A Bestiary of Unnatural Women (14 page)

He looked happy with that. “I won’t miss
hearing you whimper in pain.”

“Then it’s a deal.”

She felt like he deserved some kind of
explanation. “My thesis is well under way so I don’t need to
experience torture so frequently any more. More important, I’ve
come to the realization that the game that we’ve been playing is
nothing like the real torture that political prisoners are
suffering. You and me, we always knew that we had limits. There was
no way to force ourselves beyond them. You would have had to force
me onto the horse around the clock, would have had to disrupt my
sleep cycles by waking me up in the middle of the night and forcing
me to mount up. I couldn’t have taken that kind of real torture and
would have refused. I don't have any illusions about that.
Actually, a big part of my thesis is about misconceptions of
torture in the public mind and I understand that a lot better now.
Thank you.”

After that conversation, Trevor thought that
he would never have to ask Cindy to mount her horse again. He was
surprised to find that she wanted to keep the horse in her living
room; and, even more surprised when every couple of months, she
reminded him that she had never revoked her original promise by
whispering in his ear, “I bet there’s something extra special that
you’d like me to do for you. Something that I won’t be willing to
do until I’ve had a bit of a ride on the Devil’s horse.”

And she was always right. Every time he saw
her mount her wooden horse, he was always inspired to think of
something extra special that she could do for him. As he exercised
his imagination more, he found that he was surprising himself as
much as her with his devilish ideas.

And she always let him know how much she
loved him for it.

But is that what happened? Could an
intelligent woman live happily ever after with her torturer? Maybe
in the real world, things would have gone differently that second
week in December. Maybe it ended like this:

The second Wednesday in December, Trevor came
home and found her sitting on her sofa in the living room, crying
quietly. She made almost no noise but a river of tears flowed down
her cheeks.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” she replied.

“You’re crying,” he said, inanely.

“I know.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. I just started crying and I
can’t stop.”

He left her alone and started supper, filling
the stockpot with water and pouring a can of spaghetti sauce into a
saucepan. After he set the water to boiling and the sauce to
warming, he came back to the living room, sat down beside her and
held her while her tears soaked into his tee shirt.

She ate no spaghetti, claiming to have no
appetite, and went to bed early to cry herself to sleep.

He awoke to find her preparing breakfast –
bacon and eggs. She seemed cheerful enough and ate with good
appetite. But, after she cleared the dishes away, she demolished
his world. “We have to stop seeing each other. I want you to move
back into your own apartment this morning.”

In practical terms, moving out would be easy.
He had never officially moved in with her. Though he spent most
nights in her bed, he still had his own apartment and kept most of
his clothes and books there. In emotional terms, moving out would
be wrenching. He had been planning to move in with her full time
and give up his apartment after Christmas.

“Are you breaking up with me?” he asked,
trying to pretend that he did not understand the obvious.

“Yes. I can’t see you any more.”

“Why?”

“Because you have been torturing me.”

“Hey! That’s not fair! I only did that
because you asked me to do it. I never wanted to do it. I don’t
have to do it any more. We’ll just throw that horse in the garbage
and that’ll be the end of your experiment.”

“Please don’t make this any harder than it
has to be. You don’t know how hard this is for me. If I stay around
you any longer, I’m going to be destroyed.”

“Don’t send me away. We can go back to the
way we were. I won’t hurt you ever again.”

“That’s the problem. We can’t go back. The
bell can’t be unrung. I’ve changed. You’ve changed. Even if we
pretend to be the same, we aren’t. All that torture will always be
there between us.”

“It doesn’t have to be. You’ll see.”

“No. You have to see. I’m suffering from
full-blown classical post-traumatic stress disorder. I’ve been
suffering from it for weeks. I’m not sleeping. When I do sleep, I
have nightmares about being tortured. Every night. I spend hours
looking at this horse, dreading the next time I have to mount it. I
listen constantly for your hand on the door, for your footstep in
the apartment, knowing that all time you’re here, I’m only a minute
away from agony. Even when we’re out together somewhere else, I’m
terrified that you’re going to lean over and whisper in my ear that
I’ll be taking a ride when I get home.”

