The Academy (30 page)

“We are the center of the radical sex movements—from the leather lesbians in Seattle to the large fetish parties in San Diego. And do I even have to mention San Francisco, the gay mecca of the United States? Of course we’re experimental—we’re pioneers. Forward thinkers. We find new ways to relate every day, and others come and learn them from us. Sure, there’s always some resistance, there always is to new ideas. But you’ll find that sooner or later, our ways seep into the lives and fantasies of the S/Mers across the country and around the world. Even to people in the Marketplace.”

by M. Christian

Turbulence over the Rockies had made her stomach into a gastrointestinal cauldron of potentially explosive embarrassment. The sudden drops, fists clenched tight enough to give her palms the commas of her fingernails, and equally spontaneous climbs had also pitched the fat, greasy salesman for Hunter Farm Equipment’s (“Finest Backhoes in Oskwa County, girlie”) whiskey sour onto the arm of her best—and only—blue suit. The harsh smell was a nail rammed into her sinuses, turning up the heat under her stomach.

She didn’t sleep and the movie was one she’d already seen. She ended up faking it, trying to relax in the torturous seat for the rest of the trip—shutting her eyes to short-circuit the predatory small-talk and puffery from “the best damned salesman in Southeastern Louisiana—”

Slaves aren’t supposed to be grouchy.
Nonetheless, Doris was red-eyed, bone-tired, sharp, and testy when she finally retrieved her one small bag from the chaos of the carousel and went out into a crisp September morning.

All that and she was back in San Francisco. Home was the last place she wanted to be.

When Max Bloom, her Trainer, had told her to sever her ties with the outside, to sit and methodically dial one number after another, cutting away job, friends, apartment, job... and family ...it had been easy to imagine that she was casting them off forever, call after call: closing doors so she could walk into the life she’d always wanted.

One call had been to Richmond. Luckily she’d gotten her father’s answering machine. The message had been short, a quick flick of a verbal knife: “Good-bye. I’m leaving and I won’t be back.”

But there she was, waiting as patiently as she could, struggling to fit herself into the carefully created persona of a Slave... but all the time feeling the ghosts of San Francisco waiting around every corner. Doris waited: Slave Doris for her new Master, Little Doris—who’d run away from home—for pain to start again.

Even the mystery of her new life wasn’t enough to exorcise the ghosts. She still felt like she was waiting for Betsy to show up, to take her by the hand and drag her off into another adventure: the Chinese New Year Parade, the Cherry Blossom Festival, the Bay to Breakers, lunch in the Japanese Tea Garden, spaghetti in North Beach, closing clubs in SOMA—anything to distract, to keep from thinking of having to eventually go back to Richmond.

Waiting in the cool concrete shadow of the airport, she took a nervous deep breath, trying to find the Slave that, just a few days before, had been bought—sold into a blissful life as sensual property. She tried to capture her life before the auction, to hang onto her erotic dream of a life—the smell of Max’s aftershave; the cool feel of his brass foot board she’d slept against; the curve of his long, hard cock entering her mouth, her cunt. The memories helped, putting her back into the Doris who’d been on the auction block, was property, a desired Slave, and not the Doris who’d run away to San Francisco every chance she’d got.

Slowly, the weight of the city and her sour memories lifted from her—that and breathing crisp, natural, air. Her stomach settled a bit and her sour attitude changed to that of simple annoyance mixed with a sharp spike of anxiety:
I wonder what he’ll be like
—Max Bloom, watching her pack, had given her a few hints about her life to come—but, by far, few too many. She knew that her life as a Slave rarely had to do with her direct wishes—the whole reason, in fact, why she’d become one—but, still, to fly clear across the country to walk, basically blindfolded about everything that her life would be was a little... well, she was irritated enough with the flight and coming back to San Francisco.

“Yes,” Bloom admitted as he’d supervised her packing (or at least the amount of objects he’d allow her to take with her), “it is rather unusual. But then you are going to California.

