All of us set up shop in that big, lovely living room with the wonderful view of the beach on two sides. Now I could see why people loved having a house like this. It was inspiring. This turned out to be a time when we weren’t tied up or anything, so I studied and wandered and studied and wandered. I walked out on the patio. I felt my flimsy dress get ruffled by the beach breeze. I felt how nice that felt on a sunny day like we were having, how nice it was to let my breasts hang naturally and to not contend with watching my step in high heels. How nice it was to feel the breeze through my hair, how my hair slid over my shoulders and back when it was down. How nice it would feel to have a husband behind me, with his arms around me, and a baby swelling up my womb.
Whoa! I was feeling what? This was a strange daydream for me. My dream was to be an outstanding professional woman and a trophy wife for some hotshot, professional man and trophy husband whom I had gotten involved with after I had made a reputation, not to be some barefoot, smiling, and pregnant housewife—at least I thought it was. I went back inside and hit the books again.
Arnold wasn’t boasting when he said he was well-versed. I hit him up for questions in three different courses, and he had good answers for all of them. Wow! In truth, I didn’t need much help with number three. I was … well, I was just happy to be sitting next to him! I was getting very comfortable listening to his voice and looking in those bright blue eyes of his. And it could have just been me, but I thought he was happy when I was sitting next to him, too. He sure gave me explanations like he was happy.
Jenny and Maria saw him, too, so between the three of us, I didn’t think he got much done on his own paperwork. But he didn’t seem to mind. He was patient with all of us, and I think Jenny and Maria were equally impressed with all he seemed to know. I know I caught Jenny looking up from her work more than once to listen to something he was explaining to Maria.
The sun set, and it was evening cleanup and dinnertime.
“We will be having another guest this evening, so look your best,” Arnold said. Looking your best meant being clean but not using better clothes or makeup or heels or putting our hair up or anything we girls usually thought of as part of “looking your best.” We simply cleaned up the place and slipped in to new flimsies after the evening meal was mostly cooked.
Our guest that evening was Jimmy, the school photographer, and Jenny got to sit with him. I wasn’t surprised when she seemed to like that. By the end of the meal, she and he were hitting it off nicely. I shouldn’t have been surprised that Jimmy was having a good meal, especially because he had Jenny’s hand on his leg most of the time, but I could now see what Professor Oswald was saying about “flowering instincts,” because Jenny seemed to be having a really good time, too. She was having fun seeing Jimmy have fun.
Jimmy had brought his camera, as should be expected of any dedicated photographer, and Arnold invited him to use it. Usually, I was real shy about having my picture taken. I still had lots of acne scars on my cheeks. But this instinct thing was really “flowering,” so the three of us were happy to pose—if that was what our men wanted—and they gave every indication that that was what they wanted. They were encouraging us and clowning around with us and getting in the pictures, too. My favorite was one where Arnold made like a muscleman and Jenny and I leaned on his shoulders and nestled into the curve in each arm. You couldn’t tell from the picture, but we had to stand on the patio ledge to get high enough to get even with his shoulders. The result looked like a muscleman ad except no one was in swimsuits.
I knew Ms. Evelyn would have been disappointed, and so would Ms. Anyone for that matter. They would object to it as totally unsuitable for modern male-female relations. But gosh, it felt so right, too! (And I still love that shot.)
|
My favorite was where Arnold made like a muscleman and Jenny and I leaned on his shoulders and nestled into the curve in each arm. |
It wasn’t too long before the ropes were out again, and we got lots of shots with us girls wearing ropes on our wrists and happy grins on our faces. It sure felt strange to enjoy acting like a helpless, sexy blond, but I sure was.
That night after Jimmy left (and Jenny gave him a clingy smooch that would keep him coming back for more for weeks), Arnold tied us up again and sat us on the couch. He tied both our hands and feet this time and sat on his chair in front of us.
“What have you learned?” he asked, and he waited for an answer.
