Cat Lady on a Hot Tin Roof

I am rewarding you who survived chapter 2 of mainly description of characters with a relatively prompt chapter 3.

Also, I should explain that the title of this story is Cat Lady on a Hot Tin Doll's House but I screwed it up when I first posted the story and, having blundered, don't want to risk the chapters being placed out of order by putting down the correct title in the Literotica form in later chapters. Without further apologies:

Chapter 3 - A PARTY AT THE HOME OF JOHN AND AVERY GELT

Mrs. Talmadge told Emily she had decided that it was her mission to make sure that Emily got out and saw a lot of people in the area instead of staying in her suite with her cat re-reading Absalom Absalom!. That was part of Mrs. Talmadge's agenda.

Talmadge had engineered Avery Gelt inviting Emily to a big party at the Gelt's Mansion near Memphis. Having secure the invitation, Virginia Talmadge explained, "It's about an hour and half drive to Memphis so it might be best if we stay with the Gelts that night. They have a huge house as Robert has a very good job. One of my servants can feed your cat."

"Can't we take a train?" Emily asked.

"My goodness no. There are no trains down here. We don't believe in riding in public transportation with a lot of strangers," Virginia answered.

Emily decided to buy a knee length cocktail dress that showed no cleavage but was at least colorful. I can't go to a party looking like a woman out of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily thought, but I don't want to offend anyone or make anyone think I was coming on to men.

Still, while the dress was quite modest, there was no hiding the fact that Emily had E-cup breasts, a flat tummy and shapely hips and legs as far as one could see any of that under her dress. She had taken her blond hair to the beauty parlor at Virginia Talmadge's insistence. In short, she was smoking hot and drop dead gorgeous in a very understated sort of way. Her big wire-rimmed glasses did not detract from her lovely face. On the contrary, every guy who had ever been "hot for teacher" would be driven insane.

The Gelt home was as spacious as advertised. The main living room, one of several living room spaces, was large enough to be a hotel lobby. A number of servants, several of whom Emily could see were indentured servants from their bands, scurried about serving champagne and appetizers.

Emily was introduced to Robert Gelt, Woods Helm, Nora's husband, Nils Rogson, a former high school classmate of Nora's and general counsel for Rising Sun Entertainment, Inc., Judge Red O'Hara, Major Buck Thorn, Memphis Mayor Ford Forrest and a woman named Betty Jo Sanders who worked with Robert Gelt at Servants Service Corporation. Emily already knew Randall Calhoun who was there and plainly knew everyone.

Much of the party was light-hearted chat. However, after being asked what people up north thought of Memphis, Emily made the mistake of saying that the most of what she'd heard lately about Memphis concerned actress Loretta Alt.

Robert said, "And I bet no one had the least idea what happened."

"Yes, that's pretty much true," Emily admitted. "All we heard was that she was involved in some sort of game or bet that resulted in her becoming some sort of sex slave for seven years."

"Woods, please give your stock lecture on penal and indentured servitude to Professor Fuchs. If she is going to be down here for months, she should not live in ignorance of our current laws and customs," Robert said to Woods Helm.

"If people don't mind, I think I will see what people are doing on the porch and in other rooms," Nora said. "I've heard Woods' fascinating lecture so many times that I can't stand to hear it again."

"I will go with you," Nils Rogson said. "I deal with indentured servants on the Rising Sun boat and I know too much already about the law and how indentured servant contracts are written."

"You know, I really don't insist on doing this if it is going to boor people," Woods said. "In fact, I am getting rather tired of explaining our laws and auctions to visitors myself. There are some publications Professor Fuchs could read on the subject without me having to put people to sleep at this party."

"No, no, no," Virginia Talmadge said. "Being the principle outside counsel to Servants Service, you are an authority on this subject and Professor Fuchs will undoubtedly have questions that can't be answered by reading books. I'd rather like to go over some of these facts myself."

Nora Helm and Nils Rogson departed, and Woods Helm began.

