“I see,” she said. She lay back on the straps, and lifted her knees, and put her hands above and behind her, hooking her fingers in the interstices of the broad straps. She looked at me.
“I think there may be a slave in you,” I said.
“Oh?” she asked, interested.
“Yes,” I said.
“Rape it,” she said.
“But I must remember that you are free,” I said.
“Very well,” she said. “You win.”
“Win?” I said.
“Yes,” she said. “—I beg it.”
“What?” I asked.
“Rape. My rape. I beg my rape.”
“Though you are a free woman?”
“Yes,” she said. “I beg my rape, as though a slave!”
“As though a slave?”
“Yes, as a slave, as though I were no more than another one of those curvaceous, meaningless neck-ringed sluts, helpless, at your mercy, tormentingly aroused, beside herself with passion!” she said.
“What sort of rape?” I inquired.
“Surely it is clear,” she said.
“Speak,” I said.
“Slave rape,” she said. “Rape me as a slave.”
“I can rape you as a slave,” I said. “But you will not have the reflexes, the yieldings, the responses, of a slave, because you are not a slave. You have not been trained, enlivened, honed, sensitized, taught the dangers of not responding fully, have not been lashed for being displeasing, have not had slave fires lit in your belly.”
“Do with me as you will,” she said.
I regarded her.
“Do you find me attractive?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Do you want me?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“Then take me,” she said. “I am yours.”
I regarded her.
“What is wrong?” she asked.
“I am considering the matter,” I said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“You are a free woman,” I said. “Thus, it would doubtless be improper for me to subject you to powerful uses. It is up to me, doubtless, to see that you are protected from, indeed, shielded from, powerful sexual insights and experiences. You do not need to know what it is to be under male dominance. It is doubtless best that you never learn. It might change your life. Similarly, it is probably best that you learn nothing of helpless obedience, of submission and total surrender. It is difficult to tell where such things might lead. All in all, you had best remain on the superficial levels of sexuality, those appropriate to a free woman, unaware that anything deeper and more profound exists.”
She looked at me, angrily.
“It seems, thus,” I said, “that I must refrain from responding to your needs, real and urgent though they may be.”
“Do you think that I will respect you for falsifying your manhood,” she cried, “for denying it, for pretending it does not exist! No! Ultimately I would only despise you for your self-betrayal! Is honesty too much to ask from men? If you will not be a man, how can I be a woman? If I were a man, I would be a true man, and I would never betray my manhood! It would be precious to me! I would rejoice in it! And I would teach women, which is what we want, what it is to be women! I would be merciless with them! I would be their master!”
“That is what you want?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, “for without it, we cannot be women.”
I reached to one of the straps. It was a holding strap. These straps are adjustable. I would take it twice snugly about her wrist and then, angling it, press the cap-topped stud at the end of the strap, from the bottom, up through one of the small, sturdy, suitable eyelets on the same strap. No buckles are used. The occupant of the rack, of course, because of the nature of the cap-topped stud and the eyelet, cannot, from her position, free herself. She is helpless. The arrangement, thus, is not only such that the girl finds herself, when the straps are on her, held in perfect custody, but this custody, in virtue of the nature of the studs and eyelets, may be easily imposed or removed, a convenience to the handler. “If I fasten these upon you, you will be helpless,” I said.
“Fasten them upon me,” she begged.
I began with her wrists, and then I secured her ankles.
“Free yourself,” I suggested.
She struggled. “I cannot,” she said. She looked at me, frightened. “I am as helpless as a slave,” she said.
I regarded her. She was extremely attractive.
“Few free women,” I said, “except in the downfall of cities, find themselves secured on pleasure racks.”
“I am so secured,” she said.
“That is true,” I agreed.
“I am yours,” she said. “I give myself to you.”
“It is too late to speak of giving,” I said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“You are in the straps,” I said.
“I do not understand,” she said.
“It is now true that you are mine,” I said, “but do not speak of giving. The time for that is past. You are now in the straps. It is true, of course, that you are mine, but not now because of giving, lovely free woman. You are now mine, rather, simply, because I am going to take you.”
“It is a gift!” she said.
“One which I now seize,” I said.
“No!”
“Yes.”
She struggled.
“You cannot free yourself,” I said. “You are as helpless as a trussed tarsk sow.”
“I am beautiful,” she exclaimed. “My use is precious!”
“You squirm well,” I said.
“Free me!” she cried.
I smiled.
“Please!” she cried. “Please!”
“No,” I said.
“I am a free woman!”
“Bound as you are, you do not seem much different from a slave,” I said.
“No!” she cried.
“You are a gaudy bauble,” I said.
“Oh!” she gasped.
“Do you like that?” I asked.
“No,” she said. “No!”
“Your lips say one thing, your body another,” I said.
“No!” she wept.
