As She's Told

by Anneke Jacob

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  As She’s Told – Anneke Jacob

  It was mid-afternoon by the time they put the ladder and the tools back in the truck and headed west. The rest of the crew was working on a restaurant renovation on Roncesvalles. "Still obsessing, huh?" said Val.

  He stared straight ahead, then shrugged irritably. "Yeah. Controlling bastard doesn't begin to describe it. Why the fuck I feel this way I don't know."

  "Couldn't say. Usually you act as though the world is a reno for which you hold all the tools."

  "Do I?" He grimaced. "I've been missing a few from time to time, then."

  "Yeah, like when?" He didn't answer. "You make things go your way, Thygesen. I've never seen anyone better at it." She was silent for a minute or two. "What are you talking about, that homeless thing that got turned down?

  That's politics, bucko, get used to it. Or take it out of Maia's hide; whatever."

  Anders frowned, sorry he'd said anything. She gave him a sidelong look.

  "Not the homeless thing." He didn't answer. "Oh, well," she said, "I guess even you can't nail everything down."

  "Yeah, I'm aware of that." A corrosive trickle threaded its way through familiar channels. Damn Val! He gave his thoughts a practiced twist, and was instantly back with Maia. Traffic was down to a slow crawl. He swung into an unfamiliar side street and cursed at the sight of speed bumps. A long one-way street and no escape. Slowing, he began easing over them, so gently that the pipes and tools in the back didn't even clink. The friction was all in his head. Suddenly he was fed up with the fervid, repetitive thoughts, sick of himself.

  "You know," he said, "if you look at all this from some kind of normal perspective, what the hell am I doing? Look at me. I need to know her every move, don't trust her for a minute, don't let her use her own body as she likes. I want to know who she's with and where she goes. That kind of thing's usually the unlovely lead-up to a restraining order. How would anyone know I'm not some crazy stalker?" And he hadn't even included holding her down and beating her.

  "Oh, bullshit," said Val.

  "I was like this with Janice. Sometimes. It was what broke us up in the long run. I never could be satisfied with the level of control she was willing to give me.”

  “Maia's not Janice. As you are perfectly aware."

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  Anders went on as if he hadn't heard her. "And you know, most other doms seem to be happy with power that's basically psychological. Promises, negotiations, a dominant/submissive quid pro quo. Some blow jobs and a St.

  Andrew's cross whipping on Saturday night. That feels like nothing but games to me, but is it?"

  Val rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest. "Don't go by me, I love games." Evidently his question had been rhetorical. "Or am I missing something? Am I just lacking the – the what? The subtlety and sophistication, to appreciate dominance by force of will, hardware optional?"

  "For fuck's sake, Thygesen. Whatever turns your crank. If you want to chain your woman to the wall, do it."

  "Thanks, I probably will." Anders edged the truck around a corner onto Queen and swore again, finding himself in traffic that was at a complete standstill. He threw up his hands in resignation, folded long arms over the steering wheel and stared through the windshield for a while before he spoke again. "I have to admit, it's been fun controlling Maia without restraints.

  More fun than I expected. It's challenging, seeing how far I can go that way, watching the pattern develop."

  "Oh. So you might have a bit of class after all? Not just a simple-minded thug?"

  "Nah, I'm simple enough. Lately I keep flashing on hardware, nothing but hardware, and her in it. I play with the possibilities whenever I'm doing something routine; you know, driving, laying tiles, waiting in line to pay for something. And Home Depot's a killer, all that stuff usable in ways it wasn't intended for."

  Val cracked up. "We spend half our lives in hardware stores! You're obviously in the right line of work." She laughed at him until his face fell back into its preoccupied lines, and then she stopped. "You're not a stalker, you know. You're not abusing her.”

  “I know."

  "You've got the girl's consent. More than consent. She's begging to be taken over."

  He was silent for a while. "You know what I used to do? Read about real abusers in the paper. Books, too. So I could watch for the edge. So I could be sure I wasn't one of them.”

