We talked about the pudenda statue at dinner that evening. Four of the five team leaders: Dyana, Sagi, Tex and I were there. Robbie wasn’t with us then.
I’d asked Tex if he’d seen the video we’d obtained of the two-sided statue.
“Ah did. It’s the biggest damn pussy Ah’ve ever seen.” We all laughed at what he said and how he’d said it with his Texas drawl. “Ah’ll bet the little lady who owned that empty slit wasn’t near as happy though.”
“That’s surely true, I said, “though if she were cut young, she wouldn’t know what she was missing.”
“If they initiated the tradition Egypt follows today, she would most likely have been doctored before puberty,” Sagi noted. “Though once in a while, but not very often, an Egyptian woman isn’t cut until adulthood, or until marriage.”
Dyana looked directly at me. I thought I saw a hint of lust in her eye. “I haven’t studied your video in detail or slo-mo yet, Destiny. What’s the chance that the cut side is simply damaged or eroded from centuries in the water?”
“It’s remotely possible, but having looked closely at the spot where the clit would be, there is no evidence of breakage, though there is a smooth indentation,” I answered. “If it were polished by water erosion, I wouldn’t expect the indentation to be only there – it would have spread above and within the slit. As far as the labia breaking off, the slit is totally smooth with an even surface within. You can just put your fingers inside. There would have been no room for the petals of an inner labia.
“The best argument for no erosion damage, though, is that the circumcised side of the statue was the most deeply buried.”
That seemed to convince everyone that we’d found what we thought we had.
“Ultimately, it might strongly suggest, or definitively indicate, that Nefertiti and Cleopatra, and all the other Egyptian princesses – along with the common women in ancient Egyptian society – had been circumcised. If so, they would have been incapable of an orgasm, as we understand that capability in the twenty-first century,” Dyana offered.
“The custom of almost universal circumcision does, of course, persist to the present day in Egypt,” Sagi noted. Even though I’d known that, I couldn’t suppress a cringe. Tex’s mouth dropped open. “In Egypt, it’s not only widespread, but by far the norm. Among married women, 97% of Egyptians have been circumcised, either by removal of the clitoris or excision of the clitoris, hood and inner labia. Under the current, fundamentalist-leaning government, the practice of partial infibulation: excision plus surgical reduction and permanent closing of the outer labia by stitching them together from the top of the vulva to the vaginal opening, is becoming common too.
“The misguided, ISIS-leaning politicians falsely believe that female circumcision is an Islamic tradition. This find could prove that it predated Islam by at least 1500 years.”
“That certainly might help separate it from Islam and convince the government to stop promoting it,” I suggested.
“Yeah, if those fanatics even believed our findings. What they believe has nothing to do with real, scientific evidence,” Dyana quipped.
Sagi replied, “I fear you might have hit on the problem, Dyana. Female circumcision, at its various levels of invasiveness, had been outlawed in Egypt during the reign of Hosni Mubarak. That barely slowed down the practice at all. It was deeply ingrained in the culture. When he was deposed in 2011, the practice continued under the Muslim Brotherhood-influenced government. With the current, even more religiously fundamental government, it has become standard practice for Egyptian girls, openly legal, and essentially expected of all women in Egypt under the current, ISIS-influenced government. The only improvement, if you can call it that, is that now it’s usually done in a medical facility of some kind, instead of on the dirt floor of a grass hut.”
Personally, as you might expect, I considered the practice to be horrifying. In that regard, my view was the same as that of virtually every Western woman. Dyana did, however, have a slightly more tolerant viewpoint.
“I certainly agree that the practice is barbaric, but if you look past it into the society in which it’s practiced it falls within the boundaries of tribal tradition. In other words, it’s a ritual of belonging. I try to look at female circumcision anthropologically – as a rite of passage into the accepted, Egyptian, womanly ideal.”
I had to offer my opinion. “I always thought that the goal and intention of female circumcision was to curtail a woman’s independence, her inclination to infidelity, and make lesbianism an essentially meaningless endeavor, at least from the standpoint of sexual arousal. I thought that’s why they did it. I thought it was sponsored by and supported by the men in the community.”
“Not at all, Destiny,” Sagi said. “Most men are completely ambivalent when it comes to the practice. They leave it to the women to decide. It’s been perpetuated by the women themselves.”
“That’s true,” Dyana agreed. “If a culture embraces the goals of tribal membership and the supporting rituals, along with any real or imagined benefits of the outcome of the ritual itself and the behavior that supports it, then the members of that society would pursue the tradition simply to fit in. After all, we follow norms of our own civilization. We embrace women’s legal equality, leadership, and standards of dress and behavior. We embrace or at least tolerate personal choices like body modifications: piercings, tattoos, breast augmentation, rhinoplasty, labiaplasty, other kinds of plastic surgery, and so on. The difference is that in our culture, those choices are what an individual wants to do with her or his own body. That said, most infant boys are circumcised and mothers often get their infant daughter’s ears pierced. Both things happen long before a child had the maturity to decide.
