1.

I would have made a fantastic girl.

Which is not to say I’m a poof.  Not for a minute.  It’s just, real women, they don’t know what they’ve got.

They can learn, of course, a lot of them.  But the fact that they have to learn it, means they don’t feel it.  Not in their gut, not the way men do.

Women learn, for example, that heels make their calves look great.  And their asses.  And after a while they begin to appreciate it for themselves, in a muted way.  But there are the thing they don’t get told, the things that happen by accident, that remain a secret to the men.  The things that make men, strangers, catch each others’ eyes in public places, as if you say, did you see that?  Wow, did you see her. 

That happens all the time.  They unite men across generations and classes, those moments of shared appreciation.

Like, the way the creases cut diagonally one way, then the other, across the front of a skirt as she walks.

Like the elegance of narrow shoulders and white wrists.

Like the wisp of hair in front of the ears (how does it know where to stop?)

Like the way, sometimes, female elbows seem to bend the wrong way when they walk.  (Oh yes, they do).

Like the hems of skirts.  No context necessary.

(Why is that?  I don’t get that feeling from curtains.)

The kind of woman you look at and think, that’s my species.  At its very best.  Sod your elephants in the Serengeti. Take a proper look at a homo sapiens female, sunshine.

Men’s brains are not set up to cope logically with the situation.  I was standing on a train platform once, reading.  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this fantastic looking girl walked in on the opposite platform.  Black boots, great legs, short black skirt.  When I looked up, I saw that it wasn’t a girl at all.  It was a bloke wearing black trousers and holding a manilla envelope at thigh height.  That’s how stupid the male brain can be.

Women can morph anything they touch into magic.  I went to the Gulf once.  Within three days, burquas were beginning to have the same indefinable allure as kitten heels or pony tails.  How do they do that?

I don’t hold much with the Christians.  But there was a Christian sect once somewhere, who pointed out, that when God created the creatures of the earth, like anyone else he got better and better at it as he went along.  Started with the slime moulds and worked his way up.  And what was the very last thing he created?  Young Miss Evie, wasn’t it. 

Probably he looked and Adam, and thought, what if I take that Y chromosome away.  And put in another X.  And then, kaboom.  Jesus, will you look at that. 

The sect was wiped out as heretical.  May they rest in peace.  Sometimes, the truth hurts.

 

You’d think it would make the chicks arrogant.  Of course it generally doesn’t, which is part of their charm.  But most of them don’t even know.  Unfortunately, it has become culturally unacceptable to point out to a woman that she is better than you.

Christ, I would have made a fantastic girl.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The attentive reader may have sensed that I am an admirer of the female sex.  Straight, that is, if you like.  At least according to our system.  The ancient Romans, they classified sex differently.  Not who you were and who you were with, but what you did, or had done to you.  But I digress.  Straight, as we now call it.

My straightness manifests itself in the familiar ways everyone will recognise, as every few years I have tended to develop, out of the blue, a stomach-pounding admiration for one or another particular example of your human female who happens to drift in one direction or another across my life.   Sally Evans was the first.  I was five.   What can I say?  She was fine.  Then a gap.   Rachel Newley at 16.  Beth McFarlane at 22.  Then… now. 

I met her at my sister’s party, which I had only agreed to go to because I fancied one of her friends.  I don’t quite know what happened there.  It’s not even like she was any sort of starlet.  Not the twinkly type at all.  A solid girl she was, fine hipped, roseate and blood-pumping.  The kind of girl men probably drooled over in the thirteenth-century, no sickly waif who’d be carried off by the plague.  A biological tank.  Go team.

She was sitting at one end of a sofa and looking mildly amused, in perhaps a slightly condescending way, at the conversation she was having with a couple who looked like they might have turned out to be hippies if they had had the imagination to drop out.  Or rather, the conversation they were having rather self-consciously in front of her.  She wasn’t really taking part, or not apart from dropping in the occasional comment that seemed to send their conversation spinning off the rails. It was like watching teenagers rehearsing a school play in front of an English teacher who had seen it all. 

I am not good at elbowing in on people at parties.  It always feels so orchestrated.  It’s like, I have a room full of people I don’t know to butt-in on, and I’ve picked you.  Why?  Because you look like the kind of dull people I could really get down with?  Because I happened to be interested in the snatch of chatter about – what was it,  the pleasures of growing spinach on the local allotments - that happened to filter my way?  Or could it be because of the gut-twistingly beautiful woman reclining in your midst who seems, for some unaccountable reason, not to be spending her life surrounded by men rendered faint by the rush of blood to their aching loins?  This would have been so painfully obvious, even to the vegetable people, that whatever I selected for an opening gambit would have appeared, even to them, a laughable pretense.

My mind had drifted off as I mused on the hippy couple, chattering away oblivious to the woman-in-a-million-until-the-next-one-comes-along sitting next to them, when in one of those shocking, roller-coaster realisation moments, I came to, knowing that She was looking directly at me.  No embarrassment, no equivocation.  Her dark eyes were on me, straight at me, and she didn’t care if I saw, in fact, it was me that felt apologetic for even noticing I was being stared at.  When I caught her eye I looked away, then down, though I knew she was still looking.  Bizarre.  Like apologising for interrupting a burglar in your own house.  No, please, take what you want.

Please, take what you want.

Let’s be objective about this.  Put Emma (this turns out to be her name in a few paragraphs’ time, so you may as well know now) in a line with twenty women of her age and class.  Not that she’s one for being put in lines; - herding cats comes to mind - but this is just an illustration.  What, really, can I put my finger on that shows she is better than they?  Nothing, if I’m being honest (and I have now been taught to be honest, as you will see).  Nothing substantive.  Sure, she has a fine figure, and an excellent face.  Excellent, as you might say, this is an excellent horse.  A fine example of its type, is what I mean.  But there is no coincidence with fashion.  She pays no attention to any fashion, or any passing, faddish thing.  Here is a woman with a certainty, an absolute certainty, that she is right. 

Actually perhaps I’m getting carried away.  I certainly was at the time.  When I calm down I recall, she’s not actually like that.  But that evening at that moment, that’s how she was to me. 

She looked at me like I was an entertaining guinea-pig in a pet shop window.  She was my Superior, and there was no room in her world view for any alternative.  That is it, that is what caught me and held me at that party. 

Not that I could have expressed it in that way at the time.  I knew nothing of women like her at that stage in my life.  I confused my desire for her with my desire for other things, which is, to have them, to enjoy them, to make use of them.  Which made it all the harder to understand why, when I caught her inspecting me like that, I didn’t just acknowledge her glance and take control of the situation.  Go over and chat.  What I would have done, that is, with any other girl. 

Instead I kept my eyes away from hers, and turned, slightly, to face her.  I didn’t know why, but that’s what I did.  I gave myself up to her inspection.  I stood there for an age until the crowd shifted in front of me and I was cut adrift from her line of sight.

More people were arriving and I was feeling winded, like my soul wanted to vomit.  Seriously, never anything like it before.  What do you do when you’re spiritually mugged?  Maybe I should have gone to a priest.  But the point is, I didn’t want to be saved from her.  I didn’t want to fight this off. 

That moment lives on as the most brutal of my life.  Like she reached into me and ripped out a piece of my brain.  “No, unknown male, you will not think that way.”   Standing there in the crowd, I became incredulous that I had even been debating whether to go to her.  As if there could be anything more important going on in my life. 