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  “What edge? It's qualitatively different, not just a difference of degree.

  You know that as well as I do.”

  “Yes.”

  “What, do you see some resemblance? That isn't superficial, I mean."

  "No. I understand who she really is. I have a care for her well-being. For the real Maia, not some projection of my own deficiencies."

  "All right. So cut the crap."

  He got the truck moving again. "I'm just provoking myself. Over-dramatizing. Annoying myself. Something I do rather well when I'm on edge. Sorry."

  He found a clear bit of road and moved down it, no one on his front bumper for once. "But it's also no use pretending that I don't need what I need. Which is Maia, in my hands, right now. If I drop you off at the restaurant, would you supervise the cleanup? I have to get downtown."

  ***

  Eyes down, I left my last class and sidled through the crowds to the door. As I had all day I avoided everyone, ducking around a cluster with Po Ling in the middle of it, dodging her eagle eye. I'd already had to shake my head at her and two others who'd asked if something was wrong. I'd also had to dodge some oncoming males, including one I barely knew who accompanied me down the hall with an arm around me and pretended it was a joke. What the hell signals was I giving out? Not hard to guess.

  I still could think of very little but the sensations of the day before, of Anders' hard hands driving me up the stairs, of the pain and burn as he struck me. The endless arousal felt like a crazy and unstable weight, balanced precariously atop a freight of misery and guilt over one screw-up after another. Plus the certainty of upcoming failure. Would I fail the exam, or fail Anders? Either way, both.

  I walked out the door and there he was. A vision, straight out of my needy and possibly hallucinatory brain. Propped against a truck that glowed like ruddy sunset against the thin grey day. His jacket was open over a black t-shirt, though a scalpel wind was slicing up from the lake. I crossed the sidewalk to him like a sleepwalker heading for trouble, my feverish face cooling in the wind.

  He had a good look at me and put a hand on my arm. Not a mirage after all, apparently. I tried not to squirm as he opened the door to the truck and 89

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  watched me get in. He went round to the driver's seat.

  "You managed, didn't you?"

  "Sir?"

  "You managed not to come."

  "Yes." Should I tell him how close a call it had been?

  "That's my good girl." He squeezed my knee, and I took a shuddering breath. "But you've had a rough day."

  "It was – I'm sorry, sir – I was late all day – I kept messing up – " He listened to the details, then ran a finger along my thigh and watched me react.

  "Have you been like this all day?"

  "All night, all day…" I whispered.

  "And you have work to do tonight." He sat back. "All right. Although you've managed to keep your hand out of your cunt, you haven't been a very good girl otherwise, have you?"

  I winced, dropped my eyes. "No, sir.”

  “So I don't think I'll be particularly nice about this. Buckle up."

  Apprehensive, I watched to see where we were going. North, so not to his place, nor to mine. Not a word to enlighten me. He drove only as far as mid-town off Yonge, and turned into a parking garage. The truck spiraled up several levels, then stopped in a far, mostly empty corner.

  "Okay," he said, t
urning off the ignition. "I saw you looking at the gear shift last night. So I cleaned it up for you. Get to it."

  I stared at him, my mind going utterly blank. He unbuckled my seatbelt.

  "Come on, girl. You've got – let's see – five minutes. If you can't do it in that time you're out of luck. Take off your panties."

  I felt my chest and then my face start to burn, right up to the roots of my hair. I stared at the gearshift, then back at him. He meant it. Oh, god, he meant it. He really wanted me to do it. I couldn't bear it. I could hardly wait.

  I couldn't bear it.

  My brain could have stayed in that loop for hours. My body bypassed it and just did what it was told. I raised myself up a little and slid my panties off, turned myself around and stood awkwardly, butt against the dashboard, leaning over the seat. He shifted to one side and helped me position myself over the knob. I lowered myself and gasped as my cunt lips splayed over the black plastic. My legs were trembling. He raised the front of my dress so he 90

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  could see, and looked at his watch.