“Do you think I do not know when a woman’s body is ready to give pleasure to a man—even that of a free woman?”
Such receptivity is rarely achieved in so short a time with a free woman. It is common, of course, in slaves. The sound of a chain cast to the tiles, the sight of a whip, the snapping of fingers, a simple word of command, such things, however one has conditioned her, will loosen and open the slave for pleasure. Too, her readiness is commonly with her, and her hope then is to interest the master, that she may serve him and thus obtain from him some temporary surcease from the discomfort of her needs, often an acute discomfort, and a discomfort which, if prolonged, becomes an anguish.
The sexual needs of a free woman are often diffuse, or sublimated, or denied or suppressed, or pathologically redirected, with the usual suspicions, griefs, confusions, projections, hostilities, miseries and neuroses attendant on such unhealthy negativities and constraints. These substitutes, misdirections, veils and subterfuges are not permitted to the female slave. She is innocently, naturally, and needfully sexual.
In the beginning she is given no choice; in the end she has no choice.
It is interesting the transformation that honesty, and a collar, work in a woman.
“Free me!” she said. “I demand it! I beg it!”
“It is too late for that,” I told her.
“What are you doing?” she cried. My hands were at the string holding the cloth about her hips.
“I am going to lay aside your veil,” I told her.
“No!” she begged.
I undid the string.
“I must have something left on me,” she said.
“That portion of your disguise which is the collar will remain on you,”
I said.
“Leave the cloth,” she said. “Just thrust it up. Over my hips! It will not much interfere with you.”
It would then be rather like a broad, soft belt.
“It will be removed, completely,” I said.
“No!” she said.
She squirmed. She threw her head back and forth, in misery. Fastened as she was she was helpless, of course, to interfere in any way with the exercise of my will.
“Please, no,” she begged.
It seemed that retaining that bit of modesty, however absurd or trivial it might be, was important to her.
She would not then be totally stripped.
“I do not think you understand,” I said. “There is a principle involved here.”
“Let it at least lie across me, to shield me, to cover me, if only a little! Perhaps my abdomen, or navel! Just a little, just that much! Surely it will not much interfere with you.”
“No,” I said.
“Surely I am entitled to at least that little,” she said.
“You are entitled to nothing, absolutely nothing,” I told her.
“Release me!” she said.
“It would be now inappropriate,” I said. “You have been fastened down.”
“I am a free woman,” she said.
“But one who has been secured on a pleasure rack,” I said.
“I shall cry out!” she threatened.
“Then it will only be necessary to gag you,” I said.
“Please,” she begged. “I have changed my mind! Release me! Release me!”
“It is too late for that,” I said.
“Please,” she pleaded.
“I am only human,” I told her.
“Please,” she pleaded.
“No,” I told her.
Then she lay back on the soft, broad straps, moaning. The cloth at her hips, now freed, had been removed from her. I put it on one of the posts of the pleasure rack, where she might see it. No longer now between us lay the least impediment. She was now, as it is sometimes said on Gor, slave naked.
She looked at me.
“Does my will mean nothing?” she asked.
“It means nothing,” I said.
I put down my head and began to kiss her, and lick her, slowly about the belly.
“Oh!” she said.
And then, in a few moments, she was trying to move her body beneath my mouth, trying to bring me to other positions on her body. Her movements were mute pleas.
“Ohhhh!” she said suddenly, softly.
“Now,” I said, “you must restrain yourself. You must try not to move.”
“I cannot help myself,” she said.
“It would be easy enough for me to desert you now,” I said, “leaving you in the straps.”
She moaned.
“You will not move now,” I said, “until you receive permission.”
“I will try,” she said.
I then continued to lick and kiss at her, softly. She began to whimper and moan. I looked at her. Her eyes were wild, pleading. I put my hands on her belly. It was tense and hot, throbbing with blood and need. “Do not move,” I told her.
“No,” she said, “no!”
I then resumed my ministrations to her body. They were such as might be inflicted upon a woman who was no more than a slave.
“Please!” she whimpered. “Please! Please!”
“Very well,” I said. “You may move.”
She cried out and seemed to explode under me, sobbing with joy and helplessness. Then she looked at me wildly, still held in the straps, disbelief in her eyes. Then I entered her and took her, not gently. “Oh,” she cried. “Master! Master!” Then again she lay back on the straps, helpless.
“I have business to attend to,” I said. Indeed, I must soon make away from Port Kar.
“Tarry but a moment,” she begged. She was in a position to do no more than beg, secured as she was.
I lay beside her and kissed her, and held her, for a moment.
“Thank you,” she breathed.
