Carrie's Story: An Erotic S/M Novel (12 page)

It was a whole new ballgame, the intensity, the inexorability, and yes, the boredom of it, the fact that I was on call
twenty-four hours a day, except for the welcome relief of the
ballet and yoga (and they were tough too, though I was sure
Kate was right - they'd come in handy). I slept on a little pallet
next to Jonathan's bed, chained to the headboard. I served
his meals, on my knees. In fact, there were days when it felt
like I never got off my knees. He used me as a footrest, an end
table, an ashtray. He cut short his work at his office, bringing
projects home, and I spent some excruciating times staying as
still and quiet as I could and waiting for him to look up from
his work-his papers, drawings, or the CAD program on his
Mac-and command me to lick, suck, spread, or open. There
were days when I wasn't allowed to say anything, days when I couldn't use my hands for anything, doing everything with
my mouth. I'd learned the original rules quite well, but now
there were always new rules, new reasons to punish me.

One of the most intense changes, I realized, was not
having any money. I mean, I did, really. I had a bank account,
with a little bit saved from my job. But Jonathan had me sign
it over so that I couldn't get at it, at least until after the auction
if I didn't get sold, or until I was free, if I did. It was a very
lucid contract, written by one of the pornographer lawyers,
and given the small amount of money involved, it couldn't
have been worth what Jonathan must have paid him to write
it up. But like all the other stage props in his virtual reality,
it did its job. Especially in contrast to how I'd felt zooming
around downtown on my bike, I felt profoundly unfree.

Jonathan or Mrs. Branden would give me money to get
on the bus to go to ballet or yoga, and to come right back
home after the lesson, which I always and unfailingly did.
There was a great grungy coffeehouse right downstairs from
the ballet studio, too, where I would have loved to hang out
with a book and a latte, if I'd had the money for a latte. I'd feel
like the little match girl, practically pressing my nose against
the window, staring at all the normal people at the tables. And
then I'd get onto the bus going home, reaching into my pocket
for the exact change. Kevin was right, I'd think. Carrie, you
are weird.

I'd feel tired, melancholy, disoriented, and a little scared,
as the bus strained uphill to Jonathan's neighborhood. And
then, little by little, I'd start feeling really hot. The bus would
be chugging and I'd be sort of taking inventory of my body.
I'd feel the newly stretched muscles, the welts and bruises.
And my wet, warm insides. My jeans and sweaty leotard would begin to feel foreign. I'd think ahead to taking them
off, to bathing and drying myself and making myself up, and
then silently presenting myself to Mrs. Branden to be cuffed
and collared, perhaps shod and corseted. I always shuddered,
and probably always would, when she'd buckle the collar in
place. And no matter how good my posture was getting, how
straight my back, how strong my belly muscles, the collar
would transform me. My head would lift, my breasts would
thrust, filling me with a sense of how tender, how hurtable
they were. I would, in that moment, feel myself become an
object-his object, only better than an object, because I had
a consciousness and a will and an intelligence that I would
knowingly hand over to him. And then it would be free fall,
the moment after I'd given him my center. I could feel myself
preparing for that moment, that moment when he'd only look
at me, for what would feel like hours, until he could tell that
my body was begging him to touch me, any way, any way at
all.

How could the people on the bus not know this about
me, I wondered. Couldn't they smell it or something? Perhaps
they could. Perhaps, I thought, they'd go home tonight and
surprise their bored and tired spouses.

So, really, Jonathan's little lecture about my critical intelligence didn't really make much difference in practice. I did
like thinking that I was making him a gift of my smarts and
wit-rolling it up in a ball and tossing it to him to play with
or throw away, as he chose. But except for those sweaty bus
rides, I didn't really think much about it. Time hurtled on.
Jonathan seemed compelled to plumb the depths of his inven tiveness; and all the new rules and rough strife, I just kept
trying my damnedest to learn and to obey.