"I am doing this because I was asked to do so," Woods said. "It won't hurt my feelings if some people wander off to hear more interesting conversations."

Woods Helm then began.

"A few distinctions are needed. There have been many forms of slavery and servitude in the sad history of mankind. As to North America, from the 17th to 19th Centuries there was slavery which involved people being seized in their villages in African, brutally chained in ships and sent to the Americas. Many died horribly. After the trans-Atlantic market of slaves was made illegal in the early 19th Century, there were still people born into slavery with no say as to how they would lead their lives and families were broken up by slave sales. No one in his right mind defends anything like that anymore.

"Some of you people in the North often act as though ending slavery in 1865 was not much progress and stress the racial discrimination that continued, but you dishonor the memory of your Union soldiers in doing that. Things may not have been great after the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing real slavery, but they were better for many people and the amendment paved the way for other improvements in the 20th Century."

Robert interrupted to say, "Please stick to the subject Woods."

"I did not stray far," Woods said. "About thirty-five years ago courts in the south and, now, after the National Reconciliation, in the country as a whole, recognized two things. First, the 13th Amendment explicitly says that involuntary servitude as a result of being convicted of a crime is not the type of servitude that the Union victors wanted to abolish. That doesn't mean that any state has to have involuntary penal servitude or anything about what penal servitude will be like, but states are free to use involuntary servitude as part of a punishment subject to the limitation on 'cruel and unusual punishments.' Prisons across the country require prisoners to work and most of that work isn't much fun.

"The only difference in the South is that we now allow sex work as part of penal involuntary servitude. It is actually kind of weird that the northern states do not allow this. I mean really, Professor Fuchs, would you rather break rocks in the hot sun with a shotgun at your back or have sex on a nice bed?"

Emily blushed slightly while Woods went on.

"The restrictions many states have against sex work as penal servitude is really a kind of prudishness that unduly restricts the kind of penal servitude that can be required of convicted criminals. Of course, we don't allow sodomy or abortion in Tennessee or Mississippi as part of involuntary penal servitude for the same reason that you can't hire out prisoners to kill people although many of them would be very good at it. Penal servants cannot legally commit crimes or follow orders to commit crimes any more than anyone else.

"Yes, there were some problems for a while after sex work was allowed as part of penal servitude with women being charged by corrupt sheriffs with crimes they did not commit and receiving very long sentences to serve on the gambling and sex boats as free use sex providers. We believe that since 2046 the wrongful prosecutions to get sex servants have pretty much ended. I won't claim that no woman has ever been wrongly charged in the last twenty years to make money off of her body on a boat, but I have never seen it and the financial incentives for sheriffs to do that have been ended.

"The other court legal holding of importance is that southern states allow courts to order what lawyers call 'specific performance' of servitude contracts by having the law enforcement officials track down runaways and force them to fulfill their contracts. Unfortunately, understanding this requires knowing a little contract law. I'll excuse you if you yawn.

"Normally, if someone breaks a contract, he will have to pay money to compensate the wronged party. However, under contract law in some circumstances one can get a court to order what is called "specific performance." This is allowed by all states when a party promises to sell a unique object like land or a rare painting and won't turn it over in violation of a contract.

"For some dumb reason, many courts decided that ordering specific performance of personal service contracts was "slavery." This makes no sense. Lincoln and the other people behind the 13th Amendment were quite familiar with indentured servitude that was common in much of the country for centuries. Individuals who had agreed to indentured servitude to get money for the boat trip for America couldn't just run away when they did not want to do the work. If the authors of the 13th Amendment wanted to forbid the police and courts from enforcing contracts requiring people to do something they had promised to do, it would have been written clearly in the 13th Amendment.

"The key case came from Atlanta where a big pop singer, Baker Fast, decided on the day of her concert that she didn't feel like doing the concert. The promoter was horrified. He certainly couldn't substitute another act. He got the sheriff to arrest the singer and force her to perform at the point of a gun that was carefully concealed offstage. After the singer left town, she sued the sheriff and the promoter for wrongful arrest. They defended themselves arguing that they were within their rights as the contract clearly required her to perform.