I rolled to my back. I listened to the sounds of the carnival. Despite the lanterns and torches one could see the stars in the sable Gorean sky. Those of Earth, in urban areas, may never have seen how black, really, the sky can be; perhaps they have never really lifted their heads to the sky; perhaps they have never noted, or cared to note, how sharp and bright the stars can be, how astonishing they are, how beautiful they are, remote, carelessly plentiful, scattered about, indifferent, blazing in her darkness. I heard the grateful sobs of a ravished slave some racks away. I must leave Port Kar. I feared I had slain an agent of Priest-Kings.
I looked again at the stars.
I wondered if many Goreans realized how beautiful their world was. I feared that many of them, so used to beauty, the greenness, the mountains, the rains, the dark forests and bright meadows, the winding rivers, did not really see it. They took so much for granted.
I thought of the loveliness of female slaves. Certainly Gorean men relished them; and yet I wondered if they sufficiently appreciated the value and availability of such goods, if they realized how different things might be, if they realized how fortunate they were. On Gor, there is very little sexual frustration, save, I suppose, in the case of free women, among whom, I gather, it is not uncommon, if not rampant. But on Gor, sexuality, on the whole, is open, biologically informed, honest, joyful, and fulfilling. The civilization of Gor is emergent from nature, not an ugly, high, dark wall erected to keep her at bay. I wondered if Gorean men could even conceive of a world where sexuality was supposedly shameful, where sex and guilt were pathologically intermingled, where children were raised to suspect and fear their own bodies, where the most natural urges and impulses of human beings were denounced, where guilt, pain and misery were approved devices of social control, where the sexes were taught to distrust one another, and were set against one another. But then, too, they could probably not understand a crowded, cruel, scratching, polluted world, a world without Home Stones.
Perhaps Gor was not perfect, but she did not seem, to me, a bad world. Doubtless there are many worse.
She at least had never turned her back on nature, and truth.
I pitied those who have never breathed her air, who had never trodden her fields.
“I was put to use,” said the woman beside me, immobilized on the pleasure rack, her wrists and ankles spread.
I did not respond.
“You used me,” she said, softly, “you put me to use.”
“Every woman should be put to use,” I said.
“You had me,” she said, half chidingly, “as though I might have been a slave.”
“Yes,” I said.
“I see,” she said. “Was it not then to slave use that I was put?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“You put me to slave use!”
“Yes,” I said. “Every woman should be put to slave use.”
“Thank you,” she whispered.
I gathered that any sexual experiences she had had hitherto would have been those merely of a free woman.
“I think there is a slave in you,” I said.
“I know. I know, Master,” she whispered.
“Perhaps you should consider the collar,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
“It could terminate certain falsities and artificialities within you,” I said. “Also, it could provide you with a way of negating your self-alienation, so to speak, of resolving doubts, uncertainties, and confusions, of ridding yourself of self-conflict and self-division, of resolving the tensions within you, the results of an acculturation warring with and frustrating nature, in the most natural way possible, in favor of nature. It could bring you home to yourself. You want to be a woman. In the collar, you must be a woman.”
“Such thoughts are not new to me,” she said. “I have had them for years.”
“It must be a difficult choice for a woman,” I said, “the choice between freed
om and love.”
“Yes, Master,” she whispered.
I looked down at her.
“Collar me,” she begged.
I rose from the rack, and drew my robes about me.
“Please,” she said.
“I have business to attend to,” I said. I should soon leave the city. I adjusted my wallet.
“Yes, Master,” she said.
I freed her from the flexible, efficient restraints, and helped her courteously from the rack.
“Thank you,” she said. “You are very kind.” I restrained her from kneeling. She was, after all, a free woman. “Was I pleasing?” she asked.
“That question seems more appropriate to a slave than a free woman,” I said.
“I ask it,” she said.
“Is it important to you?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“Interesting,” I said.
“Please,” she said.
“Are you a slave, to ask such a question?” I inquired.
“Perhaps,” she smiled.
“Yes,” I said. “You were pleasing.”
“I am so pleased!” she said.
“For a free woman,” I added.
“Oh,” she said.
“Certainly you did not think to be able to compete with a slave,” I said. “You would not have her experience, her skills, her training. You have not been forced to live with and endure slave heat. You have not been forced to learn submission, obedience, service, passion and love. You have not yet been sensitized to her collar. Similarly you do not have her socio-natural vulnerability, that of the legal slave, helplessly so, in a society in which the institution of slavery is accepted, ingredient, pervasive, and honored, an unshakable matter, for thousands of years, of policy, tradition, and law.”
“Suppose I became a slave,” she said. “Do you think I might become a pleasing slave?”
“You have generated a great deal of heat,” I said, “even under the inhibitory, chilling condition of freedom. That is an excellent sign.”
“Do you think, in time, I might make an adequate slave?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said, “and perhaps, in time, even a superb one.”
“That is high praise,” she smiled.
“It is, and is intended to be,” I said.
“Let me kneel before you,” she begged.
I restrained her. “It is time for you to return home,” I said.
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