“Well … this instinct is really powerful,” I said. “I’m truly amazed at how I’m feeling. Here I am, bound hand and foot, wearing clothing I would have called ‘indecent rags’ two days ago, in front of a man whom I’ve known for only two days, and … and I feel like it’s the right place to be and I’m doing the right thing. I feel like … I deeply trust you … something I’ve only felt with my father before.”
Arnold laughed and said, “The instinct is not powerful. If it was powerful, I wouldn’t have to be taking you ladies through this program. It is something else. It is deeply satisfying, if you let it flower. In the old days, it was called ‘passionate love’ when it flowered and went well and ‘puppy love’ when it flowered and went sour. These days, few ladies are trained to feel love, and there are a lot of modern reasons not to feel it—studies, careers, travel, entertainment. These are all things that can take up your time and attention in place of passionate love. Your role models in the radical feminist camp want this instinct bottled up and stored away unused.”
“That’s not fair,” said Maria, but her heart wasn’t in the statement. She couldn't add any more to it.
“Let me ask you … why does this instinct exist?”
I thought a bit. It was so strange! Here I was, bound hand and foot, sitting in a sofa with two friends who were also bound hand and foot, and I was having a deep philosophic discussion with a professor! I squirmed a little bit against my bonds. The glow was starting to warm me again. Then I thought about the problem presented by Arnold.
“This instinct developed to hold us, men and woman, together.”
“Very good! Say more.”
“If men and women were ‘average mammals,’ they would come together only during mating season. The rest of the time, the males would forage one place, often solo, and the females would forage somewhere else, often as a weakly bound community. That works well for mammals that don’t invest a lot of effort in child-raising.”
“Good!” Arnold raised his hand to stop me. “Can either of you ladies add to this?”
Hesitantly, Jenny spoke up, “Nature evolved men and women to like sex … really like sex. Like it so much that they would stay together in mixed communities and cooperate with each other.”
As this conversation was developing, Maria was squirming even more than I was. She finally spoke out and said, “This is not right! Evolution is not right! God designed us all!”
She was now trying hard to get her hands free. I’d heard Maria when we were just sitting around and talking. If she got rolling on intelligent design, we’d be listening for hours.
Arnold moved to the sofa beside her and moved his hand up and down her leg. She settled down and looked at him.
“Did God design you, Maria?”
“Yes,” she said quietly.
“Did he put this instinct in you? The one you are feeling now?”
“Yes—”
He moved to rubbing her shoulders a bit as well as her knee.
“Let’s not waste words on an evolution-versus-intelligent-design argument now. For purposes of this discussion, let’s presume that the intelligent designer is wise enough and subtle enough to have added these instincts to the original, unchanging, distinctly human design, okay?”
She nodded, and he gave her a long kiss. As he did, his hand slid slowly from her knee, across her tummy, and to her breast and lingered there a while. Marci did not complain about that, either. In fact, she was leaning into Arnold’s kiss. What an instinct! When they came up for air, Arnold went back to his chair.
“So there is an instinct for men and women to enjoy lots of sex. That’s half of what we are experiencing. What is the other half?”
“That men dominate women,” I said.
“Bingo! Why?”
“Because men are the hunters and women are the nurturers?”
“To put it on a very basic and simple level, yes. Men need to be strong to hunt … and aggressive. A man who is a stay-at-home, sensitive type isn’t nearly as much help to a woman with child as a man who is out a lot but bringing home lots of bacon when he comes. The woman must keep that wandering man with the bacon coming home. That’s why the woman’s instinct is to be submissive and sexy and the man’s instinct is to be capturing and sexy. That’s why you wear the ropes and enjoy it. There is one more wrinkle to this equation, a new wrinkle. Successful men are cooperative men. This wrinkle came on most strongly with agriculture, so it’s a very new part of the instinct but a real part. Cooperative men are more useful to women with children than ‘born losers,’ men who may be excellent solo hunters but have a poorly developed cooperative instinct. Any questions?”
We sat there, thinking. It was hard enough thinking of something when you were at a desk with pen and paper in hand. Here, on this sofa, Arnold was patient.
I finally thought of something, “Well, I’ll ask the obvious one. Why are we not using this instinct today?”
“An excellent question! Why aren’t we?”
