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Nurse Jones: My Dinner With Anita
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From: [email protected]
Newsgroups: alt.sex.bondage
Subject: Nurse Jones: My Dinner With Anita
>From Nurse Jones,
Okay, this is another Nurse Jones memory dump. It happened last
Summer. I wrote most of it then. It has never been posted.
If it seems like we are bumbling around like the Keystone
Tops, we were.
If you feel that some of what we did was stupidly dangerous, I
will save you some butane: I agree.
If you decide this post is an aimless wander through a badly
organized evening with pointless side trips into my head, it
is.
Sometimes reality doesn't organize itself around a story line
with a dramatic ending; sometimes there's no theme, no moral, no
lesson, just a beginning, a muddle, and an end; sometimes there's
nothing you can do to massage reality into anything more than the
stupid event it actually seemed to be at the time, so you just
have to tell it and leave it at that. It was a dumb evening
that turned wonderful by accident at the last minute.
-*-
Summer 1992
Ernest Hemingway once said that if you don't know how to begin
writing about something, start with the first true thing.
The first true thing is that I still don't know where to begin
writing about last Saturday night.
Sorry, that was the First Dumb Thing. Which is rule #1 from *my*
writer's handbook.
Okay, another First True Thing: it was a very sexy evening for
me. I guess it was for Anita. The boys probably got something out
of it, God knows what, but I bet they did, the perverts.
Second True Thing: I'm still writing in a vacuum since I lost my
net access, so I can't ask for the advice I would like to have on
this and it's crazy: Anita's therapist is actually recommending
bondage as therapy. Well, not exactly, but sort of almost.
Well okay, not at all, actually.
She thinks Neets should stop being so goal-oriented. Plus, she
says that if Neets won't give up this fringe sexuality, then she
should at least try something that will encourage her to
concentrate on feeling sensations instead of withstanding them.
Which Neets interprets as meaning bondage instead of S/M. So
trying bondage is really Neets' idea, not the therapist's.
I learned a new word, though. We're paraphiliacs. All of us.
That's a medical term. Means you're a sicko.
To Neets, bondage is a kind of low-grade second-rate S/M. A sort
of second choice if she has to give up her whip. So she has
gotten it into her head that she should give bondage a try.
One bit of good news. Her therapist has attached a name to her
problem: Primary Anorgasmia. It means she's never ever had an
orgasm. The good news part is that that's normally supposed to be
the most treatable kind of anorgasmia.
Third True Thing: The four of us had dinner together, and Jay and
Tom kept their pants on. 8)
That's three true things and I still don't know where to start,
where to pick up the thread.
I guess I should go back to Anita's therapist. A few years ago,
before I knew her, Neets tried one and got an authoritarian
monster. He demanded she give up S/M before he would even start
treating her. Guess he doesn't do weirdos.
I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when she walked out on
him. She has a remarkable vocabulary.
A few months ago something happened that made me suggest she try
a therapist; some of you know about that. One of you to whom we
are indebted even knows the therapist. And thanks again. Anyway,
that's when she told me about authoritarian therapists.
She told me that after her last experience she would never go
through that again, so I asked her if I found her one that
*wasn't* an asshole would she try again and she said yes, so I
did and she did and then the therapist wanted to know how she
felt about being whipped with a cat-o'-nine-tails by her husband,
which I guess is a fair question for a therapist to ask, so Anita
up and tells her about me and what *I* wrote about it on ASB:
about her going all peculiar before she's whipped. And during,
too. *And* when she's making love, sometimes, if you ask me which
you didn't but I'm telling you anyway she does.
So Neets presented her own warped view of bondage, and she told
the therapist about me.
Which to tell the truth, I did *not* particularly appreciate,
since the therapist said she might want to talk to Tom and me. I
would do anything for Anita, but I guess I'm kind of conservative
when it comes to talking to other people about my sex life. I
mean, call me old fashioned, but what goes on in the privacy of
the bedroom ought to be strictly the business of the four people
involved.
And okay, yes, I write about it on the Net, but that's different.
I guess this stuff is just too embarrassing for me to talk about
except over the Net to thousands of complete strangers.
And telling real.life strangers makes me nervous, having been
burned recently by a hyperbaptist sysop. Well, I don't actually
know for sure if she was a hyperbaptist, but she sure did what
she knew The Lord would have done if only He knew the facts of
the case.
But that's another story. A dull and depressing one, too.
So anyway, here we are. Neets told us all this news about her
therapist a few weeks ago, but like I said, she thinks bondage is
just watered down S/M and really boring compared to the intensity
of a whipping. Her attitude is that she will give it a try, but
she doesn't expect much. Anyway, it turned out this dinner was
the night she got introduced to bondage -- in a kind of haphazard
way. I was a little slow to catch on.
She and Tom did try a little at home a few weeks ago, but they
both started laughing. She thinks maybe they need more hardware
or something.
I think she just needs to learn to concentrate a little. Like her
therapist said.
She has been a bit awkward and very sweet about approaching us on
this subject. It has been difficult for her. She has dropped a
lot of clumsy hints, and we are equally inept at handling them.
It's like a first kiss: everybody wants to do it but nobody wants
to look like a fool and be the first to make a move. It's weird
that she will feel so at home with being whipped and then she's
embarrassed about even *asking* to try bondage with us. I mean,
she gets tied up *anyway* when she's whipped, doesn't she...? Why
am I asking you?
Yes, she does is the answer. It was a rhetorical question anyway.
Sorry to use so many big words, Harlan. If you are reading.
It's funny, but as much as I write about sex, we don't talk about
it much, Neets and I. Whenever we have taken part in their
scenes, Jay and I played very secondary roles. Sort of gofers.
Tom always held the whip. Sex with Neets, for me, is mostly
vanilla.
Hmm. If you were reading ASB a year ago, you'll know I'm not
accustomed to using concepts like vanilla and bisexuality in the
same sentence. But that's what YOU all would call it: vanilla.
Maybe I should say 'private and relatively appliance-free.'
Bisexuality is more than enough for me to handle without the
added complication of kinkyness. I'm still getting used to all
this.
And Neets doesn't help at all. We went sightseeing in one of
those sleazy adult stores that we ran across on the outskirts of
Atlanta last summer. We just stopped to see what it was like. You
know the kind. Adult shrink-wrapped magazines and videos and
glass cases full of menacing-looking plastic arcana. The
proprietor was a seedy and watchful old character who clearly
believed that at best we were gawking tourists and at worst we
were going to try and shoplift a package of jumbo condoms. I was
sniggering and hissing at Neets to come and look at a monstrous
black dildo with veins and testicles. It looked like something
you could have made into a table lamp. She said it was disgusting
the way they exploit ethnic stereotypes but if I was into that
sort of thing she had just the thing for me. A Scottish vibrator.
So she drags me over to the counter where the proprietor is
lurking and says, "My friend would like to buy that vibrator."
She points.
The man looks baffled.
"The plaid one," she explains. "Does it come with batteries?"
"That's not for sale," he says, looking at me as though he were
hoping I was available wholesale. "It's my thermos bottle."
Of course I just stood there turning red and gasping with my
mouth open like a fish stranded out of the water while Neets
wanders off to look at other toys and the shop keeper grins his
mouthfull of brown teeth at me.
Anyway, incidents like that aside, we are NORMALLY pretty private
about our sexuality, Neets and I. I mean, we've only been ...
intimate with each other a few times when the boys were there.
And even then hypnosis helped me a lot to deal with it. Except
for twice, one of which was this scene that I promise I will get
around to telling you about, and the other was an unmitigated
disaster of heroic proportions that some of you already know
about.
So anyway: Anita had been hinting around for weeks that she
wanted to try something different: bondage. It really is
different from being whipped.
She bottoms when she's being whipped, so she figures she wants to
bottom in bondage. At least the bottom gets all the attention.
Which is a major factor in bottoming. At least for me.
Although she hasn't really been a proper bottom up to now. I wish
you knew her, you'd know what I mean.
