I submit to Benjamin. My greatest desire is to please him. I have no secrets from him.
Mary Jane traced her hands over the words she had written the night before. The more she read the words, repeated them to herself, and let her mind wander into the implications of those few sentences--the truer they seemed. It was a game, this dance with the intoxicating feeling of powerlessness. But that did not make it any less real.
She was sitting up in bed, notebook in hand, willing herself to begin writing in it. Write down her desires, he had told her. Interrogate her arousal, peel back the layers, then bare it all for him. It was a daunting task.
She brought the pencil to the paper. "Last night," she began to write, "I thought about what it would be like if Benjamin had me at his apartment and had his way with me." Her hand trembled slightly with the thrill of admitting it. Would her desires be the right ones for him, she wondered? Did she want what she was supposed to want?
"He laid me out on top his dining room table and tied my hands and feet to the legs of the table," she continued. "He blindfolded me and stuffed a piece of cloth in my mouth so I couldn't talk." She began to be aroused just by writing the words. Focus, she told herself. "He took a pair of scissors and cut my clothes away so I was naked. Then he touched me--" She began to write this last sentence, then crossed it out and began again. For she had neglected something that, on greater analysis, seemed important. "Then he left the room," she corrected herself. "He left me there helpless to wait for him. Then he came back and touched me. He stroked me and squeezed me, and I loved that he was enjoying me." She looked down at the words. She supposed that the scene would have gone on longer in real life, but that was as far as her mind had gotten last night before she had brought herself to orgasm. She thought she ought to share this with Benjamin as well. "Then I had an orgasm," she wrote.
What else was there, she wondered? What else might she have written if she had thought about it further? She wrote a heading, "Other things I might like," on the next line. She thought she might begin by writing things that she'd already enjoyed, that she knew she liked from her previous relationships. She wrote, "I like it when a man buys me nice things to wear. I like looking nice for him." This much was true, she knew. "I like it when he holds my chin when he kisses me," she wrote on the next line.
But there were deeper desires than that, she knew, fantasies that dipped into the realm of the grotesque, the bizarre. "I've thought before about being Rapunzel locked in a tower," she wrote "except it's a man, and he comes and has his way with me whenever he wants to." She probed her memory, picking out other fantasies. There was a strange thrill in revealing what had been so long repressed, like confessing her sins to a priest. "I've had another fantasy about being a mermaid in a tank, and scientists are coming to study me." Anything else, she wondered? "I had a professor when I was at Barnard, a French professor. I used to fantasize about him drilling me in my French conjugations, and punishing me if I got an answer wrong."
On the last few lines of the page, she wrote one more sentence, remembering that Benjamin had also told her to tell him anything that was off limits. "Off limits: don't let anyone else know." After further consideration, she added another sentence. "Don't get me pregnant."
She tore the paper out of her notebook, folded it in half, and stuck it inside her purse, along with the note she had written to herself last night. She began prepping herself for work. She took the curlers out of her hair, did her makeup, clipped herself into her fitted undergarments, and took twenty minutes deciding what to wear (she finally settled on a lime green polyester dress with a matching cardigan). Her lipstick that day was a deep pink, and she dabbed perfume on her wrists as she departed.
"Seeing anyone special today?" Sally asked as she caught a whiff of her perfume on her way to the kitchen.
"Yes, as a matter of fact," said Mary Jane, but she swept out the door before Sally could ask any more questions.
***
At 12:15, Mary Jane knocked on the door of Benjamin's office. He greeted her with a broad smile, beckoned her inside, and locked the door behind them. It was a small room, but it was bright, with a big skylight window that illuminated the bookshelves that filled each wall from the ceiling to the floor. There were books in so many languages that Mary Jane lost track--French, German, Russian, Arabic, and even some languages she did not recognize. "How are you?" He asked.
"Good," Mary Jane responded automatically, setting her purse down on the chair across from his desk.
He approached her and put a hand on her waist. She felt its warmth anchor her. "No," he said, "it was an actual question. How do you feel? I want to know."
She considered this. "I'm very excited. I enjoyed last night a lot. But I'm a little embarrassed for you to see what I've written. I've never showed these fantasies to anyone before."
He smiled. "I thought you might be. That's part of the point, of course. I want to see you a little uncomfortable. Thank you for sharing your thoughts with me."
Mary Jane gave an awkward smile. She was not sure what she was supposed to do next, so she looked down at the floor and waited for Benjamin's next instructions. He went over to the window and closed the blinds, then returned to her.
"Ready?" His hand hooked around the back of her neck.
"Yes," she breathed.
"Yes what?" The hand tightened.
"Yes, Benjamin," Mary Jane remembered.
Benjamin smiled. "Good. Stand over in front of that bookshelf, in the center of the room, facing me." She did so. He leaned against his desk, looking at her up and down. "Take off your clothes."