“I’ve never done that to you?” he
protested.

“But you could,” she said. “When I’m at
school, I get flashbacks. I’ll be sitting in a seminar and
suddenly, I’ll feel like I’m mounted on the horse. Not just
remembering or imagining, but feeling like I’m really up there and
the seminar room is what’s imaginary. It’s horrible. People have
heard me crying out in class. You can’t understand until you’ve
experienced it. I never would have understood and I’m grateful that
you did this for me. But I can’t do it any more.

“On top of that, I’ve been experiencing
Stockholm syndrome in all its glory. Surely you’ve noticed that
I’ve been clinging to you, trying desperately to appease you.
Giving you sex constantly in order to keep you too busy to think
about torturing me. Trying to create a bond between us so deep that
you’ll take pity on me and let me stay off the horse. Don’t you
see? You have to leave because I want you to stay so desperately.
Stockholm syndrome isn’t fake. I’m not pretending to love you. I
love you as deeply and strongly as it is possible for a woman to
love a man because the reptile part of my brain believes that I
have to love you that much to survive. The sex is wonderful. My
libido has never been stronger and my orgasms have never been so
earthshaking as in the past few weeks. But that’s a symptom of an
emergent mental illness. My love is driven by terror, my lust
driven by horror. It’s not natural.

“You have to leave now. I’m going to spend a
week doing nothing but crying and mourning my loss because I love
you so. I’m going to sob and suffer. And then I’m going to climb on
a bus and spend Christmas with my parents trying to learn to be
normal again. And then when I come back here, I’m going to have to
accept that my life will never be normal again; that the best that
I can hope for is tolerable. And then I’m going to publish a series
of amazing papers about torture that will rock the field. I’ve
outlined a few ideas already and my thesis committee is enthralled.
They’re already talking about the possibility of turning my thesis
into a book and I haven’t even started writing it yet. I have you
to thank for that. Really, for the rest of my life, I’m going to be
grateful to you for what you have done. But I can’t see you again.
Ever. Do you understand? Please try to understand.”

She waited a long time for a response. He
thought about what she had said and hated to have to accept it. He
could argue, but that would be useless. Her mind was made up. She
was adamant that he had to leave. He could blame her and pile as
much guilt on her as he could, but that would do nothing for either
of them. He had to admit that she was right. He also had to admire
her for not once blaming him, not once accusing him of excess, not
once accusing him of enjoying torturing her. She had left it to him
to accuse himself. And he did. He knew that her unspoken
accusations were true. He not only liked forcing her to service him
in whatever sexual way he wished at any time he wished, he had come
to enjoy hearing her whimper, take pleasure in seeing tears welling
out of her eyes, love knowing that he had absolute power to punish
her at his whim. Three months ago, when he had put her on the
horse, he had suffered with her, had empathized with her pain. Now,
he no longer felt her pain. Now he could watch her sit in agony on
the horse while he sat on the sofa and felt not the slightest
twinge of discomfort.

Having nothing else to say, he said the only
thing that made any sense in the situation. “Mount the horse. But
leave the handcuffs off and don’t pull the stirrup up.”

Her head hanging in shame because she was
unable to refuse, she stood and disrobed in silence, then climbed
up on the device. As soon as she was settled into the saddle, he
said, “Pull your foot out of the stirrup and clasp your hands
behind your head.”

She began moaning in pain as soon as her
weight was resting on the hard maple ridge that followed the
contours of her crotch. But she made no move to put her foot back
into the stirrup nor to lower her hands from her neck.

It took almost half an hour for Trevor to
move all his clothes and books out to his car. By the time he was
finished, she was sobbing continuously. But she never made a move
to relieve her pain.

