Chapter Five: Judy' story continues - The port city Glaessov
Going mainly downhill and with lighter cargo, the drive back the following morning was faster than the trip out had been. Still, there were hours on the road. The tour of Taritarat having already very substantially deviated from what was planned with Morice, I had a premonition that more surprises were to come. Rather than just sit, look out the window and worry, I asked Morice more about Wallee marital practices.
"Few of the men have more than one wife," Morice said. "The mayor's son is unusually wealthy. The problem is lack of resources. There are plenty of women. The birth rate is ridiculously high given the religious duty to have children. Also, despite many deaths in childbirth and deaths from the constant fighting that kills women caught in the crossfire, there is an excess of females. If a woman runs off toward the cities, generally no one goes after her. There are people in the central government who help runaway women from the tribes to come to the cities. There is always a shortage of women there because men in the cities all like to screw but they have little interest in doing childcare or other work."
In view of the fact that Morice had not had sex with me, I asked him if he liked women. "Yes, as a form of amusement," he said, "but I like to have a woman to myself in one of the Five Star brothels in Glaessov or Lbirne or to have one of the women I'm transporting."
I was shocked, "You traffic in women?"
"Who did you think the other women were on the boat to Glaessov? They were cargo."
"I assumed that they were religious women going to meet husbands or someone," I said. "As I told you," Morice said, "they cannot feed the women they have in the interior and what would they do with religious women in Glaessov or Lbirne? Under the burkas the women were gagged and handcuffed. The women brought into Taritarat are women trying to avoid the law in their countries who have made an uninformed choice of where to flee and women that someone wants to get out of the way. As to this second group I perform an entirely humanitarian service, buying women who would otherwise be murdered. They are mostly wives and mistresses that have caused trouble and also women who have witnessed crimes. Naturally, I will only buy them if they are attractive."
We said nothing for a while in the back seat. I was now almost sure I would not be back to Florida anytime soon. Eventually as we could see Glaessov in the distance, Morice, asked, "Don't you want to know about the place of women in Glaessov and Lbirne?" "Yes," I said, feeling this information was much too relevant to my future.
"In the interior all sex is religious and done strictly within marriage for the purpose of procreation at least in theory. In Glaessov and Lbirne, marriage has been abolished and any type of monogamous relationship is impossible. Oral and anal sex, punishable by death in the interior as abominations, are common in Glaessov and Lbirne although normal PIV sex is strongly favored. A most interesting practice is that women moving outside the communities in which they live may not decline to have sex until they have had intercourse seven times in the day. Originally every woman outside her community was available for unlimited sex but that proved to be impractical because even slightly attractive female cooks, maids and other workers could not get to work. Now each of the seven men must attach a token to the woman's collar before he has sex with her. Inside the communities, the women are subject to an unrestricted amount of sex but that sex is managed and limited by the fact that the men have to pay a fee."
I had not noticed it before, but Morice got a call on some sort of radio device. "Pardon me," he said, "We don't have cell phones in Taritarat but we have CB radios." A conversation followed in a language I did not understand.
After that discussion ended, Morice said, "To make it convenient to have sex with women outside, the cities have erected little platforms where women can be mounted in various ways without scraping knees, asses, or breasts. There is even a little shower nearby. If you look out the window, you can see a woman being taken anally and orally." I looked and almost flipped out. The woman looked like she was over 50 but in fairly good shape. She did not look to be in any particular distress. Morice added, "to continue the tour, I was going to throw you out of the van downtown and allow you to be taken seven times so you could experience Glaessov properly, but now it looks like there will be other arrangements made that will allow you to experience Glaessov still more fully."
Morice told Tony to pull off into a lot and park. "We have to wait for a while here. The men who are going to tell me where to deliver Judy are involved in some sort of orgy at one of the restaurants in the Five Star Community and will have to get back to us."
While taking in the implications of what Morice had said, I asked, "is every man having sex with every woman in Glaessov and Lbirne?"
