Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [99]
“As you wish, Mistress.”
She runs her lacquered red nails along the crop as if to test its sting, then hits him with it. Again. And again. And again. She smiles, her red lips curling up in a little crimson crescent of pleasure. He cries out, his beautiful back covered with red welts.
“You shall not cry out, boy,” she says. “For every stroke, you shall say, ‘Thank you, Mistress Larissa,’ or I triple the strokes. Do you hear me, boy?”
“Thank you, Mistress Larissa.”
“Very well, then.” She begins to flog him in earnest. He suppresses his cries, muttering instead, “Thank you, Mistress Larissa. Thank you, Mistress Larissa.”
My heart is pounding with each blow. I am growing wet.
Larissa, a very sensitive receptor, feels this. Without a word, she puts her crop in my hand and takes another from the wall for herself. It is as if she has given me her cock.
“Another beautiful lady is going to assist me now,” she tells the slave.
“Thank you, Mistress Larissa,” he says.
I bring the crop down on his buttocks, lightly and tentatively at first, then harder. Larissa and I sting him in alternate strokes, responding to each other’s motion, each other’s rhythm.
“She’s a natural,” Ada says to Larissa.
My sane mind stands apart, watching me beat the man harder and harder, astonished to be causing him pain (for which he thanks me). One touch and I might come, but I linger on the edge, amazed to find pleasure in raising red welts on the slave’s back and buttocks.
Slave, master—what does it mean? A jumble of images from my past life fills my head. I am whipping Dolph, Elmore, Dart, Dart, Dart. I am revenging myself on André, on Dolph, on every art critic who has ever attacked my work. I understand the lure of this place, the feelings discharged, their heat. Elsewhere in society the power struggle between men and women is disguised. Here it is naked. Elsewhere people pretend to be civilized; here they do not. Elsewhere men and women kiss, cuddle, and lie. Here they lash each other and tell the truth. The truth, however horrible, does make you free.
Isadora: Who, then, is the fucker and who the fuckee? Is that the point?
Leila: You got it, kiddo.
Isadora: Who do I have to fuck to get out of this movie?
I whip the man harder and harder, until his mumbled thanks are incoherent. I do not know who he is—all I know is that he is a man, and that the anger I feel against him is fathomless and deep. On one of my strokes, he groans and comes in a spurt of white over the thongs that cover his cock.
“Thank you, Mistress,” he mumbles. And I almost double over in a spontaneous convulsion of my own.
Larissa has resumed torturing the slave, her cruel crimson lips turned up in mischief as she holds high a long black candle. He thanks her as she thrusts it into his bowels.
Isadora: The mystical marriage of male and female at the dominatrix! Gimme a break!
Leila: O ye of little faith!
I feel that I am truly in hell, dedicated to the dark gods, with this man in bondage playing out his own private drama. We are all here because somehow love has not worked for us, because our sane minds have deserted us, so we are seeking pure sex, and pure power. I give myself over to Kali—I who formerly loved Demeter and Persephone. Whoever is not a cynic at forty can never have loved mankind.
“Larissa has still not released her slave,” Ada says. “But you, my pet, are a natural for this sort of psychodrama.”
Wayne looks at me and laughs. “Well, well, well,” he says. “I can’t say I’m all that surprised. Leila has never been afraid of her dark side.”
The bathroom door opens, and the blond young man emerges. He does look a bit like Dart, but he is only another Dart look-alike. The world is full of them!
Wayne was right to bring me here. This was what I needed to finally break the Dart obsession, my way of understanding it. How could he have known?
The blond young man bends down and kisses Larissa’s pointed black toe.
“Thank you, Mistress,” he says. “Next Tuesday at four.”
“Begone, pet,” she says coolly.
“Thank you,