Chapter 5: High and Low I

The next few weeks were difficult for Julie. She struggled with boredom and loneliness. One of the conditions of the deal with Blaine was that Alex not contact her. By necessity she was also cut off from friends and co-workers, for to explain her absence from work and home Alex found it necessary to invent a cover story, which was that she had gone to visit her mother who had taken ill and who lived far away in another part of the country. But in our connected age that alone was not sufficient, for surely her friends would expect her to stay in touch via text or email. So his ingenious mind concocted another falsehood, to wit, that she had lost her phone at the airport, then had the happy thought of embarking upon a digital vacation. No texts, no emails. It was a way of clearing her mind, a kind of spiritual holiday like a retreat in a monastery. It went without saying that she would remain in contact with Alex by phone via her mother’s land line. As for how to untangle these lies later, the future could be left to take care for itself. He had enough to worry about just keeping his business afloat.

But Julie actually had a mother, and she wasn’t sick at all. As a rule, mothers and daughters tend to speak, if not always on a daily or even a weekly basis, at least more frequently than once every six months. While Blaine’s plans for her seemingly required her isolation from familiar contacts, he might have had to allow this one exception, and here the invention of mobile phone technology could have proved a blessing. This, however, proved unnecessary, for mother and daughter had long been estranged. Julie’s mother had a volatile personality. Julie even suspected her of being bipolar. The marriage of her parents had been an unhappy one. Her father was a handsome, dashing man, always very popular with the ladies. He was also an incorrigible flirt, which made her mother violently jealous. Whether she ever had actual cause Julie didn’t know and never would for her father died of a sudden heart attack when she was nineteen. It was the one great tragedy of her young life, for she adored her father. When her parents quarreled Julie had always taken his side, further fueling her mother’s resentment.

There were other causes for conflict. Her mother was something of a prude. She didn’t like the way her daughter dressed, objected to her too short skirts, her crop tops, her too high heels, her fishnet stockings. “You look like a goddamn whore!” she once said. This only inflamed Julie’s rebelliousness. It got even worse when her mother discovered her kinky interests, this when she had carelessly left her computer unguarded. She was sixteen at the time and she was mortified when her mother confronted her with the evidence. She screamed and cursed at her, said she had no right to spy on her. After that her mother began to be suspicious of all her boyfriends. “He’s not a pervert, is he?” she would ask. No sooner had she graduated from college than she left her home town for good. It was a great relief to be out from under her mother’s control.

She did remain in touch though. Not surprisingly her mother was not happy when she moved in with Alex. After repeated urging the two flew in for a brief visit. Julie slept at her mother’s house while, at her insistence, Alex stayed at a hotel. Alex came prepared to charm her but her mother was cold to him and even downright rude. Then one day she asked them if they practiced safe sex. Alex was merely embarrassed but she was furious. She answered, “Yeah, we practice safe sex, but only when we do anal.” Her mother said that was disgusting. Julie walked out, an embarrassed Alex following after. They left the next day. After they went home Julie had an angry phone conversation with her mother. She castigated her mother for her rude behavior. Her mother brought up the subject of anal sex. She said it wasn’t “natural” and no decent man would do that to a woman. Julie replied that he did a lot worse than that to her and that she enjoyed it. Her mother asked her just what she meant by that. Julie said, “I think you can figure that out.” A light bulb must have gone off in her mother’s head for she said, “I knew it, I knew it, he’s one of those goddam perverts!” Julie replied, “Then I’m a pervert too. If you really want to know what we do I’ll send you an email with links to some websites.” She really wanted to flaunt it now, to throw it all in her mother’s face. In the end she never did send that email but it was the last time they ever talked. It was only through other relatives that she even knew her mother was alive.

So here she was, almost isolated from human contact with the exception of Blaine. Him she saw mostly in the mornings and evenings. The morning routine remained the same: making his morning coffee and giving him his morning blow job. The invariability of this last demand was something to marvel at; was he ever not horny in the morning? Blaine’s habits, his lifestyle, intrigued her. When she had to use the old Chevy again on a weekday, she noticed his BMW remained in the garage. She soon discovered that he had a limousine pick him up in the morning. She supposed this allowed him to get work done during his morning and evening commute. He never came home before seven and occasionally he didn’t come home at all, as she would discover the next morning when she came to make his bed. She wondered where he stayed on those occasions. Perhaps it was with a woman. On weekends he would sometimes be out all day, at other times he would be in and out. When he was home and he wasn’t with her he seemed to spend most of his time in the basement, perhaps relaxing listening to music from his large collection of CDs, or using the exercise equipment. These were guesses, for the Entertainment Room was soundproofed and further she was strictly enjoined to stay out of the basement during his nonworking hours. He was rarely in his office, the door of which he always kept open, so the basement seemed a likely guess. For the most part she was happy to stay out of his way, often remaining in her room, reading a book or a magazine.

For better or worse she had ample leisure time, for while the house was large it was mostly unoccupied. What the maid could do in two days she could surely do in two or three. Of course the maid didn’t have to worry about being caned, so she went at her duties with extra care. She was used to keeping house for Alex but she also had to work. In truth she had been an indifferent housekeeper but Alex, with his somewhat bohemian habits, didn’t particularly care.

Given the tedium of her routine the Entertainment Room, which she was allowed to use during the weekdays, was a great blessing to her. Julie loved music. Half of Blaine’s collection was classical, the rest jazz, rock and a few more exotic categories like “World Music.” She mostly listened to rock and regretted that Blaine’s tastes hardly extended past the last century. But she didn’t mind expanding her horizons a bit to other kinds of music. Now and then she watched a movie. What she missed most at first was the internet for she had no computer and couldn’t use the one in Blaine’s office. But she got used to it and in time she began to think that Alex’s fiction of a digital vacation had something to recommend it after all.

