Playing Indians

"Let's play white people."

Those were the words that started it. Wasula said them to Mato in bed one night while staring pensively up at the sloped ceiling of their tipi.

"That's not funny," he told her.

"I know," she responded. "I wasn't joking."

Mato looked at Wasula askance. The two of them were recently married, and they had fallen deeply into lust with each other. They liked playing games with sex (the having-sex-outside game, the having-sex-with-mouths game, among others) and were looking for a new game. But this roleplay was not exactly what Mato had had in mind. His brow furrowed as he thought about the days and days he and his hunting party had spent hunting buffalo that were no longer there because the settlers had overhunted them. "What kind of fucked up game is that?" He exclaimed. "What do you want me to do, give you smallpox?" He made the last statement with tight-lipped grim humor.

"No! I don't know, I just thought..." Wasula trailed off.

Wasula collected her thoughts as she tried to articulate what she was feeling. She thought back to the conversation she had had earlier that day with her sister, who was married to a white fur trapper. "These white men," her sister had said, "they treat all their kin like 'property.' Their wives, their land, their animals. They live like they have no relatives." Her sister had said the word "property" in English with discernable derision. The alien and fearsome potency of the word stuck with Wasula. In Lakota culture, to reside on a piece of land meant to have a reciprocal relationship with it, not to have absolute dominion over it. To have children with a woman meant to enter into a kinship of mutual responsibility, not to subordinate her absolutely. To be someone else's property, to be totally and absolutely dominated, was a strange notion indeed.

And yet beneath the ominous haze of violence and fear--indeed, perhaps precisely because of it--there was a kernel of something erotic in the notion of property. Absolute power and absolute powerlessness. The idea of giving one's self up entirely, to live in one's body as if it were an object somebody else owned, enticed Wasula's fancy. The notion made her feel giddy, detached, incorporeal. It felt naughty, like playing with the laws of nature.

"I'm thinking about the white settlers, with their 'property,'" she told Mato finally. "Don't get me wrong, I hate it. The arrogance of it. But still...I sometimes wonder what it would be like."

"What what would be like?"

"To be someone else's property."

Mato shook his head. "Why would you ever want that?"

Wasula sighed. "I don't. I just wonder what it would be like. To be that powerless." She rolled over in bed, facing away from Mato as if to go to sleep. "If you don't want to that's fine."

Mato ran his hand over Wasula's shoulder, down the side of her back. He had to admit, it had occurred to him to wonder. What would it be like to be a white man? To live with the unimaginable hubris that you were entitled to own land, animals, and other people? He considered Wasula's body: the smoothness of her skin, the liquid texture of her hair, the pliant, supple contours of her slim frame. She made him feel powerful, but it had never occurred to him to think about her as his property. For a minute, he let the idea play across his imagination. To have her absolutely, without condition or responsibility; to give her his attention, or perhaps to ignore her, at his discretion; to hurt her, even, if he happened to feel like it. There was something decidedly perverse about it, but a stirring in his groin told him that he was not entirely unmoved by the idea.

"Alright," he said at last. "Let's try it."

***

Mato returned from his hunt the next day with a triumphal glow on his face and a buffalo carcass in tow. After days of coming back from the hunt empty-handed, the relief of bringing home a buffalo was palpable. A young female buffalo had taken mercy on them and given herself up to the hunting party, and it had been Mato who fired the shot that subdued her. The prospect of a hearty meal filled Mato's hungry stomach with anticipation as his hunting mates patted him on the back for his success. Wasula returned several hours later from the valley where she had been harvesting wild onions, and she saw immediately from Mato's expression that he had been successful on his hunt. Wasula's group of women gathered around the buffalo carcass, praised the hunters, and thanked the buffalo for her sacrifice.

Mato grinned at Wasula from across the group of friends, flicked his eyes deliberately to the left, then flicked them back. Wasula knew what the signal meant. Before Mato had asked Wasula's father's permission to marry her, the two of them used to sneak off together to a grove of trees about a mile away from the village, where they made love in secret. Now, even though they were married and their physical relationship was officially ordained, they still sometimes snuck off to the same spot. The danger of it excited them, the possibility that they might be caught. It was what had first caught Wasula's attention about Mato: his recklessness, the looseness of his interpretation of the rules. His roguish grin seemed to evoke endless possibilities. She raised her eyebrows and smiled back at him now, signaling to him that she understood his intent.

