“The whip, then,” I said, “after your beating, was pressed to your lips, to be kissed.”
“Yes, Master.”
“And you kissed it?”
“Yes, Master,” she said, “fervently, piteously, hoping that it would strike us no more.”
“I am curious,” I said, “to inquire into a familiar distinction, but now, particularly, in the case of the slave, Alcinoe, a slave of the ship of Tersites.”
“Master?” she said, puzzled.
“You fear the whip,” I said.
“Terribly, Master.”
“You are subject to it,” I said.
“Yes, Master,” she said. “I am a slave.”
“How do you feel about being subject to the whip?” I asked.
“I fear the whip,” she said. “I am terrified of its stroke.”
“Of course,” I said.
This is common with high-grade slaves, delicate, well-formed, finely featured women, women of high intelligence, profound emotion, and active imagination, irremediably sensate, tactually enlivened women, women keenly alive, women profoundly stirred by the floor beneath their knees, by leather thrust to their lips, profoundly responsive to the fingers of a man’s hand on an ear lobe or thigh, women with helplessly sensitive bodies.
Such women, being so desirable, and alive, bring by far the highest prices off the block.
“I dread it,” she said. “I will do anything to avoid its stroke.”
“But,” I said, “how do you feel about being subject to it?”
“Must I speak?” she asked.
“Yes,” I said.
“I love it,” she whispered.
“Speak further,” I said.
“Must I?” she said.
“Yes,” I said.
“It is hard to understand,” she said. “I do not know if a man can understand it.”
“Speak,” I said.
“It is something I became aware of,” she said, “when I first felt certain needs, and feelings, in my body. They were hard to understand. I looked about, and I saw the incredible, mighty differences between men and women, and understood that I, by nature or the will of Priest-Kings, was of that profoundly different sort, the woman. And I wondered why this should be, and what it might mean. How was I to understand it? What did it mean for my sex, and for me, who was of that sex? I felt myself somehow a part of that great difference, and union. Men were so aggressive, so possessive, so ambitious, so powerful, so strong, so proudly, so naturally, so unquestioningly, so intimidatingly so. We, on the other hand, were small, weak, soft, slight, and beautiful. Who was master, who was slave? Was nature to be denied? What of my feelings, my needs? Was I to pretend to be a man, in which sorry pretense I must fail, or should I listen to my heart, and acknowledge my difference? Nay, not only acknowledge this difference, but welcome it, celebrate it, acclaim it, rejoice in it! Is it not as meaningful, as glorious, as right, to be a slave as a master? Is one truly better than the other? Does the slave not need the master, and the master the slave? Is not each incomplete without the other? Of course, I tried to be as a man! I tried to live that mockery, that stunting lie. I sought to stand against them, rather than kneel gratefully at their feet! I flung myself, with like-minded women, into the games of power, exploiting my liberty to narrow and circumscribe that of men. How I thought I hated them, while I really wanted to be put in their chains. I used my sex, as I could, bestowing cordialities, hinting at favors, to influence men who, entrapped in the conventions of the cities, refrained from tearing away my veils and robes and putting me, as I deserved, in the bracelets of a slave. How natural then that they should seek the beauties of the paga taverns, that they should raid far cities to bring back women, much as I, naked, in coffles. How I, and my kind, hated slaves, women in their fitting place in nature, who, in radiance, and contentment, so joyful, were fulfilled by masters! How we envied those degraded, pathetic, despicable things in their tiny tunics, their bodies so bared, and collars, so unslippable, so closely encircling their throats, their thighs marked, as the animals they were, that all would recognize them as the properties of men. How cruel I was to my own slaves, making them suffer in proxy for my own self-hatred. How I kept them from men, that they might howl in anguish, and know something of my own unhappiness and deprivation. Then, to my horror, I found myself in a collar! How I fought the slave in me, until I met a man whose feet I yearned to kiss.”
“You may continue to speak,” I said.
“I am a woman,” she said. “I suppose master cannot understand the rightfulness, the deliciousness, of the feeling that a woman has when she is dominated by a man. She responds, with her whole being, to his domination. In her subjection she feels most woman, most helplessly, most completely, most rightfully woman. She desires no choice. She rejoices to be put under his power.”
I recalled a hundred slaves, a thousand slaves, on the streets of Ar, Jad, Brundisium, Temos, such places. I recalled the swaying hips of slave dancers, the proffering of paga, the extended hands of girls on the shelf, begging to be purchased.
“I want to be a slave,” she said, “and love being a slave. I am a slave. I desire to be what I am. How can I be happy otherwise? To be sure, I am terrified, too, to be a slave. For I know what may be done with me, and how I may be treated. But I am content in a collar, for it is that in which I belong.”
“You are destined to be a particular sort of slave,” I said.
“I gather,” she said, “-the pleasure slave.”
“Like the others,” I said.
“Even when I fastened myself in my own collar, as a ruse, as a disguise, long ago, in Ar,” she said, “I felt sexual, alarmingly, troublesomely, disturbingly so. Master can well imagine then what it is to be fastened in that of another, one I cannot remove. My body, in its collar, is alive, and sexual. It tells me I am a woman, a slave, and a sexual being, a woman not her own but one who belongs to another, as a verr or tarsk might belong to another, one at the mercy of the master who may treat her as he wishes, and whom she must strive to please. Even white-silk, I can begin to sense something of what may become of me, how I will be transformed, how helpless I will be in the throes of passion, how I will be so much at a man’s mercy, and will beg and cry out in need.”
I had occasionally heard, even on the street outside a tavern’s door, a girl cry out in relief and gratitude, the sound carrying from behind the leather curtain of an alcove itself.
“So, I gather,” I said, “you love being subject to the whip.”
“Yes,” she said, “being subject to it. I do not want to feel it, of course, and will strive to keep it on its peg. But, knowing that it will be used on me, if I am not pleasing, thrills me. It reminds me that I am a slave, and must obey, and strive to please. It informs me that consequences will attend any laxity or slovenliness on my part, any imperfection in my service, any dissatisfaction on the part of my master. Is it not the symbol of the mastery? Does it not tell me I am an animal, that I am owned, and a slave? Perhaps my master will often have me kiss the whip, that I may thusly be reminded of my bondage.”
“It seems,” I said, “that you might enjoy being a pleasure slave.”
“Better that than a tower slave, a laundress, a loom slave, a cooking slave,” she said.
“You are a lascivious little beast?” I said.
“The pleasure slave in her master’s arms,” she said, “is the happiest, the most joyful, the truest of women.”
“Or writhing in his bonds, his thongs, his chains,” I said.
“Yes,” she said.
A woman’s helplessness, as is well known, is sexually stimulatory, sometimes almost unendurably so.
“It is my hope that my master will be kind to me,” she said.
“He may,” I said, “if he wishes, for amusement, bring you patiently to the brink of a yearned-for relief, one for which you are pathetically, beggingly desperate, and then abandon you, leaving you alone to thrash in helpless frustration.”
“Surely not!” she said.