  "You've only got four minutes left. Better move." My shaking hands were braced, one on the seat, the other on his shoulder, and I began to rock my pelvis. My wet flesh slid and pressed, and I bit my lip and shuddered.

  "Raise your head, look at me." He pushed the hair back from my face and I looked at him through the haze. "This is how bad girls get to come," he said. "When they get to come at all. Isn't that right?"

  "Ah – ah – yes, sir –"

  My cunt opened around the knob, almost big enough to take it inside of me, and I groaned and fucked myself on it gently before pulling back. Then my clit pressed itself against the plastic. I stared at him: my lover, my tormentor. I was very close; it hadn't taken much. The hot smell of my arousal filled the cab.

  His head swiveled, fast, and then back. "Get down, girl." He was laughing under his breath as he pushed me off the gearshift. Footsteps coming our way. Huddled sideways on the seat, skirt down, my breath sobbed in and out of me. Between my legs a hot, painful throbbing. So close…. Anders wrapped the long fingers of one hand round both my wrists, and squeezed. A couple passed behind us, weighed down with something large, directing each other. They loaded up a van only a few spaces away, taking their time. At last they started up and drove away. I looked up at him in agony, tears in my eyes.

  "Please…please, sir….”

  “You'd like to keep going, would you?”

  “Yes!"

  "All right. That interruption stopped the clock. You've still got a minute or so left. Make the most of it."

  I positioned myself and began again, faster this time, moving urgently, feeling the seconds ticking down, aware of him watching my lewd, humiliating performance. Terrified he'd make me stop. And then suddenly at my centre there was a flash, like a thunderstorm in fast forward, billows of it, ecstatic, extreme, agonizing. I screamed in a hard whisper, shoved my wet flesh against the knob, released and then shoved forward harder, shaking and crying.

  When I began to sag he moved me gently off the gearshift and down to the truck floor, where I huddled, getting my breath.

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  His thumb circled under my eyes, wiping away tears. I kissed his hand, and we sat there in silence for a minute or two.

  "Well?" he said.

  What was my response supposed to be? Had I just been punished or rewarded? Evidently this was how bad girls got to come, so I was still a bad girl, though an intensely grateful one. I pressed his hand to my face. "Thank you, sir…I'm sorry I was bad…thank you….”

  “You didn't deserve to come, under the circumstances. I expect you to function properly in the future, horny or not." I swallowed some tears. "I'll try, sir."

  "But as you're new at this I gave you a break." He sat back. "Now, look at this, girl. I can't use the gearshift in this condition."

  I looked up at him. Then I swiped at the tears on my face, raised my head to the gearshift and began to lick it clean.

  When I was done he shifted to the passenger side and opened his fly.

  There was no time limit on his pleasure; he made me suck him for a long, long time. And this was right, like some piece of the natural order; as much a given as the laws of physics.

  That night for some reason I thought about my first year Chaucer course, and Patient Griselda, a peasant woman married to a lord who tested her cruelly. "I am thine owen thing; werketh after thy will," she had said.

  The story didn't quite fit the bill (I could trust Anders not to become a psychopathic asshole like the Marquis), but the words rang true. I was Anders' own thing, and whatever he wanted he could do.

  ***

  >This sounds not a mistake at all, in fact very hot. And she seems to be shaping well. What is your difficulty?

  >Too close to failure; that's the difficulty. I pushed her out to the edge and left her to her own resources, pushed her too far. She had nothing left to function with. That can't last. Which puts my control at risk. Which neither of us can tolerate.

  >Not every woman can be controlled in this way; you are lucky.

  >I'm more than lucky, but she was right on the verge. Willpower alone isn't going to do it. I'll have to ease back a little for now and look at more strategies to manage her. What is the word on that German guy; any good?

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  >Tante Margit heard from Svend finally; he is in Brighton, crewing on some friend's sailboat.

