A Bestiary of Unnatural Women (18 page)

I watched Gene while I was reading. Some
parts made his eyes glitter. Some parts made my stomach clench.
Those were the same parts.

After supper, we watched a little television
and now he's letting me write in my diary until bedtime. Even last
night was easy. Despite having my hands clipped to my collar so
that I couldn't touch any part of myself but my face, I slept right
through.

If this is all we're going to do for the rest
of the week, I want to go back to work and stop wasting my vacation
time.

He better think of something more interesting
to do to me tomorrow or I'm going to be very disappointed in
him.

Gene's Diary

Tuesday, 2 February 1973

Today, I get educated. I’m going to learn
some things about O that I never knew before.

Emily's Diary

Tuesday, 2 February 1973

I can’t believe what Gene made me do today.
It was appalling. Even when I was being beaten black and blue the
entire length of my body, I wasn’t ready to give up. But now I'm
seriously thinking that I won't be able to last until the end of
the week.

The morning went well enough. Puttering
around in my Roissy dress, cleaning the house, watching a little
television, then preparing lunch. Gene was quiet. Thoughtful. I
should have guessed that he was planning something, but I never
would have guessed what he had in mind. He has an evil, perverted
streak in him that I never saw before. Or even suspected.

It all started after lunch. He made me sit
quietly while he cleaned up the kitchen. I knew that something was
coming, but had no idea what it could be. My wrists and ankles were
free. I remembered to keep my knees slightly separated, my lips
slightly parted, and my eyes lowered, as O was instructed to
do.

After he was finished, he took me into the
living room and told me to remove all my clothes. When I was naked,
he made me to sit in the recliner. He tied a black scarf around my
eyes to blindfold me and then had me lie back all the way and
spread my legs apart, not far, just far enough to expose my
sex.

I heard him sit on the sofa across the room
from me; the springs creaked a little as he made himself
comfortable. I felt nervous because I knew that something was going
to happen now.

He asked me a question, “When was the first
time you kissed a man romantically?”

I told him. It was no big deal. I've told him
a few things about my first boy friend, and about some other boys
that I'd dated before I met him. But this time he wanted details.
How did I feel? What was I thinking?

He kept asking questions and I kept answering
them. O has no privacy.

He spent all afternoon doing that: looting my
life, raping my memories, demanding to know everything I've ever
done with any other man. He went all the way back to the first sex
games that I played with my cousin when I was eight or nine years
old, daring each other to pull down our pants. He asked about my
fantasies. What did I think when I was making love to him? Had I
ever thought about a movie star when I was in bed with him? How did
I get myself in the mood? Had I ever imagined being raped? By more
than one man? What did I think when I was watching the movie,
“Billy Jack”? “Straw Dogs?” “Clockwork Orange?” What actress did I
think was the sexiest? Could I imagine myself kissing her? When was
the first time I played with myself? When was the most recent time?
What did I fantasize about when I did that? Did I ever play with my
own breasts? Did I ever put my fingers inside myself?

His questions went on and on. I told him the
truth. And the more truth he heard, the more he wanted to hear.

He tore every secret from me that he could
and left me as naked as any person could ever be. No husband should
know that much about his wife. I would never want to know that much
about him.

What did he think when I told him that I once
came when I was playing with myself and imagined being raped by a
motorcycle gang? Does he think that means that I want to be raped
by hairy, brutal strangers? Is he going to take me down to the
Hell's Angels clubhouse tomorrow afternoon and leave me naked on
their front porch? Does he understand the difference between
fantasy and reality? Does he care?

And why does the thought of being sent naked
into a motorcycle gang headquarters make me wet when I'm sitting
here writing in my diary tonight?

Gene's Diary

Thursday, 8 February 1973

I can't believe that my wife told me as much
as she did yesterday. But I do believe that every word was the
truth. And I believe that she was telling me truths about the real
Emily, not about the imaginary O. It sounded true, not made up. O
said the words but Emily supplied the memories.

In a single afternoon, I was given a greater
gift than any husband has ever received or deserved.

I do not know how to return that gift, but I
will have to think of something that shows her the same degree of
love and trust that she has shown to me.

It will be difficult because I have learned
that my wife is a more exciting person than I ever knew or
imagined.

Emily's Diary

Thursday, 8 February 1973

It was another terrible day. I can't believe
what Gene made me do. I can't believe that I was able to make
myself obey him. If you'd asked me this morning if I could do what
I did today, I would have said that it was impossible. That, even
if I had wanted to, I couldn't have done it. That I'd have died
first. But I did. I didn't know what was coming and I was only told
one thing at a time, only had to take one little step at a time, so
I kept doing it until I’d done it all it. I’m I really that
obedient now? Can I actually toss my ego aside this quickly? What
does this say about my self-image as a strong, independent
person?

It began when Gene took me shopping. This
time, he made me wear black stockings and the garter belt
underneath my duffel coat and winter boots. Nothing else, of
course. And this time he drove rather than sending me out on my
own. That meant that I had to pull the bottom of my coat out from
under me when I got in the car. It wasn't as cold out as on
Tuesday, just below freezing, but the car seat was still so cold
beneath my bare butt that I was shivering so hard that my teeth
were rattling before we got halfway downtown and the car warmed up
enough.

Gene sent me into a sex shop with a shopping
list. He didn't know that it was the same shop where I bought the
collar and cuffs and whips and I didn't tell him. He made me buy a
vibrator, a realistic-looking dildo, and three porn magazines, one
about bondage, one about anal sex, and one with pictures of Betty
Page taken by Irving Klaw. I think he was specific about that
because he wanted to force me to spend a long time looking through
all the magazines to find the right ones. I wasn’t allowed to just
rush in, grab a few things at random and rush out.

