“Why is your bra locked on?” he asked.
“It’s a punishment bra. It’s locked on so that I can’t remove it myself no matter how much it hurts.”
“Does it hurt to wear it?” Rob didn’t know much about bras but he did know that they weren’t supposed to hurt, even when a woman wore one all day.
“Yes. It hurts like hell. Please take it off now.”
“In a minute,” he said absentmindedly then continued, “Why does it hurt?”
“Because the inside of the cups have thumbtacks glued to them and they are poking me.”
“You mean that you are bleeding inside your bra?”
“No. It won’t be gross when you take it off. Thumbtacks aren’t that sharp. They just press hard little points against me. When I move, the points rub against my skin, irritating it and making me a little bit raw where they're digging in. The longer I wear this thing and the more I move, the more it hurts. Right now it hurts every time I breathe. It even hurts to talk to you. That's why you have to unlock it now.”
“How many tacks are glued inside it?” Rob stepped around and leaned close to examine the cups. Now that she mentioned the tacks, he could see little bumps where the heads were pressing against the leather on the inside. There were bumps all over the surface.
“I don’t know. Lots. They’re all over, glued as close together as possible. There must be a hundred of them.”
“That must hurt a lot,” he commented.
“It sure as hell does. Especially on the bottom of the cups where the full weight of my breasts are supported by them. And around the nipples, of course. Nipples are sensitive and the points are positioned so that they stick right into them. Please unlock it now.”
“Soon. I promise. But first, I need to know a few things. How long have you been wearing it?”
“Since I got dressed this morning. About six hours. I can’t stand to have it on any longer.”
“Sure you can. If you’ve been wearing it for six hours then a few more minutes won’t make much difference.”
“It makes a difference. Believe me. Right now every minute makes a difference.”
“Who locked it on you?” He had to know if he would make anyone angry by releasing her.
“Me. I put it on myself.”
“You put it on yourself?” Rob couldn’t believe what she said.
“Yes. That’s what I said. I put it on myself. It’s not easy to reach the lock but I can manage to fit it together and spin the dials if I stretch.”
“Who made you do that?”
“Nobody made me do it. I did it to myself.”
“Why?”
“To punish myself. It’s a punishment bra. The only reason that any woman would put a thing like this on herself would be to punish herself. And now I’ve been punished enough so I need someone to take it off.”
“Why did you pick me to take it off?”
“Why not you? I just walked around until I saw someone in an office who looked like he would be nice and helpful. That’s you. Your building is at the edge of the campus, so I didn’t have to walk so far.” The woman looked over her shoulder at Rob. “Are you going to unlock it?”
“Do you work at the university?”
“No. I work in an office tower a couple of blocks from here. I put in some overtime today because I can dress like this instead of wearing my usual business suit.”
“Why didn’t you ask someone where you work to unlock you?”
“I’m not going to let anyone that I work with know that I’d wear a thing like this.” She looked at him like he was an idiot. “Unlock it now, please. Five eight six nine.”
“In a minute. Just be patient. I’ve got to do something first and then I’ll be right with you.” The first step in solving a problem is to gather information. The second step is to consult an expert. He sat at his computer and began typing furiously. That’s where I come in to the picture. He opened a chat connection to me and typed a quick description of what had transpired. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. A woman had come into Rob’s office wearing a tack-lined punishment bra? She claimed to have locked it onto herself? And she had chosen Rob to unlock it for her? Was she insane? At first I thought that Rob was telling me some fantasy that he was having, but he assured me that it was really happening and he needed advice.
I typed back, “Don’t do anything hasty. There’re a lot of possibilities here. Ask her what she did that to deserve to be punished.”
A minute later, he typed back, “She won’t tell me. She said that if I don’t unlock her right now, she’s going to leave and find someone else to help her.”
I didn’t want that to happen. Rob deserves some fun and this was a once in a lifetime opportunity. It was a good thing that he got in touch with me because he’d never figure out how to exploit the situation properly. “Tell her that you’re going to unlock her in a few minutes but you have to do some stuff first. Tell her to be patient because she’ll get unlocked faster if she waits to let you do it than if she has to go out and find someone else and explain herself all over again.”
There was a pause then he typed back, “Ok. I did that.”
I thought for a minute, then got an idea. I typed, “Now, ask her to turn around. When she isn’t looking, you grab her shirt and hide it. Do it quietly so that she doesn’t know where you put it. You can unlock her after you’ve secured her blouse. But don’t give the blouse back until you’ve talked to me again.” I’ve known Rob for several years and I know that he’s a pushover when it comes to women. I thought that he’d need my guidance to keep the upper hand. I didn’t know that he’d immediately understood the implications of taking the woman’s shirt hostage and was already executing my plan even better than I anticipated.
Rob told the woman, “Turn around and clasp your hands behind your neck.”
She looked at him. “That’s going to hurt. Raising my hands like that is going to push my breasts against the tacks.”
He shrugged. “You’re hurting now. It’ll only take a few seconds to unlock your bra and then you’ll be free.”
The woman laid her shirt across the back of a nearby chair, turned and raised her hands to clasp them behind her neck. She moaned loudly as she assumed the position. “Hurry. This hurts like hell.”
