 James Williams is the author of one collection of short erotic fiction, But I Know What You Want: 25 Sex Tales for the Different (San Francisco: Greenery Press, 2003). His essay “The Mother and Child Reunion” will appear in Walking Higher: Gay Men Write About the Deaths of Their Mothers, edited by Nicholas Hornack, XLibris, 2004. Visit James on the Web.
Obedience Even in the dead of winter he preferred to sleep with the window open, but in warmer weather he imagined the bedroom as a regal tent from the old Arabesque movies: corner poles and intricate carpets to demarcate his place in civilization, all the wall flaps up to let in nature. With windows open, he could to listen to the city wake up, which he loved to do. First he became aware of the urban hum that never rests: air conditioners, refrigeration rooms, electric generators, delivery trucks, mostly distant automobile engines, tires on asphalt. Nighthawks made him aware of the first day birds whose cacophony grew in volume and intensity from just before dawn until just before sunrise, an auditory riot of mating news and other space claims from which he'd only learned to distinguish the hoarse croaking of the corvids from the sound wattle of small chirpy birds. Later, more traffic and more humanity would overwhelm his powers of observation, and turn his morning symphony to noise. She watched him at the open French door, listening in the dawn s early light. The air on her face was cold, which heightened her contented sense of well-being, since the rest of her body was so wonderfully warm beneath the goose-down comforter. She wondered, idly, how he could simply stand there in the altogether, altogether awake so soon after being altogether asleep. His naked ass and legs looked like the frogs legs she'd sautéed long ago, in her First Domestic Period: pale, lean, hairless, defined. She wanted to sink her teeth into his flesh as she had bitten away the frogs legs meat, feel the muscles smooth striations resist, give way, and snap as she bit down, up, in, bundle by layer by sheet until she had an over-generous mouthful of flesh, and thick, warm, salty human blood dripped red and coppery down her chin. His muscles would twitch the way frogs legs jumped in a pan of hot oil, helplessly balletic. She threw the cover off with one loud thrust, startling him to attention. He spun so fast he was facing her before her body was fully exposed, and yet the specific tenor of the whole next hour was already, instantly, clear to both of them. He stood stock still for her delighted examination, which always began with the 750 pound test chain padlocked to the polished stainless steel collar locked by intricate combination-controlled screws around the mass of his genitals, and padlocked at the other end to a ringbolt set deep into the stone baseboard of her bedroom wall. He could have gone no farther than the windows where he stood without making himself a eunuch very painfully, so she liked to leave him free to reach the boundaries of his tether. His balls were fat and swollen both because she had taken to beating them with her hands, fists, feet, and vulva, and because she had not let him come for days, weeks, months, she was unsure. She only let him come at all because she liked to see him lose control at her command, and the intermittent reward kept his needs from flagging; otherwise she'd simply milk him periodically. The collar would never let him grow completely soft but beneath her gaze he was now becoming semi-hard, so she could read the intricate illuminated script as it unfolded, describing her whole name in blues and reds and greens and gold along the entire length of his shaft, Laura Diana Lucinda, lunar Goddess, Huntress chaste and fair, the further descriptors continuing on in black Italianate script curling back and forth to form a Cretan labyrinth the width and depth of his pubic mound with the single Latin word obedire at its center. To obey. She'd designed and overseen this work of art, held his hand through his full-body depilation, held his balls and let him cry while the tattoo artist worked, and every now and then reminded him with a judicious pressure of her hand as firm as she believed the occasion required that he was lying beneath the artist's needle because she had told him to: the artist's hand was merely another extension of her will, her wish, her self; his obedience was hers to command. Now she saw that he remembered too: if not the specific events that lit up in her memory, then in any case the simple truth of his condition. She could tell by the faint change in his demeanor as he stood between her eyes and the open window that he'd succumbed all over again. Always submissive, always subservient where she was concerned, sometimes he realized anew, as if for the first time, how completely she possessed him, how completely he'd become her property, and how fulfilled he felt that way. Then his entire musculature relented, and she could see right now, for instance that he only stood erect because she had not commanded otherwise. Left to his own devices, now, he would fall on the floor at her feet and look abashed. He was just what she'd long imagined owning: a man who worshiped and obeyed her no matter what she required of him. She was careful making her demands, so when she planned to demand something more than she knew he thought he would be able to give tattooing her name on his penis, for example she introduced the subject well ahead of time and talked about it both pointedly and incidentally until he had grown accustomed to the idea, even if he was not comfortable with it. Even now, long since smooth from face to feet, he was sometimes still not comfortable to have been denuded of his body hair, and every month or two he wept bitterly about the much more recent tat. But just as frequently he pressed his face into her hands or thighs and thanked her fervently for what she'd done, and over time the frequency of his remorse diminished while the intensity of his gratitude increased. In this sort of progress she could see that she had never made a major wrong decision with him from the day she took him out to lunch and handed him a plain brown paper bag. Take this to the bathroom, she had said, and follow the instructions. To all appearances she'd kept her composure while he was gone, but underneath her careful study of a mask she'd wondered if, in fact, her faith would be rewarded. He might have simply left her in the restaurant and headed for the hills, but she did not think he was that sort of man, and so the longer he was gone the more she thought that she'd been right: the more likely he'd acceded. By the time he did return whatever doubts she once had entertained were gone. Seeing his face a little flushed and his eyes cast down as he scraped the floor with the legs of his chair, she'd known for certain she was going to have everything she wanted most.
