What is wrong with me! I haven't felt like this since my first deflowering! Deflowering? What a perfectly delicate euphemism. My body is on fire with lust, but for whom? My heart is pounding. My nipples feel like bullets. I'm panting like a bitch on heat. I feel that my knickers are squelching inside my slacks.
It's not even that I'm in a situation conducive to thoughts of sex. I can't think of anything even remotely romantic about what is happening to me. My wrists and ankles are manacled and linked by a chain. I can barely take a step that's two thirds the length of my normal stride. Two very unsympathetic men are forcing me along faster than I can comfortably walk by long poles attached to the metal band locked round my throat. And still I'm as horny as rabbit in season! I must concentrate!
Oh it's so hard to do that. At the end of this frog-march, the man will want answers. I must speak the words that I have to, and mean every word of them if they are to be believed.
The interview is over. Despite my inner struggles, I had remembered what had to be said and how it had to be said. I think everyone is pleased with me. I hear the word that will allow me to relax. Relax as much as is possible in my chains and collar.
"Cut" shouts the director.
Will we have to shoot the scene again? My bonds are getting decidedly uncomfortable, but more important I need to get back to my dressing room to try and make sense of why I'm feeling so strange, why I don't mind being uncomfortable in these restraints and even though I almost dare not think it, why I'd be so disappointed to be relieved of my fetters.
"That's a wrap, everyone!"
Damn! The previously unsympathetic men are suddenly very sympathetic and are freeing me from my 'ordeal'. Why is it that I'm almost in tears? As soon as I am freed I rush away to my sanctum, my dressing room.
Shooting is over for today. I've just finished taking my make-up off. There is a knock on the door. I'm not sure that I want company, but I guess I must be polite.
"Come in..." I respond.
There's Reg. Reg is the Props man. He sources, obtains, maintains and delivers everything that is used on the show, barring costumes, make-up and technical equipment such as camera's and microphones. If you want a sword, a suit of armour, a bicycle, a bunch of roses, Reg is your man! Talking of roses, Reg is standing there with a bunch of obviously fake flowers, a bottle of wine and two glasses.
"Evening Gwen! I'd give you fresh flowers but it's too late for the florist. Will these do?" Reg is sweet. Romantic in a way. His smile is radiant, so I'm quite happy to accept the fake flowers with a conspiratorial laugh.
"I hope too, you'll join me in a glass of wine, Gwen. I've a suspicion that you need one." Despite believing that I need time to think, the thought of a glass of wine is appealing. Besides Reg is a nice person to kill half an hour with.
Reg makes small talk for a while, until I've finished my first glass and he's poured me a second. The seriousness of his conversation ratchets up a notch.
"That was a very difficult scene for you to play today. I couldn't help but notice how it effected you..."
"It wasn't so bad really," I bluster.
"Tell it to the marines, dear! You kept your voice and your face straight, but you couldn't hide the prominence of your nipples, the pace of your breathing, a slight flush to your face and a crafty wriggle of your hips when you thought no one was watching you."
I'm furious with him! He's seen right through my mask of objectivity. It's as though he's just stripped me of all self respect. I want to tell him to go, to leave me, but my mouth won't obey the brain. I just sit here feeling very vulnerable that he's pierced my armour so effortlessly. Indeed, I sense the possibility, no, the definite start of the itch that could so easily flare up into the kind of need that I'd felt on set, when ensconced in the chains and was being manhandled so.
Reg leans forwards oh so gently, as though to kiss me. If that's what he wants, I'll give him a gentle peck on his cheek. His lips however don't touch me! I'm quite startled when suddenly he reaches for my left wrist. Grabbing it, he pulls it round to the front by my right one. In less time than I can conceive, I feel cold metal encircling my wrists and hear the clack-clack-clack of the ratchets of the handcuffs! I'm startled and consequently not as sharp and cutting with my wit as I would normally be. I can barely croak out the cliché.
"What are you doing? Why have you handcuffed me?"
Suddenly the sweet innocent friendship that Reg normally embodies is no longer there. Instead I'm sensing depths in him that most people wouldn't see and I'm suddenly apprehensive.
"How long are you going to lie to yourself Gwen? It was plain for all to see that your passion was ignited by your chains during today's shooting. How Bill can direct a show like this when he's clearly so blind as to miss the obvious, is beyond me". He waits a moment and continues "Look yourself in the heart and tell me you want me to remove the handcuffs. I'll do so if you truly want me to."
My mind is telling me
"Yes, tell him! Get him to take the handcuffs off. This is a dangerous situation. He could be Jack the Ripper, the Boston Strangler or Norman Bates! How can you know?..."
However, I'm in a fugue because my heart and my sex is telling me
"Ohhhh yes! Let him wrap me in chains, let him take me against my will (especially as it isn't truly against my will). Perhaps he is the one in my dreams, whose face I can never see, who carries me off to his castle to serve him as his slave."
Making no decision is sometimes a decision in itself. I remain silent whether through acquiescence to what he has done to me, or indecision as to which course to follow, I can't tell. Reg comes behind me, and reaches round me. He unlocks the handcuff on my right wrist. At once I'm both relieved and yet saddened and disappointed. Next thing I know, he has brought my wrists behind my back and refastened the handcuff. I'm even more helpless than I was! The same feelings that I had before are back, but this time reversed! This man is clearly going to do to me what he wants, not necessarily what my logical brain wants. The play with the handcuffs and my feelings of helplessness are exciting me in precisely the same way that I was earlier on, on set in my chains.
His hackneyed dialogue is so perfectly 'hammed up' that I just have to laugh.
"Now my beauty! I have you just where I want you!"
All fear seems to have evaporated. My excitement is building like a volcano. Reg reaches over me and picks up my glass of wine. Holding and tipping it for me, so I can drink is somehow so very intimate an act that it takes my breath away. Whether I realise it or not, I have now crossed the Rubicon. I am his to do with as he wishes. I neither have nor want any say in the matter. Right now I wouldn't go back to the sterile emotionless life that I have been living.
There is however a frisson of fear, or is it excitement? What is he going to do with me? Will I be able to withstand it? I realise suddenly that this uncertainty is the breeding ground for the vulnerability and helplessness that I crave for its seductiveness. He will make me be whatever pleases him most.
Oh yes, I swallowed the feminist catechism whole! I 'walked the walk' and 'talked the talk'. But now I see that it is all a sham. For the first time, I feel that I am in the place that nature has decreed for me. Every cell in my body has over countless generations, been shaped to be subservient to man. I am content, though unfulfilled.
The wine is finished. I'm quivering with excitement and foreboding. My hips are gyrating as much as the chair will allow. Reg has taken from his pocket a leather collar. It's not a lot different from a dog's collar. He buckles it round my throat, and attaches a leash to it.
