When the whip landed across Svetlana's rump, it exorcised all of Svetlana's residual restraint. It was real, true, hard and decisive pain; a pain that shocked her body and numbed her mind, a pain that forced on her a gasping, open-mouthed surprise, a pain that drove tears from her eyes, a pain that made her push her sex towards Little Su's mouth, subconsciously demanding deeper and more earnest satisfaction. It was a pain like no other she had ever experienced, a pain that mutated as it echoed through her body into a strange and wicked pleasure. As she jerked against the handcuffs, her body tautened, absorbing-welcoming-the intense punishment. In that nano-second of revelation, she understood how pain could be transmogrified into lust.
Yes ... in that instance she felt so very sorry for the blonde, who by being so circumspect, so very fearful of the pain being visited upon her, would never be able to endure the heady delights of erotic torture. Sexual and intellectual fulfilment would remain forever tantalisingly beyond her grasp.
"More,” Svetlana screamed, as she saw on the stage below her the man's arm ratchet back, coiling itself in anticipation of a second blow. As though time had slowed, she watched as the muscles on the man's back bunched, as his spine twisted like a drawn bow, saw his mouth tensed in studied concentration...
The two whip slashes landed simultaneously; as one, Svetlana and the blonde bucked forward against their shackles; and together they emitted a scream of ecstasy. The crowd cheered, but on the balcony all there was, was the grunt of effort as the Master belaboured Svetlana's arse, the sigh of satisfaction from Svetlana as the pain of the whip and the joy of the climax merged into one overwhelming, overpowering orgasm. Finally, Svetlana slumped down against her fetters, her body spent by her sexual exertions.
Distracted, her breath coming in short, desperate pants, Svetlana sensed Little Su stand away from her, and felt the Master sank three fingers into her sodden cunt, twisting them to coat them liberally with her hot balm. Then with unexpected tenderness, he smoothed her unction over the hot stripes on her arse. “Come to me again,” he whispered, “and I will initiate you into the world of domination. To be all you can be as a submissive you must explore these contrary sensations ... these contrary pleasures."
They unbuckled her, then led her back down the stairs. She left her skirt, preferring to walk through the club naked from the waist down, happy to display her sex to the crowds thronging the club, happy to have the spotlights flicker on her cream-slicked thighs and arse, and very content to display the stripes of her submission.
As he walked by her side, the Master suddenly turned to Svetlana, “I give you a challenge ... next time you come to So-UnReal-Ism show me something new, something that shows you have understood tonight's experiences. Demonstrate to me that you are changed."
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Chapter Three
The Boss watched her second presentation carefully.
He knew that some of her team members were surprised by his presence. He guessed they thought he was there to witness Svetlana's failure. Oh, the word had gone out that the great, the glacial, the god-damned brilliant Svetlana was in trouble; that her first pitch had been a fuck-up. So, everyone wanted to be there to witness the final conflagration of her meteoric career. A business colleague is never more popular than when he or she is in trouble. Everyone wants to watch a train-wreck.
But his reason for attending the presentation was much more prosaic. He knew she had embraced submission and she had embraced surrealism—sub-realism?—and nothing could be a more liberating experience. She had taken that oh-so-difficult first step on the road to sexual and intellectual liberation. And hopefully the prospect of playing the Dominatrix at So-UnReal-Ism tonight had whet her sexual appetites even further.
So, the question was, had So-UnReal-Ism produced a thawing of the Ice Princess?
As he watched her rise to her feet and move to stand by the projector screen, he knew that his efforts hadn't been in vain. Oh, the changes in her were subtle, but he saw them and he knew what they presaged. Her outfit was as it always was: the starched white blouse and the knee-length black pencil skirt, but rather than being buttoned tight to her neck now three buttons of the blouse were undone, allowing the occasional, fleeting glimpse of the swell of her breasts. Moreover, her breasts now hung without a bra, and as she raised her arm to point out facts on the display screen, they undulated deliciously.
