday afternoon he played softball as usual, and his friend Randy was there. Randy's uncle is dying of cancer in Utah, and Randy had just been to visit him, and on the way back through Nevada he picked up all these fireworks. Really big ones — the kind they set off over the water on the Fourth of July — a couple of hundred dollars' worth; and after the game, he and Peter and some of the other guys figure out this plan to set them off at the cemetery when it gets dark. So they buy a bunch of meatball parmesan subs and two more cases of beer, and we all drive to the cemetery and unload the stuff under some trees, and then Peter and Randy and Phil park the cars outside, in case they close the gates. When I see the fireworks, I get kind of worried about the attention they're going to attract, because they're over a foot long, and maybe two inches across, and each one has its own launching pad attached to the bottom. "Anyway, the guys come back from parking the cars and we all hang out eating subs and drinking beer while it gets dark. I just have one beer because I'm worried about how drunk all the guys are getting, and somebody's got to be able to drive home — I mean, they're getting real sloppy, not to mention the trouble I expect because of the fireworks — and I notice Kandee's being cautious too. "Well, it gets dark and they decide to start on the fireworks. And those things are loud! And when they light up in the sky, I'm sure you can see them for miles. Well, the guys just keep setting them off, taking turns, like they think nobody's going to notice except us. After they've done about twenty, they light one more and a car comes round a bend and catches us in its headlights and just stops. Well, after a few seconds, the thing goes off with another bang, and the sky lights up with one of those silver and gold willow-tree designs, and I think, Uh-oh! And the car turns off its lights and backs down the way it came, and Tom says, 'We better get out of here! He'll be coming back with the riot squad!' "So Randy, he bends down and starts picking up fireworks, and he shouts, 'Yo, Peter! Grab a few! We'll set 'em off on the way out!' Well, Randy takes four, which is way too many to run with, and Peter takes three, and everyone else but Raymond has enough sense to let the rest of them be, but Raymond takes three also. Once he figures out that he can't carry more than four, Randy starts running through the woods toward the exit, not real fast, and everyone else runs along with him. So there we are — there's nine of us, and we've left about a case of beer and maybe twenty of those rockets back where we unloaded them. "Well, the first time we come to a break in the trees, Randy drops the fireworks and starts setting one up, and everyone else stops, and Peter sets one up, and Raymond sets one up, and Randy lights his, and Raymond yells, 'Hey, I need a light!' And Randy runs over to him and hands him some matches while Peter is lighting his, and all this time the fuse is burning, and then Randy runs back to this thing that's about to go off, and picks up the other three sitting next to it and takes off again for the gate. It was scary how close we were when the first one went off, and then the other two go off just a few seconds later, and just as the popping dies down in the sky, we come to another open area and Randy stops again, but before anyone can do anything, we hear sirens. "As soon as the sirens start, Peter throws up and it gets all over him. I think, shit! But at least he isn't going to pick up the fireworks again and I do my best to help him. Well, he starts saying he's sorry, and I say, 'Peter, just get us out of here!" And hallelujah! he starts running again. So we make it outside and Peter and Tom and Gerhardt get in our car with me driving, and Randy gets in his little sports car, and the rest of them get in Phil and Kandee's car with Kandee driving, and we all start gagging from the smell, but we make it back to the park without anyone else throwing up, and then I drive Peter home. I don't know how, but the cops never did catch us." "Maybe they weren't trying to," I said. "Maybe they weren't even cops. I can't imagine the police responding to a call about fireworks in a cemetery in less than five minutes. It takes them at least ten for an armed robbery downtown." After a pause, Nora spoke. "You know, that sounds like fun. I can see where Peter is the kind of guy a lot of people would want to hang out with. If he did the same thing without getting drunk and throwing up, it would have been a great evening." "You're right. I used to like that kind of scene too, and Peter seemed to generate a lot of them, though there was never one quite like that. And his friends don't have to deal with the throw-up and the falling-down drunk, but I had to take him home and dump his clothes out on the porch and then wash them the next day, and he crawls into bed without even cleaning himself up and wants to get all lovey-dovey. I couldn't take it. I told him. I said, 'I don't want to screw a corpse.'" "How did he react to that?" I asked. "He said he was sorry and went to sleep. Then in the morning, Randy calls and wants him to go back to the scene of the crime, and Peter says he'll be over in half an hour and hangs up, then tells me it's a done deal. So I ask, 'What does Randy want to do there?' And he says, 'Look for the fireworks and beer we left.' And I tell him, 'It's Sunday morning; they're going to be burying people.' And he says, 'Not under the trees.' And he gets dressed and leaves me to clean up his clothes from yesterday. Can you imagine what half-digested meatball parmesan and beer smells like? "Then he doesn't come home until nine at night, and of course he's drunk, and I ask him where he's been and he tells me Randy was upset about his uncle and needed to talk, so they were sitting at Sal's, talking. I didn't even argue with him, because it's like I can't win. He thinks he did the right thing, and if I don't say anything, he'll keep doing it because it's okay; and if I do, he'll keep doing it because I'm nagging and he wants to get away." "Did he want sex?" Nora asked. "No, he just wanted to sleep. And this morning he was so hung over, he could barely drag himself out of bed and go to work." "It sounds like he's trying to get used to a platonic relationship," I said; "and the scary thing is, if you give him a couple of years he'll probably succeed. You ought to make him your slave while you still can." "I'll never get away with it." "Sure you will! What could go wrong?" "He'll be so mad, there's no telling what he might do!" "If he gets mad, you can deal with it, and there's a good chance it'll still work. If you make it like he doesn't have a choice, he'll probably go along and get to like it. If you can't make it work, you can tell him you were playacting because you thought it would turn him on, then say you're sorry it didn't work out and he'll forgive you." "Maybe. How do you think I should do it?" "Well, the first thing you should do is make it clear to him that the only way you're going to do sex with him is if he's completely sober. It wouldn't be a bad idea, once you've got him under control, to insist he be sober all the time, sex or no; but you can't accomplish anything if you let him have you when he's been drinking, even if you tie him up to keep control." "It sure would be an improvement! But how am I going to get him to go along with it? I don't think he's been completely sober since the time we almost made it on the table." "You tell him he can't have you any other way and you keep your knees together. Eventually he'll get horny enough to give in." "It'll be a struggle!" "Yeah, but the longer it takes, the hornier he'll be when you finally get to do it your way." "What do I do then?" "You make him promise to be your love slave. After what you've told me about him, I think the best way to do it would be to tie him up and say something like, 'Now I've got you right where I want you. I'm going to make you promise to be my love slave for the rest of your life.' And go on to tell him what that means, including no drinking." "How do I make him promise?" "There's always the chance he'll promise right away. Then you do whatever you like; just don't untie him until you're done and don't go back to having sex on his terms. If he doesn't agree right away, I think he'd respond best to being told you're going to play with him until he comes and he needs you to stop, and then you're going to keep playing with him until he gives in. That'll get it right out in the open that he can't resist you. Do you know whether he gets sensitive after he comes?" "No, we've never done anything except straight missionary intercourse." "You never made him come by hand?" "No." "That's great! From what you've told me, he'll be really embarrassed at having you watch him come, especially if you make a point of being interested in the show and tease him about what he's going through. The only problem is not knowing whether he gets sensitive." "How do I find out?" "Well, I've told you how I find out, but you might want to lay the whole thing on him all at once — get him real horny without any alcohol to hide behind, tie him up for the first time, show him he can't resist you, make an obscene display of his orgasm, and make him promise to be your love slave right then and there. It would blow him away completely!" "You mean I should do it without knowing whether he gets sensitive?" "You could give it a try. There's a good chance he'll agree to be your slave right away, and then it won't matter. If he doesn't, you can figure he probably gets sensitive; I've only known one man who didn't. You can tell him you know all men get sensitive and hope for the best. Just remember what I told you about which parts to keep rubbing." "Oh, I remember that. That's the easy part. It's the rest of the scheme I'm not comfortable with. It has an awful lot of missing pieces, and I don't think I can make up for them with just a running start and a flying leap." "You could try any of the other approaches I've told you about, that worked for me, but you'd still have to adapt them a little. I've never tried to enslave someone I was already committed to." "I have," said Nora. Holy...! "This weekend?" I asked. "Friday evening." "How did it go?" "Whatever possessed you?" Ginny asked before Nora could answer. "It seemed like it would be a lot of fun, and I thought Joel would like it too, and I'd already figured out what George said a couple of minutes ago — that if he didn't like it, he'd forgive me. He is in love with me, and he knows I'm in love with him and I'm not going to do him something bad on purpose, so I decided to give it a try. It worked. At least so far. That is, he agreed to be my sex slave and neither one of us has changed our mind yet. It hasn't been very long, but it's been good!" "Congratulations!" I said. "How did you do it?" asked Ginny. "We were starting to make love and I told him I'd decided that that's how I want it to be, and he said okay." "That's all?" she asked. "Yeah. He agreed. And he's gone along with everything I've told him since. He's liked it, too." "What have you had him do that's different from what you used to?" Ginny wanted to know. "As soon as he agreed, I tied him down and had him eat me the way you described, George. Then I took him inside me while he was still tied down, and right after he came I reached back and tickled his ball-sac and he squirmed and I teased him about it. "Saturday we had a bunch of things to do, but we had a couple of hours in the afternoon to relax, and I made him take all his clothes off and I kept doing little sexy things and teasing him about how he turned on, and how I got to see. Then in the evening we made love again. I let him be on top, but I did another little funny when he came — something I learned from a college professor I had an affair with when I was twenty and he used to do it to me sometimes when we made love. "I had my hands on Joel's back, and when he was almost done coming, I kind of dug the tips of my fingers in, just inside his shoulder blades, with the kind of motion you'd use to tickle someone in the ribs, and it had the same effect as what I did the night before. I didn't say anything, but I made a little teasing noise, like, I know." "You tickled his shoulder blades?" Ginny repeated doubtfully. "Yes! It must be hard to imagine if you haven't experienced it, but Henry — that's the professor — got me so tuned in to that feeling, he used to be able to make me come whenever he wanted, just by pressing his fingertips into my back next to my shoulder blade. He'd do it in his office, or riding in his car, and I'd just come right away. It's powerful!" "I'll have to keep it in mind," said Ginny. "It sounds pretty far out, but so does everything else I've heard this past week. Did you have Joel do anything else new and different?" "Sunday afternoon we went to see some friends in Monterey and we didn't get started back until after dark, so I drove and had him sit next to me and take his pants down and I kept reaching over to play with him." "Weren't you afraid someone would see?" "It's a dark road and I figured the glare from our headlights would keep anyone from looking in — even truckers. When we got to where there were a lot of street lights, I told him to cover up again. At home we made love with me on top, and I told him how much fun it is that he's my sex slave." "I don't know. That all seems so mild compared to what you're saying I should do, George." "It sounds fitting for Nora and Joel, and plenty exciting too. If it seems mild, it's probably because Nora isn't asking Joel to change very much, at least compared with what you'd want from Peter. I mean, look at Matt and me. We're a totally unremarkable couple. The love-slave trip is all in the head, and a couple can share it very quietly. If you were to make Peter your slave, most of what you'd wind up doing over the course of a year would probably be as mild as what Nora and Joel did over the weekend; the only part that's likely to be extreme is the big bang when you get started." "Maybe I can give you a better explanation of why I'm doing it," offered Nora. "I like sex to be fun — I like to play, I like teasing, I like to let go and enjoy the pure sensation of it. But I also like to be treated gently and respectfully, and I've noticed there aren't a lot of men who can give both. Most of the men I've known who are relaxed enough to handle a playful tumble are self-centered bastards with twisted moral scruples that positively forbid them to care about the feelings of a woman. Henry was perfect, but he was married; and even if he'd been available, he was old enough so I'd have to figure I'd be taking care of him the whole middle part of my life. I wound up moving on, but Henry had really spoiled me. Other men seemed so inadequate, even for just one night. "Then last summer I met Joel and we both knew we were just made for each other. He's always good to me, it's obvious that he cares, he's gentle, he's affectionate, we can talk to each other, we fit perfectly when we snuggle, he smells right, sex with him feels just wonderful, and I've been in love with him for as long as I've known him — maybe longer. And he feels the same about me. "The trouble was, his attitude toward me and our lovemaking was just so reverent and solemn. It was nice to be treated so well, and to know he loved me so much, but sex was never playful and I wanted it to be — at least sometimes. Maybe I should have been able to do something about it, like maybe I should have tried tickling his shoulder blades a long time ago, but I always had the feeling it would be like swearing in church, so I didn't. "Then George came up with that explanation of why Peter married you, and I realized that's also why Joel married me. Somehow he understood that I can play and I can tease and he wanted all that, but he was also afraid of it, so he sent me subtle messages that I should suppress that part of myself, and I did. Now that I understand what was happening, I can choose to do it the other way, and I know we'll both like it a lot better. In fact the reason I decided to call him my sex slave instead of my love slave was to get away from all the reverence and solemnity Joel associates with the word love, and let him know that what we're going to do is playful. He already found out it's still loving but now we can be loving without all that baggage." Ginny and I contemplated that a while, and then I made my pitch. "Georgeann's Snake Oil Balm! Good for what ails you! How about it, Ginny? Try a bottle?" "I'll think about it." "I'm sure the food in that restaurant was good; at least it went down easy. My plate was empty and I wasn't hungry, but I couldn't remember eating. As we left, I wondered whether I might also have failed to notice someone listening in on our conversation. It was amusing to imagine what thoughts an eavesdropper might have been left with. Shortly after the three of us sat down to lunch the next day, I asked Ginny whether anything new had happened between her and Peter. "Well, when I got home yesterday, he had the barbecue set up on the porch with a couple of potatoes baking and some kabobs ready to go on, and he was drinking a beer. I said hello and he told me when dinner would be ready, and then he went back to cooking and drinking. I didn't kiss him hello like I usually do, and he didn't seem to miss it. That really bugged me, but I must have needed it to convince myself that it was time to give him some kind of ultimatum. "Not much happened until we went to bed — we had dinner, watched some TV, that's about it. He drank seven beers — one and a half while he made dinner, two and a half with dinner, and three during the rest of the evening. He didn't even seem to notice that anything was bugging me. Finally we get into bed, and he starts getting all lovey-dovey, and I push him away. So he asks what's wrong, and I tell him. I say, 'You've been drinking so much, I can't enjoy you anymore. If you want to make love to me, do it when you don't smell of beer and you know what you're doing.' And he stares at me kind of drunkenly and says, 'I just had a couple; it never bothered you before.' And I say, 'It's been bothering me for two years! Look, even one beer is too many! If you want to touch me at all, don't drink!' "So he starts arguing about that. He says I drink and he wants to know why it's okay for me but not him. So I tell him the only time I drink beer is when I'm thirsty and he's made sure there's nothing else to drink. Like, 'If you'd let me bring some soda when you play softball, I'd drink that, but the five times I asked you last year, you acted like it'd give you some kind of reputation with the team, so I stopped asking.' "So he thinks about it a little, and then he says, 'We used to have a few beers together before we got married.' Well, that's true, but that was before I got so turned off by his drinking." "Did you tell him that?" I asked. "Yes! And I told him again I don't want him touching me when he's been drinking. Even one beer! Even a sip! Well, I see him get real worried, so I tell him, 'I'm not trying to be vindictive; I just can't enjoy you when you've been drinking. You're no fun that way.' And he's just sort of lying there in shock, so I figure I might as well keep talking and see if it does any good, so I say if he has to drink, that's okay; I'll still be there the next day. And if he wants sex, he can drink later. Well, he still doesn't react, so I say, 'You know, if you tried making love to me without drinking, you'd probably enjoy it a whole lot more.' And that really seems to worry him. So I think, Hey! George is on to something! And I say, 'You ought to let me show you how much you could enjoy me. If you ever decide you want me bad enough to do without your beer, just let me know and I'll do something really special for you, but tonight the best thing you can do is sleep it off and hope it's easier to get up tomorrow than today.' "I'm starting to feel like I'm going to be able to make this whole thing work out." "I hate to mention this," said Nora, "but what if he decides he'd rather have his beer?" "I've given that a lot of thought," she began, imitating her boss's pompous manner, "and I'm sure you're right, George. He doesn't like beer more. Some days he doesn't drink at all. Remembering back over the last two years, he only drinks when he gets with his friends or he wants sex, and it has to be because he's afraid what'll happen if he tries having sex when he's sober. So your question doesn't worry me, Nora; it's the other one — What if he decides sex without beer is so scary, he'd rather do without?" "He can't decide that," I said. "He'll get so horny, he'll have to do it your way. Right now, while we're sitting here, he's thinking about what you said, and wondering how much you really understand about the reason he drinks, and trying to imagine what special something you have in mind for him. And the more he thinks about things like that, the hornier he gets." "I hope so," she said doubtfully. For Wednesday, Nora found a place called Creepy Suzette's, housed in a building made up to look like a large wooden shack. I ordered a sandwich called a carpenter — a kind of sourdough calzone with a flat squarish bottom, the corners folded up so they almost closed at the top, with meatballs and sauce inside along with the cheese. After some conjecture about the name of the establishment, and a bit more about the name of the sandwich, Nora asked Ginny how things were going with Peter. "Terrible! He got home two hours later than me, and he might have been able to pass a breathalyzer test, but he's still lucky he didn't kill himself on the way. He started apologizing as soon as he walked in — said he'd been thinking all day about my 'something really special' and wanted to make love and hoped I would let him explain and forgive him. "I said, 'You're not touching me until you're cold sober. I can't enjoy you like this and there's nothing you can do to change that.' Then I told him, 'If you want me to forgive you, all you have to do is wait for tomorrow. I've already forgiven you for yesterday's drunk, and I think I'm even patient enough to forgive you Thursday for tomorrow. I just can't forgive you the same day. I hope you can forgive me for being so difficult.' "So he says, 'Ginny, please! Bob invited me—' Bob's his boss —' Bob invited me for a couple of beers so we could discuss some plans he wants me in on. I couldn't say no.' And I say, 'You could have ordered ginger ale. Your side of the discussion would have come out a lot more impressive, especially toward the end.' And he says, 'It just isn't done that way, especially with Bob. If I ever want more responsibility, I have to drink with him.' So I say, 'I can appreciate there are times it's going to be a tough decision, but it is a decision; you can have your beer or you can have me, but you can't have both. Maybe you'll do it differently tomorrow.' "Aren't you proud of me?" I was too taken aback to answer right away. I'd never been cast in that role before, never been asked that question, never told any of my lovers that I was proud of them, never even been told by my parents that they were proud of me, though they'd always exhibited a much higher degree of confidence in my ability to run my own life than any other parents I'd ever heard of. Still, I knew the right answer... "Yes, and I'm sure tonight will go much better," I heard Nora say. "Definitely! That was an impressive performance!" I added. "Thanks," said Ginny. "What's happening with you and Joel? Has he stopped being so serious?" "Oh, no, I don't expect him to. I don't even think I want him to. I've just stopped letting him lay it on me." "Oh?" "Yeah. What was bothering me was that he was so reverent and solemn that I wasn't comfortable teasing and being playful, because I was afraid he would disapprove. Now I can do what I want, and I've found out that he likes me to tease and be playful. Like I said the other day, I figured out before I asked him, that that was probably what would happen but I didn't expect him to change." Ginny looked puzzled, so Nora offered more. "Like, the other night we were making love and I'd just climbed on top of him, and he wrapped his arms around me and held me real tight and he said... well, he told me he loved me. And when he let go I propped myself up on one elbow and looked at him curious-like, and I asked, 'Is it a religious experience?' And he said he was kind of overwhelmed, and I gave him a little kiss and started moving, and then I took hold of his wrists and held them down and kept them that way the whole time until we came, and then I kept moving, and he started trying to pull out, and I said..." She put her hand over her mouth and looked around to see whether anyone else was listening, then continued in a hoarse whisper, "I stopped moving and I said, 'Sensitive cock!' And he just looked up at me and caught his breath and told me again how he loved me, and he said it as reverent and solemn as ever — maybe more! "So he hasn't changed — I have. And we're both enjoying it. We're even more in love than we were before, because now he can love me for teasing him and acting playful and letting him see that part of me so clearly, which he couldn't before because I was suppressing it all; and I can love him for accepting me so completely, just the way I am, which I didn't used to know he would." "I want that so badly," said Ginny. "I'll pray for you," I said. "Me too," said Nora; then she changed the subject. She'd seen a memo at work that was part of a long-running turf battle of which she'd been unaware, and she wanted us to fill her in. Company folklore carried us all the way back to the office parking lot. Thursday we got off to a late start because I'd spent the whole morning in painfully detailed discussions with our printer. By the time we left, Ginny seemed ready to burst. "I did it!" she said, even before she was completely inside the car. "He agreed, did he?" I prodded from the back seat. "Did he ever!" she exclaimed as she and Nora fastened their safety belts. "And he came like you wouldn't believe! I've never seen a man let loose like that! He was really blown away, just like you said." "I knew it would work out!" Nora said. "Good for you!" "Was it difficult?" I asked, leaning forward between them. "No, it was easy! He got home at a reasonable hour and he was sober. He kissed me hello and told me he wants to make love and find out what that 'something really special' is, that I promised him, so I tell him we can do it even before dinner; all he has to do is take off his shoes and strip to the waist and lie down on the bed. So he does, and I get ready to tie him down, and he puts on this act like I'm one of the Manson girls, so I tell him it won't work unless he's tied down and not to worry, I won't hurt him; so he lets me tie him down. I do just his arms like you said, and then I pull his pants off and he helps by wriggling out of them. "When he's down to his undershorts I say, 'This is going to be the beginning of a whole new relationship for us. He just says, 'Yeah?' So I say, 'Yeah! Starting today your cock is going to be my toy, to play with any time I want, and you're going to promise to go along with it.' So he says okay, and I tell him he's going to have to be naked when I want, and let me tie him up when I want, and just be my sex slave any way I can think of. And he says okay to that, so I say, 'You know, I'm not kidding. If you piss me off with your drinking, I might have you lick me every night for a week and then make you jerk off twice with me watching before I even think about screwing you again. That's also part of being my sex slave.' "When he hears that, he says, 'You're really serious?' And I say, 'Yeah, I'm serious!' And he says, 'So your "something really special" was just a trick so I'd let you tie me down.' And I say, 'No, my "something really special" is showing you how it's going to feel, being my sex slave. It's going to be the biggest turn-on you ever had! I'm going to make you come like a volcano! By the time we're done, you're going to want to be my sex slave." "This is a place I've been to before," Said Nora as she pulled up to The Hop. "It has a jukebox loud enough so we can talk without being overheard." We piled out of the car, walked in, and got ourselves seated; then Ginny continued her story. "So I tell him he's going to want to be my sex slave, and he says, 'What if I don't see it that way?' And I say, 'You will. If you don't, you might never get to stick your cock in me again, but that's not why you will. You're going to promise to be my sex slave because I'm going to make you, and then you're going to keep your promise because you want to. This is going to be every bit as special as I said.' "He didn't have anything to say to that, so I ask him is he ready? And he says, 'I'm not going anywhere, but no! I'll never be ready for anything that crazy.' I figure that'll have to do, so I tell him. Then I take hold of his undershorts and I pull them off. He doesn't help like before, but he can't stop me either, so I get them off. Then I look at him — at his cock — and I say, 'One of the things that's going to be different now is that I get to look at you, just like this.' And it gets hard! Just from me looking at it! And I think, Hey! This is going to be easy! George was right! "So I say, 'See how exciting it is being my sex toy?' and he looks at me and doesn't answer, and I say, 'You can't hide it, can you?' so finally he says, 'Of course you turn me on! Do you think I'd have married you if you didn't? Christ! We haven't done anything in a week! Sure I'm horny!' "'Well, good!' I tell him. 