Nurse Jones stands on her chair and shouts:
"Forgive me Neets: you are a TERRIBLE bottom."
Even though she's the one being whipped, she controls the scene
more than Tom. There are no surprises for her. She pushes it
until she gets what she wants, sometimes further than Tom wants.
I guess the point is, she doesn't relinquish control very easily,
and she certainly doesn't do what I do. Whatever that is. At
least I can give myself up to the scene. Swim in it.
And now she's been dropping these awkward hints whenever we are
together. Asking about the things Jay and I do. Pretending she
needs consumer reports on appliances like I was the Ralph Nader
of marital aids.
She's so sweet. She's never once asked for advice in her entire
life and now she suddenly has to know all about our toys and she
nods all wide-eyed and innocent when we tell her. Talk about
transparent.
And talk about the stupid conversations we have.
"Do you think it would fit me?"
"We could certainly try it..."
"I don't know... do you think now is the right time...?"
Oh, come on.
I guess for the rest I'll just have to shut up and tell you what
happened. At least she finally decided to take the bull by the,
um ... well, whatever.
-*-
It was hot. The Deep South midsummer heat can take away all your
energy. We had gone to the fitness center that morning and the
instructor had really burned us out, and then that evening we did
this scene I'm about to tell you about. We were both deliciously
tired to begin with, and the weather melted away any energy that
was left. Still, something happened.
It hardly qualifies as a scene, though. From my posts the ASB
crowd probably thinks I'm doing exotic sexy things all the time,
but we don't, really. I just write about the high points. We
actually have a very ordinary life most of the time. We all have
full time jobs, practice regular dental hygene, veg out in front
of the VCR.
We can go for ages without doing anything sexy at all.
Well, maybe not *that* long, but one time it seemed like *days*.
8)
Ahem.
Anyway, this turned out to be a scene, but it was really pretty
impromptu and low-tech. So the technicians among you -- the ones
with the tool belts and bags full of accessories with attachments
and the crossed mexican-bandit shoulder cartridge belts full of
spare batteries -- you may not be interested. This is not one of
those high points on my brief sojourn to the fringe, either.
Really, we were all topped by the weather: late July in the Deep,
Deep South.
Once the sun goes down it cools off a little bit, but it was
still humid and sticky. The morning had been sunny and Neets had
been at the beach; she is the most incredibly determined person I
know when it comes to the beach. *Normal* people just don't go
when it's this hot. Plus it had been trying to rain all
afternoon; all we got, though, was distant thunder and hazy white
skies that turned grey in the late afternoon.
Those of you that are from Wisconsin may not understand this.
Every morning, as soon as the sun is up, our yard is filled with
a thick, warm mist, like a steam bath. Every afternoon it rains.
Jay says it's some kinf of meteorological cycle in the
subtropics. Yuck. The other day I found a pair of green fuzzy
sandals in the closet.
I didn't really feel like doing anything, especially not dressing
up the way Jay always wants me to for a scene. I told him if he
wanted me to wear anything special then I was going to turn the
air conditioning on and he said No.
I was really steamed at first, he can be such a cheapskate
sometimes, and I get irritable when I'm hot and sticky -- but he
said he wanted it that way for a reason and wouldn't even
explain, so I kind of got interested. And curious.
So we were going to have a scene, and Jay and Tom were going to
call the shots. Actually, what happened had Jay written all over
it. I mean, the scene was wound up at the beginning like a toy and
then allowed to run on it's own, with no guidance. Or very
little. Nobody seemed to know what was going on. Either that or
everybody did but me.
Anita and I got instructions on how to dress. It wasn't really
kinky, even. Well, it was, a little. He wanted me to dress like a
New Orleans hooker, whatever that is. I didn't know we had a
special look in New Orleans.
It's funny: after I wrote about this particular evening, Jay read
it and I learned something interesting. He -- and I guess most
men -- really like visually descriptive stuff when it is sexy and
about women.
Well, of course they do. Now that I write it down, it's stupidly
obvious, but that's not what I mean.
What I mean is, Jay reads these posts sometimes and I learn a lot
from him about what men like. Otherwise I would never have put in
all the descriptive detail. You'd think I would learn, wouldn't
you? I mean, he literally *made* me put it in when I was writing
The List. Maybe I should take a creative writing course. They
teach one at the local university.
Of course, I'd have to write about something else...
Anyway. Jay likes to read how we were dressed, what we look like,
that kind of thing. I tend to skip over that and go straight to
what's on the inside. So one "improvement" he is always
suggesting is that I give details about what I was wearing and
gestures and things that he thinks are sexy. So now half the time
I feel like I have to back up and wait for the men to catch up
with the rest of us and I wonder if it is really an improvement.
The rest of the time it is facinating to hear him talk about all
the details he thinks are sexy, things that push his buttons.
It's like he's telling me about a secret weapon that I can use on
him.
And back in our vanilla days when we made love he used to say he
couldn't tell what I was feeling. I never thought about it, even,
but he was right. So now, after all these discussions about what
turns him on, I let it all show and I can tell it gets to him.
Part of it is that he likes to know that he's having a big effect
on me. If he can see that effect, it has a big effect on him.
The clods back home in Indiana didn't care a hoot about anything
but their own ride. I mean, if it wasn't for beer and television
they would have no earthly idea what to do for apres whoopie, so
where would I learn to show how I felt except from someone who
cared to know? So I guess I learned to keep quiet and have
private orgasms, and I had to unlearn it for Jay.
I mean, this is going to sound really stupid, but I even peeked
at my face in the mirror once (again, way back in our vanilla
days) when Jay and I were making love and discovered how right he
was: you would never have known I was even having an orgasm if
you didn't know me very well. Which I would hope one would under
those circumstances.
I had to become an actress to show what I was really feeling on
the inside. Odd. And then I started feeling it more....
I guess the point is that there is almost a kind of science to
learning about the opposite sex, and a lot of it doesn't come
naturally; my natural writing style doesn't automatically include
pushing male buttons. I've been almost taught by Jay, and I
learned from ASB that it works, so I do it. Sometimes it seems
like magic, and I don't understand it any more than I really
understand why my computer restarts itself when I push control-
alt-delete.
So anyway, here's some of that descriptive stuff:
I dressed in a microscopic sleeveless black cotton knit mini that
Jay had gotten me last Christmas when we were more deeply into
hypnosis. We stayed in a posh hotel and he had me dress up like a
hooker (I wrote about that already). Anyway, that's what he
wanted again: an obvious, cheap hooker, garish makeup and all.
Men are so dumb sometimes. And Anita just wore a light indian
cotton wraparound and a sleeveless white men's tank-top t-shirt,
both of which she borrowed from me. And, yes, you could see
through the skirt with the light behind her.
Men.
Especially mine.
Well, I guess I can forgive him for treating me like a sex
object. But only because he's got buns you could bounce a quarter
on.
Anyway, Neets didn't even wear any shoes, but could I go barefoot
on the hottest night of the year? Of course not. I had to teeter
around on four inch bimbo heels all evening. Actually, what with
not wearing any underwear and all, it wasn't too bad at first for
either of us.
But it *was* a strange way to dress on an evening like that.
Runny makeup was the worst part.
It was all very mysterious, going to all this trouble on a hot
muggy night when all you want to do is shower and turn up the air.
So of course I asked him what the scene was going to be, and of
course he wouldn't tell me. So I asked him to at least tell me
WHEN it would be and he said it had already started. He told
Anita and me to watch this simmering pot of disgusting ... cajun
stuff ... so it wouldn't boil over while he and Tom went and
changed. You have to change a lot in this weather. Three showers
a day, sometimes.
They came back wearing white cotton pants and shirts like a
couple of plantation owners and I started kidding around calling
Jay "Big Daddy" and using words like "y'all" and "grits" and
before I knew it I was calling Neets "Aunt Pittypat" and Tom was
"Oh, Ashley!" and then I degenerated into Streetcar Named Desire
and became ... whatzername ... Blanche DuBois. You know: Stanley
Kowalski's sister-in-law. The one that was always fainting and
going on about how she "always relied on the kindness of
strangers." The one Karl Malden thought he wanted to marry.