“Let me put it this way,” he’d continued, “I’ve heard there’s some very unusual arrangements that get made for Slaves on the West Coast. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least if you are going to find yourself in one of them.”

The memory of the auction haunted her through her packing, her trip to the airport, the flight. Her nervousness had been almost physical—no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t calm her body: her memories of the auction vied with excitement and fear. The hall had been a flurry of Masters and Mistresses claiming their purchases—some trying them out with an echoing chorus of trial punishments—but not for Doris. She had stood and waited for what seemed like an eternity until a round little Japanese man in an immaculate black silk suit, all bottle-bottom glasses and little bowler hat, presented her with a small card and a thick envelope and left, without giving her a chance to even blink.

In the envelope was a plane ticket to San Francisco, the note had said in hard courier type (an affectation she’d realized as the card was computer-printed): Leave immediately. You will be met.

So there she was, better—not so miserable—but, still, not completely comfortable at being whisked back to the city of her childhood, her painful adolescence.

At least, she mused, waiting, she was coming back as the Slave she always wanted to be.

“You the new slut?”

At first Doris didn’t hear him—the cold echoes of the terminal drowned out his deep voice. That, and the source being so unexpected: if she had to pick anyone out of the tourists, businessmen, the casual travelers it would not have been him.

Tall, almost disturbingly so. He was thin, almost touching on emaciated—he stared at her from behind mirrored sunglasses, a wickedly lascivious grin breaking across the lower half of his face. A brilliant rooster-crest of a Mohawk leapt from the top of his otherwise brilliantly smoothed and polished head. A spill of silver earrings caught even the crappy fluorescent lights of the terminal and brilliantly flashed.

He wore threadbare denim cut-offs and a stained white T-shirt that might have said something, one time or another, but was now just a pale pink blob of illegibility.

“Hey,” then he whistled, painfully shrill in the closed concrete overhangs, “you. I said, ‘Are you the new slut?’”

Doris passionately resisted pointing to her chest with a stupid
Who, me?
gesture. Instead she dipped her eyes and folded her hands over her blue-suited stomach. “I’m from the Marketplace,” she said, not wanting to use “sir” in case he was just the punk he seemed, and hoping that dropping it wouldn’t get her in bad graces—if he was, indeed, her new Master.

“Cool. I’m Spunk,” he said, tossing her a small black helmet. “Get on.”

She caught it, clumsily, almost dropping it onto the hard concrete. “I don’t know what you—” she started to say as ‘Spunk’ (her new Master?) stepped aside, showing her a gleaming chrome motorcycle. Doris didn’t know that much about cycles but she knew enough to hold her breath in reverent awe of its elegant power, its erotic, throbbing majesty.

“Excuse me,” she said, trying assertive timidity, as she walked toward him, “but I really don’t know what’s going on.”

“Sure you do, slut—sure you do!” Spunk walked up to her, meeting her halfway, and towering over her. “Marketplace, right? You’re what’s commonly called a ‘slave,’ right? Well, see my Pa is the one that just bought you, which means that you belong to Pa and if you belong to Pa you also belong to me.”

That was enough for Doris. Bloom would have been proud of her: “Yes, Sir,” she said, standing straight and dipping her head down to look at his scuffed, battered combat boots. “I’m sorry, Sir, I misunderstood.”

Spunk laughed, deep and short, like a shotgun blast in the echoing corridors. “At ease, slut. Yeah, you’re property and all that, and, yeah, you’re gonna be used like you’ve never been used before, but, fuck, you’re still... what the fuck’s your name, anyway, slut?”

“Doris, Sir.”

“Doris? Fuck, that’s a slut’s name if ever I heard one,” he said, smiling. “Well, Doris, stick that thing on your head, stash your junk in the saddlebag, and let’s go meet the folks.”

Not in a million years—well, maybe in five hundred thousand... Doris hung onto the back of Spunk’s bike, all conversation, and most of her thoughts, lost to the thrumming power of the machine between her legs—all save for her bubbling incredulity of her situation: Spunk? Pa? Folks?