“Okay.” Rob could do better than to merely hide the blouse, he carried it to his desk, threw it into a drawer and locked it.
“What are you doing?” the woman whimpered. The tacks were punishing her severely now. She asked because she could not see him when she was facing away and holding her head straight with her hands clasped behind her neck.
“Getting the combination,” he replied. “I wrote it down.”
“Five eight six nine,” the woman hissed through clenched teeth. “You just had to ask.”
“Oh, right.” Rob put his face close to the lock and turned the rings to their proper position. His fingers tingled where the brushed against the soft skin on the woman’s back. He had never touched a woman as intimately as this before.
The spindle slipped out of the lock and the ends of the bra strap came apart, slipping out of the loops at the end of the shoulder strap. The woman lowered her hands and gingerly pulled the cups off her breasts, whimpering softly as the points of the tacks scraped against her tender flesh.
She did not turn around until she had raised her hands to cover her breasts, shielding her modesty from Rob’s sight. The bra dangled from her right hand.
He said, “I’d like to see that,” and took the bra in his hand. She relaxed her fingers enough to let him take it from her.
The leather cups were stiffer than he anticipated. Mostly because, as she had said, there were dozens of thumbtacks glued to the inside of each cup, probably with a good strong epoxy. They were packed so densely that almost no leather could be seen between the broad heads. While he was examining the torture device, she was scanning the room, looking for her shirt. She wanted to cover herself and saw that i
t was not lying across the back of the chair where she had put it.
“Where’s my shirt?”
“Umm. It’s safe. Don’t worry. I haven’t lost it.”
“Give it to me.”
“Soon. Not right now. We’ve got some things to discuss first.”
“Give my shirt to me right now,” she snapped in irritation, trying unsuccessfully to keep her fear from showing.
“Or what? You can leave if you want.”
She looked down at her hands covering her naked breasts. “I can’t leave like this.”
“I guess not.” He held the bra out to her. “You could put this back on. It’s not like real underwear. It’s more like a leather bikini top. Kind of kinky looking, but it covers enough that they can’t arrest you for walking around in it.”
She looked at her punishment bra. She couldn’t walk out wearing only the bra. Someone that she knew might see her on the street. And even if nobody saw her, her breasts were already so sore that she didn’t think that she could stand to press them back into those spiked cups. But worst of all, the only way that she would be able to keep the bra in place would be to re-lock it and then she’d be right back where she started, looking for someone to unlock it for her. “I can’t do that.”
“I can certainly see why you wouldn’t want to lock this thing back on yourself.” He smiled his best evil smile. “Don’t look so horrified. You’re going to get out of this all right. It’s just going to take a little cooperation. I did you a favor by unlocking this. Now, I’d like a favor in return.”
“What?” she asked suspiciously.
“Nothing much. I’d like to see your breasts. You may not believe this, but I’ve never seen a woman’s naked breasts before. Except in movies. I’d like to see real breasts. Okay?”
With obvious reluctance, the woman lowered her hands to her waists.
Her breasts were round and heavy. But natural. If Rob had known to look for scars from plastic surgery, he would have found none.
They had been the woman’s pride and joy since puberty. Men stared at them where ever she went, keeping her always aware of them. Which was exactly why she had chosen to punish them.
“You’re the most beautiful woman that I’ve ever seen,” Rob said spontaneously.
Thought she was humiliated by being forced to expose herself to this young man, at the same time, his appreciation of her beauty was so obviously heartfelt and sincere that she felt flattered. “Thank-you.”
He leaned close to examine her flesh. “I assume that they aren’t normally so bumpy and mottled.”
“No,” she replied, looking down. “That’s what the points of the thumbtacks did to them. They’ll get smooth in a few minutes. It may take a little longer for the redness to fade.”
“May I touch them?”
She sighed. What choice did she have? “If you’re gentle. They’re awfully tender right now.”
He stroked her with the lightest of caresses. “You're perfect.”
“Thank you. May I have my shirt back now?”
“In a minute. I have something to do first,” he replied and returned to his keyboard.
After filling me in with what had transpired, I was encouraged. Making her clasp her hands behind her neck and locking the blouse up in his drawer were good moves. There was hope for Rob yet. The question was how to leverage his slim advantage into something more effective. Right now he and the woman were in a standoff. She didn’t want to expose herself to public ridicule but, if he tried to push her too hard, she might decide to have him arrested for sexual assault and endure the ensuing humiliation. All she had to do was start screaming and claim that he’d attacked her. I worried about that. A woman who locked a tack-lined bra onto herself and then asked a strange man to remove it for her couldn’t be all that mentally stable.
“Tell her that you need to know what she did to deserve this punishment before you can give her shirt back,” I typed. “Tell her that a necessary part of any punishment is the confession.” I thought that maybe he could exploit her obvious need to punish herself and glean more useful information from her. It turned out that I was right. I added one more instruction for Rob. “Mute your speakers and turn Skype on. Try to get the microphone close enough to the woman so that I can hear what she says.”