The furniture, and the people reaching with gusto for snacks they didn’t want, shepherded me round behind and alongside her.  I remember noticing the hippies were less good-looking than they had seemed from the other side of the room.  She looked up at me without surprise for a moment, and then held out her glass.  “White wine, the pinot not the sauvignon.”

 

2.

Bringing her wine was an act of love, of devotion, or that’s how it felt.  But what’s the difference between wine brought as an offering to the adored, and wine brought out of politeness to some chick?  There isn’t one, which is why these misunderstandings can occur.

Emma (I’m still calling her by that at this stage, purely as an act of historical accuracy) and I did not understand one another.  She thought I understood the signs and knew her for what she was, whereas I was just a wandering rogue male with the right mental genes, running on instinct.  Not even an acolyte at that stage.  So some of the following conversation may be misreported, because I heard what she said, misinterpreted it, and reframed it as something that made sense to my untutored mind, in the light of what comes after.  I say that because, reading it back, it kind of makes sense.  But I don’t think we made much sense that night.  There were plenty of confused pauses, I am sure. 

“Oh come on” she was saying to me ten minutes later, “every man has some sad hobby.  If it’s not playing the guitar badly, it’s reading comic books, or computer games…”

“Football…” I began.

“Football doesn’t count as sad, it’s a shared activity.  Unless you sit and home and watch it on TV.  It does count as tasteless, pointless and vapid, of course…”

“You’re not very forgiving.”

“You’re not asking me to forgive you, are you?”

“They say football is beautiful...”

“There are those who say that about synchronised swimming.  That doesn’t mean that it is.”

“Well, it’s a new sport, I guess people haven’t got good at it yet…”

“Ballroom dancing.”

“OK, but…  Well, as it happens you’re right, I am trying to learn the guitar” I admitted.

“Of course you are.  I expect you’ve been trying since you were 16, like every other man I know.  But you’ve never got far because you lack the self-discipline.”

“Well I do lack time…”

“Oh, rubbish, you’re here aren’t you?  You just don’t want it quite enough, and you’re probably a sufficiently accomplished fantasist to get enough satisfaction from dreaming about it.  Oh, don’t argue, there’s no need to let that bother you, that attitude makes for a much easier life.  And in any case there’s no reason to assume that by the time you learned to do it, you wouldn’t be thoroughly sick of it.  None of these things are effortless like they look, you know.”

I swirled my wine and watched the legs form on the glass.  “What you do seems effortless” I said.

She paused for a moment, and smiled.  “Explain?”

“You’ve pummeled me easily enough since we’ve been talking.”

“Oh, but my dear you wanted to be pummeled.  Nothing made you fetch my drink”. 

“It felt like you did.”

“Aww, I didn’t touch you.  I just gave you the chance to do what you wanted.”

“You’re saying… I wanted to take someone their drink?”

“No, I’m saying you wanted to show me you would do as I told you.  Take this discussion, for example.  You haven’t stood up for yourself once, but that’s because you don’t want to.  Do you have any opinions of your own?”

I thought for a moment.  “Not that stand up to yours.”

She smiled.  “Quite, but that’s how you want it, isn’t it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well duh, - think about it, and then decide, and then tell me.”

“Uh… well, I guess so” I said pointlessly, ducking my head out of the path of a passing partygoer.  “Look, you know, we could, would you like to, go somewhere for a drink, maybe…?”

“What?” 

“I was just wondering, we could leave the party, and…”

“Are you asking me out?”   

“Well, I just thought we were getting on, so…”

My sister, who was just doing the rounds at that moment with a bottle in each hand, sidled over to us as Emma waved her down.  “Your brother is intelligent but a bit slow on the uptake.  He’s just asked me to go out with him”.

My sister laughed.  “He was always a bit dense with girls.  Brother dear, Emma is not your type.” 

“What?”

“She likes to be in charge.  You’re too… normal…”  She giggled and looked apologetically at Emma with a shrug.

“I’m domme” Emma said.  “A dominatrix.  I dominate men for kicks.  That’s my thing, that’s what I get off on, that’s what my sexuality is.  You can’t be my boyfriend because I don’t do boyfriends, I do slaves.”

“Uh…”

“It is true you’d look cute in a collar.  But I’m guessing that’s not your thing, so.. Game Over.  Unless you’re about to give in.  And I don’t think you are, because at least half of the people in this room, including your dear little sister here, know just what I my tastes are.  That said, if you really do want to spend some time with me, you may ask to be my slave, right now.  Otherwise, forget it.  Comprende?” 

“I…”

“She’s sweet, but she’s a fruit cake” my sister giggled as Emma rose abruptly from the couch and stalked off.  “But there is someone in the kitchen you wouldn’t be wasting your time with…”

3.

“Hello, Emma?  It’s Will, from the party…”

Silence.

“I just wanted to apologise.  I obviously pissed you off, so…”

“You have a nerve.”

“Sorry, what… how?”

“How? STOP playing stupid, it drives me insane!  You let me down, did you not?”

“I’m sorry, it all took me so much by surprise…”

“Why?  It seems perfectly simple to me.  I had you writhing around in your submissiveness for twenty minutes and then when I asked you to admit, in front of your sister, that you wanted to be my slave, you let me down and went back into that ridiculous fake coy thing you do like some six-year old girl.  Well, that was your chance and it has gone.  I’m fed up with crap men wanting to get off on their kinks in secret and keep pretending they’re mister middle-England in front of their friends.”

“Emma, I’m sorry…” 

“Do  not use my name, as if you are my bloody equal.  You let me down, idiot.  Do you not realise what a kick it would have given me, to make a good-looking vanilla guy humiliate himself like that totally out of the blue in front of his sister, surrounded by her irritating middle-class friends?  You had the opportunity to give me one big fat orgasmic moment and you let me down like a pussy, and you made me look like a freak into the bargain.  How fucking dare you.”

“Oh, shit, look, I’m sorry, I can make it up to...”

“You are nowhere, nowhere near good enough to make it up to me.” 

“OK – please, look – you’re driving me crazy.  I admit it, I admit I adore you.  I won’t bother you any more of course but if I can ever, ever, be of use to you, you can get my number from my sister and I guarantee, I will never let you down…. Please, I…”

The line went dead.

4.

There was a degree of frustration for a period of time, reader.  I could say more, but I think we all know what that’s like.

BUT… (hooray, a ‘but’) my sister emailed me at work.  Her freaky friend Emma had asked for my number, and would it be OK to give it out.

Ummm… Mobile, home and work says I, yes, yes and yes.  Yes, that would be fine, dear sister.

Well if you’re sure, says she.

More than two months I waited.  Not that I knew there was something to wait for back then.  I would have loved to know that at the time.  At the time, it was why did she ask for my number?  Why, and then nothing?

Then, another email from my sister.  (We email a lot when we’re at work.  I can even hear her voice in courier font.)  ‘Do you remember my friend who you met at my party.  For some reason she asked if you know anything about decorating (Hell she’s odd.)  I told her about the stuff you did to your flat.  Hope OK.  See you sat.  H’

I emailed back, making up some story about me and Emma talking about organic paint at the party, and she probably wanted to check something with whoever it was she’d been talking to, but she couldn’t remember it was me.  That was the last time I lied about her.  Damn, I was a good liar, in the old days.