Buying the items was humiliating enough but
it was worse than Gene knew because the clerk recognized me and he
recognized the collar that was locked around my neck. He had
another one in the display case right beneath his fingers. Two days
ago, the clerk in the drug store only hoped that I was naked
underneath the coat; today, this guy in the sex shop was certain. I
was sweating when I bought the stuff so he grinned and told me that
if I was too hot, I could take my coat off. He said that the
windows were blacked out so it would be all right by him.

I got out of there as soon as I could. In the
car, Gene made me tell him what happened before he would drive
away. I was afraid that he was going to send me back into the store
and take my coat off for the clerk, but I forced myself to tell him
everything anyway. Gene didn't send me back inside; he just laughed
and drove me to a drugstore. It was a different one than I had
shopped at last time. He sent me in to buy a box of condoms and
another jar of Vaseline. Then, he took me to a hardware store and
sent me inside to buy four ten-foot lengths of steel chain, sixty
feet of medium polyester rope, and six new padlocks.

The next stop was a camera store. He made me
buy a Polaroid camera, a dozen film packs, and a dozen packages of
flash bulbs. I was worried that he was thinking that I'd let him
take pictures of me naked and was going to tell him that he's got
another think coming. Even O has limits. Actually O doesn't, but
Emily does and there aren't going to be any pictures that might
still exist when O disappears and Emily comes back.

Little did I guess what he really had in
mind. Letting him take a few lewd pictures of me and then
destroying them right away would have been an easier way to spend
the day.

The naked-but-for-the-coat shopping never got
any easier, though. I got so tired of seeing clerks all over the
city leering at me. It's like they're raping me with their eyes.
And, just to make sure that I was experiencing the humiliation
fully, every time I got back into the car, Gene made me tell him
exactly what happened in the store. What the clerk said; what I
said; how the clerk looked at me. If he was that interested, he
should have come inside with me and watched for himself. I think
the main reason that he didn't was because he was embarrassed that
he might be seen walking across the parking lot with a woman who's
obviously naked under her winter coat.

Next, he took me to the bank and told me to
take five hundred dollars out of our savings account. By chance,
the teller was the first woman who served me today; all the other
clerks had been men. She was years younger than me but she knew
what I wasn't wearing and looked at me with plain disgust.

It was easier to tolerate the men’s
leers.

The final stop was the capper. Gene drove me
back down to the part of town where they kept the porn shops and
strip clubs, I guess you'd call it the red light district, and
explained to me exactly what I had to do. I had to go into the
strip clubs until I found a woman who would agree to be a
photographic model for us for the rest of the afternoon. I had to
make she that she understood exactly what she was agreeing to do. I
had to show her the magazines and tell her that we would want her
to pose like the models in the pictures, except that there wouldn't
be any men posing with her. She would use a dildo on herself
instead of letting a man penetrate her. I could tell her that she
wouldn't have to sign a release because the pictures were for our
private enjoyment alone. We would pay her a hundred dollars an hour
for her services.

Gene told me not to come back to the car
until I had a woman who would model for me.

I thought that I was going to die.

When I got out of the car, I told myself that
I would go inside just to make it look good, and then come back
after a half hour and tell him that it was hopeless, that no one
would pose for us. But I was astounded to find out how easy it was.
As soon as I went inside the first club, a woman asked what I
wanted and I told her that I was looking for a women to model for
some nude photographs and she told me to talk to another woman
named Purty who was standing by the bar. Purty, I think that was a
stage name but I didn't ask.

Purty looked at me and asked right out if I
was naked under my coat.

I told her that I was, that my husband was
doing this to humiliate me. Then I told her what we wanted and
showed her the magazines. I blushed when she looked through them
but she didn't even look surprised. She just asked if she would be
safe around my husband and me. I showed her my driver's license – I
had it in my pocket in case I needed to drive – so she told her
friend who she would be around for the rest of the afternoon and
came back to the car with me.

I can't believe how some women would let
themselves be used. Don't they have any self-respect?

Gene let me go to the bedroom and put on a
blouse and skirt. He didn't make me be naked in front of Purty even
though Purty had to be naked in front of us all afternoon.

I spent the rest of the day selecting
pictures from the magazines, posing Purty in the same way as the
models, and taking pictures with the Polaroid camera. All Gene did
was sit in his chair and watch. He said almost nothing and never
tried to touch Purty.

I was more grateful than you could know
because Purty was such a sport. She didn’t mind even when she had
to coat the dildo with Vaseline and work it up into her backside.
She even helped tie herself up and lock on the chains in the
bondage shots. It took a little less than four hours to use up all
the film, but I gave her the whole five hundred anyway. She
deserved the tip.

Gene let me drive her back downtown by
myself. This time he let me keep wearing the blouse and skirt
underneath the coat. He's such a peach. But, of course, I still
don't have any underwear in the house – that's still locked in the
shed in the back and Gene still has the key.

When I dropped her off, Purty offered to
model again but I said that I think this was a once-in-a-lifetime
adventure. She laughed and said it wasn't once-in-a-lifetime for
her. She told me that I was lucky; that Gene seems like a nice guy.
She's right.

This has been the weirdest day yet. We're
getting a long way from my original offer to do, within limits,
what O did and– My God! I just got it. I'm so dumb. This isn't
getting away from the book at all. This is exactly right for a
slightly-twisted interpretation of O. In the book she was a
photographer. And she was forced to bring one of her models,
Jacqueline, to Roissy. It was different, of course. O was a fashion
photographer and Jacqueline was her lover and she never took
photographs at Roissy. But this was how Gene could fit that aspect
of “The Story of O” into our Cleveland version of Roissy. He made
me be a photographer and made me recruit another woman to come
here.