A Program of Self-Improvement

This is another installment of the tale which began with "A Brief Affair" and continued in "A Lesson in Yoga."

*

After my second visit to her apartment, it was clear to both Liu and me that our relationship had entered a new phase. Of course, the fact that we had had sexual intercourse represented a dramatic turning point. However, the act of intercourse itself was maybe less important than the physical intimacy which preceded it. By allowing me to watch her perform her yoga exercises. Liu had revealed an aspect of her existence in which the physical was inextricably related to the spiritual. Having followed her performance by manipulating my body so that I would learn first hand the demands which she had been putting on her body, she had made me appreciate the intensity of her experience and the sense of vulnerability she must have felt while doing them.

During our conversations about how, or even if, we should proceed, it became increasingly clear to me that Liu had been as affected as I by what had transpired in her apartment. She had obviously enjoyed having me witness the discipline required by her yoga exercises. In addition, she had found it exciting to impose that discipline on me. What she had not determined is how or whether it would be possible to reproduce that pleasure and excitement. She was reluctant to have us become conventional lovers who simply relieved their carnal desires with an occasional coupling, but she had been unable to come up with a satisfactory alternative. Thinking that I understood what she was seeking, I made a suggestion.

"You have made it obvious that you want to find a way for us to continue the exploration of each others bodies without our becoming lovers in the usual sense. Instead, you seem to have in mind a kind of intimacy which derives from an intimate, but not explicitly sexual, familiarity with each others body. One approach to achieving such a familiarity might be for each of us to take responsibility for the transformation of some portion of the other's anatomy. For example, I would like to develop your abdominal muscles so that your lower belly would acquire a more pronounced contour. I do not know exactly how I would go about producing that contour, but I would expect your unquestioning complicity in whatever program I tried. Similarly, when you had decided how you would like to transform some part of my body, I would concede to you the right to apply methods of your own choosing."

After hearing my proposal, Liu took her time before responding. The look on her face indicated that I had struck a chord with her own ruminations, but her body language indicated that she was having trouble coming to terms with the possibility that her fantasies might become realities. When she finally spoke, her words reflected the ambivalence that she was feeling.

"I will not deny that your idea appeals to me and that it is not far from ideas which I have had myself. At the same time, I will not deny that there are elements of your proposal that disturb me. I very much enjoyed pushing you beyond the limits which you thought your body could tolerate, and I have wondered whether I would like someone to so something similar to me. On the other hand, heretofore, I have always thought about such matters in the abstract and have never confronted the question of actually submitting myself in that way to another person's control.

One of the reasons why I choose yoga over other forms of athletics is that I like the sense of control which yoga requires me to have over my own body, but I am not at all sure that I want to share that control with somebody else. I realize that it is inconsistent for me to enjoy exercising such control over you and hesitate to grant you similar control over me, but consistency is not to be expected in connection with one's emotional life. Thus, I am not rejecting your proposal, but I am asking for some time to consider it."

I could not but admire Liu's response. I did not want her to accept my proposal frivolously, and so I was glad to know that her answer would be given only after she had thought about its consequences seriously. Thus, I decided that it would be best not to rush her and to wait for her to bring up the subject when she had reached a her decision.

A few days later, Liu came to my office. After locking the door, she approached me and, standing with her legs firmly pressed against my desk, defiantly raised her blouse. With one hand clutching the blouse just below her breasts, she used the other to lower her panties until her bare belly was exposed all the way from the bottom of her bra to the upper edge of her pubic hair.

"I gather that this is the portion of my anatomy which you think needs to be improved. Although I am not sure how you plan to improve it, I am ready to have you try. In return, I will endeavor to improve the part of your body on which I worked the last time you visited me. Namely, your legs, and particularly your groin, are extremely inflexible. My goal is to loosen the ligaments and tendons in that region so that you will be able to assume the sort position which I will now demonstrate."