Anyway, Jay told me stop clowning and besides you have a lousy
southern accent. Well, I never. *I* thought I sounded *just* like
Vivien Leigh.
I harrumphed to Aunt Pittypat that men are all alike and she
drawled back that, "Men are awl Ah like, too, Miss Scarlett," so
then Jay had to try and put a lid on her as well, and the evening
almost got out of hand right there.
Anyway, the boys started out dressed in crisp white which became
damp white within minutes. Actually, Jay is pretty sexy in white.
Even damp white. Especially now with a tan.
In fact, I am the only one that doesn't have a tan. I wear
stucco-grade sunblock at the beach. And a hat that Jay got me
with a solar-powered propeller in it. He says that my pale skin
with that hat makes me look like the bizarre result of genetic
experimentation involving mutant mushrooms and Bernadette Peters.
Very witty, I'm sure. Ha ha. Ha.
I wear a towel over my shoulders and white stuff on my nose and I
hog the umbrella. Folding chair, book, sunglasses, sandals,
cooler .... The beach is nice, too.
Well, I like to be fully prepared.
Anita, on the other hand, brings her swimsuit. She's just hoping
the hole in the ozone layer makes it this far north in time for
her to enjoy it.
I keep telling her she's going to ruin her skin. Last time we
were at the beach together she went without any sunblock at all
until I nagged her into letting me put some on, and what does she
have but this oil of dubious value but a really fun nozzle for
squirting, so I really soaked her in it, suit and all. She
retaliated later by leaving sunblock off my ass. (Yes, it was one
of *those* suits.) She's such a bitch. I should have been paying
closer attention, but I fell asleep while she was putting it on.
She has such strong hands. Luckily for her she told me after
about a half hour, but I still got pretty rosy. Back there.
Anyway, she's going to ruin her skin, but will she listen? No.
She never listens to anybody.
Jeez. I just realized I am becoming my mother.
Okay, it's partly jealousy. I will admit she looks pretty good
all tan and oiled the way she was. Jay keeps describing her as
magnificent. Well, she's practically eight feet tall, so what
else would she be? There wasn't a man on the beach that didn't
notice her. The bitch. I guess I have to accept it: the summer is
hers. The winter may be mine, but the summer is hers.
Now she says that if I'm going to keep my skin so pale I should
dye my hair black. For effect.
Artists. They're all alike...
Um, where was I?
Oh, yeah.
So anyway, we cooked dinner.
Like I said, Jay had this spicy cajun dish he wanted to try.
Gumbelijah, or something. I can't even spell it, nevermind eat it.
I don't even know for sure what it was. It was brown, that's what
it was. Jesus, what a thing to pick for a night like that. We
should have aad cold salads and fruit. Cajun food is so *heavy*
and *hot*. Bleah. It's awful stuff. You can eat all you want and
you're hungry again in just a few weeks.
And I do *not* like crayfish. Or anything with that many legs.
Especially when you have to squeeze the heads and suck
unspecified juices out of them. I mean, who *knows* what's in
there?
What is it with men and food? Before we got married, Jay
subsisted on burgers. Haven't they ever discovered fruit? Salad?
Not only does it taste good, and it's good for you, but you don't
have to cook it. And I really haven't figured out this cooking
business yet.
My father won't eat greens either. He eats steak. Period. For
him vegetables are baked beans and orange soda pop. I think he
secretly considers chicken to be a vegetable. The four major food
groups are Rare, Medium, Well Done, and Fries. Parsley is
something you flick out of the way with your finger. Or put on
your daughter's plate. Plenty of vitamin C in catsup. Ketchup?
Catsoup? See, I can't even spell it.
When we got married I cracked my knuckles and flexed my fingers
in preparation for the traditional midwestern Complete Husband
Overhaul, and I almost had Jay trained to eat balanced meals, but
then Tom and Neets turn up, and now whenever the boys get
together and cook something it has to be some macho dish that is
always brown. We went camping for a week, and we ate brown food
the whole time. And I didn't know what *it* was, either. Is this
some kind of man-rule? Where is it writtn that meat has to be
red and/or black and everything else has to be brown? I *hate*
baked beans. And hash browned potatoes. I'll tell you about that
camping trip sometime.
Anyway.
It may have been the food, but it seemed like the evening only
got hotter. We have those big, lazy ceiling fans, but they didn't
help much. There was summer lightning and some distant thunder;
the lightning outside would occasionally illuminate the trees
outside the windows. It was somehow surprising for the darkness
to dissappear and remind us of the trees so big and so close to
the house; it was as if they had snuck up and surrounded us.
But no breeze. The air was dead.
Even with a fan right over the dining table everyone's clothing
was sticking to them. My arms stuck to the table. Jay took his
shirt off and put on a white sleeveless t like Anita had. I love
his arms. And shoulders. Not to mention ... well, I already
mentioned those, didn't I.
When we sat down to eat, the candles were blowing and melting in
the breeze from the fan so Jay lit an oil lamp with a glass
chimney -- which is something every house has down here because
of hurricaine season. The smell of the burned oil just made the
room seem more close and oppressive.
And then he turned off the stereo, and suddenly we were in the
Old South. The insects are nearly deafening. Cicadas, tree frogs,
katydids, crickets. If you listen to it it begins to sound like
an auditory hallucination. Like mother nature has an electrical
fault. Almost hypnotic, sort of like a salon hairdryer.
Later, out on the porch, it wasa conversation stopper, but who
wanted to talk. Anyway, that was later...
"I checked ASB today," Anita said, and waited. She knows I like
to hear about what's going on on the Net ever since I lost my
access.
"Well? So tell me!"
She fanned herself with a folded newspaper and leaned back
against her chair, taking a rest from the cajun torture. She knew
I was dying to hear about ASB, so she was pretending it was too
hot for conversation. "Oh, it wasn't much... Somebody mentioned
you. Or rather Nurse Jones."
She must have been saving that for dinner. And she was going to
make me drag it out of her. "Well? So tell me! Who was it? What
did they say?"
"Somebody said you're a virtual personality. Which I knew all
along." She smirked, something she does really well.
"Is that all? Just that? A virtual personality? Pass me that
croissant..."
"It was part of some thread or other. I didn't read the rest. I
did a search for the word 'nurse' -- just like you said -- and
there you were." She fished an ice cube out of her glass and ran
it over her throat, head tilted back. Melted drops ran down her
front.
"Great. A virtual personality. And I used to be a Net Queen.
How 'bout some butter down here. Please." I watched her play with
the ice cube.
"I always knew you had a virtual personality disorder..." Jay
slid the butter toward me without looking away from Neets. That
was a very interesting ice cube.
"Oh, ha, ha. Very funny."
"God, you're disgusting..." Neets said. She flicked icewater at
me.
"What?!? What?!? What did I do?"
"The way you put butter on that thing..."
Jay said, "Ignore her, Neets. Otherwise it'll just get worse."
"Hey," I said. "It's just butter..."
"Just stop playing with your food and eat it..."
"Oh God. Not like that..."
"What?! What now?!"
"You're worse than a fratboy. Gawd. Virtual personality would be
a good career move, I think," Tom said. He was watching the ice
cube, too.
Neets popped it in her mouth and smiled at us. She knew we were
all watching her.
"Phooey." I threw the croissant onto my plate and leaned back.
"Phooey?"
"I can't eat anything. Besides, I'm supposed to be a Net Queen and
I can't even get an account. I might as well be a virtual
personality. And I especially refuse to eat *this* stuff." Three
bites of cajun delight and I was full and hot and icewater was
the only thing light enough to drink. Even cold beer was too
heavy. It was just too hot.
I wiped the perspiration off my face and my mascara turned into a
big smudge on the paper napkin.