Well, maybe once it made a tiny difference. One day he
showed me a dress he'd had made for me-gorgeous, black,
very short, and backless, with a high jeweled neck that looked
like a collar. "Oh, Mr. Rochester," I said-it just popped
into my mind and I couldn't stop myself, and I guess somewhere I knew he would think it was funny. He did, too. He
was amused and then mightily pissed off when he realized
that it was going to be difficult to hit me hard enough for that
transgression and not have any stray marks show outside the
boundaries of the teeny dress. He managed, though, and I
very seriously considered whether I was ever going to try to
be even mildly funny again.

Then he had me put on the dress. Underneath, I was
wearing a corset and black stockings, with a new, Conan the
Barbarian of a dildo belted firmly up my ass. "We're going to
the opera," he said. A big limo came to the door. We got in;
he sat on the seat and I knelt on the floor and sucked his cock
the whole way there while he sipped champagne, and then I
had to sit through the whole fatuous opera performance - The
Alidzzetuzzz fran the Seraglio, I guess that was his idea of ajoke-
with my lipstick smudged and my mouth full of the taste of
him, feeling utterly riven up the ass and helplessly exposed
(the audience was full of nasty Muffies), while he watched me
smugly.

At intermission, he pulled me to my feet while most
people were still applauding. I hoped that this meant we could
go -maybe he wanted to play some more in the limo -but
really I knew better. He led me to a central area where people
were buying drinks and sitting down with them at tables. It was already crowded, with people dressed every possible
way, and buzzing with all kinds of chatter, but he found us a
table. He leaned across it and said very softly, "I'm glad you
gave me cause to beat you earlier. I like knowing how bruised
you are under that pretty dress. Makes you seem more naked.
It's difficult, isn't it, being so near to naked in the middle of
this scene."

"Yes, Jonathan, it is difficult," I replied. Bastard.

"Good," he answered, almost gloating, but maintaining
his stuffy schoolmaster voice. "Now, I want to see you on
your hands and knees, here, in this room. Do the best you
can. I'll be over there by the wall."

"Yes, Jonathan," I breathed. Oh yes, Jonathan, swell.

The best I could think of was to drop an earring and get
down to retrieve it. Pretty tame, but given the shortness of
my dress, pretty difficult too. Looking at nothing at all, pretending a kind of idle calm, I fiddled with the post of my left
earring, slowly wiggling it off, being careful to keep it folded
in my hand. I kept my head very still and the earring stayed
in place. Then I moved my head slowly to look at Jonathan,
leaning against the wall with his arms folded, watching me
intently. Well, I thought, if he knows about my bruises, I
know about that hard-on that's starting up over there, as I
glanced at the area of his loose Italian suit that wasn't hanging
exactly as Giorgio had intended. Then I raised my eyes to his,
to catch his wry little look of "touche," and my earring fell to
the floor at my feet.

What would I have done, I wondered, if it had rolled all
the way across the floor? But it hadn't, so I slowly got down,
keeping my eyes locked to his. I'm) ust retrieving an earring,
I kept repeating to myself, trying my damnedest not to feel too obvious and humiliated in the middle of this shrine to
cultural excess and obsession. At the same time, I kept hearing his tone of command and my own tone of obedience, his
"I want" and my "yes, Jonathan," the duet playing on some
internal radio that seemed always to be turned on whenever
we were together.

Down on the floor, I simply posed for an instant, all
meekness and compliance, eyes on his, mouth slightly open.
Okay? I wondered, and then, suddenly and joltingly, found
myself staring at him as though I had never seen him before.
Nothing like being in a crowd of strangers to hype up the
familiar a little. I guessed that was what he was enjoying as
well. It made me a little dizzy for a moment, and then, mercifully, my head cleared. Ready or not, I'd been down on the
floor quite long enough, I thought, and grabbed the earring.