Rob understood the power of confession. He had been a good Catholic before he abandoned his faith halfway through high school. He moved his visitor chair in front of his desk but turned it so that it was facing away from where he would sit. “Sit here for a minute,” he told the woman. She did not bother trying to hide her bountiful breasts any longer. She kept her hands by her sides as she sat in the chair. He handed the punishment bra to her before returning to his own chair behind his desk.
As I instructed, he muted his speakers, rang me on Skype, and then pushed the headset forward so that the microphone was right behind her head. I could hear every word perfectly.
He spoke to the back of her head. “You have punished yourself today because you did something wrong. You have punished yourself and deserve forgiveness but you cannot be forgiven until you have confessed your transgression. You don’t know me and will likely never see me again so I am the perfect person to hear your confession and forgive you. Tell me what you did that merited this punishment. Just start your story at the beginning.”
She looked down at the bra in her hands and thought about the pain it had caused her throughout the day. Then she began speaking, slowly and quietly. “You have to understand my relationship with my boyfriend. I was married to an abusive man named Paul for six years. Paul didn't hurt me physically but he was psychologically abusive. Terribly abusive. He had grown cold and unloving shortly after we got married and stayed that way for most of the time that we were together. After putting up with a loveless marriage for five years, I met Andy. His company was one of our clients and I was assigned to work with him a year ago. When I first met him, I thought that he was completely different from Paul and liked him for that. After I finished his project and delivered the final report, I kept seeing him as a friend. We’d go out for lunch together and talk about all kinds of things. It was great. After a while, I began to fall in love with him. One day I invited him to come to my house so that I could cook him lunch instead of going out. I never got around to cooking anything that day. As soon as he came inside, I kissed him and he kissed me back so I kissed him again, long and deep. Then I dragged him into the bedroom, ripped his clothes off and had my way with him. Twice. I hadn’t been having much sex with my husband and it was such a relief to have a passionate man in my bed again, that I couldn’t stop myself.”
“And that’s why you’re punishing yourself now? For cheating on your husband?”
I cringed when I heard Rob say that. I was thinking the same thing, but I was afraid that he was going to blow the whole confession by interrupting the woman. I needn’t have worried. Now that this woman had begun spilling her guts, nothing was going to stop her.
“Oh, heavens, no. That was all Paul’s fault. If he’d cared more about me, I never would have cheated on him. I didn’t deserve to be punished for our marriage; he did. The only thing that I did wrong there was marrying him in the first place. I had my doubts before the wedding but I went through with it anyway. And I gave him a good five years of my life. I don’t owe him anything more. No, it was later that I came to deserve to be punished.” The woman fingered the bra, caressing the points inside the cup with light strokes for a minute, then began speaking again. “As my love affair with Andy grew more intense, it began to consume more of my time and attention. Soon it became impossible to sustain my marriage. One day I went to a lawyer instead of going to work and arranged for him to serve Paul with divorce papers. He was shocked. He was so inattentive that he never realized that our marriage was nothing but a hollow shell. He begged and pleaded for a second chance. He even cried. But it was too late. My heart was with Andy by then. It didn't take long to complete the divorce and I got t
he house in the settlement. That wasn’t as big a deal as it sounds because it had a pretty big mortgage on it and Paul's alimony checks don't even cover the monthly payments. But, at least I didn’t have to move out. Instead, Andy moved in.”
“And that’s why you’re punishing yourself now. Because you treated Paul so badly in the divorce?”
“Of course not. He’s a big boy. He can suck it up like a man and roll with the punches. After what he put me through, I never spent a minute feeling sorry for him.” She paused. “Where was I? Oh, yeah. Andy moved into the house. It was great for a while, but he turned out to be more like Paul than I realized. He spent a lot of time at work just like Paul. And he wasn’t as much fun at home as he had been when we were dating. Our lovemaking became routine and I didn’t enjoy it much so we pretty much stopped doing it within a few weeks. Besides, he never proposed to me. I tried to get him to propose. When I brought the subject up, he said that he didn’t want to be married. Even when I told him that I was pregnant, he didn’t propose. He just said that he’d help me get an abortion.”
“And that’s it? You’re punishing yourself for getting an abortion?”
“No, silly. I wasn’t really pregnant. I just wanted to see what he’d say. It was easy to do because we weren’t making love enough for him to know when I got my period. After a month passed and he still didn’t propose, I told him that I miscarried. He had the nerve to tell me how sorry he was about the miscarriage. The bastard. He was all fine with the idea of an abortion but a miscarriage broke him up. After that, it was all over but the crying. A couple of weeks ago he went on a business trip, so I changed the locks and put all of his stuff in boxes on the front porch along with a note saying that I didn’t want to see him any more. He got the hint. I haven’t seen him since. Just for good measure, I got a restraining order against him. I told him about that in the note, too. Paul was such a weakling, I knew he wouldn’t do anything, but I wasn’t so sure about Andy. I thought that it’d be better to be safe than sorry. You know. To get the order, I had to tell the police that he’d been physically abusive sometimes but that was no biggie. It’s not like I had him arrested or anything.”
A Bestiary of Unnatural Women Page 4