Anita smirked again. "You look like a raccoon."
I dipped another napkin in my icewater and tried to wipe more
off. God, I felt seedy.
"You still look like a raccoon." Anita pushed her plate back too,
and took an apple from the fruit bowl. That's right, fruit bowl.
Go ahead, laugh. I even put cut flowers around the house. I'm
going to start cooking for real any day now. No more microwave
miracles. Real soon. I'm becoming domesticated.
"And what in God's name is this?!?" Anita found a ball gag in
the fruit bowl and was holding it up by the strap like it was a
dead rat.
Well, maybe not completely totally domesticated.
"Um, I guess it's a ball gag..."
"No! Really?!? Well, you could have knocked me over with a
feather. A ball gag? Imagine that...a ball gag. Right here in the
fruit bowl. Well, I never." She shook her head in amazement.
Wiseass. That was her first hint of the evening, though.
"Very funny. I'm going to get cleaned up." I stood up. The seat
of my dress was stuck to me.
"No, stay; don't wash it off," said Jay. "It's part of the scene."
"You and your scene." I pulled my dress away from various
anatomical features. "At least lets turn on the air."
"Yeah..." Good ol' Tom. He agrees with everybody.
"Uh, uh. Just pretend you're Scarlett O'Hara. Back before they
invented air conditioning," Jay said. "And could you pass that
carafe?"
"Maybe. If I could swallow it."
"Oh God. Just fucking pass the fucking ice water."
Neets stuck her lower lip out and blew a limp strand of hair off
her forehead.
I pulled the neckline of my dress away and let the fan blow down
my front. "Well, mom always wanted me to stick to my knitting."
Tom groaned and put his forehead on the edge of the table and
rolled his head back and forth. "Please, somebody make her
stop..."
"Humor her. She has a knife. And she isn't very strong on
etiquette..."
"Well, excuuse me Miss Manners. It's only a butter knife." I put
it back. The butter had slumped into a puddle.
Tom stopped rolling his head back and forth, but he left his
forehead resting on the table edge. Without looking up, he said,
"Yeah, lookout: she might butter you."
"Well, it's not like it would be the first time," I sniggered.
"I don't even want to *talk* about that," Neets said.
"Besides, it's too hot," I said.
"Thank God."
"What I need is a slave with one of those big feathery fans. I
bet if I were really Scarlett O'Hara..."
Neets stands up and says, "Here. Try this, Scarlett..." and she
dips her hand in the pitcher of icewater and runs it over my
chest and down inside my front. I was already slippery from
perspiration, but her hand ...
"Think I'd make a good slave?"
"Um," I quipped, my mind shifting instantly into high gear. I was
concentrating on her hand. Missed another hint, too...
Neets turned to Jay. "That what you had in mind for a scene?"
"Sure."
She stood there with her hand down my front and smirked again.
"Well, I know one thing."
She waited for me to rise to the bait. I wouldn't.
She smiled innocently, encouragingly.
Jay couldn't resist. "What's that?"
"Nothing virtual about these." She grabbed my boobs with both
hands and gave them a lecherous squeeze.
"Neets! Cut it out..." I swatted her hands away.
"I think maybe you meant virtuous." Jay's another wiseass.
"Let's just check..." She hooked the front of my dress with a
finger and pulled it out, looking down.
I slapped at her hand again. "You get out of there. You're worse
than Jay."
She pulled the front of her own t-shirt out and looked down; she
smirked again and shrugged. I keep telling her she is perfect for
someone with her build, but will she listen? No. She thinks she's
too small and that's all there is to it.
She is awfully insecure for someone with all her self-assurance.
She put one foot up on her chair and her wraparound skirt parted
to reveal several yards of very brown leg. She's so competitive.
Jay was watching, naturally. The swine. She pulled an elastic
tieback out of her ponytail, shook her hair out, and pulled it up
in a bun. I'm always mesmerized by her hair. She knows it, too.
The bitch.
In fact, what the heck: in an old post that we wrote together,
Neets described me and how she felt about me. I'm going to do the
same right now about her.
Jay is always saying she's magnificent but he's just a man so
what does he know, but really, she is. He just thinks she's
magnificent because she is so tall and has long hair and can
repair her own truck. Men. They *are* all alike.
But she IS tall. And she's strong. Strong willed, strong boned,
strong emotionally, and strong physically. She's vibrant and
graceful. And she's blindingly talented. She's an old-school
artist in a university where her teachers all want something new
and different and avant garde and groundbreaking and noone values
her kind of gift and she doesn't care one damn bit what they
think.
She gives the impression that she can stand alone, and does.
She's not pretty. Her face is too strong to be pretty. Strong
cheekbones, strong nose. Not that she's unattractive; I think she
would actually be less attractive if she were merely pretty. But
I guess men generally prefer pretty. With a little makeup she's a
knockout; what Jay calls a drop-dead looker. ut her strength
shows through and it makes beauty seem irrelevant, and somehow
that can make her beautiful. But not pretty.
Anyway, she gets impatient when I try to tell her she's
beautiful. She doesn't believe me and it wouldn't matter to her
if she did.
She gives the impression that there isn't anything you could take
away from her that she can't do without. Or anything that you
have that she wants.
And yet -- and this is important, so pay attention -- she makes
it clear she wants something I have. But it's almost as though I,
the real Margaret, am not part of the package. As if I were in
the way, almost.
Did you follow that? It's as though she is negotiating with me
for something I'm unaware I have and she won't tell me what it is
for fear I'll jack up the price.
Almost as though *I* was an irrelevant broker, unnecessary to the
transaction. Maybe I *am* a virtual personality, just lucky to be
attached to whatever it is she wants.
The thing is, with all her strength she isn't hard. She has the
strength to open herself up and pour out her soul and then zip
back up so life is back to normal except that now you have seen
the inside. Men never do that. I don't know if that's from
strength or weakness. Probably both.
She's everything I'm not, come to think of it. She's everything I
admire. I feel stupid writing love letters that almost everyone
BUT Anita will read; she never even sees most of my posts. She
DID read most of The List, though, thanks to TheClone who
reposted it last Spring.
That was an experience: hearing from Neets that The List was
scrolling by once again for everyone to see -- almost on the
anniversary of the time Jay and I did it. And to know that Neets
was reading it and there was nothing I could do to stop her.
And after I had made excuses for months every time she asked me
to let her read it. It was embarrassing. Topped long distance by
TheClone. Talk about reaching out and touching someone. It was a
sweet gesture. ThankyouClone, if you are still out there, for
Doing The Job. Did you know you were topping Nurse Jones?
Neets once said that when she sees me the very first thing she
thinks of is that she has to have me and the next thing she
remembers is that she can't have me. That was back when she and
Tom were on the outside of our relationship looking in.
Now, when I see her, I'm glad she wants me. I want to be hers.
Hers and Jay's. I want to be owned. Not "owned like a slave" in
the sense of the bondage play that we write about on the Net, but
possessed and protected by someone possessive and protective. The
way Jay feels. I like that. It makes me feel safe.
And that's how I feel about Neets.
-*-
So there we were, sitting at the dinner table trying to decide if
it was worth the effort to try and have a conversation. The
insects were thrumming outside.
Anita said, "You know, now that I've read The List it's weird
sitting here..." She leaned back in her chair and fanned herself
with the newspaper again.
"Why's that?"
Anita covered the half-melted butter to keep a suicidal moth out
of it. We watched it throw itself at the lamp chimney instead and
wondered if it would find it's way to the flame and something
icky would happen to it.
"...And it was weird reading The List, too. I had already been
here, and it was weird reading about things happening in a place
I had already been. Now it's weird being in a place I have read
about. Like this table." She looked straight at me. I knew
immediately what she meant; Jay had done things to me there that,
according to Miss Manners, shouldn't be done on a dining room
table, and I had written about it in The List.
I tried to be cool and pretend it didn't bother me, but she kept
looking at me and I ended up looking down and blushing furiously.
