“Look at me!”
He had his cock in his hand, squeezing it tight, as he knelt above me, straddling my chest with that magnificent organ dangling inches from my lips. Finally, I was able to look up at his face. He was so gorgeous. I smiled as his seed rained down upon my face. I licked it from my lips, relishing the salty taste of his semen as it dribbled down my cheeks and onto my lips.
“You look beautiful like that,” Kenyatta said smiling. He used one finger to scoop some of his semen off my chin and spoon it into my mouth. I sucked it from his finger tip, twirling my tongue along the tip of his finger the way I did when I sucked his cock. A shudder went through him.
“Stick out your tongue.”
I did as I was told and Kenyatta squeezed out the last of his semen onto my outstretched tongue.
“This is my body. This is my blood,” he said with a seriousness and solemnity that would have been comical from anyone but him.
He had once told me that swallowing his cum to him was like taking communion with a God. It made him feel powerful to watch me lick his seed from my lips. It made me feel so submissive that I always wanted to make love immediately afterward or to be hugged and cuddled in his powerful arms or to curl up at the feet of my master like a lap dog, which is usually what I settled for. This time he just handed me back my bucket and walked upstairs to dress for work.
“Have that floor clean by the time I’m ready to leave.”
I was forbidden even to say, “Yes, Master” now. None of the abductees aboard the slave ships spoke English yet so neither was I allowed to. Instead I nodded my head and picked up my scrub brush. Feeling the absence of him as a hollow place in my heart and every orifice he’d entered.
Kenyatta came back down just as I finished the hallway. He looked amazing in his dark business suit and white shirt with gray pinstriped tie. He always dressed like he was running for president and it worked for him. He looked so handsome standing there like that that my own sense of wretchedness increased. I knew what I must have looked like in comparison.
“Get below.”
I crawled, dragging my chains. The iron collar around my neck cut deeper into my skin as the weight of the other chains attached to it dragged behind me. Blood from my neck dripped onto the tile floor I had just spent the last hour scrubbing insuring that there would be more work for me the next day. The humidity in the basement overwhelmed me after having been upstairs for even that brief period. It felt like I was walking through a wall of moist heat as I crossed the threshold. Kenyatta stood above me, watching, as I crawled. I knew that watching me crawl was one of the things that seemed to turn him on the most. He would have fucked me again, right there on the stairs if it wouldn’t have gotten his suit dirty and made him late for work. The stairs scraped my knees as I crawled down them. I began to moan and then to cry as I dragged my broken body down into the basement and across the hard concrete floor.
“Back in your box now.”
His voice was not angry or harsh but matter of fact as if he was merely giving direction to a child who needed to be reminded of such things, as if he was merely reminding me to brush my teeth or wash my hands before dinner. I crawled into the box and Kenyatta padlocked it and left without a word. He closed the basement door and both the heat and the darkness redoubled.
I was constantly thirsty, constantly hungry, miserable from sunrise to sunset except for those brief moments when Kenyatta brought me out to fuck me or whip me or both. His cock inside of me was the only joy in my life now. Perhaps that was the other lesson he was trying to teach me, that I needed him.
The lingering taste of Kenyatta’s semen recalled the vivid memory of the first time I’d taken his manhood between my lips. Kenyatta was the first man I’d given a blowjob to since my first blowjob. I had hated the act. When I was raped as a child, the taste and texture of my abuser’s semen, the stench of his unwashed testicles, had stuck with me for years. I would wake up screaming with that taste on my lips. The first time Kenyatta asked me to suck his cock, I had refused, repulsed by the very idea of it.
“I-I don’t do that.”
Kenyatta raised an eyebrow and stared at me curiously.
“A woman who doesn’t give head is only half a woman. Show me a woman who doesn’t suck her man’s cock and I’ll show you a man who is looking for any and every opportunity to cheat on her. I won’t tell you, you’d do it if you loved me. Not because it isn’t true, but because it’s too cliché. I will say that if you want to remain the only woman in my life, you will learn to please me.”