I shrugged. (I could still do that.) “It seems so … old-fashioned … and childish. Cowboys and Indians. Getting tied up. Now that we are doing this, it feels really good! But I would never have guessed! Why didn’t my mother tell me!”
I laughed. We all laughed.
“Your mother didn’t know. She didn’t know because this instinct has been suppressed slowly, bit by bit. It has been suppressed by prosperity.”
“Prosperity?”
Arnold nodded. “How has prosperity suppressed this instinct to be sexy and submit to men?”
“Be sexy and submit to men. That's what whores do,” said Maria. She was squirming again.
“Why do they do it, Maria?”
“Because they get paid.”
“Why do they get paid?”
“Because men really like it?”
“Sounds like your marketing instinct is well-developed. There’s a strong demand. What else is necessary for a high price?”
Maria settled down and blushed a bit and then said, “A limited supply. These men haven’t found what they want elsewhere for cheaper.”
“Economics 101. Not enough women are being sexy and submissive, so the men pay well for those who will be.”
For some reason, I felt like standing up, hopping over to Arnold on my bound feet, and planting my hot little fanny in his lap. So I did! And after I was nice and comfy in his lap, I noticed there was a spot below his ear that needed a little kiss. When that was taken care of, I asked, “Why did prosperity make women give up on being sexy?”
I was not disappointed. He slid one hand up and down my thighs while the other slid up and down my back. The hand on my back grabbed my hair and forced my head into a lingering kiss with his lips before he answered, “Two things are happening that make prosperous women give up on being sexy. First, they have many more choices of how to spend their time than when they are poor. They have spas, TV, music, studies, careers, beauty parlors, jogging—all sorts of ways to spend time besides being sexy and submissive. And most of their fellow women are encouraging them to pursue these alternatives. Instead of scheming how to get a man, these days, you hear friends say, ‘Forget about that man. Come spend time with me at the spa!’
“Second, a woman only wants to be sexy and submissive for a short time in her life—only during her teens and twenties. By the time a woman gets to thirty, her instinct is telling her to be a ‘matron,’ not a ‘bride.’ And that’s a whole new instinct set.
“A matron has to fight for her rights. She is not only getting resources for herself but first for her growing children and then for her soon-to-be married children and finally for herself and her weakening husband when they get old and gray.
“So the time is short, and prosperity has been cutting hard into the bride time. We started losing bride time during the industrial revolution, when the progressive part of the community declared that women under eighteen are too young to know what they are doing in matters sexual. In the last half of the twentieth century, we have cut out the second half by telling women, ‘Finish college. Get your career established. Then hunt men.’
“Thanks to the wonderful opportunities offered by prosperity, the community has chosen to stifle the bride instincts completely, and it wants women to begin their relations with men only after the matron instincts are ready to kick in.”
“Maybe that's why my mother never told me. Maybe she forgot.”
“It is likely she never let her bride instinct flower in her teens and twenties and when she became thirty, the sexy and submissive instinct became irrelevant, not understandable anymore.”
We all sat in silence, thinking.
“How about men? Do their instincts change, too?”
“Indeed they do! No man in his teens or twenties could be teaching you the way I’m teaching you now, could they?”
We all laughed again.
“A man’s instincts are different and evolve differently from a woman’s. A man is not sexy and submissive in his teens and twenties, and not a matron in his thirties and forties. His instincts unfold along a different path.”
I was feeling really warm and fuzzy now. I felt Arnold’s arms come up under my legs and back. He stood up with me in his arms and kissed me.
“Someone should stick a fork in you. You’re well done.”
I giggled. He put me on the sofa. I moaned a little in disappointment. I decided to sit with my legs under me rather than on the floor, so I squirmed around a little as I got my legs under me.
Arnold paused to watch and then said, “Who else wants to feel really good? Maria?” He picked her up, and she took my place. She was a little wide-eyed at first.