So then I get this call, on my home number, from this woman.  Not that woman, some other one.  I still don’t know who it was.  “Is that Will” she said, and then “You will be working on Emma Selwyn’s place from this Friday evening.  She’s in a hurry for the property to be finished as she’s looking for a quick sale, so you’ll work through the weekend.  I will text instructions on Friday afternoon.  Clear?”

“Clear, thank you” I said.  Dizzy.  I must have stood up too quick.

So, I was getting a second chance, although a bit of a weird chance.  I wasn’t going to blow it.  Not a moment, not a letter out of place.  Not now.  I will not jeopardize this.  I wanted to please her so badly I could hurl.

I didn’t get much done at work that Friday.  The text came, though not till about 4.30pm, and it said:

‘Report 18:30 corner Carlisle Lane and Hercules Road, SE12.  Yr contact is Geoff.‘

Geoff?

Carlisle Lane and Hercules Road, it turns out, are the names of two roads which meet at a post-box and a plane tree on a gentle slope in a rather expensive area of south London.  I am standing by the postbox, and it’s freezing, and I am hoping that balding man approaching me isn’t called Geoff.

“Will?  I’m Geoff.”

“Yes, hi”.

Geoff is the name of a 50-something man in overalls.  He beckons with his balding head and I follow him down Carlisle Lane and into a mews, on one side of which is a trendy looking sixties flat, with what is presumably Geoff’s white van parked outside.

The inside of the flat is freshly plastered with wires protruding from the plaster like month-old seedlings.  It’s upside down, with two reception rooms and bedrooms downstairs and a big kitchen diner upstairs.  There is another man there, younger, also wearing white overalls.  And someone upstairs.  Another.  Four of us, then.  Barry and James don’t seem any more talkative than Geoff.  How nice.  I am handed my own overalls, and under Geoff’s direction, begin to work washing down recently plastered walls with primer.

No one spoke.  No one played the radio.  For a while I wondered if they were waiting for me to start, but as they weren’t talking to each other either, I said nothing.  They worked hard, concentrating, doing things properly.  Avoiding eye contact, I noticed.  I guess we were all embarrassed.   Were we all here for the same reason… or were they real builders?  Did they know?  I didn’t feel like saying much.  

About 9.15pm, a pair of headlights pulled into the mews.  Geoff looked up, concerned, but then relaxed when the car pulled into the space outside one of the houses opposite.  For the first time, he glanced in my direction.  “There’s an inspection between 9.30 and 10pm” he said in a low voice.  Scottish accent, I think.  “Do exactly what we do, and don’t say anything.”

“OK” I said.

We went on with our work.  

A car pulled into the mews at about 9.40pm and reversed into the parking space in front of the flat.  The three men, exchanging a glance, downed their tools and hurried into in the largest ground-floor room, where they lined up, in a row, on their knees.

I know.  Seriously, they did.

“What’s going on?” I whispered to Geoff.

He glared at me.  “you do not ask questions, you do not move, you do not talk.  you listen to the words of the Females and you obey.”

Jesus.

Actually I’m feeling pretty grouchy by this stage too.

Following their example, I join them on my knees as women’s shoes and voices entered the flat.  The front door opened and heels clattered on the tile floor of the entrance hall.  “Twelve” a woman’s voice called out as the door swings shut.

Barry nudged me to bow forwards, pressing my face to the dirty floor, and signaled to copy him in holding my wrists crossed in the small of my back.  The other men did the same.  “Position 12” he whispered, by way of explanation.

We listened as the women walked slowly around the flat for about ten minutes, talking in low voices, before they entered the room in which we knelt with our faces on the floorboards. 

They walked slowly around the walls, inspecting the plaster work, circling to stand barely an inch in front of where our faces were pressed to the dusty floor.

“The work is acceptable.  Lick the dust from our shoes”.

There are six female feet, four men.  Being on the end, I am given only one shoe to lick.  A black kitten heel.  Just when I think I am finished, I am presented with the underside of the shoe.  The building is dusty and I end up with a mouthful of grit.  Barry is trembling quite visibly alongside me.  At first I had thought he was being melodramatic, but by this point I had clogged that he is just not good at kneeling for long.

“Work will begin again at 7am” said one of the women, the same one who had said “twelve” (was it twelve?  Shit I’ve remembered the position and not the number).  “Tabitha’s boys, you will return to her for the night.  Barry will not be returning, you know why.  Geoff you sleep here in this room.  New boy, you will be here at 7am.”  The kitten heel pressed gently on the back of my head to make it clear that was me.  “You will take a photograph of yourself at the front door on your mobile and text it to Miss Emma at 7am precisely.”  She grabbed me by the hair and pulled me to my feet.  “Leave.”

I stumbled, bowed idiotically to her like she was some Japanese businessman, and walked out of the house.

5.

An oh-so-strange week followed, then.  My pleasure in Geoff’s company bobbed along at a flat zero.  I didn’t see the women again, but as directed by a stream of anonymous text messages I put in a full weekend, four out of five evenings the following week, and most of the Saturday after, until Geoff pronounced we were finished.  We locked up, and he drove off.  Didn’t even offer me a lift to the station.

Thank you Geoff, it’s been great, no really.

So now what?

“Eyes on the hem of my skirt.”

(See, reader, it was worth it).

“Huh?”

“Oh for God’s sake, stop being willfully dense.  That’s what you’re doing, isn’t it?  Covering your embarrassment by pretending not to understand.  Jesus, it’s irritating.  I know you understand perfectly well, and I am running out of patience.”

(That’s her voice, can’t you tell?)

“One more moment of doe-eyed-disobedience and you can forget the whole thing, decorating skills or not.  Now, put your eyes on the hem of my skirt, and do not move them, not up, not down, not anywhere but where I have told you.  Is that clear?”

“Yes.  Yes, Miss.  I’m sorry Miss, I do understand.”

(So, I am with the splendid Miss E.  “Result”.  I am feeling pleased with myself. I’ll tell you how this came about a little later on; right now, I can’t bear to tear myself away.)

We were in her kitchen, for some reason.  Oh yes, right after I arrived we were drinking tea.  She was being nice to me; obviously she was pleased developments at Carlyle Lane.  But then I was told to get on my knees and things went rapidly downhill.

There is an object, reader, Miss Emma calls a joltstrap.  I’m not sure if it’s a brand-name or what.  Or just her name for it.  Anyway, a joltstrap is a rigid, inflexible leather jockstrap which can be padlocked tight at the back.  I know this, because my fingertips are desperately fiddling with this padlock at this point in the narrative.  This particular joltstrap is painfully tight and is cutting in to my thighs.  I cannot even dig my fingers in anywhere around the edge, except, possibly, by sucking in my stomach.  But my hands are cuffed behind me, and being human, I can’t suck in my spine.

Inside the joltstrap, an array of flexible metallic strips are bent tight around the shaft of my cock.  Another three are wrapped around my balls.  A short, stubby metal button is forced by the unyielding leather inside my anus.

It’s a rather brutal item.  It is uniformly, graspingly tight as if all the air inside has been vacuum-pumped out.

I am on my knees, she is standing over me wielding a cane.  This is where we came in at the top of this chapter. 

“Do you want to move your eyes from the hem of my skirt?” she asked.

“No, Miss”.

“Why not?”

“Because I want to obey you, Mistress.”

“So if I had told you to keep your eyes on a certain point on the floor, would you be as keen to obey as you are with this command?”

“Yes, Mistress”.