She did that deliberately, making me blush. Plus she had this
little smile of satisfaction when she saw she was successful. She
is always poking at me to make me blush. She says it's only
fair because I'm always doing it to other people; she says I'm a
psychic vampire, always stirring other people up and feeding on
their discomfort.
Well, I'm sure I have *no* idea what she's talking about.
She shifted her attention. "Is that the chair? The one by the
fireplace?"
"Um, yeah..." At least my associations with that chair aren't as
embarrassing as with the table.
She got up and walked over to it. "That was your first night..."
She touched it lightly, experimentally.
It was my first night. Jay had taped me to it with black plastic
electrical tape and ... well, you know the sort of thing. She had
read it all. I was amazed she remembered that much of it. In fact
I had been half hoping she had forgotten all about it entirely,
it's such an embarrassment. At times like this I think I should
never have written that stuff down. I should have let that
experience go instead of trying to enshrine it. I should have
erased the files when it was over and I had the chance...
She picked up the chair and wrestled it over to the table before
Jay could even get up to help her. She plopped it down heavily at
her place and droplets of her perspiration spattered the table. Any
effort is too much in this weather.
She sat up straight and put her arms flat on the arms of the
chair the way Jay had taped mine. She looked across the table at
me. Well, it was obvious what she was thinking, but she didn't
say anything.
"I take it the jumbeliah [whatever] was a bust. Who's for
desert?" Jay said. He didn't finish his either. Well, it WAS a
bust. I mean, really: cooking that stuff when it had been 99 all
day. Temperature AND humidity.
"How about hot coffee?"
"Very funny," I said. "Do you think we could fit four people in
the refrigerator?"
"No kidding. Coffee. Anyone?"
Tom and I looked at Jay like he was crazy. Anita was preoccupied,
fiddling with the ball gag again.
"In case you hadn't noticed, it's not only a bazillion degrees
but it's so humid the mosquitos can stay airborne without
flapping their wings. I'm having ice cream."
"Yeah. Ice cream." Tom can always be counted on to be sensible
when everyone else is acting flaky. Coffee. Sheesh. I went and
opened the refrigerator.
Anita put the ball gag back into the fruit bowl and asked what
flavor.
"Vanilla," I reported, basking in front of the freezer.
"Is that it?"
"Yep. Vanilla."
"I'll have coffee, too."
"What?! Coffee? What's the matter with you?"
"Me too," said Tom. The traitor.
Jesus. What's the matter with vanilla? I didn't care if the only
flavors were corn, liver, and wood. The *point* was that it was
*cold*. I marched back out to the dining room.
The three of them were just sitting there. Anita and Jay were
looking at each other like they were sharing a secret.
"What *is* the matter with you people? Coffee on a night like
tonight? What is going on? Have I missed something or ... or
something?"
"I guess it's just not my night for vanilla," said Anita, still
looking at Jay.
"Okay, okay, so I'll boil water for your coffee. At 212 degrees.
Fahrenheit. Unless that's not hot enough for you? Would you
prefer centigrade or Kevin or something?"
They just looked at me like I was speaking chinese or something.
"That's Kelvin," Jay said.
"Well, I am going to eat the *vanilla* ice cream. All of it."
They still didn't react. They were serious about having coffee.
Okay, so I'm a bit slow sometimes, but I still hadn't figured out
what was going on yet. Actually, I still haven't.
Anyway, Anita fanned herself with the newspaper and they all
watched me stuff my face while the water heated up.
I was pretty hungry after all, as long as I didn't have to eat
forty pounds of chili pepper and tobasco sauce. But after a few
minutes I noticed they were watching me and I started losing
momentum. Well, maybe it was a pretty big bowl of ice cream, but
they *did* say they didn't want any.
The kettle whistled and Jay started to get up, but Neets put her
hand on his arm and said she would get it.
"You sure you don't want some?" Jay said to me.
"Um." I looked from Jay to Neets to Tom for a clue. No clues.
Something funny was going on, but no clues. What the hell. I
didn't have to actually drink it. I sighed, "Cream and sugar."
Anita smiled to herself and left for the kitchen.
I whispered fiercely at Jay, "What's with this coffee business?"
He shrugged and said, "It's a scene, I guess. Just go with it and
see what happens."
A scene ... a scene that involved drinking hot coffee and eating
hot spicy cajun food in humid 95 degree weather without an air
conditioner. Aha. Now it all made sense.
I could get into that.
I stirred my ice cream soup. I had lost my appetite, and anyway
it was melted. Then a moth plopped into it and got stuck and by
the time I had made Jay rescue it Neets was back with the coffee.
She settled in with both elbows on the table and the coffee cup
in her hands under her chin and leaned toward me like she was
ready for a good gossip. She took a drink. I took a drink.
Gradually it turned into a really stupid drinking contest, except
we were seeing how hot we could stand to be rather than how
drunk.
Along the way, Neets asked me about the first time I had tried
bondage games with Jay. She wanted to know what the very first
thing was that we did that made an impression on me. I told her
it was when I came out of the bedroom that first time dressed the
way I was. I was mortified.
"I can't do that now. What next?"
Oho. I Can't Do That Now. That statement said a lot She wanted
to Do Something. Now. Comprehension dawned. Aha. Oho. She has an
agenda. This was a sort of free form scene and she was taking
advantage of it to do what SHE wanted to do. I looked around at
Jay and Tom and realized I had been the last one to figure this
out.
She was persistent. "Come on, what was the next thing you did?"
"It was so silly."
"No, go on, tell me," she said.
"But it's going to sound so stupid..."
She just sat there looking at me as if to say, "Well? are you
going to tell me or not?"
"Okay: Jay told me to do something sexy."
"Yeah? What?"
"Just something. Anything. He didn't specify."
She squinted at me, her expression implying disbelief. She can be
so dense sometimes. "Why does that bother you? You do sexy things
all the time."
"I do not. I don't know why. I guess doing something like that on
demand bothered me. It seemed so contrived."
"But lots of the things you do are contrived. Almost *everything*
you do is contrived."
I hate it when she asks perfectly reasonable questions that drag
me out into the open like that. "Yeah," I said, "but he was asking
me to act -- like an actress -- and he would know I was acting.
And if I felt, well... sexy, he would know I had made myself feel
that way. It was almost like, um, masturbating..." I cleared my
throat; it was hard saying this in front of Tom. "For, ah, him,"
I croaked, ending in a whisper.
"So? That would bother you?"
"Jeez, Neets, of course it would! Wouldn't it bother you?"
I could see she was thinking about it. She was looking at me like
she was trying to estimate my dress size or something.
She got up and walked over to the picture window. "Just 'Do
Something Sexy?' That's all?"
She looked at Jay and then back at me, and raised her tumbler of
icewater to drink, but as she drank she tipped it up and up and
it ran over her chin and down her face and neck and soaked the
front of her her t-shirt. And still she kept pouring until the
only thing left was ice cubes. She put the glass on the table
decisively, wiped her face on her bare arm, and looked at the
three of us sitting there like idiots.
Of course, she might as well not have been wearing a t-shirt at
all, with it all wet like that. The boys were gawping, the
perverts. And they both swear they've never seen a wet t-shirt
contest. They're terrible liars.
Do something sexy. Well, she had done something sexy. She has no
trouble at all knowing what turns men on.
She put her hands on her hips. "Well, what's the matter with you
people? Are you just going to sit there with your mouths open?"
Actually, yes, that was all I had planned for the next few minutes.
"Sit down, and maybe we'll give you lessons," said Jay.
She came back to the table and sat.
"It seems to me you've been asking for a scene all night," said
Jay.
She smiled innocently. Ha. Innocently.
Ha.
"So are you just kidding around, or are you serious? Because
first of all..."
"Stop, stop, stop," I slapped at Jay's shoulder to shut him up.
"You'll ruin everything. She just doesn't understand yet."
Jay raised his eyebrows at me.