The Boss leant closer, examining the tips of her breasts as they jiggled so excitingly: she was colouring them! He could see the dark stiffness of the twin disks of her nipples even through the thickness of the blouse's cotton, a subtle darkness that was all the more erotically arousing because of the almost subliminal way they were displayed. Having seen this change he now saw others: her lipstick was at least two or three shades darker than that which she usually wore and it had a shiny varnished look. She now sported heavy chain jewellery about her neck and her wrists—surely an echo of the steel manacles she'd seen in So-UnReal-Ism—and her heels were now a towering four inches, making her legs look amazingly long.
It wasn't just her appearance that had altered. She also seemed to have begun to appreciate the erotic, and this was noticeable in her reinterpretation of the campaign for the perfume. For the first time he saw her fantasy persona, the one she had manifested in So-UnReal-Ism, and the real world persona of Svetlana the hard-headed marketing executive begin to overlap. Svetlana's fantasies and her realities were merging to form a new and very exciting ... surreality.
There would be no need to send any more e-mails...
* * * *
Madam Durst was the doyen of all perfumiers: a living legend. She had worked with all the greats—Ernest Beaux who created Chanel No 5, and the other master perfumiers at Guerlain and Worth—all of them. She had developed some of the most famous perfumes that sat on the shelves of cosmetic counters around the world.
And now she was sitting, frail and fragile, at the end of the Agency's conference table, swathed in a floor-length black woollen dress, sucking greedily on her black cheroot and puffing out dark, vaporous clouds of smoke, smoke which threatened to obscure the “No Smoking” sign on the wall. She looked, decided Svetlana, like a tiny sparrow, her head bobbing up and down and her sharp, alert eyes twitching around the room examining and assessing the nervous members of Svetlana's creative team.
"Eighty, if she's a day," thought Svetlana, “and still sharp as a tack."
So sharp, in fact, that only five years before the intimidating, the daunting Madam Durst had mortgaged everything she owned to set up her own company, a company dedicated to producing—discovering almost—that ultimate perfume. And now that she'd done the impossible, she was looking for someone to market it.
"Are vee ready to begin?” the old woman said suddenly, the acid in her voice only partially diluted by the strange accent that flavoured her speech.
Svetlana got to her feet and moved to the opposite end of the table from where Madam Durst was sitting, to where her computer was set up.
"You are vearing my perfume,” the old woman observed. It wasn't a question, more a statement.
"Why yes, I thought..."
"Gut, it suits you. A voman like you needs a lascivious perfume. How are you vearing it?"
For a moment Svetlana was nonplussed by the question, then she shrugged, “Well ... as I normally do: behind my ears and on the inside of my wrists."
"Pah, this is not gut. A voman, young, beautiful ... desirable as you are, must use her perfume provocatively. Vhen I vas yo’ age I vore my perfume betveen my breasts, in my navel unt on my pubis ... pour l'encouragement des hommes. You understand?"
"Oh yes...” stumbled Svetlana, understanding only too clearly. There were nervous shuffles around the table. It seemed the rest of the executives gathered in the room had understood too.
"Gut. Do zhat unt in vun veek you vill have fucked all ze young men in zis room.” Madam Durst peered through rheumy eyes at the men sitting about the conference table, bobbing her head an
d its sequinned beret at the most handsome of them. Then she added as an after-thought, “All ze vuns who are nut queer anyzays.” She took another long drag of her cheroot and settled back in her chair with an expectant look on her face. “Zo ... ve proceed, yes?"
And thus encouraged, Svetlana proceeded.
"I have thought long and hard about your perfume,” she heard herself pronounce to the collected gathering, “and about perfume in general. My conclusion is that a woman wears perfume in order to mutate and to signal that this mutation has produced a woman more sexually active and sexually available than the original."
"Gut, yes,” commented Madam Durst, to no one in particular, “zat is right. All perfume iz about fucking. All perfume imitates vun stage or ze ozzer ov ze ritual ov sex. Ze florals ze first chaste kiss, ze fougere ze touch ov vun naked body on anozer, unt ze chypre ze first entry ov ze penis into ze cunt. Zis perfume ov mine mimicks ze aroma ov orgasm, because ze orgasm is ze ultimate reason vhy ve have ze fuck. Zis is gut. Continue pleeze."