"I won't boor you with all the details, but the Supreme Court held in Fast v. Jones and Slam Productions, that Ms. Fast could not sue because she was only compelled to do what she'd promised to do. There were still a bunch of issues as to how the defendants had compelled her to perform and the case eventually settled, but the main thing was that the case established that compelling personal services was consistent with the 13th Amendment."

"I think I have heard some of this before, but how does this relate to what happened to Loretta Alt?" Virginia Talmadge asked.

"I'm getting there," Woods Helm said.

"Get there faster please," Robert said.

"Yeah, Yeah, so the fact that penal servitude as a result of a criminal conviction or indentured servitude from a freely entered contract is not unconstitutional does not mean states have to allow it. Northern courts generally still do not order specific performance of a personal service contract.

"Down here, we believe in treating adults like adults. If someone has signed a deal, they should keep it as long as the object of the contract is legal. So, no, we don't enforce contracts signed by Mafia hit men to force them to commit the murder they promised. But if an adult woman has signed a contract to provide dishwashing, waitress, or sexual services, she can't weasel out of it," Woods said.

"Are you telling me that a wealthy actress decided to sign a contract for her to be an indentured sex slave for seven years?" Emily Fuchs said incredulously.

"No, not exactly," Woods said. "She signed a contract before a notary that committed her to take a risk of becoming a free use sex object for seven years if she was chosen to be a such an object through a carefully designed process to which she agreed. But I've talked enough. I will let Robert explain what his company does in arranging free use sex object agreements and auctions. He is more qualified as to that, particularly as he, with Betty Jo Sanders who is with us, handled the selection agreement that involved Loretta Alt and the auction that happened as a result of Ms. Alt being chosen to be an auction item under that agreement.

"I will just conclude my lecture on the law by saying that the law in Tennessee is that if you sign a contract, the courts, police and sheriffs will enforce it. And if someone tries to run, which almost never happens because people knew what they were getting into when they signed the indentured servitude agreement, the law will track you down and, because of the national reconciliation, there is no place to run in the whole country. Further, there are treaties regarding return of runaway indentured servants with a long list of other countries.

"Now, Robert, why don't you tell Professor Fuchs, Mrs. Talmadge and the others about arrangements for making free use sex object agreements and auctions."

"Ok," Robert Gelt began after a pause and asking a servant to bring him another glass of wine. "First, I don't want you to get the idea that all the indentured servants Servant Service handles are free use sex objects. There are many citizens and foreigners who sign contracts to perform services as mundane as fruit picking or brick laying. Companies who enter those contracts with servants provide unsexy goods and services like transportation, food and clothing.

"The companies sign an agreement with a healthy person and get a worker they know they can rely on for generally seven years, a period chosen mainly because that was the standard indentured servant contract from 1650 to 1850. Those contracts normally specify what the worker is to do. Generally, the contract does not include anything to do with sex. It can be for whatever length the parties want. You are free to make up any sort of contract you want, and it will be enforceable within the boundaries Woods discussed. We have appetizers at this party being prepared by indentured servants who signed a seven-year contract requiring them to cook and serve food but not to do anything sexual, at least not under the contract.

"Also, many people have gone to business or job training schools with their tuitions paid by a company that knows it is going to have them as a worker for seven years after student gets out of school. This helps students get loans because companies don't like to pay a lot of money for someone to receive job training and have the person take a job for a competitor.

"Servants Services provides consulting services and facilities as to all those kinds of indentured servitudes.

"Only women enter contracts to provide sexual services. Sodomy is illegal here although some male strippers are indentured servants and who knows what happens behind closed doors. The servants who have committed crimes are all on the gambling boats or working in facilities near the prisons. We can't have criminals walking around and, of course, those who have committed violent crimes don't provide sexual services at all. If they don't suffer capital punishment, they spend hard time.