'You been trying for two years to act like I don't turn you on, but I'm not going to let you get away with it anymore. Anytime I want, you're going to let me look at you just like this, whether I tie you up or not, and I'll get to see you turn on to me.' Then I got really brave and wrapped my hand around it and I said, 'This is my toy now, not some kind of secret weapon you keep hidden away until five seconds before you use it. I get to look at it when I want, and even ride it if I want. Tonight I'm going to play with it and watch it spurt. I've never had a real good look at how that happens, and I don't think that's right, seeing as how we've been married two years.' "So he says, 'You mean your "something really special" is a hand job?' And I say, 'What's going to be so special is having to come with me watching. I know what that's going to be like for you! And another thing about getting a hand job when you're tied down like this — you can't control how much stimulation you get. I can rub your cock so you have an orgasm that completely blows you away, and I can keep rubbing when you're done and want me to stop. That's how I make you promise to be my sex slave, if you don't agree before. I keep rubbing until you do.' And while I'm saying that, his cock twitches a couple of times, so I say, 'I saw that!' And I run my fingertips along the ball-sac and it twitches a couple of times more! And I say, 'Hey! You're going to be the best toy I ever had!' "So he says, 'Ginny, okay. You're embarrassing me. What is it you really want?' And I tell him, "You. I want you to be my sex slave. Nothing ulterior. Just you and this toy you've been keeping hidden away except when you're too drunk to use it right.' I see he looks frustrated, like he doesn't understand, or maybe he thinks I don't. So I tell him I love him, I tell him I want him, I tell him, 'Look,' I say, 'I even married you, but I can't really have you because you're always hiding from me. You keep busy with your projects and your sports and you hide behind your beer, and I'm not going to let you do it anymore. I know I turn you on, and I know I'm embarrassing you, making your cock twitch while I watch. I mean, you've been hiding from me for two years, just to save yourself the embarrassment of letting me see you turn on to me. Is it worth it? Think of all the good times we could have had in two years, that you hid from. Does that make sense?' "So he gets this real guilty look on his face, and I'm thinking, This is outrageous! I can't be getting away with it! But I say, 'Yeah! I figured it out. You lost control once, and you turned into a control freak. And tonight you finally get to stop. You don't have to do it anymore, because I'm going to take control of your sexuality, and I mean completely.' "Then he starts shaking! He doesn't look mad or anything, but he starts shaking. So I kind of lie down with him and try to comfort him — I tell him I love him, that it's okay. "After a while, it seems to help. He stops shaking and he looks at me like he did that first time when we were making out on the love seat. So I kiss him, and he really gets into it. A few minutes later I've got my clothes off and I'm sitting on his face like you said, and he's licking me. I've got to tell you, that's a great feeling! When I'm done, I sit next to him, and he's dripping like a faucet, so I tease him about it. I say, 'I do turn you on! You've got a puddle on you to prove it! All I have to do now is play with you for just a few seconds, and you know what happens! There's no way you're going to resist, and it's going to be the biggest thrill you ever had! Now, remember to tell me when you decide you're going to be my sex slave, because you're not going to want me to keep it up too long after you're done.' "Well, I start working on him, and he's looking at me and breathing hard, and I can feel how his cock keeps twitching between my hands, and I say, 'Isn't this exciting?' And it gets real stiff and he says, 'I want to be your sex slave!' And he comes. And it is like a volcano! He lifts his knees up near his chest, and jerks his hips, and splashes the pillow, and makes noises like I never heard. So I say, 'Yeah! Think how it'll feel, knowing I can do this anytime I want!" And he jerks his hips even harder and makes this really wild noise, and I wish it could go on forever, but he quiets down, and I stop rubbing and just sit there holding him. "After a little while, I say, 'I made you want to be my sex slave.' And he says yeah. And I tell him I love him, and he tells me he loves me, which he hasn't done on his own in I don't know how long, and he says, 'I'm going to have to think about this,' and I say yeah and I untie him. "We spend the rest of the evening hanging out and having dinner, and I can see he is doing a lot of thinking, but he's affectionate too, like he didn't used to be. When we finally go to bed, he snuggles up to me, and that's something else he never used to do, at least when he was sober. So I press myself against him, and he gets turned on again, so I get on top of him and put his cock in, and we do it, and he's looking at me the whole time. I really like it! Before, when he was always on top, he used to keep his face buried in the pillow, so I couldn't see him. This was so much nicer. We even fell asleep holding each other; that's another thing that almost never happened before. "This morning was the usual rush, but he did kiss me good-bye, and he slowed down to do it. I think this is going to turn out really good for both of us." "Brava!" exclaimed Nora. "You know, when he said that — that he wanted to be your sex slave — he really meant it. Many of those times he had his face buried in the pillow, he was fantasizing a scene a lot like what you did last night, and then, all of a sudden, there you were, telling him you knew and making it part of his real life. That must have been some powerful trip for him! I'm sure it'll turn out good. Congratulations! It did turn out good. The next evening set the pattern for many that followed. Ginny required Peter to undress as soon as they were alone, and when he was thoroughly excited, she fucked him from above, making sure they could see one another the whole time. The following Saturday was no miracle, but it was progress. Peter played softball as his teammates expected and drank beer as the rules required, but he didn't argue when Ginny announced her intention to bring a supply of soda. She did bring a supply of soda — a large supply — and she shared it freely; more than half the people there had at least a bottle, and Kandee and Tom drank no beer at all. After the game, there was another gathering at Sal's, and Ginny, Kandee and Tom continued to drink soda, even there. Peter drank about half his normal quota of beer, and he managed to please the crowd with his antics without sinking into the depravity that Ginny had come to dread. When they got home, neither made any sexual overtures to the other, nor did either editorialize on the day's events; they just went to sleep. Sunday Peter didn't drink, and they shared a pleasant evening of love play, controlled by Ginny. Soon it was time to switch from softball to touch football, and Peter took the opportunity to opt out and take up running. Freed from the expectations of his teammates, he came very close to eliminating beer from his life. He ran enough to give a good account of himself and stay in shape, but not so much as to deprive Ginny of his time and energy. Tom, who had always had a talent for recognizing a good opportunity, also quit team sports and often accompanied Peter when he ran. I parted company with Ginny and Nora the following winter to accept a more appealing job. Both were still enthusiastically using my techniques. Ginny and Peter had grown very close, and Peter was developing a talent for intimate conversation. I lost track of them soon afterward, but I met Ginny by chance almost twenty years later. She and Peter were still happily married and they had two children, a year apart, the younger just entering high school. She thanked me for helping her get Peter straightened out, way back when. He hadn't had a drink in sixteen years and she described him as thoughtful, caring and communicative; indeed he had cultivated those qualities to such a degree that he had been able to parlay them into a successful second career as a labor negotiator. Curiously, Ginny was no longer using my techniques and had long since stopped regarding Peter as her love slave. As he became increasingly open in his manner of relating to her, she saw less and less need to control him, and the techniques by which she had maintained her control fell into disuse. For the first few years, she would dust them off every now and then, just for fun; but that always seemed to remind them of the bad attitude with which Peter had begun their marriage, and it was something they both wanted to forget, so Ginny let the whole venture fade into obscurity. I can understand the evolution of Ginny's attitude toward female domination well enough to explain it (such is the nature of my craft), but as a woman who enjoys sexual power, I can't relate to it at all. Though I know Ginny had no interest in female domination to begin with — she just needed to get Peter straightened out — I also remember how much she enjoyed it once she got started, and I can't imagine how she could choose to stop. No matter. I wouldn't have done it that way, but she's happy, Peter is happy, and I'm happy to have helped. Love is neat, whatever the style. *** Chapter 16, In which Ralph loses eighty pounds Eileen and Ralph met in a bicycle club. They fell in love and decided they'd rather not have the rest of the club along when they went riding, so they became a steady twosome. They shared week after week of fun and adventure, marveled at their compatibility, married, and set about playing house. That's where their difficulties began — playing house. Eileen had been raised in the belief that a wife ought to feed her husband well, while Ralph had been raised to welcome her cooking as an offering of love. As often happens, they overdid their roles and Ralph started gaining weight. It wasn't much of a problem at first because Ralph, five feet ten inches tall, was a very thin 145 pounds when they met, and he was still getting plenty of exercise, but that soon changed. He had been working as a computer operator for a mid- sized bank and doing an outstanding job of it. His talent caught the attention of the chief systems programmer, and when Ralph and Eileen had been married three months, he was invited to move up to a world of sixty-hour weeks — system maintenance nearly every weekend, political lunches most other days, more money, and the opportunity for further advancement. Naturally he accepted. His new duties left no time for cycling, and his weight increased at an alarming rate. When he and Eileen celebrated their second wedding anniversary he weighed 217 pounds. Ralph's weight was a problem to Eileen. She had always been turned off by fat men, and now, if she looked at Ralph objectively, she was thoroughly grossed out. Usually she managed to avoid complete objectivity, distorting her perception so as to see him at some intermediate weight. She couldn't do that, though, when they fucked. That was a nightmare. Ralph's arms weren't strong enough to support the rest of him — not for any length of time — and as he got carried away with sexual excitement, he'd relax them, crushing Eileen and making it impossible for her to breathe. By the time she realized what was happening, she often had too little air in her lungs to say anything, and she had to give Ralph a rough push, or even hit him, to get his attention. He was always duly apologetic, but Eileen couldn't help feeling that he didn't care about her — that he regarded her as a mere implement of sexual satisfaction rather than a human being. On several occasions Eileen tried to avoid being crushed by getting on top, but Ralph wouldn't let her. If her attempt was purely physical, he repositioned her. If she talked about it, he accused her, jokingly, of latent homosexuality or trans-sexuality, or of trying to turn him queer. Sometimes he said he just didn't like doing it that way. Eileen found his protests difficult to believe, and when she discussed the matter with me, I explained that that was because they were less than honest. Ralph wasn't a homophobe, and he had too solid a sense of reality to believe that Eileen's climbing on top was a threat to his heterosexuality or that it reflected deviance on her part. He pretended otherwise simply to keep Eileen underneath, and his reason for wanting her there was the sense of control it gave him. Some of that control was symbolic but most of it was real. Some men — and I'm sure Ralph was among them — resist being fucked from above for fear the stimulation will be too intense and they won't be able to slow it or control their responses. It's not that they're afraid their partners are ingenious enough to inflict my favorite torture; they worry that they'll be made to come too quickly and they dread the embarrassment. Ralph's refusal to let Eileen get on top wouldn't have been a problem if not for his weight; being on top wasn't one of her needs. She would have preferred that Ralph get his weight under control, and he himself said he wanted to. They went so far as to agree that Eileen would no longer cook for him so he wouldn't feel obliged to eat. For reasons of which she was only dimly aware, it was a difficult agreement for her to accept; when Ralph proposed it, she took it as badly as some women take their husbands' requests that they be permitted extramarital affairs. Still, the need was so clear, she had to agree. Unfortunately it did no good. Ralph's weight soon reached 225 and Eileen could now rely on being asphyxiated every time they fucked. Finally she decided she'd had enough and reacted with a vengeance. She bought a digital scale, weighed Ralph once, and told hm the rules. He was going to be her sex slave, and he was going to get his weight back down to the 145 pounds it had been when they met. (She was tempted to go for his original weight — about seven pounds — but she thought better of it.) When he wanted sex, she'd weigh him on her scale, hiding the reading from his view. Then she'd tie him to the bed and he'd eat her. If he hadn't lost half a pound since the last time he'd come, that would be it; his lust wouldn't be satisfied until he'd lost at least half a pound. If he'd lost half a pound but not a whole pound, she'd make him come by hand but she wouldn't fuck him. If he'd lost a pound or more, she'd fuck him but he'd have to remain tied while she did; she wouldn't let him get on top until his weight was all the way down to 145. She wouldn't be sexually available at all during her periods, and she also warned him that he'd better not try to cheat by playing with himself or he'd be in for an unpleasant surprise. As to how he lost the weight, that was up to him. She would refrain from offering him food, but he could eat as much or as little as he chose, whenever and wherever he liked. He wasn't to use the digital scale, and she would keep her readings secret, but he could monitor his weight on any other scale, and he could time his sexual requests any way he wanted. She knew that Ralph would accept her rules. He found her a powerful turn-on and couldn't possibly choose celibacy while living with her. Neither could he easily arrange an affair: he was so fat that few women would have him, his work kept him too busy to go looking, and all the women with whom he regularly came in contact knew he was married and were at least somewhat friendly with Eileen. She gave him the rules on the first day of her period, hoping he would accumulate a full-pound loss by the time it was over. Indeed she hoped he would accumulate a full-pound loss every time she had her period, and she had set up the rules with just that in mind, because she herself always craved a good fuck right after the bleeding stopped. She understood, though, that Ralph might not cooperate, and she was determined to stick to the program regardless. Surprisingly Ralph said okay; but in retrospect, that was only because he knew Eileen was always horny after her period and he expected that when the time came, she would conveniently forget everything she'd said. He must have figured that if he could get her to make an exception to her rules at the very beginning, the project would be completely derailed. Sure enough, as soon as Eileen's period was over, Ralph came on to her. It was five o'clock on a Wednesday morning, and he had just come home from working all night on an emergency. She resisted his advances and reminded him how things were going to be. "Come on, I need you. You can't expect us to give up sex until I lose eighty pounds." "No, we'll have lots of sex; but each time, you're going to have to lose at least half a pound to earn it." "Aren't you horny?" "Yes, but I can wait if I have to. If you want, I'll weigh you right now. Then I'll tie you down and you can eat me. What happens then depends on how much you weigh." He agreed to be weighed, then argued some more when Eileen refused to tell him what the scale said until after he'd eaten her. She wouldn't give in though, and he wound up cooperating. When he'd satisfied her, she gave him the bad news. He'd gained half a pound. Now he'd have to lose a whole pound just to have her bring him off by hand, or a pound and a half if he wanted to fuck. He raged at the unfairness of it all, then realized Eileen wasn't going to untie him until he calmed down, so he got himself under control. She released him and started getting ready for work, thankful for the excuse to escape his frustration. Ralph argued through most of Wednesday evening, Thursday morning, Thursday evening and Friday morning. Eileen found it a drag, having to hear and recite the same words over and over, but she noticed through it all that Ralph wasn't eating — at least not so she could see — and that seemed promising. Friday evening, instead of arguing, Ralph asked to be weighed. He'd lost the pound and a half, but Eileen refused to tell him until he'd eaten her. He resumed his arguing, but she held firm, finally pointing out that even if he had a reward coming, he wasn't going to get it until he was tied to the bed. That convinced him and he let her tie him. She straddled his face and warmed herself up on his mouth, then straddled his cock, slid it into her pussy, and fucked him. It took just four strokes to make him come, and it was a big one. "You were horny!" "Yeah, it's been too long." Ralph didn't argue after that. Sunday evening, after the weekend's work, he asked Eileen to weigh him again and she did. This time he let her tie him down without asking what the scale said. When she'd had enough of his eating her, she told him that he'd lost a whole pound and rewarded him with another fuck. This time he lasted several minutes. His orgasm, while not so overwhelming as the previous one, was obviously more intense than any he'd ever had in the missionary position. After the initial loss of water, Ralph settled into a slow but steady pattern, shedding about a pound and a half a week. He stopped eating lunch, explaining to his colleagues that his doctor had predicted is imminent demise and put him on a crash diet. He went out with them as politics demanded, but he'd have only diet soda or mineral water. He stopped eating the pizza, subs, and chainburgers his boss ordered during their weekend work binges and kept himself going on black coffee. As far as Eileen could see, he lived on a single frozen fish fillet a day, cooked in a microwave and supplemented with enough vitamins to keep him from getting sick. Sometimes he slipped and Eileen would leave him frustrated until he'd lost the requisite half pound. Once when that happened, she pretended to fall asleep but monitored his movements to see whether he would masturbate. She was sure he did, and in the morning she saw that his pubic hairs were glued together and a small area of the sheet was noticeably discolored and stiff. She decided it was time to subject him to her unpleasant surprise; she didn't want him evading her beneficent influence. She waited until he'd lost enough weight to earn his reward, and then, when he was tied in place and had already satisfied her, she confronted him with what he'd done and told him he would have to be punished. His embarrassment was so plain as to sweep away any lingering doubt of his guilt, but he tried to deny it anyway. Eileen wouldn't be fooled though, and after some back-and-forth, he asked her what she was going to do. She told him his punishment would consist of two parts. One would be that the next time he told her he wanted her, and it turned out that he'd lost less than a pound but more than a half, he'd have to play with himself while she watched. The other would be a surprise, and he'd find out what it was when it happened. He tried to talk her out of it, suggesting that instead she ought to have him do something of practical value, but Eileen wouldn't hear of it. She said he was trying to turn her into a prostitute and she refused to be corrupted by her power over him. He kept arguing, so she decided to take the opportunity to add a new dimension to his enslavement. She was going to show him he couldn't resist her. "All right. I'll give you one chance to get out of the whole thing," she began — then went on to tell him that all he had to do was keep himself from coming until eleven o'clock, twenty-two minutes away. He was still trying to figure out what to say when she went to work on his cock, and as she toyed with it she teased him about how he was going to have to come, even knowing that it would mean she'd get to watch him jerk off. He came at 10:45 and she kept rubbing. He tried to pull away. "Poor Ralph! You need to stop coming and I'm not letting you." He begged her. "Nuh-uh! This is your surprise." And she bent down and sucked his nipple even as she kept rubbing his cock. He thrashed so wildly, she thought the bed would break, but he couldn't escape. At last he gave up and, braying like a donkey, yielded to the sensory overload. Eileen kept piling it on until his cock no longer twitched, and even then she didn't stop; she continued until it started to lose its stiffness. "You're going to know now to take my rules seriously, aren't you?" "You're too much. I guess I'd better." "And you're still going to have to let me watch you jerk off. There's no way now you're going to get out of that." "What if I lose a whole pound every time?" "You might do that, but I doubt it." She untied him and they cuddled. He held her more affectionately than he had in a long time. The next time he asked to be weighed, Ralph had indeed lost a whole pound and Eileen fucked him. As she did, she teased him. First she reminded him that she was eventually going to get to watch him masturbate; then she pointed out that if she wanted to, she could keep fucking him after he came and he'd wind up feeling just what he's felt last time. That idea precipitated his orgasm, which in turn triggered hers. When they settled down, she teased him a bit more. "That was an exciting thought, wasn't it?" "You're trying to embarrass me." "And you love me for it, don't you?" He sputtered. "Well, don't you?" She kissed him lightly. He looked at her with just the mixture of love and embarrassment she was talking about, apparently unable to speak. "I know you do," she said. "And I felt how turned on you got by the idea that I might keep fucking you after you came. You're really going to be my love slave now, even after you lose the rest of that weight. And one of the things you're going to have to do is answer questions like the ones I just asked you. You do love me for embarrassing you, don't you?" "I guess I do." "And when I said I might keep fucking you after you came, it was such a turn-on, it made you come. Isn't that true?" "Yeah," he said. He choked on it, but he said it. If it hadn't been for the weight-loss project, Eileen would have over-stimulated and teased Ralph almost continuously from that moment on, the way I do my lovers. She understood, though, that that would be counterproductive. Ralph would wind up so horny that masturbation would become a necessity, and if he really needed to escape detection, he could. So nothing changed. Eileen continued to wait for Ralph's requests, taking care not to get him too fired up before he was ready. Then, when he asked her to, she'd weigh him and do as the scale said. Ralph managed to avoid having to masturbate for Eileen until he'd lost forty-two pounds. When he finally made the mistake of asking her to weigh him too soon, she told him it was time. She enjoyed the show, teased him about it, and secretly hoped that the removal of the threat wouldn't make him haphazard about his future accomplishments. Unfortunately though, Ralph had hit something of a plateau; it started to take him twice as long to lose each pound. Two months went by before Eileen fucked him again, and during those two months he lost only six pounds. Eileen didn't try to tell Ralph how to lose weight faster, or even ask about his efforts; she just enforced her rules. Ralph himself figured out that since he was lighter, his usual activities took fewer calories; if he wanted the pounds to come off at the rate they'd been, he'd have to exercise. Difficult as it was in his decrepit state, he resurrected his bicycle and started riding again. He still had no time for it, but now he was motivated. Often Eileen rode with him, and though Ralph couldn't go as fast nor as far as he used to, they both enjoyed it. He found other ways to exercise too: he walked to the mailbox and the convenience store instead of driving, and sometimes he even did push-ups. The push-ups were Eileen's idea. She suggested them once when Ralph was lamenting the impossibility of exercising in the rain. She knew push-ups couldn't take off much weight, but someday she would again have to let him fuck her in the missionary position, if only to celebrate the completion of their project, and she'd developed a real fear of being crushed. She wanted him to strengthen his arms so that when his weight reached 145 pounds, she wouldn't have to carry it all on her ribs. Somehow the idea took hold and a month later, when Eileen attended an office party at the bank, Ralph's boss remarked on his new habit of doing push-ups on the computer room floor while waiting for the machine to do its work. "It must be the programming," he said. "Every programmer I've ever known is crazy, even me." Whatever its effect on his image, the exercise was just what Ralph needed to start the pounds melting away again. As soon as he got back into riding, his weight resumed its previous dive. At the same time, Eileen's teasing had a comparably beneficial effect on their love life. During each sexual encounter, she teased Ralph at least a little, and she could see in his eyes that he really did love her for it. He didn't leave the feeling in bed, either. Between times, much more often than before, he offered her the little spontaneous displays of affection every woman needs. He'd tell her he loved her, run his hand through her hair, pat her, give her a kiss or a hug. He was treating her as affectionately as he had before they were married. As Ralph struggled with his last fifteen pounds, Eileen put a heroic effort into the continued enforcement of her rules. She never let Ralph know, but he turned her on so much with his again sexy body and his affectionate ways that she wanted to fuck him all the time. Finally, after fifteen months, the ordeal ended. Ralph asked to be weighed one Saturday morning when he didn't have to work, and Eileen obliged. "You did it!" "I lost a whole pound?" "No, just seven tenths, but it says 144.9." "At last! I thought I was getting down there. Does that mean we can stop all this nonsense?" "No, it means I make up a new set of rules where I get to decide when and how we make love, instead of always letting you decide when and the scale decide how." "Can't we make love like a normal couple again, like we used to?" "We can do it like missionaries if you want, but we'll never be a normal couple. You'll always be my love slave, no matter how we position our bodies, and you'll always know it — even more than before, because I've been taking care not to turn you on too much, so you wouldn't be frustrated all the time. Now I don't have to worry about that, so I can keep you naked when we're home, and I can look at that sexy body, and I can rub my pussy in your face and see what it does to your cock, and I can do it all as often as I want. "See?" she pointed, "All I have to do is talk about sexually dominating you and it gives you a hard-on. Would you like to put it in my pussy this once without being tied down?" In just a few seconds he was fucking her, and they did it twice more that day. She had a very pleasant time and enjoyed rediscovering how easy, relaxing, and downright sexy the missionary position can be when one isn't being crushed. Ralph was thin again, and his arms were stronger than when Eileen first met him, and it was the most enjoyable Saturday she'd had in three years. Soon she gave him her new rules. She'd make all the decisions about their lovemaking and he'd do whatever she said. She'd continue to weigh him every few days, and she wouldn't fuck him if he let his weight go above 148 pounds, and he wouldn't be permitted to come at all if it went over 150. For as long as I stayed in contact with Eileen, Ralph's weight never again became a problem, but neither did she relinquish control over their lovemaking. She varied their play imaginatively and impulsively, only rarely allowing Ralph to get on top when they fucked. It was still his favorite way of making love, but he didn't try to insist on it anymore. Part of the reason was undoubtedly that he knew it wouldn't do any good; but also, he'd learned he didn't need the control the missionary position gave him. If he was being fucked from above and he came after an embarrassingly short time (which happened exactly as often as Eileen wanted), the consequence would be some affectionate teasing, not the rejection that men in conventional relationships dread. Ralph was in paradise, or as close to it as a man can come while working in a bank, and he knew it was Eileen who had brought him there. He repaid her with all the loyalty and devotion she deserved. Had Eileen wanted to, she could easily have done to Ralph what Linda did to Stephan. The first time she fucked him from above, when he came after only four strokes, she could have teased him about it, played up his embarrassment, and given him a hypnotic suggestion that he'd always come immediately upon entering her; and yea, it would have been so. That's not what she wanted though, so she handled it differently: she supplied an excuse for Ralph's loss of control, and the duration of their next fuck was normal. Still, there were times, much later, when she wanted to make him come in just a few seconds and she wanted to tease him about it. And she could. If your man is horny and you turn him on, not only can you make him come, but usually you can make him come as fast as you want. Just subject him to a form of physical stimulation he can't resist, teasing him at the same time about how embarrassed he'll be if he can't delay his orgasm at all, and it happens. Unlike what Linda did, this is a one-time thing; you do it when you want and the effect doesn't carry over. Linda fixed Stephan for good. That's what she intended. That's the way her suggestion was worded. Still, if Eileen had given Ralph the same suggestion, not at her first opportunity, but three months after he'd lost the last of his excess weight, it would have had no effect. By then, Ralph had learned he could usually control himself, even if sometimes