Christ, follow that, thought Svetlana, though she was pleased to see that Pauline Trent was as disconcerted by the old woman's asides as anyone. “The problem though is that all perfume advertising to date prescribes the image of this final mutation. How?” It was obviously a rhetorical question and the audience stayed mute, “by providing a dream image in the form of a celebrity endorsement. They say daub this perfume on your body and you'll become Beyonce, Britney, or J-Lo. But as you wish to attract the independent college-educated woman, a traditional and hackneyed promotional strategy like this will, I believe, be a positional cul-de-sac. Such free-thinking women are, in all probability, turned off by this sort of endorsement."
"On zis ve are in agreement. All ze ozer agencies ‘av proposed wun celebrity or anozer. I zay zat zey are too fucking expenzive. Anyhow most are too safe. Jeezus, wun proposed Jili Sands unt I reminded zem zat for all zat money I at least vanated a voman whose hymen vos fucking broken ... or maybe better, broken by ze fuck. Fucking Jili Sands. I fucked her husband unt he had a dick zat long...” Madam Durst waggled her little finger at Svetlana who had the good grace to colour, as much from the fact that she'd once supported the idea of using Jili Sands as a front-woman, as for the ribaldry of the observation.
"Well, that's good to know.” Svetlana took a deep steadying breath, “Anyway as I was saying: such women see celebrity endorsement as self-serving and false. You want to attract the woman who, to quote Tristan Tzara, ‘demands the right to piss in different colours'.” It was an audacious declaration of intent, and indeed the word “piss” did draw a few inward gasps from the audience, but conversely there was a general stiffening of attention as the audience became more alert to what Svetlana was saying.
"Yez, zat iz gut. I fucked Tzara ven I vas junger ... vell I think I did, all zose Dada-ists looked the zame. Whoever he vas, he knew Tzara unt had a monocle just like Tzara"s. Ven he orgasmed, ze liddle monocle he vore popped out ov his liddle eye. I liked Tzara; he vas a cute little Romanian unt I “av a penchant for Slavs.” She looked around the stunned gathering. “All zees Dada people ver mad, you understand.” she said by way of an enigmatic explanation. She turned back to Svetlana and smiled, displaying a set of nicotine-yellowed teeth, “You ver discussing ze need to piss in different colours. I think ... I pick blue,” she said giving a little chortle.
These constant scatological asides were playing havoc with Svetlana's ability to concentrate on her presentation; but she did her best. “Is it any wonder that perhaps the most successful, the most enduring perfume is Chanel No. 5? Not only is it a marvellous fragrance, but its purchase brings with it a cachet of intellectualism: it is an intelligent perfume purchased by intelligent women! For your perfume I have taken as my inspiration a movement of thought that was rife when Coco Chanel was at the peak of her creative powers: Surrealism.” She knew she had a cheek; to have lifted the idea for the perfume from the club she'd attended just a couple of evenings ago was downright larceny, but in a way she thought it was poetic justice. They'd stolen her sexual naivety and she'd pinched their theme.
"Surrealism, huh. Ze surrealists ver as crazy as ze Dada-ists, unt not vun gut fuck in ze lot of zem. Ov course, I never fucked Dali, zo maybe ze master vud “av changed my mind. I vas in Hollywood ven he visited Valt Disney to vork on Destino unt I think he vos interested in my firm young flesh. But zen Gala got vind of it und it all vent kaput-ski."
Svetlana paused for a moment to ensure that her client had finished her reminiscence and then ploughed on, “Surrealism, ladies and gentlemen, embraced surprise, created unexpected juxtapositions of thoughts and ideas, delighted in the non sequitur, and rejected prudishness whilst welcoming the experience of esoteric sex. Was there ever a more apposite description of the modern, metro-sexual woman?"
There was some nervous conversation amongst the gathered executives: this, in truth, was a far more radical premise for an advertising campaign than they had been expecting, and as always when a pack is undecided they turned to the alpha-male, or in this case the alpha-female for their lead. Pauline Trent saw her role in life as reining in Madam Durst's worst excesses and for ensuring that the business plan, agreed with the woman's financiers, was followed. That was why the board had appointed her: to ride herd on the semi-senile harridan whose vision and genius had, awkwardly in their opinion, created the company. Trent was a world-weary executive who had seen it all, bought some of it, and been disappoint with most of it. “This is intriguing but, I suspect, dangerous. To base a multi-million dollar ad campaign on the eighty-year-old musings of a bunch of wacko European intellectuals is, I think, a little too risky and,” she smiled at her own joke, “risqué."