He left the key to the apartment on the
kitchen table and, as he walked out the door for the last time,
said, “You can stop the torture whenever you want. You always
could.”

She waited until she could no longer hear his
footsteps, could not even imagine hearing his footsteps, before she
lowered her hands, put her foot in the stirrup and dismounted the
horse for the last time.

She never saw Trevor again and worked hard to
avoid thinking about him. But she kept his wooden horse near at
hand for the rest of her life. It was appropriate furniture for a
woman who spent a long and successful academic career investigating
the nature of torture.

At the end of her career, she barely
remembered that it all happened because an old boyfriend had once
begged her to visit a certain museum in Amsterdam.

Notes from Roissy, Cleveland, Ohio

Sophia's Diary

Tuesday, 2 December 2008

This is my first diary entry ever. I have
been motivated to begin keeping a diary at the late age of
thirty-five only after reading my parents' diaries.

Two months ago, my parents, Gene and Emily
Robins, were killed by a drunk driver. I was could not bring myself
to begin sorting through their personal papers until last week.
What I found shocked me nearly senseless. I found a letter from my
mother to my father, dated 25 December 1972. Then I discovered that
both of them had kept diaries. The letter and entries from their
diaries during January 1973 and the first week of February 1973
tilted my world sideways.

These are my parents. They're not supposed to
know about things like this, much less do them. And they're
certainly not supposed to keep a record of their perverted games
for their unsuspecting daughter to find after their death. But, in
moments when I manage to distance myself from them, I love seeing
how strongly they were committed to each other.

They were two people in love

I don’t know if anyone will ever read my
diary – I guess I hope not – but I have to include copies of my
parents' documents with it because it helps me make sense of my
life.

Emily's Letter

Monday, 25 December 1972

Dear Gene:

In celebration of the tenth Christmas that we
have spent together, I offer a special gift to you.

For some time, I have been aware that you
keep “The Story of O” by Pauline Réage hidden in your workshop
behind your yellow toolbox. Judging from the amount of wear on the
edges of the pages, I can infer that you have read it a lot and,
though you have never said anything to me, I expect that you would
like to act out that fantasy.

I have already booked the first week in
February as vacation time and, over a period of five days from
Monday, 5 February until Friday, 9 February, I am designating our
home to be your private “Château Roissy”. I offer myself to be your
“O”.

To ensure that you are able to enjoy my gift
as fully as possible, I make my understanding of my condition
during those five days explicit as follows:

First, O’s most important condition is that
she is available for a man’s use for sex without reservation. She
allows any man in Roissy to use any orifice at any time and in any
way that he wishes without question, comment, or complaint. Because
this is your private Roissy, my availability is limited to you
(sorry no Jacqueline). And, in order that you may take your
pleasure from me more easily despite the shortcomings of human
anatomy, I beg to be permitted to apply artificial lubricant
liberally before some acts. Apart from that, I am prepared to
assume any position you ask and receive you however you desire.

Second, O’s unconditional availability is
shown by her clothing. Like her, I will wear no underclothes in
Roissy; my sex will be naked and my breasts unrestrained. When I
sit, no fabric will interpose itself between my rump and my resting
place. I have already purchased and modified a gown so that it will
lift and present my naked breasts to you. Its skirt may be raised
and secured to the waist in front and back to allow you unfettered
access to the lower regions of my body. I will remove from Roissy
all underwear, pants, and other restrictive clothing, leaving only
blouses with buttons down the front and loose skirts – clothes that
can be pushed aside or opened quickly. Thus, even if you allow me
to wear normal clothes, I must, for lack of alternatives, wear only
clothes that allow you constant, immediate access to any part of my
body.

Third, to further emphasize my availability
for your use, I will not cross my legs, allow my knees to touch
each other, cover my breasts with my hands, or allow my lips to
fully close in your presence. I will keep my eyes lowered and only
speak as required.