Safe Word

by Molly Weatherfield

  Mr. Constant looked thoughtful.

  "You're obviously right," he said. He turned for a moment, looking silently toward the door behind him. "But let's compromise, what do you say?" he continued, turning back to us. "Before I send her away for a week, I'd like to see her thoroughly whipped."

  Annie shrugged. "That's cool. Out on the deck? Come on, Carrie."

  And I've always wondered if Mr. Constant had actually wanted Stefan to do that whipping, and not Annie. And whether Annie suspected the same thing, dragging me out to the deck as quickly as she did. And whether Mr. Constant was surprised by how eager I seemed to be, since-as he'd observed-I wasn't one of those pain slaves. But I knew that if I had to bear it, I wanted it to be from Annie and not Stefan.

  Not that it wasn't completely awful-the most workmanlike whipping I'd ever received, utterly devoid of rancor, or of any emotion, really: pure technique, based on her knowledge of what her boss liked, and her professional sense of how to make me weep and writhe and scream out over the silent, late afternoon sea. And she'd only get better at it, I thought, as she came to understand me better, after I was purged of my bad habits, and she could begin training me in earnest. I thanked her profusely, through my sobs, after she'd detached the rings in my cuffs from a hook thoughtfully mounted in a beam above the deck's railing.

  "The stables first, I think," Mr. Constant was saying.

  Which was where I began. On my knees that afternoon, in the dirty straw of a real stable, one that held horses. Two men worked there, an older one, in a tweed cap, and a younger one, with curly black hair and stone-washed jeans. They kept me with them on a leash as they fed and watered the horses, and when they got really busy, they'd loop the leash over some nail or hook.

  It's a pretty labor-intensive business, taking care of thoroughbred horses, and a very matter-of-fact one. They worked quietly, the older guy whistling tunelessly, the younger one breaking in with a comment or question from time to time. And every once in a while, one of them would break off from his work, and decide he needed to fuck my mouth or my ass. And, no, I couldn't tell very well which they wanted, so I often got pushed or slapped or whipped-they'd usually use a riding crop or something that was hanging around for the horses, but they also liked the bundle of twigs that Annie had provided for them.

  They left at dinner time, when a woman in a black dress and kerchief came by with some food in a pail for me. I'd been tethered next to a pile of straw, with a rough blanket on it, and I figured that I was finished for the day. But they each came back after dinner-in fact the younger guy brought a friend, and the older guy a bottle of wine. They laughed to see that they'd both had the same idea, which, I guess, was to try out what they hadn't had time for during the workday. To experiment with how I could be trussed up in the horses' leather harnesses. To take turns fucking my mouth while I raised and lowered my cunt over the pommel of a western saddle. To rig up odd and original ways of suspending me so that both of them could fuck me at the same time. They played until late into the night, finally leaving me exhausted on my blanket, and coming back early the next morning, to get as much out of me as they could, before passing me along to the goatherds.

  Well, I guess anybody would have appreciated a quick release from the rigors of the workday. Mr. Constant seemed to be a tough boss; I had to hustle to be available for the quick breaks they allowed themselves between chores. But there'd be sudden bursts of whimsy and humor, ingenuity and inspiration as well. I developed a new view of the world of objects: Big barrels or troughs were good for upending me over; long tools could be thrust up into me, for comic effect. Anything that tied or buckled would, of course, be used to bind me into clumsy and painful positions. It was all simple physics, I thought: gravity, friction, the collision of bodies in space, the primitive technologies regulating the expenditure of energy. I learned to move quickly, and to be alert for signals-who'd want what next, and how I could keep from getting punished for being too slow on the uptake.

  They'd wash out my cunt or mouth or asshole when it was too cruddy for anybody to want to fuck, but otherwise, at least in the stables and goatpens and the garage, I crawled around smeared with shit and motor oil. But of course I had to be scrubbed down when I got to the laundry room (which was a sweaty treasure house of cunning bondage apparatus). At which point I was also passed from men to black-clad women, who were a lot more difficult, with their disapproving looks, and, as it turned out, very exacting standards. They'd spank or fuck me with just about anything, too: mops, brooms, wooden spoons, those wide paddles you use for taking pizza out of the oven. Well, that was in the kitchen, which is where the week ended up, and where there were also a few younger women, in denim skirts and striped T-shirts, who laughed a lot when I made them come, and made the older ladies very angry.