he couldn't, and his expectation of control would be difficult to overcome permanently, regardless of how quickly he could be brought to orgasm on any one occasion. If Eileen wanted to turn Ralph into a chronic premature ejaculator, the time to do it was the first time she tied him down. Ralph was disoriented then, both by the novelty of the situation and by having been made to come so quickly, and his disorientation made him especially suggestible. More important, he had no accumulated experience that would lead him to doubt a suggestion that his loss of control was permanent. He would believe it. That belief would add to the embarrassment he already felt, especially if Eileen went beyond simple suggestion and piled on some heavy teasing. The resulting Loop would play in his mind every time he felt his cock enter her pussy, making him come immediately. Women have a diversity of attitudes toward this. A few want their men to suffer chronic premature ejaculation so they can tease them about it, or to discourage affairs, or both. Linda started with no preference; she destroyed Stephan's control because the opportunity presented itself and she understood how strongly it would bond him to her. Most women want to be able to fuck at least occasionally. If you're among the majority and you're going to enslave your man, take care not to dial Linda's magic combination by accident. Ralph's decline into obesity was no mere misfortune. It was required by the script that had been engraved in his unconscious, however unintentionally, by his parents during his early years. (Many people live by such scripts, and several books have been written on the subject of scripting.) Ralph's script required that he follow in his father's footsteps, and his father had been a moderately successful drudge of grotesque physical proportions. Obesity would serve the same purposes in Ralph's life as in his father's. It would prove he was successful. If he weren't, he couldn't afford to overfeed himself. It would prevent him from pursuing distractions, be they extramarital affairs or frivolous activities requiring exertion. And it would distance him from his wife, protecting him both figuratively and literally from the common male bugaboo of being swallowed up by her love. Though his father had passed along a vague dread of intimacy as leading to emotional and even physical engulfment, Ralph still had to have a wife, and an attractive one at that. The old man had a wife, so marriage was part of the script. A good-looking wife would serve as a highly visible emblem of success, and a good-looking wife who remained loyal to a grotesquely obese husband would be conclusive proof of success. And script or no, fear of engulfment or no, Ralph had the usual human needs for love, sex and companionship. He had to get the wife before he put on the weight. Once he was fat, attracting a good-looking partner would be nearly impossible. And even if he could find one who was interested, courtship (at least among the young) involves a degree of physical activity that's difficult for an obese person to manage. That's not to say that Ralph laid a trap for Eileen. If a trap was laid at all, it was laid by the script, which can be seen as a kind of evil spirit with a life of its own, out to ensnare Ralph and Eileen both. A script — at least a destructive one — will keep itself hidden during courtship because if it didn't, it would frighten away any potential partner who became aware of it. Even the bearer would take evasive action. Ralph, the 145-pound cyclist, would have been horrified to think he'd wind up with his father's girth, but once he was married and the script took hold, he did everything necessary to make it happen, and he did it without becoming conscious of the script. Eileen, who fell in love with a 145-pound cyclist, would have been equally horrified — she found fat men repulsive — but she too wound up doing her part. Of course at their deepest levels, Eileen and Ralph both knew what was coming. Ralph was the bearer of the script and couldn't help sneaking a peek. Eileen had been introduced to the script in the form of Ralph's parents, and the subconscious understands these things. She went along because she had been prepared for her role by her own parents. What she hadn't been prepared for was the day-to-day reality of Ralph's obesity. If Eileen hadn't been exposed to the techniques of female domination, she and Ralph, like Ralph's parents, would have gone through five or six years of bickering over hubby's weight, followed by a lifetime of unhappy resignation. It might have been a brief lifetime, because the more weight a man carries around, the less time he's obliged to carry it; but as it happened, Eileen did get the opportunity to learn about female domination and she used its techniques to defeat the script, saving Ralph from premature burial in a piano crate. Not every script can be defeated as easily as Ralph's. Scripting is powerful and female domination has its limitations. If you become a proficient dominatrix, you can use your skills to bring out the best in a man, but you can't make him over from scratch. It just doesn't work. There are two reasons Ralph was able to lose eighty pounds with Eileen's help. First, on a conscious level both Eileen and Ralph wanted it. Eileen wanted Ralph slim, and she wanted him slim more than she wanted to cook for him. Ralph had felt better — more alive — before he put on the weight. Part of him remembered that feeling and wanted it back. He even cared, though he seemed not to, about the quality of experience he was creating for Eileen; he can't have felt good about crushing her. The program would have failed had Eileen's need to feed Ralph been stronger, or had she feared that if Ralph were attractive she might lose him to another woman. It would also have failed had Ralph been pathologically afraid of starving, like some survivors of famine. The second factor that made it possible for Eileen and Ralph to succeed is that Ralph knew how to weigh 145 pounds. He'd done it before. His body knew what kind of food and exercise it needed, and how much. All he had to do was dust off the pieces, reassemble the machine, and plug it in. If he had never been slim, the process would have been much more difficult, perhaps impossible. The story of Eileen and Ralph exemplifies the use of female domination to motivate a man toward a goal. It falls midway between two extremes. At one extreme, we find compulsive gamblers who need to be stopped. At the other, we find men who have no real problems, but who could use some motivational assistance to see them through ordinary projects, and want their wives to use the power of their femininity to provide it. If your marriage is conventional and your husband is attempting to earn an academic degree while working full time, and he's finding it difficult to focus on his studies, you probably aren't going to enslave him for the purpose of giving him motivational assistance. Even I, fanatic that I am, wouldn't advise it. Enslave him, yes! But don't use your power to motivate him unless you're sure he'll welcome your efforts. He'll very likely resent your intrusion into a part of his life that's properly his alone, and you could easily do your marriage more harm than good. His goal, unlike Ralph's, isn't worth the risk. When you've already enslaved your husband, things are different. If he wants you to help motivate him, you'll know it. He'll tell you — if not on his own, then in response to your questions about his fantasies. And if he does want your help, you'll know how to go about it; women in this situation rarely make mistakes. Most men don't need motivational assistance and prefer to run their own lives, and as long as they keep themselves a couple of inches back from the edge of disaster, they should be allowed to. I've taken charge of every one of my relationships since Steve (except the two that ended because of my partners' refusal), but after Corbett, I've always chosen to limit my exercise of control. I control my partner's sexuality and whatever else is naturally shared between us, but I don't go beyond that core. I'm more comfortable that way, and since I've remained single, I've never felt obliged to rescue a partner who started making self- destructive choices. I could leave instead. If you're married, that's neither a practical option nor a decent one, at least until you've exhausted all the others, and one of the others is female domination. Later, when we consider the story of a compulsive gambler — or even now, focusing on Ralph — it may seem that the primary value of female domination lies in its potential for dealing with difficult and ugly problems. Not so. The primary value of female domination is its ability to sustain a loving, happy and intimate relationship, and the best time to enslave your man is when he's in love with you and there's no need. That's when it's easiest; that's when it's most fun; that's when those difficult and ugly problems can still be prevented instead of solved. If you wait, you may accomplish wonders; but whatever wonders you accomplish, it would have been better to avoid the necessity. Sexual slavery always plays best as play. *** Chapter 17, In which two jealous tyrants are taken down just one notch I met Lisa the week before I enslaved Patrick. Mike and I were a technical writing staff of two, faced with the task of turning out fourteen manuals in four months. It was more than we could handle, so Lisa was brought on as a temporary hire to lighten our load. A year younger than me, pushing forty, Lisa looked sometimes like a twenty-year-old in granny glasses and sometimes like a sweet little old lady, but somehow she never looked forty. For seventeen years she'd been exploring the North American continent and acquainting herself with its people, supporting herself as a freelance writer. She'd turned out a steady stream of magazine articles about the places she visited, the people she met, even the more unusual episodes of her love life. Occasionally she'd stopped long enough to do some work for hire — a family history commissioned by a Mississippi matriarch, an undercover investigation for a Tennessee newspaper — but she always wound up on the road again. She had friends everywhere, but those to whom she was closest were a couple in Texas — Nancy and Dan. It was they who had received her mail year after year while she was traveling and read it to her over the phone; it was they who handled her bank deposits; it was in their precinct she'd been voting, usually by absentee ballot, since leaving her parents' home in Idaho. She had no quarrel with her parents — she used her friends' address mainly to avoid paying state income tax — but she'd been back home only four times in twelve years because whenever her folks got the opportunity, they preached marriage to her. They didn't condemn her lifestyle as sinful, or harangue her about the dangers of the road, but they were always warning her she'd wind up a lonely old woman with no one to care for her. She liked the way she was living and didn't want to hear it. Then, shortly before we met, Lisa realized that sometimes, when she looked in the mirror, she saw a little old granny lady. Suddenly her parents' warnings took on new meaning. She panicked, falling into the common fear that age would soon make her unattractive, even to men whose experience and maturity were commensurate with her own. She decided to find a husband before it was too late. Silicon Valley seemed the ideal place to look. Lisa valued intelligence and wanted that quality in a man. She aimed to get it by shopping computer companies; the computer industry is known for the mental prowess of its workers. She expected to support herself during the search by picking up short-term writing assignments with the very companies she intended to shop. Efficient. During the four months Lisa and I worked together, she added me to her extensive network of friends; she did an impressive job on the manuals, especially considering she'd never done that kind of writing before; and she made the intimate acquaintance of five of my male colleagues (not Mike — he was already married). None of the men suited her and she moved on to another project with another company. I stayed in touch with her. Every couple of weeks we'd have dinner together or go hiking, sometimes with Patrick, and she'd describe the progress of her search. Her second writing stint didn't turn up anyone promising, nor her third, but her fourth did. The company specialized in computer security. They sold consulting services and they built hardware and software for data encryption and access authentication — the stuff that makes your PIN work in the ATM while keeping it secret from the crew inside the bank. Jason was one of their senior analysts. He designed data security algorithms and he went out on consulting assignments. Lisa's relationship with him began with a bang: a whole weekend — unplanned — of lovemaking, cuddling and intimate self-disclosure. By the time I saw her the following Tuesday evening, she was in love. From what she said, Jason was too. Jason, forty-two, had high ideals of what marriage ought to be. He believed in commitment, loyalty and fidelity. He had been married once before, for twenty-five months, to a woman twelve years his junior. The marriage had ended in divorce two years earlier. His ex, whose name he never spoke, hadn't lived up to his standards. He married Miss Ex because he was in love and she seemed to be too. On that basis alone, he assumed everything would be perfect. He was open and honest with her, and he allowed her to handle their finances, figuring that if she used his working hours to manage the logistics of the household, they'd be able to spend all his free time enjoying one another. Before marriage, Jason had no debts except his mortgage. His accounting was meticulous, but he handled money casually. He had plenty, so when he wanted something, he bought it with a credit card, then paid the bills in full when they arrived. Right after they married, he and Miss Ex opened a joint checking account with a starting balance of eight thousand dollars, almost all of it contributed by Jason. Another twenty-six hundred went in by direct deposit every two weeks when he was paid. He told Lisa that though the marriage seemed to be going well, there were signs that something was wrong. He didn't describe them, but he said they were so obvious, he was a fool to ignore them. Still, ignore them he did. He let Miss Ex fool him until he came down with lymphogranuloma venerium. Even then, he ignored the initial lesion and sought treatment only when the lymph nodes in his groin became tender and inflamed. Once his doctor explained what was wrong, he could no longer pretend everything was perfect. Miss Ex had been unfaithful to him, and she'd been lucky enough, or unlucky enough, to pick up a sexually transmitted disease without developing symptoms. He investigated the best he could without alerting her. Their checking account balance was nine hundred dollars and their credit card debt exceeded twenty-one thousand, with two payments overdue. Most of the money seemed to have been spent on cocaine. Miss Ex was involved in at least five separate affairs, and coke figured in all of them. She was fucking two men who supplied her, apparently getting a small discount in return, and she was fucking three other men she found attractive, each time sharing a few lines at her own expense to ensure their continued interest. When Jason's investigation was complete, he closed all the credit accounts to which Miss Ex had access, closed the joint checking account, and opened an account in his own name. Then he filed for divorce. The confrontation that followed was ugly in the extreme, as was the subsequent litigation. Through clever maneuvering, her lawyer got Miss Ex almost as much in the divorce as she had already stolen, but at least when it was over, Jason was rid of her. By exercising unaccustomed frugality, he dug himself out of debt quickly; the last of it had been paid off two months before Lisa met him. He still dreamed of a happy marriage, but he'd picked up a heavy dose of cynicism and regarded it as a good thing. He was determined never again to be victimized. Lisa, hoping to persuade him that she was the One, said she had always expected that when she was married, she would pay her own way as an equal partner. "By living on the road? with a man in every town? And I'd just be the guy you slept with between trips?" She was so happy he was talking about marrying her, so sorry about the betrayal he'd suffered at the hands of Miss Ex, that she overlooked the undeserved hostility. She assured him she wanted a traditional monogamous marriage as much as he. He told her his sexual history. It was what one would expect, given his age — perhaps a bit more extensive in that it included a year-long experiment in communal living, back when he was twenty-four. Difficult to reconcile with such an old-fashioned view of marriage, Lisa thought, but he seemed so sensitive on the subject, she didn't dare question or comment. Instead she drew her own inference — that Jason's accumulated experience and observation had gradually led him to the conviction that monogamy is the only way. It was what she believed too, with a convert's zeal. She had already told Jason she'd been moderately promiscuous on the road, and she interpreted his recitation of his own history as a request for the details. She started to oblige, but he interrupted her and said he preferred not to know. Monday morning he left on a two-day consulting trip and "should be landing in San Jose right about now," she said. They already had a date for the following evening and Lisa was looking forward to spending the night with him. I next heard from her at four the following Saturday afternoon. Patrick and I were cuddling, exhausted, when she rang the phone and said she needed to talk. She sounded depressed, so I consulted with Patrick and we agreed that he'd nap while I tended to Lisa, whom I then arranged to meet at her apartment. I showered quickly, dressed, grabbed my helmet, and rode over. I tried to guess what might be the matter, but it was impossible. Things had gone way to fast the previous weekend. By now, Lisa and Jason might be married and separated. I imagined Lisa, living and loving on the road and wanting her relationships to have some depth. Had she developed the facility of getting all her partners to open up so quickly? Was Jason wondering the same and feeling manipulated? I parked the motorcycle, trotted to Lisa's door, and knocked. "Who's there?" She still sounded depressed. "George." She opened the door slowly. Everything about her said doom. I stepped inside and she closed the door. "Hi! What's the trouble?" "I really screwed it up with Jason." "I'm sorry if it's going badly." "I had this idea — I really thought it would turn out good, but I just screwed it up." "Do you want to tell me about it?" She looked like she didn't, but she'd asked me over, and it was the end of the world anyway, so she might as well. "I tied him up." It was a promising start, but I couldn't see how it related to her misery. I waited for more. Three seconds...four seconds... "And he didn't like it?" I ventured. "I'm sorry. I told you I needed to talk, and I'm not. I'll start at the beginning and maybe it'll make some sense." The beginning was Wednesday evening. Jason took Lisa to dinner as planned, then to bed as she'd hoped. Thursday evening was the same. Lisa would have liked to do it again Friday and stay until Monday, but she had too big a backlog of chores and errands. "Besides, I had this idea about tying him up. You know..." She studied me as if trying to gauge how far she could trust me, then seemed to remember it was doomsday so it didn't matter. "I've always had these fantasies about tying people up or being tied up myself — sex fantasies. A few times I got to do it, but just a few, because it takes a lot of trust to do that with someone, and I didn't have the kind of long-term relationships that build that kind of trust. Maybe I could have trusted the guys if I had a regular job and a bunch of friends who saw me every day, but living on the road like that, if someone decided to do a Jack the Ripper on me, it would have been a couple of weeks before Dan and Nancy got worried, and then no one would know where I'd disappeared from, so I had to be real careful." "You could still tie them up, couldn't you?" "I didn't want to ask. They had as much reason to be scared as I did, with all the serial killers running around, and I didn't want to make them uncomfortable. Besides, then they could say they wanted to tie me up, and it'd be hard to say no. "Anyway, I thought Jason would go for it. What I was hoping was that when he thought about it later, it'd sink in that I can be trusted — not just to tie him up, but all those other ways he has trouble with." "Sounds reasonable to me!" "So I figured I'd give him a rest last night so if I did get to tie him up, he'd be horny enough to make love to, even if he was a little apprehensive." "Good strategy!" "Well, we made up that I'd be at his house at eleven and we'd have brunch, and I brought along a bag of stuff for the weekend, including some rope. The first thing we did after brunch was go to bed, and when we were both really turned on, I told him to wait a minute and I got the rope and I said, 'Guess what I'm going to do!' And he said, 'You're going to spread me out and tie me down?' And I said yeah. "So I tied him down. He didn't try to stop me or anything, so I thought it was okay." "Sure!" "Well, when I was done tying him, I kind of got on top of him and tried to kiss him, but he wouldn't let me. He set his mouth so it was all stiff and he looked at me with this really grim, stony expression. I just had to back off. And then he asked me why it was so important to have him tied up. "I didn't know what to say. The best I could do was tell him it wasn't that I wanted him tied up, but that I wanted to make love to him while he was tied up." "Did that help?" She shook her head and groaned. "I guess it's an awfully fine distinction for someone as badly freaked as he was." "Oh, it's no distinction at all. I know that. I was just trying to play spin doctor and it didn't work." "What happened?" "You mean after that?" "Yeah." "I untied him." I looked at her questioningly. "I was scared I was going to lose him, so I untied him." I was tempted to ask her how she knew her spin doctoring had failed, but I didn't want to be giving her the third degree. "If you don't mind my asking, what were you going to do if he hadn't freaked?" "Make love to him." "Well, let me tell you the kind of thing I do; then you can see if we're on the same wavelength." That seemed to catch her interest, so I went on. "I like to tie up my boyfriends too — the ones who are into it, anyway. What I usually do is something like this: When I've got a guy tied down, the first thing I do is sit on his face and have him eat me. That turns him on and gives me a reasonable degree of satisfaction even if I don't wind up fucking him. Then I sit next to him, facing his cock, and I tell him I'm going to play with it, say for twenty minutes, and if he can keep himself from coming for that long, I'll fuck him; but if he can't, I'll keep playing with it a whole lot longer than he can stand — you know, most men get real sensitive after they come and they can't take that." She nodded. "I know how to stimulate a man so he'll come even if he doesn't want to, so I go to it, and I tease him about how he's turning on to me and how he's going to come even though he knows what's going to happen. And what that does, is it embarrasses him, and his embarrassment starts turning him on too, all by itself — it just works that way. So it never takes very long to get him off, and then he's been trying to hold back, so it's always a big one. And as soon as it starts, I tease him about that — maybe about having me watch, or how embarrassed he must be, or not getting to fuck me, or how I'm going to torture him now — maybe a whole bunch of things together. I even tease him while I'm torturing him. "What he gets out of it is a really exciting trip that he'll be fantasizing about for the rest of his life. What I get — well, two things. First I get my femininity affirmed. I prove that he really can't resist me, and it's a good feeling. Second, like you said, I build a lot of trust that makes for a really close relationship. Once I've done that to a man, he'll trust me to do it over and over, and he does trust me to know he's turned on by something so embarrassingly kinky. He has no choice; I do know it, and he has to adjust. When he does, he'll trust me with anything." "Yeah!" "If I were to just tie him up and make love to him quietly — you know, let him close his eyes and slip off into his own world — he'd wind up fantasizing the same thing anyway, except then I wouldn't be part of it because it'd all be in his head. Maybe his fantasy would be a little different — like he's been abducted by aliens and they're experimenting on him and they make him come — but there'd be something about losing control and being embarrassed about it." My dissertation seemed to revive Lisa considerably, and she answered in her own voice rather than the one she'd borrowed at the funeral parlor. "The times I let guys tie me up, that's just the kind of fantasies I had. And when I tied them up — well, I did let them go off into their own world, and I stayed in mine, having fantasies about doing the kind of thing you just described. I guess I was going to do the same thing with Jason — enjoy my fantasies while he enjoyed his. I hadn't thought about making the fantasy real. The main thing was to show him I wasn't going to hurt him." "Well, you did show him that, didn't you?" "I don't know. I didn't hurt him, but he acted like it didn't make any difference. He made me feel I was doing something really bad." "But he does know you didn't hurt him, and he knows you care how he feels even when he can't do anything about it." "I don't think that even crossed his mind. He just seemed so disappointed in me." "What happened after you untied him?" "He said if I'd discussed it with him beforehand, he could have gotten into it. I thought we had discussed it, but I was too upset to say so. I got dressed and asked him if I could come back later. I told him I'd be back at seven." "He didn't say anything else while you were getting dressed and ready to leave?" "No." "I don't think he wants to lose you any more than you want to lose him. He's probably worrying whether you're really coming back. I'm sure he'll be happy to see you." "You really think so?" "Well, yeah! People don't just fall in love for a week and then snap out of it. Sure, he wants to control your relationship, especially after what happened with his ex — men are like that even under the best of circumstances — so when you tied him up, he got worried that you were taking control and he did what he had to, to stop you. But he can't mean to reject you forever; he just wants you to worry about it." She breathed an exaggerated sigh of relief. "I hope so." When Lisa returned to Jason that evening, he was indeed happy to see her. He comforted her and admitted that, as I'd expected, he'd been worried she might not come back. They fucked and assured one another of their continued love, then stayed together until Monday morning. Three weeks later she moved in with him. By way of preparation, she went through her clips and got rid of the ones that described her sexual adventures. She was afraid Jason would react badly if he found them. She didn't give them to me for safekeeping, or send them to Nancy and Dan, even though all three of us had seen them. She threw them out. When her stint with Jason's employer was done, she paid a visit to the local animal shelter and adopted a dog — a gray female mutt about fourteen inches high with an irregular white spot on one side of its back. She named it Blotch. Though she hadn't consulted Jason, he didn't mind at all. He didn't even suggest a doghouse. Blotch became a permanent member of the household. Lisa convinced herself that the dog had to be cared for, so she didn't look for any more consulting assignments; instead she went back to freelancing. She thought it would be easy, but it wasn't. The road had been a mother lode of material that never tapped out. Jason and Blotch weren't good for even one article — not an article anyone would publish. She found herself having to compete as one of many competent but dull writers in a buyer's market, scrounging for the occasional idea that hadn't yet been done quite to death and trying to make it seem interesting to a gauntlet of editors who knew better. By sheer perseverance, she snared a few assignments: a piece on the Winchester Mystery House; another on computer fraud, slanted toward women without technical knowledge; a third describing the garlic farms of Gilroy. It wasn't much. After figuring costs for research and postage, she was barely clearing two hundred dollars a month. But at least she wasn't doing what Miss Ex had done, and Jason seemed pleased even though she came nowhere near paying her own way. About once a week, I'd call Lisa from work just to chat. If Jason was going to be out of town on a night I was free, I'd try to arrange dinner. Over one such dinner, when the future of her writing career looked particularly bleak — before she'd sold the piece on the Winchester Mystery House — she sadly described the limitations imposed on her by Blotch. She couldn't do field research that took her away from home for more than a few hours, she couldn't ask people for interviews and expect them to let her bring a dog, and if she never sold another article, she couldn't take a job. I was tempted to point out that millions of dog owners live normal lives, thousands live enhanced lives because their dogs serve as eyes or defensive weapons, and only four had been reduced to prisoners like her, but I thought better of it. I could see that the dog's whole purpose was the shrinkage of Lisa's world, and I feared that if I made an issue of it, I might never see her again. I didn't want that to happen, partly because I liked Lisa and partly because I was fascinated by her continuing story in much the way one might be fascinated by a train wreck. I hastily negotiated a compromise and asked why she'd adopted the dog to begin with. "I always wanted one." Having moved around so much for so long, and having grown accustomed to relying on her friends in Texas, Lisa at first made no effort to give Jason's address to her correspondents. Most of her mail was still delivered to Nancy and Dan, who would open it, telephone her if they found anything urgent, repackage it (even the