She paused at this, and calmly took a step to my left.  “As you may have guessed, the rigid objects sewn into the joltstrap over your hips are two lithium batteries.”

Actually, I hadn’t guessed.  Nice to know where you stand.

“The purpose of the joltstrap is to enable me to torture you by remote control” she said, indicating what I had take for a key fob in her left hand.

She is left-handed.  Well I never.

JEEEEEEEEEEEEEESUZ…………………

An agonizing burst of electricity pulsed through my genitals, jolting into my anus like a red-hot physical intrusion.  Twisting, I fell forwards onto the floor.  A moment later, a brutal stroke of the cane across my backside, firm-wristed and mercilessly hard. Fuck,  that hurt. 

“I believe your reply to have been incorrect.  Let me rephrase the question.  A woman commands you either a) to keep your eyes on the hem of her skirt or b) to look at a spot on the carpet.  Which of these commands are you more eager to receive?”

“Command ‘a’ Mistress” I said, blinking languorously and trying to suck tears back into my eyeballs (no, it doesn’t work).  I struggled back to my knees as best I could without the benefit of arms.

“Give a complete answer.”

“I would be more keen to receive a command to look at the hem of her skirt, Mistress”.  I sound like an idiot.

“Good, now express your emotional response accurately.”

“I am very happy… I am turned on to receive a command to keep my eyes on the hem of a woman’s skirt, Mistress”.

“Ah, now we are getting somewhere.  I am going to break you out of this cycle of cliché and half-truth that every slave seems prone to, so that in time you come to express yourself automatically in more genuinely revealing terms as you have just done.  Let’s return to your original answer and interpret why you lied.  Why did you tell me you would be as keen to obey if commanded to look at a spot on the floor?”

“Because… because I wanted to convey that I found joy in obeying your orders, and not… and not in some purely sexual, or… purely fetishistic… act.”

“Good, that is more like it.  You fell prey to a common failing among slaves, that of trying to make yourself look good rather than answering honestly.  I am not interested in watching you try to look good, I am interested in knowing precisely what is going on in your mind so that I can dig my heels and my nails into your mind.  I hope you begin to understand.”

“I do, Mistress”.

“Why does it turn you on to be commanded to look at a hem, more than the floor?”

“Because…”

“You are allowed to pause to think before you talk rubbish.”

“Thank you Mistress.  Because the hem of a skirt is bound up with my fetishistic desire for female rule in a way that the floor is not”.

“Ooh get you, Mr eloquent.  So in two minutes we have dispensed with the lie that you simply wish to serve women.  You don’t, you wish to receive gratification for your fetishistic inclinations.”

“Yes, Mistress.”

“Fine.  That’s entirely natural.  I am familiar with the many psychological weaknesses of submissive males and I warn you there is little point trying to disguise them.  There are many tedious lies males in your position use to hide their emotional confusion; these will systematically be taken away from you until you have no option but to speak the truth.  In the meantime, be aware that I do not regard a ‘fetishistic desire for female rule’ as you put it to be a inferior version of submission.”

“Yes Mistress”.

“Now, I believe you still owe me for the distressing occasion at the party.”

“When I let you down, Mistress.”

“Quite, when you let me down.  Now is the time for you to make recompense.  As the idea of your friends and your little sister finding out about your little peccadillo seems to be such a big deal to you, you are going to provide me with the material with which to blackmail you, if I choose.  Do you think that seems fair?”

“You are always fair Mistress.”

“That is meaningless and rather feeble flattery; I am nothing of the sort.” 

I am ashamed to say I whimpered as I saw her arms raise the cane for a second brutal stroke across my back.  I just had time to hear her giggle before a lower-voltage but long, agonisingly long, surge of pain pulsed again through my genitals, leaving me sprawling and writhing on the tiles.

“Remain on your belly, slave.  It will save time.”

“Yes, Mistress” I gasped.

“When under torture you will address me with the phrase ‘My Owner’ to show your acceptance of the natural right by which I impose such pain.”

“Yes, My Owner.”

“Now, hard as it is to believe, one of the major problems for a dominant woman is the unreliability of submissive males.  You have already shown yourself to be unreliable in a public situation, which irritated and disappointed me.  This should be a source of considerable shame to you.  I am therefore asking you a simple question, do you accept that it is reasonable for me to gain some control of you through blackmail, as you have shown yourself to be unreliable?”

“Yes, My Owner.”

Again, the pain.  Twenty, thirty seconds it must have been, as I wriggled and moaned, sweating, across the floor at her feet.  With each successive jolt my arms automatically tried to free themselves and the rim of the handcuffs began to dig painfully into my red-raw skin.

“I did that just to amuse myself.  Do you still think I am fair?”

“No, My Owner.  You are not fair.”

“You see, being honest is not so hard.  There will be no play-acting between us.  I will be honest with you, too.  Let me demonstrate.  Right now, I am musing on the question of whether you are the twelfth or the thirteenth slave to be locked into that joltstrap.  For a while, I was counting, but they all began to blur into one.  I was also  wondering whether you had realised that that damp feeling of the inside of the leather is the sweat of your brother slaves.”

“I…”

“That was a rhetorical question.  I am musing to myself, I am not actually interested in the answer.  I am more concerned with savouring the pleasure of having you locked in the joltstrap.  Do you realise that just seeing you inside that thing is enough to make me despise you?  You are a man, after all, and you have allowed yourself to become the torture slut of a female of your own species.  Someone smaller and weaker than you.  Can you blame me for despising you?”

“No, Miss.”

She grasped me by the chin and looked straight into my eyes, up close.

“You are the lowest of your species.  When I see a male of your type on his knees in that thing, I get worked up.  I am getting worked up now, I can feel it.  My cruelty is rising.  My anger, I think.  Anger that you are permitted to walk the streets as if you were the equal of the rest of us.  It is a disgrace that you have been permitted to live a normal life.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“It is a disgrace that males such as you are permitted to own property, to earn and use money to use as you wish.  An absolute joke, in fact.  How dare you?  You have been living on this planet aware of your inferiority to females for what, fifteen years?  And you have had the temerity to continue to live a selfish life centred around the gross fallacy that the appropriate focus of your various activities is your own self-promotion and pleasure?  Do you begin to understand why I am angry?”

“Yes, Miss.  I am ashamed.” 

“Be that as it may.  You have at least found your natural place now, which is more than can be said for most of your kind.  It is a shame, as your youth would have been well spent acquiring the skills that would have been of use to me now.  That is too bad.  However you can be assured that your life of freedom, life as you know it, is now over.  You are to be broken, and you are to be put to use.”

She walked slowly over to where I had left my things under a chair, and rifled through my bag.

“Stand, slave, and follow me.”

We walked through to the spare room at the back of the house where she unlocked the door and led me inside.

A sort of parlour, with sofas, a TV, a table with a laptop computer, and three cold iron posts embedded along one wall, facing the sofas.

I was chained to one of these and my handcuffs were then removed.  

“Take this…” she said, handing me my mobile phone from my bag, before falling elegantly back into one of the sofas.  “I am now switching on my answer-phone.  You are going to call me and you are going to leave me a nice little message, reminding me of our conversation at the party and pleading with me to reconsider enslaving you.  I have the text written out here” she said as she passed me a paper with five lines of script written out.  “I’ve tried to make it sound like you” she added.

I could feel my pulse banging away in my wrists.

