'I have not yet finished it,' I said. The bowl was behind me, on the table.
'Yes, Master,' she said.
I had drunk from the bowl which she had proffered to me. I had been standing. She, a naked slave, had been kneeling before me. I had drunk with her at my feet, as a master. Power had been in my body when I had drunk the wine. I recalled that I should have castigated myself for the feelings of strength which had been in me at that time, but I had failed to do so. I had felt powerful and magnificent. I realized now, of course, I should have been ashamed. I wondered if it were so wrong to feel magnificent and powerful. Was it truly unworthy of a man to feel magnificent and powerful? Why, I wondered. Why is it wrong for a man to feel like a man? Perhaps, I pondered, it is not wrong for a man to feel like a man. Perhaps it is not even wrong for a man to be a man. Who could think such, save perhaps some who were not themselves men?
'Would you like me to again serve you wine, Master,' asked Lola.
'No,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said. She put her head down, deferentially. I realized then she was waiting for me to take her by the arms and throw her on her back on the straw, claiming her, subjecting her to the ruthless domination, sometimes tender, sometime harsh, always uncompromising, accorded by a master to one who is only a miserable slave.
Tears came to my eyes. I wanted her. Yet I knew I must not touch her. I was a man of Earth. I must remember that. And she was a helpless girl, a person.
She looked up. 'Taste me,' she said.
I then realized, to my chagrin, that another reason I might not have been alert to her needs was because of my fear. He who does not recognize a woman's needs certainly does not have to consider whether or not he should satisfy them. When a girl exposes herself as a slave it would seem there is then extended to the male an invitation to her mastery. She was at my feet, a slave. Did this not, then, challenge me, in effect, to put my collar on her. He who fears he cannot satisfy a woman, or fears he will be unable to do so, often pretends he does not understand her need. If necessary he may chide her, gently, or belittle or ridicule her, attempting to make her ashamed of her need, that it will therefore be overlooked that he has not satisfied it. If the female can be tricked, thusly, into the verbal repudiation of her needs, the male, in his weakness, relieved, need not consider fulfilling them. These deceptions, of course, are seldom successful; unhappiness, conflict and frustration, accordingly, for both males and females, for the needs cannot be physiologically repudiated, become endemic. One who fears to be a master, who doubts his capacity, his power, his strength, his will, his resoluteness, will be expected to turn a deaf ear to the pleas of even the most piteous of beautiful slaves. How can he be expected to fulfill another who fears, first, to fulfill himself? No man can be truly happy who does not own a slave. No woman can be truly happy who does not belong to a master. But if, in an unguarded moment, I had suddenly glimpsed my terror at the prospect of fulfilling myself, of accepting the responsibility, the joy and incredible power, energizing and exalting, of the mastership, of answering the obvious depth needs of the lovely, surrendered female before me, I swiftly thrust such a frightening comprehension out of my thoughts. I feared to look deeply into myself, and into women. Was I strong enough to accept honestly what I might find there? Is it not safer to cower in the caves of lies than stand upon the cliffs of truth, surveying the world? Yet when one stands is the sunlight, and feels the winds of reality, how dank and shameful seem the dark shelters of falsehood, and how foolish it seems then to have once feared daylight and fresh air. But swiftly I, a man of Earth, well tutored in my myths, scoffed that I might have feared to assume my manhood. I was well aware of the definitions of my manhood, and how well I must fulfill them, that I must be gentle, solicitous, feminine and sweet, and obedient to the whims of females, lest I be a brute. But into those definitions did not enter, as I now recognize, hints of a nature formed by a harsh evolution, remarks pertaining to genetic dispositions selected for in times when the meadows were bestrode by the prowling tread of the saber-toothed tiger and the hills rang with the trumpeting of mastodons; those definitions did not tell of the dark songs and cries of hunters; they did not speak of campfires or knives of blue flint; they did not speak of warriors, or of meat turned on green spits by captured, neck-thonged women; one reality seemed to have eluded the verbal formulas I had been taught; one item had been left out of the definitions; it is called man.
