in such books, in such a world, that I would find myself somehow therein? Did I fear I might learn something which, in some sense, I feared I already knew?
âYou have never heard of Gor?â he asked.
âNo,â I said.
âI think that what you are saying is false,â he said. âOne such as you is not permitted to lie. Only a free woman may lie. One such as you may be punished.â
ââPunishedââ?
âCertainly,â he said. âYou are a slave.â
âI am not a slave!â I said.
Again he smiled.
âGor is only in stories!â I said.
âI thought you had not heard of Gor,â he said.
âIt is only in stories,â I said.
âSo many such as you have thought,â he said, âwho are now on Gor, and, as they should be, in collars.â
ââCollarsâ?â
âSlave collars.â
âI shall call the police!â I said.
âThey would be pleased to see such as you, naked, at their feet, in a collar,â he said.
âGet out!â
He went to the door and opened it, and then turned, paused in the threshold. âAs for Gor, my dear,â he said, âinquire further into the matter. Normally one such as you would not be selected, but I think we may make an exception in your case. You have not been fully pleasing. And Gor, after all, has a use for its pot girls, and its kettle-and-mat girls, as well as for better, more delicious merchandise.â
âYou cannot demean me!â I cried. âI tell you I am beautiful, very beautiful!â
âVain bitch,â he said.
ââBitchâ?â
âAs of now,â he said. âThe whip, as I mentioned, takes that out of a woman. It is hard to be a bitch, on your knees, your head down, fearfully kissing and licking the feet of a man.â
âBeautiful!â I cried. âBeautiful!â
He stood in the portal, paused. âIt is true,â he said. âIn a collar, you might become more beautiful. In a collar, a woman becomes far more beautiful.â
âGet out!â I cried. âGet out!â
âDo not be afraid,â he said. âAt least, not yet. This is a preliminary assessment. No decision has been made.â
âI am not afraid!â I said, trembling.
âWe may meet again,â he said.
âGet out!â I cried.
He then turned about, and left. Behind him he had closed the door, quietly. I heard him descend the stairs, his step placid and measured.
I then turned about, and bent over the desk, distraught, clinging to it. My thigh hurt where I had stumbled against the wood. I would probably, shortly, have a bruise there. Perhaps it was there already. After a few minutes I had become far more calm. I had very little sense of what had just occurred. Had I called the police what could they have done? What could I have told them? Was I hysterical? Was I the victim of some delusion? Had I misunderstood some brief unpleasantness, or misremembered it? Was I not making much out of little, or nothing? Might they not credit my account to some aberration? I did not know the man. I had never seen him before. I presumed that I would never see him again. He was not in our records. He was not a client, even a prospective client. There was no name, and even the description might have fit any number of large men. I had sensed an accent, but was not even sure of that.
And I was beautiful, very beautiful!
I had planned to go to the beach the next day.
Would I do so?
When I went to the beach, it was not to swim, but to relish the sun, the warm sand, the sight of the water and sky, the crowd, the sound of the surf, and sense the impression one such as I would make in such a milieu, on the young men, so many of them furtive and diffident, so frightened to be noticed in their noticing. How ashamed my culture had made so many of them to be male. Was that not to be a secret, denied even to oneself? In my