He leaned back in his chair with his eyebrow still cocked, a smug expression on his face, awaiting my reply.
“Even if a woman is the best lover you ever had? If she does everything else perfectly, just the way you like it, but just doesn’t suck your dick, that isn’t enough?”
Kenyatta smirked and shook his head, eyes still boring into my skull like he was trying to read my thoughts.
“A woman who doesn’t give head could never be the best lover I ever had and she wouldn’t be my lover for long.”
Kenyatta wasn’t a man given to threats. He said it as a simple matter of fact. If I didn’t give him head he would get it from someone else. The thought of losing him to some cum-guzzling slut almost brought tears to my eyes.
“I-I don’t know how.”
“I’ll show you.”
Kenyatta was a patient teacher. He calmly stood and unbuckled his pants, unzipped them and let them fall to his ankles. He wore silk boxers, black, with little red and gold paisleys on them. He let them slip down to his ankles as well. He guided me gently to my knees with just the slightest pressure from his manicured fingertips on my shoulders until my nose was level with the head of his turgid organ. He grabbed my jaw with his strong hand and slipped his thumb into my mouth.
“Suck it.”
I did as instructed, sucking on his thumb.
“Swirl your tongue around the tip.”
I obeyed.
“Now tickle the underside with your tongue.”
Again, I obeyed, looking up at him, desperate for his approval.
“Now, slide it down your throat.”
I took his thumb as deep in my mouth as it would go.
“In and out.”
I slid his thumb in and out of my mouth, my eyes alternating from looking up at him and staring at his erect penis, which was still bobbing in the air, inches from my face.
“I don’t feel your tongue.”
I swirled my tongue around the tip of his thumb again as I continued sliding it in and out of my mouth. I flicked my tongue along the underside of his thumb as he had instructed me to do earlier.
“Now take it out of your mouth and lick up and down both sides.”
I obeyed once more.
“Now, repeat. Do everything I told you to do, exactly the way I told you to do it, but now, I want you to do it to my cock.”
I felt a tremor of fear and a brief moment of revulsion, but then I obeyed. I eased his engorged flesh between my lips and began bobbing my head up and down, sliding his cock in and out of my mouth. I flicked it with my tongue then swirled my tongue around the head like I was licking a lollipop. I licked up and down the shaft, and finally eased it as far down my throat as I could without gagging.
This was so different from the memory of my assault. Kenyatta wasn’t ramming his cock down my throat, choking me with it. I felt in control. I could feel his organ pulsate, nearing orgasm, and each time I would ease it out of my throat and lick it up and down.
“Stroke it with your hand and lick the tip. Just like that, like you’re licking an ice cream cone. Suck the tip.”
I sucked and licked and stroked until I could feel him about to cum.
“I’m going to cum and I want you to drink every drop. You understand?”
I nodded my ascent as I continued bobbing my head up and down on his tumescent manhood. I tried to hide my panic at the idea of him filling my mouth with his semen,
of being compelled to swallow it. I felt myself beginning to hyperventilate. I had to get myself back under control. I was beginning to feel nauseated and feared I would vomit when Kenyatta’s cum filled my throat. That would almost certainly end things between us, I feared.
I tried to distract myself with other thoughts. I thought about how wonderful Kenyatta was. I recalled how his lips felt on my nipples, how his tongue felt on my clitoris. It was only fair that I reciprocate. Kenyatta was nothing like the fat cousin who had raped me in my parent’s basement. I wondered if perhaps his cum would taste differently, if I might even enjoy it. I took his cock deeper, pushing it past my tonsils, choking myself, but not caring, wanting to please my man, and when I felt Kenyatta’s body tense, heard his low, growling, guttural moan, felt that thick, warm, salty, eruption splash across my tonsils, I did as Kenyatta asked. I swallowed it all. That’s when I knew how much I loved him. It wasn’t long after that Kenyatta brought up the subject of the box.