  "Let's go back to the hotel," Jonathan said, putting down his coffee cup abruptly and stubbing out his cigarette. Gotcha, she thought.

  They'd walked a block or two when he stopped in front of a hardware store. "Wait a minute," he said thoughtfully, studying the window display. "I need to buy something."

  "But I thought we agreed.... "

  He laughed. "Trust me on this one."

  CARRIE

  And when he came back out, I couldn't tell what was in the small white plastic bag tucked into the pocket of his jacket.

  "What is it?" I demanded.

  "Dessert," he said. "A second dessert. Wipe that speck of whipped cream off the tip of your nose. And come on, hurry up, don't dawdle." He took my hand and set off at a rapid clip, leading me the couple of blocks to our hotel and up the stairs.

  Well, I thought, I'd been right-it had definitely been his kind of story. He slammed the door behind him, and we tried to pull our clothes off, as quickly as we could. Which meant, of course, that we kept fumbling, tripping, cursing to ourselves. Finally, though, he stood behind me, running his hands down my front. I leaned back against him and he whispered in my ear, "Tell me again. I like to hear you say it. He lent you to people in the..."

  "Stables," I breathed, "the stables." I arched my back so that I could feel his cock against my ass. He had one hand on my cunt, while the other moved up, over my belly, my breasts, my neck, my face. I kissed the palm of his hand.

  "And they dragged you through filthy straw," he said, "dragged you after them on a leash and when they snapped their fingers..."

  I reached behind me and pulled his hips forward, while I pushed against him as hard as I could. "When they snapped their fingers," I said, "I had to figure out whether they wanted to fuck my mouth or my ass."

  "Oh, your ass," he said, kissing my ears and the back of my neck, "no question about it-definitely your ass this afternoon."

  He nudged me over to the bed, and I lay down across it, on my belly. He kissed my neck again, and then he moved his mouth down, tracing my spine, kissing as he went. "Keep talking," he said.

  "But it wasn't just the stables," I said, softly, happily. His mouth traveled lower, following the curve of my ass. "It was also the garage, you know, on the greasy concrete floor, my face almost in the oil pan...."

  "And the goatpens and gardeners' sheds, and the laundry, and the kitchen," he whispered, "Don't forget the kitchen." He bent his head again, planting kisses on the backs of both my thighs.

  "Yes," I said quickly. I figured I'd better talk quickly, to keep him quiet-to keep his mouth where it belonged. "Yes, they were very strict in the kitchen, but, you know, it was in the goat shed where they really fucked my ass a lot...." He was licking the backs of my knees. "And they used to like to whip me with that little bundle of sticks," I continued, "the one that was hanging down from my collar by a chain." He spread my legs apart and kissed the insides of my thighs. And then he got up on his knees behind me.

  He snapped his fingers.

  I scrambled to my knees, arching my back, my breasts crushed against the bed, my arms in front of me, my hands anchoring me, gripping the edge of the mattress.

  He slappe
d my ass sharply. Each side.

  "Oh, yes," he repeated, "most definitely your ass."

  And then he bent over me, and oh yes no question most definitely fucked my ass.

  We were both pretty comatose afterward, lying sprawled across the bed for quite a while. And then just kissing, idly and luxuriously, for quite a while longer. Our clothes, which we'd pulled off so clumsily, were lying everywhere around the room. Lascivious disarray-the phrase slipped into my head, probably from something I'd read in my early teens. I liked the way it sounded. I drifted contentedly in and out of sleep on it, ignoring Jonathan's increasing fidgetiness. The messiness was making him crazy. He sighed unhappily, ostentatiously, while I pretended not to notice-and finally he gave up, sighed one last huge pitiful sigh, and pulled himself out of bed to hang up our stuff in the armoire.

  And when he came back to bed he was holding that package from the hardware store. I'd forgotten about it. What had he said back there? Something about dessert....

  He took a little metal whisk out of the bag. Like something you'd use to made an omelet. Did we have a hotplate in the room? I wondered dimwittedly. Were there eggs, milk?