"In theory, yes," Morice answered, "in practice the women in the Five Star Communities are too expensive for most men who only have access to them if they meet them on the street. The women in the Five Star Communities are allowed only rarely to leave their communities as they are generally booked for paying sex. The other communities are more affordable to everyone and men come and go into the communities freely."
"What are these things you call communities?" I asked. Morice answered, "They are communities of women managed to provide sex, childcare or housekeeping. 'Communities' sounds nicer than 'brothels,' 'factories' or 'barracks' don't you think? There are many of them, together housing the over 300,000 women in the two cities. The two Five Star Communities have about 3000 of those.
"The Five Star ones, as I said, are the old brothels modernized and greatly expanded now that monogamy has been abolished in Glaessov and Lbirne. The others are huge dormitories that were built after the end of the civil war. Women are assigned to them; each woman gets her own room and toilet mainly for the benefit of male visitors. Most specialize in one of the roles for women; that is sex, childcare, cleaning, cooking. Men can arrange for sex with any of the women in any of the communities to the extent they can afford it, but naturally the older women in communities focused on childcare see much less interest in that regard. Women have absolutely no say over any facet of their lives.
"How did such a bizarre system develop?" I asked. "It is not so bizarre," Morice said, "Jolly well practical, in my view. To give a bit of history, women could vote in Taritarat beginning in 1948 but most women did not vote or just voted for whomever their husband told them to vote for. Anyway, the elections did not mean much, particularly after the country fell into civil war.
"Socially, by the 80s, the natural inclination of the men in the cities, magnified by the example of all the western free love types, had already weakened the idea of marriage and other forms of permanent relationship to the point that adultery and polygamous sex was the norm. Most importantly the brothels were booming with business from both tourists and local men and had become the major product produced in the cities. The central government was pretty much run by the managers of the larger brothels.
"In the treaties that ended the civil war, the central government made a deal with the fundamentalists who had a number of grievances regarding taxes, public education and sexual mores that it was felt were harming the purity of their lifestyle in the interior. Regarding women, the Wallee and Nubimbi were horrified by the freedom of women in the cities. The major brothel owners in the cities were no more sympathetic women's rights than the Wallee and the Nubimbi. So, to restore the peace, it was agreed nationwide to exclude women from activities other than sex, taking care of children, housekeeping, cooking and prayer.
The manner of limiting women to their natural roles, though, was entirely different in the interior and the cities. In the interior, women were and are tied strictly to a husband and every woman has to marry whomever she is told to marry, yield her body according to the religious law, obey her husband without question and do all the work in the home along with any other wives.
"In the cities, the brothels and licentious behavior were central to the economy and controlled by powerful monopolists. So, in the cities all females are assigned to fulfill specialized roles within the basic spectrum of virgin, mother, whore, and housemaid with the roles of individual women changing over their lives based on age and sexual desirability. It is expected that a desirable woman might spend 15 years in a Five Star brothel community, 10 years in a Four Star brothel, 5 years in a Three Star brothel and then move to a community in which sex is infrequent and the women mainly spend their time providing childcare and housekeeping. Also, some older women are allowed to leave.
"Adultery was ended throughout the country. In the interior it was ended by killing anyone caught doing it. In the cities, adultery was ended by ending marriage. Because mature women may not decline to have sex, virginity s not possible anywhere except for young females.
"Of course, some women and intellectuals disliked these agreements but the fundamentalist threat enabled those in power in the cities who wanted to put women in their proper place to establish the new social regime. I think that everyone benefitted. A few nasty women naturally were unhappy at first, but after deprivations, whippings and rough sex, they saw the error of their ways. Some of the people who were unhappy about the new system when it was introduced are now some of our best sex providers and brothel managers. Most women are happy to be rid of having to make decisions and everyone in the cities is happy about the end to jealousy, violence over sexual relationships, nepotism and lover's quarrels."
"But doesn't this make women into slaves?" I asked. "No," Morice said, "they are just women. You don't call your pet poodle a slave because it is not allowed any say in running the household."
I resisted the impulse to scream and asked, "If every woman is available for sex by anyone, how does anyone know whose children are whose?"