I had already committed myself to the experiment by then, even though my insides roiled at the thought of being locked inside a wooden coffin for who knew how long, so I couldn’t back down. I needed to see it through. But Kenyatta wanted me to know exactly what I was getting into and why. He pulled out a book he’d found at the library when he was a boy. I was surprised by the profoundness of his emotion as he opened the book.
“Roots had just come out on television and I was so affected by it that I wanted to know more about the slave trade and what had happened to our people two hundred years ago when they came to America. I asked my Mom about it and she took me to the library to look it up for myself.”
He paused. His strong regal face cracked and trembled, twisting into a scowl as whatever he was feeling inside broke through to the surface and tears welled up in his eyes. He looked up at the ceiling and inhaled deeply, fighting to control his emotion. I could tell this was a painful memory for him. The chords in his neck bulged as his body tensed, struggling for control. When he looked back down at me, his face was hard and stoic. He forced himself to look me in the eyes, but I knew it was taking a great effort for him to do so. I knew he wanted to hang his head or lower his brow into his hands, anything but look at me. But it just wasn’t his way to show weakness in front of me and giving in to his emotions would have seemed weak to him. I suspect he also knew that it would hurt me more to see the pain on his face as he struggled to suppress it.
“This was the book I picked up. It’s called 400 Years of Oppression. It contains, among other things, detailed descriptions of life aboard a slave ship pieced together from various accounts and historical documents, most of it told by former slaves who traveled through the Middle Passage. It contains slave narratives all the way up to the emancipation proclamation. It follows the life of African Americans from the time they were kidnapped from their homes in Africa, to the civil rights movement, right up to today’s struggles with drugs, crime, and poverty. I cried when I read it. I wept out loud and I couldn’t stop crying even when my mother held me in her arms. I had no idea how bad it was. I had no idea how many Africans they stole from their homes and brought here. In that book, they estimated that about fifteen million slaves were brought here from Africa and at least another five million never made the trip due to disease, malnourishment, suicide, murder, and slave revolts. Then all the hell they went through for more than four hundred years in this country as they struggled to find freedom and equality. I had no idea. You could not imagine what my people endured aboard those ships.”
Kenyatta opened the book and I prepared for the worst. But just as he had been unprepared when he’d picked up the book twenty-five years ago. I was completely overwhelmed by what I heard. I could never have imagined that human beings could have been capable of such cruelty to one another.
“Africans were treated like cattle during the crossing, wedged together below deck as tight as they could pack them in, chained together and stuffed in narrow, three feet high compartments too low for standing. Most of these compartments had no light or fresh air except for those immediately under the grated hatchways. The stifling heat was unbearable, and the humid air nearly unbreathable.
“In the latter 18th century, most slave ships were “tight packers,” squeezing as many slaves as they could fit into their cargo holds, crowded together in spaces smaller than a grave, stacked on top of one another like spoons, breathing each other’s sweat and body odor. Disease and suffocation below deck were common. Men were often chained in pairs, manacled together in twos and threes, shackled wrist to wrist or ankle to ankle. They were forced to lie on their backs with their heads between the legs of others. This meant they often had to lie in each other’s sweat, feces, urine, and, in the case of dysentery, even blood, covered from head to toe in lice and other parasites, a number of them in different stages of suffocation; many of them foaming at the mouth and in their last agonies, dying of oxygen deprivation.
“The floor of the ship’s hold resembled a slaughterhouse covered with blood and mucus. The confined air was rendered noxious by the sweat, urine, feces, blood and vomit evacuated from their bodies and being repeatedly breathed.”
I didn’t want to hear anymore. I wanted to clap my hands to my ears and scream.
What he was describing was too horrible to have been possible. There was no way human beings could have done things like that to each other. But, I knew Kenyatta wasn’t embellishing. I knew everything he was saying was true and I doubted he’d be able to approximate any of the horrors he was describing or whether I’d be able to endure it if he could.
“Diseases such as smallpox and yellow fever spread like wildfire, and slaves that fell ill were often thrown overboard to prevent wholesale epidemics.