"Yes, Benjamin." With trembling fingers, Mary Jane unzipped the side of her dress and slipped it over her shoulders. She took off her shoes, inched her pantyhose down her legs, and began undoing the clasps of her bodice.
As she undressed for him, he watched her with casual attentiveness. She felt his eyes peruse the curves and folds of her body. He twirled a pen in his hands absentmindedly, and began a conversation while she was mid-way into taking off her dress. "Tell me more about what you were telling me last night. How you discipline yourself."
She finished taking off the brassiere. "Well, how I dress, for starters. How I make my body look like it's supposed to look." As she said the words, she felt her flesh realign, betraying all those persistent, fleshy imperfections that the undergarment had smoothed over so cleverly--the fat around her stomach, the sagging in her breasts. She held the brassiere in her hands. "It makes me sit up straighter, reminds me to keep my legs crossed."
Benjamin's eyes traveled over the hills and valleys of Mary Jane's bare chest, and for a moment he seemed lost in thought. "Who was it that taught you," he wondered aloud, "that that's how your body was supposed to look?" He walked up to her and ran a finger over each breast in turn as she considered the question. He seemed to be taking it all in, every patch of skin he touched.
"I...well, no one taught me, really," she stumbled, keenly aware of each movement of his finger over the contours of her breast. "It's everywhere, isn't it? Every magazine I look at, every time I turn on the TV." Benjamin had moved his finger upwards and was tracing lines around her neck. "Everything that tells us what normal is," she continued, with effort. "What's common sense."
"Yes," he took in her answer. "Yes!" He took a small notebook and pencil out of his pocket and began scribbling something. "I'm writing it down," he explained, "what you just said. So I remember it later." Mary Jane blushed, flattered. He picked up the brassiere and examined it. He let out a small laugh. "This looks like it's from 1956!" He fixed his gaze on her. "You know, a lot of women don't wear these kinds of things anymore. Why do you?"
Mary Jane did not have a good answer. "I..." she faltered, "I don't know."
He ran his finger down the middle of her chest, between her breasts, down the length of her stomach. He grasped the flesh of her stomach, on the front and the sides. Embarrassed that there was enough flesh there to fill his hands, Mary Jane drew away reflexively. "I'm sorry," she said on impulse.
Benjamin's brow furrowed. "I never asked you to apologize," he said. An unmistakable harshness crept into his tone. "Why did you apologize?"
For the imperfections of her body, Mary Jane thought--that was why. Because her body did not look like the bodies of women from magazines or on the television. Because it had the audacity, the impertinence, to swell in places it was not supposed to, around her stomach and her thighs. "I..." she hesitated. "I should go to the gym more often, I know," she finished despairingly.
At this, he took hold of her hair and, with a firm, steady grip, forced her head back so that she was looking up at him. "That's for me to decide," he told her. "Or do you not trust me to know a beautiful woman when I see one?"
Mary Jane inhaled sharply. Benjamin's grip on her hair focused her mind entirely on his face, as if there were nothing else in the world. "I do trust you," she said.
His grip tightened, pulling painfully on her scalp. "When you submit to me, your body is mine. And I don't want you insulting my possessions. Do you understand?"
She gasped, "Yes, Benjamin!"
He let go of her hair. He turned away from her, paced the room as if considering something, and turned back. "All those things," he said slowly, as if coming up with each new idea as he spoke it. "All those things you said told you how your body is supposed to look. The TV set, the magazines. I want you to take a deep breath and let go of them. Go ahead, take a deep breath." Mary Jane obeyed. She tried to do as he said: to let go of all those outside influences and focus only on Benjamin, right here and now. She was not sure she had succeeded. He approached her and ran a hand through her hair. "From this moment on," he continued, "the only discipline you submit to is mine. I tell you how your body is supposed to look, how it's supposed to act, how it's supposed to feel. And I say that it is perfect the way it is. Everything about it is pleasing to me."
Mary Jane gave a surprised smile. "Thank you, Benjamin."
As if reading her thoughts, he said, "You don't have to believe me. But that is what I would like you to practice thinking."
She nodded. "Yes, Benjamin."
He returned to his desk and sat behind it. He took out a yellow folder, a blank sheet of paper, and a ballpoint pen. "Finish taking your clothes off for me," he said offhand. She obeyed, slipping her underwear down her legs and revealing the neatly trimmed hair underneath. "Now, I'm going to jot down some basic information for my files, alright?" The edges of his lips curled into a smile.
"Yes, Benjamin."
"You'll stay right where you are and keep your posture straight. Hands at your sides. Feet shoulder width apart. Shoulders relaxed."
"Yes, Benjamin." Mary Jane adjusted her posture as he had instructed. She felt her skin prickle as he watched her do it. She was keenly aware that every small adjustment in her body was on display for him.
He twirled the pen around in his hand. "Age?"
"Twenty Five."