junk), and forward it with impressive dispatch. This bothered Jason. He felt that by allowing Nancy and Dan to open her mail, Lisa was granting them a degree of intimacy that should be reserved to him alone. He also found their willingness to do all that work, and to pay for the calls and postage besides, incomprehensible in any context save an ongoing sexual relationship. Lisa assured him that the relationship wasn't sexual and promised to give her current address to everyone from whom she received mail. She warned him, though, that it might take a while to get Nancy and Dan completely out of the loop because every now and then she got a letter from someone who hadn't written in years. "Old lovers?" "Old friends." He sulked. She Sulked. Eventually they made up. That's how it was done between them, over and over — how Lisa's world disappeared, one piece at a time. Jason never raged at her, never gave her a direct order. He didn't need to. All he had to do was be reminded of something Miss Ex had done, then suggest that his reminiscence had been triggered, however obliquely, by Lisa. He'd act hurt, he'd act disappointed, and of course Lisa would be hurt too, but in the end it was always she who changed to accommodate him. Somehow she managed not to feel tyrannized. In the matter of Nancy and Dan, she brought herself round to the belief that it really was inappropriate for them to open her mail. When she'd got herself thus straightened out, she called Nancy and asked her to forward the mail unopened. Nancy agreed and the mail started arriving unopened — even faster than before, because Nancy and Dan could no longer identify low-priority items with any certainty. A month later, just to be sure, Lisa filed a change-of-address order with the Postal Service. Much as she wanted to accommodate Jason, she couldn't make herself believe she was sexually involved with Nancy and Dan. She knew Jason's suspicion was unreasonable — she hadn't been out of California since she and Jason met — but she justified his attitude as a natural consequence of what Miss Ex had done to him. She seemed to accept the idea that she was morally obliged to atone for the sins of a coke fiend she had never met — that it was fitting and proper for Jason to punish her for her predecessor's misdeeds. To be fair to Jason (and Lisa too), I ought to make it clear that Jason was genuinely in love with Lisa and, except for his occasional fits of paranoia, treated her well. He housed her, fed her, even took her clothes- shopping and seemed to enjoy it. Their lovemaking was always intense and emotional, never perfunctory. They seemed to have only one problem — the ghost of Miss Ex. Whenever Jason found himself in a situation where Miss Ex might stab him in the back, he jumped to the conclusion that Lisa had set him up for the same. At such times, he refused to remember that Lisa loved him. He intentionally forgot that Lisa wanted the best for him and for their relationship. He told himself that because he was even more in love with Lisa than he'd been with Miss Ex, he was that much more likely to overlook signs of incipient betrayal, and he therefore had to be hypervigilant to protect himself from his own proven stupidity. If he hadn't got mixed up with Miss Ex first, or if he'd decided to give Lisa the benefit of every doubt as he'd given Miss Ex the benefit of every doubt, their relationship would have been truly idyllic. (Hey! you ask, How do you know so much about what was going on in Jason's head? I know because he was so stupidly proud of not being stupid anymore, he told her.) From her side, Lisa didn't feel like her life was the train wreck I was watching. The shrinkage of her world was so incidental to her relationship with Jason, I doubt she was even conscious of it. She enjoyed the love Jason gave her, the companionship, the attention — and that's how it was most of the time. Besides, she believed she could atone for the sins of Miss Ex — that if she kept being perfect long enough, Jason's paranoia would go into remission and he'd learn to trust her. She encouraged herself by noticing little improvements — situations in which he'd overreacted last month but not yesterday. Since my own impression, based on the general flow of Lisa's stories, was that Jason was getting worse, I suspected that his little improvements represented nothing more than lapses in attention. After five months in this state of bliss, Lisa and Jason were married. Two weeks later, on a Saturday morning, Dan came between them again. He telephoned to say that a jury summons had arrived for Lisa. The envelope was marked, "DO NOT FORWARD," so the postman left it with him. He hadn't opened it, but it was obvious what it was, and he wanted to know what to do with it. He certainly didn't want the sheriff showing up with a warrant for her arrest and searching the house for her. Lisa asked him to return the summons with a note saying she'd moved to California more than a year ago and giving her new name and address. He said he would. "Who was that?" Jason asked. "Dan. Called to tell me the mailman delivered a jury summons for Lisa Marshall." "He opened it?" "No, he knows what they look like." "I thought you told the post office to forward all your mail." "I did. He said it was marked, "DO NOT FORWARD." "Why didn't the post office return it?" "I don't know." "And I thought you told Dan and Nancy to forward your mail even before you told the post office." "I asked them to, yes; but Dan was worried that if the summons wasn't answered, the sheriff would come looking for me, and he doesn't want his house searched. That happened to a friend of his, when his wife didn't show up for jury duty because her mother got sick." "What's he got there? a bunch of milk-carton kids chained to the walls?" She went into a sulk. When he saw she wasn't going to answer, he went on. "Look, I just don't want those perverts calling." She locked herself in the bathroom and he started doing chores. By evening, he was treating her decently and she'd stopped sulking, but the issue hadn't been resolved. When she told me the story, I remarked that it was unfair of Jason to hold her responsible for Dan's calling; after all, she hadn't made the call. "I know, but after everything he went through with his ex, I can understand where he's coming from." A few weeks later it was time to renew the insurance and registration on Lisa's camper van. Jason convinced her it was an unnecessary expense and she wound up selling the van for four hundred dollars, which made it difficult to get around while Jason was at work. The following month, Jason had to go on a business trip that spanned a weekend, and I took the opportunity to invite Lisa to join me on a hike. "No, I don't go anywhere the dog can't go." "We can bring the dog, you know." "She's not used to being out in the wild. I'm afraid she'll get lost." I put it as diplomatically as I could. "It seems to me, it'd be awfully hard to lose a dog." "No, I don't want to take the chance." Ah, well... if Jason could imagine a sexual relationship among Lisa, Nancy and Dan across half a continent, he could certainly imagine one between Lisa and me alone in the hills with only Blotch for a chaperone. No sense getting him started! Besides, maybe Lisa's story wasn't worth following any further; it was turning downright depressing. But I didn't want to give up on her. If I was ready to do that, I might as well try to sell her on female domination. At worst, the result would be the same: I'd never see her again. At best, she would regain some of the freedom she'd had when we first met. I suggested dinner the following Monday and she surprised me by inviting me over and offering to cook. I arrived at her house at the appointed time and we passed an enjoyable evening fussing over Blotch, devouring an imaginatively seasoned roast chicken, and talking. She described a problem that had arisen between her and Jason with increasing frequency since their marriage: Men initiated conversations with her, and Jason didn't like it. Men had always initiated conversations with her. She'd learned to control these interactions while she was still in school, and on the road she'd polished her skill until it was an art. She could avoid unwanted intimacy, and she could manage it easily and gently, without giving offense. She knew how to reject a man's most urgent advances, and do so repeatedly, yet remain on good terms with him. As a married woman, she had to reject even those men with whom she would have eagerly jumped into bed in her previous life, but that was easy — as long as Jason wasn't around. It was Jason who made things difficult. Often a man would chat her up while Jason was watching, and he'd always give her grief about it later, accusing her of encouraging the man's attentions — sometimes even of making a secret date. He could see that none of the conversations included physical contact, but that didn't help. Lisa assured him that she never gave anyone her address, phone number or even her name, but that didn't satisfy him either; indeed he often made it obvious that he didn't believe her, though without ever quite accusing her of lying. What he wanted was for Lisa to reject men with such obvious contempt, disdain and hostility that he could see it from whatever distance; nothing gentler would do. But rudeness wasn't Lisa's way. It was simply contrary to her nature, and she couldn't meet Jason's demands. She explained this to him and tried to assure him that she was quite capable of guarding her chastity without confrontation, but he wouldn't hear it. Lisa wanted to keep the conflicts in her marriage to a minimum, so once she became aware of Jason's problem, she tried to discourage men from approaching by giving them a wide berth and avoiding eye contact. It might have worked but for Blotch. Blotch wanted to meet every human she laid eyes on. Running free, she did — easily. On a leash it was harder; if she wanted to visit someone, she had to pull Lisa along, and Lisa was too big. But if she tugged with all her might, and barked, and wagged her tail, she could get most people to come to her. And since a friendly dog is one of the world's most effective icebreakers, any man who found Lisa attractive had a perfect excuse to chat. There were also a few men who simply liked Blotch and talked with Lisa only to be polite, but they made Jason as jealous as the others; he couldn't have told the difference even if he believed such men existed. It was because of Blotch, too, that Lisa so often looked like she was alone when Jason was nearby. Lisa was active while Jason was sedentary. Often Lisa took Blotch for a walk on their street and Jason watched from the window. When they went to the park, it was Lisa who played with Blotch, running from place to place while Jason sat and read. Trouble brewed as if by ritual, the same way every time. A man, thinking Lisa was unattached, or perhaps not caring, would greet first Blotch, then Lisa. Lisa would exchange a few pleasantries with him, then excuse herself and make her way back to Jason, who would scowl, sulk, and indulge in an assortment of colorful delusions. He would nurse his imagined injuries for hours, advising Lisa what she ought to have done and telling her that her behavior was proof of habitual infidelity. Eventually, exhausted, he would say he was giving up because he loved her and had no choice but to accept her constant betrayals. Later still, they'd tire of sulking, remember that they liked one another, and resume the part of their relationship that kept them together. Whatever could I say to all that? Maybe, that's men for you! But that isn't men, just the insecure ones, and it wouldn't be a helpful response anyway. Let's see... How utterly tragic! More honest, but still so unhelpful as to be laughable. Jason is a horrible person and he should be shot! Thtpfft! "Did you ever try tying him up again?" "No." "Maybe you ought to." "It would just be another disaster." "You could even turn him into your love slave. Like, put yourself in charge of all your lovemaking so he knows that whatever the two of you do is something you really want. The when you have sex, he won't be able to delude himself into thinking you're just accommodating him so he won't figure out how much you're getting from other men." "Huh? That went by kind of fast. I think I missed something." "It's something you could do — make Jason your love slave." "How?" "You start by tying him up, so he finds out how exciting it is when you're in charge." "His paranoid index would go through the roof if I even mentioned that." "But the time you tried it, he said he could have got into it if the two of you had discussed it beforehand. And when he said that, you'd already given up, so he had no reason to mention it except that he wanted to keep the possibility open." "You've been watching too many lawyer shows." "Think about it. He wouldn't have said that without a reason." "Maybe he thought tying him up was something I needed and he didn't want to lose me if it was." "If he thought that, he wouldn't have acted so hostile that you had to untie him right away." "Okay, you explain what happened." "I think he has fantasies of being tied up, but he's too paranoid to let it happen. He always needs to be in control. Look at the branch of computing he's in. Security. Controlling who's allowed to do what. When he mentioned the possibility of pre-negotiating a bondage scene, it was because his natural self wants to do it, but his paranoid self wants to keep control over it. Now, we both know that's impossible. He probably knows it too, which is why he never mentioned it again, but I'm sure he has fantasies. Even right now, he might be thinking, If she really loved me, she'd tie me up again. "That doesn't' mean that if you do, he'll be any more cooperative; but it does mean you can overcome his resistance and make him enjoy it in spite of himself. Just act confident. Refuse to be guilt-tripped. After a couple of times, he'll learn he can trust you." "How do I get him to cooperate the first time?" "There are two possibilities. One, you can remind him what he said — that he could get into it if he had a chance to talk about it beforehand — then ask him if he's ready because you still want to do it. The other is, next time he has one of his fits and you both wind up sulking, make an issue of his distrust and refuse to make love until he lets you tie him up. Tell him it's the only way he can prove he trusts you. Maybe the best strategy is to try the first, so he knows you're thinking about it, then if you don't get anywhere, do the second." "And how do I get from there to having him be my love slave?" I described what I'd done to Patrick, but without saying it was Patrick I'd done it to. She asked the obvious question — why a man would continue to cooperate once he was untied — and I gave her the complete explanation, with three-part harmony. "It sounds very appealing, very exciting," she said when I'd finished; "but I don't see how it's going to stop him from acting the way he does every time some guy admires Blotch." "It won't, all by itself. You'll have to use your power over him to forbid it. You tell him you're not going to have sex with other men, but you'll talk with them if it suits you, and he'll have to accept it. Warn him that if he gives you a hard time he'll be punished — maybe with a period of abstinence, or by being tortured like I described, or having to play with himself while you watch — you'll be able to figure out the details. "If he's like most men, he'll wind up so in love with you — so addicted to what you do for him — that he won't be able to leave you even if you are unfaithful. You could bring that right out in the open and tease him about it, then say you're going to keep your vows anyway, by choice, and it would be decent of him to show his appreciation by leaving off his silly and boorish accusations." "Did anyone ever tell you you're crazy?" "It's a different dynamic from what you're used to with Jason, and you haven't rehearsed it, but he hasn't figured out how to respond, either, so you can stay ahead of him and keep him off balance." I returned home, typed the evening's events into my floppy journal, and went to bed. I was just drifting off when the phone rang. It was one of the many incarnations of my old friend Crank. As soon as I answered, he hung up. By the time I next spoke with Lisa, the call had been relegated to the darkest corner of my memory, but she shed some light on it. Jason had called her shortly after I left and asked what she'd been doing. She told him I'd been over for dinner and he went into jealousy mode. He seemed to suspect I'd replaced Nancy as Lisa's lesbian lover and he asked whether I was still there. She said no, but he repeated the question several times during their conversation, in a low-key but needling sort of way. "You sure you're alone now?" "Georgeann's gone home, eh?" Oh yeah! I thought, Crank! I didn't tell Lisa about his call, but now I knew the reason for it. I was sure Jason would soon arrange my final ejection from Lisa's world but I didn't intend to make it easy for him. I gave Lisa another call two weeks later. "Hello?" "Hi Lisa! It's George." "I can't talk now. I'm up to my elbows in wet scouring powder and I don't want it to dry on the tub. Can you call me tomorrow morning about 9:30?" "Sure." "Thanks. Talk to you then!" Strange, I thought. I called the next morning. "Hello?" "Hi! It's George again." "Now's not a good time either. Can you pick me up for lunch today?" "Okay. When?" "Anytime. I'll be here." "That's easy! I'll aim for 12:45 so we won't have to fight the crowds." "Good! See you then!" "Bye-bye." When I drove up, she was sitting on the doorstep. She got up, walked to the car, settled in. "Hi!" I greeted her. "Hi. Sorry I sounded so weird when you called, but Jason's tapped the phone." "Really?" "Yes! Maybe he's even bugged the whole house." "What makes you think that?" "There's a locked box in the basement, bolted down in a corner where I'm pretty sure there's a modular connector for a telephone. At least that's what I remember seeing there before the box went in." "That's something! Where should we go?" "Mexican. In the opposite direction from Jason's office." "You know a place?" "No." "I don't either — not around here. We could be cruising a long time. Does it have to be Mexican?" "Jason doesn't eat Mexican. If anyone hears what we say, I want to be sure they never see me and Jason together." "Did you ask Jason about the box?" "No, I don't want to escalate his paranoia." "Do you know when he installed it?" "Not exactly. Sometime after you were over to dinner. He must have done the work in little bits, while I was in the shower or out walking Blotch." "Could it be something innocent, like a backup of the stuff he's doing at work or a coin collection or a gun or even some dope?" "If it were innocent, he wouldn't have concealed it from me, and he did conceal it. It's not like it was just an accident that I missed seeing him put it in, because I'm always home. Besides, he doesn't have anything like a coin collection, and he doesn't use drugs, and I know where he keeps the backup and the gun." "Crazy! What are you going to do?" "About the box? I don't know. I do know I want to tie him up and make him my love slave, but I'll need a lot of moral support along the way." "You can count on me for that! I'll do anything I can!" "It won't be easy. I can't talk to you on the phone." "How about I pick you up every Wednesday at 12:45, like today, and we'll do lunch — at least until you get the tap off your phone. If there's a week I can't make it, I'll call you in the morning and ask you how things are going, and you give me some innocuous answer. Then you ask me the same thing and I'll give you the same kind of answer. That way you'll know not to expect me, and Jason will be reassured what boring people we are." "I feel a little guilty, asking you for so much." "I'll tell you what! You can repay me by telling me the story of how you enslave Jason. I love stories! You can give me a new installment every week, like a soap opera." "There's a place!—¡Tres Señoritas!" "Yeah, thanks! I missed it. I was on automatic." I parked and we went inside to continue our discussion over lunch. I asked whether she'd got around to telling Jason she still wanted to tie him up, and she said she had. She'd even reminded him what he said way back when. His answer wasn't encouraging. "I guess what I meant was that I can relate to it as a fantasy, but it's not something I'd want to do in real life...." He went on, expounding the distinction as though he'd just invented it. When he thought Lisa had been lectured to distraction, he reached for his newspaper. "I want to tie you up in real life," she said. "I couldn't. I'd be too self-conscious." "Of course he'd be too self-conscious!" I said, interrupting Lisa's narrative. "That's the whole idea!" I gave her a crash course in suggestion and encouraged her to raise the issue again. "Then, when he refuses, tell him, 'You'll agree to it eventually.' Tell him he'll like it, too. If you have to, tell him that if you get frustrated enough, you'll refuse to make love with him at all until he agrees. And if he tells you he'll be too self-conscious, tell him, "Mm-hm! And I'll get to see just how self-conscious!' That'll set him fantasizing!" Lisa was staring at me. I realized I'd been ranting and decided to ham it up even further. "Gung ho!" I almost shouted. She took a quick look around to see what kind of attention I'd attracted, then burst out laughing. By the following Wednesday, Lisa was on strike. She had put my advice into practice Friday evening. Jason didn't agree to be tied up, but Lisa was able to launch a steady barrage of suggestion — just what we'd expected. Sunday they took the dog to the park and some man started feeding it treats out of a bag attached to his wheelchair. Lisa exchanged some idle chatter with him, then led the dog back to Jason, who did his usual. "He may be paranoid," I said, sitting with Lisa in Tres Señoritas, "but at least he's an equal-opportunity paranoid. The wheelchair didn't make a bit of difference, did it?" "I sure would like to write that man's story. His bag is covered with campaign ribbons and medals, and his eyes look like he's been through about sixty lifetimes. An interview would be worth eight hundred dollars, easy — maybe even a couple of thousand." "Did you tell Jason that?" "Boom! His answer was, 'And what would he get out of it? You?' That's what did it, really. I called him on it. I told him, 'That's not a real question. You said that just to hurt me.'" "Good for you! How did he take it?" "He pretended not to hear it. He said, 'Look, I told you before, I don't want you flirting.' So I said I told him before, I never flirt. I talk with people sometimes, and half the people in the world are male, so yes, I talk with a man now and then. If I don't talk with a man for a while, he starts getting suspicious of the women I talk with. But I told him that's not the point. I said, 'You said what you did just to hurt me.' "He said he never says anything just to hurt me, so I repeated his exact words and asked what else he could have meant, and he said the same thing as before — that he doesn't want me flirting — so we went round again. Then I tried a third time and he snapped —'Why don't you just lay off?' So I said, 'I'll lay off as long as you like, but we will have to deal with this eventually. I'm not going to do like usual and pretend everything's all right when I know you're trying to hurt me.' And George, I've been as stubborn as I promised. I've been sleeping on the sofa for three nights." "How does Jason take that?" "He thinks it's a big joke. His idea of a good marriage is, we don't have sex with other people and we don't look like we might be thinking about it. If we don't have sex with each other, no problem!— just so we don't do it with anyone else. If we don't talk, that's no problem either. He should have gone to India and married a tree." "Did he tell you that's how he sees it?" "No, but it's obvious." "Did you tell him that's how he sees it?" "No." "About that thing he said to hurt you — and I agree, he did say it just to hurt you — what do you want him to do? It sounds like you want him to admit he said it to hurt you, acknowledge that it was wrong of him, and agree to some rules of decency to protect you from having the same thing happen again. Is that pretty much it?" "Yes!" "Did you tell Jason that that's what you want?" "What could he think I want?" "Maybe a promiscuity license. And if he admits that what he said was inappropriate, that entitles you to one." "What!?" "Different people have different styles of arguing. Usually they learn them from their parents and never examine them critically. Some people have a rule that says one person is right about everything and the other is wrong about everything. It's a bad rule, best got rid of, but most people who are attached to it don't even know they believe it, so they're stuck. "Anyway, from Jason's point of view, the two of you were talking about whether you ought to be promiscuous.—" "We were talking about an article I could have written." "That's true from your point of view, but Jason is what's called insanely jealous. That's not an empty phrase. It means he's jealous to such a degree that it's obvious to the casual observer that his perceptions are out of line with reality. But from that insane point of view, you were demanding the right to be promiscuous." Lisa looked thoroughly bewildered. "He didn't believe you wanted to write an article. He thought it was just an excuse to get some time alone with that man. He probably thought you wanted to have sex with him; but if he didn't, he thought it was the thin end of the wedge — interview the one man so that when another comes along who really turns you on, the precedent will have been set and you'll be able to sneak off with him under the pretext of another interview. "Now add to that the rule that one person has to be completely right and the other has to be completely wrong. If you say he was wrong to interject a remark that was intended to hurt you, it follows that his entire position is wrong and you're entitled to be promiscuous." "But that's crazy!" "Precisely. Think about that box in the basement — all the planning that went into it, sneaking it past you, the work of installing it in secret, slinking down there every day or two to find out what you've been up to on the telephone. A sane person doesn't do that. He's crazy. "What I think you ought to do is sit him down, tell him it's okay that he wants you to be faithful, and then explain that you see that attack of his as a completely separate issue — one that needs to be resolved." "What good will it do? He'll only accuse me of infidelity again and say he doesn't want me flirting." "He probably will. When he does, keep your cool. Tell him you understand. Tell him you agree with him — as far as you do agree with him — but don't tell him where you disagree. Tell him it's okay that he wants you to be faithful; tell him you know you should be faithful; tell him you have been faithful. Don't tell him he's being unreasonable, at least while the matter of the verbal attack is still pending, and certainly don't tell him you can be trusted to be faithful." "What? Why not?" "Because he has the delusion that you can't be trusted, and confronting a delusion directly is a strategy that always fails. I learned that from a friend of mine who's a shrink. I've tested it on the few real nuts I've met since, and it's true. "You might also want to lead him into an examination of his belief that one person is completely right and the other is completely wrong. Maybe he'll drop it and you'll be able to settle your differences more easily in the future. Another thing you might want to examine is the idea that arguments can be won. They can't, you know. It doesn't matter whether you win and he loses or he wins and you lose; your relationship is that much weaker as a result. "Then there's this question of what it means to be married. Does he really believe that forsaking all others is the essence of marriage, and love, honor and cherish is a bunch of empty fluff? It's possible, but I'd be surprised; and you seem a little bitter about it, so it'd be a good idea for the two of you to talk about it. As the saying goes, It ain't the things you don't know, what gets you into trouble; it's the things you know for sure, what ain't so. "There's a couple more things to think about, that have to do with your offer to tie him up. Like, one of the reasons this dispute may have dragged on so long is that he's afraid when it's over, the first thing you're going to want to do is tie him up. It might help to start your discussion by telling him you miss your normal lovemaking and want to get back to it, but first you need to work out the issue of his verbal abuse. Then he won't worry that as soon as the problem's been dealt with, you're going to do something terrible to him. That approach also helps convince him that you haven't been getting your sexual needs met somewhere else. "And one of Jason's problems with letting you tie him up now is undoubtedly that he's worried about the box. If the key is hidden, he might be paranoid enough to think you're going to torture him into telling you where. If he carries it around, which is more likely, he probably thinks the first thing you're going to do when you tie him up is look for the key and use it." "I already know he doesn't carry it around. I went through his pockets while he was in the shower Thursday and Friday, and tried all the keys. None of them fit." "Then it's hid. It doesn't really matter." "I guess not. Either way, he'll never let me tie him up." "There are a couple of things you can do. One is, you can make a date with him in advance and spend an hour or two beforehand lying in bed reading or watching television — maybe even take the dog for a walk. That way you give him a chance to set up whatever evasion he thinks is necessary — like maybe clear out the box and leave it open — so he won't have that particular worry. Another way to get around it is take a weekend off and stay in a motel." Lisa was wearing a look of utter astonishment. I turned my attention to my plate and we ate in silence for a while. I expected her to say, It takes one to know one, but she didn't. "What's the use of tying him up if there's nothing I can do about his jealousy?" "It's a fun thing to do. You said it's one of your fantasies, and Jason would probably enjoy it too. That's enough of a reason right there. Besides, the love slave trip might be one of the few things you can do about his jealousy." "But you said he's convinced I want to be unfaithful, and I shouldn't confront his delusion." "Right! But the love slave trip doesn't confront his delusion; it bypasses it. First, there's what I told you last week: Being tied up gets him used to trusting you. Being your love slave gets him used to trusting you. At some point he realizes he's so much in love that even if you told him you were having an affair, he'd have to accept it. "But there's something else, and it has to do with his view of the nature of the sexual experience. Right now, to him, sex means fucking — missionary style — and he assumes that's what it means to everyone. He sees missionary sex as a transaction in which a man claims possession of a woman, and the woman gets bonded to him as a kind of appendage. If you have a sexual interest in another man, the natural thing for you to do is let him fuck you, and then he'll be the man who owns you, instead of Jason, and you won't be able to help but steal Jason's money to pay for his cocaine — not to mention that you'll be unspeakably defiled with enemy secretions. "Okay. You start tying Jason up and eventually you get into the love slave trip, and now your lovemaking is different. You have him eat you; you bring him off by hand; maybe you even make him play with himself while you watch and tease him about it. Sometimes you fuck, but it's almost always with you on top. Along the way, you let him know that this style of lovemaking suits you a whole lot better. Maybe it doesn't, really, but you tell him anyway, and you act like it's true, and he believes you — especially since you tried tying him up so early in your relationship. One of the things you do is play games with him, where he has to control himself and he gets punished when he can't — like the one where I tell a man that if he can't keep himself from coming when I play with his cock, I'm going to keep playing with it when he's drained and it gets all sensitive — and you express lots of enthusiasm for the sense of power you get when he always loses. "Now when he sees some guy saying hello to your dog, he doesn't think, That son of a bitch is going to subvert my wife. Instead he thinks, That poor devil! What she'll do to him if he isn't careful! Instead of seeing the man as a competitor, he sees him as a potential victim, and it's hard to be jealous of a victim. He might even develop a degree of pride in your sexual power, so if some man is really attracted to you, you'd be able to tie him up and play my favorite control game with him, and then brag to Jason that you tortured him so severely, he'll never want to see you again." "You are crazy!" "Sure! How else could I understand Jason so well without ever having met him?" *** When I saw Lisa a week later, she and Jason had gone back to their ordinary ways and fucked a couple of times in the missionary position. Lisa had resumed her program of teasing suggestion and Jason had had one more fit of jealousy; mercifully it didn't drag on. We had a pleasant, wide-ranging talk, concentrating mostly on communication styles, hidden assumptions, and the negotiation of ground rules for discussion. Six days later, about two o'clock Tuesday afternoon, Lisa called me at work. "Hello, this is Georgeann." "Hi! It's Lisa. Got a few minutes?" "Lisa! I didn't expect to be hearing from you. How are you? What's happening?" "I found the key and opened the box and the phone isn't tapped, so I figured I'd invite you to dinner this evening and tell you how it went when Jason let me tie him up. I can pick up some comestibles at the shopping center; I want to walk over there anyway to make a copy of the key." "Is Jason out of town?" "Yes, he left yesterday and he's coming back tomorrow evening." "What was in the box?" "Ammunition." "Ammunition?" "Yeah. A dozen boxes of .38 Special, fifty rounds to a box. Nothing exotic — just what he'd normally load in his gun. Oh, yeah!