  But he was holding it wrong, I thought, my sex-benumbed mind struggling for coherence. He was holding it upside down. That was odd. He held it delicately, his long fingers around the slender loops of wire, his eyes mischievous in his deadpan face. I was still too tired to move, lying stretched out on my back, too dazed and astonished to do anything at all as he moved the handle up my cunt, rested the edge gently against my clit. And then, well, I guess he started hitting the loops of wire with the finger of his other hand. And the whisk's cool, smooth aluminum handle began to vibrate against me, in my cunt, gently and beautifully, playing its music of the spheres, turning me into a glass harp, a tuning fork, for that long, long, timeless instant he kept jingling the wires. Ahhh....-

  I was embarrassed, a little, after that. "But where...?" I whispered, after kissing him breathlessly for a while, "how...?"

  He pretended to be casual about it. "Oh, that," he began. "Oh. Yeah. Well, sometimes I like to go down to Valencia Street and browse the lesbian sex zines. And, well, uh, when you were telling me about your adventures in the kitchen, I remembered something I'd read. See, there's a zine that has kind of a `Hints from Heloise' column and I always check it out. Well, I figure they'd know, right?" He shrugged, all boyish, charming, phony modesty. I kissed him again.

  And when I went to take a bath a little while later, I found that I was singing, softly at first, but happily and ridiculously, a song from deep within my memory. I know lots of old rock songs, you see. They were imprinted on me, when I was very little, by my boomer parents who played their favorite records over and over, constantly. So, as I was running the hot water and dumping in the bath salts I started singing. I got louder, too, warbling unselfconsciously along with the sound of the water and the pipes-with the harmonies of my overworked senses and overwhelmed emotions. And as I lowered myself into the steaming tub I was singing full force.

  "In the jingle jangle morning," I sang, "I'll come followin' you." And I wondered if I really would, too.

  Of course, you always pay for it, don't you? You get out of the bathtub or shower, you see the other person's amused face, and you realize just how loudly you were belting out your song in there.

  "Nice selection," he grinned. "A lesser sensibility might have given me `You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman."'

  "Come back to bed," he added. "I lied before. I want your mouth too."

  I'd forgotten how devastating I found that little phrase. I want. Well, it was more than a phrase, after all-it was, as I could have told you at nine years old, a complete sentence, the verb sweetly agreeing with the subject in number. Number? One. Just him, his declarative, subjective singularity-taut, swollen, urgent. I want. Tense: the present. Oh, yes, very tense, and very present. A simple sentence, wanting to grow, to complexify, its predicate demanding its object give it its object. Your mouth. And I opened my mouth, and he pulled my head down on him, hard. Oh, and I want you. I want you. To want it. To want me. It. Dissolve. Drown in the ambiguity.

  But you don't really drown. After a while you surface. He pulled me up, helping me to swim, like Alice through her tears. And words, phrases-exclamatory, hortatory-odd, illassorted forms from languages living and dead, bubbled up in me, as I demanded more, more from him, his hands, his mouth. Onward, I insisted. Onward and upward and downward too, I directed him. And so on. And so forth. Q.E.D. and P.D.Q. I remembered another barely understood favorite song from early childhood. She comes in colors-only I don't, I come in words. Et cetera and even and so weiter. Aha and eureka and excelsior, too. Semperfidelis and don't forget sic semper tyrannis. I led and he followed, but matching me, teasing me, laughing at my insatiability and goading me on, chasing me through moods and modes, hollow lands and hilly lands, as the twilight deepened and we exhausted ourselves-our abilities, ingenuities, vocabularies. We slept for a while, and it was very dark when we woke up. Ten o'clock, too late to get dinner in a restaurant. "But I'm starving," I wailed, and we went out to find a cafe that would give us salad, or cassoulet, or anything.