“Yes, My Owner.  May I ask what are you going to do with it?” I asked, a cold sweat sweeping over me.  A Goddess, unarguably, but is she nuts?

“You revert to ‘Miss’ now, you are not under torture.  So long as you remain obedient, I will do nothing with it.  If you start fucking about, I will consider sending copies to all your little friends.”

“Yes, Miss…”

“Don’t look so horrified.  I am a woman of honour.  The terms of our understanding are clear.”

“Yes, Mistress.”   

“You have my command.  Obey.”

I dialed, and the answer-phone clicked in with a surprisingly cheerful “Hi this is Emma, please leave a message.”

“Oh, hello, uh… Miss Emma, it’s Will, from the party…”

My nerves were making me sound nervous… just like I would, in fact.  Damn, this was sounding believable.

“I know you told me you never took your friends’ brothers as slaves, and I should find someone else, but.. well..” (the ‘well’ was a naturalistic touch, all my own work) “I can’t stop thinking about you and I am completely desperate to be your servant.  I can’t stop thinking about when you told me, you needed a male maid to do your housework, and I would definitely be interested.  Especially in wearing the uniform you described.  I am a hard worker and I could work as many evenings a week as you wished.  I promise I won’t tell my sister, I mean, I wouldn’t would I?  She wouldn’t believe it anyway.  Please, Miss.  You have my number.  I beg you to call me.”

I pressed the red button.  I felt like I had pressed the red button on my life.

“That was pathetic.  Which is to say, exactly what I wanted.”

“Yes Mistress.”  

Walking towards me with a smirk, she gently recuffed my wrists behind my back.

“Now for the fun bit” she said, turning to the computer.  I watched as she fiddled for a couple of minutes, wondering if she would lose her temper with it, until Oh, hello, uh… Miss Emma, it’s Will, from.. emerged tinnily from the speakers. 

“I am uploading the sound file to a secure area of my website… there.  Now.  And while we’re here, your address is will.ferenc@live.co.uk, isn’t it?  So let’s open that up.  You are going to give me your password.”

“Mistress, I…”

I spent the next ten seconds writhing in desperation as jolt after jolt of cruel pain raped their way through my loins.  She sat watching me, dispassionate, but smiling.  Glowing, in fact.

“I am unimpressed at having to torture you to surrender your password.  Had I not given you sufficient warning of what I would do?”

“Yes, Mi… my owner.”

“And you came to me.  So you knew what to expect.”

“Yes, Mistress.  I will strive to do better, Goddess”.

She snorted.  “Christ, what was that?”

“Mistress?”

She sighed.  “We are going to have to work on your tone - you sound like an arse.  There is no need to use a word like ‘strive’ that you wouldn’t use in real life”.

“No, Mistress”.

“You have a – what is that, is that a slight lisp?”

“Not that I am aware of Mistress…”

“Well, you make a bit of a mess of ‘Mistress’.  Your sibilants aren’t very crisp. I’ve noticed that about men.  Stick to ‘Miss’ or ‘Miss Emma’.  In our case it means the same thing.”

“Yes Miss”.

“Better.  I do not want to hear any ‘striving’ or ‘devotedly worshipping’ or any similarly baroque constructions.  For a start, it implies we’re actors in some sort of fantasy, which we most definitely are not.  Secondly, it’s tiresome to listen to, and that is not the sort of life I want to lead.  I expect explicit and extreme male obedience to be built into the fabric of my life; I do not expect to spend my time trying to be haughty and saying ‘lick my boots you worm’.  I very rarely need my boots licked, for heaven’s sake.  And I don’t generally wear heels in the house, it dents my parquet.”

“Yes, Miss.”

“The password.”

“‘Quixotic’, Miss.”

She arched her eyebrows.  “If you’re hoping I can’t spell that, you’re sadly mistaken.  O..T..I..C… Right, we’re in.  Just as well, a lie at that point and I’d have whipped your balls.  I see you have plenty of friends.”

“Yes Miss”.

She clicked the mouse and said “Their details are being uploaded into my records.  They will receive copies of your little phone message if you ever fuck me about.  Understood?”

“Yes, Miss”.

“Who is Edith Ferenc?”

“My grandmother, Miss.”

Emma laughed.  “A cybergranny.  Perfect.  I’m sure she’d be very proud of you.  So… I am now changing the password on your email account.  I am now able to communicate with all these people as if I were you.”

“Yes, Miss” I said.

Is this misery?  Why does misery come with an erection?

“When you need to email people during the next couple of weeks, you will ask me to log in for you, and you will write messages under my watchful eye”.

“I understand, Miss.”

“We are going to have to handle your sister carefully.  It will not be possible to hide our relationship from her, given what I have planned for you.”

“Yes Miss.”

“and she will put two and two together.”

“Yes, Miss.”

She finished fiddling with the laptop and turned back to face me.  “You can forget any fantasies you may have about living in chains under a PVC-clad bitch.  You are a man, I am a woman, I have you nicely blackmailed into slavery, which suits our respective sexual natures most of the time.  But there will be plenty of occasions when the very last thing you want is to have to serve someone else – this is something you are going to have to work through.  You will serve me, even when you are miserable, or I will (and I WILL) publicly humiliate you and replace you with a more eager slave.  There will also be times when the last thing I want is to come home to a naked man in chains expecting to be harshly treated, so get used to that idea.  There will never be a time, though, when I don’t have use for quiet, discreet, high-quality obedient service from a well-presented male.”

“I understand, Miss.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do, but can you provide it?”

“I don’t know, Miss.”

“Good, you’re learning to be honest.  I don’t know either.”

“No, Miss.”

“Now about your attitude to me.  I do not want you to be one of those guys who only ever says ‘yes Miss’.  You have a creative edge to you that I find amusing.  You are going to have to learn to relax, but only in certain specific ways.  You can relax in the knowledge that I am scrupulously fair, and the rules under which you will live will be absolutely clear.  My rules, and there are thousands, will ensure your behaviour is appropriate, so you don’t need to adopt any fawning tone.  Just follow the rules.  And I will beat you whenever I feel like it, not because you’ve been a bad boy.”

“You’re an evil genius, Miss”.

“See, now that’s mildly entertaining, or at least, not dull, and therefore unlikely to get you in trouble.”

“Your boy’s soul leaps in delight, Miss”.

“Sarcasm is less funny and liable to misinterpretation.  It’s good to see you’ve got the point, though…”

“I don’t think I have ever been so turned on, Miss”.

She grinned.  “So I see.”

I am getting ahead of myself.  I just had to get that bit out of the way, so you didn’t spend too many pages thinking I was a total loser.

6.

We scroll back a few days, then.  I’m not sure when Miss Emma had gone to visit Carlyle Lane, but I had received a call from her (from her herself) on the following Wednesday, in the middle of my walk home from work.  She had told me she was pleased, and that she was starting to believe that just possibly I wasn’t wasting her time.  It was true work on the house had gone well, and it had looked fantastic at the end of the admittedly-more-than-a-weekend.  Geoff was a miserable bugger but a hell of a decorator, I had to give him that.  Emma was shortly going to sell it for a packet, so she said.

“I am going to make several thousand pounds from the work you boys put in last week” she had said.  “Thank me.”

I was perplexed for a moment, then smiled.  I loved this girl’s sense of humour.  “Thank you for using me so efficiently Miss” I replied, skootching sideways onto a dreary patch of grass where was less danger of being overheard.

