The Slave (7 page)

She didn’t know how to masturbate to orgasm
yet, not quite. But she did know that thinking of these stories
made her feel good, and that when they were accompanied by select
touches and pinches, she felt even better. And the enforced silence
of her nightly explorations only added to their power. She couldn’t
afford to let Mom or Dad hear as she experienced the pleasures of
her fantasies.

And she knew, absolutely knew, that her new
feminist heroines would never, ever approve of such visions and
dreams. They shamed her. But she could not reject feminism because
she had secret evil thoughts! The best that she could do was master
the thoughts and put them away.

Robin found a refuge in academics, burying
herself in more books and more studies. No one was surprised when
she skipped a grade; everyone was proud when she received special
honors in graduations. She discovered fine art and spent weekends
strolling through museums and going to different libraries and
galleries for showings. She wrote pages and pages of journals,
recording every thought but the most disturbing ones, pushing them
back with new strength and knowing that they would return with new
cunning. She ran, sometimes faster, sometimes further, never an
award winner on the track, but keeping it up for the release of
energy it promised.

Sublimation
, she wrote one day, in a rush
of frustration
, is as exhausting as pursuit
. She found herself starting to drift off
into daytime fantasies from time to time, while watching someone
else or while waiting for something to happen.

Standing on line at the supermarket led to
lurid fantasies about being dragged into the dark, cool stockroom
and humiliated and ravished by hulking stockboys and their leering
supervisor.

Lying at the side of a pool over summer
vacation with the sounds of splashing and the sensation of
tightness as water droplets evaporated from her skin invariably led
to thoughts of pirates, their hands and mouths all over her
helpless body.

Then, one afternoon when she was sixteen,
she was fooling around with one of her girlfriends in the attic of
the girl’s house. They had already gone through a wedding album two
generations past, and giggled at the clothing and gasped at the
small waists of the women in the bridal party. Then, Cheryl, the
friend, found someone’s old army stuff and put on an officer’s cap,
standing straight and saluting in the mirror. It had been packed
away in plastic with some care, and although it was large for her,
her silhouette made Robin gasp. Cheryl, still silly over the
pictures, swung around and barked, in her rough estimation of what
a soldier might sound like, “What are you gaping at, girl? Stand at
attention when I’m talking to you!”

And that caused another, much more
disturbing reaction. Robin flushed and tried to cover it by
laughing. She excused herself not much later, saying that she had
work to do, and went home feeling nauseated and dizzy. And moist
between her legs.

I’m not only
perverted
,
she thought, holding her pen above the journal page, not daring to
write.
But
I’m a lesbian. That’s impossible. Lesbians love women. They’re
feminists. Feminism is the theory, lesbianism is the practice,
wasn’t that what someone said? How could I possibly ever tell a
woman that I loved her when she’d recoil from me in horror if she
knew what I was really like?

I will certainly never find a
true lover
,
she finally wrote, a new pain growing in her chest.
I am even an
outsider among outsiders
.

* * * *

Of course, nothing was ever that easy. Her
late night and midday fantasies, now bolstered with a much more
complete understanding of how her body worked and what it needed
for release, did not suddenly cease to have male characters in
them. And as she found herself looking at classmates and people on
the street, or even at movie and rock stars, she realized that she
could be attracted to men or women. This did nothing to help
things, but only complicated them to such a ludicrous degree that
she managed to avoid dating as much as humanly possible, looking
for events that required group participation and hobbies that
didn’t allow her time on the weekends. She became involved with
school plays and newspapers and student councils. And then she
turned her attention to college.

“
She’ll be a teacher,” her father
assured friends. “She’s always reading, and she loves libraries and
schools. We’re gonna have a teacher in this family real
soon.”

“
Definitely a lawyer,” her mother
confided to her friends. “So bright! All these awards! And she’s so
political! Who knows? Maybe one day she’ll be the governor. She’s
going to go out and change things, that’s for sure!”

“
I want to be an art buyer,” Robin
told her college counselor. “I know I’m no artist, but I want to
work for museums or galleries or auction or restoration houses.
What do I have to do to get the right training?”

Her confused and slightly miffed parents
wanted her to go locally, and there were certainly plenty of
quality schools nearby. But she negotiated a scholarship to one far
away, where she could live on campus and be part of a new
community. She also wanted one within easy distance of a major
city. It was important to her that she be separated from her
family, because whatever happened, whether she gave in to these
fantasies or not, there was no way she was going to want to come
home and sleep in her nice single bed with the pink coverlet.

If I’m going to be a
pervert
, she
wrote at last, just before packing her journals,
at least it’ll be
where no one knows me.

And
, was her less conscious thought, as
she packed up to head east,
where there might be more people who are like
me.

* * * *

“
So what’s the deal with you and
Greg?” Donna asked, combing her fingers through her long blonde
hair. She flipped a few strands over her forehead, where they would
fall in that sweet, slightly stylish way that drove some of the
young men to distraction. She smiled at the effect, knowing how it
looked. “Are you guys going out or what?”

“
It... didn’t really work out,” Robin
answered. She had a textbook open in front of her, and she was
making notes on a yellow pad.

“
Aww, too bad. He was cute, too. But
what was it? Was he, like, all dick and no brain?” Donna cocked her
head and rolled her eyes. “Du-uh, wanna pizza? Wanna watch me sweat
with a buncha other guys? Wanna fuck, baybee?”

Robin giggled. Donna was just too funny
sometimes. “I guess you could say it had something to do with his
intelligence. Or at least his imagination.”