“I’m not saying I’m a die-hard advocate for multiculturalism, because I’m not. But I’ll admit that it’s very difficult to find absolute principles for human behavior within any society, let alone across all of them. We can all agree about prohibiting murder, but we do it in wars all the time, so even that isn’t absolute. It gets much more difficult to define an absolute morality when you talk about cultural traditions.
“In my opinion, female circumcision in Egypt merely reflects the mores the society values. As a Western woman, you might hate it, but you couldn’t argue against it from some, arbitrary, Western sense of morality.”
I could see Tex struggling with both the topic of the discussion and where it had landed. I got the impression he not only had nothing to say, but he really wanted this conversation to end. I had to suppress a smile at the discomfort of our big, gentle post-doc.
Sagi spoke again. “Based on the monument you’ve uncovered, the tradition of female circumcision is likely to be a foundational custom, deeply ingrained in Egyptian culture from long ago – at least twice as ancient as the country’s currently-dominant, Muslim faith. If that proves to be true, it would undeniably show that female circumcision is an Egyptian tradition, which has nothing to do with Islam, as many have contended for years. If so, female circumcision as practiced in Egypt would be one of the most persistent, ancient female rituals known.
“Under the current, ISIS-influenced Egyptian administration, female circumcision has once again, become compulsory and, for all intents and purposes, so firmly entrenched that it would take a true female rebel, locally at least, to avoid the practice and continue to exist outside the prison system.”
I had to add my two-cents worth. “Since circumcision is usually done before early teens, there are few or no ‘rebels.’ Most any potential Egyptian rebel has already been circumcised as a child, and has little or no idea of what she’s lost.”
“That is, in fact, true,” Sagi agreed.
As I thought about the statue still lying on the Mediterranean Sea bed, I had an evolving, somewhat different view of the practice. It now was obviously a social norm that had persisted for about 3000 years! Barbaric, for sure, but with enormous, traditional, ethnic inertia.
I’d alway
s known, intellectually, about societies where male dominance was the norm. Even my beloved America, in which I’d grown up, hadn’t considered women equal citizens until about a hundred years ago. Now, however, it was right there, staring me in the face, unavoidable in its social, societal, and personal impact. And it was an ancient tradition. Incredibly ancient.
Chapter 5 – Real Love
Dyana turned 32 at the end of my third week with the team. She and I celebrated privately during the day, and the rest of the crew and archeologists threw a big party for her that started even before dinner. I’m not a big drinker, but I managed to really put it away that night. Whatever happened afterwards is barely a blur in my mind. I might have had sex with one of the crew, following a couple hours of flirting. I’m not sure anymore. If I did, Dyana apparently didn’t care, but I expected that she knew.
As I expected to, I crashed in her cabin that night, dead to the world in mere minutes.
Some indeterminate time later, I felt Dyana running her fingers through my short, short hair. I purred with the pleasure of her fingertips on my scalp. This was one of the best things about short hair. If you had a talented lover, as I did, she could make your entire head an erotic zone. I felt the stirring from my scalp all the way down to my pussy.
After several minutes of this, I opened my eyes to look on my lover, and to initiate my own response to her erotic stroking of the short hair she’d imposed on me.
There was a faint light from somewhere, perhaps moonlight through the starboard window. It was difficult to tell what the source of the faint illumination was. What was clear was that Dyana was asleep and facing away from me. My face was buried in her short bob. I was cupping her from behind.
Once again, I felt fingers run through my hair from front to back, back to front, and then combing my hair in its natural, new shape, from left to right.
I looked up from the bed without moving. Tia was there, the image of her torso suspended above me. Her hands reached down and stroked my hair. Her eyes had a look I didn’t recognize at first. Then I realized that there was lust, contentment, and appreciation on her face. She was reacting to my short hair.
I didn’t say anything, fearing I’d alert Dyana to Tia’s presence. Her fingers in my hair felt wonderful, comforting, sexy and arousing. I found her face and saw the pleasure in it.
With the faintest whisper, I heard her say, “Ooo … yes! Destiny, this is you. I wish I’d thought of this … so, so sexy. So, so desirable. I so want to …”
And she was gone. I think she liked my pixie haircut! If she were real. If I hadn’t dreamt the whole thing. If there was some connection between our world and the next …
**********
The first month of work passed in a haze of hours a day in the water, half-a-dozen dives in one of the two mini submarines, and seemingly endless seafloor mapping. Finally, as the second summer month began, we had investigated a large enough area in detail that we were able to focus on five sites for detailed exploration, all within a square that was two kilometers on a side, and all about ten klicks, or six miles offshore.
We would spend a couple days assembling the new site-covering domes, which would let us work comfortably on the bottom, 10 to 15 meters down. As soon as they were ready, two teams would anchor them to the sandy-muddy seafloor.
I’d done a dive in the morning of our 30th day out, to set exact location stakes for our first dome. Dyana asked me to join her for lunch in her cabin, where I spent a good portion of my off-hours time.