I got up slowly, being careful not to let the dress ride
up too high. I felt like a diver surfacing. All of a sudden, I
was aware of all the chatter around me again. And, miserably,
uncomfortably, I was also aware of several pairs of eyes on
me. Just how conspicuous had I been, I wondered? There
was no way I could know. I tried to screen the stares out of
my consciousness, to disconnect from the lines of force that
the gazes described. I knew that if I looked I'd see the kinds of
questions that I had seen before in people's eyes, on the rare
occasions when Jonathan and I had been together out in the
"real," nonpornotopia world. I mean, we were hardly blatant
or anything, but face it, we'd always get some attention. At
first, naively, I'd thought that was because he always saw to
it that we wore such great clothes. But it wasn't, of course. It
was that, for those with eyes to see, there was always something extra, some buzz between us, some way that he'd hold my arm) ust a little too tightly. Somebody would always notice,
some eyebrow would always be raised. The clash of our private virtual reality and the real world was deeply disturbing
to me, and he was a genius at exploiting my discomfort.

So as I got back into my seat at the table, I wasn't
entirely surprised to see a very queer looking man, dressed
all in black with steel-rimmed glasses, raising his champagne
glass to me. I got flustered and turned my head away, and
my eyes met those of a little girl, maybe eleven years old, her
pale face surrounded by unruly curls, in tacky dark green
velvet with a white lace collar. Her gaze was calm and steady.
I didn't think that she understood. But I knew that she k,iers'.
Oh, what the hell, I thought, and returned her gaze. Don't be
scared, it's just what it is, I tried to communicate to her. Life
is really surprising. She seemed to absorb that, not really to
understand it, but in the way of wise children, to file it away
for when she'd be ready for it. She's smart, I thought, a whole
lot smarter than I am-and I put on the earring, jamming the
post tightly.

Jonathan strolled over, finally. Cheerfully, he kissed the
top of my head. "Not bad," he said. "You were a little rude for
a moment back there, but you already know that. We'll deal
with it later, of course. Anyhow, not bad, not bad at all." He
lifted me by the elbow and led me back to our orchestra seats.
I could feel a run snaking down my stocking. He'll like that, I
thought. I hardly heard the rest of the opera.

Afterward, he punished and then fucked me in the limo,
parked at the top of Twin Peaks, while the driver watched
silently through his mirror. And when he'd driven us back to
the house, Jonathan asked if he'd like to have me suck him
off, as a tip, he said. Of course it really wasn't a tip -Jonathan just wanted to see what it felt like to watch through the
mirror-but I don't suppose the driver cared about making
such a fine distinction. Anyhow, they traded places, and they
both got what they wanted, and then Jonathan also gave him
some money as well as the leftover champagne, before we
walked back into the house.

few days after our night at the opera, the phone rang
_in Jonathan's study. He picked up the receiver, listened
for a minute, and started talking loudly. "Doug, that's ridiculous, the ventilation works fine, it's a minor adjustment that
I've planned for already. No, they don't need me. I can walk
them through it over the phone, I don't have to be there for
the whole damn week while they install. Because I'm busy.
No. No, personal things. No, I can't tell you."

He waited a bit, pushing me off his lap to a kneeling position on the floor, then rubbing my head distractedly. They
were probably putting him on a conference call; his quality
of life would take a turn for the worse, I thought, when those
things all had video components built in.

Anyway, he argued with Doug, and then Doug and Stan
and Carol, for about fifteen minutes, speaking that horrible
singsong whiny yuppie-ese he could do so well: "But we've
already completed that deliverable, Stan," and "Ye,;, Carol, I
understand that your comfort level is not high." And by the
end of it, he'd promised to go to Chicago the following evening, though he was adamant that he was right and they were
wrong and that it was stupid for him to go. But the deal was
that he'd walk them through the installation, whatever that
was, in person, and then he'd be entirely done. No more calls,
and no way were they going to mess up his trip to Europe in ten days-that was the auction, though of course they didn't
know it.