I turned to Anita. "The trouble with you is, you try to control
everything." I love giving advice. Plus I admit I was a little
excitd at whatever was going on, even though I didn't know what
it was, exactly.
"What do you mean, control everything!? Tom whips me. He's the
top -- he's the one doing the controlling." She gave the
impression that she was trying very hard to take me seriously.
She thinks bondage is a little trivial.
Yeah, so why did she want to try it?
I stood up and leaned over the table, my face close to hers, with
my hands on either side of her plate. I invaded her space. She
leaned back, a little surprised. Jay told me that little trick.
He says that if you do it intentionally, unexpectedly, it really
keeps the other person off balance. It's a good thing to know. I
guess that's what they call 'getting in someone's face.' Ha. It
works, too.
So I said into her face, "But you control the pain, don't you?"
As if that was really significant or something.
She looked from side to side at Tom and Jay as if
to say, Who is this crazy lady? "Well, yeah," she said.
"Yeah, you do. And you think that's the right way to go, don't
you. Control."
I started pacing around the table, warming to the subject.
"And who went and got that chair you are sitting in? And who was
waving the ball gag around? Well?"
"I was just..."
I interrupted. "And who's trying to start a wet t-shirt contest?
If that's not controlling things, I don't know what is."
I whispered in Jay's ear to go and get his roll of black plastic
tape and the blindfold and some toys. The insects were a
blessing: she couldn't hear a word I said to him.
He looked at me like I had all of a sudden turned into a
different person, taking charge like that, but he smiled his
quirky little smile and went.
"Plus you can't have Tom here to protect you," I went on. "That
won't do at all. Think about how I felt my first night out here
in the middle of the woods. I was completely dependent on Jay." I
whispered to Tom to come back after we blindfolded her.
She said, "but Tom..."
I interrupted again. "Do you want to keep trying to control things
or what?"
She smirked again. "Oh, yeah, right. Like, what am I supposed to
do, say, 'No, Mistress,' and bat my eyelashes?"
"No." I picked up the ball gag and put it against her lips.
"You're not supposed to say anything."
She rolled her eyes at the ceiling, being cute and trying to
trivialize the gag.
"Well?"
She opened her mouth a little.
"Wider."
She opened wider. I could tell she was trying to smirk at the
same time, the showoff. But her attention shifted to the gag and
she had to open her mouth still wider to accomodate it.
In it went.
She looked a little surprised. I could see her attitude shift
from showing off and smirking to suddenly noticing this object in
her mouth. She didn't like it. She raised her hand as if to take
it out, but changed her mind. That would have been admitting it
bothered her.
Instead, she tried to look cool.
And learned you can't look cool wearing a ball gag. It can't be
done. Your mouth is open. Too open. And everyone else knows you
aren't in control of one of life's basic functions: talking.
And smirking.
She looked around at the three of us; I could tell she was
realizing she couldn't say anything to anyone. You would think
that would be obvious, but no: up to that point she had been
thinking about how a gag is nothing compared to her whip;
suddenly she couldn't wisecrack anymore.
Nobody said anything. The insects thrummed outside, but she
couldn't break the sudden silence.
She was cut off from us.
She looked over at Tom with this shocked look on her face. I said
to him, "Are you still here? Go on, scram. Out."
He did.
"Buckle it."
She did.
"Really," I lectured, "One shouldn't have so many people around;
there's safety in numbers, and this isn't about that kind of
safety: it's about trust."
I'm telling you, it was great, the feeling of sudden control. If
anyone (especially me) tells you women are temperamentally
unsuited to topping, don't listen. Months ago, when I tried to
top Jay, I thought I hated it, but this night when I said to
Anita, "The trouble with you is..." I realized that topping for
me is different: I get to give advice and they not only Have To
Listen, but they Have To Do It.
Giving advice. That puts it on terms I can identify with. And Tom
and Jay played along with me.
For those few minutes I loved it. It's a little embarrassing to
admit, but I did.
And I used to wonder why anybody in their right mind would want
to be a top. I guess we each find our own path. Mine lasted about
five minutes...
Jay brought back the entire drawer from the bedside table.
Perfect. I rummaged around and found one of those tiny paddlocks.
"Turn the chair around and tape her. Ankles and wrists." Jay did.
I was topping everybody. Four minutes to go as a top.
As he was doing her left wrist, her right hand went back up to
the buckle on the gag. I grabbed her wrist with both hands. She
is strong. She wriggled loose and went for the buckle again and I
had to catch her a second time. She really wanted to say
something.
"Neets! Stop it. Do you hear me? Stop it!" She relaxed for a
second. "Here. This is going to be your safeword." I showed her
an orange from the fruit bowl. "Drop it and the scene is over.
Understand?" She nodded, but she didn't take the orange. Instead
she tried again to get at the buckle, but I was ready for her.
It was terribly sneaky of me, and the ASB crowd will probably
accuse me of violating a nonconsensuality clause of some sort,
but I grabbed her wrist again and told her once more to stop it,
and that all this wrestling wasn't going to get her anywhere. She
relaxed again but she looked so desperate I asked her if she
really really really wanted the gag out. She nodded, and I told
her I would unbuckle it.
Instead, I put the paddlock in.
I betrayed her. Tricked her.
I stepped back from the chair to wait and see what she would do,
and she realized right away I had done something sneaky. Her free
hand flew to the buckle and her fingers scrabbled over the lock.
When she realized what I had done, she let out a screech of
frustration behind the gag and pounded her open palm against the
arm of the chair. She tried to stand, and almost made it. Jay had
only managed to get her ankles and one wrist taped to the chair,
and she was so slippery from the perspiration that the tape
didn't stick to her properly, but she couldn't get free without
actually breaking the tape and it was too strong for that. The
only thing she could manage was to half-stand so awkwardly she
nearly fell over and took the chair with her. Thank God Jay was
there to get her sat back down. Things were rapidly getting out
of control, and I was feeling a little less like the bigshot I
had been a minute earlier. Ding! End of my try at topping Neets.
Once he had her sitting back down, he knelt in front of her and
took her free hand in his. She must have thought he was going to
tape it or something, and tried to pull back, but he held on and
got her attention.
"Neets! Listen to me!" She was staring right at him, breathing
heavily through her nose and making faint whining noises in the
back of her throat with every breath. Perspiration was running
down both their faces and there was a big wet stain down the
back of Jay's t-shirt. "I know you can hear me, so settle down."
She continued with the heavy breathing, but she stopped fighting
him.
"Do you need to make a pit stop? I don't want to start this on a
full bladder..." Which made perfect sense. I didn't even think of
that. Of course, Jay's been there before.
But she shook her head. That wasn't the problem.
"Okay, then. Look. This is the way it is." He wiped the
perspiration off his face with the tail of his t-shirt. (He has
great stomach muscles.) "I'm going to give you that orange. I'm
going to put it in your hand. If you drop it, the scene is over.
Right then. That's your safeword, just like Margaret said."
I handed him the orange and he held it up in front of her. "This
is the only choice you get. Keep going or stop. That's all. You
don't get to choose anything else"
He kissed the palm of her hand and put the orange there, but she
didn't close her hand on it.
"I don't know what you want to say, but if it's that important,
you can drop your safeword right now and we'll stop everything."
He curled her fingers around the orange. "Decide," he said, and
took his hand away.
The orange stayed there.
"Good."
When he kissed the palm of her hand, that was the first time Jay
has ever kissed Anita except to say hello or goodbye. It kind of
bothered me, a little. I don't know why; I love them both. I
guess I'm just the jealous type. It's not fair, really, I know:
Jay lets me have a relationship with Anita, but I want to keep
him all to myself.
And they call us the fair sex.
He took the roll of tape and pulled off a length. Immediately,
she made a noise as if she were trying to speak and pulled the
hand with the orange away from him. She reached around in back of
her shoulder and pulled awkwardly at me with the orange hand,
trying to move me around into her field of vision. I stepped to
her side and she plucked at my dress with a free finger, pulling
me closer.
