Don't Judge Me

We were walking more slowly than we had earlier. Miss Havisham motioned for me to walk alongside her as we crossed the vast entry hall, and as we reached the imposing carved front doors, she opened the left one herself, ushering me through.

The afternoon was perfect. Warm sunlight was streaming into the garden, through the foliage of the large shade trees. The carefully maintained lawns rolled all the way to their neatly defined edges, and stopped short like a carpet. There were insects moving over the floral hedges, and I could see a beautiful fountain to the left hand side. This was a garden in which one could spend a happy eternity.

"Tell me about what you... saw, my dear. Do you have any thoughts?" Miss Havisham gently brought my mind back to our collegiate stroll. It seemed she had drawn me outside to ask me something specific. I wondered how to answer.

"Well," I started. She gave me a moment to think, without her usual bustling impatience. "I, err... I could see that Mahogany actually enjoyed it. Quite a lot!"

She nodded, "Hmm. What else?" She took us a little way up the path where there was a perfectly quaint wrought iron bench seat, set in a small extension off to the side of the path, where the gravel was extended to accommodate the seating without impeding the main pathway. It was overhung by a large Birch of some sort, so that the light was dappled as it filtered through the foliage. She motioned me to sit.

I wondered where to begin. She turned with me and we both sat. I was reminded suddenly that my so-called dress spared no fabric to shield my bare bottom from the elements as I sat. Not a shred of it was tucked underneath me. It just surrounded me like a jellyfish settling on an outcropping of coral. For my unprotected bottom, the cold iron of the seat was very apparent.

Perhaps I drew breath or something, because Miss Havisham wore an expression of concern, "A little cold?"

I had not felt exposed in any way since entering the gates of the manor house, but with her question I suddenly felt naked again, just as I had when we met. I was unexpectedly back to a state of thrill and arousal. How did she know just how to say the very thing that would fire me up?

"I'm sure it's fine, thank you, miss," I had dropped back into the submissive persona that first interacted with her.

She turned her attention to the gardens, sitting prim and proper with her hands in her lap. My titillation subsided. A little.

"Tell me what you saw." This time it was more of a command. Half way between the authoritative bossiness she had first shown and the friendly chatter we had more recently enjoyed.

My bottom had started warming the cold metal, or perhaps numbing, so I was more comfortable already. I started to describe my experience. I talked about cliffs, and waves, and storms, and lava. I was sure it didn't make much sense, but she let me speak on as she surveyed the gardens from our little seat. I wondered if the would think me mad.

"And in the end?" She asked.

"Oh, in the end there was... that is, it felt like, or looked like... a warm meadow. With sunshine. You know, just really really nice. Wonderful, really. Is this making any sense at all?" I desperately needed to know if she was about to reprimand me, or mock me, or just send me away. I had been jabbering away, breathing and speaking urgently, trying to articulate impossible experiences with only sadly inadequate words.

"Oh," she turned to me and looked into my face. "I know exactly what you mean", which a peculiar emphasis on "exactly", the meaning of which was outside my grasp.

She turned again to look across the garden.

"What do you know about wine making?" She asked. A question completely, as far as I could tell, unrelated to anything we had discussed. It was sort of absurd, in fact.

"Wine making?" I was so surprised I simply repeated it back.

"Yes. Wine making. Making wine, dear. Are you familiar?" She gently mocked me. It really wasn't fair, though. I had no idea what she was talking about.

"Oh, no, Miss Havisham. I don't really know anything at all about wine making", I apologetically offered.

"Well, as you would presumably know, the French are particularly skilled at making fine wines." She opened.

"Oh, yes, miss. I do know that."

"Alright. Well, among the French there are certain individuals. Highly skilled, trained, but importantly, they are gifted individuals, blessed with an ability both rare and precious. They have the ability to discern subtleties in the aroma of wines that other people simply are not capable of detecting. Although they undergo extensive training to refine the ability, other people are not even equipped, genetically, to detect those subtleties, no matter how much they train. These gifted individuals are affectionately known as 'le nez', which means, 'the nose'. You can imagine how valuable such a person would be to a wine maker." Miss Havisham looked over her glasses at me to ensure I was understanding.

"Oh, yes. I imagine so!" I replied.

"And you might imagine what it's like to desire to have such a talent, if, for example, one was passionate about wines, only to find you simply do not possess it, and you cannot, no matter how much training you do." She pressed.

"Yes, I suppose so."

"Or, for that matter, what it's like to discover that you, among so many who desire but lack it, possess this rare talent." She was turning to me as she made each of these points, as if to emphasize them.

"Now that you mention it, yes, I can see how that could be... hard," I was working hard to process each point, but didn't know where she was going with it.

"Indeed it could! Suppose among a group of friends, each of whom desired it, only one was found to have the gift. How might that affect their relationships?" She now seemed to be angling towards something. I still wasn't sure what.

"It could be very painful," I said.

"It could." she agreed.

We sat quietly for a moment. Small birds were hopping around in the base of the hedge across the path. They were probably tending a nest inside the protective foliage of the meticulously trimmed plant.

"What if I told you," she began, in a strangely conspiratorial tone, turning towards me again, "that the other girls didn't see what you saw during Mahogany's punishment?