“Some captains would have their crew periodically clean the “tween decks” with hot vinegar. Most did not. Slavers used iron muzzles and whippings to control the slaves who greatly outnumbered them on the overcrowded ships. Women were raped and sexually abused by the officers and the crew, who were permitted to indulge their passions at will and were sometimes guilty of such cruelties as would turn the stomach of a seasoned prostitute. Often, after suffering violent sexual abuses, women would leap overboard and drown themselves.
“But the constant deficit of fresh air was by far the most torturous of all the horrors aboard these ships. To bring in fresh oxygen, most slave ships had five or six air-ports on each side about five inches in length and four in width. Some had what they called wind-sails. But whenever the sea was rough and the rain heavy, the crew would shut these and every other opening in the ship and the slaves’ living space soon became intolerably hot and, what little oxygen there was, almost unbreathable.
“Slaves often fainted from the oppressive heat and the deprivation of oxygen and were carried above deck where many of them died and were tossed overboard. A healthy slave was sometimes dragged up onto the deck shackled to a corpse; sometimes of the three attached to the same chain, one was dying and another dead. Suffocating slaves struggled to extricate themselves, destroying one another in their fury and desperation for oxygen and room. Men strangled those next to them, and women clawed each other to ribbons.”
By the time he was done reading I knew I had to do it. Still, I had no idea how he hoped to recreate such atrocities or how I was going to handle it, but if I loved him I knew I had to try. That’s when he told me about his idea for the box.
“The Box” was a pine coffin that Kenyatta purchased from the local mortuary. It was four feet wide, three feet deep, and six feet long. Kenyatta bought several lengths of chain and a few thick metal loops that he screwed into the wooden floor trusses in the basement ceiling. He then connected the chains to it and, after screwing several other eyelets into the coffin, suspended the entire thing three feet off the floor. He kept the chains long and loose so that the slightest vibration caused the entire thing to sway. Then he hooked up a motor to it that pulled the pulley’s up and down, rocking the box steadily like the motion of c
alm waves gently rocking a boat.
“This will make it feel like you’re at sea. I can’t exactly hire a bunch of naked Africans to pack you in here with, so this coffin will simulate that same claustrophobic feeling they must have had being packed in tight with hundreds of other slaves. I’m gonna put heaters all around the room and a humidifier to make it as hot down here as it was between decks with no windows or ventilation. It’s gonna be miserable as hell. But just remember that no matter how horrible and uncomfortable it gets in there, no matter how fucked up and cruel I might seem for putting you through this, remember that it’s nothing compared to what my ancestors endured. They had no safe word.”
“Okay. I’ll do it.”
“You’re gonna have to quit your job. Take a leave of absence or something. Just tell them it’s for personal reasons. They won’t ask questions. Then come right back here and we’ll start this shit. I love you, baby. I really do. But I’m warning you that once this begins I’m fully committed. I’ll become your oppressor and I won’t show you any pity. No mercy. Not for four hundred days. And this box is just the beginning. My ancestor’s journey through the Middle Passage was just the first part of a fucked up odyssey that lead right up to today. I’m talking about four hundred days experiencing all the hardships my people have endured for the last four hundred years. You sure you can do this?”
“I’m sure.”
“I’m not gonna take it easy on you. You have your safe word if you decide you can’t take it anymore, but if you do go through with it. If you last all four hundred days...”
He pulled out a small ring box and lifted the lid slowly, staring at my face, waiting to see my reaction. It was an engagement ring. A princess-cut diamond, at least two carats, with a platinum band and two smaller diamonds inset on either side. It was beautiful.
“You make it through this shit and I’ll know that you really understand what it’s like, what my people have gone through, what I go through every day. I’ll know you’re more than just some freaky redneck bitch with a low self-esteem who got tired of the white trash she’s been dealing with all of her life. That you didn’t just get bored and decide to try something a little kinky and go slumming with the jiggaboos. I’ll know you really do love me and understand me. Then we can be together as man and wife. Then every time some sista looks at you wrong and starts in with that bullshit of you not ever being able to really understand a black man or black people, you’ll know different because you can say that you’ve been through everything we have.”
400 Days of Oppression Page 5