“
Oh yeah, ain’t it the truth? Like
some of these guys think that foreplay is when they squeeze your
tits a little first. And where do they get this?” She raised her
hands and made pinching movements with her fingers. “I mean, did
you ever have a guy just grab your nips and twist them around like
knobs on an old radio? It’s like, who taught you how to make love,
the TV repairman?” She snorted and checked her hair one last
time.

Robin was so used to being flooded by these
feelings that she didn’t do more than raise an eyebrow at Donna’s
mimicry. But under her sweatshirt, her nipples ached for someone to
grab them and yes, squeeze them and twist them around. Well, thank
goodness Donna was going out. There was always the box under the
bed.

“
It’s too bad you don’t have a guy,
though. Ramon says he’s got extra tickets to the game tomorrow, and
we could’a gone together. You can still come if you want
to.”

“
No thanks, Doni, I’ve seen enough
games for a while.” Robin tapped the book. “And I have to finish my
research for this paper, anyway. But say hello to Ramon for me, and
tell him thanks for those magazines. They really came in
handy.”

Like Robin, Donna’s boyfriend was taking a
series of courses in art. He had seen Robin’s books on
pre-Columbian paintings and mentioned that his parents had a series
of magazines that had some great color illustrations and
photographs, would she like to see them? He seemed to treat her
like a younger sister, which was fine with her and just peachy to
Donna. Especially since Ramon was a sexy hunk of manhood who spoke
three languages and came from money.

“
He’s perfect for me,” Donna often
said. “Older, smarter, richer, and utterly fascinated by my big
tits. Latin men, you know. Give ’em blonde hair and big tits, and
they’re all yours.” Certainly Ramon did nothing to disprove her
theory.

“
Yeah, I’ll say hello,” Donna said as
she got up to go. “And don’t be such a nun, OK? Get out and do
something. It’s Friday fucking night. Go out and get blasted or
something. Meet some guy on the track team, they’re more
intellectual than the ball players. I got safes in the basket, help
yourself. And I shouldn’t be back until two or three!”

“
I’ll consider your advice,” Robin
promised with a wave. But as she eyed the garish woven basket that
held Donna’s endless supply of colorful prophylactics, she only
sighed. She never wanted to see one again. Especially not in the
hands of a jock.

But an hour later, as the silence in the
room grew oppressive, Robin finally closed the books and stretched.
With a cool deliberation, she closed the curtains and locked the
door. And pulled the box out from under her bed.

The box. It was a rectangular cardboard box
about twenty inches long and five inches deep, designed to be used
as storage. It came to school packed with her journals. Now, there
was only one volume in it, her current one. The rest of the space
was taken up by her slowly growing collection of toys and books and
magazines. She took them out with a ritual slowness, touching them
and laying them out so she could decide what to do.

First, the two tabloid newspapers, with
garish, horribly drawn caricatures of women in bondage on the
cover. She had purchased them when her train passed through the
city, along with several of the books underneath them. The only
woman in a dimly lit store inside a huge bus and train terminal,
she had hurriedly made her selections and paid for them as sweat
broke down the middle of her back. She had been positive that every
man in the place was watching her and that everyone on the train
she later boarded would look at her with disgust if they knew what
was in that stapled brown bag.

She had purchased the two papers and two
softcover books. One was about a woman who trained men to be her
slaves, the other about group of men who abducted and tormented
young girls, who invariably grew to love it. Robin knew that the
stories were shoddy, the writing awful, the sexism unbearable.

But they made her hot. They got her so wet
that she couldn’t stand it. Filled with more shame, she had written
to the companies and gotten their catalogs and ordered more. And
their arrival made her even more humiliated; held captive by her
own twisted libido.

That was when she had just gotten to school,
though. She wasn’t that bad about these things any more. Now, she
just accepted her fantasies for what they were, and indulged
herself as needed.

Like right now. The books she stacked to one
side, leaving her current favorites on the bottom of the pile.
Then, she took out the collar.

It was a normal dog collar, purchased with a
load of munchies at a local supermarket. But as she put it on, she
felt a new rush of heat flooding through her. It felt so right.

Carefully, she piled pillows on
her bed to make support for her shoulders. She undressed slowly,
her eyes closed, hearing a voice whisper the commands to her. When
she was nude except for the collar, she opened her eyes to look at
herself in the mirror across the room. This always served to excite
her more. Her curly hair cascaded around her shoulders, and her fit
body seemed so pale. The collar stood out sharply, defining
her.
I am a
slave
, she
mouthed silently.
I am your slave.

She put the box on her nightstand, pushing
the clock out of the way, and eased back into the bed. For about a
half hour, she read through the newspapers, with their fake letters
and fake stories. She read everything, from the token editorial to
the ads for professional mistresses, and everything went straight
to her loins. This was a world made of her fantasies.

She spent time trying to imagine what it
would be like to visit a professional. How she would go there, what
she would say? Would the woman be tall and thin? Would she be
powerful, and stately? Would she wear these clothes, like in the
magazine pictures, the corsets and the stockings, the high boots
and long whips?

Carefully, Robin reached over to the box,
not looking at it. This was to add a touch of unpredictability to
the session. She pulled out the first thing she touched, and sighed
as she trailed it cross her body. It was a plain pair of
clothespins, which she had tied together with a leather shoelace.
She had gotten the idea from one of the magazines. She pinched one
nipple and slipped the jaws of the pin around the base, sighing
when it was on. The other went on easily, and she let a low moan
issue from between her lips.

The newspapers fell to the floor as she
shifted to get her next toy. It didn’t matter; their part in her
ritual was over. Now, she looked specifically for the heavy piece
of black silk she used as a blindfold, and she tied it around her
eyes. Now, with her hands and the power of her imagination, she
could truly pleasure herself.