We finished a mixed salad with sea polyps, along with a couple glasses of a very nice Chardonnay from the Burgundy region of France. Did you know that in some years, that region produces more Chardonnay than its famous Burgundy red, the Pinot Noir? It’s true. I really got into wines during my Master’s degree work and though I didn’t yet have enough money to spend on wines to become a connoisseur, I had lots of knowledge and reasonable experience picking decent bargain bottles.
I’m something of a heretic in that I like my Chardonnays almost ice cold – I know you’re supposed to serve the oaky ones at about 54o F and the non-oaky ones at 48o F, but I like white wine cold. That’s just me. Dyana indulged me on that one. Anyway, the wine went great with the salad, and mellowed us both out. Fortunately, we had the afternoon off that day.
I wanted to take advantage of the mood and got up from our little table (I was starting to think of Dyana’s cabin as ours) and reached for Dyana’s hand, intending to lead her to the bed. “In a few moments, dear,” she said.
She stood and reached her hand behind my head, her fingers in my hair as usual, and pulled me to her for one of our spectacular kisses. We’re both talented kissers, and took fair advantage of that fact. We both have soft, full-but-not-thick lips. They fit together wonderfully. We maintain that yielding softness when we kiss.
About four times out of five, I broke out in goosebumps when Dyana kissed me. It never seemed to get old. This kiss was one of those. I felt it everywhere.
She pulled back a little and said, “Sit back down for a few minutes. It’s been a month and your hair is getting a little shaggy. I want to trim it up so it’s nice and neat like it was.”
I didn’t plan to have her do that. In fact, as I’ve mentioned, I was going to let it grow as long as I could. I told her that.
She looked at me sweetly and said, “That’s fine, but this is beyond ‘as long as you can.’ Now it’s time to trim it.”
“Uh … uh … that’s not what I meant. I’m going to … umm …”
She interrupted me. “No, I’m sorry – well, not very – but you aren’t going to have long hair again. You’re a short-hair girl now and that’s how you’ll stay.” She started taking her haircutting things out of her little bag.
“I know you like my hair short,” I admitted to her, “and I’ll probably keep it shorter than it was – it would take me years to grow it back anyway. But I want it a little longer than it is.”
“Why in the world would you want that?” She asked.
“Just ‘cause I like it longer?” I answered her with a question because I didn’t actually have a reason. It was more like a want, and I wasn’t sure why I wanted long hair. I suspected, again, that it was only because it had always been long.
“It looks great every moment of every day – including in bed, under water, and blowing in the wind. It’s easy, sexy, very pretty on you, and everyone is used to this being how you look.”
“Except me.”
“You’re more used to it. And after a few months keeping it this way, you’ll be completely at home and happy with it.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of.”
“Why on Earth would you be afraid of that?”
“I don’t want to become a committed, short-hair woman. It isn’t me.”
“It is now, and your lover is crazy about it.”
And so we went back and forth, but the end result was inevitable. I sat down, she put a towel around me, and started trimming about half an inch off the top, back and sides. It all went much faster this time and, before I knew it, the clippers were buzzing up the back at my hairline, along the sides over my ear, and making my sideburns - which had become a little wispy - short, tight and neat.
I was back to where I had been when it was first cut. It was obvious to me that I’d wear my hair like Dyana wanted, as long as I was here. As long as I was in the same reality as she was. When I thought about it, it actually did make total sense to me. For whom did I want to look good more than for my lover? The answer was obvious: for no one, including myself. After all, I didn’t look at me very often, but Dyana did. Why wouldn’t I want to look good for her?
There was no driving reason to not be what she wanted, of course. So I was going to remain a short-hair girl.
Did Dyana make it up to me in bed? Did she show her appreciation? Was it worth losing my long, flowing hair – essentially forever?
Oh God yes!
That afternoon after I was
rendered neat and tidy again, we made our way onto the bed, but not under the covers. Unlike most times, we started our intimacy in half-69, our mouths on each other’s nipples. I was on top. “I’m butch again – or still – and I’m on top this time,” I told her. She didn’t argue at all.
Her breasts are barely smaller than mine, but she has surprisingly big nipples. I could suck them into my mouth nicely. Dyana liked me to be rough with them. I’d come to know just how to suck them in and then nibble on them to really get her going. Then I’d bite down at the base, and slowly increase the force of the bite until she said, “Aaahhh!” Then I held it for a while, then let up, sucked it back in, and did it again.
That’s different than what I like. My nipples are hypersensitive – at least, that’s how they seem to me. Any stimulation – fingers, lips, tongue, palm-of-the-hand, even just looking at a hot guy or girl will make them hard, aroused, and standing at attention. Dyana was gently swirling her tongue around one of my nipples, while her hand reached up (her “up”), to rest on my inner thigh and draw circles on it with her fingertips. It was driving me insane with sensation!
My nipple was in her mouth and it was totally obvious to me that the togetherness that implied was exactly what I wanted in a lover. Dyana could have been female, male, or neuter and it would have made no difference to me. I simply needed Dyana. The warmth and pressure of my torso against her was everything I needed to become a woman who was, at that moment, sex-crazed.
Destiny Taken (Destiny Lost Book 1) Page 8