Moving back from my desk, Liu raised her skirt lowered herself to the floor. Lying on her back with her skirt bunched at her waist, she first raised her legs until they were perpendicular to the floor and then began to spread them. As they spread, the tendons along her inner thighs became more prominent and, by the time that her feet were within inches of the floor, it looked as if her hips had spread and the ball joints in her pelvis had partially opened to accommodate the stress to which she was subjecting them. When her ankles were grazing the floor, she grabbed them with her hands so that, apart from her neck and head, her body formed a slightly skewed trapezoid. Looking at me through her splayed legs, she said,

"I doubt if will be able to reproduce this pose, few men ever can. Nonetheless, your body can be taught to make a close approximation of it, and I look forward to being its teacher."

Having delivered her acceptance of my proposal in such a dramatic fashion, there was no point in Liu's delaying her departure. Thus, after telling me to come to her apartment at 9AM the following Saturday, she rose, put her clothes back in order, and left my office.

It was with considerable anxiety that I made my way to my appointment on Saturday morning. I had only a vague idea how I would proceed with the training of Liu's tummy, and I had no idea what she had planned for my groin. When she let me in, she was wearing a two piece leotard which left her midriff completely bare between a scant halter and an even more scant strip of cloth which covered but hardly hid her pubis. Otherwise, except the bow which held her hair in a pigtail over one shoulder, she wore nothing else. As on my previous visit, all the furniture in her living room had been shoved aside, leaving ample space in the middle for the foam mat on which she had first demonstrated and then introduced me to the meaning of disciplined exercise.

Once we were in the living room, Liu stood directly in front of me and, without a word, began undressing me. After removing each piece of clothing, she meticulously folded it before placing it on a neat little pile which she made in one corner of the room. Having divested me of everything else, she stopped when I was down to my underpants and led me to the mat. There, in an unbroken, flowing motion, she lowered herself into a sitting position, which she then transformed into a classic yoga pose with her feet resting in the crevice between her calves and thighs. Bidding me to follow suit, she clasped my hands and solicitously guided me into an awkward mirror image of herself.

"If you have no objections, I would like to begin by discussing how you think that you can give my stomach the shape which you want it to have. You should know that, although my yoga routine helps me keep my abdominal muscles toned, it does not aim to strengthen them. On the other hand, as a youngster in China, I did do exercises designed to make them strong. In fact, in order to be eligible to compete for a place in one of the better schools, a girl must be able to do forty-two situps in a minute. Thus, at age eighteen, my abdominal muscles were much more developed than they are today. On the other hand, even at their strongest, they never produced more than a gentle curve in my otherwise concave belly. Of course, I have matured in the meantime, and so renewed training might now result in a more aesthetically pleasing result."

Grateful for the background information which she had provided, I admitted my uncertainty.

"I do not know how, or even if, it is possible to significantly alter the shape of your stomach. Thus, I must proceed by a method of experimentation. My intuition tells me that adding bulk to your abdominal muscles will enhance the shape of your belly, and so my efforts will be directed in that direction. Based on what you just told me, I will begin by bringing your abdominal muscles back to the strength that they had when you competed to enter an elite school in China. By the time they have, I assume that I will have thought of new goals for them to achieve. In any event, I anticipate that, for some time to come, you will be continuously aware of the demands which I will be making on your tummy, a fact which will be a source of pleasure to me and, I hope, pride to you."

I watched with interest my words, especially the somewhat ominous concluding ones, register on Liu's features. The idea of re-engaging in the rigorous exercise routine of her youth brought back memories which were obviously not altogether happy, and she grimaced when I mentioned the residual soreness which I wanted her to experience. However, once she had heard me out, she did not hesitate long before telling her plans for me.

"Your training program will be somewhat different from mine. My guess is that mine will consist of relatively brief periods during which my muscles undergo an arduous workout. To accomplish what I have in mind for you will require more subtle methods. Stretching tendons and ligaments is a very different goal from building muscles. At no time will I have to make your muscles work as hard as you will make mine. On the other hand, I will force you to continue for much longer periods. I will employ various techniques to relieve your stress and tedium, but I have no intention of coddling you, and, just as you assured me that I would have residual effects to remind me of my travail, so I can assure you that you will not quickly forget yours."

