screen.
“Excellent!” cried men.
Some struck their left shoulders with the palms of their right hand. Others pounded on the small tables with pleasure.
“Now,” said Leros, “we shall have a proper supper, even at the World’s End!”
There was much assent to this.
I then fetched a slave whip which I had earlier put to the side. “Pass the whip about,” I said. “Each slave, when she first serves you, is to kneel and kiss the whip, and then place the plate before you.”
Let them learn well, I thought, what they are, the former Talena of Ar, once Ubara, and the former Lady Flavia of Ar, once her confidante, that they are now slaves, only that.
I tossed the whip to Aeacus. Adraste knelt beside him, at the edge of the small table, bent forward, and kissed the whip, which he extended to her. She then put the plate before him, humbly. He handed the whip to Leros, and Alcinoe knelt at his place, and leaned forward, kissing in her turn the whip proffered to her lips, and then, as Adraste before her, placed the plate humbly before the free man. Soon Adraste would return, with another plate, and the whip would be passed to the next fellow. “Fellows,” I said, and loudly, that the slaves might hear as well, “if the service is not fully pleasing, or is lacking in any respect, use the whip on them.”
“Yes,” said more than one man. “Yes!”
The slaves, I was sure, would be zealous to please. I did not doubt but what they would do their best to serve well.
For the men, of course, it is pleasant to be served by naked slaves. I supposed that free women speculated that private dinners amongst free men, to which they were not invited, were often so served. Let the mother, the aunt, the sister, and such, familiar with a son’s, a nephew’s, or a brother’s quiet, refined, demure, tastefully attired slave not speculate on how she serves his guests at a private party nor, more interestingly, what occurs later at his slave ring.
I went behind the screen, where the slaves were preparing to continue serving.
Now that the feast was in progress, I felt I might slip away, unnoticed.
Alcinoe was standing at the edge of the serving table. She was lovely in the lamplight. She turned, to look at me. Then she fled suddenly to my arms, and I held her to me. Tears coursed her cheeks. Words rushed out of her, as though a stream had broken forth from behind some obstruction, sweeping debris to the side, and, released at last, it rushed forth, threatening its banks, in a churning, grateful torrent. “Thank you, oh, thank you, Master,” she sobbed, “thank you for making me serve naked! I feel so female, so slave, serving men, so exposed, my masters! I am thrilled. I am a different form of life, I know that now, I am now fulfilled. Let them look upon me! It is such as I who belong to them! I am now as I should be! I would serve all your feasts, Master, naked, as a woman, and slave. It is so right, and I am so happy!”
I crushed her to me. She was slave, and in my arms!
“Thank you for giving me no choice, for making me do what you will have me do,” she said. “Thank you for your command, your power, your uncompromised, unqualified domination! Be ruthless with me, be severe. It is what I want! I respond in a thousand ways! I revel in it. I need it, I am a woman, I am incomplete without it! Yes, make me serve men naked, or as you wish! I love it! It is what I am for!”
I held her tightly.
She could not have begun to free herself.
She was slave.
“My body is so different from that of men,” she whispered, “a body designed by nature for their pleasure. To look upon it, do they not know it was made for them, and is such that it belongs to them! That they find it different and beautiful, and desirable, excites me. How meaningful, and warm, and real it makes me feel! I want them to look upon it, with zest and pleasure. As the body of a woman is it not theirs, a fitting belonging, like the whole of a woman, of men? I have always wanted to show it, to display it, and I am grateful that I must now do so. Must we always be content with a disarranged veil, the hem of a skirt, lifted about an ankle? Better the slave in her collar, given no choice but to be bared before masters! Does not the free woman, in her heart, yearn to cast aside her robes, and show herself as what she is, woman! Does she truly wish to bargain with the promise of her beauty, dangling it before her like a closed purse, whispering its hints from behind an opaque screen? Are not such mercenary ones better put on the slave block, in chains? The beauty of a woman is not a thing of shame. Who could think so? Does she truly think it a thing of shame? Surely her beauty is not a thing of shame, not a blemish, or crime, to be concealed from view. Does she truly wish to conceal her beauty? Does she not rather, in her heart, desire to reveal it? How different is it, truly, from that of a thousand other beauties, that of grass and wine trees, that of tabuk, of sleen, or kaiila? Is it not a thing with which to be pleased? Let the slave, brazen in her sex, be proud. Let her say to the free woman, ‘Here I am, a female, found pleasing by men, and collared, for their pleasure. Are you so much? I am helpless, and theirs. I must be obedient, and fear the whip! Would you not be so? Abuse me, and hate me, if you wish. I am content. I am happy. Are you so?’”
My lips drank from her the wine of her bondage.
She gasped, her small arms clutched me.
“Oh!” she said.
When I would thrust her from me, the mark of my buckle would be in her body.
“Own me,” she begged. “I am your slave! You know that!”
That one could own such a thing as she much pleased me.
She was slave in my arms.
“I love you,” she said, “I love you, I love you, my master!”
“Beware,” I said.
“Do not have me sold!” she said. “Do not put me on the block! I am so helpless!”
“I do not own you,” I said.
“It is your collar I would beg to wear!”
“Surely you wish to be free,” I said.
“No, no, no!” she wept. “I want to be a slave!”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because I am a slave,” she said. “It is in my heart to love and serve! I want to give all. I want a master! I want to be owned! Chain me, tie me, master me! I want to be so desired, so wanted, so lusted for, that it would not occur to a man to keep me other than as what I am, as a slave, even to the whip! That is how I want to be kept! Oh, I would strive to be found pleasing!”
“Surely you want freedom,” I said.
“I am not a man,” she said. “I am a woman!”
“Even so,” I said.
“No,” she said, “a thousand times no! I have known the emptiness, the loneliness, of freedom, the pretensions, the selfishness, the uncertainties of freedom, the confusions, the lack of place, the opacities and ambiguities of freedom, the lack of purpose, the lack of meaning and identity!”
“It is true,” I said, “that a slave has her purpose, and her meaning. Such things are quite clear. It is also true that what is expected of her is clear, and that there is no doubt as to what she is. That is as clear as the collar on her neck.”
“It is in my sex and my heart,” she said. “It is an ancient and needful thing in my body, to belong, to be owned, to kneel, to revere, to submit, to serve, to please, to find myself at a master’s feet, where I desire to be!”
“Surely freedom is precious,” I said.
“So, too,” she said, “is bondage.”
“I have heard so,” I said.
“What woman does not wish to be owned,” she said, “what woman does not wish a master?”
“Some, I suppose, free women, would deny it,” I said.
“Such expressions are expected of them,” she said, “even required of them. How they would be ostracized and scorned, put from society, if they did not say such things! Indeed, they might be remanded to slavers.”
“Some,” I said, “might suppose themselves, honestly enough, if naively, to subscribe to such expressions.”