She pushed the orange at me and said something. She repeated it,
and I could tell she was saying the same thing over and over, but
she was completely unintelligible. After a couple of tries I
realized she was trying to get me to take the orange from her.
"No," I said. "I can't take it. It's not right -- it's your
safeword -- you have to keep it." I pushed it back at her. "No,
please."
"Take it," said Jay.
"But..."
"Just take it. It'll be alright."
I did. I took it and sqeezed her hand for a second. That really
is quite a gift, you know, giving away your safeword. I planted a
kiss on the side of her mouth where it was stretched against the
ball gag. That kind of turned me on, for some reason, kissing her
lips when they were held open that way and feeling the gag
against my own lips. She tasted salty and of coffee, and I
smelled the rubbery smell of the gag. I got more than a little
preoccupied with her while Jay finished taping her other wrist.
And her elbows. And her knees.
I got out the scissors and snipped down the front of her t-shirt
and made it into a vest. Well, it was my shirt.
The trouble was, we didn't know where to go from there. If Jay
had actually planned the whole scene we wouldn't have had that
problem, but the chair we had taped her to was just a big clunky
oak armchair. Office furniture. Even after I had cut away her
shirt and unbuttoned her skirt and she was completely nude it was
nearly impossible to do anything interesting with her. To her.
The seat of the chair should be removable or something. So I
tried a few clothsepins and learned that it's not easy being a
top. Even an assistant top. You need a lot of imagination and
forethought.
Jay makes it look so easy. But he plans everythiing.
Jay saw the problem right away and told me to give it a few
minutes, then put my wrist and ankle cuffs on her, and bring her
out to the hammock on the porch. He said he would fix the hammock
for me. He whispered to me to keep the key to the ball gag handy and
*never* take my eyes off her in case she threw up. Which scared
the hell out of me. Then he disappeared and left me all alone to
keep things going. I was tempted to take the gag out right then.
Throwing up under those circumstances is scary. Being a top is no
fun if you have to be *that* careful.
At least I had a goal: get her to the porch hammock.
Really, I think the worst thing I did was to let a mosquito bite
her. I was trying to think of something to do that would make the
clothsepins more interesting when it landed on her thigh and she
tried to twitch it off. She was looking at me and gesturing with
her head for me to brush it away and I automatically started to
swat it -- I really did -- I even raised my hand, but then I
thought wait: it's only a mosquito. There are no horses or
chickens within miles and miles of us. She's not going to get
encephalitis. It's only a mosquito.
Instead of swatting it I redirected the gesture and brushed a
strand of damp hair off her face.
Oh, the look of outrage on her face.
Her head snapped up and she looked at me like I was a criminal
when she realized I knew it was there and was letting it bite her
on purpose. I just watched her face. The mosquito had the same
effect on her that they always have on me. The minute I hear one
whining I instantly become a bog of sweat. I don't know why that
is, but I always do, and she did too.
She made a frustrated-sounding noise and broke out in a fresh
sheen of perspiration.
She blinked against the sweat that ran into her eyes and tossed
her head to clear the droplets away.
I kissed her eyelids and said, "I hate seeing you uncomfortable
that way. Here: let me do something about that." I put the
blindfold on her.
But I took pity on her and wiped her with a towel. Her hair was
stuck to the side of her face; I brushed it up and away from the
gag and pulled it back so the blindfold held it.
I put my collar on her and announced I was going to take her for
a little walk. I put my leather wrist and ankle cuffs on her, and
as I cut the tape away I snapped a short chain between her ankles
and clipped her wrist cuffs together. I didn't use locks, and
just hoped she wouldn't notice.
I helped her to her feet. While she got used to standing with a
blindfold on and before she decided to try taking it off, I
clipped the leash to one of her wrist cuffs, pulled it between
her legs and up her back and tied it to the back of the collar.
That kept her from lifting her hands to the blindfold. She
didn't try. She had decided to be docile, I think.
I guided her out through the kitchen and utility room to the
porch. She walked very cautiously, afraid of running into things
and tripping. It was quite a change to see Neets helpless. She
depended on me to keep her upright and to direct her; she could
only take tiny steps and it was obvious she was very unsure of
herself. I wonder what was going on in her head. She could have
gotten away if she had tried to get the blindfold off when she
had the opportunity, but she didn't.
Knowing her, I would expect her to be humiliated by her
dependance on me rather than by the restraints. But she seemed to
accept that dependance with grace and even dignity, and allowed
me to help her.
When I got her to the back porch and opened the door, I had to
step down onto the porch floor to help her down the step. She
stood above me, backlit by the lights in the house, lifted her
head and listened to the suddenly-loud roar of the insects. She
turned her blindfolded face back and forth as though she were
scanning a distant horizon in the blackness.
Tom and Jay stood behind me on the porch, ready to catch her if
she fell on the step. I don't know why, because it makes no
sense, especially with a brightly lit utility room full of major
household appliances forming a not-very-dramatic backdrop, but we
all stood there and admired her. We were standing beneath her,
below her eyelevel, while she looked blindly out over out heads,
past us at a nonexistent landscape. She looked somehow magnificent.
We just stood and admired. The way you might admire a mountain
goat if you chanced to see it on a cliff above you.
She was unaware that the three of us were watching her. She just
stood there, wrists locked together, waiting for me to help her
down the step. I dunno. It was just one of those moments. You had
to be there.
The roar of the insects was overwhelming. Everything changes when
you go out on the porch at night. You can get used to them when
you are inside the house, but if you go outside they dominate
everything. They sound almost life threatening, they are so loud.
There are so many different kinds of noises and rhythms.
You just have to resign yourself to the idea that it is pointless
to try and hold a conversation. Especially anything romantic. You
would have to shout.
But it was cooler. Not exactly cool, but cooler than the house.
There is a fan on the porch, and a big rope net hammock. The kind
where the ropes go through holes in these boards at either end.
Natural spreader bars.
Funny I had never seen the possibilities before.
It was dark out there when Jay turned out the light. So dark I
couldn't really see Tom and Jay. They were there, sitting in the
rocking chairs that look out on the lawn, but they were little
more than shapes unless there was lightning.
The thing is, I made love to Neets there on the hammock, sort of.
This is where the evening turned really miraculous, at least for
me, and it was because of the weird southern weather -- that
summer lightning (some call it sheet lightning) combined with the
chorus of the insects.
There must have been thunder, but it was drowned by the roar of
the insects so that the flashes of sheet lightening seemed to
come out of nowhere, unconnected to any sound at all. There was
just this insistent electrical-sounding hum; a twittering,
whining, screeching roar that obliterated all thought. It seemed
there was nothing but the physical sensations, the sound, and the
sudden flickering images of the porch, the trees outside and
later, of our sweating bodies.
It was eerie.
I backed her up to the hammock and sat her down in the midst of
this roar. On the hammock Jay had clipped four of these mountain-
climbing gizmos called beaners (don't ask, I don't know. They
don't seem to have anything to do with beans. They're kind of
like a big spring-loaded link from a chain.) He had clipped them
to the ropes above the wooden pieces at the ends of the hammock.
The lightning was frequent enough to help me see/feel to hook
them through the rings on Neet's cuffs.
The hammock was too short to do a proper eagle, and she could
have released the clips without help if she had really wanted to,
but she didn't try very hard to get away, even during the moments
when she could have. Her legs were almost straight, but her
elbows were bent so that her hands were held just barely above
her head. She's too long for the hammock.
I bet I would fit...
Ahem.
I fumbled around in the dark and unlocked the gag. It was silly
anyway, and I didn't want to have to worry about it. She held
still for me. No doubt she was glad to get rid of it. I know it
hurts to wear it too long.
But I left it in for a moment longer, unbuckled, but in. I bent
over in the darkness and kissed her one last time before I took
it out. It smelled of rubber. It always does. And after the gag
was out I kissed her still-open mouth. She still smelled of
suntan lotion -- her breath was coffee and cajun spices and her
skin was warm and slick and salty.
