"There's some wet on me," Elise said softly. Perhaps it was Miguel's splashing earlier. Sigrid paid no attention to what she said; she continued with her nostalgic reverie about the time when pleasure for her was more pure, less corrupted by inhibition and less tainted by paranoia. She was talking of Zizi, Sigrid's great mistress and teacher in the ways of pleasure.
"Zizi could bring pleasure to a man with her eyes," she said. "None of this messy dealing with bodies and fluids, no untidy exchanges -- just a pure gift she would give him with a look, she would open her eyelids slowly, let her long eyelashes twitter a little, and then her eyes would moisten visibly, suggesting more intimately than imaginable the moistness of her vulva, and then the opening and closing of her eyes would appear like the parting of her labia; the gentle sound her soft eyes would make in blinking would echo the sound of her labia leaving wet kisses on the man's cock; or at least that is what he would have to imagine.
"There was a hypnotism in her languid stare, that offered both surrender and ultimate mastery. Some say it is because her eyes were both green and blue; but I say it was because she offered her soul completely, I mean it's secret and lustful animality of course, she offered that in those looks -- the men came immediately, uncontrollably, often before they could get their cocks out of their pants to prevent ruining their expensive trousers. Oh, Elise, it was different then for me, when she would look at me with that intensity, and I would shudder all over and feel weak in my knees, with a floating in my stomach and a pull in my womb, and any resistence I might ever have felt at giving myself over to Zizi, over to her completely would melt -- in my mind I fancied a solid block of icy resistance in me melting, and that fluid would flood between my legs, bursting the dam of my virginal resistance. . . ."
Elise felt lost in a haze of heat and metaphor. She and Sigrid were under an umbrella in the gazebo on Sigrid's country estate, and all was quiet save for the sound of Sigrid's gentle voice coursing through her ears. She did not feel so alluring, though she had dressed herself as Sigrid requested, with the tight fitting bodice, the arm length white gloves, and the short skirt without panties underneath. She longed to look at Sigrid with Zizi's look, that is what she wanted to learn. She looked at her now with her ordinary eyes, and her ordinary desire.
Sigrid had hair so blond as to be nearly white cut page-boy style, the crisp line of her bangs framing her rich blue eyes and her aqualine nose. Her mouth was full, her lips sumptuous and tender. The lines of her taut neck led Elise's eyes irresistably to her firm, even breasts, which now held her rapt attention. She gazed at them longingly, trying to arouse the nipples with the intensity of her desire to show themselves through the fabric of her sweater.
Elise felt herself inadequate to such beauty, though she had often pleased herself while gazing at herself in her full length mirror, surveying her youthful, compact body. Her black hair was short and spiky when dry, but when she came naked from the shower, with her hair still wet, she looked just like a little boy who needed a trim. It was then she would go to her mirror and look at herself, and think, I am like a little boy. She would hide her breasts in her folded arms, and turn to the side and look herself over, thinking irrationally, I am a little boy, and little boys like to play.
She would look at herself the way she liked to look at boys, at their staight, lithe bodies, tensile, ready to spring. Then she would run her hands feverishly over her breasts, half thinking she could flatten them, and half surrendering to the wonderful pleasure her strokes gave her. And then she would do the same with her hips, wishing away the curves even as the smooth feels of them sent waves of delight all through her. A tumble of confused thoughts and impressions would overcome her, and she would turn her back to the mirror, but before leaving it she would take a last glance over her shoulder at her back side, and touching her ass she could pretend her hands were the hands of a little boy, with delicate little fingers, and she would forget in her fantasy whether she was the little boy looking at her beautiful girlish body, or if she was the women, touching the taut, yet giving flesh of the little boy's rear end, knowing of course that she had somehow become both at once, and it was this realization that brought her to the final ecstacy.
Sigrid told her that her that this was good, that giving oneself to oneself, to the mirror image of oneself was an important step on the enlightened path. She said you must make love to the image of yourself that you see in order to defeat and transcend that image. But now she was talking about Zizi, about the legend.
"Of course Zizi only looked at me that way to show me, to teach me; she didn't mean to send me into spasms, into paroxysms of pleasure. I wanted to learn her mastery over men; I thought still that such was the way to true fulfillment. Sometimes I still believe it. Perhaps we should summon Gregor." She put the whistle between her thick lips and blew. Gregor, wearing only his white silk loincloth, came scampering over the hill and approached the gazebo. "Look at him, so eager and attentive," Sigrid remarked. "His life had been confused before, filled with the unruly conflicts of the desires for self and the desire for pleasure. It was easy to break through him." He stole into the gazebo and stood before their table gazing at his bare feet on the concrete.
"Gregor!" Sigrid barked, and his face reddened, helpless he was to halt his embarrassment. "I can see you under your loincloth," she continued sternly. "You see Elise how pathetically eager he is, and how quickly he links servitude and satisfaction in his little mind." Sigrid snapped her long fingers, and immediatey Gregor dropped to his knees. He blushed at his own excitement. "Elise, would you like him to eat you?"
A pensive shimmer crossed Elise's face. When Sigrid had Gregor perform tricks for them, he amused and incited her, but the tortuous workings of his tongue on her had always left her strangely cold. She felt she should enjoy it, as a compliment to Sigrid's training, but as he worked his tongue in and out of her shaft, she always found herself thinking of other things, about the ripples of sunlight reflecting on the pool, or about the quality of the smell of heather in the breeze. The last time Gregor ate her, she had grown impatient, and kicked him away as he worked at her with the heel of her leather boot.
Perhaps this had pleased Sigrid, perhaps that had been a test she had passed successfully, to let go of the more obvious routes to pleasure to strike out in search of more exquisite ones. "Pleasure is not a quantity," Sigrid had taught her, "pleasure is not even a quality. It is a flash of time, a plastic moment that expands and explodes, incomparable as it is uncontrollable." Elise's Maoist training bristled at first at the rejection of quantities, but she had realized now that Maoism had finally brought her very little pleasure.
