My name is Feorinda, but my frends call me Fay. I am a blonde third year university student working on my double bachelor in Social Work and Women's Studies. I had a minor in Asian Art, as that was my guilty pleasure and the bulk of my non-core electives were spent in that field, and to get money to augment my scholarships I began working at Ching Wu's Gallery, an extremely upscale boutique specializing in Chinese cultural art from the Imperial period.
I was a girl with the whole world figured out. I knew who I was, and what I wanted in my career and education. I had very little private life, as, honestly, what my peers were doing with their time seemed somewhere between pointless and destructive. I was content in a world I understood, and knew my place in. The book changed that.
I found the book on the table before the private show room. That room was for invited guests only, and the sales generated from it every few months easily covered the cost of the store for a full year. The displays would run for about a month, by invitation to a select crowd of Asian guests, and there was never an auction. Mr Wu was given sealed bids and either returned the envelope or had me contact them for delivery instructions.
The book was green leather bound, and perhaps 18" wide by a foot. It was chased with gold in the ornate pattern common to late Imperial dynasties. The contents dated from the time of the Boxer Rebellion, through to the present, and the contents are what threatened to shatter my world, and my illusions about myself.
On one page I saw...
A post stood, carved in ebony, with scenes of Asian men using and punishing women in various states of dress and nudity that made it clear they were from the Colonial Period, perhaps from the ill fated Boxer Rebellion to expel the Europeans. Chain bracelets were on the post, and whips hung from it, but the red headed girl who knelt before it was secured only by a while silk scarf, wrapped around her neck, and tied to the pole.
She wore a green silk kimono, opened at the front to show pale white breasts that had never seen the sun. The breasts were thrust upward as the girls arms were bound behind her, as were her elbows, by ropes that passed over and under her young breasts. Two jade pendants hung from her engorged nipples and her downcast eyes failed to hide the panting eagerness with which she waited for her master, who was only a shadow at the edge of the picture.
From the second I first laid eyes upon that picture, my soul was not my own. Every night I dreamed of being the girl in that picture, every day the thought drives my wild with lust, and then shame, and then anger, and at last despair. Shame that I yearn to submit, to be nothing more than a plaything to be used an abused by Mr Wu, or, in my darkest moments of truth, any Mr Wu ordered me to please. Anger that a strong independent woman should have such thoughts, which ring with racism and misogyny on Mr Wu's part, and on my own for increasingly defining my own sexuality by the need to be a white plaything of Asian master or mistress. I believed in the equality of all people, yet my body betrayed this belief with every, increasingly powerful orgasm.
I broke a house rule of Mr Wu's and spoke one of the Chinese dialects to his customers. I allowed myself to be gagged, and worked the rest of the day on display for his customers amusement, in a perpetual state of arousal and shame, and when freed of the device at last, did not shout my indignation, but rather grip his ankles with both hands, allow my golden hair to fall across his leather dress shoes, and reverently kiss them.
I fled Mr Wu's quiet laughter and swore never to return.
I was going to call and quit. I was.
I relived the scene and became so aroused I wanted to give in and touch myself again, wanted to pleasure myself at the thought of kneeling to Mr Wu. In a rage I threw my phone and shattered it. Then I cried, the desire to hurt myself came, and only the training I had in psychology allowed me to rationalize the truth that hurting my body would not heal my mind, nor change my desires.
I looked at the clock. I had waited too long. I was to be on shift in an hour and a half. Looking at my tear stained face, I knew I could never face Mr Wu like this. If I had to deliver my resignation in person, then I would be the strong confident woman he hired when I did so.
As I showered, I relaxed, in the caress of the warm water I remembered the feeling of Mr Wu's hand upon my hair, and it didn't matter what part of my body I ran my hands over, it felt more sensual than any lover's touch I had known. I took the pleasure, and allowed it to restore me.
I dressed for him carefully. I put on a white lace bra and panty set, covered with a severe white silk blouse that covered me to the throat. Black thigh highs swept out of a long black split skirt. I did my make up with a cool hauteur. The perfect ice maiden looked back from the mirror. A study in control and intellect, devoid of any traces of passion or humanity, I became the mask I wore, and went to work.
Mr Wu watched me coming in and smiled a very small smile. He turned and approached the far display table, and I mustered my prepared speech. This job had meant a lot to me, and I had learned much from Mr Wu. In many ways I would regret leaving this position, but I could not remain here, not and remain sane. Before I could speak, he opened the book, and turned it to me.
"It began with the Opium Wars. Imperial China had a civilization of grace and beauty, a meritocracy built upon centuries of learning and culture. The barbarian west had only its hunger for wealth, and its hunger for war, neither of which Imperial China wanted.
That was not enough for the west. No. The started to smuggle in Opium to China. Where once they would have to pay gold for the tea they desired, for the spices and silks, now a nation that was losing its soul to drugs sold the very plants that made the tea and spices to the drug lords of the west, until the poppy plantations of India gave way to tea plantations, and spice plantations, and the western barbarians that once paid their gold for the fruits of our labour now took our gold for poison to pollute our people. Imperial China became a plaything to the Western Empires, and our civilization hung on the edge of ruin."
Much of what he said was true, although we tried not to emphasize the fact that the first drug war was waged by the west, as the dealer, and we had won it.
"There were two schools of thought on saving China. One was the Jade school, that looked to save both the white race from itself, and the middle kingdom from the western lust for blood and gold. The other was the Iron school, that looked to the Boxers, the martial arts societies to follow the western path, and settle the matter with war. Everyone knows the Boxer rebellion failed, and China today is a poor copy of Western greed and brutality, a poor student aping its conquorers without even the excuse of natural inclination."
The Jade school recorded in this book began with the daughter of the Great House of Wu, Taesuk, whose name means one who gives, or leader, in fact began the Jade school with the English Governors daughters."
Turning to the book I saw a sketch of two teenage girls and a strong very proper looking Chinese governess. The girls were looking at the decorations on the bath house set aside for the girls. It was a traditional Chinese bath for a noble house, with delicate inlays on artistic stonework depicting the hundred thousand acts of love between man and woman.
Another picture showed the girls bathing with their Chinese attendants, and some of the attendants kissing and caressing each other, while the girls looked on in dread fascination.
The next picture showed the governess coming upon the two white girls touching themselves, and her taking them over her knee and spanking them with a hairbrush until they were scarlet cheeked.
Lastly, it showed the two girls serving the stern governess, one kneeling between her legs and lapping while the other suckled at the golden breast of her mistress while the hard eyed woman pinched the rosy buds of her delicate white breasts.
Again, I was caught in the pictures, caught in the spell of an ancient forbidden seduction.
"Taesuk found the disease that troubled your race, and indeed found the cure. The defining drive of the white race is greed, the defining character trait of Christianity is shame. This leaves you driven by a desire to take, and a deep shame at both your desire and its fulfillment. This leaves your men either weak or monsterous, your women either frigid or sluts."
I opened my mouth to object, but my own night of lust and shame made me stumble
