Carrie's Story Read online

  Anyway, I was pushed down to the linoleum floor and my leash given to a hefty woman sitting near the platform. She raised her skirt and pushed my head into her crotch, where I began to lick and suck, feeling the trembling of her big belly and thighs, and hearing the shouts and laughs from the crowd.

  After a while, she jerked the leash and slapped my ass, hard, and I crawled away from her, to the next hand, this one a man, who turned me around and got down behind me to fuck me up the ass. I was glad, at least, that this allowed me to see what was happening up on the platform. About what you’d expect, I guess. Willful was on his hands and knees sucking some big guy’s cock, while the guy, who was dressed like a cook, grasped his pony tail to control the movement of his head. It was hard for me to see, but I had the idea that Willful wasn’t just a passive mouth being manipulated, but was actually putting some action behind it. Meanwhile, the guy at his asshole side, maybe an electrician or something, had just come, to cheers from the audience, and was staggering away, while his replacement began cheerily drilling away, occasioning more cheers and calls of encouragement.

  This seemed to encourage the guy drilling into me. I heard myself calling out in pain and was rewarded by some hard slaps against my breasts. Finally, though, he was done, pulling himself back into his seat and handing my leash to the next person, who hauled me over her knee and started spanking me (the crowd had started up rhythmic clapping, to accompany the next mouth guy’s orgasm). And so it went, my simply following the jerks at the leash, relaxing into it as hands pushed or lifted me where they wanted me to go, breathing as well as I could, trying to stay as open as I could wherever I could. My knees were aching from crawling around the sticky floor, my face was sticky with come and tears, and the rest of me was a sticky, sweaty mess as well.

  I was under another woman’s skirts when the contest was finally over, and a huge cheer rose from the crowd, accompanied by groans and boos, I guess from those who’d bet on the losers. So I didn’t get to see who won. Not that I cared. The woman grasped my head firmly, signaling that I was to finish what I was doing, and I did, until I heard her moans, and she dropped her hands entirely. A security guard picked up my leash and pulled me to my feet. I got to see Willful being pulled to his feet as well; I guess he’d fallen flat on the stage from exhaustion. The crowd shouted their disapproval at this, and then laughed as they saw how weak he was in the knees. Two big men lifted him to his feet, and then they hustled him around the cafeteria so everybody could at least get a pinch or poke at him. But he wasn’t crying. He seemed, from what I could see, interested in what was happening, bleary-eyed and mostly exhausted, but still amazingly alert.

  At last, the party was breaking up. As a security guard grabbed my shoulders and turned me toward the exit door, I noticed the man in the dark glasses again, standing against a wall with his arms folded, watching everything, it seemed like. At least it seemed like he was watching me. Maybe he’s head of security or something, I thought idly, as I prepared to make my way down the corridors and back to my room. Leaving the cafeteria, I could hear a few shouts and guffaws behind me—I guessed they were still tormenting that tall, beautiful boy. And I never did find out what you had to do to be counted as WILLFULLY DISOBEDIENT in that place.

  The next few days were much calmer. I spent a lot of time in the Garden—I was a lion in the zoo, a marvelously decorated peacock on the little carousel, a statue on the fountain, and a café waitress a few times more—and I got very quick at responding to the peremptory nod, the snap of the fingers, the contemptuous “you, there.” Drop everything, climb gracefully down, pay strict attention, and open and give yourself totally to the probing fingers, the hard cocks, the slaps and pinches, the appraising comments made to companions and other buyers.

  It was a bit easier in my room, waiting for whoever turned up. Sometimes they’d be buyers, sometimes staff members. The staff members just wanted to fuck me, of course. And because they couldn’t mark up my skin before the auction (and my ass was healing, mercifully), there was a limit to how much they could hurt me. There were lots of slaps and spanks, lots of swipes with their whips, nothing that hurt too terribly much—it was a whip more for effect than for really doing much damage. And when the buyers came to my room, they didn’t act that differently. Maybe, I thought, it was because the little white room with its iron bed seemed partly like a room in a brothel, partly like a room in a convent. It was its own ironic little turn-on. People just wanted to get fucked there.

