Carrie's Story Read online

  “I thought that eventually he’d realize that it was you and only you he loved,” he wailed. He was, in fact, deeply smitten with Jonathan, whom he’d finally gotten a glimpse of. We’d been at the Castro waiting for Les Enfants du Paradis to start. I’d insisted we arrive early to get terrific seats, and while I was buying us popcorn and the organist was finishing his Edith Piaf medley, segueing from “Milord” to “San Francisco, open your Golden Gate,” I spotted Jonathan way in the back and sent Stuart to get a good look. Jonathan was alone, reading something. I don’t think he noticed us.

  “Yeah, and marry me. Like Mr. Rochester, right? And we could raise a houseful of little perverts. God, Stu, sometimes I think you’re in love with him—you’re certainly his most swooning and faithful admirer. You deserve to be treated like he treats the Muffies.”

  “That’s avoiding the question,” he said. “Are you really going to tell me you started in with him just because you’re such a brave adventurer? Didn’t you have a big, big romantic thing for him when you met him? At least till you met Uncle Harry, who seems to have changed your life.”

  “Uncle Tom, Dick, and Harry,” I boasted, “and just about every fraternity brother Jonathan ever had. Probably a few who didn’t make it into the fraternity, too. And then there’s Muffy, Buffy, and…”

  “Cottontail.”

  “Cottontail. Right. The thing is, it really does change your perspective. It’s certainly changed my ideas about what turns me on. I think it’s the voice. That command voice. Jonathan’s great at it, but just about all of them can do it some.”

  “Except the Muffies.”

  “Well, that’s because of Jonathan’s mindfuck. He creates a situation where they can’t demand what they want. But even they sometimes hit the voice, sometimes just by accident. The thing I’ve been trying to explain, Stuie, is that I’ve started to think of the voice as kind of a transpersonal thing. It’s made up of lots of voices. It’s beyond Jonathan.”

  I thought I was being quite impressive, until I heard Stuart snort. “Can it, Car,” he said. “I don’t believe you. I mean, I can see how it would be a turn-on to be, like, doing it with all of them in front of him. And sometimes, if he’s not there, he makes you tell him about it afterward, right?”

  “Yeah, sometimes,” I said impatiently. “What’s your point?”

  “Well, it’s still him,” he said. “Muffies or Uncle or whatever, so I don’t believe you that it’s suddenly so, uh…what was the big word you used, the one that sounded sort of like ‘transgressive’?”

  “Oh, fuck you,” I yelled, suddenly feeling like I was going to cry. “It’s my damn life, not yours, and I am not going to center it around somebody who, on the one hand, has this strange cruel streak and, on the other, has his life really together and doesn’t have to worry about stuff like whether he’s really smart or talented or just kidding himself. I mean, he’s like fifteen years older than I am—he can probably remember where he was when Kennedy got shot—and he’s rich, male, smug, and successful. And I think getting emotionally tangled up with him—like if I cared about that—would be a lot more dangerous than anything I’m doing right now. So fuck you…and…and…”

  And I stopped before I could say something like “get a life,” which was on the tip of my tongue, but which—given how I’d depended on Stuart this whole year—would have been so cruel and unfair that I never could have forgiven myself. And probably he knew that, since the look he threw me was partly shamed, partly grateful, and also somewhat serious.

  “Right,” he breathed. “Okay. He’s giving you your start, but it’s your adventure through life and sex, and he just disappears after a while. That’s cool. But aren’t you at least sad that he disappears?”

  “We’ll always have Paris,” I said, recovering my equilibrium. “Anyhow, I want to see what happens next. I want that more than anything.”

  “And how about him?” he asked. “Why does he want to sell you? Is he bored?”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but I don’t think so. I think it’s a Pygmalion thing. I think he wants me to go up on that auction block or whatever it is and be the way coolest bottom anybody ever saw. This whole business, from picking me up at the party to turning me into an actual slave and showing me off in public—it’s like an aesthetic act. So he’s got to complete it, create, you know, closure.”

  “Aren’t you scared?” he asked.

  “Stuart,” I said patiently, “I am always scared.”