— there is a phone connecter inside, but nothing's plugged into it." "Is that a lot of ammunition?" Considering how much he shoots, I guess so, but not a shocking amount. Maybe it was on sale." On sale? I thought. Maybe in rural Idaho or Texas or some of the other places she used to hang out, but this is Silicon Valley. "I guess it's possible. I do want to hear your story. What time should I be over?" "How about seven? That'll give me time to walk both ways and cook just about everything." "Great! I'll be there. See you then!" "Hasta luego." About six, while I was running a stack of paper through the copy machine, it hit me. "Hey!" I said, when Lisa and I had greeted one another and Blotch was reasonably calm again, "I figured out what the ammunition is for." "Okay, what?" "It's to justify the box." "I don't follow." "It's like this: Jason decides he wants to spy on your phone calls, so he finds an out-of-the-way phone outlet, builds a lockbox around it, puts some recording equipment inside, and whenever it's convenient, he changes the tape and listens to what he's got — on the way to work, maybe in his office, I don't know. Then you start talking about tying him up, and he gets worried it's because you've noticed the box and you want to find out what's inside, but he has just enough grip on reality to know that that's probably not the reason. "He hopes you're going to lose interest, but you don't, and when he sees he's going to have to let you do it, he buys a bunch of ammunition, gets rid of the recording equipment, and puts the ammunition in its place. No loss there — he's been listening to nothing for three weeks, and by now he doesn't even expect to hear anything. "Now if you ask him what's in the box, he can tell you ammunition; and if you ask where the key is, he can tell you that; and if you open the box, you'll see he's telling the truth. And since he's so security-minded, it'll make sense that if he had that much ammunition, he'd want to lock it away so it doesn't blow up if the house catches fire, or fall into the wrong hands. The only thing wrong is that if his purpose was really to secure the ammunition, he wouldn't have built the box around a telephone outlet; he would have taken care to leave it accessible." "Come to think of it, when I opened the box I wouldn't have seen that outlet, except I remembered it was there, so I moved the ammunition to look for it. I'm starting to see what you mean about having to be crazy to understand him." Over dinner, Lisa told me the story of her weekend with Jason. They hadn't fucked since Tuesday, so he was horny and tried initiating sex Friday night. Lisa told him she was going to tie him up — he wasn't going to get into her any other way. They discussed it at length, and he made several attempts to guilt-trip her into giving up again, but she wouldn't crumble and he seemed to understand he'd have to go along. When he chose to go to sleep rather than let her tie him up right then, she decided I'd been right about his wanting to protect the box, so she gave him plenty of room on Saturday, staying as far from the basement as possible to let him make whatever preparations he needed. In the middle of the afternoon, she was sitting in her workspace next door to their bedroom, trying to write a short story. ("I know I'm a little old to be learning such a difficult craft," she'd told me the previous Wednesday, "but I've got plenty of material just because I'm so old. No research.") For two hours the disc player had been shuffling through Jason's collection of albums by his favorite pop sex goddess, presumably getting him in the mood while drowning out the sounds of his subterranean skullduggery. Finally she heard his footsteps nearby. She turned to greet him just has he entered the room. "Come to bed?" he asked. "Want me to tie you up?" "No, but if you really must, I'll let you." She led him into the bedroom, had him strip, tied his wrists to the legs of the bed. "Comfortable?" "Considering." She undressed, lay on him, kissed him. It went better than the first time; at least he didn't set his mouth. "I want you to lick me before I fuck you." "I do that even when you don't tie me up." "I know. It's still what I want." She sat on his face and he ate her. He seemed to get into it, same as always — watching her turn on, watching her come. When she decided it was time to fuck, he was ready. She impaled herself on his cock, leaned forward, kissed him. He looked skeptical, apprehensive. "Don't worry. It's only me, and I love you." She kissed him again. "We'll see how you like this." "I already told you." "Not how you say you like it, how you really like it. I'll know. If it doesn't work for us, we won't do it anymore, but if you come like the big bang, I'm going to make love to you like this every chance I get." She started thrusting her hips, slowly, looking into his eyes, sometimes kissing him. He kept so still, she knew he was trying to resist, but it was no use. The chemistry between them was too strong, her pussy too insistent, his embarrassment too exciting. Soon he was making rasping sounds, his face contorted with lust. Seeing him like that, knowing it was all her doing, made her come. She kept fucking him, riding from one orgasm to the next, until at last he let loose a kind of wail, lifted his hips off the bed, pushed all the way into her, spurted. She sat up on him, pressing him down on the bed, and went to work on his nipples with her fingers. He wailed again and his hips bucked convulsively, making her come once more. "Untie me!" he gasped, even before the spasms of their orgasm had fully subsided. "Please!" She did. Immediately. As soon as his right hand was free, he started tearing at the knot binding his left wrist. When she'd untied the lower ends of both bonds, she asked, "Are you okay?" "That's too scary. I don't want to do it anymore." She lay down next to him and waited while he finished untying his wrists. "How are you now?" "I'll live." "Of course you'll live, silly. Would you like to snuggle?" They did. His heart was beating way too fast. She waited some more. "That was the big bang! I've never felt you come like that. Thanks for letting me be part of it. It was beautiful." "It was scary." "Really? How?" "I can't explain it." "You'll get used to it." "No I won't. I want us to make love like normal people, not like the psychopaths I read about in the newspaper." "Psychopaths don't make love. Maybe they go through the motions, but they don't feel what we do. That's what makes them psychopaths." He lay quiet for a moment, then held her tight. "I love you," he said. His voice was shaking. "Trust me too?" "I'm doing the best I can." "I know. It's okay. I love you." I offered Lisa my congratulations on the great start she'd made, and on the brilliant way she'd lured Jason into struggling to control his responses without threatening him beyond his severely limited tolerance. What she'd done was take the common-sense approach to any new experience (try it once, then do it again only if you like it) and reframe it as a control game (if this makes you come really hard, you're going to have to let me do more of it). It was so obvious that the game was nothing more than a rewording of the common-sense approach to any new experience, Jason couldn't reasonably object. If he freaked, Lisa could simply point out that what she'd told him is the common-sense approach to any new experience, no more menacing than, Taste this sliver of cake, and if you like it, I'll give you more. When he cooperated, Lisa accomplished three things. First, she got Jason used to control games. On subsequent occasions, both the control required and the consequences of failure could be escalated until the games were like mine or worse. Second, when Jason started losing control, he couldn't help but be embarrassed. His embarrassment fed his arousal, and he fell into the Loop. The Loop is addictive, so when he was horny again, he'd want more. Third, Jason's attempt at control was just successful enough that he didn't come until his sexual tension had built to where his orgasm was truly overwhelming. As Lisa had warned when she set up the game, the intensity of his orgasm would later justify her insistence on tying him up again. And though he didn't realize it while he was still so shaken, he'd soon find himself craving orgasms of that intensity. To get them, he'd have to give Lisa control of his sexuality. I myself had never thought of manufacturing a control game out of nothing at all. I would have dismissed the possibility on the grounds that no man could take such a game seriously. Jason, though, was so frightened of losing control that he did take it seriously — at least on an emotional level, which is where it really matters. Lisa chose the game perfectly. At that point in their relationship, Jason couldn't handle the threat of a significant penalty for losing; a heavier game might have left him unable to trust Lisa further. I also told Lisa how wise she'd been to refrain from discussing their future lovemaking while Jason was satiated. Negotiations would go much better when he was horny and he'd spent some time fantasizing the pleasures of being dominated. Lisa told me that indeed they hadn't discussed it further until the eve of Jason's departure. Sunday had been a good day for them. A persistent drizzle kept Jason indoors while Lisa took the dog on a series of brisk walks around the neighborhood, undisturbed by admirers. When they went to bed, Jason started into his mating ritual. Lisa cooperated until he moved to climb on top of her. "I really ought to tie you up again." "No! I don't like it!" "Yes you do. I saw how it made you come and I'm going to keep doing it. I can be very stubborn." "I don't want to argue. I'm not going to see you for three days. Can't we make love normally? Talk about your need for perversion when I get back?" "No! I don't like making love normally!" "You seemed to, for over a year." "I love you, and you raised such a ruckus the first time I tied you up, I thought you really didn't like it, so I reconciled myself to giving it up so I could have you. Now I know you do like it, but you just don't want to admit it. Since we both like it, I'm going to see that we do it. I like it much better than missionary sex." While he was still trying to figure out what to say, she wrestled her way on top of him. "I'll tell you what. We'll pretend you're tied up this time. We'll do it for real when you get back from your trip." She held his forearms against the bed and kissed him. She had to release him to get his cock into her, but she pinned him down — pretended to, anyway — all through their fuck. She could see he had mixed emotions, at least until he came; then he was blown away again — not like when he'd been tied down, but definitely second place. Lisa was more determined than ever to make Jason her slave. It would take time and effort, she knew, but it was worth it. She really preferred the kind of lovemaking they'd got into over the weekend; her enthusiasm wasn't just put on for Jason's benefit. Besides, she needed a handle on his jealousy. We agreed there was no further need for me to pick her up for lunch on Wednesdays; we could go back to talking on the phone. Neither of us expected Jason to bug the line again, but Lisa planned to check the box every morning. Over the next few months, Lisa steadily increased her sexual control over Jason, raising the stakes of their games and teasing him incessantly. He became hopelessly addicted. She didn't try to deal with his jealousy until her control was solid. Then she told him that what he'd been doing was unacceptable and warned him he'd be punished unless he stopped. He said he still didn't like her flirting, but he promised he'd try to control himself. He knew what Lisa could do and how much he needed her, so he felt he had no choice. At first he didn't succeed very well. Whenever he witnessed one of her inconsequential little encounters, he managed to convince himself there was something so outrageous about it, something so different from any interaction he'd observed before, that it justified an exception to his resolve. Lisa never agreed, and Jason wound up taking a great deal of punishment. Forced abstinence seemed to hurt him the most; Jason had changed radically since the days when he didn't care if Lisa spent three nights sleeping in the living room. When he couldn't have her, he became so desperate, he'd beg just to be allowed to lick her pussy. Despite the punishment, Jason's thinking didn't seem to be changing in the way I'd so optimistically predicted, so Lisa decided to give it a nudge. On the particular day she chose, their car had been first in line to use a section of road narrowed to a single lane by repaving, and Jason was having a fit because the flagman had struck up a conversation with Lisa. "What are you worried about?" she asked. "Do you think he's going to invite me to tie him up, and I'll decide I like torturing him better than you?" He was so impressed, he stopped talking and thought about it (she knew him well enough to tell the difference between thinking and sulking). Then, over the next few weeks, his displays of jealousy decreased in intensity. He didn't really make an honest effort to eliminate them; what he did was figure out just how much displeasure he could express without being punished. When Lisa talked with another man, he'd go exactly that far and no further. Lisa knew what he was doing, but she left the threshold where it was; she figured he needed a safety valve and she preferred not to be punishing him. I wish I could report an equally happy resolution to the matter of Lisa's incredible shrinking world, but I can't. Even though she'd told me about most of the individual cuts, Lisa never acknowledged that her world had in fact been shrunk — perhaps not even to herself. I always felt the subject was taboo, so I never mentioned it. When last I saw her, more than a year after Jason's enslavement, her world was only slightly larger than it had been the day before he tapped the phone. The dog continued to hold her prisoner. She wouldn't leave it home alone for more than four hours, she wouldn't let anyone else watch it, and the places she wouldn't take it were coincidentally the places Jason never wanted her to go. On the plus side, Jason had bought a new car and Lisa had been assertive enough to express her displeasure with the hardships she'd endured since selling the camper van. She asked him not to trade his old one, but instead hold on to it for her use. He agreed. He kept it filled with gas too. And to be sure she never ran out, he looked at the odometer every day or two. Whenever he noticed that it had been driven more than a couple of miles, he questioned her, so she never forgot how crazy he was. Still, emergency trips to the store were no longer difficult and she was able to use the public library. Once she even met me for lunch near my office. She didn't go back to writing magazine articles even though the car would have made research easier; instead she continued her experiments with the short story and eventually sold a couple. Her writing kept her busy and she was happy to be published again, but her income barely covered supplies. Though she'd never expected to wind up being supported by a husband, she wasn't unhappy with the way things had turned out, and Jason seemed to prefer it too. She probably never would have said anything about expecting to pay her own way, except that she always had, and she thought it was what Jason wanted to hear at the beginning of their relationship. Once I got brave and asked her whether she still had any contact with Nancy and Dan. "Not in a long time," she said. "I've been neglecting them terribly." Lisa's power over Jason was great indeed, but she used it sparingly, only for things that were really important to her. She knew — wrongly and pre-consciously, I suspect — that her marriage depended on her willingness to live in a shrunken world. And she adapted. She insisted on her own style of communication, but she accepted the necessity of dropping all her friends and making no new ones. She insisted on having access to a car, but she accepted the severe limits Jason placed on its use, even convincing herself that his odometer inspections were nothing worse than an endearing quirk. Could Lisa have regained the freedom she'd enjoyed at thirty without losing Jason? Probably most of it, but I don't think she wanted to. The only credible explanation for Lisa's train wreck is that her life was scripted, much as Ralph's was. If she lived to forty, she was required to marry into a shrunken world, and she recognized Jason as well-suited to the complementary role. There turned out to be a few burrs in the fit, and Lisa used the techniques of female domination to file them down. I count this among my vicarious successes, but I wish I could have freed Lisa from her script rather than just helping smooth the burrs. Unfortunately that's not what she wanted, and I certainly wasn't going to take it upon myself to force freedom down her throat. Kathie, another woman with a jealous husband, was something else. I'd met her a decade earlier, when I took a job with the company she worked for. During my first week, I saw her only in passing — a lanky figure, six foot two, large hands and feet, long straight hair, pretty face, no makeup, faint scars; T-shirts, faded jeans, work boots, a tool kit hanging from a men's wide leather belt. Her only concession to convention was an unneeded bra. I asked about her and learned that she was the person who kept all the office equipment running — computers, printers, copiers, everything. The company had a lot of it for those days, and Kathie was something of a legend. Most of the machines were intended to work together, and there had been a time when almost none of them would even work separately. They'd been bought from different vendors, and every service call turned into a finger- pointing contest; it took days to get anything fixed, and the repairs didn't last. Kathie asked for the opportunity to set things right, and the head honcho said yes. Contrary to expectations, she succeeded, and succeeded quickly. Now all the machinery was hers, and she took care of it without help. On Tuesday of my second week, a few minutes after eleven, my office mate headed for the men's room as was his custom. Kathie walked in ten seconds behind him and closed the door. "Do you party?" "I smoke grass when I get the chance, but that's about all." "That's what I got. You want to go out at lunchtime and catch a buzz?" "Sure! Just come get me when you're ready." And so we became drinking buddies, with an improvement on the drinking. We'd go out two or three times a week, pick up sandwiches and sodas, then drive someplace where no one could see us (Kathie knew a dozen good hideouts near the office) and eat our sandwiches, smoke a couple of joints, and drink the sodas. When we'd been out about fifty minutes, we'd drive back to the office and resume our duties. Every couple of weeks I'd buy an ounce from her. I used most of it with Matt and our friends, but I carried one joint back to work each day so I could share it with Kathie and not be a mooch. As we ate and smoked, week after week, Kathie told me about the world in which she lived — a world completely alien to me. I picked up quite an education, and it struck me more than odd — spiritually significant, I've often thought — that the reason all this fascinating knowledge came my way was that I was in the habit of wearing jeans and T-shirts, and "looked like I party." Kathie grew up fighting on the streets of Philadelphia and fled west by thumb at the age of seventeen, living on money she'd made selling dope. Her first week in San Francisco, she met Rick, then twenty-two, also a dope dealer. She became his live-in lover the same day. Rick had a day job in a home-improvement chain store, and many of the people who bought drugs from him lived in Silicon Valley, so when the chain opened a new store here, he applied for a position as manager of the automotive department and got it. He moved south, taking Kathie, whom he had wed five months earlier, and their three-month-old son, Sean. They settled in the sort of seedy area where endless comings and goings would be well tolerated. Kathie, who hated pretense and saw it everywhere, was comfortable there and got along well with her new neighbors. A few of them seemed trustworthy and were willing to take care of Sean for a reasonable fee, so Kathie decided to get a job. She figured office work would bring her in contact with people who needed a reliable source of dope, and indeed it did. She also found that she enjoyed the novelty of getting a paycheck. By the time we met, though, her main reason for working was that she liked the responsibility. She'd started out doing clerical work, but it was too easy for her and she got through it so fast that she was always left with spare time, which she contrived to spend with the techies. There was always at least one who was willing to teach her some of his skills and jargon, and she wound up learning a great deal about the workings of small computers and other office machinery. After changing jobs a few times, mainly to expand her drug clientele, she found her niche, and there she intended to stay. She could dress and act as she pleased, and she was convinced that no other company would have her unless she agreed to become a phony. Over the years — Sean was nine now — Rick had become increasingly jealous. He suspected and hated every man with whom Kathie worked. He had never met one, but no matter. It was a class war thing, really — the same hostility Kathie felt toward women who wore conventional business attire — but it was stronger, and it came out as jealousy vented in Kathie's direction. It was a royal pain (in Kathie's words), especially since she wasn't at all inclined to stray and Rick had no evidence on which to base his suspicions. Over lunch she would tell me the stories. I remember one that said it all: Kathie was in the habit of showering before work. Almost every morning, Rick would come into the bathroom and say something like, "Get your pussy all scrubbed up, now, so you'll be all nice and sweet for Jim and Brian and Sergei. You got a big day of whoring coming up." In the evening, he'd follow up with more of the same. It was crude, it was ugly, it was pointless. Unlike Jason, Rick never hinted that Kathie might pacify him by doing things differently. He was insecure, and he was going to take it out on Kathie, and that's all there was to it. In response to Kathie's complaints, I offered first sympathy, then my usual prescription. Though I knew less about female domination at thirty than at forty, I taught Kathie more than Lisa, simply because Kathie and I spent so much time together. Kathie usually listened with interest, interjecting questions and comments that reflected a high degree of understanding, but sometimes she became irritated by the suspicion that my techniques were based on an affectation of femininity rather than on femininity itself. Affectation was anathema to her. I did my best to dispel her discomfort, but it returned from time to time, and even when she was most at ease with my advice, she seemed disinclined to take it. Kathie might have tolerated Rick's abuse forever, but she got word he was having an affair with a woman at the store, name of Carol. The rumor was, Rick and Carol were getting together whenever they could, but they had a standing date for Wednesday evenings. Kathie believed it. Rick had been out every Wednesday for three months. He'd accounted for the time by saying he was delivering drugs, and indeed he might have been, but not for as many hours as he was gone. The next Wednesday evening, Kathie came home to Sean and fixed three hamburgers. Kathie and Sean started on two, and Rick arrived while they were still eating and had the other. As soon as they were done, Sean left to visit a friend; then Rick undressed and went into the shower. When he came out, he handed Kathie her evening ration of abuse. "You have fun with the jokers at work? Get yourself knocked up yet?" While he was rummaging for clean clothes, Kathie came up behind him, reached her right hand between his legs, and grabbed him by the testicles. She squeezed just a little. "No! Don't!" "Real slow now, walk over to the bed. And don't even think about getting loose." When he got to the bed, she changed hands so she was holding him from the front. Then, to be sure, she brought her right hand around so she had one testicle in each hand. "Okay, turn around and sit down." He did. She knelt on the floor between his legs. "Now move back so you're lying down. Keep going till your head is all the way to the edge of the bed." She liked the way he followed her orders. Even more, she liked not having to take his usual sarcasm. "Good!" she said when he'd complied. He was lying on his back with his legs apart, knees bent, feet flat on the bed with his toes at the edge. She was kneeling on the floor between his legs, a hand wrapped around each testicle. "Put your pillow under your head. I want you to look at me when I talk to you." He did. "I'm sick of taking all your shit! Your balls are mine, and they're going to be mine! And you're going to show me some respect! Am I right?" "All the way, Kathie! Sure!" "You're going to stop accusing me of screwing around at work. Is that right?" "I didn't accuse you. I just asked, because I know everybody wants you and I get worried." She tightened her grip. "Aagh! Okay, I'll stop!" She released the pressure. "And you're going to be my sex slave, too, aren't you? And do everything I say." "Yes." "Good! You can start by jerking off! Right now!" "I can't! Not with you holding on to me like this!" She squeezed hard. He doubled over on his side with a loud scream, kicking her in the head. She didn't let it bother her, or so she said. "I'll squeeze 'em till they pop, you fuckin' bastard! You do everything I say, or your voice is going to be higher than mine!" "Okay," he whimpered. She relaxed her grip again. "Now, slow! Get back like you were! I'll give you a minute to catch your breath 'cause I'm such a nice person — but no more shit or I'll fix you good!" He rolled onto his back. She waited until he'd relaxed as much as he was going to. "Here, I'll even get you started." She leaned over and took his cock in her mouth, using her tongue to stimulate the head. When she was satisfied with the result, she let go. "Even like this, you can't help turning on to me. Get started before I do something that hurts!" He did it. "Embarrassing, isn't it?" she teased as he came. When it was over he cried. "I'm going to let you go, but don't try anything or you'll really be sorry! Don't ever talk to me like you've been, either, or think you're going to get out of being my sex slave, because if you do, you're going to get hurt real bad! Understand?" "I didn't mean nothin'," he sobbed. She let go and he turned on his side with his knees drawn up, still