Mato left the group inconspicuously, and, a few minutes later, Wasula drifted away and started walking toward their secret spot. She reached the grove of trees a little while later and found Mato leaning against one of the trees with a mischievous smile.

"You can't come into this clearing without my permission," he told her casually.

"Why is that?"

"Because it's mine. It's my property." Mato tried to keep a straight face as he said the words, but he broke out into a grin.

Wasula giggled, playing along with the game. "Your property? I had no idea I was trespassing on something as sacred as that. What do I have to do to gain your permission to come in?"

Mato cocked his head. "Take your dress off," he ordered.

Wasula obeyed. She pulled her dress over her head and cast it onto the ground. Mato's eyes flicked over the familiar sight of his wife's body. All mine, he thought to himself. He tried to convince himself of it. This body, with its fragile beauty, is my property. Anything I want with it, I can do. But what did he want? "You may enter," he told her. She did so, ducking her head down shyly.

Mato gazed at Wasula with furious determination--her placid expression, her neatly braided hair. He reached out a finger and traced an invisible line, starting at her chin, traveling down her neck, then deliberately down the center of her chest. He traced another line around her left breast, another around her right breast, then another around her waist. Like a white man might chart lines on a map, he thought to himself, I am marking my property. Each place his finger touched seemed to abstract the flesh in front of him--instead of a woman, he saw a waist, a breast, a section of skin. He pressed his fingernail into the fleshy underbelly of her left breast, eliciting a gasp from Wasula and imprinting a minute patch of red onto her skin. Intrigued, he did it again. Wasula's eyes widened and she drew her breath in sharply. Mato returned to tracing lines on her body with his finger, this time, leaving a trail of red with his fingernail. Wasula moaned as he imprinted his marks onto her skin. How easy it was to elicit a reaction from her! He was curious to see what sounds he might draw out of her if he were to be rougher with his hands.

He reached his hand down and took hold of one of her braids, twisting it away from her head. Wasula cried out, and her hands went up to her hair as if to push Mato's hands away. Feeling guilty, he released her. "I'm sorry," he said. "I didn't really mean to hurt you."

"You can hurt me if you want," Wasula told him.

Mato looked at her, trying to gauge the seriousness of her offer. He decided to test the waters a little, to venture into her pain and see how she reacted. He reinforced his grip on her hair, and this time when Wasula's hands went up involuntarily to protect herself, he slapped them away. He loosened his grip, let her relax a split second, then tightened again, eliciting another cry. "You like this game?" He asked, jerking her head to the left, then to the right. "You like being my property to play with?"

Wasula gazed up at Mato in awe of the immediacy of his power. It was so effortless for him to give her pain in this position; he had only to tighten his grip on her hair to send her reeling. It made her keenly aware of his every movement, every slight adjustment he made with his hands. A deep, submissive current coursed through her veins. She felt as if she were dissolving into Mato, melting away. "I'm yours, Mato," she breathed. "Anything you want."

A strange, sadistic curiosity was creeping over Mato. What would her smooth, young skin look like if he hit it, he wondered? What futile expressions of resistance could he extract from her? As the thoughts occurred to him, however, he checked himself. After all, he loved his wife. This was the woman who took care of him, and who would take care of their children some day--Mato had to be able to look her in the eye the next morning. He was hesitant to give himself entirely to this experiment.

"Would you..." he hesitated, "would you be upset if I hit you right now?"

"No," Wasula replied immediately.

"Really? You mean it?"

Wasula's voice was unwavering. "Do it."

There it was: an affirmation not only of Wasula's willingness to be hurt, but her eagerness for it. Whatever reservations Mato had, it seemed that this was his chance to cast them aside, at least temporarily, and follow his instinct. "Alright then," he said. Holding her in place by her hair, he slapped her chest, hard, with his open hand. She cried out, and her eyes bulged. Mato slapped her again, this time on her thigh, noting as he did so the patch of red that appeared on her skin where his hand had made contact. She made as if to wriggle away, but he held her tightly and hit her twice, three times, four times, on her thigh. Wasula gasped, with a deep, desperate sincerity as the pain intensified with each blow. "Having any regrets?" He whispered, slapping her again on the chest and twisting her nipple roughly. "Do you still like being my property?"

"I do, I like it," Wasula gasped, then screamed as Mato dealt another stinging blow to her thigh.

