At his house, the surprises continued.
“I’ll be carrying each of you in. One at a time. When you get inside, please stand still where I leave you until you are all in,” he said. “When I move you to the door, please move your ankles to where I can tie them.”
I was first. He tied my ankles and then hoisted me over his shoulder and carried me off. I found myself surprisingly relaxed. I felt like I was a kidnapped princess being hauled off by a handsome pirate. As he walked and as I bounced gently on his shoulder, I was really getting a warm glow inside me. This was most strange! What was I feeling?
He put me down.
“There’s a couch behind you, so sit back if you must, but I would prefer you to remain standing.”
He left to get the others. I was all alone, standing, blindfolded, with my wrists and ankles tied. I worked my wrists a little as I waited. The pressure on my wrists felt exciting. I felt around for loose cords or a knot—none that I could find. I was pretty sure I would not get loose all by myself.
A girl was put down beside me. The girl was tall.
“Jenny?” I whispered after the man left.
“Yeah,” she confirmed. We didn’t say more. I felt her arms move as she checked her bonds.
Finally, I couldn’t hold it in. “Are you feeling as weird as I’m feeling?” I whispered.
She didn’t answer right away. Finally, she said, “Yeah, I’m feeling pretty strange all right.”
Then the professor came in with Maria.
He let us stand side-by-side for a while. I guess he was watching us.
I felt Jenny stir a little beside me. Then moments later, I felt his hand under my chin. I think he was inspecting us.
“You have done very well so far, my ladies. Next, I will untie you. Nearby is your dormitory room and washroom. I want you to go in there, undress completely, and pack your street clothes and personal possessions in the bag provided. Shower thoroughly, including your hair, and then put on your community service uniforms and come back out here. Do you need to notify anyone that you are staying here for the week?”
“Here for a week?” I sighed. “Yes,” I said.
“Please notify them after I untie you,” he said, and then he began untying us. He made it all seem so straightforward and routine, but it was all so strange! I didn’t want my folks to know about this. This had been a lot more trouble than I had expected as the result of a peaceful sit-in. So I would call my roommate and have her fib about where I was if my parents called.
He untied us and took off the blindfolds. My vision was fuzzy at first, but as it cleared, I could see I was in a nice house with lots of floor-to-ceiling windows. As my vision cleared more, I could see it was a beach house. Hmm … very nice! What did I do to deserve community service in digs like these? I was sure I was going to find out.
The professor was pointing toward the dormitory room. We went in, closed the door, and undressed. Our room had four beds. The shower was a large community-style affair with three entrances besides ours. If we wanted to escape or even just hide for a bit, it didn’t look like it would be hard to do. I called my roomie, and then I undressed.
We showered and didn’t think much about it, except for the “wash your hair” part. We all had long hair, so that meant toweling it afterward, and it was going to be severely witchy if we didn’t spend some time brushing it. We nodded to each other and took some time on our hair. This professor clearly had no idea what he was asking if he wanted our hair washed and not combed and dried!
Then came our community service outfits. Whoa! The outfit was only panties and flimsy fabric dresses that had over-the-shoulder ties and only went down to the midthigh. No bras, no stockings, no shoes—nothing else. The dress fabric was not only thin. It felt like paper! I looked for my personal-effects bag; it had been removed while we were showering. I looked in the chest of drawers in the room; there were more outfits like the ones we now wore, nothing more.
“This is bullshit,” I said, but what could we do but get dressed and get some explanations?
We walked out into the living room again, and Professor Oswald looked up from reading a book. He smiled as we came in. The smile didn't look lecherous, but who knew what lurked in the hearts of dirty old professors who took freshmen coeds in for community service?
There was a box on the large table in the living room, and near the table a single chair stood facing the sofa we had stood in front of before. He motioned us over to the sofa.
“I must ask that you ladies put your arms behind you once again.”
Tied up again. I turned around obediently and put the backs of my hands on my butt. I thought a little about objecting, but here I was in this flimsy excuse for a dress, no bra, and no shoes. It just didn’t seem worth it to object.
The rope first slid around my elbows, not my wrists. It had a cool, soft, pleasant feel—a thick nylon rope. The professor was not pulling my elbows any more tightly than I offered. I felt the coils wrap three times. Then I felt some vertical wraps and then some wraps around my wrists and some more vertical wraps, and finally, I felt a slight tug as the professor knotted what he’d done.