Having learned what to expect, the next step was to decide how to proceed. Taking into account the difference in duration of our routines, we agreed that it made more sense for me to exercise Liu's stomach before she worked on my legs. Because her apartment was very warm and perspiration was already glistening on her body, I decided that there was no need for preliminaries and asked her to show me the abdominal exercises with which she had prepared for her entrance exam in China.

After scouting back a few feet, she lay back on the mat, bent her legs, and told me to hold her feet flat. She then clasped her hands behind her neck and performed a sequence of rapid sit-ups, each time bringing her chest to her knees before immediately dropping back to the mat. Because each repetition took only a couple of seconds, it was easy for me to believe Liu's claim that at one time she had been able to perform forty-two in a minute. Indeed, speed seemed to have been the primary goal of this exercise, but it was not mine. Thus, after she had completed about twenty, I told her to stop.

"I can understand why such sit-ups were good preparation for your exam, but they are not well suited for my purposes. You are no longer in a race against the clock. The clock will still play a role, but its role will be different. Namely, it will measure the duration instead to the speed of each sit-up. Thus, I now want you to raise yourself off the mat and keep yourself raised for as long as you can. I think that you should be able to stay up for at least half a minute."

Liu winced when she heard my final sentence, but bravely followed my instructions to the letter. As I had predicted, half a minute had passed before she collapsed back onto the map. In the response to the demands being made on it, her lower belly bulged throughout her sit-up, and during the final few seconds began to tremble. While I waited for her to regain her breath, I warned her that she would have to perform nine more such sit-ups, each one lasting half a minute. To assuage the fear resulting from my warning, I leaned forward and gently rubbed her tummy, savoring the way it swelled and contracted as she gasped for air. By the time that she had completed her assignment, Liu's abdominal muscles were utterly exhausted. In search of comfort, she had rolled over on her side and hugged her bent legs to her heaving chest. Even though her face was pressed against her knees, when I knelt by her side I could see that there were tears in her eyes. Moved by the pitiful sight of her depleted body and hoping that she would interpret it as a compensation for her distress, I ran my hand over the damp strip of cloth covering her vulva. Running my fingers around its periphery and along the crevice bisecting this mound, I commiserated with Liu.

"In spite of my warnings, you had no idea how hard I would make your stomach work. Although I will increase both the difficulty and duration of your exercises, I believe that, even if they are not easier for you to bear, in time you will have an easier time bearing them. Of course, for the next few days your abdominal muscles will be very much on your mind, but, by the time that I renew their training, they will be ready to do so. In any event, you can take satisfaction from the opportunity which you will have now to take revenge."

Liu's spirits improved when I reminded her of this opportunity, and she soon recovered sufficiently to act on it. Resuming her seated position in front of me, she outlined her program.

"As a first step, I will stretch your legs in the same way I did before. Once they have again become accustomed to that, I will introduce them to a new exercise, one which will last quite a while and require considerable courage for you to tolerate. During that second phase of your training, I will offer you the same sort of distraction which you have just been providing me, but I predict that you will be bowed legged for a while."

After I spread my legs, just as she had the last time, Liu braced her feet against my ankles, took a firm grip on my wrists, and leaned back until I my chin nearly touched the apex of her pelvis and my tendons in my groin were standing out along my inner thigh and in my groin. This time she rocked back and forth, each time drawing me closer to her mons and forcing my legs further apart. With a less than kind smile on her face, Liu watched the torment recorded on my face and warned me that there was worse to come. When she at last released my hands, I could tell that she had indeed stretched all the connective tissue in my upper legs and groin and that, as a consequence, my legs were more limber than when she began. Leaving me, bathed in my own sweat, to catch my breath, Liu rose and told me to wait while she fetched a piece of equipment. She returned shortly thereafter carrying what looked like one of those sturdy canvas staps which one sees securing large pieces of luggage. Kneeling, she folded back the mat at its middle and ran the belt beneath before dropping the mat on top of it. After making sure that the belt was symmetrically placed, she had me lie on my back with my pelvis resting on the mat along the line under which the strap passed.