"What if I told you", she repeated. "That only a handful of living humans on this planet would have seen it?

"What if I told you," she continued the refrain. "That you are, almost uniquely, gifted with the ability to discern some things that other people simply are not?" She left the questions hanging, and studied me intently.

This was a very strange thing to be told. Or asked. I started processing the "what if" questions. It was true that I had not ever heard of someone experiencing what I did with Mahogany. But I also had not experienced it before. How did she know? Is this why I was here? Who was this woman? The questions rapidly overwhelmed any conclusions I could draw.

I pulled my thoughts together sufficiently to ask a single cogent question, in the hope it would begin to shed light, "But... why have I never experienced this before?"

After searching my face, Miss Havisham smiled, was it pleasure at my response, relief? She then relaxed a little and turned away again to watch the little birds.

"You would have spent time in change rooms, wouldn't you?" she asked. "When you were at school. You would have been in the presence of other girls who were getting dressed, undressed, and so forth. Isn't that right?"

"Yes, of course"

"And you wouldn't have thought anything of it, I mean, in a sexual way. You would have, what, just got changed and sort of ignored the fact that everyone else was doing likewise?"

I didn't know where she was going with this, but she was right. "That's right. It was just expected. Even the girls who were... you know... into girls, they didn't make a fuss of it, either. Like you say, nobody made a fuss. It just wasn't done."

"Even if you saw someone completely naked in the change room, that wouldn't affect the way you related to them outside? You wouldn't talk about what you had seen?"

"Oh, no. That would be weird."

"So nobody ever saw your nakedness and later commented to you about it?"

"Um... no? No, I don't think that ever happened." She was losing me a bit now.

"So how would you know?" She asked.

"Err... know what?"

"How would you know they saw you naked, if nobody ever acted like they saw you naked?"

It was a strange question. Of course I had been naked in the change rooms, although more often I got dressed in parts, preferring not to be completely naked all at once. But countless girls had been with me. Of course they saw me. I had showered.

"I don't understand. I know they saw me. They just weren't weird about it."

"And you're right, of course, but I'm trying to make a point. The point is you *assume* they saw you naked because you know you were naked in front of them, and when people are naked in front of you, you of course see them, but what if, for argument's sake, they were all peculiarly blind to nakedness? What if they didn't have the ability to see it, and you did, and because everyone just didn't talk about it you never had the opportunity to find out? You would have no way of ever finding out that what you were seeing was different than what others were seeing."

I sort of caught her meaning, although it was a strange way to introduce the idea. "I think I get it. So, that's somehow like what I saw with Mahogany?"

"Exactly. With Mahogany you were in a situation where you were engaged with it. You saw it and you kept looking. I just bet there have been countless times you have seen arousal or shame or excitement in your friends, and instinctively knew not to mention it, just like the locker room nudies, and even to tune out from it, like you tune out of women getting undressed around you. You would have assumed others could see the same thing, and you would have assumed they were, like you, acting like they hadn't. But in fact, you were the only one seeing it, and your friends had no idea they were being seen."

It was making sense. This did gel with my experience. I sometimes felt embarrassed for a friend who was so obviously lusting after someone, for example, but it wasn't appropriate to say anything. Maybe she was right. Maybe I was seeing more than others.

"So... can other people... see nothing? What do they see?"

"Oh, it varies. Like the olfactory talents of winemakers, some have a better pallet than others, but by comparison they are all seeing blurry approximations where Le Nez is seeing sharply defined images, detailed maps, clear boundaries. I mean, women are generally much more perceptive than men, for example, when it comes to reading people. It's why we have the expression 'womens' intuition'. But by comparison, even the most perceptive person still only gets hints and clues, whereas you, my dear, " she indulged in a delighted little laugh and a small sigh. "You have a searchlight, a magnifying glass, a telephoto lens!" Her hands clapped in excitement. "We call it 'The Sight', and my dear, you have it in spades!"

I sat for several moments, taking it in. I believed her. It made sense. In fact, it was making sense of an assortment of experiences in my life that had been a little inexplicable.

But, I wondered... "So, how did you know I have this 'Sight'?"

She raised an eyebrow and looked expectantly at me. She gave me a moment to think about my question a little further.

"Ah," I said. "You have it, too. Of course." I did feel a little silly at that one.

"It's lunchtime," Miss Havisham announced. "We need to head back inside." She stood.

As I straightened up, my numb bottom popping away from the cold metal, I asked a final question, "Do the other girls have it?"

Miss Havisham motioned for me to walk alongside her. "Ah, no", she said conclusively. "They don't know such a thing exists. And before discussing it with them I caution you to consider my earlier questions about how one might feel if, desiring a certain talent, one were to find out that one did not possess it, and someone else did." She looked over the top of her glasses at me, ensuring I understood her.

"I understand." I started to appreciate how it could be difficult to be the gifted one among those who are not.

I wanted to be friends with these girls, and find out more about why they were here, and role they played (when not being spanked into orgasm on the dining table). But now I didn't know if I could be their friend. I was different. I even felt, before I could check myself, if I'm being honest, just for a moment, that I was *better*. Don't judge me.