Belonger (An erotic novel): Part One Read online

  Rubber sex also referred to textured phallic sheathes designed to caress the vagina in a way mere flesh could not. Many discerning women insisted their lovers use “rubbers”—no matter how talented at copulation—because of their ability to confer a stronger interior stimulation. Rubbers were also used to limit a man’s pleasure, and were shaded in the Merkin’s system to indicate a relative delay in climax. He sometimes had his male auditioners fit with them to ensure their unfaltering performance through any coitus that might arise on stage. The Merkin desired the acceptance of the rubber more than any other fashion innovation as it was the seed from which a dress code could be imposed anywhere, from the site of deepest intimacy out to a whole wardrobe, potentially granting him total control of the other judges’ cultures.

  Rubber sex was the perfect subtext for a scene involving Manassa, and his needle blurred into motion as he stitched the words and lines of a new piece of script…

  SCENE: A number of female employees uniformly garbed in stylish but unrevealing rubber-accented pink and red dresses are stationed about a special clothing boutique. They are organizing various wares arranged in low displays, commenting on their presentation and organization, including brassieres and panties, gloves, whips and belts, and a rack of phallic rubber sheathes modeled on boldly angled phalluses—everything in numerous sizes, colors and textures.

  A rectangular series of knee-high wall segments line one side of the shop, intended to represent a private changing room. However, anyone inside this “room” is fully exposed to the audience gathered circumferentially about the stage.

  NARRATOR: “A new employee has come to a clothing boutique for orientation. Already acquainted with the sale of ordinary attire, she will now practice with erotic rubber fashions. She circulates among the more experienced employees as they wait for customers, ready to accommodate them in any reasonable way.”

  A handsome fellow in a dashing leisure suit enters.

  CUSTOMER: “I’d like to see your belts. I’m looking for something to coax my sulky lover’s bottom, if you take my meaning.”

  An employee steps forward to help. She is a relatively compact woman, like all the ladies of the boutique save for the new one being trained—Manassa.

  EMPLOYEE: “I do, sir. Right this way.”

  She directs her customer to the appropriate display and he selects a lightweight blue product.

  CUSTOMER: “This one, perhaps?”

  EMPLOYEE: “I think not, sir; it’s too flimsy to inflict a satisfying censure on the buttocks.”

  With this in mind he raises a few more for consideration.

  EMPLOYEE: “That’s the one you want.”

  She indicates a thick rubber strap sure to deliver a sound impact.

  CUSTOMER: “Very good! This will do.”

  His status is easily sufficient for the acquisition and he is soon gone from the shop.

  Next, two casually attired people saunter into the shop, awkwardly holding hands. Another employee steps forth to help.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Can I be of assistance?”

  The man steps away from his companion, a lovely woman with an air of quiet anxiety. He regards the contents of the shop with a frown, then addresses the employee in an irked tone.

  CUSTOMER TWO: “Well, the situation is this; the lady disturbs my sleep on a frequent basis with her ceaseless masturbation. She means to be discreet I’m sure, but at some point every night, when she decides after rubbing and teasing herself at length that she wants to climax after all, I am awakened from dream to find myself haplessly involved in her fantasy.”

  The employee offers a suitably scandalized look.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “I see.”

  She regards the woman with a puzzled air.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Why do you touch yourself when fulfillment is impossible without his participation?”

  There was no answer.

  CUSTOMER TWO: “Tell them!”

  CUSTOMER THREE: “I just like the feeling of my vagina. I like to rub it very slowly and imagine…”

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “But no one can orgasm without the intentional contact of another person…”

  The woman looks submissively down.

  CUSTOMER THREE: “Yes, I know…”

  The employee circles her with a speculative air, turns back to her client.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Sir, is it your desire to stymie her masturbation, or to condition her behavior so that such arrangements are unnecessary altogether?”