crying. She went out. When she returned, he was gone; Sean was back. After a few minutes, the boy went to bed; then she did. Still later, Rick came in, lay down next to her, and fell asleep. The next morning was like any other, except there was none of Rick's usual sarcasm. "Weren't you worried what he might do later?" I asked. "No, he knows I can handle him. Back when Sean was in first grade he tried something. Got mad and hit me. Well, there was this lamp? on the table? made out of clay? with a lampshade?" "Yeah?" "Well, I picked it up and broke it over his head. Yeah. Blood everywhere. Then I drove him to the emergency room to get sewed up. That's the last time he ever tried anything." "Oh." "Yeah, I got three inches on him too. I'll be okay." The following Saturday afternoon, Sean went out with his friends, leaving Kathie and Rick alone. She sneaked up on him again and caught him in a hammerlock, then fastened his hands behind him with a pair of handcuffs she'd borrowed. "What do you want? I didn't do nothin'," he whined. "You're still my sex slave, remember?" "Yeah, okay." "I like when you can't help turning on to me, so I'm going to make it happen again." "I wouldn't have tried to stop you. What do you need the handcuffs for?" "Oh, I think you would have tried to stop me. Because I'm going to lay you down and fuck you, and if you come before I say, I'm going to shave off all the hair you've got, from your waist to your knees." "No! Please!" She backed him up to the bed and pushed him down. He started crying again. She could imagine why, but she didn't say anything. She worked his jeans off, then got undressed, ate him until he was hard, and fucked him. I'd told her what to expect, but she was still surprised by the intensity of his orgasm. "I really move you, huh? Maybe it's even worth losing your hair for." She climbed off him and got a pot of warm water, some shaving cream, a couple of disposable razors, a towel and a washcloth; then she cleaned him up and shaved him. Finally she rolled him over and undid the handcuffs. She felt bad about the bruises — she hadn't thought about that — but she knew that what she'd done was necessary. During the following week, she heard that Rick and Carol had had a couple of big fights and broken up. Rick seemed distracted for a while, but continued to treat Kathie respectfully. In no time at all, their sexual relationship settled back to its former tedium. Kathie never again reminded Rick that he was her slave, nor did she tease him anymore. She acted as if nothing had happened, and so did he. It makes sense, in a way. Kathie was never really comfortable with sexual intimacy. She tried my techniques only because they promised to end Rick's affair and stop his abuse. When that had been accomplished, Kathie's new role became a liability. A dominatrix has to talk to her slave, especially about sex, and Kathie didn't want to do that. She wanted a relationship in which sex would just happen — quietly, mechanically and without emotion — often enough so she wouldn't have to think about it. She didn't want to get horny and be distracted from the things that were important to her, and she certainly didn't want to fall in love and get pulled into a truly intimate relationship with its attendant risks. Indeed she had many of the attitudes toward marital sex for which men are notorious. Rick had always suited her perfectly, satisfying her physical needs without getting really close, and she intended to let him continue. The techniques Kathie used during her four-day career as a dominatrix are obviously quite different from mine, and I don't recommend them. If the average woman were to do what Kathie did, she'd get killed, beat up, or arrested for domestic battery. Kathie's position was highly unusual. She wasn't going to get beat up because Rick knew she could outfight him. She wasn't going to get killed or arrested because Rick was a professional criminal and had fallen into the habit of evaluating every course of action in terms of its potential for attracting the attention of the police. Most men don't operate under such constraints, and even some who aren't brutes will turn violent after a stunt like Kathie's. But though Kathie's position was highly unusual, it's not unique. I'm sure there are other women who can use her techniques, who can succeed with her techniques, who can succeed only with her techniques, who need her techniques. For what it's worth. *** Chapter 18, In which we contemplate some insurmountable obstacles Not every man is a good candidate for female domination, nor is every difficulty amenable to its beneficial effects. Let's look at some problems we can't solve, so that we'll know better than to try. Retarded Ejaculation Any man in sound physical condition can masturbate to climax in just a couple of minutes when he's alone, but a few — a very few — find it difficult to reach orgasm with a partner. These men are said to suffer from retarded ejaculation. The details vary. Most have difficulty with one particular mode of stimulation — vaginal, oral or manual. Some can't come at all unless they're alone; others can, but take inordinately long. There are two head trips that underlie retarded ejaculation; any given sufferer may be troubled by either or both. In one, the man perceives ejaculation as a defilement, usually of himself, sometimes of his partner. Men who worry about self-defilement see women as dirty. They won't perform cunnilingus and are likely to vomit if forced into it. Their reluctance to ejaculate is most pronounced during vaginal intercourse. Men who worry about defiling their partners perceive themselves as dirty; generally they have more difficulty with fellatio than with vaginal intercourse and more difficulty with vaginal intercourse than with manual stimulation, though it's not readily apparent how much difficulty they have with fellatio because they won't admit to trying to come in a woman's mouth. It may seem that the Loop ought to be able to coexist with such feelings, even predominate over them, but that's not what happens. Remember, this isn't your average man, but one so disgusted by his own or his partner's genitalia and secretions that his disgust kills his ability to respond even after he's aroused. That's a lot of disgust, and it doesn't leave much room in his head for anything else. Besides, ordinary arousal is half the Loop, so anything that inhibits it will shut down the Loop as a whole, even if the other half — embarrassment — is fed at the same time. The other possible head trip may be a surprise. The man can't come because he's too embarrassed. Really! Some men are like that! Instead of being turned on by the embarrassment of being unable to control their arousal, they're embarrassed into unresponsiveness, just by the awareness that a woman is present. Such a man can reach orgasm with a partner only by tuning her out — if indeed he can reach orgasm with a partner at all. Obviously you can't lead him into the Loop. An attempt to do so will not only fail, it will make his problem more severe; and the damage will persist. Retarded ejaculation is rare. If you're young and unmarried, and change partners with ordinary frequency, you have about as much chance of encountering a case of retarded ejaculation as of winning the Utah State Lottery. That doesn't help, though, if you're married to a man who suffers from it. If the condition is already part of your life, that's the reality you have to deal with. My advice is simple. Don't use the techniques in this book on a man who suffers from retarded ejaculation or on a man who has been successfully treated for it. Even if his problem is disgust rather than embarrassment, you'll fail. If his problem is embarrassment, or a combination of embarrassment and disgust, you'll make the condition worse. If he's been successfully treated, you'll trigger a relapse. Because of the high emotional charge associated with the feelings that underlie retarded ejaculation, your partner may be less than truthful if you ask him its cause. He may tell you that the inhibitory processes in his head are different from anything I've described, or that his problem is physical when he knows it isn't. You may then deduce, quite reasonably, that while an attempt to apply my techniques is unlikely to succeed, it can at least do no harm. Don't try anyway. There's a good chance that embarrassment is part of his problem, or even all of it, regardless of what he says. Maybe he's too embarrassed to tell you. Maybe he thinks you'd be offended by his embarrassment because you'd take it as evidence of undeserved distrust. If his parents are religious fanatics, they may have raised him to be so chronically guilty and embarrassed about everything, he isn't even aware that that's what he's feeling. No matter what he says, no matter how much you may like the idea of enslaving him, don't take the chance. You're sure to fail, and even if you might succeed, the risks are too great. Childhood abuse If you try my techniques on a man who was sexually abused as a boy, his reaction is likely to be extreme. In some cases, he'll respond with uncommon enthusiasm. In others things will go just dreadfully. Your efforts may trigger flashbacks, panic and dissociation (a feeling of depersonalization and psychic fragmentation that's difficult to appreciate if you've never experienced it). In the short term, such reactions inhibit your partner's erotic responses. In the long term, they make him uncomfortable with you — wary. Not the sort of thing that builds a pleasant relationship. If you have an intimate knowledge of your man's history, you can judge whether it includes anything that will make for a bad reaction. The phrase sexual abuse by itself doesn't mean much. The prevention, detection and prosecution of child sexual abuse, and the repair of its damages, have become such a growth industry, it now seems everyone is a survivor of abuse; if your partner is an exception, there's a licensed professional somewhere who, for a sufficient fee, will open up his head and implant the necessary memories. I'm not going to argue this. I'm outnumbered and outgunned, and I've already made enough enemies by saying that gentle rape happens by mistake, so I'll concede the obviously absurd point that every sexual transaction involving a person under the age of eighteen has a victim and a perpetrator, and I'll go on from there to tell you what kind of childhood sexual abuse spells trouble. Not what happened to Trespassers William alongside Beth's pool. Not the masturbation or fellation of a nine-month-old baby by his mother to help him fall asleep. Not the enticement of a ten-year-old boy into a game of strip poker with his sixteen-year-old babysitter. The abuse that causes real damage is that which creates an irreconcilable conflict in the victim's view of the world — abuse in which an authority figure secretly and coercively does something that, according to the belief system that that authority figure has always seemed to uphold, must never be permitted to occur. Nadine is a single mother who lives alone with her nine- year-old son, Jeff. She's kept her body hidden from him for the past six years and answered his few questions about sex so minimally and with such obvious discomfort that he's stopped asking. She's repeatedly cautioned him about the evils of alcohol and warned him against the potentially erratic behavior of people who use it. He's seen and smelled a few drunks himself, so he's pretty well convinced. Then one evening Nadine goes out on a date, comes home drunk and alone, and forces Jeff to eat her. It becomes a pattern repeated six more times over a period of fourteen months. If you try to enslave Jeff (years later of course), he'll freak out terribly. Even if you don't try to enslave him — even if you let him have complete control of your sexual relationship — he'll dissociate and relive his abuse at least occasionally while making love to you, though he'll manage to keep it to himself as the traditional male role requires. If your partner was the victim of heavy sexual abuse as a child, I'd advise against trying to enslave him. I'd even advise against tying him up. If he was the victim of relatively light abuse, handle him with care. Be alert to signs of psychological pain and be ready to offer aid and comfort as needed. Unfortunately I can't give you a rigorous set of rules for recognizing flashbacks and dissociation, especially when they're not severe. A man's behavior changes when he's sexually excited; it changes differently when he's tied up; it changes still differently when he's tied up and sexually excited at the same time; and it changes differently again when on top of all that, he has to struggle to control his responses. If you put a man through that much, and it's all new, it's unlikely that you'll suddenly be struck by the clear realization that, Hey! That's not embarrassment I'm seeing! That's not the outward manifestation of a struggle for control! He's dissociating! Still, if the two of you have become so intimate that you know he has a history of abuse, you'll also know him well enough to tell if he's having a rough time. This brings us round to look at the problem from the other end. If your relationship is new, you don't know your lover's history, nor do you know him well enough to identify dissociation or a flashback before it becomes severe. If he was badly abused, your first inkling comes when you've tied him up and laid some heavy trip on him, and you suddenly find yourself confronted with a full- scale psychiatric emergency. He may become sexually unresponsive, shake, scream, cry, vomit, speak as though he were a child, address a person who isn't there, talk to you as though you were someone else, or refer to events that aren't taking place as though they were. These symptoms can occur in any combination. Shaking and crying, of course, usually express feelings within the normal range (given the intensity of the experience you're creating) and therefore don't signify by themselves, and screaming is a common response to sensory overload, but a major freak-out looks so much like a major freak-out that you won't have to break it into its elements. If you're faced with such an emergency, you have to deal with it. The first thing to do if your partner is tied in place is release him. If he's tied so he's lying on his back and he vomits, you must release him immediately lest he choke. Under less pressing circumstances, you'll want to consider whether he's dangerous. If you're scared of him, get help. Most major psychiatric hospitals have mobile teams they'll dispatch on request, often without charge, and the members of the team are bound by the ethics of their profession to keep quiet about what they see. If you're going to get help, do it right away. If you don't need help — and normally you won't — release your partner. Do that right away. If you find yourself waiting to see what develops, neither calling for help nor releasing your partner, you're making a big mistake. Do one or the other, or things will get much worse. Once your partner is free, take care of him. Comfort him. Calm him. Unless it's absolutely necessary, don't try to explore the memories you've uncovered. Those can be dealt with another time — if indeed they're to be dealt with at all (it's properly his choice). Remind him that you're you, rather than some ghost from his past. Remind him — show him — that you can be trusted, that you care about him. Unless it's absolutely necessary? Why would an exploration of his memories be necessary? I don't want to get into that! If he's stuck in a flashback, reliving some past atrocity, you may have to talk him through it. How old are you? Where are you? Who are you with?— that kind of thing. Nightmares like this don't happen often, but they do happen. Before you try to enslave a man — before you even tie him up — think about how you would handle such a scene if it arose. If you don't like your partner enough — don't care about him enough — to help him through it, and help him lovingly, even when he's just thrown up on your bed, you might not want to risk creating the situation. Sex role insecurity When we discussed brutes, we noted that many of them are insecure about their masculinity. Indeed they all are, except perhaps a few psychopaths whose violence is cold- blooded. The converse isn't true. There are plenty of men who are insecure about their masculinity without being brutes. They've rejected violence but still see their gender identity as inextricably linked to one or more elements of the traditional male role (drive the car, pay the tab, light the charcoal — that kind of thing). The link, of course, is arbitrary and delusional, and the role elements by which these men identify themselves as male have nothing to do with masculinity per se, but telling them is useless. The risk in such insecurity is that if you threaten enough role elements to which your partner is attached, or even just one that he sees as critical, he may find the situation intolerable and leave. When you undertake to enslave your partner, you threaten at least one element of the traditional male role. Tradition says it's the male who initiates and controls all sexual encounters, and you'll be saying something different. Your partner may have no problem with this even if he's insecure about his masculinity. He may be attached to other elements of the traditional male role but not sexual leadership. If such is the case, you'll run afoul of his insecurities only if you try to use your sexual power to pry him loose of his attachments. (If your partner is attached only to elements of the traditional male role that you have no inclination to threaten, then for purposes of your relationship he's functionally equivalent to a man who is secure in his masculinity, no matter how insecure he may in fact be.) Usually though, if a man has insecurities, you'll bring them to the fore by seizing control of his sexuality, and this is what most often drives a man away when a woman introduces female domination into an uncommitted relationship. A committed relationship is hard to walk away from, but an exceptionally insecure man who feels that his masculinity is threatened may leave anyway. I've never known a marriage to break up over a woman's attempt to enslave her husband when sexual control was the only element of the traditional male role she took from him, but I do have a sad story to tell, and it doesn't even include an attempt at enslavement. When Joanne married Paul, she was working as an elementary school teacher and he was working as a physicist in a research lab, as he has ever since. A few months before their son Kevin was born, Joanne quit teaching to take care of him. When he was twelve, she decided to go back to work. Rather than teach again, she applied for a job doing product support for a computer company. She'd take phone calls from customers having difficulties, offer advice off the top of her head if she could, and pass the harder problems up the line to the technical heavyweights. She had little relevant experience, but the support manager decided to hire her anyway. She spoke well, she listened well, she had a great deal of native intelligence, and she had the emotional maturity to defuse potential confrontations rather than try to win them. That was eighty percent of the job, and he figured she would soon absorb enough technical knowledge to solve most customer problems without help. She surpassed his expectations, exhibiting an uncanny aptitude for computer technology as well as an uncommon understanding of the customers' needs. After four years she was managing production and earning considerably more than Paul, who could sell his services only to the government and had to take what he was offered. Though Joanne wasn't at all competitive and regarded her earnings as a community resource, Paul found the situation demeaning. He cultivated the delusion that Joanne was always taunting him. When she had to work overtime or travel, she was deserting him. When she tried to plan time alone with him, she was patronizing him. Even when she had their bathroom remodeled, her purpose was to make him feel inadequate for not having done so himself before she went back to work. He stopped initiating sex and rejected her advances with great hostility, accusing her of regarding him as a gigolo, bought and paid for. Like all insecure men, he refused marriage counseling. They had been living in this unhappy state for a year when Joanne first heard about my techniques. As in the case of Nora, I wasn't targeting her; rather I was proselytizing to another friend, Trudy, while Joanne was present, and Joanne tuned in to the possibilities. She remembered that early in their marriage Paul would occasionally bring home some grass for them to smoke, and it always made him horny. Hoping for the same effect, she worked out a plan with Trudy to get Paul stoned while Kevin was off camping. The plan called for Joanne to buy half an ounce of the best and turn it over to Trudy, who would then drop in after dinner, rave about what great stuff she'd got, share some with Joanne and Paul, and leave some more as a present. It went just so. When Trudy left, Joanne rolled a joint, lit it, and followed Paul around, feeding him as many tokes as she could. Soon he lay down on the couch and retreated into a magazine, then into sleep. Joanne, who until then had been thinking in terms of a moderately aggressive seduction, decided to tie him in place. She worried she would wake him, and she had no idea what she would do if that happened, but she went ahead anyway. It turned out she didn't wake him — not when she took of his pants, not when she took off his undershorts, not when she dragged one end of the couch out to the middle of the living room, not even when she rearranged his arms and legs and tied the knots. He wound up with his feet on the floor on opposite sides of the couch, ankles tied to two of its legs, elbows bent over the other end, wrists tied together and to the two other legs. She undressed. "Paul..." No response. "Paul!" He made a muffled noise and went on sleeping. She got an ice cube and rubbed it across his tummy. She shock woke him instantly. He jerked at the bonds and discovered them. "What the hell is going on?" he yelled. "I want you. I'm sorry about the ice cube; it was hard to wake you. Let me dump it in the sink." "You're some kind of psycho! Untie me!" he shouted after her. "I've missed our lovemaking," she said when she came back. "I want to do that with you." "You think you own me, don't you?" "No, I don't own you. I just love you. Maybe you'll see that." She positioned herself face down between his legs and went to work on his cock with her mouth, looking up at him as he watched her. His cock stiffened and she followed it upward, licking until it was hard enough to fuck. She got up on the couch and squatted with one foot at either edge. She took him inside her, leaned forward, kissed him. He kissed her back. "I've missed you so much," she said. She started moving her hips, fucking him. A few minutes and they came. Together. The most intense orgasm she'd ever seen him have. She cried. He looked "kind of lost," is how she put it. "I love you," she said. "I just love you." She got up and untied him. "Come to bed with me?" He followed her and lay flat on his back, staring at the ceiling. She cuddled up to him. He didn't resist or pull away, but neither did he reciprocate — just went on staring at the ceiling. They fell asleep. A few days later, while Joanne was at work, Paul moved out. They agreed on a no-fault divorce. Most people to whom I tell this story marvel at Paul's stupidity. Joanne was impressed with it too. Many say Paul was no great loss, but Joanne didn't feel that way. She remembered who he'd been before the insecurity took over, and that's who she wanted. For a few moments that evening, she thought she'd brought him back — resurrected him — but then the insecurity reasserted itself and he was gone. What can we learn from Joanne's story? Not a whole lot; it's just one story, and it would have unfolded differently with different characters, but it's a good jumping-off point for some interesting conjecture. One encouraging thing we can say is that Joanne and Paul's marriage was over before she tied him up, and his moving out was just a matter of time. Most everyone sees it that way, including Joanne, but there are dissenters. The dissenters subscribe to the view that It ain't over till it's over. They argue that Joanne hastened the end by subjecting Paul to severe emotional trauma. If she hadn't, they say, he would have hung around at least a few days longer, and during those few days the marriage might have been saved. Maybe. Had I collected a thousand similar stories in which the woman never made Joanne's outrageous move, the dissenters would surely be right at least once; one of the marriages would have been brought back from the brink, if only by the miraculously timed bankruptcy of the woman's employer. Then again, out of a thousand stories that did include the kink, at least one man would have wound up falling in love with his wife all over again. I wish I could tell you how to predict which course will yield the best result, but I don't even have enough data to tell you what happens most of the time with each approach; all I have is the one story. The story suggests two more lines of conjecture. The first is discouraging but I feel obliged to explore it lest I lull you into false optimism. What if Paul's insecurities hadn't been tweaked by Joanne's success? Suppose Joanne had never gone back to work and Trudy's visit came about naturally rather than as the result of a conspiracy, but the rest of that evening unfolded much as it did. Would Paul have left just because of the kink? Based on what Joanne told me about what he'd been like during their first fifteen years of marriage, no. But some men would. And some men would leave even if they wanted to stay. If I knew a man who left his wife just for tying him up while he was asleep and fucking him, I would say he had a really strange and unfortunate quirk. Obviously his view would be different. He would say his wife had violated the spirit of the marriage compact so profoundly as to make recovery impossible. And because the quirk gives him an idiosyncratic view of the nature of marriage, he would be as right from his side as I am from mine. What this means is that before you try to take control of the sexual aspect of your marriage, it's important that you know your husband well. This book is loaded with good advice, but it's about men in general; I don't know your man at all. The remaining line of conjecture is more encouraging. What if Joanne had set out to enslave Paul a year before she went back to work? He wasn't yet a shell-shocked paranoid holed up in a bunker, and we know she turned him on, so it's almost certain she would have succeeded. If that had been accomplished first, what would have happened when Joanne's career took off? Most likely, Paul would have handled it well. In the process of getting used to being Joanne's love slave, he would have taken on a different mindset from the one that allowed him to get so carried away with his insecurities. By the time Joanne's salary became significant, he already would have voluntarily given up whatever it was he was trying so desperately to defend in their conventional marriage. To borrow Bart's metaphor, Joann's financial success would have been just bird shit on the bridle path. And besides, Paul would have been in love. Again, the best time to take control is when there's no need. Alcoholism I've known several wives of alcoholics who tried using the techniques of female domination to stop their men's drinking, and one who tried to help her husband kick heroin. None succeeded. I'm convinced it's impossible. Before I explain why, I ought to delimit the scope of this discussion and define the word alcoholic as I'll be using it. An alcoholic is a man in the grip of an active addiction to alcohol or any other depressant drug. Because the other recreational depressants differ from alcohol only in vocabulary, means of administration, theatricality and speed of the downward spiral, I'll let alcohol stand for the lot. I won't address non- depressant drugs at all; I don't know even one woman who tried enslaving her man to get him to quit cocaine or amphetamines, and tobacco use is so divisive an issue that I'm unwilling to touch it. We've already met two men who drank to excess, but they weren't alcoholics. Bart certainly wasn't, and he'll probably never be one. As a young adult he learned that drinking was a social obligation; it helped him turn off his mind at the end of the workday (all good programmers obsess on their craft); and he found it useful for lubricating seductions. But at the age of thirty-seven he still wasn't drinking at lunch and, given the choice between alcohol and me, he usually chose me. In fact he always chose me; when he spent an evening doing something else, it was never just because he wanted to drink. Peter wasn't an alcoholic either, though he was at significantly greater risk of becoming one. If he'd kept going at the rate he was, he would eventually have pickled his brain, lost control of his drinking, and wound up thoroughly addicted. It would have taken years though, and Ginny stopped him in plenty of time. An alcoholic's most important relationship is with alcohol. He arranges his life around opportunities to drink and avoids situations where drinking is inappropriate (or embarrasses himself by drinking inappropriately). He can't consistently resist the temptation to take just one drink, and he can't reliably limit his consumption once it starts. He denies all this, even to himself, at least until he's sunk so low that the truth breaks through. Peter wasn't like that. He only pretended to be, because his reasons for drinking embarrassed him so. First, he drank to dull his lust for his wife, and he certainly wasn't going to brag about that — not to her and not to anyone else. Second, he drank because drinking — and drinking enthusiastically — was part of the role that he thought his buddies required of him. He didn't have the courage to step out of that role and be himself, even though realistically his buddies couldn't have cared. His act was so convincing that even Ginny was fooled, despite the fact that sometimes, when he wasn't horny and his friends weren't around, he didn't drink. The reasons for Peter's drinking were hard to see, but they were there, and I could figure them out from Ginny's stories. When you try to account for the behavior of an alcoholic, only one explanation fits: Nothing matters to him as much as drink. He may be able to offer excuses for his drinking, but that's because he's arranged his