"Good." Mato dealt three more blows in quick succession to Wasula's tender thighs. He admitted it to himself freely now, the sadism that was growing inside him. He wanted not only to dominate Wasula--he wanted to strip her of all composure, to beat her past speech, past tolerance. Was it right, this urge? Was it natural? Mato was not sure. But, just this once, he thought, he would let himself indulge it.

With calculated carelessness, Mato cast Wasula to the ground. She lay there face down, breathing heavily, waiting for his next assault. Mato knelt down and straddled her backwards, so that he had access to her legs and rear end and could hold her in place with his own legs. He surveyed the sight before him--Wasula's flesh, recumbent and vulnerable. With his face turned away from Wasula's head, it seemed to Mato as if these legs and buttocks, which twitched with such supple eagerness, could have been anyone's. They were abstract, raw material awaiting his domination.

Mato had brought with him a short length of rope. He took the rope out of his pocket now, looped it once around his hand, and brought it down like a whip on Wasula's rear end. She squealed and flinched, and a neat line of red appeared where Mato had hit her. Mato was pleased with the result. He struck Wasula again with the rope, this time more forcefully, and watched with a rush of power the involuntary shudder that rent her body. He hit her again on the same spot, then a third time, in quick succession. Again and again he brought the weapon across her limbs. Wasula cried out. She twitched and she thrashed, but Mato had her pinned down beneath his legs, and he was relentless with his blows. He beat her with a rhythm resembling sex, at first slow and steady, then accelerating to a fever pace. Wasula's complaints came deep and guttural, her breath in gasps. Mato, too, was flushed with exertion, overtaken by the thrill of dominance. He dealt a final, decisive blow across her rear end and dropped the rope, admiring his handiwork. Wasula's legs and buttocks bore the marks of each slash of the rope, indexed on her brown skin in a network of red lines. Where her muscles had originally been taut with anticipation, they now relaxed, subdued past any last vestiges of resistance.

Mato stood up. He had done it. He had beaten Wasula into a deep and total submission. He looked down at his victim. Her limbs shook in the aftershock of the assault, and she moaned quietly. Mato thought to himself that the shaking body on the ground hardly resembled Wasula--the real life woman with her thoughtful remarks, leveled industriousness, and taste for adventure. But whatever it was, this body was unequivocally, undeniably his. Its reddened legs were his, its bowed head, its aching totality--Mato had made all of it his property.

Mato sat down next to Wasula. Now that he had played out his fantasy, his most immediate thought was that he missed Wasula. He felt too individual, sitting here, inside this grove of trees that he had made his own, next to this woman who had given herself up to him totally. Just him and his property. How lonely it must be to be a white man, he mused. What a strange way to live, with only your property to keep you company.

"Are you okay?" He asked Wasula presently.

With effort, Wasula raised her head and smiled at Mato. "Yes" she responded. "I feel very good, actually."

Mato helped Wasula to sit up, and he put his arms around her. They stayed in this position in silence, each clutching the other. The capacity for thoughts and words slowly trickled back to Wasula. She felt as if she were coming down from a cloud. Mato's dominance had transported her to a strange, immaterial realm where she and her body seemed to exist on separate planes. Ecstatic and excruciating as it was, it was a relief to feel herself in her limbs again.

Mato ran his hand down Wasula's back. "Well, Wasula," he said, "you wondered what it would be like. So what was it like?"

Wasula tried to put the best words she could to the strange sentiments she felt in her body. "I felt so incorporeal," she explained. "Like I was here but not really here."

"I felt that too. Like you were somewhere else. Like your body wasn't really you. I missed you."

Wasula smiled. "I like playing white people. But let's not play this game all the time, okay?"

"Yes," Mato agreed. "In the grand scheme of things, I think I like playing Indians better."

It was getting dark. The village would miss them soon. Mato and Wasula felt the pull of real life calling them. But they stayed in their clearing for a few moments longer in the warm summer air, listening to the sounds of the world. The wind rustled through the grass, and the insects hummed. And Mato and Wasula each reveled in the joy of connection--in being fully present with each other, on the same plane, in the same world.

***A note on this story: this story is based on early encounters that Lakota Sioux people had with white fur trappers and settlers. One of the biggest agents of settler colonialism in the American west was the imposition of private property--the idea that humans could own land, animals, and even other people. This idea is contrary to the epistemologies of indigenous people, which view the natural world and the human world as relatives with mutual responsibilities to each other. In this story, I tried to explore the erotic and power relationships inherent to the concept of property. I also tried to counter the exoticization and fetishization of native people by making whiteness, rather than Indianness, the object of the fetish.***