“See if that is comfortable,” he said. I moved my wrists and arms around—up, down, one side, and then the other. I was held, but I would not hurt. As I checked how well I was held, the calmness in me grew.
“You may turn around.”
I did, and I watched as he tied the other girls. The tying up was kind of exciting to watch, too, and I noticed that Jenny and Maria were both pretty calm as it happened. The professor was smooth at this.
“You may sit,” he announced when we were all tied. We all sat down on the sofa before I even thought about the fact that when he sat in that chair facing us, he would be looking up our skirts. That’s how relaxed I was. I had that silly grin again, too. He sat in the chair and faced us.
“Let me explain a little more about this community service,” he said. “This is, as you have noticed, not a typical community service program. It’s an experimental one. It’s designed to relieve what I see as a growing problem of our modern society. A problem that Judge Jones—Judge Dredd to you—has noticed as well and concurs we should be trying to solve. First, let me ask. Do you consider yourselves to be modern women?”
I looked at Jenny and Maria, nodded, and said, “Yes.”
“When are you planning on getting married?”
“What kind of question is that?” said Jenny.
“A very straightforward one,” replied Oswald.
“Not until the right man comes along and I’ve had a chance to develop my career. Probably late twenties or early thirties,” said Maria.
“Would you other ladies agree?”
We nodded yes.
“And how many children do you expect to have?”
“Oh … one or two … if my future husband insists upon them.”
We nodded in agreement again. This was something we’d talked about during the summer. We were all pretty much in agreement that there was too much to do in life to get tied down early with marriage and motherhood.
“Uh-huh, and therein lies a problem,” Oswald said knowingly. “Now which of you has studied history or anthropology?”
“I have,” I said.
“Historically, how old was a woman when she got married?”
“Oh, twenty-four.”
“Wrong,” Oswald said and sighed. “You’re even more brainwashed than I thought. Who told you twenty-four?”
“Brainwashed!” I thought. Even if I was tied up, those were fighting words! But I replied evenly, “Lots of people. Ms. Evelyn in particular.”
“Evelyn. Yes, that explains a lot. What do you know of Ms. Evelyn’s credentials?”
“What do you mean credentials? She’s the regional president of NOW and a registered lobbyist for gay and lesbian rights. She's got wonderful credentials.”
“Yes, she has wonderful credentials for an activist career, but they are not those of a careful, impartial observer, are they?”
I really wanted to get my hands in front of me so I could make a point. I wanted to lay into this Oswald in a big way and count off points on my fingers. But I couldn’t, and somehow because I couldn’t, I didn’t feel like saying any more. Somehow, the ropes that were holding my arms behind me were draining my will to argue. I squirmed instead, got up, and walked around. Oswald did not object. I was surprised. Five minutes ago, he had tied us up, so I was expecting him to act like some kind of fascist, but instead, he was staying quite relaxed and letting me do what I could. I looked out the window at the beach. Soon, I settled down, and I was ready to listen again. I sat back down in my place on the sofa.
“What age?” he asked again, picking up the conversation where we left off.
“The older books say eighteen, but Ms. Evelyn points out they were written by dead, white males,” I said.
“They may be dead, white males, but there’s a whole lot of evidence backing up that claim. Marriage records, diaries, family histories … it's pretty hard to refute that up until the second half of the twentieth century, the large majority of women who married married in their late teens to early twenties and did their childbearing in their twenties and early thirties.”
“How many children?” he continued.
“Oh, four was common.”
“Much better. Yes, four was about average, and eight if the mother was blessed. Why am I asking you this?”
“We have no idea!” It was Jenny’s turn to be frustrated. “This is supposed to be community service, not some sort of lecture series that’s half-chloroform and half-kink.”
Oswald laughed and said, “Okay, I see I’ve hit the limit of your attention span, Jenny, and perhaps you others, too. Let’s do something a bit more physical for a while. I would like you young ladies to clean this place up and prepare us an evening meal.”
Jenny blushed, but Oswald motioned for us to come to him. One-by-one, we came up to get untied. He untied us, but before he did, he gave each of us a quick but nice backrub. Whatever he had in mind for teaching us, touch seemed to be very important to it.
Once we were untied, we spent the rest of the afternoon and early evening cleaning the place up. It was fairly big, and it had been put in storage for the winter, so there was a lot of unwrapping and dusting and such to do. We moved groceries in from the van, and got the kitchen ready for the summer season.