  CUSTOMER TWO: “I don’t know. I’ve tried promises and oaths, nocturnal supervision, bondage, restrictive lingerie, whips and straps… she can’t be stopped!”

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Indeed! Let me think…”

  She makes a show of musing on possible remedies, then raises a finger theatrically.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “I think I have it. Come this way, please.”

  She steps around to the display of rubber gloves.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Sir, are you familiar with the ritual of the helping hand?”

  CUSTOMER TWO: “Indeed, no…”

  The employee selects a pair of long, angry red gloves, their fingers lined with deep ridges to stymie even the canniest effort of clitoral stimulation. She summons the man’s companion and deftly draws them onto her shapely hands.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Sir, your first obligation will be to ensure that she is properly gloved for sleep.

  CUSTOMER TWO: “I see…”

  Then, when she awakens the following morning, you question her.”

  The employee faces the woman and speaks formally.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “How many times did you attempt climax last night?”

  CUSTOMER THREE: “Five.”

  Her voice is rich with shame.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Well! Rather frisky-fingered aren’t you? A nice little love affair with yourself!”

  She smirks, turning back to her male customer.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Next, you correct her selfishness with the following technique, which thematically bridges the behavior and its punishment.”

  The employee gently pushes the man’s lover onto a low demonstration table, gets her settled on her back.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Remove your panties and spread your legs, please.”

  The woman does so and they stare at her naked crotch.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Now, the ritual proceeds as follows…”

  She points sternly at the woman spread before them.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Which is the hand that helped your pleasure?”

  The woman timidly offers her right one, and the employee draws the glove from it with sensual but sinister finesse. She grasps it at the open end like a whip, fingers extended, then raises it judgmentally.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “For each offense you will be slapped by your own hand. And after each rebuke you will swear as follows: ‘I will not masturbate without permission!’. Do you understand?”

  The woman nods and the employee brings the long, supple rubber glove down on her crotch, provoking a little shriek.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Say it!”

  CUSTOMER THREE: “I will not masturbate without permission…”

  The woman quavers the response, legs fanning in pain. Her eyes close.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “The hand that hurts is the hand that helps.”

  The employee brings the glove down again and the woman gasps in pain and excitation.

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Say it!”

  CUSTOMER THREE: “I will not masturbate without permission!”

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “Now you try.”

  She hands the glove to her client. He clutches it firmly from the open end and brings the hand down between his lover’s shapely thighs.

  CUSTOMER TWO: “Selfish slipper! Say it!”

  CUSTOMER THREE: “I will not masturbate without permission!”

  CUSTOMER TWO: “Maybe you’ll keep your hands off your snooch tonight!”

  He delivers a totally unqualified contact. Her whole body spasms and she wails the humiliati
ng response.

  CUSTOMER THREE: “I will not masturbate without permission!”

  Her lover smiles, satisfied with her sincerity.

  CUSTOMER TWO: “The hand that helps is the hand that hurts, dear.”

  EMPLOYEE TWO: “You may close your legs and don your glove again.”

  The chastened woman slides unsteadily to her feet, cheeks blooming from her belittlement. Eyes lowered to the carpet, she takes the glove from the employee and slides it back on.

  CUSTOMER TWO: “This is a remedy I can believe in!”

  Impressed by this bold regime, he selects additional gloves for their varying textures, and the couple are shortly on their way.

  Next, a very large, handsome fellow enters the shop, conservatively suited. The employees cease bantering and face this new customer, presenting themselves hopefully to service.

  CUSTOMER FOUR: “I’m shopping for my lady. It is to be a surprise. As she cannot try things on personally, I would prefer the boutique to provide a model for this purpose. My lover is a voluptuous woman, I should mention, and as tall as myself.”

  The man surveys the employees of the boutique, halts on Manassa’s comparatively giant form; she is the obvious choice next to the other women.

  CUSTOMER FOUR: “You. You will suffice.”

  Manassa steps forward with alacrity to serve him.

  MANASSA: “No problem! Now what are you interested in?”