  >That figures. I haven't heard from him since that postcard from Dublin. He told my mother he'd email from internet cafes; he didn't tell her he'd do it once in six months. Drives her crazy.

  >It's an elder brother thing, I think.

  >Bullshit my friend. You joke about Mormor, but of all her grandchildren you are the one who is cast most in that mold. The high, shall we say rigid standards, the wilful self-reliance that gives only and will not take, these are the warp and weft of her personality. Of yours, at least the weft; the warp is kink, I suppose.

  >Uh huh.

  >Has Ria made up her mind about Chicago?

  >She will come, she says, but not until six months to finish the fisherwoman documentary. Including editing, promotion and all. I could not persuade her that Lake Michigan would stand in for the North Sea. And all her support is here and not enough money to go back and forth. When it is done she will come.

  >Too bad, Karl. But better than nothing.

  >Unless some slave wins her heart. We are never jealous but I can feel the danger.

  >I know what you mean. Hell, I'm uneasy when my girl is five kilometres away. Though that's a little different.

  >Get a good phone plan, and definitely a webcam. You'll share your exploits like always. I know; write your thesis on the influence of network technology on long-distance kinky relationships, using lots of personal examples. That should get you tenure.

  ***

  The next evening Anders showed up at Maia's door with fiddle in hand and a tape measure in his pocket. He'd promised (or threatened) a little theory lesson way back at the folk club. But first he stripped her and measured her all over, keeping notes, explaining nothing. She stood still and followed his every move, eyes wide, jumping at the flick of the tape measure between her legs, on her ass.

  He was much more communicative about the characteristics of various fiddle styles. With Maia naked at his feet, he demonstrated some different 93

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  kinds of bowing, and showed her ornamentation and where to place the accents for, say, Cape Breton as opposed to Québécois. She picked up rapidly on the relationships, one style emerging from another, surprising him with her quick comprehension.

  "I know some theory," she admitted shyly.

  "You took music?"

  "Piano lessons. Just for a year. I was hopeless at it. Theory was the only part I could do.”

 
; “Well, you've got a good ear," he said. "Listen, now."

  He illustrated some more, using Acadian and Cajun, Irish and Newfoundland. Then he confused her with some rather odd Scandinavian pieces.

  When he moved from phrases to full-length songs there was a tap at the door. Maia scooped up her clothes and ran for the bathroom.

  The Silvas stood in the doorway with smiles on their faces, asking to come in and listen. Maia emerged, shyly arranged chairs, offered tea, and whisked the measuring tape into a drawer. Anders played a few bars of this and that, traded friendly remarks and fished around for what they might like to hear. Mr. Silva broke into an old folk song from his youth, his wife nodding vigorously and joining in on the chorus; Anders improvised an accompaniment. Then another song, and another. Mrs. Silva went downstairs and returned with wine and sweet rice pudding. In between songs they discussed the construction business and Azores cuisine.

  Mrs. Silva turned to Maia and took her small wrist in a heavy, friendly grip. "You come downstairs tomorrow," she insisted; "I teach you sopa de couves. A very good soup, and is easy; you will see. You have to feed up this man here, yes?" She turned to Anders for support; she'd been trying to get Maia into her kitchen for a year.

  He glanced at Maia's embarrassed face, already shaking a negative. The girl seemed to be attracting instructors today. He wouldn't have minded a cooking lesson himself, but he was busy. If Maia hadn't been so busy herself he would have made her do it just to tease her.

  "She has so much schoolwork, poor girl," he said. "Her professors won't take soup instead of assignments. Maybe they should, eh? But tell me, what goes into that soup, kale? And sausage? Is it like caldo verde?"

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  continued deftly diverting the landlady's attention to himself, and at last she seemed to accept with some puzzlement that it was he, not Maia, who was the cook. By the time he went home, Anders had been provided with half a coconut cake, the recipe for sopa de couves, and an excellent deal on floor tiles.