“What I am teaching … what I think we must do is remember that we have these instincts and use prosperity to enhance them, not suppress them. We were close to the right idea in the midsixties with the ‘free love’ movement. That's when then-late-teenage Baby Boomers said, ‘Let’s use our prosperity (and technology) to love each other more than we could before.’ That part of the sixties thinking was good thinking in my opinion, but that thinking got tangled up with the drug experimenting and antiwar protesting that was also evolving in the sixties. And it was discounted along with that whole package in the backlash of the 70s.
“What we are doing here today is trying to find a way to enhance your lifestyles—a way to let you lead more fulfilling lives by helping you get in touch with this deeply fulfilling instinct and finding ways for you to let it flower more fully in a modern lifestyle.”
“Wow!” said Jenny. “You sure make it sound like making out is good for you.”
I noticed that Maria had now found the spot on Arnold’s neck to kiss, too, and her toes and ankles were twitching a little when she did. Arnold was encouraging her the same way he had encouraged me! Was I feeling jealous? No, I was still feeling very mellow.
“That’s right. You’re saying it isn’t?”
She thought about this. “It's good … but it needs to be done in the right place and at the right time.”
“What is the right place and right time?”
“Well, look at you two!” Jenny’s lips were curling in disgust. She looked at me and said, “And you two earlier. Get a room!”
She started fighting her bonds’ “I've had enough! I want out! I want—”
I could not believe his speed, but then he was a man! He stood up and tossed Maria back on the couch. She landed with a surprised yelp. Even as she was flying through the air, Arnold was headed for Jenny. He towered over her with hands on the sofa on both sides of her head. She stopped struggling and looked at him in a worried way. The speed with which he towered over her drove into her brain just how vulnerable she was by sitting on a sofa, hands and feet tied, the face of the man who had tied her not twelve inches from hers.
His left hand flashed, and it was snaked into her hair. He gave her half a second to realize where his hand was so she could relax her neck. Then with a jerk, he tipped her head back so it was on the top of the sofa, and he kissed her, kissed her hard. She squirmed at first, and I heard a soft, “No.”
Uh-oh, she said the ‘N word.’ The party was all over now!
But wait … Arnold was not letting up! I’d always been taught that when a girl said, “No,” she meant it, and a man should back off. And the few men I have dealt with in this kind of situation knew this, too. Jenny was kind of amazed, too, I could tell. Arnold came up for air and stared at her. His hand went to her breast. She tried to look at it, to get it off. Arnold held her face pointed at his.
“No,” she said again, still softly. He kissed her again. She couldn’t do anything to stop it. He kept kissing her while his right hand moved between breast and thigh.
I thought, “Whoa! He’s treating her like this in front of witnesses? How many campus regulations is he breaking? How many sensitivity sessions is he ignoring?”
But Jenny was not getting angrier. She said, “No,” one more time in a sort of gasping way that I had only seen on really old movies, and after that, she was kissing back. Arnold worked her over for another minute so that she got really warm. Then he lifted her up and went back to his seat. After he sat down, I saw that Jenny found that same spot to kiss on his neck that Maria and I had found earlier. So much for a lawsuit!
“You have just seen another aspect of that deep instinct,” said Arnold as he admired Jenny’s face. A woman can say no and not mean it. Right, dear?”
Jenny just nuzzled into him a little deeper and purred.
“This is part of the instinct, part of the feeling built into women about men. That part which says that if a man displays his aggression properly, he's much more of a man than if he shows no aggression at all.”
“I never heard that in a sensitivity class,” said Maria in a way that indicated her eyes had been opened.
“This modern obsession with the concept that there is no difference in thinking processes between men and women is not neutral in effect. I hope, with your help, to demonstrate that while it may make good politics and good polemics, it is damaging to happiness. That is the experiment you are party to. This is what your community service is all about. If you come away from this community service knowing how to let your sexy-submissive instinct flower and you are happier women for it, then I have taken one small step to prove my hypothesis.”
“But it will be a giant leap for womankind,” cooed Jenny.
“But what if we don't?” she continued as she kissed him once more. She was looking most cozy, rocking on his lap, held in his strong arms.
“Hmm … then I guess I’ll have to come up with a new hypothesis we can experiment on.” And he kissed her back solidly.