'I kneed before my master,' said Lola. 'I await my rape:'
I cried out with misery and frustration. Lola looked at me, startled, unable to comprehend the conflict which raged within me. I wanted to seize her and throw her to her back, and vent my wrath and joy upon her, uncompromisingly exercising the nocturnal rights which had been assigned to me over her, taking her hot slave flesh in my arms, making it writhe to my least touch, making her scream her submission to me as her master, but I knew that I was a man of Earth, and that she was a person.
Suddenly, angrily, stupidly, foolishly, I lashed out at her, cuffing her back with the back of my left hand. She fell backward. I was startled that I had struck her. Yet it had happened so swiftly I had hardly realized what I was doing. I had been furious not really with her, but with myself. Lola was innocent. She was only a naked, aroused, beautiful, collared slave at my feet. It was not her fault that she had been thrown to me nor was it her fault that her needs were those of what she was, a slave girl. Yet she was the obvious precipitant of my dilemma, my misery. It was thus that I had suddenly, irrationally, struck her. It was foolish, and meaningless, that I had done so. She was flung back in the straw, blood at her beautiful mouth. I expected her to look at me with horror and reproach. Instead, she put down her head and crawled swiftly to my feet. She then lay on her stomach in the straw before me, her upper body lifted on her elbows, her head down, over my feet. I felt her lips, sweet and full, kissing at my feet. There was a kind of wonder and pleasure in her voice. 'Yes, Master,' she said. 'Thank you, Master. I am sorry if I was not pleasing to you.' I then understood that she had taken the blow as a token of my mastery over her, an explicit expression of my sovereignty over her. I felt her lips kissing at my feet, happily, gratefully.
'It is enough,' I said.
'Yes, Master,' she said. She continued to lie at my feet, her head turned to the side, her right cheek on my feet. I felt her hair, too, on my feet.
A slave girl is subject to discipline. She may be struck with or without reason. Usually, of course, the master would have a reason, however trivial it might be. Sometimes, of course, he may strike her with no obvious reason whatsoever, even one which is trivial. This serves to remind hex that she is a slave and that no reason is needed to strike her.
I looked down at Lola.
She looked up at me, and then, turning her head and lifting herself on her elbows, she again kissed my feet. She then rolled from my feet a yard or so away in the straw. She lay on her back and regarded me, happily. 'It will not be necessary to strike me again, Master,' she said. 'I will be docile, and obedient and loving.' She looked up at me, smiling, her left knee raised, her hands beside her, palms up, in the straw. 'Have me, Master,' she said. 'Subject me, uncompromisingly, to your pleasure.'
'Do you beg it?' I asked. I did not know why I asked the question.
'Yes, Master,' she said, smiling, 'I beg it.'
'Why were you put in with me tonight?' I asked.
'To be punished,' she said. She smiled. 'I await my punishment, Master,' she said.
Then suddenly I was afraid, and guilty, and confused. I was weak, and I reddened, and stammered. I had struck the poor thing. And surely she did not expect me to be strong, and to take her in hand, as would have a Gorean master. I was of Earth. And did she not know she was a person?
'I am sorry I struck you,' I stammered. 'It was a stupid and cruel thing to do. I was really angry not so much at you, as at myself. I behaved as a brute. I am very sorry.'
She looked at me, frightened. She did not understand me, or the forces which moved within me. How could she have understood me, she a Gorean girl, collared, whom strong men had long ago taught her womanhood? Did she not know that I, because of my fears, was trying to make her like a man? Could she not, like many of the women of Earth, because of her own fears, try, too, to be like a man? Each sex could then, because of its fears, try to protect itself from the other, denying the obvious complementarities of nature, the fitting together of diverse dispositions and modalities. The wholeness is not achieved, the puzzle is not solved, by trying to put togather pieces of the same configuration.
I looked at her. Quickly, trembling, confused, she knelt, making herself small. She put her head down to the straw.
'Do not be cruel to me,' she begged. 'If I have displeased you, simply whip me. I do not understand you, or