She was amused at my reply.  “Good.  Where are you?”

“Battersea Park, Mistress.”

“I see.  Anyone nearby?”

“Only squirrels, Mistress.”

“Oh, you can trust them, we have them bribed with nuts.  Explain to me, without any attempt to impress, your desire and ability to carry out further such tasks”.

“I want to be used and I want to make you rich, Miss.  Serving you there felt like… like being the victim of a vampire.  Having my life sucked away for your amusement.  This whole thing is just so bizarre, and so inexplicable, I don’t understand it but I adore you like crazy.  Geoff’s a pain in the ass, though…”

“Geoff has been a slave for 15 years and has not seen his owner more than five times in that period.  It’s little wonder he’s pissed off”.

“Isn’t he yours?  I mean, he’s working for you?”

“No, I borrowed him.  I prefer young and pretty slaves like you.”

“So how is he kept a slave if he never sees his owner?”

“There are methods.  You’ll find out what these are if and when I decide you are a suitable victim.”

I went cold.  But I knew I couldn’t pull back from her.

“I don’t feel I could ever say ‘no’ to you, Mistress”.

“Then you’re in big trouble, Will.  You’re good looking and intelligent and the idea of taking control of your future away from you and changing your life permanently gives me one big kick.  I do not trick men into slavery, I am completely open and honest about what I do and how I do it.  But I know what drives men like you and I know how to press your buttons.  And I am going to keep pressing them, over and over again.  You have two choices; either you pull yourself together and stand up to me, admit you’ve got yourself in too deep and you want out, or else you’re heading for spending every minute of the rest of your life serving women.”

“I adore you.  I’ve never been so happy, or experienced anything that affects me so deeply.  I’m desperately grateful you forgave me.”

  There was a silence on the line, before she said. “It’s strange, on some level I want to save you from me.  Listen carefully.  I am a bitch, Will.  When I get in the mood, it’s like I’m possessed.  On some level, I’m a man-hater.  I revel in sentencing young men to humiliation and misery.  I get so turned on I lose control.  My favourite CD is a recording of men being beaten - sometimes I put it on while I go to sleep.  I use blackmail ruthlessly.  I will blackmail you, and I will be without mercy.  I’m giving you one huge warning now because I’m actually quite fond of you and because I know that once I let myself go, you are utterly fucked.  You’re not a loser, you could have a great life.  Don’t throw it away just because your balls are telling you to.  I’ve seen this before with men like you.  Your submissive instincts are overbalancing your common sense.  Yes, you’re turned on and living as a slave under me seems like a big fantasy to you.  But remember what its like when you’ve had a shitty day at work, when you’re tired and crabby and pissed off, and some girl you’re with is annoying the hell out of you, and you get a bit sarcastic and she’s screaming at you – well now think what that would be like if she had you by the balls, like I’m going to have you by the balls.  Think what it would be like if you were told you could never watch football again, and you could never drink beer because it will just make you fat, and you spent your weekends at the gym, cleaning kitchen floors, buying organic vegetables, ironing panties and listening to music you hate.” 

My adoration for her had me gripped like a vice.  I knew that if I pulled away, I would never see her again.  I just couldn’t do that.

“I know what you are saying Mistress.  I am grateful for the warning.  But you don’t, you can’t understand, what it feels like to obey you.  It’s like I’m possessed.”

I heard her snort in derision, almost angrily, and then the sound of heels moving across a hard floor. 

“Is it not clear what I have said?  Are you really saying you accept your fate under such outrageous terms?”

“I accept them, Miss.”

“You are an idiot.  I have a method of ‘breaking’ slaves.  You will be broken.  This means having your will smashed, changing your psychology so your sex drive is completely redefined simply as submission to female commands.  It’s a form of brainwashing, but it’s more a matter of bringing out the submissive instincts that are already there.  It’s basically a cult, and the god that is worshipped is Women.  Do you understand?” 

“I do, Miss”.

“I will take over your life.  I will take everything you own away from you, and I will give you only ruthless slavery in return.”

“I understand, Miss.”

“I promise you there are going to be countless times when you desperately regret what you are now doing. Save yourself, Will.  It’s so easy.”

“Miss, I don’t care about the regret, I am driven.”

“Then you are screwed.  I will make no more attempts to save you.  From this moment I am going to drive you on to your own destruction, pretty boy, and I am going to enjoy myself immensely.”

“There’s nothing I want more, Miss, than for you to enjoy me.”

“Go home, Will, and think about what I have said.  If, despite everything I have said, you still decide to be an idiot and come crawling back to me, I want you to email me your most extreme submissive fantasy, two-hundred words or less.  Nothing realistic, something, you know, way out there.  If it even slightly disappoints me, I will disregard you.  If it genuinely excites me, you will be summoned to my heel and I will take everything away from you.” 

She hung up.

7.

Have you ever tried getting on with your life under those sort of conditions?  Pointless.  I couldn’t spend more than ten seconds at my desk without my mind wandering.  Or perhaps, it’s not that I couldn’t, but that I didn’t want to.  Either way, it amounts to the same thing.

I went to the gym five times that week.  I told myself I was trying to work off my tension when in fact I knew perfectly well I was trying to make myself look better for her.  But even there, I couldn’t concentrate.  Each weight I lifted, I told myself I was serving her.  Making her servant stronger, fitter, better looking.  But that just got me all turned on.  It just wasn’t working.  I knew I was getting myself into the kind of trouble that would spread itself out beyond my sex life, but despite the occasional moments of clarity my desire drove me on, whispering assurances in my ear that I would be able to get out of it, that she was a nice girl at heart and she liked me.  So, inevitably, I sat down to write that email. 

----------------------

From: Will Ferenc [will.ferenc@live.co.uk]

To: Emma Crowe

Date: 11 December 2006

It is Britain two centuries before the arrival of the Romans.  I am the teenage son of a tribal chief.  Every solstice, a group of Wiccan priestesses issues a challenge to the tribal youths; they want a volunteer to spend one year in captivity before being sacrificed to the fertility Goddess to ensure a good harvest.  For as long as anyone can remember, no boy has come forward and each year they have resorted to the sacrifice of a captive taken in war with another tribe.  This year though, I volunteer.  The priestesses are jubilant.  I am taken away.

In my fantasy, my year is up.  At sunset I am taken in chains to a stone circle.  Young male goats are being slaughtered as female goats look on.  At midnight, my turn comes.  I am chained to a granite slab.  One by one the priestesses cut me with their knives and greedily drink my blood.   They keep me alive until dawn, when the high priestess bites into my neck and the women fall upon me, biting and tearing me apart.  The sacrifice is made.  The Goddess is appeased and the harvest will be successful.

-------------------

Emma’s  reply was not long in coming.

From: Emma Crowe

To: Will Ferenc

Date: 11 December 2006

‘Female goats look on’?  What, weren’t they laughing?  I guess I have to give you some credit for being willing to come up with something so silly.  It seems you will do after all.  Drop in for a chat.  E.

The ‘chat’ ended with my rather serious and terrifying surrender, as you have read.

So, where am I now?  Am I actually under the control of the woman I worship, or am I being an amusing diversion for her?  If she’s done this before, where are the other slaves?  Is she a psycho or just very, very good at this?  Or both?  Do I trust her?  Yes, but I don’t know why.  Can  I get my answer-phone file back?  No, because it’s hidden away cliff–knows–where on the web.  Would she really use it?  Yes, I believe she would, although only as a last resort as it’s a weapon that only works once.  But in anger, yes, she would, I know it.