life to provide them. An astute observer can almost always tell a reason from an excuse. Let's lift two sentences out of that little apology for Peter's drinking: An alcoholic's most important relationship is with alcohol. Nothing matters to him as much as drink. That's why alcoholism is impervious to my techniques. An alcoholic's need for alcohol is much stronger than his need for sex, love, companionship — anything. Alcohol, to him, is a satisfactory substitute — no, a superior substitute — for all the things we humans normally need. Yes, all the things! An alcoholic may be frostbitten or dehydrated and not feel it. Can you imagine needing a whole quart of water and not knowing you're thirsty? Alcohol does that to people, and there are some people to whom alcohol does that every day. You can't compete with something that powerful. Alcoholics routinely sacrifice good marriages to their drinking. You don't stand a chance. When he hits bottom, you still can't do anything; if he stops drinking, he goes into withdrawal and gets so sick that sex is meaningless. You have to wait until he's detoxified — beyond withdrawal. Then what? Alcoholics are notoriously defiant, and detoxification doesn't change that. An alcoholic will overreact to any attempt to circumscribe his behavior. (That's why the twelve steps of Alcoholics Anonymous describe what the early members did, not what today's members should do.) If you try enslaving a newly detoxified alcoholic for the purpose of forbidding him to drink, he's likely to resume his drinking out of spite. Don't risk it. If an alcoholic makes it into recovery, you can regard him as a normal man who simply has the good sense not to drink. You might want to enslave him just for fun, because the two of you love one another and it would be a pleasant way to handle your sexual relationship, but certainly not to help him stay sober. Though this sounds like a good situation (he isn't drinking and he loves you), I'd still advise forbearance. It isn't a good idea to take any risks with a man newly into recovery. I would wait until he's through A.A.'s ninth step at least, and he's had a couple of months working the tenth. *** Chapter 19, In which the A-Frame loses a victim I've studied gambling enough to know that the people of Utah have it right, give or take a quibble here and a fly speck there. The conventionally religious believe that gambling leads to damnation. Well, I've watched people gamble, and the only part I don't buy is the delay. Those people were suffering the torments of hell right then and there, and most of them would carry away enough misery to last well beyond next time. I would no more gamble than drink, and though I'm not a Moslem, I find it simultaneously amusing and reassuring that both sins are forbidden by the selfsame verse of the Qu'ran. True, I made a bet with Bart to see who would be whose slave for the evening, and yes, all my control games involve betting of a sort, but that's not gambling. Gambling is the world's most pernicious addiction. A heroin addict knows that his fix won't last; he'll eventually need another, then another. Even though he says he can quit any time, he understands that the only way out is through withdrawal. A compulsive gambler knows no such thing. One big win can fix everything, make him well for good. He's had a big win before and he'll have a big win again. He's due. He knows the game better. He's figured it all out. His luck is changing. With a positive attitude like that, there's no escape — not even through withdrawal. On the other hand, there's one thing about compulsive gambling that makes it amenable to my techniques where the chemical addictions aren't. No detox. True, many gamblers are also drunkards; but most have only the one addiction, and they're ready to be saved as soon as they hit bottom — even a relatively high bottom. Indeed I was thinking of the compulsive gambler when I wrote that peculiar parenthetic clause in my essay on trustworthiness: "If he distrusts you, he certainly won't let you tie him up (unless he's in a suicidal depression)...." Why would he distrust you? The most likely reason is that your relationship has become an adversarial one. Perhaps you've been persecuting him about his gambling — a pattern you fell into long before you read this book. It's a natural reaction to an intolerable situation. You're as trustworthy as anyone — more so than many — but he remembers your quarrels, knows how badly he's hurt you, and expects you to hold a grudge. When he's just lost everything and he's thinking of killing himself, he doesn't need to trust you. He'll do what you say. Suicidal depressions are common to all addicts. It's part of hitting bottom. But if your husband is addicted to a chemical, you can't take proper advantage of a depression when it hits. Your femininity has no power over him until he's detoxified, and by then he's less depressed. There's also the problem of his defiance. If he feels spiteful enough to resume the downward spiral, he can do it easily. He may have no savings and no job, but he can scrape together the price of three strong doses of his favorite poison, and down he goes. A gambler needs money, or at least credit. Without a stake, he can't gamble. When he's just hit bottom, when he's depressed and remorseful, and especially when you've just taken charge of his sexuality, you can easily get control of any money and credit he has left, then dole it out in such small portions that he can't gather a stake. If this sounds extreme, you aren't married to a compulsive gambler. If you are married to a compulsive gambler, you're probably wondering what money and credit I'm talking about, because they dried up long ago. Unfortunately you can't stop a compulsive gambler until he's done himself (and you) enough damage so that he becomes genuinely depressed and remorseful. As long as he can take his losses in stride, even if he's upset, you can't stop him, not even by taking control of his sexuality. The addiction is just too powerful. That doesn't mean my techniques have no value. You can stop him at the highest bottom he hits — a tremendous improvement over the alternative. If you don't stop him at your first opportunity (or your next, if that's where I've found you), he'll adapt to his new circumstances and keep going, probably by borrowing money he can't repay. Soon he'll hit an even lower bottom, then a lower one still, dragging you down with him the whole way. People in other states are often surprised to hear about the legal card casinos of California. We had them even during the twenty-one years that gambling was outlawed in Nevada. Back then, the only games offered were draw poker, panguingue and bridge. Recently other forms of poker have been added, as well as the various Asian games, so called because most of the people who play them are of Oriental descent. It's one of the Asian games, pai-gow poker, that's the villain of our story. Despite its name, pai-gow poker isn't poker and involves none of the deception and aggression on which that game is based; it's a game of chance that involves only a minimal degree of skill. That is, it's possible to play so badly as to ensure a loss, but in practice all players quickly learn the optimum strategy and play accordingly, so the outcome is governed entirely by luck. There are two factors that work against the player. One is the house collection. The casino charges the player a fee for each hand played, and the cost adds up. The other factor hits the more clever player especially hard. Because of a peculiarity of California law, the game is banked by the players rather than the house; each player in turn is given the opportunity to act as banker. The rules give the banker a small advantage over the other players; indeed the game's only real potential for profit lies in making big bets when acting as banker. Of course a big bet can always be lost, and a player who repeatedly bets big, even if only when banking, risks gambler's ruin — the loss of his entire stake. A gambler who bets a thousand dollars at a one percent advantage wins ten dollars — in theory. In practice, the result depends on chance and on the rules of the game, but it will almost always be more extreme than a ten dollar win. At pai-gow poker, it could be anything from a thousand dollar loss to a sixty-three thousand dollar gain. A gambler who bets a thousand dollars at a one percent advantage, and does it a thousand times, makes ten thousand dollars — again in theory. An addict who tries this with a two-thousand- dollar bankroll loses it all. Invariably. The mathematician's explanation is that any other result is more than three standard deviations from the mean, and since the universe of possibility is contained within three standard deviations of the mean, a win is impossible. Another explanation is that Satan's top priority is recruitment, so only beginners win; the compulsive gambler is already committed to sin, so he lives the miserable life he deserves while his money ensnares the next generation of reprobates. There are other explanations as well, equally valid. It might be that Cindy deserved the misery that Darryl's addiction caused her. She was a poker dealer at the A- Frame, so she was on the Devil's staff, but she was also a friend and she didn't seem to deserve it. Then again, I didn't see her while it was happening, so I don't know. I'd made her acquaintance years earlier, when she took an interest in aikido. At the time, she told me about her boyfriend, Rubin, and particularly about some puzzling things he sometimes said and did. It sounded like he had fantasies of being sexually dominated and was trying to hint at what he needed, so I spelled it out for her in detail, explaining every technique I knew, figuring I'd eventually hit on one that struck her so exciting, or so foolproof, or so mild that she'd try it. She was obviously fascinated, but she also seemed to believe, dogmatically, that any man who wanted such things done to him wasn't for her. After a while, Rubin drifted away. Her next relationship left no time for aikido, and Cindy stopped coming around, so I didn't hear about Darryl when she met him, nor when she married him, but she called me almost a year after she enslaved him and we spent several hours together, during which she told me their story as it had developed to that point. Darryl was an aircraft mechanic. When Cindy met him, she was working as a secretary, but an economic downturn vaporized her position, and an uncle helped her get a job at the A-Frame, dealing poker on the graveyard shift. The hours took some getting used to and the wages were minimal, but the tips were good and she wound up earning considerably more than she had as a secretary. To simplify the logistics of their daily life, Darryl arranged to work a compatible shift — three hours earlier than hers. Cindy would go to work by bus or catch a ride with a coworker, and Darryl would pick her up at the end of her shift. Usually they'd have dinner right there at the A- Frame (it was one of the few places a good dinner could be had in the morning); then they'd drive home, doing their shopping and other errands on the way. Darryl was never late, but Cindy sometimes had to wait for him because she'd been dismissed early for lack of players. Darryl noticed this and, ever thoughtful, started arriving early. If Cindy was still working, he'd play pai-gow poker until she finished. He played for small stakes and almost always lost. He soon realized that, on average, his loss was accounted for by the house collection and the tips he gave the dealers. He decided that if he was going to pay the collection, he ought to get his money's worth, so he increased his bets. Since he was playing for real money, he started studying the game. This gave him an illusion of competence and convinced him that he ought to bank as often as possible, betting as much as he could afford or more. He had a couple of big wins and he was hooked. Cindy, telling me the story, commented that what made the big wins possible was that Darryl was still able to walk away from the table when her shift ended. A couple of months later, he couldn't. After a profitable hand, he'd want to play his rush; it was sure to continue. When losing, he'd want to recover. He could leave only when he was about even and Cindy was standing over him, or when he was broke. If he was losing and Cindy was waiting for him, he'd leave when he'd gambled away all his cash, then all of hers. If she left, it was worse; he'd hit the ATM for their daily limit and max out their credit cards. Credit card advances quickly emptied their savings account, then devoured all the equity they had in their house. Darryl started playing marathon sessions, failing to show up for work. Cindy would leave him at the A-Frame, then come in for her next shift, three hours after he was due at the airport, and he'd still be playing. They lost their house and had to sell their furniture and one of their cars for a pittance. They had nothing in the bank, no credit, huge debts. Using the proceeds of the sale of the furniture and car, Cindy put a deposit on the cheapest apartment she could find, in a neighborhood even worse than the one Rick chose for his drug business. They couldn't get a telephone. Darryl, remorseful, promised not to gamble anymore; he promised not to show up at the A-Frame early, even if he had no money. His resolve held less than a month and he was at it again. His third session was another marathon. So was his fourth, and it cost him his job. Back to remorse! Back on the wagon! At Cindy's insistence, he promised to stay away from the A-Frame completely. He got another job, this one on the day shift. He would have no excuse to break his promise. In less than a month, he did anyway. He came in after work, while Cindy wasn't there, ostensibly to cash his paycheck, and stayed to gamble. He did well. It took four marathon sessions, spread over eleven days, to empty his pockets. When it was over and he returned to the airport, he was fired. That was when Cindy decided to take action. But wait! I've left out too much. I haven't told you anything about the sexual aspect of their relationship, and that's what this book is about. I've reduced Cindy and Darryl to an economic entity with a gambling problem. I haven't even told you how long they were married, or how long Darryl's decline took. (He gambled twenty months before he started losing precipitously.) I probably would have left out even more, but there isn't much more to tell. Cindy and Darryl had little in common except that they lusted after one another, fell in love soon after they met, and maintained their lust despite six years of very ordinary marriage and one year of high melodrama. Like most compulsive gamblers, Darryl had always been charming, confident and sincere. After the fever hit, he was sincere in his confidence when gambling and sincere in his remorse each time he hit a new bottom. He was charming enough so that when he couldn't leave his game at the end of Cindy's shift, he never seemed annoyed with her for wanting him to, and always managed to keep her from becoming annoyed that he stayed. Rough as their life got, Cindy had never stopped loving him. Sex had always been good, except for one little problem. The first few times they fucked, Cindy was disturbed by the haste with which Darryl pulled out when he came. She needed him to stay longer and felt rejected. Had she not been so in love, she might have stopped seeing him. It was a difficult subject to bring up for discussion, especially so early in their relationship, but there seemed to be no alternative, so she asked him about it. He told her that once he came, his cock became too sensitive to leave inside her. She recognized the phenomenon from my description and felt relieved. She accepted him as he was, adapted, married him. Since she understood the reason for his behavior, it caused no further difficulty. Then, eight years later, he hit that big bottom and dragged himself home to her. He told her what had happened. He was remorseful. He was depressed. He offered to kill himself. He said it might make them both feel better. He promised to quit for good. He talked some more about killing himself, pointing out that it was a way to make sure he quit for good. Cindy fetched a length of clothesline and tied his wrists together in front of him. She took off his boots. She took off his pants. She took off his undershorts. She took him over her knee and spanked him. Hard. More strokes than she could count. His bottom turned red. His cock stiffened against her thigh. He cried. He screamed. He broke down in sobs. When she found herself worrying how long he might take to recover, she stopped. "Time to get up!" she said. He didn't move. She stood up and pulled him to his feet, forcing him to stand in front of her with tears streaming down his face and his cock sticking straight out in front of him, dripping. She sat down again, wrapped one hand around his cock, reached between his legs from behind and took his balls in the other. "Instead of killing yourself, this is going to be my hostage to make sure you quit. You're going to be my slave and do everything I say, or things will get even worse than today. You understand?" He nodded and sobbed out a yes. She got some more clothesline and led him to the chest of drawers that held most of their clothes. She fastened the clothesline to the figure-eight between his wrists, then had him kneel on the floor and tied him to a leg of the chest, leaving about a foot of slack. She dragged their mattress into position nearby and had him lie on his back, his arms pulled alongside his head. She squatted over his cock and impaled herself. "You know, this is the last time you're going to feel the inside of my pussy for a whole year! And if you make even one bet, it'll be at least two years — maybe more — if I stick around at all." "Please don't leave me, Cindy." "Then do exactly what I say, and don't make one bet. Okay?" "I quit. I really quit. Please believe me?" "Believe you? I'll see whether you quit! Be happy that I'm willing to do that!" "Okay, I understand." "A whole year! But you might be just as happy, 'cause this time you're not going to be able to pull out when you're done. I'm going to keep fucking you until I've had enough, and it's going to be just like another spanking, except it doesn't start until you come, so you're going to try not to, and you're going to find out I can make you come even easier than I can make you cry." She started moving and he came in half a dozen strokes. He squirmed, trying to pull out. He started crying again. He squirmed some more. Then Cindy's orgasm overtook her and she couldn't quite make out what he was doing, except that she heard a mixture of howling and whimpering, and she still had a delicious grip on his cock. She knew she did a job on him, the way her hips jerked and her pussy throbbed. It was the most intense orgasm she'd ever had, and she almost decided to keep going for two or three, but she took pity and stopped, though she still didn't climb off. Darryl was still crying. Every couple of seconds she could feel his cock twitch weakly in her pussy. "Think you've had enough fucking to last a year?" she teased. He made an inarticulate noise. "If you don't, I've still got another come in me. I could go for it." "No. Stop. It's enough." She climbed off his cock and sat on his chest, letting his shirt absorb their mingled secretions. "It may be hard to believe right now, but you're going to get horny at least a hundred times during the next year, so before I untie you I'm going to tell you how we're going to deal with it. Ready?" "Please, Cindy. I love you." "I know. It must be so embarrassing, having to love me now, but that's what you get for making such a mess of everything. Are you ready for what I'm going to tell you?" "Yes." "First, you never go off alone and play with yourself. You understand that?" "Yes." "Good! 'Cause if you come when I'm not with you, you'll be punished even worse than today. That doesn't mean you never have to play with yourself; I might make you do it while I watch. You understand that?" "Yes." "What I want you to do is, when you get horny enough so you really need a come, and you're willing to do whatever I say to get it, you take off all your clothes, you bring me these pieces of rope — we'll keep them under the mattress — you bring me these pieces of rope and you tell me, 'I need a come.' Okay?" "Yes." "I might tell you no, and you can try again tomorrow; or I might say you have to let me watch you play with yourself; or I might tie you up and do something really nice for you. I might even get carried away like today and not want to stop. But whatever I decide, once you tell me you need it, you have to go along with it; you can't change your mind because you wanted something different. Understand?" "Yes." "And I'm going to take care of all our money. If we ever get back to where we can put some in the bank, it's going to be in my name. I'll try to see that you have enough in your pocket to get you through the day, once I have some, but you're never going to be able to go on another binge, even if we stay together the rest of our lives. Are you prepared to accept that?" "I told you, I'm quitting for good." "Yes, in the past year, you've told me that at least five times. It's easy to quit when there's no money, but someday you'll find another job and we might have rent money on the twenty-ninth and... So much for quitting!— at least that's the way it's always been in the past. So this time, quitting isn't enough. You're going to have to let me take care of all the money, even what you make. If you can't go with that, I can't stay with you. I need a clear answer, right now." "Okay, you take care of the money." "Good! Don't worry. If you've really quit, everything will work out for us." She got up and untied him. He took off his shirt and lay down again. She lay down with him and they cuddled themselves to sleep. He was still asleep when she got up and went to work. She left him twenty dollars of her previous day's tips so he could eat and look for a job. Gradually they started rebuilding. No one would hire Darryl to work on airplanes, but he found a job working on cars at a service station in the neighborhood. He wasn't the sort of expert one finds at a dealership, but neither was the other grease monkey at the shop, or their boss either. The pay wasn't what he'd been getting, but it was certainly more than he'd been keeping. Between them, Cindy and Darryl must have had the highest income on their block, as well as the biggest cumulative debt. Before Darryl's first payday rolled around, Cindy scraped together a hundred dollars in tips and opened a checking account in her own name, with Darryl as trust beneficiary in case she died. When he was paid, she had him endorse the check and give it to her so she could deposit it. Every day she made sure he had a few dollars to live on, taking care that he never accumulated enough to tempt him. Over time it worked. They earned money, Darryl didn't gamble, their expenses were low, and they made payments on their debts. By the time Cindy called me, they were dug halfway out. Cindy was starting to fantasize about a better neighborhood, but she intended to save a few thousand dollars before moving because she understood that it would be years and years before anyone was willing to extend them credit. Did she want credit? With Darryl around, it still scared her. Underlying their escape from hell was their new sexual relationship. During the first few days after Cindy's takeover, Darryl made several attempts to seduce her. Each time, she rebuffed him. It was almost a week before he gave up, took off his clothes, brought her the clothesline and, with obvious embarrassment, recited the formula. "I need a come." "You must, by now!" She told him that for a start, he could make love to her with his mouth. She undressed and lay down, and he went at it, trying the same stunt Steve had tried on me all those years before. She blocked his way and scolded him. "That's a no!" He looked at her with a mixture of frustration, remorse and fear. "Go back to what you were doing." He did, and kept at it until he knew she'd had enough. He stopped and held her. They rested. "Now, for you!" she said, gathering up the clothesline. She tied his hands behind his back and had him lie on them. As an afterthought, she ran the other length of clothesline under the mattress and tied one end to each of his ankles, forcing them about thirty inches apart to be sure that he couldn't get his cock out of her reach. She knew the knots would tighten if pulled, but she'd be untying them soon, so she didn't expect any damage. "You shouldn't have lunged at me. You're going to have to be punished." "What are you going to do?" "Well, I was going to play with you till you came, but now I'm going to play with you a little longer." She could see that the idea frightened and embarrassed him. She glanced at the clock and began sliding her hands up and down over the head of his cock, allowing them to be lubricated by the fluid oozing out the tip. There was plenty, and it didn't have a chance to dry. Less than twenty seconds went by before his cock stiffened in the first stage of orgasm. "You're going to get it now!" She kept an eye on the clock. Eight seconds after the first spurt, he started squirming and whimpering; at twelve he began a serious effort to pull away, twisting and bending his body as far as he could. Cindy had to wrap one hand around his cock and use the other to push his upper body down against the bed. At eighteen seconds he begged her to stop, still whimpering, still making desultory efforts to pull away; at twenty-four he relaxed, giving up on everything but the pained expression and the whimpering, still unable to stop the little spasms of his cock in Cindy's hand. Twenty-nine seconds after the first spurt, he started to cry. Four seconds later, Cindy let go. Twenty-five seconds, she reckoned, that's what he can take. She kissed him lightly, then untied him and held him. "Feel better now?" "Yeah." *** That night, Cindy approached one of her fellow dealers, who had once said, half jokingly, that she and her husband sometimes used a Polaroid camera to take snapshots of their lovemaking. She asked if she might borrow the camera and a tripod for the same purpose. "Sure!" she said with a big smile. "I'll bring them in tomorrow. I like your honesty." "Thanks." "I've heard some fantastic explanations of why people wanted to put that camera on a tripod, but there's only one, really." The next day, Cindy indulged in an extravagance. She put a hook in the ceiling and hung a potted plant from it. While she was in the hardware store, she bought another clothesline. The following day, she had possession of the camera, the tripod and a remote plunger that her friend had thoughtfully included. She also had an explanation of how to buy film, and instructions on what to do with it all. She experimented while Darryl was out, then hid everything away and waited. The next time Darryl came begging relief, she tied his wrists in front of him, then lay down as she had the first time and told him to eat her. She expected him to think his wrists had been tied to prevent him from making another attempt to fuck her, but actually she was trying to make it impossible to draw future inferences based on whether his wrists were tied, or where. Sooner or later she'd have to spank him again, and she didn't want him to panic and resist when she started tying his wrists in front. When his mouth had satisfied her, she fastened his wrists to the hook in the ceiling. She didn't expect him to be flattered by her desire to photograph him, so she tied a length of clothesline to each ankle and anchored one to the chest of drawers, the other to the commode in the bathroom, so his feet were pulled apart and he couldn't turn away when she snapped the shutter. When he was thoroughly immobilized, she set up the camera so that it was focused on his cock. Darryl protested. Cindy answered as innocently and affectionately as she could, saying she wanted a snapshot of his cock doing its thing; it would be a nice memento for a wife to have. It was the truth, too, or close to it. Of course, she also wanted to embarrass him, and she wanted him to worry that such a picture existed, but she didn't intend to use it for anything but her own enjoyment. Darryl continued to object, so she said, "Okay, just don't turn on, and I won't be able to get the picture I want." When she had everything set up, she put her arms around him and kissed him until he was hard again. Then she backed away, pushed the plunger, and performed the other ministrations that the machinery required. When the picture was developed, she showed it to Darryl, then set it down and kissed him again. She got a chair, sat next to him, and went to work on his cock, stimulating it until he was just over the edge. "Let's see if I can catch the first spurt," she said, simultaneously taking hold of the plunger, standing up, and pushing the chair away. He gasped, looking at her with an expression that combined shame, panic and orgasm. Then his cock started pumping and she did her best to time the shot. "What a memory this'll be!" she said, savoring his embarrassment as he continued to ejaculate. When it was over, she turned her attention to the camera and set the picture to developing. Then she snapped one more and went through the procedure again. The second shot was a little blurry, but it was good enough, considering that she knew what it was. The third was clear and showed Darryl's cock, still engorged, pointing downward and dripping come. She showed them to him and he asked what she was going to do with them. "Hide them. Look at them when you're not around. I'm a sexual being and I love you." She hid them, using running water to muffle the sounds and slamming more drawers and cabinets than necessary. Then she released Darryl. He asked where the pictures were and started looking for them. Considering how sparsely appointed the apartment was, it was a wonder he didn't find them right away. Cindy quickly put a stop to the search, warning him that if he continued, she'd have to spank him again. He asked where she got the camera and she told him. He asked whether she'd let him take pictures of her and she said yes. He used up the rest of the film and she cooperated fully, even spreading her legs for a couple of shots of her pussy. She knew he'd only use them to inflame his lust, and that would make him all the more tractable. Two days later he asked for another come. She had him eat her, tied his hands behind his back, and tied his ankles around the mattress. "I'm going to give you some incentive to learn not to come so fast when I play