  Over coffee, our elbows on the crowded little cafe table, our hands linked, I wondered how I could make this moment last, just a little longer. Because out of the happy haze that had surrounded us that long, drizzly afternoon, certain details were beginning to emerge, islands in the sea of memory, the tides of events swirling around them. Things were going to change, I knew. Soon. They were changing now, and I couldn't stop the haze from dissolving, from revealing the new landscape. I looked at him, silently imploring him to help me hold on to the moment, but he shook his head. Damn, I thought, he wants things to move along. He's ready and I'm not. He kissed my fingers, my knuckles that were beginning to clench; he brushed them lightly with his lips. His eyes, peering over the top of my hand, were sympathetic, ironic. He'll be patient, I thought, for a little while longer. Maybe, if I'm lucky, until tomorrow

  Where had it come from, this change in mood, in tempo? Perhaps it had been those slaps. Not that they'd hurt, but they'd lingered, resonating in memory. I was suddenly overwhelmed by memories, images-his hand on his rattan cane, while I sobbed and writhed beneath him. The modeling of the bones in his wrist, the tension of the muscles in his forearm, the heat in his eyes. Was I feeling terror, I wondered, or impatient desire? Was time moving too fast or too slowly?

  Back up, I thought. Slow down. This isn't about pain yet. It will be, oh, don't doubt that. But there are other things, important things, protocols and decorum to be put in place first. Those slaps-they're not punishment, after all. They're communication: simple syntax in the pidgin of dominance and submission. Like that snap of his fingers. It's a wakeup call, a warning signal that we're no longer moving through the courtly figures of seduction, flirtation, negotiation.

  But it was dangerous to think like that. If you could call it thinking at all. I mean, it was the kind of thinking where thinking makes it so-I was already mainlining his signals, his commands to my wet, open, tremulous, primitive body, feeling the sound of the snap of his fingers.

  He shook his head, across the table from me. "You're really something," he said, smiling. And then, looking around him, "I think they'd like to close the cafe." He gestured for the check, and I tried to compose myself-to get back into real time, to watch the cafe owner's wife yawning, her reddened hands polishing the espresso machine.

  Hurry up please it's time. Time to wrap up the old stories and to make up some frightening, difficult, new ones. Hurry up. Because he won't say "please" tomorrow.

  We walked quietly back to the hotel through dark, wet streets. You could see a few stars, but it was still mostly cloudy.

  "It's late," he said, opening the door to our room, taking off his jacket and hanging it in the armoire.

  I nodded. I pulled off my clothes and tossed them onto the floor.

  We got into bed and he snapped off the light. />
  I snapped it back on. "Not yet," I said. "One more story today."

  He raised an eyebrow, and I drew myself into sitting position.

  "Okay, Jonathan," I said. I found that I could still conjure up a confident, demanding tone. "A story from you now" But with a subtle weakening at the end, like a boy whose voice is changing. "And one that's not about Kate."

  JONATHAN TELLS A STORY THAT'S (MOSTLY) NOT ABOUT KATE

  That letter I wrote to you-I'd given it to Stefan to give to you-got me into trouble. It was definitely an unacceptable thing to do, you see, in the parallel legal universe of the auction association. Stefan should really have refused to let you see it. His story was that he thought I had a right to send it to you, because they hadn't signed the papers yet and you were still my property. But I think he'd passed it on, to you and Constant, just to make trouble for you. And for me.

  Because it had definitely been a no-no, and the auction people, the powers that be, felt they had to censure me for it. I'd gotten a phone call from my lawyer, Brewer. Not from his secretary, which is what I would have expected. No, Brewer called me himself, to set up a lunch appointment, to talk about it some more. "What the hell did you think you were doing?" he asked. And when I stammered my apologiesI'd been carried away emotionally, whatever-he sounded serious.

  "That letter could get you barred from the association, Jon," he said. "How long have you been a member?"

  "Fifteen years," I said. "More, I guess."

  "Well, you should know better," he growled. "I'll send you copies of the relevant clauses in the bylaws, so you can see just how entirely out of line you were."

  Who reads these things? I never had. Well, but I'd never needed to. I'd always been such a good, well-behaved citizen of the association before. I mean, it was all common sense, basic manners and sensibility, boundaries one wouldn't dream of overstepping. Who would have imagined doing any of what I'd so thoughtlessly done? The bylaws couldn't have been clearer. The prohibitions against declaring love or proposing friendship to a slave, revealing one's own emotions, or phrasing anything as a request rather than a command. Worse, I thought, probably, was the way I'd asked you to meet me in a year. I couldn't specify the exact clause I'd violated, but I knew that Constant had been right to take issue with what I'd done. Because, yeah, I'd definitely wanted you to think about me, on his time, across the boundaries of the year he'd paid for.