  Meanwhile, time passed in a comforting, monotonous way, a continuous present. I never saw a clock, never knew what time it was. All I knew was where I had to be and what I had to do now. I had to work hard to keep track in my head of the days to the auction; part of me felt as though I’d be here forever. Still, I tried awfully hard to obey, to assume positions well, to relax into whatever I was pushed or dragged to do. Margot’s line, “the system is your master,” had a resonance for me. I did think about her, though, and wonder if I’d see her again.

  Then, in late afternoon of the fifth day, the night before the auction, they threw me a real curve. My bracelet led me back from the gym to my room, and there, on the bed, was a dress. It was mine, a gray-green wool, just a long, soft, sinuous button-down cardigan really, one of the pretty dresses Jonathan had bought for me to wear to visit the board of examiners—or, at least, to wear in between the hotel and their apartment. My shoes were there too, at the side of the bed. And there were stockings and a garter belt, and pretty, Victoria’s Secret underwear. Silk tap pants—sexy wonderful little abbreviated boxer shorts—and little lace underwire bra that hooked in the front. All in a deep, smoky gray. I’d never worn anything like that in my life—my pre-Jonathan underwear had been standard cotton three-to-a-pack, with the occasional splurge if Jockey for Women was on sale (and of course with Jonathan I hadn’t worn any at all). They’d even given me back my wristwatch. Were they throwing me out? As far as I knew, I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I was really panicky. I went to the bed, and there was an unsigned note:Take off your collar. Then shower, dress, and put on makeup. The Argus will tell you where to go.

  I’d never taken off a collar. My hands trembled as I did. So easy, just buckles. They must be throwing me out. I went to the little bathroom and took a long shower, doing all the things for myself that normal people do. It felt as though I was doing it through a haze of memory. I felt quite clumsy with the makeup, but I looked good, I thought, when I’d finally finished putting it on. I felt numb, confused, cheated. I had tried so hard for so long. What had they wanted from me that I hadn’t given them? It must have been the little exchange of glances with Willfully Disobedient, I was thinking, wandering around the room distractedly, waiting for the bracelet to buzz me.

  When it did, I hurried to the Argus, got my diagram, and set off. This time I had to negotiate a fairly complicated set of twists and turns down corridors. I even got lost once and had to consult another Argus. But Margot had been right—you couldn’t get too lost in that place. The final lap of the instructions took me up a stairway, cleverly represented on the diagram. I was beginning to feel like I was playing one of those early computer games like Adventure. I might have even enjoyed it, if I hadn’t been so panicky about being thrown out.

  The last corridor seemed to be offices, with some technical and educational information posted on a bulletin board. A very pretty woman in jeans and a sweatshirt that had ORACLE printed on it looked at me curiously, as I clicked by in my high heels. This, I thought, must be the place, and I headed for the Argus midway down the hall, next to the open office door.

  I waved my bracelet over it and wasn’t at all surprised when I heard Margot’s voice from the office. I was both thrilled and terrified. “Come in,” she said brusquely, and when I did she barely looked up from her screen. “I’ll be just a minute,” she said in a distant, distracted voice. “Sit down.”

  Typical, I thought, I always go for the compulsive ones. And scared as I w
as, I couldn’t help feeling a little pissed and neglected. I sat on a wooden chair and looked around the monastic little office. A few different kinds of computers, a printer, and some other machines I didn’t recognize. Neat piles of papers and printouts, scientific reprints, and many, many technical manuals. Just a few other books—Foucault, Fourier, the volume of the Sade collection that contained Justine and Philosophy in the Bedroom. In a little alcove off the office, there was a beat-up leather couch with an afghan neatly folded over the arm. There were no curtains on the window, and I could see the soft black night, a few stars, the distant lights of the city.

