Chapter 8: Post-match analysis
Author's note:
This story is complete fantasy. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, companies or inventions is purely accidental.
The story will make more sense if chapters 1 to 7 are read first.
**********
At five minutes past five on Sunday, Peter and Jenny were sitting comfortably in the living room of David and Samantha, holding drinks and enjoying the last daylight view of the garden through the picture window. Logs crackled merrily in an open fireplace. The room had an antique card-table, large bookshelves over-flowing with books, four Norwich school paintings and no television set.
They sipped their drinks silently. No one knew how to mention yesterday's session; but talking about the weather or the news seemed inappropriate. Even David at his most affable could not command more than a few minutes' conversation. It took the forthright Jenny to overcome the general reticence and get on to the topic they both feared and desired. She did so with a frontal assault:
"How are your bruises today, Sam?" Jenny asked.
"They are still quite tender, Jenny, but healing nicely, thank you. I'll show them to you later, if you want."
"Oh, I do want, very much."
As he had been her temporary Master, Peter would not apologise to Samantha for a deserved punishment but he was genuinely sorry that Samantha was still in pain. He said so.
"Thank you, Peter, but this was not the worst whipping I've had."
"What was the worst, Sam?" Jenny asked eagerly.
"It was when David punished me for getting a tattoo. Will you tell Jenny and Peter the story, David?"
"Yes, please," said Jenny, on the edge of her seat.
"Well," said David, "it happened about ten years ago. I have always forbidden Sam to get any tattoos, piercing or other mutilations."
"You dislike them? So does Peter."
"My reason is that God and Mendel's laws have combined to make Sam perfect, so any alteration would only diminish her."
"I agree," Jenny gushed: "Sam's absolutely gorgeous."
"Sam is one of the true beauties of our sadly plastic generation," intoned Peter, rather more earnestly than he intended; but David was delighted with the compliment, which Samantha acknowledged with a small bow of her elegant head. David continued:
"So, you can imagine how I felt when Sam came home one day from a shopping trip with marks on her back. I could see them in the gap between her tee-shirt and her jeans. I ordered her to lift her shirt. She had the words "Property of David Harding" written in an oval in the small of her back, decorated by a pair of handcuffs and a whip. It was beautifully done but I had expressly forbidden it, so I ordered her to our punishment horse."
"Your what?" Jenny asked.
"It's like a carpenter's saw-horse but with a padded leather top and metal eyes for straps. I bent Sam over the horse and strapped in her ankles and wrists, then I began walloping her backside. When her bottom had gone red, I stuffed a gag in her mouth to stop her shrieks alerting the whole street; then I whacked her bum with a cane until it was purple all over."
"Besides screaming her head off and almost breaking the straps with her struggles, Sam was also sweating and after about half an hour or so, I noticed rivulets of black sweat on her back. I ran a finger over her tattoo and the ink came off."
"It was done in marker pen by an artist-friend of Sam's. She wanted to tease me."
"Then you untied her and you two made passionate love for hours," predicted Jennifer Mordant, hopeless romantic.
"Not a bit of it, Jenny," Samantha corrected: "He whipped me even worse for giving him such a scare."
But Samantha also smiled at the memory. After whipping her for an hour, David had fucked her and left her tied up, returning to fuck her again and again throughout the night. (At least, she assumed it was David.) It was her worst ever punishment and one of her best ever nights of sex.
"Well," said Jenny, "I was amazed at the beating you took last night, Sam. I think you were wonderful. Even more so because Peter said you let him win."
Sam pondered a moment, then said:
"It is all the better, Jenny, that the future CEO of Culpepper Electronics should be someone so perceptive as Peter."
"So it's true, Sam!" Jenny exclaimed and turned to David to ask: "Did you also go easy on me, David?"
"Not at all, Jenny," David answered. "You beat me fair and square."
"Hmm" said Jenny, expressing her suspicions. "Anyway, we now have another reason to say that Sam made the right decision: Peter has solved the technical problem of Lumenite. His device to transmit a communications signal over mains current will be a Culpepper product worth investing in."
"I look forward to seeing it in action," said Samantha, with real interest.