At eight in the evening she would begin preparing herself for her nightly visits to his office, bathing in bath salts, then applying her makeup. Sometime between nine and eleven he would call her. She would attach the leash to her collar and head for his office where she would mount the bench in the Submission Position. After tying the leash to the bench he would ask her a question, always the same one: “What did you do today, Julie?” She would follow this with a monotonous recitation of the banal events of her day, beginning with making his bed and her own. If she went to the supermarket she would tell him that and also what foods she bought. If she went to the cleaners to pick up or deliver his suits she would tell him that too. She would tell him if she vacuumed the living room, did the laundry or cleaned the bathrooms. She would tell him about preparing her breakfast, lunch and dinner and what she ate. She would describe her leisure activities, when she would swim in the pool, when she would work out on the exercise equipment, when she would use the Entertainment Room, what music she would listen to or, less frequently, what movies she would watch. These recitations could last as long as half an hour.

It all seemed pretty pointless as well as monotonous. Why did he want to know all this? She didn’t think he really did. She had two theories about it. One was that it was a way of demonstrating his control over her. He could not be with her every hour of the day but he could force her to account for every hour of the day. It was a reminder that she was a slave, that her time was not her own, that even her leisure time existed at his sufferance, as a privilege he graciously bestowed on her.

The other theory, which she leaned to more strongly, was that it was all about this ridiculous Submission Position he had forced her to assume. Julie was used to sitting at Alex’s feet when he talked to her. That was a ritual she enjoyed. At least she was allowed the privilege of talking to him face to face. It was positively dignified compared to this, having to talk to him while he stared at her private parts. She was sure that at least part of the purpose of these inquisitions was just for the sake of maintaining her in this humiliating posture.

About twice a week after her recitation he would spank her, starting with his hand or hands followed by use of either a belt, paddle or strap. At this he was very good. She should know, for there was nothing she liked better than being spanked, not even sex. The spankings were prolonged and always left her sore and bruised. But he knew how to give a good warmup. She eventually figured out that his spanking schedule depended on waiting for the bruises from her last spanking to clear up, so she could usually guess when the next one was coming. These spankings made her extremely excited. By the time he was finished her cunt would be dripping wet, her juices often spilling onto the bench (which she would clean the next day), the room heavy with the odor of her sex. But while enjoying it she also felt resentful, resentful that he was capable of exciting her in this way. When Alex spanked her it was the act of a lover. He was her lover before he was her Master and he remained her lover still. Blaine, on the other hand, and she never forgot this, was a man who was holding her hostage, hostage against a loan Alex had accepted out of mere desperation. He was like a loan shark out of some gangster movie like The Godfather. “Don Blaineone” she called him in her private thoughts. So what right did he have to extort such pleasure from her body? She almost would have preferred not to respond at all but she just couldn’t help herself. It was a physical reaction she couldn’t control. It was her body that betrayed her.

And the end of these sessions was always the same, the penetration of her asshole by that monstrous phallus. His apparent obsession with this mode of intercourse continued to surprise her. She’d have thought that at least some of the time he would want to fuck her in the normal way. Alex liked to say that while he enjoyed anal there was nothing like a warm, moist pussy. It was, after all, nature’s way. It required no external aids, no artificial lubrication. It was certainly more pleasurable for the woman, assuming such considerations mattered to Blaine. Perhaps he intended to do it eventually. Perhaps this was a form of training and once she had been opened up to his satisfaction he would begin using the standard method. After all, her asshole would always be there when he wanted it, at least during the duration of her stay.

As for the anal fucking itself, only very gradually did she become somewhat accustomed to it. She no longer worried that he would rend her apart or injure her. It slowly became less painful as her rectum learned to accommodate the intrusion. Was it all in her mind or had the passage itself become wider with exercise? She was reminded of a pornographic novel in which a slave was trained for anal use by being forced to wear ever larger dildos. That was what Blaine’s cock seemed like to her, a gigantic dildo. At least Alex would be pleased. “I’ve got a present for you, sir,” she would tell him. “My asshole has become larger. Now you can fuck me there all you want!”

Then one day everything changed. It was a Saturday afternoon in late August. She was in her room lying in bed reading when he opened the door and came in, something he rarely did. He told her to put on some nice clothes, as he was taking her into the city. He watched while she outfitted herself in a pink floral dress, stockings and heels. She asked him if she looked all right. He said she did. They drove into the city in his BMW. He said not a word about where they were going and she knew better than to ask. An hour later they were standing in front of a well-known and very upscale department store. She followed Blaine to the women’s clothing section. This was not a total surprise as a week ago he had asked for her measurements. A young saleswoman approached and asked if they needed help. Blaine gave her his name, saying he had an appointment with one Christine. Saying “I’ll get her,” the woman quickly turned on her heels and walked off. A few minutes later another woman, tall and slender and closer to Blaine’s age walked up to them. “Good afternoon, Mr. Blaine,” she said, smiling and extending her hand. “Hello, Christine,” he replied. “This is my girl, Julie.”

Christine turned her head towards Julie, but rather than saying hello she merely stared at her, looking her up and down in a way that made her blush. “She’s just as you described her,” the woman said at last. “I have the perfect model. Anything that fits her should fit your girl quite well. Shall we go inside?”

“Yes, let’s,” Blaine said.

Christine led them into a private viewing room, seating them in a pair of comfortable chairs. Julie felt ill at ease. The collar around her neck added to her discomfort. She guessed she was not the first “girl” Blaine had brought to this Christine woman and wondered if they wore collars too. If that were the case the woman would doubtless know just what it signified.