Right, to get some more of the divine girl.

8.

“My little act of identity theft is the first step to the regime of social control under which you are to be placed” she was explaining.  Its weird how she can combine cute with dictatorial.  “I assure you this has all been most carefully planned, and has been tried and tested on other males.  Other males who are now absolutely broken.”  She suddenly stopped, smiled, and stroked my hair.  “You look terrified, my young slave” she said, softly.

“I am, Miss” I confessed.  “This is so outrageous and yet I still don’t have the slightest desire to resist you.”

“There’s a useful thought experiment for this point in the process” she said, pulling up a chair and sitting astride it backwards like a rapper, right in front of me.  “I want you to imagine you died in a this morning, hit by a car.  Your battered body is currently awaiting identification in the local hospital morgue.  It easily could have happened, it happens to thousands of people a year.   One moment of distraction, or not even that, an idiot driver, a patch of diesel, and wham.  All over.  Can you imagine that?”

“Yes, Miss…” I said, not sure where she was going with this.

“Fine.  Now, instead of such oblivion, I am offering you a life of slavery.  A booby prize.  You see, suddenly it doesn’t seem so terrible.  That’s the sort of mental leap you have to make.  I am not taking anything away from you, I am giving you the slavery you deserve, the slavery that nature has designed you for.  Do you understand, boy?”

I understood, and she saw that I understood, and it pleased her.

“Female supremacy is not the blunt fantasy you may take it for.   Naturally I am aware that many women are not the flawless beings you might wish for.  There are plenty of individual men who are clearly more intelligent, more creative, more empathic than some women.  But that really isn’t the point.  There are individuals like you, in which the submissive instincts are so ingrained, that they form the very basis of your character, everything you are.  Nature knew what she was doing in creating you in that way.  You are incapable of resisting me and nature has willed it so, and the reason you are incapable is because you are a natural born slave-male and I am female.  There’s your female supremacy, it is what is binding you into this massive, outrageous surrender.  And it is completely, laughably outrageous, what I am going to do to you, but you have not once tried to reject it.   Face it, you are a bit of a joke.  You are not, even for a second, the kind of male any normal woman would be slightly interested in.  You turn me on, but hey I’m more than a little strange.  And there’s one small part of me that despises you too.  You’re an embarrassment to my species.  I want to see you suffer.  I want to rub your face in your weakness and your inferiority.  But there is no need to be afraid, because I understand you and the slavery you are condemned to will suit you as tightly as that joltstrap.”

I think that’s when I came.

9.

I surrendered everything that night.  I say surrendered, although actually I was forced to give it up under the cruelty of the joltstrap.  It was taken away from me.  ‘Life rape’, Miss Emma called it.  But emotionally, I surrendered, and willingly.  Once you find your natural place, you don’t want to give it up for the world, and I didn’t give a damn for all that was taken from me.  I finally let go of the idea that all this was just her overactive fantasy life.  Within an hour she had taken control of my online bank account, and we transferred the contents to her own (I say ‘we’, because she made me press the button with my tongue and then watch as my assets vanished).  The next morning, kneeling in a small cage, I started calling estate agents to make arrangements for the valuation of my flat, which was to be sold.  Locked into the joltstrap, I was interrogated on every detail of my life, my friends, my habits, and my job.  I didn’t hide the tiniest detail.  Bit by bit, she smashed through boundaries I hadn’t even thought of.  And every new outrage swept over me with a chill of insane adoration.

Not everything changed.  Once she satisfied herself that my line manager at work was a woman, and that I earned a sufficiently good salary, she decided I would be permitted to keep my job.  It had never even occurred to me before that moment that there was any question of giving it up.  But I would need to move to a new company later, I was told, if things ever turned out that I would have a male boss.  That was not to be permitted. 

She was a dictator, and much was not permitted.  Football, alcohol and masturbation were the first to go.  Within 24 hours she was tightening her grip on my life with brutal ruthlessness.  She had useful friends.  A girlfriend of hers was a highly effective accountant, and was well paid to stitch me up good and proper.  My wages were from that moment to be paid directly into a new bank account, nominally under my name, but entirely out of my control.  No card, no pin number, no password.  A separate account was set up for me, which always contained enough money to do the shopping or to get myself home when the tubes broke down.  But never more than that.  Never enough to run to Brazil, or to Calais even.  Not that I had a passport any longer.

Plausible explanations for the changes in my life were carefully constructed.  Essentially, the story was, Miss Emma was my girlfriend.  We had met and fallen in love.  We would share her mortgage.  A few of my possessions took her fancy; she kept these and strategically placed them around the house to give it all a semblance of reality.  But the rest of the physical evidence of my previous life was sold or destroyed, and there was no hiding from an observant visitor that very little of the house’s contents had much to do with me.  My sister, of course, guessed much of the truth, as my evident embarrassment the next time I met her confirmed her suspicions.  Miss Emma carefully hid from her though the full magnitude of what had happened.  For that I was grateful.

I live as her servant now.  Her slave, of course, but in effect I spend most of my time as an unpaid domestic servant.  Miss Emma warned me wisely when she said she would not spend her life in PVC.   I understand now what she meant.  Life must be lived, and much of life is mundane.  I do not live daily under the whip, but under the yoke.  I work.  Generally I get up at six, to work, quietly, in the house, or else I may lie in if no work is needed.  But in any case I am up before 7am to prepare her breakfast.  Twice-brewed soba tea, made with a thermometer.  Darjeeling, later in the day.  A rigorously healthy diet, generally, for Miss Emma does not lack self-discipline, with the exception perhaps of a weakness for fine pastries.  I now know the three patisseries in London whose confections are worthy of my Owner.  Most things, though, she prefers home-made. 

I have learned when working how to keep absolute focus on every detail.  My mind does not wander now; there are too many rules to follow for that to be possible.  I have been changed; I have been made to acquire infinitely more patience, more concentration, more self-discipline.  I accomplish more.  My role has also forced me to acquire new skills, for example, I have learned to iron perfectly a seemingly never-ending stream of garments with pleats, darts, straps and curved panels.  I have attended evening classes in cookery and I am learning Japanese so as to be of more use on our impending visit to Japan.

Curious things please her.  Like the first time I used the phrase ‘very good, Miss’.  I think it came to me out of the blue from a PG Wodehouse I once read.  She latched on to it, giggled, and nurtured it in me.  I now say it all the time.  I am like a garden, she has said, in which weeds are sought out and destroyed, and the favoured species unceasingly cultivated until they thrive and take over.

There are few true terrors in my life, but one is of having to share my Goddess with other slaves.  This has never yet come about.  There are very few males capable of keeping her standards, and despite her cruelty, she is in many ways a considerate owner.  She knows how to keep my submission at fever pitch.  The one exception is Gerald, but he is no threat.  Gerald is her chauffeur.  He had his 71st birthday last summer.  Miss Emma enjoys his repartee, I think.  He has a good pedigree - he was paying women to beat him back in the fifties.  He’s past that now, but he still has a nice car, a good suit and a gentleman’s way about him. He’s a complete charmer, as Miss Emma says.  She says he makes her look good and can drop her off outside the Royal Opera House with perfect aplomb.  I’ve watched him, a 70-year old clambering out of the car and hobbling round in the rain to open the door for her.  Gives her just the right air of Bitch, she says.  Makes goggle-eyed passers-by wonder how much she is worth.  I can see her point. 