  She breathed out a triumphant “Yesss,” hit a key that started an intricate geometric screen-saver program, and turned to look at me over her shoulder, draping her arm over the back of her chair. I forgot how frightened I was and how pissed. She was wearing her leather pants, with a black silk shirt and big silver hoop earrings. And she was grinning, wickedly and delightedly, at me, at my absolute confusion, discomfort, and wild mute desire for her.

  “I do like the dress,” she said. “That boyfriend of yours has lovely taste. But,” she continued, getting up and coming over to me, “you really don’t need that bracelet.” She unbuckled it and kissed the inside of my wrist. The ripple of sensation was considerably stronger than any of the electric shocks had been. But they must be throwing me out, I thought. No collar, no bracelet…

  She laughed.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “We’re not throwing you out. You don’t need the bracelet because, after all, you’re here with me. And I can put you back on the floor, naked and on your knees, in a minute if that’s what you want. But standard procedure around here is that you get a last supper, and we treat you like a free agent for the last time, if you think you can stand it. It’s your last chance to change your mind. Hey, cheer up. No tofu for dinner tonight.”

  A maid came to the door, pushing one of those room service tables on wheels. There was a white tablecloth on it and dinner on top of that, with big dome-like covers over the plates. I stayed in my seat, and the maid pushed the table in front of me. Margot pulled her desk chair across from me.

  The table was set for two. The maid uncovered the plates. It was true. No tofu. Instead, things I loved. Pâté, to start with. And then salmon. Braised leeks. Shiitake mushrooms. Very, very good, crusty bread. It was the kind of dinner I’d imagined Jonathan buying for his girlfriends. Margot opened a bottle of wine.

  “I’m not surprised you know what I like to eat,” I said, digging in. I was still quite confused, but the food was putting out its own clear signals. “But everybody can’t be coming here for dinner tonight.”

  “Everybody else is having special dinners in their rooms,” she said, “but I’m so busy getting everything together for tomorrow that I pulled you up here instead. Don’t worry. We have a big staff to take care of all you guys. I just overrode the parameters and entered myself into this slot. Somebody had to do it, anyhow.”

  I sipped my wine, feeling very shy, suddenly. It was as though we were on some big date. She leaned over and kissed me softly on the forehead, and I could see her breast through the open collar of her silk shirt. She really was very beautiful, though you didn’t see it all at once. You saw her energy, her astonishing control, a flare of collarbone, the shadow of a cheekbone. And always, I thought again, her blunt, powerful, eloquent hands.

  I felt a stab of feeling in my cunt, clashing rather confusedly with my absurd joy at the lovely food. My mouth dropped open, but then I closed it and continued to chew. I was so confused that I didn’t know what to feel. She had said they were treating me like a free agent. I guessed, in any case, that that meant I could say anything I wanted to say and not have to worry about them taking away my dessert. But what did I want to say? “Do you come here often?” was about the only thing that occurred to me.

  “When do I have to say whether I’m changing my mind?” I asked. “I mean, I don’t intend to, but if I say that right away do I have to take my clothes off immediately?”

  “Basically,” she said, “we get to have a nice dinner together, and then I ask you the question. You say no, you haven’t changed your mind, and I make you say it in some formal way that’s too corny to repeat right now. Then I call the maid and settle back to watch her take all the clothes off you and put you back into restraints and like that. It’s supposed to be your final big humiliation in this place, but frankly, I’m not very impressed with it. It’s left over from before I was organizing things around here. In a while, I hope to replace it with something a whole lot better. Okay? Do you think you can relax now?”

  “Yes,” I said, “I think so. This is a major mindfuck. But I guess I’m glad about it. This food is wonderful, and I’m glad you’re here. God, that sounds terrible, I’m sorry, I didn’t intend it to come out in that order, you know what I really mean. Well, anyhow, if I were really a free agent, I’d ask you how you got here. I mean, you know how I got here.”