He'd sat down gingerly, a good sign. Tell me what you did, she'd said. I followed your instructions, he'd replied. No: tell me exactly what you did, step by step.
He'd reached for his glass of water and she'd put her hand on his wrist. he'd stopped and looked his question at her. Ask, she'd said. Ask? he'd said, and she: You have not asked permission. he'd looked unhappy but he'd asked. Permission granted, he had drunk. He was very tractable for her: even more than she'd expected. Now tell me, she had said, sipping from his glass of wine. I I I put in the plug, he'd said as if admitting to some heinous crime. I put the cock ring on. She'd asked, And where is your underwear? he'd pursed his lips: In the bag in my pocket. she'd held out her hand and he had given to her, obediently, what she'd demanded. He'd looked back from time to time thereafter but she had not, and so he had followed her into what her friends all recognized as modern, erotic, technically consensual slavery.
All that had been years ago. Now the sun was up casting thin grey shadows on the Hollywood hills behind him. Her memories had warmed her lust. She picked up the chain where it passed through the bed and started to make it snake, banging up against his balls while he waited, first enduring, then accepting, then thankful for her direction. When he had relinquished his remaining moment of belief that she should not do to him exactly what she wanted, she pulled: Come. Down. Turn. She didn t know why he obeyed, she didn t know why she wanted him to. She looked at him bowed on the floor, facing the window, his so-called private parts as vulnerable as a baby s; then, still holding the chain in her left hand, she took up the strap in her right and hefted its well-oiled weight.
After they had lunched she'd taken his arm like an Old Style Girl and gently but firmly set his steps in the direction of her home. She had unlocked the door, stepped in, turned back to face him, and held out her hand. Give me your jacket. His mouth had actually opened, then he had complied. Take off your shoes and socks. She had pointed to the inner sill and there he'd left his footwear. Shirt. Slacks. He stood on her front stoop porch entirely naked, plugged, collared for the very first time. She had pointed to the ground and he was such a good boy! He had understood immediately, knelt, bent, kissed her feet. She'd taken him by the hair and led him inside on hands and knees, and closed the door behind him.
She had walked to her couch with her catch in tow, and after she'd sat down she'd first turned his face up to face her face. Do you really want this? she had asked him. What are you going to do to me? he'd asked back, and she had said, I m going to slap your face, beat your ass, kick you in the balls, control when you eat, drink, shit, piss, and everything else in your life from morning to night and back again to morning, make you my sex slave, and make you gladder than you can believe that you ever even met me. Slowly he had shaken his head from side to side as if in wonder, as if he wanted to say No, but what had come out of his mouth was simpler: Yes. Please.
She'd let go of his hair and with the same hand had cupped his right cheek so his head would not rock, had drawn back her other hand, palm open, so he could see exactly what she was going to do, and slapped him smartly across the face. His eyes had watered, his cheek had turned red, but he had not wavered, then or, really, since. Eyes on her eyes he had asked, Why do you want to hurt me? And she had said, So you will surrender. So you will know it is my right. Besides, I like to. He had taken her hand in his and brought it first to his lips to kiss, and then to his cheek again. It is your right. It is your pleasure. She had slapped him again and then again and then again, then pointed to his slacks that she had folded on the entryway table. Bring me your belt, she'd said. He had not had to ask, but crawled the whole way, draped the belt over his neck, and crawled back to her. Go back and bring it to me in your mouth. he'd done so without question. Turn around and place your face on the floor between your arms.
Just like now, she thought seeing him exposed and vulnerable. She raised the strap and twirled it in the space before her, breathed deeply to bring strength up from the ground through her feet, felt it ripple up her calves and thighs and into her back, and when it reached her shoulders she snapped her wrist and brought the strap down with a terrific crack her neighbors must have heard upon the waiting flesh before her. He flinched emphatically and a sound escaped him but he remained where she had placed him as the pink welt grew and spread and darkened red. She raised the strap again and brought it down again. Over and over, with her own blood rising, she made her mark until his thighs and buttocks were covered in hot pink with black-purple weals of blood-fall and she could hear him sobbing deeply, weeping wet with pain.
He did not like to be hurt. She knew he did this all for her, only for her, with nothing in it for himself but the pleasure he took from pleasing her. Such a strange man, just what she'd long imagined owning. She leaned extra hard into the blow she'd chosen as her last and felt her own body convulse and spit when he fell forward on his face. She leaped up on his back and wrapped the strap around his mouth, pulled back against her till his face turned up and she could see tears running freely down his cheeks, hear his labored, stuttered breathing. She beat herself against him, pounding everywhere she could, and came and came again and again and again.
Again. No, not again. First time, every time. The noise of traffic had risen over La Cienega. She had taken what she wanted. He had given himself to her. She had no further need, for now, nor any desire. The breeze blowing in from the open window was warming to the day. She would let him come tomorrow. If it pleased her. If she remembered. Put your face right here, she said: your mouth: right here. Here.
Copyright ©
2004 James Williams. All Rights Reserved. Do not copy or post.
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