Tinny sycophantic laughs echoed around the room. Svetlana was disappointed, she had expected, she had hoped, that Pauline Trent would be more daring. Madam Durst was obviously of the same opinion.
"Zoon, I suspect, Pauline, you vill be applying zat censure to me. But ze musings of zis eighty-year old European vacko iz zat Svetlana has something here,” said Madam Durst, the frost heavy on her voice, and the laughter dried immediately. “Zo vhy, Zvetlana, don't you finish your presentation unt let's see vere it leads."
Pauline Trent wasn't, however, the type of woman to be intimidated, even by someone as redoubtable as Madam Durst. “Do you really think that is necessary? I'm sure the Venture Capital Company would prefer to see a more orthodox..."
"Fuck zem unt all who sail in zem. I didn't spend zixty years of my life developing zis perfume, just to kowtow to a bunch ov fucking accountants. Come,” she looked across the table to Svetlana, “show me vot you propose."
"Of course,” began Svetlana, quickly heading off Pauline Trent's next protest, “in today's marketing environment, launching a new perfume without the comfort-blanket of celebrity endorsement is not for the faint-hearted, but I believe my concept lends itself to, no, demands, an incremental approach to promotion. This perfume will have a guerrilla image and be promoted guerrilla-style. This is to be a viral marketing campaign. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you ... “I Submit"."
The lights in the room darkened and on the screen appeared a small black cylinder around which were woven strips of black leather, the seams raised and emphasised by crude saddle-stitching. The word, “iSUBmiT” was scrawled in silver Pentel along one side of the cylinder which was shown resting against a black leather crop. Written in the same anarchic script at the bottom of the picture was the advert's tag-line, “The Revolt of the Libido". Svetlana thought it a brilliant piece of graphic design especially the use of the jagged lighting effects, and of the scraps of pictures torn from pornographic magazines that was used in the background collage.
"Wow!"
"Jesus!"
"You've got to be kidding!"
"No way!"
"That's the sickest thing I've ever seen.” This last comment came from Pauline Trent. “It conveys no optimism or aspirational values, it's got no meaning and its only obvious purpose is to offend.
Use that in support of our perfume and it'll be the most expensive snuff-campaign in the history of marketing."
"I like it.” This last statement was the most important as it came from Madam Durst. “You are being too circumspect, Pauline. Zere iz zomething here that communicates viz me. Unt ze name iz excellent ... perfect. Come, Zvetlana, tell me more about ‘I Zubmit'."
Unhurriedly, Svetlana moved through the rest of her presentation. “I would want the product to have a nebulous feeling about it. I want it to disturb and to irritate. Its appearance should change at irregular intervals. No one should be allowed to become comfortable about the product. Its only predictable feature should be its unpredictability.” And to emphasise the point, Svetlana flicked through a series of shots showing how the leather container could change over time, finally appearing as a scratched silver dildo with D-ring adornments.
"I like ze dildo,” observed Madam Durst, “ze 250 ml zize can be used in ze cunt unt ze iddy-bitty 50ml zize vill make ze vunderful butt-plug. Iz gut."
Svetlana ploughed on as best she could, “The promotion of the product would be similarly counter-intuitive.” As she described it, the campaign for “I Submit” would roll out slowly from four of the most artistically radical cities in the world: New York, Berlin, Tokyo and Moscow, and in each city the perfume would be associated with the “Degenerate Art” scene—whether it be music, visual and digital art, the written word, or theatre—by sponsoring unknown and underground performers and artists. Everything would be done to connect “I Submit” with the intellectuals who were seeking to overturn accepted attitudes and morals. The aim being, as Svetlana described it, that as the fame and infamy of the artists the perfume supported grew and rippled out to a wider audience, so too would the recognition of “I Submit's” association with the underground art-scene.
"Do you have anything else planned to reinforce this association?” came the begrudging question from Pauline Trent.
Phaze Fantasies, Vol. VI Page 28