"I am overjoyed to hear it," said David. "And how's your bottom, Jenny?"
"Very much improved, thanks, David," she answered, bouncing on her seat in proof.
This was the perfect cue for Samantha to invite Jenny upstairs to show off her bruises.
"Actually, I have some to show you, Sam," Jenny said as she skipped after her hostess, proud of the evidence of that morning's punishment in the very moment that she was forgetting to abide by its lesson.
After their wives had left them and the men sat back down, David said to Peter:
"Perhaps I can guess what you are thinking, Peter. You think it is curious that Samantha wants to show Jenny her marks in private when both women were naked and tied up in front of us when they are inflicted."
"Yes, I was thinking that, though I also think I know why. Absurd though it seems under the circumstances, Samantha has a sense of modesty."
"It's not completely absurd: it's a way of being respectable."
"But aren't 'respectable people' merely people with dirty minds?"
"Ah, you read Samuel Butler, Peter. Few do nowadays. That's another reason for me to like you."
"Butler was talking about the Victorians, of course," David continued, "and we are properly enlightened and liberal now. ... All right, Peter, you know I'm joking, though we are more liberal in some matters than the Victorians were. My point is that we can never escape respectability in ourselves if we are to show proper respect to other people. Even within the 'lifestyle' that Samantha and I have pursued for some time, there are rules of respectability or decorum. It is not really 'anything goes'."
"For example?" Peter asked.
"The costumes, the masks, the titles or rules for addressing people depending on their status, the whole ritualised play-acting, even by people who practise the lifestyle full-time. It's very significant, don't you think, that even in private groups where they are supposed not to be ashamed of whom they are, some people still pretend to be someone else? Similarly, look how difficult it was to get us four to talk about what we did together in complete privacy as consenting adults yesterday. We cannot escape having rules of decency and modesty."
"So if Sam's tattoo had been real, David, would you have prevented her showing it off in public?"
"Yes, though in theory I would not be ashamed publicly to acknowledge Sam as my submissive; nor would she be ashamed publicly to admit me as her dominant, regardless what effect the notoriety would have on our careers."
"I understand. Jenny once bought herself a slave collar but I would not let her wear it in public. I said it was because our relationship is private. Is that your reason, too?"
"Yes and for an even stronger reason: we have no right to offend or shock other people. The idea that others can be shocked into practising toleration by 'in your face' exhibitionism is a sadly popular and very damaging shibboleth of our contemporary culture. Whole tribes have died from culture-shock; why do we imagine that hidebound, elderly or over-sensitive members of our own society should be immune?"
"I had not thought of that," Peter agreed.
"The toleration I demand for what Sam and I do in private compels me to tolerate the sensitivities of other people. This is how the idea of having to be respectable in order to show respect operates in practise. Some advocates of toleration can be very intolerant themselves. People who 'out' homosexuals, for example. Some in my lifestyle do not fully appreciate this principle."
"What do they do?" asked Peter.
"You may have heard the expression 'vanilla' used disparagingly of those in mainstream relationships. This is one way we kinky people might look down on people different from ourselves."
"I see there is a paradox of toleration," Peter observed "where tolerance does not enlarge but merely shifts its targets."
"Nicely put, Peter."
"How does this apply to our case, David?"
"I want you to understand that I am tolerant of people who utterly despise what Sam and I do. Perhaps they misunderstand the role of punishment in our lifestyle, or they are genuinely disgusted by our practises; yet I neither resent them. I do not think that, because they are 'vanilla', or 'squares', or 'conservative' that they should be shaken out of their happy little ruts."
"So," David concluded, "you can believe me when I say that my friendship with you will not be the least impaired if you tell me that yesterday's session is never to be repeated, that the lifestyle Sam and I pursue does not suit you. I believe we can be perfectly normal friends regardless of what happened last night, which we can agree to forget if you want. A dinner party with us will not always end in a bondage orgy."
"Thank you, David. You have made it very easy for me to tell you about a decision I have made. I will not lend Jenny again to another man. You realise she had a wonderful time with you, so my decision does not reflect on you in any way. In fact, she had too good a time."
