We had dinner in the dining room next to the kitchen. It had been a strenuous afternoon with all the cleaning and cooking. I was getting a bit worn out, and this skimpy little dress I was wearing didn’t stand up well to tugging or sweating. I’d had it on only a few hours, and it was looking pretty shabby.
“You can clean up and change clothes for dinner. When you do, throw out those you have on now. They are one-wear. And we will have one more lesson before we begin eating.”
I was hungry, so we showered quickly—no hair-washing this time—and switched into new dresses and then came out. Oswald was waiting with the box of rope. He didn’t have to say a thing. We just lined up with our arms behind us. It was a simple wrists-together tie this time.
“Before dinner tonight, we will have a physical, and hereafter, we will have it in the morning before breakfast,” he announced, and out of the box came a stethoscope, a scale, and a blood pressure checker. The scale and the blood pressure thingy made some sense, but I swear he was checking our hearts just to get a cheap thrill when he slid our dresses down! He did, and he saw our breasts. He worked the stethoscope thingy around them, and none of us objected. He asked us our ideal weights, and then we stood on the scale. We were all, of course, overweight, so he prescribed “just one serving at dinner tonight.”
He went on, “One rule you must follow during a community service meal is that you must be touching a male body while you eat, and you must treat that male with the utmost respect and courtesy. To make that rule easier, I’ve invited a guest to have dinner with us—Mr. Billy Bucket.”
Maria was wide-eyed as her Billy knocked on the door and came into the dining room. He was dressed in a suit. Professor Oswald greeted him warmly but formally, and it was clear that we should treat this whole dinner as a formal occasion. Maria got to sit by Billy, and when she wasn’t serving, she put her hand on his knee. Jenny and I did the same for Professor Oswald.
It was a strange meal. It was very formal. We ladies were permitted to speak but only in the most polite ways and only to the men, not to each other. Professor Oswald talked most of the time as if we weren’t there, and this setting was strange enough for him that Billy followed along. (And I didn’t think he minded one bit that Maria had to keep touching him.) Billy got the idea, and both men started talking as if we weren’t there at all—until they needed some more food or drink. The professor had supervised us closely as we had prepared this first meal, and he had told us how large to make the servings (small), so we were moving a lot now. We didn’t eat until the men were finished. Then we ate while they talked some more, and we still had to touch them.
It should have been humiliating, and thinking about these rules before the start of dinner sure was! But by the end of the meal, I felt relaxed again. The professor had said he had an explanation for this during that afternoon lecture, but Jenny had cut him off. I hope he would get around to explaining it once again.
It was like he was reading my mind.
“Ladies … and Billy, you’re probably noticing you’re feeling a bit strange right now. No, the food hasn’t been drugged or anything such as that! It’s the atmosphere around you right now. You’re experiencing an idyllic male-dominated atmosphere. What you are experiencing here is men being men, and your brains are responding to this atmosphere in an instinctive way. You, ladies, are starting to feel the flowering of the instinct to submit to a man.”
“The what! I don’t want to feel any such instinct!” Maria stood up and took her hand off Billy with a look of disgust.
“Suit yourself. You may leave at any time. You just have to pay the fine … for all three of you. Remember, if one leaves, you all leave, and remember also that you are here at my pleasure, not yours. If I decide one of you must leave, the experiment stops, and you all must leave. This was clear at the beginning, right?”
Maria said nothing, did nothing.
“You may put your hand back on Billy, Maria.”
Oswald said it as an order. She thought for only a moment, put her hand back on Billy, and sat down. Strangely, as this was going on, I did not get very excited about Maria’s case. I almost felt I was out of body, and I was kind of leaning into the professor as she was yelling. I guess I could sort of sympathize now with those ladies I saw acting like baby dolls.
“As I was saying, you have an instinct to feel this way. What exactly is an instinct, Jenny?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Something you feel like doing?”
“Not a bad answer—”
“It’s a suggestion that comes into your brain from nowhere,” I interrupted. “It’s keyed by aging and external events, but it’s not something you learn or are told. It’s something that is hardwired into your brain. It comes out feeling like a strong suggestion to do something or feel a certain way about someone or something.”
Professor Oswald looked at me in amazement. “Where did you pick all that up?”
“I read it in an article. I thought it was pretty interesting stuff.”
“You didn’t happen to notice the author, did you?”
“No.”
Oswald grinned and said, “I hope it was me. If it wasn’t, someone is plagiarizing.”
“Really?” Then something really strange happened! God! I couldn’t believe I did it! I gave him a little hug. This instinct business was nuts!
“Well, I think we’ve had a most entertaining evening. Billy, I must get these lovely young ladies to bed, or Judge Jones will have my hide. If Maria approves, I’ll try to get you back for another dinner.”
Good-byes were said all around. We ladies were feeling so gracious and into this formal courtesy scene that we even curtsied as Billy bowed when he left and then giggled at the joke. The professor just smiled.
We headed back for the dorm but went through it to a room beyond. That room had a circular water bed in it and a massage table. When we got there, the professor announced, “You will each get a full-body massage before bed, and you will be tied up while you wait.
Our arms went behind us. Once our wrists were tied, the professor put us on the water bed and tied our ankles to our wrists.
“This is called a hog-tie,” he said.
Wow! So much helplessness for so little rope! I couldn’t move a muscle.
Jenny was first. He worked her over hog-tied first while we watched. He had a lot of technique. Sometimes he was gentle. Sometimes he was strong. It wasn’t too long before her eyes closed, and it wasn’t too long after that her breathing got different. The professor untied her ankles and rubbed her some more. Finally, he untied her wrists and carried her like a princess back to the dorm room. It took a while before he came out and worked on Maria. I was the cow’s tail, and I was darn curious about what obviously felt so good.
I found out! Gosh, he had good hands! As good as I was feeling before, I was ten times more so when I was carried to my bed. I got a little kiss, too. He turned the lights out, and our first day of community service was over.