I had noticed that, about a foot from each end of the belt, were loops held in place by rather sophisticated looking turn buckles. I assumed that my legs were destined to end up attached to these loops, but, until Liu installed them, I did not appreciate just how much control they would afford her. Thus, when she fastened the loops to my legs just above my ankle, I was more curious than concerned about their purpose. However, when she raised my legs perpendicular to my body and began adjusting the turn buckles, I quickly realized that the strap gave her enormous mechanical advantage and that, if she wished, she could probably rend my legs from my hips. Fortunately, even if she was not averse to paying me back for the pain which I had inflicted on her, she is not basically vindictive. Thus she stopped turning the buckles once she saw that further spreading could cause damage. Nonetheless, she did not stop until the pain in my groin was so significant that I had begun to doubt my ability to stand it. Looking down at me, she seemed pleased with her handiwork and complimented me on my fortitude.

"As I told you last time, I know the pain which you are feeling. When I was young, my parents thought that I should study ballet, and so I attended ballet school twice a week until I left China. In China, ballet masters assert absolute control over their students and show little mercy. Thus, when it comes to training a young girl's legs, old fashioned methods are applied. For half an hour each class we were lined up at the barre. So long as the master deemed that we were showing sufficient diligence, we were left to stretch our own legs. But if he saw one of us flagging, he would take a position on the opposite side of the barre, grab the malingerer's raised leg around the calf and pull with all his might. In total, I must have spent several hours with my crotch mashed on the upper edge of the barre and one leg or the other feeling as if it were being ripped from my body. By comparison, your suffering is mild, and you should be grateful to not be a young girl at the mercy of a Chinese ballet master."

After she had delivered this cold comfort, she dropped to her knees, placed a hand on each of my inner thighs and began delivering comfort more to my liking. Much to my surprise, her ministrations not only gave comfort to my splayed limbs but also lit a flame in my libido. As she stroked her hands over the distended ligaments in the vicinity of my crotch, I began to develop an erection which soon resulted in the appearance of my penis through the fly of my underpants. Delighted, Liu abandoned by my thighs and cupped her hands around my penis. Alternating her attention between its rampant shaft and its swollen glans, she caressed it with expertise while commenting my plight.

"Although you must be frustrated and confused by being simultaneously helpless and sexually aroused, you have to admit that being teased in this manner is preferable to situation in which my erogenous zones found themselves while the ballet master was stretching my legs at the barre. Being rather short, I usually ended up literally suspended over the barre with both feet off the ground and my whole weight bearing down on my pubis. Your legs and groin are suffering, but your genitals are not. Because this is the first time that I have stretched you in this manner, I will release you after fifteen minutes. Between now and then, you too will experience a kind of suspension, but yours will be of an entirely different nature from that which I had to endure. You will be suspended between your desire for relief from the pain in your groin and your desire to consumate the sexual pleasure which your groin is earning for you. When, in the future, I will stretch you for longer and longer periods of time, I will have to devise more ingenious methods to keep you aroused."

Delivering on her promise, Liu succeeded in keeping me sufficiently sexually excited that I was occasionally able to ignore the signals coming from my legs and groin. In addition, these signals caused me less distress as my ligaments and tendons became more accustomed to being lengthened. Thus it was easier for me to tolerate my fifteen minutes under Liu's tutelage than it might have been. In fact, when she finally relented and freed my legs, it was unclear to me whether it was my legs or rock hard penis which was the greater source of discomfort. Before I had time to decide, Liu crouched over my pelvis and lowered herself onto my penis. All memories of my recent ordeal vanished until I tried to get up after she had satisfied our mutual need and thoroughly drained me.