  CUSTOMER FOUR: “I would like to get her a rubber brassiere and a matching set of rubber stockings.”

  Manassa turns to regard the wares of the boutique. She steps to the appropriate displays.

  MANASSA: “Certainly, sir. Right over here!”

  The customer joins her and they survey the available colors and styles. Manassa points to a few pink articles accented with black.

  MANASSA: “How about these?”

  CUSTOMER FOUR: “Yes. They will do. Please model them for me, would you?”

  MANASSA: “As you wish, sir.”

  She acquires the largest available of each, then steps over to the mock changing room.

  Miming the use of a door, she is soon “hidden” within knee-height walls. She undresses, then slips the pink rubber brassiere on and rolls the matching stockings up her legs.

  She emerges from the dressing room and models the lingerie for her customer with a decorous whirl, highlighting small rubber tags that protrude from the nipples.

  MANASSA: “These tags render a painful thrill for your pleasure.”

  She takes one between thumb and forefinger and pulls it. The material of the brassiere stretches compliantly, and when she releases the tag her nipple is snapped painfully.

  MANASSA: “Oh, that smarts! Would you care to try?”

  The customer reaches for her breast, finds the tag and pulls it back. He releases it and the material snaps down hard. Manassa jumps and her customer smiles.

  CUSTOMER FOUR: “Very good! I think I’ll try a rubber, too. You will also need to model this. In reaction, of course.”

  Manassa lies down on the demonstration bench and widens her thighs to expose a perfectly hairless vagina. The customer unzips his fly and rolls the textured rubber onto his erection.

  MANASSA: “At your convenience, sir.”

  The customer positions himself at her cleft, then lets himself in. She gasps as his member strokes deep inside, fully penetrating.

  MANASSA: “That’s nice, sir. Your penis is a marvel, and the rubber feels wonderful! Please don’t stop!”

  The customer enjoys intercourse till the pleasure brings climax.

  MANASSA: “I’m coming, sir!”

  She sighs in ecstasy as the client ejaculates into the rubber. He slows to a gentle stroke.

  CUSTOMER FOUR: “Excellent! I’ll take a few of these with the lingerie.”

  The Merkin’s needle slowed and he closed his eyes for a moment. The dilapidated wilderness of pajamas and pillowcases where he had secreted himself for the business of writing was totally silent. Sound barely carried in the laundry.

  His work on Manassa’s scene had deeply aroused him. He couldn’t stop fantasizing about her utterly smooth vagina; it had become his teleological lure the moment he first heard it described. Leaning back, he traced his ancient adoration for the female body, a love affair negotiated over and again in the reconception of the brassiere, the panty, the glove, the sleek stockings he loved to draw on their legs… Now his obsession had an object—a destiny—and he wouldn’t rest till Manassa was on his stage, living in his world. It was almost more than he could imagine…

  The Merkin smoothed the narrow delta of hair at his lips, too worked up to be creative now. He needed to spend time in the one place he could directly access the beauty of the female physique with his own hands. He needed his flower garden.

  He slapped the soft pink jacket shut on its valley of canvas pages and stood, remedied his cramped physique with a brief interval of grunting pandiculation, then set off for the nearest sleeve that accessed the higher levels of the Tent, stopping only to select new clothes for later.

  His path took him through a lonely neighborhood of grey and blue slacks of a style he had introduced long ago, and he sentimentally fingered the sharp leg crease in passing, wondering as many times before why fashion had no circular path back to its celebrated modes. The older clothes of the laundry could never be novel or popular again. Unless everyone forgot everything all at once somehow…

  He trudged up a gentle gradient of canvas that brought him around to a small sink. This silent pool lay at the terminus of a sprawling network of flooded wrinkles in the floor of the Tent, and he followed the tendril of water that endowed it till a larger tributary wandered into view. Sprinting toward this lazy stream he vaulted to the other side, where scratchy red and orange sweaters ornamented were massed into great heaps under the gloomy gaze of a low-hung gnome.