Miss Emma’s sadism is a curious thing.  Much of the time, it seems entirely absent.  Sometimes however, unexpectedly, her appetite for cruelty overcomes her, it flares up in her and transports her, and I am thrashed until one of my cries under a particularly well-placed stroke of the cane brings her to a sudden climax.  Usually that satisfies her, and she smiles, and is gentle.  At other times, though, it can be a long, slow burning monster.  This is the Bitch-Emma of which she warned me.  Several times I have been bound and displayed, crying and writhing in pain, while she dines, slowly, for an hour or more.   Most often I am gagged, but sometimes I am required to describe the pain I am suffering in infinite detail.  She says it is good for her appetite. 

There is a basement in the house, a small cellar with a concrete floor and whitewashed walls, cool in the summer and horribly cold in winter.  Twice I have been thrown in that room in chains, beaten and left overnight, shivering, freezing and miserable.  There is a surveillance camera; my Owner retired to watch me from the comfort of Her bedroom.  The first time She fell asleep laughing, basking in the warm haze of my out-of-focus, black-and-white misery.  The second time She pitied me and came and released me early in the morning to the relative comfort of the cage at the foot of Her bed.  She is changeable like that.  She nurses her sadism like a beloved pet dog, and sometimes it bites me on the ass.  Such is the regime under which I live. 

I am fitter than I have ever been.  I apply myself in the gym as closely as with all other activities.  Miss Emma has an admiring amateur sub, a fitness instructor, in a local gym.  he keeps a close eye over me with a smirk, sculpting my physique to her requirements.  he gives me nods and winks in token of his salacious jealousy.  he annoys me, with his assumption he could do what I do.  I am sure, he could not.

Her hold over me is brutal.  Periodically I am shown a glimpse of the system that is in place to destroy me if I seek to escape my life.  I know there are men out there, former slaves, who disappointed their Owners and were discarded, but not freed.  Men like Geoff.  Their slavery will last a lifetime, but they will not live in the direct glow of Female rule that gives my life meaning.  I have learned how lucky I am.

Miss Emma is a genuine believer in male slavery as a model social structure, and she is keen to encourage others whom she thinks may have the correct instincts to develop themselves in this area.  Occasionally she will come across a younger woman whom she believes fits the bill and will take them under her wing.  One such was a girl called Claire, who made contact with my Owner through her website a few months after my slavery had begun.  Claire was developing a dominant relationship with her boyfriend, but things were not going quite as she wished.  She lived nearby and used to drop in for a chat with Miss Emma, and the two became friends.  At first, I had very little to do with her, and for one reason or another I didn’t even set eyes on her until her third visit.   On that occasion, I was summoned to Miss Emma by the bell, and commanded to bring tea. 

“It’s always going to be a problem if he’s your boyfriend first” Miss Emma was saying as I entered the room and began to place the tea things on the table between them.  “In my view you have to make an absolute distinction between a man and a slave.  The two are not the same thing.  A man is someone you would have in your bed, would have make love to you, even if you do like the look of him in chains.  A slave is not a man, although you may choose to permit him to be masculine.  You must decide which your boyfriend is.”

“You don’t have sex with this slave?” Miss Claire asked, indicating me with her foot.  “He’s nice looking…”

“God no, absolutely not!” my Owner replied.  “It is unthinkable I would sleep with a slave.  If I needed that sort of satisfaction, there are plenty of real men I can call on.  I think this is why you are confusing issues with your boyfriend.  Sex is an act of union after all, and for a woman to wish to unite in that way with a man, she must regard him in some way as her equal.”  Glancing at me, she snapped her fingers and made a brief gesture with her right hand, the command for the fourteenth position.  I knelt, head bowed, lips parted, with my wrists grasping my ankles behind me, my eyes on my Owner’s skirt.

“A slave may be nice looking, and you may find him sexually pleasing” she went on, “but you should never, never forget that he is a slave.  Do you really think a man who allows this to happen to himself, in fact who seeks out a woman to do this to him, is a worthy sexual partner for you?  Never, never in a million years!  Sex with this slave would be utterly degrading for me, despite the fact that I fancy him.”

“So you’re saying this… boy will never have sex?”

“It depends what you call sex.  He will never have genital sex with a woman, but I do enjoy the physical services of his eyes, hands and his tongue.  Especially his tongue.  But then I have something of an obsession with cunnilingus, for you it may be different…”

Miss Claire shifted in her seat.  “You know he’s staring at your skirt…”

Miss Emma laughed.  “He’s not being freaky, he’s just not allowed to look anywhere else.  When he is kneeling, unless otherwise instructed, he must worship my sex with his eyes.  I like to see the desperate longing in his eyes.  He’s full of helpless desire for what he can never have, aren’t you, boy?”

I recognized that as a question requiring only a nod, which I gave.

“How can you control where he looks?” asked Miss Claire.

“It’s not rocket science, I just beat the shit out of him if I catch him breaking the rules, even for a second.  When standing, his eyes will be either on his work, or on the floor in front of him.  He is coming to know my shoe collection rather well.  This is why he has not looked you in the face.  In this house he is not permitted to look a woman in the eye, unless directly commanded to do so.  You could come here every weekend for a year and he would still not know what you look like.”

“Convenient.”

“Mmm.” 

“I can’t believe he agreed to all this…”

“The details were not discussed specifically.  But he accepted slavery, and he had ample warning of what I am like.  I have even banned him from experiencing orgasm as it saps his desire…”

“He can’t even come??!!” asked Miss Claire, incredulous.  (I was beginning to like her.  I still couldn’t believe it either.)

“I don’t regard orgasm as appropriate for slaves” Miss Emma explained, as she had explained to me months earlier.  “It’s the way a male fertilizes a female, after all, and a slave such as this one is under no circumstances worthy of that act, even in simulation.”

“I think my boyfriend would explode if I tried that…”

“Yes, the tension does present certain problems.  This boy is trying very hard to hold out, but I know it will be impossible for him.”

“So what happens when he breaks?”

Miss Emma reached for my collar and pulled my chin up so that I was looking directly at her.  She stroked my hair.  “Explain the rule, slave” she commanded, turning my face to the visitor.  Miss Claire was a petite, moderately pretty girl, possibly even younger than me.  She was flushed – embarrassed or turned on, I didn’t know which.

I swallowed to clear my throat.  I had not spoken for at least a day.  “Rule twenty-five – I may only come into the throat of another male slave, Miss” I said.  “If I am unable to control my desire, I am required to ask my Mistress to have one of her friends’ slaves brought to the house for the purpose.”

Miss Claire flinched.  Embarrassed, then.

“Watching two slaves tightly bound together in a mutual, gulping embrace” said Miss Emma, driving the point home, “is rather funny.  Especially if you fill their bladders first and leave them for a few hours.  The boy is holding out as long as he can, but I have no doubt he will break.” 

i used to desire women, and was never satisfied.  Now i serve and i am happy.  i adore Her, but i would have no choice but to serve her whether or not this were so.  What can i say?  It is better to be a slave living under the heel of one’s Superiors than it is to live aimlessly, pointlessly, in mediocre freedom.

The author is alive and well and living in London.  Literary criticism, requests for DIY advice or any other communication can be sent to will.ferenc@live.co.uk