"But about ten years ago, 2055, six 18-year-old female high school seniors who could not get money for college tuition for the studies they wanted to pursue, came up with a fundraising idea. They would put themselves up for a kind of auction package for one of them to become a free use sex object with the money raised to be used for college tuition and expenses for the five woman who did not become free use sex objects. If they could raise enough money from the sacrifice of one of them, five of them could go to school and one of them would become a free use sex object. We often call them 'FUSOs' for short.

"Of course, none of the six was going to volunteer to be the FUSO. The young women gave a lot of thought to the problem and agreed that the six of them would appear in very sexy bikinis and potential purchasers, who would know only one women was becoming a FUSO, would have to ante up enough money so that one-sixth of the money was enough to get a woman through college. Five of them would use their share of the initial money raised to go to college with the last sixth of the money to go into an account so the FUSO would have something to live on after her servitude expired.

"After the initial ante money was raised, the six would draw straws and the one with the short straw went up for an auction to go to the highest bidder. Half the money from the auction would go to the FUSO with the other five to split the rest. To be clear, buyers were first putting up money for there to be an auction and for them to participate in it, and then buyers would bid in an auction in which one of the women - no one knew who before they drew straws - would become a FUSO.

"They decided it would take $400,000 to get each of them through school and that $2.4 million was what buyers would have to put in for there to be an auction. As it happened, a syndicate of buyers did put up $2.4 million. An 18-year-old named Olivia drew the short straw and was sold at auction. She became a sex worker on a boat and in a Memphis brothel connected with that boat for seven years. Five young women went to college and got jobs later.

"I should mention for Emily if she does not know, that large ships, we call 'boats' for short, have casinos and 'below deck' what are essentially brothels with women working who are generally penal or indentured servants. Originally, these boats sailed on the Mississippi and certain other rivers and the Gulf of Mexico. Some years ago, it was decided it was too costly and dangerous given the storms to have the boats actually sail. Most of the boats are permanently docked. The ones that do sail have land-based brothels near their docks so that they can provide gambling and sex services during the long periods that they can't sail, and it is unsafe even to operate from a docked boat.

Getting back to Olivia, she fulfilled her seven-year contractual obligations in 2062. She decided to go to Europe to be a fancy escort there and used in London all the skills she'd learned in Memphis in selling herself. You might say that all six women put their money and education to good use.

"But I am getting ahead of myself. When the novel way the girls had decided to put themselves through school got out, it was naturally a scandal and a sensation. But it caught on with various formulas being tried to assure that enough money was raised to accomplish the purpose and to raise as much money as possible. Also, although many of these contracts involving sex servitude are still for young women who want to go to college who can't get a loan otherwise, they have become fairly common for many types of women who just need to raise money and are willing to accept a risk of becoming a FUSO.

"Lately, even some bored housewives who don't need money have been playing with becoming indentured free use sex objects. They generally claim it is for some charity but maybe they have mixed motives.

"Anyway, these sex object agreements and auctions have gotten a lot more attention than they deserve just because of the salacious nature of it all. The total number of women participating in these things is maybe a couple thousand a year and the vast majority of those are of the college tuition variety or of women trying to get enough money to pay rent or buy groceries.

"Of course, a young woman could just enter into a FUSO contract by herself and go to school after seven years. But that is looked down on as simple prostitution, which it is, of course, although it's not clear that taking a one-sixth chance of becoming a FUSO is morally different than just selling sex services. Also, just selling yourself would delay going to school for years and, without the drama of the selection and the open outcry auction, much less money would probably be raised.

"We have some sorts of standard contracts and arrangements, but women are free to put themselves at risk of becoming a FUSO in a variety of ways. There is nothing magical about six women at risk or 7 years as a FUSO. We did a deal that involved twenty women and, so only a one twentieth risk, but committed the one chosen to be a free use sex servant for 15 years.