with you, okay?" "Do I have a choice?" "No." "I didn't think so. How are you going to mistreat me this time?" "I'm going to play with you till you come. If it takes ten minutes or more, I'll stop as soon as you say. If it takes less, I'll keep playing with you for twenty-five seconds, starting from the first spurt." "Cindy, why do you want to torture me?" "It'll be good for you. Besides, last time I kept it up for thirty-three seconds and you're still alive, so I know you can take it." He came in less than two minutes and she put him through it, teasing him as she did. He squirmed and whimpered, but he didn't try to get up and he didn't cry. He seemed more stoical, knowing he wouldn't have to endure quite as much torture as he had previously. Darryl presented himself to Cindy again two days later, his cock partially hard. She conjectured that he must have found her control game quite a turn-on. Unfortunately she had her period and felt squeamish about having him eat her. She considered repeating the control game anyway, but decided she wanted to watch him masturbate, partly because she was curious and partly because she wanted to subject him to the embarrassment. She told him to lie on the bed, then sat next to him and told him to play with himself. "I can't" "You're not allowed to refuse, you know." "Cindy, please. You're taking this too far." He offered no resistance when she tied his wrists in front of him. She helped him to his feet, led him to her chair, sat down, took him across her knee and, ignoring his protests, spanked him just as severely as that first day. It had the same effect: his cock stiffened and lubricated, and he cried like a little boy. She stood him up and tied his wrists to the overhead hook. Then she took a couple of clothespins and clamped one on each nipple. He screamed as each one closed, then went back to whimpering and sobbing. She positioned her chair nearby and sat looking at him. Tears ran down his cheeks and lubricant spilled out of his cock in a slow but steady stream. It flowed down the undersurface, continued down the scrotum, then dripped to the floor. She could imagine how congested he must be, how explosively he would erupt at just a little direct stimulation. "Even this isn't going too far. You're my sex slave now, and you do what I tell you or you'll be punished something terrible. Besides the spanking and the clothespins, you'll have to let me watch you play with yourself at least twice more after today, before I even think about playing with you again, and that's if you take back your refusal right now. If you wait a few more minutes, what you get is a few more minutes of the clothespins, and you might be playing with yourself five or ten or twenty times. Are you ready to do what I tell you?" "Yes." She removed the clothespins, unhooked him, led him back to the bed, had him lie down, untied his wrists. His cock was still hard. "Go ahead!" He looked at her pleadingly, wrapped his hand around his cock, slid it up and down three times, and started sobbing again as he splattered the pillow, his shoulder his chest — all with the first spurt. He stopped moving his hand and just lay there, crying, holding his cock, looking up at Cindy, pumping his sperm out onto his chest and tummy. "Big come! Embarrassing!" "What's really embarrassing is having to love you for doing this to me." "Mm-hm!" she teased, savoring the rush of love brought on by his confession. And she wondered. What had made him say that? Was it a move to get her to be more lenient? Or alternatively, had he wanted to be spanked? Was it an honest readout of his feelings, made possible by the stripping away of his defenses? Some combination? Did he himself know? Perhaps, over time, she'd figure it out. For now, she could just enjoy. *** She was surprised when he asked for another come two days later. She expected that since he knew she would make him masturbate, he would try to wait — maybe even masturbate in secret until she asked why he'd lost interest in sex. No matter. She went into the bathroom, hid the tampon string in her vagina, and made sure she was as fresh as possible. Then she came out, tied his hands in front just to mystify him, and had him eat her. When she'd had enough, she untied him and told him to play with himself. This time he didn't argue. He didn't argue the next time either, and she found herself puzzling over what she'd do with him the time after that. She was still puzzling two days later when he again brought her the clothesline and recited the formula. She did what felt right. First she tied his hands in front and had him eat her. Then she tied him to a leg of the chest of drawers, moved the mattress, laid him down with his hands pulled back over his head, and tied his ankles apart. When everything was secure, she told him they were going to play ten twenty-five — the game whose rules she'd already established. He had to resist her stimulation for ten minutes or she'd keep rubbing his cock for twenty-five seconds after he came. It took less than two minutes to bring him off. Two days later they did the same thing, and again he came in less than two minutes. Cindy found herself puzzling less, increasingly sure of what she was doing. She understood intuitively that she had to keep making Darryl play control games, and he had to keep losing. In some way — some way so grotesque that it discouraged scrutiny — control games met the same need within his psyche that gambling had satisfied previously. Where pai-gow poker had extracted Darryl's money, Cindy was extracting his tears, sexual lubricant and sperm. Instead of suffering the pain of losing at the tables, he was suffering the pain of Cindy's tortures. Somehow it was the same to him. And embarrassment accompanied loss and pain in both contexts. Her understanding reassured her. She liked the idea that with this new style of lovemaking, she could keep Darryl safe forever. But at the same time, it gave her the willies; something about it just seemed so unwholesome. She tried turning it around — looking at the parallels from the other side. Maybe Darryl had always wanted her to do this, and he'd turned to gambling as a substitute — perhaps even a poor substitute. That was less disturbing. It seemed more likely, too, because sex is natural and gambling is artificial, and it was fitting that the artificial should be the poor substitute for the natural. Besides, Darryl was thriving on her tortures; despite their difficult circumstances, he seemed more relaxed than he'd been in years. Had he first been attracted to her because he saw her potential as a dominatrix? Had I been right about Rubin? Had all her lovers known something about her that she herself was just now learning? She had to admit she relished her new role; it seemed to fit her perfectly. And she'd gone far beyond the recommendations she'd got from me, even though she once regarded my techniques as extreme. Darryl continued to ask for relief every other day, and each time, for almost a month, Cindy played ten twenty- five with him. The longest it ever took to make him come was two minutes and thirty-four seconds. Once, he brought her the magic clothesline two days in a row, and she thought he might win because he was less horny, so she was tempted to do something different. But his cock was engorged as usual, so she played the same game. It took a minute and fifty-eight seconds to make him come. After her next period, with a month's experience as a benchmark, Cindy came up with something new. When Darryl asked for a come, she started out as usual and tied him in place. "Miss feeling your cock in my pussy yet?" "Yes, of course I do." "Want a chance to fuck me?" "What's the catch?" "New game. It's called five fifty. You keep from coming for just five minutes and I untie you and let you fuck me; otherwise I keep rubbing your cock for fifty seconds." He looked dazed. "If you don't want to take the chance, we can play ten twenty-five. You don't get to fuck me that way, and it's twice as hard to win, but at least you know you can take the torture." "I'll play five fifty." "Okay," she said, looking at the clock. She started rubbing his cock. "You'll be sorry," she said as she milked him. "You're going to come so fast, it'd be embarrassing even if you weren't losing the chance to fuck me. You know, I wonder... Are you going to cry again like that other time I kept going longer than the twenty-five?" And he came. It had taken fifteen seconds. "Ooh, yeah! Give it up, Darryl! Show me how much you love me!" Eight seconds. He started squirming, trying to pull away. "Please! Don't do it!" "You know the rules! Thirty-eight more seconds!" She milked him mercilessly. He did wind up crying again. "Embarrassing!" she said when she finally stopped. "And I bet you love me, too." "I do love you. Cindy, what are you doing to me?" "Just what you need me to." Darryl started bringing Cindy the ropes more often — about five times a week — and almost always, even after only seventeen hours' rest, his cock was sticking straight out instead of being only slightly engorged. She always gave him a choice between playing ten twenty- five and five fifty, and he always chose five fifty. It was a much more exciting game, and he never lasted even two minutes. One Thursday he tried to cheat by masturbating in secret, but Cindy could tell what he'd done by the relaxed state of his cock. "You'll have to wait until Sunday," she said. "What?" "I told you I might tell you, you have to wait. You have to wait. Try again Sunday." He didn't try to cheat anymore. After two months of five fifty, just before Cindy got her period, she invented an even more extreme game that she called three fifty. The rules were the same as for five fifty, but Darryl had to hold back his orgasm for only three minutes. On the other hand, if he lost, she'd tie his hands and spank him before he was allowed to come again, and she'd choose the time of the spanking. Besides that, after being spanked, he'd have to let her watch him masturbate, but he could decide when. He wanted to play it. It was like the first time he played five fifty; he came in only fifteen seconds. Cindy let three days go by before delivering the spanking. Then she told Darryl it was time, had him undress, and tied his hands in front of him. He was scared, breathing hard, not turned on at all. She tied him to the leg of the chest of drawers, moved the mattress, and put him in his usual position for their control games. He hadn't been expecting that, and it scared him even more. She sat next to him. "What are you doing?" he asked for about the fifth time. "I want to get you really turned on before I spank you, and this is a good place to do it." She leered at his cock. "Then again, maybe I won't be able to, and you'll get out of being spanked." She knew he expected her to use her hands — probably even felt safe as long as she didn't — but she just stared and teased. In less than a minute he was hard; a couple more and he was lubricating — his usual slow stream. "You're dripping. I guess that's turned on enough. It looks like I'll be spanking you after all." She untied the tether and led him to her chair, sat down, pulled him over her knee and got into it. He yelped with each stroke. His bottom turned red. He started crying. A few swats after the tears began, she felt him ejaculate on her thigh. She jumped up and pulled him along with her so she could watch the last few spasms of his cock. "Shame, shame! You came from being spanked!" He hung his head, still crying. "You'll still have to play with yourself, but I don't think it'll be today." Cindy added three fifty to her list of choices, but only when she was about to get her period. Darryl always chose it over the other two games and always lost. Between times, he continued to choose five fifty over ten twenty-five and lost at that. The reason she called me was that she was worried she had a tiger by the tail. Darryl's year was up in five weeks — close enough to dilute the credibility of their games. She was afraid that if they resumed a normal sex life, she would no longer be meeting his need and he'd start gambling again. On the other hand, she wanted to get back to fucking. She missed it. She had a problem with the spankings too. At first they vented her anger over the mess Darryl and made of her life, but over the months, she'd developed doubts. They made her feel bad about herself. Still she liked the control games; she liked torturing Darryl's cock after he came; she even admitted that it was a thrill to make him come by spanking him. "Well," I began, "it's obvious that he needs the control games, and it seems the only prize that really suits him is a fuck that ends just before it becomes uncomfortable." "Yeah..." "But you could continue meeting his needs without depriving yourself of fucking. You could play a game just like your ten twenty-five, except that you fuck him. If he lasts you many minutes, you climb off him eight seconds after he lets loose; if he comes sooner, you keep going longer, like that first time you tied him up. If he wins, you can even let him get on top next time — he'll probably never win anyway." She nodded. "You might need a way of choosing among the control games, or just a way of deciding when to fuck; but you're so inventive, I'm sure it won't be a problem. Then again, you can be completely arbitrary too — just do what you like, day by day." While she was reflecting, another thought struck me. "You know, I'm really impressed with that ritual you invented — having him take off his clothes and bring you the clothesline. Besides embarrassing him and letting you gauge his arousal, it's a perfect metaphor for walking into a card club and joining a game, especially if his goal is losing." "I know. I thought of that a few weeks after I invented it, and I've been trying to figure out ever since whether it was just a lucky coincidence or did I start out understanding more than I was willing to admit?" "Either way, I'm sure you and Darryl are doing what's right for you." "I guess so. What about the spankings?" "I don't know. I've never spanked anyone myself, and I don't know how common Darryl's reaction is. I don't know how your spankings fit into Darryl's scheme of things either. Does he want you to continue? Does he want you to stop? Does he need you to continue? I would guess that you ought to go on spanking him, but only as a punishment. I would also guess that when you do spank him, you ought to go on teasing him about how he can't help but sexualize it. But I could be very wrong." "What I'm afraid of is that if I stop playing three fifty, he'll take his paycheck directly to the A-Frame again, and get back into that whole thing." "Like I say, I don't know where the spankings fit. That might happen, but it probably won't. If you've got him playing control games five times a week, that should meet his needs even if the games aren't really extreme. Can you arrange your finances so you can afford to take the risk one time?" "And then refuse to fuck him for another year?" "Back to the old drawing board!" We sat a few seconds in silence before she spoke again. "It isn't really very likely, is it?" "I don't know him, but I don't think so." I waited a while longer to see if she'd say anything else; then I told her I was interested in hearing how things turned out. I asked whether I might get in touch with her after a few months, and she said it would be okay, so we discussed the logistics. We agreed that I'd call information and ask for her number, and if she had a phone by then, I'd call her. Otherwise, I'd look for her at the A-Frame and try to catch her on break or at the end of her shift. Seven months went by before I tracked her down at the A- Frame on a Sunday morning before dawn. We made a date for brunch at my place the following week when she got off work. I was a bit worried about the implications of her not yet having a telephone, but it turned out she did, and she gave me the number in case I needed to change our plans; she had decided to get an unlisted number after hearing the stories of other dealers who had received unpleasant calls from players irate about losing. The following Sunday she arrived on schedule and we built sandwiches out of an assortment of fixings I'd picked up the day before. I asked her how things were going with Darryl, and she gave me a detailed account. He still wasn't gambling, and he was back at the airport, working the day shift. To celebrate his first year of recovery, Cindy had bought a bed. Nothing fancy — no headboard — but a new mattress, springs and frame. It was a tremendous improvement over the old slab of foam they'd inherited from her cousin when they moved. When she'd put the sheet on it, she turned to Darryl, and asked, "Want to fuck?" "You silver-tongued devil! You talked me into it!" "You'll have to let me tie you down." "Why?— if we're agreed on what we're going to do anyway..." "I like it. Besides, I never said I'd stop tying you up, just that I'd go back to fucking you. I don't even think I want to give up the ritual of you getting naked and bringing me the ropes when you want to come. Or the part about having to accept whatever I decide; I might not want to fuck you every time. The only difference now is that when I feel like it, we can fuck." "Okay, you've got the pussy." "That's right! Looking forward to feeling it from the inside again?" "Yeah," he said in a gentler tone. He took her in his arms and kissed her. Soon she could feel the straining of his cock. She pushed him away lightly. "Come on! Get your clothes off!" He did. She did. She tied him down properly, with his arms out to the sides. She lay on top of him, kissed him until they were both mad with lust, then guided his cock into her pussy and lowered herself all the way. "Like the way that feels?" "O God, yes!" "Know what I'm going to do?" "What?" "I'm going to come twice before I let you go." "I can't last that long. You're too much of a turn-on." "That's okay; I'll do all the work. All you have to do is lie here. I know it'll be uncomfortable after you come, but you do have a choice; if you wait till I'm done coming the second time, I'll stop when you need me to." "You're planning to torture me every time we make love, aren't you?" "Even when our hair is all white. Isn't it great?— having a wife who turns you on so much, you have to come even though you know you're going to be tortured?" "Well, yeah! But that doesn't mean you have to actually torture me." "You'd miss it if I stopped, and even if you wouldn't, I would. This is fun!" She started thrusting her hips, abandoning herself to the sensations, watching Darryl watch her, watching his increasing excitement as she fucked him. They came together and she kept going, taking care to stay low enough to keep him from pulling out. "Stop... stop!" "Uh-uh. Remember, I got the pussy. I don't get tired." Soon he was crying, and then she came again. Her pussy went into spasms, her hips jerked — and every time she moved, Darryl reacted as though her hand had just smacked his bottom. When it was over, she lay down on him, one elbow on either side. His cock still couldn't stop twitching. "Welcome back, sexy man!" With a mighty heave, he pulled out of her. "Had enough for another year?" "No!" "Good! I'm looking forward to doing that again." When Darryl had regained his composure, he asked, "Can't we make love sometimes without you torturing me?" "Maybe. Maybe I'll invent another game, where you can win a chance to get on top. Darryl didn't believe that Cindy was still going to insist on the ritual, so when he got horny again, he tried to seduce her. She told him she meant what she'd said, so with an exaggerated display of weariness, he stood up, fetched the clothesline, and recited the formula. She tied him in place. "You want me to fuck you?" "Yes, but I don't want you to torture me." "I'll tell you what. As soon as we've both come, I'll stop moving. That way, if you wait for me, you'll only get tortured a little." "Do I get a choice?" "Do you want me to torture you more?" "No!" "Do you want me not to fuck you?" "Of course I want to fuck!" "Well, those are the choices." She lay on him, kissed him, gave him her breasts to suck, straddled his face and had him lick her pussy. She was almost ready to come when she finally guided his cock into her, and she fucked him hard and fast. They came together in about half a minute, and when it was over she stopped moving. He kept making little gasping noises timed to the twitching of his cock, and she maintained enough downward pressure so he couldn't pull out. She was doing just what she'd said — torturing him, but only a little. He wasn't nearly so distressed as when she kept moving. "Had enough?" "Yeh," he panted. She uncoupled from him with a sudden lurch and lay cuddled up to him. They talked a while — about how much they loved one another, how good it felt to be fitted together again — then she untied him. Two days later he needed more, and they repeated the ritual of the ropes. "Remember I said I might invent a game where you could win the chance to be on top?" "Yeah?" "You want to hear the rules?" "Sure." "I fuck you, and if you stay inside me — without telling me to stop, or hurry up, or anything like that — till after I come, then next time I let you get on top without the ropes. If you come before me, I keep going until I come too, and if you say any of those things, then you don't get to be on top next time. If you pull out of me, that's cheating, and you don't get to come again till I've spanked you." "What are the other choices?" You mean right now? If you don't want to play the game?" "Yeah." "I fuck you like last time, and you don't get to be on top next time even if you would have won. You probably don't get spanked either, even if you manage to pull out." He decided to try the game. She lay on him and kissed him until he was dripping, then straddled his cock and put it in. She fucked him with long, slow strokes, and he came in less than two minutes. She kept going while he squirmed, panted, sobbed, whimpered, and finally begged her to stop. "Uh-huh! As soon as I come." She let herself go, and she came in another half minute, getting off on Darryl's agonized noises and tortured look. She relaxed. She felt him make a slow but forcible attempt to lift his bottom off the bed, as he had after their first fuck of the year, but this time she knew his plan. If he could get a couple of inches of empty space under him, he would drop down suddenly and free his cock. She resisted and tightened her vaginal muscles. His cock twitched and he made a pained noise. "You want me to let you go? Is that it?" "Yes." She pulled away quickly, then cuddled him. "You didn't win, but I'll let you try again. We'll call that our fucking game. Maybe you'll like it as much as five fifty." "Untie me?" "Sure." She did, then lay down with him. They cuddled and talked. He confessed his embarrassment. She told him she knew. She told him he'd be embarrassed every time he tried to control himself, because he'd never be able to, and she'd always know. He told her he loved her. She told him she loved him too. Since then, their lovemaking had consisted almost entirely of fucking. They played that game, by Darryl's choice, about a third of the time, and he always lost. The times they didn't play, Cindy almost always came at the same time as Darryl, or nearly so, and she held on to Darryl's cock for about half a minute afterward. Cindy and I marveled at it all. The fucking game wasn't a game; it was a ritual. Cindy had it rigged so Darryl could never win. When they played, she kept herself from coming until he gave up. When they weren't playing, she relaxed and responded naturally. The pattern was so obvious, Darryl had to understand what was happening, but he chose to play anyway. There could be no doubt that Cindy had been right about the nature of Darryl's sexual needs, and about his having met those needs by gambling and losing. Now he had the fucking game, and he could play it exactly as often as he needed to keep him on the straight and narrow. Cindy wasn't even really controlling the sexual aspect of the relationship — though she could, anytime it became necessary. With things going well, all she was doing was creating a context in which Darryl could get what he needed, and get it in its natural form. He would never again have to indulge in that hideous parody that had brought them to the brink of ruin. She wished she'd figured it out sooner. *** Chapter 20, In which we look to the future And that's everything! You know it all! What now? I told you my dream. I'd like female domination to become so nearly universal that no heterosexually active man can escape our civilizing influence. That can happen only through the cumulative effort of a great many women, but I don't necessarily want you to be among them. I want you to do what's right for you. No person should be a pawn in another's crusade, however worthy. Even more than wanting each woman to do what's right for her, I want each woman to do right. We have a good record so far. We're known for nurturance, not massacre, and we ought to keep it that way. The techniques of female domination have tremendous potential for good, but they also have potential for mischief, whether intentional or thoughtless, and I dread hearing the news when someone uses the knowledge in this book in a hurtful way. I've agonized over this. I know such news will reach me. Not everyone who picks up my techniques will use them with care and restraint; I haven't always done so myself. Still, I hope for the best. I'd like to believe that the young women who study this book will use their newfound knowledge the way Nora did in her marriage with Joel rather than emulating my own twisted relationship with Corbett. Women in general are decent, especially compared with men, but some are angry over past wrongs and some are irresponsible. When the techniques of female domination become widely known, a small minority of women will misuse them. I don't intend it. I don't want it. But I can't prevent it. And just a few excesses — even imaginary excesses — if widely rumored, will trigger a male-supremacist backlash. I don't intend that either, or want it, but it's likely. I'm confident, though, that the good accomplished through these techniques will far outweigh the harm, and someday we'll all be at peace. Men, by nature, have as much good in them as we do. Sadly, most have been taught to keep it hidden — to keep up their guard and seek control over others. They've learned that good is a sign of weakness and that they have to appear strong lest they be abused and exploited. The way to appear strong is to act mean. Like many women, they haven't figured out that as adults they can just say no to abuse and exploitation; they don't feel really grown up until they begin to suffer the infirmities of old age. Female domination offers such great hope because it gives you a way of nurturing the good in your man, of persuading him to leave behind the fears and defenses of adolescence, of encouraging him to act in accordance with the most noble of his predilections. And it gives you a way to get started — a way to find the good in your partner. Early in a relationship, finding the good is easy. During courtship, a man lets it shine through, hoping it will make you love him. Some men, like Francesca's husband Roy, never turn it off; they're comfortable being openly and notoriously good all the time. Most, though, are guarded except when trying to attract a partner. And once they've got a woman committed, they aim for distance and control rather than intimacy and cooperation. They put on a bad act. The good gets hidden away, often forever. I'm not saying they become brutes, but they're a disappointment compared with their early promise. Ginny's problems with Peter and Lisa's with Jason are commonplace. And Peter and Jason weren't bad men, just scared. If you tie your partner down so he's helpless, he knows his bad act is no longer credible. If you make love to him, slowly, giving him time to open up; and you look into him deeply enough, you'll find the long-lost good. You'll see it. You'll recognize it. And you'll see that with a little help and nurturance, it could cast the bad act aside and reclaim its rightful place in the sun. The good, after all, is him. The bad act is just a collection of mannerisms learned out of fear from other bad actors. Acknowledge the good. Nurture it. Encourage it. You can make a world of difference. Good exists in almost all men. The good is lovable. The good is loving. The good deserves to be loved. This doesn't mean that every man is a fitting lover for you, or even that you should be able to like all men. Our likes and dislikes are idiosyncratic. That's a fact of life and needs no justification. Our sexual preferences are even more idiosyncratic. Typically only a small minority of the men we meet will be acceptable as sexual playmates, even if the play doesn't include fucking. When I meet a man who doesn't turn me on, or who finds me unattractive, there's no problem what to do; we're not going to have a sexual relationship. If the chemistry is there, I'm obliged to look further before making a decision. Can I deal with this man in good faith? Can I nurture the good in him? If I can't, I oughtn't become involved with him. Somewhere there's a woman who can deal with him in good faith — who can nurture the good. Spiritually she's a better fit for him than I am, and I ought to leave him to her. They'll meet eventually, and if I've dealt with him in bad faith or tried to punish him for the nits in his character, she'll have to repair my damage. Worse still, she'll have to dig deeper to find the good in him because I will have frightened it further into hiding. Corbett was a mistake. Years later, when I already knew better, I was tempted to make another. A coworker became the victim of a gentle rape, and the perpetrator was someone with whom I could easily have entered into a sexual relationship. I was tempted to do so for the purpose of avenging her — make him fall in love with me and play with his head. I decided against it. It would be better to wait for him to meet a woman who fit him so perfectly, he'd fall in love on his own. Then she could nurture the good in him, lovingly, until he could no longer see his fellow human beings as objects to be used. I could help her by writing this book. Peace and love be with you. And thanks. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ This story was written as an adult fantasy. The author does not condone the described behavior in real life in any way, shape or form. Anyone tempted to act out any of the scenarios in this story should seriously consider seeking professional help. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Kristen's collection - Directory 80