  CHAPTER III

  Professionalism

  I didn’t think Jonathan would tell me any more about the selling idea for a while, and he didn’t. Things went on as they had been—quiet days in pornotopia—for a week or two more. And then, late on a Saturday afternoon, when Mrs. Branden led me into the study, Jonathan was already there, drinking wine and talking and laughing with the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen. She was about Jonathan’s age and she was, well, perfect. Red gold hair, cut in an achingly pure straight Louise Brooks bob that fell to her jawbone. Big pale transparent green eyes. A black linen suit, tight jacket with no blouse under it, short tight skirt, long, long legs. Decidedly nontrashy red shoes that cost the earth. Short, flawless, bright red fingernails. The little Mercedes I’d noticed parked outside must have been hers, too. This was not a Muffy, and I knew, absolutely—I mean, after all I do know Jonathan very well in some ways—that she and Jonathan had had a wonderful, expensive lunch at some place like Zuni and then had come home and fucked their brains out. It didn’t matter that she looked so absolutely perfectly groomed, like she’d been born in that suit about an hour ago. They’d fucked and fucked and then she’d quickly gotten her perfect self all back together again, because that’s the kind of person she was.

  Was she why he wanted to sell me? All my bravado began to wobble. I was scared and jealous. I tried to look completely compliant and impassive, as I was supposed to look, and I suspected that I wasn’t succeeding very well.

  Jonathan took the leash and unhooked it, unhooked my hands from behind my back, and did a quick little gesture that I understood perfectly. I kneeled down and kissed her shoe (I knew how to deal with the lipstick by now). Then I stayed on my knees in front of them, staring foolishly at her.

  He turned to her. “So, what do you think?”

  She laughed a little more and scooped up my chin in her hand, tipping my face up so she could look into my eyes. “Just wait a minute,” she said. She had a lovely, husky voice, the kind I’d seen described in some novel as “thrilling.” She looked at me hard.

  “My god, Jon,” she said now, “the little slut seems to think she owns you. Where’s your cane?”

  He handed it to her, and she whacked me, really painfully. I started to wail. She slapped me in the face. “Stop that,” she said quickly—and amazingly, I was able to.

  “Now look, Carrie,” she said briskly, “I’m not interested in whatever you think is happening here, so please show a little self-control and don’t communicate anything except your desire to obey us.” Then she poked the toe of one of her beautiful red shoes into my cunt and gave a witchy laugh. “You’re right, by the way, about these. They are too expensive, even for me. Now go get that stool.” She pointed to a little wooden stool about a foot high, in the corner. “Put it there,” she said, pointing to the middle of the room, “and stand on it.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” I said.

  “Ms. Clarke,” she corrected me, lightly flicking the cane on my ass again.

  “Yes, Ms. Clarke,” I agreed. Oh Stuart, I thought, scratch everything I said about the voice. It’s an entirely different thing when it comes from someone like this. I hurried to do what she said, climbing up on the stool. She stood up and slowly walked around me, looking at me hard, nudging me from time to time with the cane. I tried to interpret her nudges as signals, how to stand better, how to look more graceful. She wasn’t very tall, I realized for the first time, maybe even a little below medium height. But you just assumed she’d be tall
because she had so much presence. I was very frightened of her, and it took everything I had just to be still. I didn’t want her to think Jonathan had trained me badly. Somehow, that seemed very important.

  She put down the cane, squeezed my breasts, fluffed my pubic hair. Then she put two fingers in my mouth and parted it a little, while her other hand did the same thing to my cunt. I felt terribly warm and weak. I wanted to come, but I knew that that would be a disgraceful thing to do. I just concentrated on breathing, on not trembling too much.

  She let go and walked around me again. “Well,” she finally said, “she’s pretty enough, just barely. Of course you know that she’s not a great beauty, and you also know that in the long run that’s what they want to pay their money for. She stands reasonably well, though she’s clearly a novice. You could have trained her for dressage, but I know that’s not your kind of thing to do. Too bad, though. If she were mine, I’d use a bit and bridle on her. There’s just so much training she hasn’t had, and it shows. As does her attitude. You’re charmed by how bright she is, and you clumsily indulge her, as though she were a precocious child. Sweetheart, are you going through a midlife thing about becoming a daddy? Because we all know that there are pretty girls lined up around the block, each of them willing to tolerate a little, ah, strangeness on your part, in return for marrying you and getting knocked up and putting in an early application at Presidio Hill School. But please don’t lay any of that on Carrie, who still, I think, has some decent instincts about elegant sex.