For some reason something had changed. Before, in the house, it
had been too hot and sticky to even contemplate more than the
shortest most ginger physical contact. But her taste and her
smell when I kissed her .... I wanted to feel her against me.
We had changed from hot and sticky to warm and wet and steamy.
She started to speak and I could almost make out her words, but I
put a finger on her lips and shushed her.
I kicked off my shoes. Standing flatfooted on the cool bricks was
a relief after those heels. I stripped my dress off over my head
and I was wiping the sweat off my face with it when silent
lightning strobed the porch; I could see Tom and Jay down at the
other end in the rocking chairs. Tom was watching the trees. Jay
was looking directly at me. Neither of us moved. Then it stopped
and he was gone.
I had been about to use my dress to wipe the perspiration off my
body but something about seeing Jay made me think twice. I don't
know why, but I decided to leave the perspiration. It seemed like
part of the scene, I guess.
The cooler air felt wonderful on my skin. It was still too hot
for me to feel clammy. I was just slippery and warm. I picked up
the vibrator, ducked under the rope, and eased myself into the
hammock beside Neets. I put my lips right next to her ear and
whispered that the boys couldn't see or hear us from where they
sat. I told her she was all mine; in response she turned her
blindfolded face toward me and in a flicker of lightning I caught
a glimpse of her parted lips, waiting to be kissed.
The moist warmth of her cajun-spice breath on my face was too
much to resist. I dived into her.
There was something -- I don't know -- sort of biologically
intimate about those moments. I'm one of those people that
usually has to have everything so perfect: with Jay I want to be
fully showered, powdered, perfumed and prepared. But that night
with Neets, something happened when I got in next to her and
smelled her skin and felt the moisture and slippery warmth of her
body next to mine.
I lay beside her, twined myself around her, my thigh across
her stomach, my body pressed against her side, my hand caressing
her; midwestern thoughts of talcumed hygene went out the window
and I felt an uncharacteristic hunger for the flavor and smell of
her skin. As I say, I dived into her. It sounds like a cliche, I
know, but I "kissed her deeply." It was one of those sloppy,
juicy, openmouthed kisses that I'm always saying I don't like
from men. (Okay, so maybe *sometimes* I like 'em...) I licked
perspiration from her face, her body. I drank her in. I slid
myself against her and our bodies melded in a kind of warm, fluid
dance.
The pulsating roar of the insects excluded every other sound but
an occasional threat from the thunder -- even the sound of our
own voices. A few times, when the thunder rumbled, the insects
would fade briefly, faltering in their rhythm and then recovering.
In my memory, the rest of the evening is a series of disjointed
flashes: brief stark illuminations held together by the tactile
continuity of our sweating bodies.
The lightning flickered and I saw two shades of black on the
blindfold: the shiny satin and the darker stains of sweat. And
her mouth, lips parted, waiting for me, she is looking in not
quite the right direction.
Lightning flickered again and I was looking down the length of
our intertwined bodies, both equally colorless in the intense
glare despite the depth of her tan and my paleness.
It strobed again: her head is tossing back and forth, her hair
wet and matted against her cheeks, her mouth open. I hear only
the roaring silence of the insects.
And again: her head is thrown back and I am about to kiss her
throat. In the washed-out glare the perspiration makes her neck
seem like glass.
Again: her face is turned away from me, pressed against her own
shoulder, avoiding me; perspiration on her neck below her ear
where a curl of hair is stuck to her. She is holding the
hammock ropes above her head, pulling against them.
Again, and I see the banana trees lit beyond her upthrust
elbow. My fingers hooked like claws through the wide mesh
of the hammock.
Again: a strand of her hair is caught between her lips ... and
between mine.
And again and again: our intertwining bodies knotted together
like a nest of pale snakes, seeming to writhe in spasmodic
jerks while the strobing light played mind-tricks.
And all the while, the heady, heavy, spicy, sweet, suffocating
moist warmth of her breath and skin.
That is how I remember it.
Making love properly in a hammock is nearly impossible. It sags
too much in the middle. It didn't really matter, somehow, that
the vibrator was the only practical -- or graceful -- option.
And grace is so important, don't you think?
I couldn't even hear the vibrator when I turned it on, the
insects were so loud. As I played with her, pressing it against
her, now and then sliding it deep into her, I watched her face,
waiting for the lightning to show me her reaction. She tossed her
head back and forth, and after a few moments of watching and
waiting for the lightning to show her to me I realized she was
saying something softly under the roar of the insects. I couldn't
hear unless I put my ear near her lips. She was writhing against
me, squirming halfheartedly, trying and not trying to get away,
but I kept at her, pushing her further and further. Gradually I
realized that she was saying faintly, over and over, "No... stop
... no ... please ... don't ... stop ... no, Margaret... no ..."
She kept rocking her head back an forth, and over and over she
was asking me to stop.
But I don't know if she meant me to hear her.
Of course, anorgasmia reared its ugly head. Miracles like her
first orgasm just don't happen on cue. It would have been the
proper thing for her to do, according to my sense of dramatic
timing, but she didn't. Poor Neets gets everything right but
that.
There was a miracle of sorts, though. The thunder became louder
and the lightening sharper and nearer, and within the space of a
few minutes the insects stopped their chorus; her moans and
inarticulate panting noises became abruptly audible in the
silence that followed, and I think the suddenness of the silence
distracted her. She made an unintelligible but desperate sounding
noise and managed to pull away from the vibrator. She was knock-
kneed, her thighs pressed together; she wanted to stop. We
rested, my body knotted tightly around hers...
The absence of the insects left a humid, heavy, oppressive,
expectant silence that was punctuated again by the approaching
thunder.
It's funny: in a proper storm you can tell which flash caused
which peal of thunder, but with this weather a distant crump or
muffled rumble of thunder will come out of the darkness all by
itself, and sometimes a series of silent flashes will illuminate
the porch and the trees outside. There doesn't seem to be a
connection between the lightning and the thunder.
The insects seemed to be waiting for something.
I took off the blindfold and used it to wipe perspiration from
her brow, her chin. The flashes of lightning showed me her face;
she was looking up at me, almost expressionless but still
breathing hard; she, too, was watching me and waiting for the
lightning to illuminate my face.
I loved her so much in those moments. I held her close while her
breathing gradually returned to normal, and we turned and looked
out through the screen together, cheek to cheek, watching the
trees silhouetted against the sky by silent lightening, waiting
with the insects. I loved her, this woman that cannot see the way.
I'm used to her not having orgasms, but still ... well, sometimes
it hurts a little when you love someone and you can't help them.
That was the miraculous part. The perfect timing.
We laid there for what seemed like hours and listened to it
running off the roof and spattering on the flagstones around the
porch; the air turned cooler and a faint breeze picked up.
The next thing I remember was Jay waking me up. The rain had
stopped briefly and the insects were completely silent. There
was a light on somewhere in the house and it was time to go to
bed. He left the oil lamp on the porch table and I roused Neets.
We sat side by side on the hammock for a few minutes, in a
welcome intimacy forced by the sagging hammmock. Hips and thighs
pressed together, her arm was around my shoulders; our bodies
radiated a moist warmth and we were bathed in the odors of
lovemaking.
As we sat there trying to find the energy to get up and go to
bed, the rain started again; Neets grabbed my hand and pulled me
to my feet.
"Come on..."
She led me out into the warm rain and we stood ogether on the
grass while she kissed me; we stood pressed face-to-face under a
heavy stream of water coming off the roof and the water washed
our bodies.
Where the light from the house fell on the yard the rain droplets
made a kind of mist just above the grass.
We stayed until I started shivering, then we went in to a hot
shower.
I lost a damn contact lens somewhere out there. Maybe the rain
washed it out. I didn't notice until I went back inside. No
wonder I felt disoriented ...
There isn't much more to tell. Just a bit about the next morning.
I'll put that in another post.
Nurse Jones,
Swiiiingin'
in the rain...
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