  She laughed. I loved her mouth. “I understand,” she said. “All that healthy bland food we’ve been giving you is one of our undercover humiliations. And I got here,” she continued, “pretty much the same way you did. Originally, I mean. I was sold at the auction and spent a year as a slave. But the truth is I wasn’t really that good at it. It was no disgrace, in fact it was pretty hot, and I have good memories of it. But I knew that I wasn’t going to continue along those lines, and I had no idea what I wanted to do next. About three weeks before my term of service was due to end, my master called me into a little office he had. I’d never been there. It was a messy little room, filled with computers and assorted computer hardware, machines with their casings off and their innards hanging out. I’d never seen anything like it, and my eyes kept straying to all the boards and cable. I was on my knees in front of him, and all of a sudden he slapped me so hard he knocked me over.

  “‘You’re not paying attention, Margot,’ he said. ‘You’re going to get a very serious whipping tonight.’

  “‘Yes, sir,’ I said unhappily. ‘Thank you for correcting me, sir.’

  “‘But meanwhile,’ he said, ‘I’m going to leave you alone in here for the afternoon. There are hardware and software manuals on the shelf. See how far you can get.’

  “Well, it’s a corny story,” she said. “I’ll cut it as short as I can. Of course I was a natural at it, as he had suspected I would be. He was a big computer tycoon, almost unbeknownst to me. All I had known for sure was that he was rich. He gave me the whipping that night, but then he ended the term of service early, handed me a couple of pair of jeans and T-shirts, and hired me as a trainee.”

  “One more popular fantasy come true,” I laughed. “But you came back here. How did that happen?”

  “Well, that part’s more interesting,” she answered. “That’s where your friend Kate Clarke comes in.”

  “My friend?” I was surprised, almost spilling my coffee. The meal was ending spectacularly, with coffee, brandy, fruit, cheeses, and crème brulée.

  “Well, I guess not your friend,” she agreed. “Your friend’s friend. And I guess you don’t know that you’ve got a note from her in your file.”

  There were even fancy cigarettes, Players. She lit one for each of us. “It’s not any kind of rave recommendation, you know. But then, she’s not given to raving. As I’d expect her to, she describes you quite accurately. She says you have immense potential and somewhat spotty training, and that anybody taking you on should be willing to take on the responsibilities that combination entails. Still, just having the letter there calls attention to you.”

  How odd, I thought. Anybody reading that letter who knew Jonathan and Kate—and there would definitely be people who did—would know that the message was about more than me. Why would Kate let all that hang out so publicly, I wondered—the polar struggle between her professionalism and his amateurism, the central fact, perhaps, of an odd, frustrating, enduring, lifelong relationship. Oh come on, Carrie, I tho
ught, if we’re talking about public exposure here, we could ask you a few questions yourself. But still, how strange that I would know how to interpret that letter, when Margot, for all her vast cool, did not. I turned back to what she was saying.

  “Well, my ex-master got to know Kate. I had been the first slave he’d owned, and he felt chagrined that he’d tried so hard to chose somebody for his body and had wound up picking a programmer. He’s a hiring genius—I mean, he’s known for that—but he didn’t want to be doing it all the damn time. So after my period of service was up he didn’t go to any more auctions. He started going to Kate’s place in Napa, and he took me a few times. I don’t suppose you’ve ever been there?”

  “I’ve only heard about it.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll get to go sometime, in some, uh, capacity. It’s, it’s…delicious. That’s the only word I can think of for it. Chez Panisse for sex. I’m glad I got taken there, because I couldn’t possibly have afforded what it costs. But what a terrific present. I was at loose ends sexually. I knew what I liked, but I didn’t have the time or the energy to get it. That’s what’s so wonderful about Kate. If you know exactly what you want, she can make it happen for you. You get to know her, too—or she gets to know you, in any case. And one day she and I were both griping about the old-fashioned retro or militaristic trappings that S/M insists on adopting.

  “‘I can see,’ she was saying, ‘that period decor is attractive. I have no problem with that. But it can’t be the only backdrop for the assertion of power. After all, power gets asserted every day in this world.’

  “Well, I started to talk about computers and control and she became fascinated, and one thing led to another, and here I am. Kate got me this job. She knows everybody in this little universe. And it works well for me. I like to create environments that delineate power. You recognized that, didn’t you?”