  He wondered how Manassa and her group were faring in the City. What sexual dynamic prevailed among the four of them? He doubted they were cleanly divided into couples; two couples made a fundamentally unstable socio-sexual unit. The reason for that was technical—mathematical actually—but it explained in very simple terms why no significant culture of “swinging” sexuality ever endured, despite the fact that there was usually great interest in the experiences it could offer.

  The Merkin dallied at a piled promontory of soft pink blouses to spy on a few slippers in the distance, busy hauling clean laundry out of a canvas sink tenanted by a churning gyro gnome. Soap bubbles spumed from its whirling arms and legs and the women were laughing at its chaotic but indispensable utility. A single bubble wandered as far as his own position, unlikely survivor of a dangerous journey through the intervening maze of apparel. The Merkin beheld its tiny, transparent domain—exterior, whorling boundary of film, and the unknowable world within—then gently popped the sensually dancing orb, canceling its fragile secrecy and its secrets too.

  The slippers fell silent as a mannerman wandered by to inspect their bikinis, resumed their noisy banter at his departure.

  Had the man found either woman improperly attired, wearing the wrong color for example, she would have been tied at the wrists to one of the hemp lines undergirding the canvas ceiling. Her bikini would have been gently removed, then she would have been strapped by a moistened fabric strap—nipples, posterior and crotch—till she was twitching from the reprimand, and carefully and correctly attired by his hand. The Merkin almost wished it had happened, or even better that he could perform this function himself, but he was already quite aroused and such intimate and unstructured contact with a pretty woman would have resulted in his helplessly licking and sucking and fucking her, to the complete eradication of his dignity.

  No… that was the reason for the mannermen. And his flower garden.

  Striking off to the right, the Merkin padded his way down to a well-occupied region of the laundry and was shortly striding up a giant fabric sleeve. Servants hustled deferentially from his path�
��he was easily recognized anywhere he ranged due to the unique fringe of hair at his lips—and he took three progressively smaller sleeves up to the highest levels of the Tent, arresting at the vigilantly doormanned entrance to the calyx dormitory.

  Doormen were specialized servants. They were trained by the Dowser to remember any face they saw, which was something the mannermen couldn’t do at all—their perception was completely fixed to extrinsic qualities of personhood such as clothing and accouterments. The Merkin used doormen all over the Tent for their singular ability to police its complex privileges of access, and even had fancy uniforms to distinguish them, replete with buttoned vests and smart-looking caps. They formed an automatic hierarchy, and he only had to deal with the top doorman; his orders automatically propagated down from there to the other ones in service to the Tent. The fellow stationed before his flower garden allowed no man but the Merkin to enter it, and dutifully swept the curtained arch wide at his approach.

  Within, a slipper enveloped by a flowery, mint-colored ensemble straightened at his presence. His gardener.

  “Arrange a dox of flowers in the moss grotto,” he instructed, and she stalked off to see this done as he repaired to the big gnome-pumped tub in a nearby hall to bathe. Canvas sinks were only available in the laundry, where the underside of the Tent was directly permeated by fresh water—all higher levels of the Tent got their supply courtesy of flow gnomes with posterior intake hoses drawing from the lowest level. He soaped himself thoroughly, washed off and stepped out as water drained back to the laundry through another flexible conduit.

  The garment bag he had brought held a bulky black and maroon trefoil-patterned suit tessellated by an almost invisible threadwork at the lapels. It was the latest style—his sew gnomes had just begun to produce the design. His swarthy reddish shirt was cut from the finest linen he possessed, exquisitely soft against his skin. The tie he had chosen was a wide persimmon plain dotted by a round silver disk.

  Clean, freshly attired and psychologically rehearsed for what would follow, the Merkin traversed the twisting fabric corridor from the bath to his most exclusive garden. Pausing one last time to estimate his long-condensing arousal, he entered.