Spunk wasn’t what she’d call a Masterful type. But, still, she had to admit that she had a certain powerful... attraction to the slim punk. Agreed, a big helping of that was the fact that she had spent the better part of a half hour with her arms wrapped firmly around him, her breasts pressed against his strong back, his throbbing... engine between her legs, thumping stronger than any vibrator ever could.

And his hand. Mustn’t forget his hand.

The trip had started out with a bang—with her heart in her throat. Once she was on and seated as securely as she could, Spunk fired the bike up and tore out of the terminal—a pair of screams echoing behind his tearing sprint: one from the bike’s tires on the abrasive concrete and the other from Doris.

Soon though, sooner than she would have expected, the ride floated down over Doris and her fear dropped down to a dull vibration that closely matched the rumble of the bike—that and most likely because she couldn’t see forward because of Spunk’s back. She could, however, look to the right or the left—but after seeing a few blurring streaks that she realized were cars being passed at their maniac speed she decided it was much better to stare at either Spunk’s back or the inside of her own eyelids by closing her eyes.

The ride, thankfully, wasn’t long—but it was... interesting. About the time she’d decided that watching traffic pass by them (or, better yet, them passing traffic by) was risky to either her stomach—again—or her sanity she felt his hand push its way insistently between her left thigh and Spunk’s back.

At first she thought that Spunk might be trying to tell her something, maybe to get her to stop trying to squeeze his stomach out his back, but then she realized what his hand was reaching for.

A flash of shivering fear blasted through her. Well, actually two, distinct, spasms. One was that Spunk would lose control of the bike and they’d spill—horribly—down onto the freeway. The second was almost as primal—that she didn’t know what her Master wanted, and how to please him.

Shortly, though, what he wanted became clear—and that the bike never dipped or wove even in the slightest diminished her first fear as well—as his hand reached precariously back and under her, cupping her ass.

The drumming hum of the bike, the powerful strength of Spunk; the delightful mystery of what her life was going to be like; the warm return of the sense of being property, of being a slave; all of it—of course Spunk’s thumb curled up and roughly dipped into her cunt and found wetness. Of course—was there ever a question? She was a Slave, he was her Master (at least she thought so).

He stayed inside her for what seemed like ages—because you don’t measure time when you’re riding on a bike (especially not with a thumb in your cunt), you measure distance: Spunk’s hand stayed inside her cunt for miles and miles.

She didn’t expect to come—not at all. Coming, what with the fear of falling off, the oppressive doubts that ricocheted around in her dazed mind, didn’t feel like a possibility.

But, still, she shivered and shook, a quaking spasm that raced up from his thumb, tapping with the echoing rumble of the bike against her G-spot—if not a true come then a damned good near one.

Just as she was about to reach down—so pleasurable was the thrill that she was about to delusionally risk her balance on the speeding bike—and position his hand and thumb better to push her completely over the edge, he pulled his hand firmly out to replace it on the clutch of the bike.

Dizzy with fear and the near-shattering come, Doris relaxed against his strong back, losing herself in the bike’s throbbing vibration and the sudden tilts and swings as Spunk easily glided them off the freeway and down into the city proper.

Even though Doris had spent a big chunk of her adolescence—too big a chunk—in the city, she couldn’t really tell where they were headed, and where they ended up. Her brain was addled and fried by the clenching fear of the ride and the thumping of her heart from the near orgasm for anything as delicate or right-brain as navigation.

Still, she was able to pick out certain landmarks: a cafe all glass and golden lettering, a shuttered and dark church, the grumble of LRV tracks under the bike’s tires, the sudden, stomach-grabbing lurch of a severe hill... placed her somewhere near Dolores park, maybe touching the Castro, maybe kissing Noe valley.

Then they stopped. Doris had shifted her vision, turned her head to the right so she missed their approach—in fact, she was so rattled both from the ride and Spunk’s thumb in her cunt, that she didn’t realize they’d completely stopped till he heeled the kickstand down and leaned the bike onto it.