  “Because she does have a quality, I’ll give you that, Jon. She does have a bruised innocence that some of them will want, and a lovely pear-shaped rump, especially one that marks so easily, never hurt anybody’s salability.”

  He made an exasperated sound. I could see, out of the corner of my eye, that he was simultaneously annoyed, amused, and, despite himself, finding this a big turn-on. “Helluva performance, Kate,” he said, dryly, “but is there a bottom line here? Is it a go or not?”

  “Damn it,” she said, angry but apparently amused as well. “I’m giving you a whole lot more than a performance. I’m giving you expert advice, which would be costing anybody but my oldest friend and lover a thousand bucks. So let me continue, please, too bad for you if I insist on throwing in a lecture. Yes, there is a bottom line here, what a silly term under the circumstances. Yes, somebody will quite probably pay good money for a very badly trained little girl with some evident talent and a pretty body. Not a huge amount of money, but she’ll squeak through the trials, and somebody will get a bargain at the auction. Let’s hope it’s somebody tough and professional, which is what she desperately needs. Still, it’s not the way I like to do business, and it’s not the way I like to see business done. Why all the rush? Why not train her properly? Why not really develop a product? Send her to me if you’re too bored and lazy to do it correctly. Do her good to get out of this misty Wuthering Heights you’ve got here, anyway. And she’d be no trouble, would you, Carrie?”

  I didn’t think Jonathan would like it, but I couldn’t see promising Ms. Clarke that I’d make trouble for her, even hypothetically. “No, Ms. Clarke,” I said.

  She laughed again. “In fact,” she continued thoughtfully, “Carrie would like to come and stay awhile with me, I think. Not that we—or I, at least—care what she’d like. But I think she’s becoming somewhat infatuated with me.”

  “Bitch,” he said evenly. “Well, I’ll think about it.”

  “No, you won’t,” she answered. “You’ll never send her, so don’t pretend you will. You will continue in the confused, romantic, amateurish way you’ve begun, and I will continue to disapprove. At least, though, promise me you’ll send her for some yoga or ballet classes. I can see that she’s a little jock, but she could really use the strength and flexibility.”

  She picked up her purse and checked her perfect image in the mirror. Then she put her arms around him and kissed him. It was a long, communicative kiss, seeming to express things I couldn’t even guess at.

  “Listen, sweetie,” she murmured, “I’m sorry I teased you, but you make it so damn easy. God, I miss you, though. I wish we saw each other more often. Even if you won’t bring Carrie, you should come to Napa more than twice a year. It’s not so far, you know.” Her hands, with those perfect fingernails, were all over his ass. He sighed, and they nuzzled a little more. Then they drifted out of the room, arm in arm.

  I stood there on the stool, a few tears trickling down my cheeks, waves of shame, fear, and confusion washing over me. I could think of so many things to cry about, I wasn’t even sure what was really making me cry. Somebody had betrayed somebody, I thought, but I didn’t quite know what I meant by it and who I thought had betrayed whom. I heard her car pull away, and then, about five minutes later, Mrs. Branden came into the study to tell me that Jonathan said I should go home for today.

  The next time I came was different, too. Mrs. Branden told me to keep my clothes on—messenger clothes, that day my T-shirt said, WE’RE PRIMUS—WE SUCK—and just to go into the study. Jonathan was standing at a large walnut table by the leaded window in the corner, making neat piles of papers. There was a pot of coffee.

  “There you are, good. Listen, this is a terrible pain, but we need to do it together. These are ownership papers, these are auction applications, these are photocopies of the laws that these papers ever so elegantly skate over, so that we can actually be doing this in this day and age. Read everything, then you can ask me questions. Then we can fill them out. Have some coffee. No rules today. I’ve ordered a pizza and Cokes.”

  I went back to the kitchen to get my reading glasses—first time I’d ever needed them here—then grabbed a pile of papers, curled up in Jonathan’s armchair, and started to read. After a while a pattern emerged.

  “It’s another virtual reality, isn’t it?” I asked, reaching for a slice of the pizza, which had arrived by then.

  “Pretty much,” he nodded. “There’s no real ownership—I mean, how could there be? Just elaborately precise degrees of consensuality and gift giving within the boundaries of international law. Still, the lawyers who wrote these papers were rather talented pornographers and, within the definitions of consensuality, managed to make it sound as though this were the ancien régime and the droit du seigneur were still a going thing.”

  “So it’s completely legal? And how do they keep it so secret?”

  “Probably it could be challenged in court at certain points. But it isn’t, and probably for the same reasons that we don’t get reporters sniffing around. Most of the people involved in this thing are rich, and some of them are spectacularly, metaphysically rich. I wouldn’t exactly say a fix is in, but there is influence at play and payoffs can always be made.”

  “Swell,” I said grimly, “just the crowd I want to hang with. This isn’t the part I like to think about, you know.”

  “I know,” he said. “Neither do I. That’s part of what Kate means about my being a romantic amateur. She never forgets the bigger picture for a minute.”

  “So, who is she?” I asked, wiping my mouth. I didn’t think he’d really tell me, but I liked to see how far I could go during these little time-out periods when the rules were suspended. And, more than just about anything, I wanted to hear about Ms. Clarke. I could see him start to say that it was none of my business. But instead he took a deep breath.

  “Kate? Yes, well. Um. Well, as she said, she’s my oldest friend and lover. I mean, we grew up together, our parents were friends, we grew up playing sports and playing doctor. I’m a year older and Kate is about a decade tougher. I honestly can’t remember a time when I wasn’t sexually involved with Kate, if just at the level of peeking and groping. And then a whole lot of early teenage experimentation. First just screwing, hours and hours of it, but then we discovered pain, and power. Domination, control. Together, I mean we just sort of stumbled into it, maybe because being so close made us so brave and foolhardy. Or maybe, really, it all came about becau
se Kate was gutsy enough to demand what she wanted, in so tough a voice that it scared us both, and started us thinking about a whole other level of desire and expression. Whatever it was, when we got started—God, it was like two teenage science prodigies setting up a lab in the basement. And practically blowing up the house. We did some ridiculous and dangerous things. I’ve got scars. I guess you’ve seen them.”

  “Yes,” I said wistfully, just about dying of awe and envy, “I have. Uh, who’s, who’s…?” I found myself asking the question, but then I couldn’t get the words out.

  But he was amazingly forthcoming. “The top, you mean? Well, me, for starters, of course. I mean, we read Story of O, too. But then we read a lot of other stuff, we tried lots of stuff straight out of the books. Venus in Furs, naturally. Even Bataille, though we really didn’t get more than sticky with eggs and milk. We played from lots of angles, lots of roles. All in all, it was pretty polymorphous-perverse, and it still is, which I guess is what you really want to know about. I mean, we don’t use hardware at all anymore. It’s more like that joke about the prison, where the prisoners know all the jokes so well that they just call them out by number and everybody laughs. Kate and I know so many of the same scenes, and we know each other so well, we can run lots of different and contrasting scenes very economically in a short time, just out of fucking and eye contact.”

  She dumped him, he said, just before his senior year in high school. He was stunned. He had thought they’d be together forever. “Together how?” she’d asked. “With our parents buying us the big spread down the road? Owning things together? Uh-uh, sweetie.” It took him awhile to figure it out, but it wasn’t quite so terrible when he realized that they could still fuck from time to time.

  “And then, when I was at college, I got to go to a slave auction, for the first time. Uncle Harry took me. And there, on one of the little pedestals, was Kate. She was supposed to be at Sarah Lawrence, but she’d somehow engineered this stunt. Her parents found out afterward, and there was a big stink, but it was too late then. She was a sensation, of course, brought in more money than anybody had before. She got famous in those circles, wound up running a remarkable establishment in Napa with maybe the most gorgeous slaves in the world.”