Anonymous - Laura

“What is your name?” I turn carefully in the bath to face her, then recompose my posture. My bush sparkles with the diamonds of her laving.

“Lucy, Miss. Shall you return this evening and I shall bathe you again?”

“Would you like that? Your finger escapes the sponge at moments. Do you mean it to?”

“I mean no impertinence by it, Miss, but you feel so nice. I am put out of home, you see, live in rooms, so would be glad to attend upon you after my other duties.”

“I shall rest my hands on your shoulders. Do you mind the wet? Bring a young man with you. Do you have a young man?”

“Yes, Miss, but he is not so lettered or well mannered. I has another gentleman, a toff, who comes occasionally. I met him at the Alhambra; he is a fair dancer, too.”

“A toff? You mean he is of another social class than yourself? Be not demeaning of yourself in your ways, Lucy, for men are men and women are women. If you can finger well, as well you finger, are soft of eyes and pretty with words, there need be no accounting of difference. Does he pay you for your compliances? Is he well furnished? Come, dry me. I am in a mood for the rub of the towel. Use a warm, dry one between my legs.”

“You are a fair devil, Miss, if I dare say so. There comes several up from the country whom I have furnished with gentlemen friends in their boudoirs. The gentlemen come into the front of the hotel, you see, and I from the back, and so I come up quietly and make the introductions.”

“For which you are paid by both, no doubt, you witch. Such services should be arranged. I have no doubt of it. We shall, however, reverse our roles. I will put you to the gentleman and watch your bout. Thereafter you will both leave and you must apprise him of such before his entrance. I wish him not to be unclothed. He will lower his trousers, you your drawers, if such you wear. He will approach you from the rear. All shall be silent. Let no more be said on it until you are put up. Nine-thirty tonight will suffice.”

“As you wish Miss. I never had anyone watch me before.”

“You may keep your eyes closed. The bedroom will be in darkness. The light from the drawing room shall illumine all that needs be seen. You may dress me now-the small corset, a chemise, drawers, and gown will suffice. Be sure that my stockings are drawn up taut.”

I have concluded with the mundane. It may be that I shall have no taste for the matter when the time comes. Perhaps they have done it before me already and I am at the end rather than the beginning. Father returned once from horse racing, to which he had been inveigled by a friend, looking, as I thought, most profound. Sitting deep in thought as he did and I asking him upon what his mind was fixed for I feared that he had gambled overmuch and lost, he said, “As I watched one race succeeding the other, I became aware that only one horse could succeed in each contest. The thought crossed my mind as a truism, but when I placed it, as it were, a little to one side and looked beneath I realised that since no horse could win save the horse that won, then in every sense the horse had already won before the race had started.”

Gazing at me quizzically he smiled and asked, “Is there a meaning to life therein? Have we already won, or lost?”

My paternal aunt entered at that moment, having heard what was said upon her approach.

“If the horse has already won, then we have already died,” she said.

The room seemed not to chill at her words, though I thought it might. I looked to my father for an answer, for I thought his words might solve all the mysteries of the universe.

“As to that, we are perhaps too much at words,” he said.

“Indeed so,” my aunt replied, “for did Mama not tell us that words and the thoughts that are consequent upon them become as intertwined and ravelled as spaghetti upon a plate, and that the more we try to separate the strands-if we so try-then the more anxious our minds become.”

“Mama had much wisdom,” Papa said and gazed at me as though I too should possess such, but I do not think that was the intent of his look upon me. “You have misquoted, though, my dear,” he went on, “for what she actually said, and I recall that she wore a blue sari threaded with silver upon that occasion, was that in netting words with the thoughts that they occasion we incur thereafter great frustration in trying to unravel all and finally are left with such a mess of potage as were best left alone. She did, however, mention spaghetti,” he conceded with a grin.

“Then we should learn nothing. Surely did your Mama not add something else?” I asked, for I then forever felt he was keeping something from me like a tease who proffers a wrapped parcel but will not let one take hold of it and dances all about holding it above one's head.

“Words are the furnishings of the caves where devils dwell,” my aunt said. So I felt as much frustration as I ever had and was put out and showed it by my sulky look. Excusing myself, I went up to my room, where Papa in due course followed. I sat upon my bed and looked forlorn, for such was ever my posture when I wanted him to talk and comfort me.

“What was intended was that one learns in silence, Laura.”

“What then is there to learn?”

“When you know that then you will have no further need of words.”

“Even so, you could tell me,” I replied, then laughed for I realised that I had fallen into my own trap, and my laughter being echoed by his own, I again felt contentment and listened to the twittering of the baby swallows in their nest beneath the eaves, for such sounds are condiments to the feast of life, as is the tinkling of a spoon to a cup, the far calling of children at play and the water-rustlings of the small waves on a beach where the beach would try to grip the sea yet fails.

When my paternal grandmother was receiving her benedictions, as she called them-as in turn I learned to do-there was frequently the sound of small bells, which, it was said, came from Tibet. Not always wishing to know whose penis she might receive, for then her meditations could continue the more contained and unblemished, her maid would hang strings of these bells around my grandmother's bed so that whoever brushed through them would cause them to tinkle. She, being upon all fours and well presented with her ample bottom offered, would keep her eyes closed and her face cupped in her palms, which she had scented beforehand. Oil was applied delicately around and within the rim of her rose, her orifice, with such a thin glass rod as later I had been supplied and which I used to the same end when I knew that I was to be exercised. Experiencing no more than I the first shock of entry of the swollen knob, she would receive it with but a sigh as if the outgoing of her breath were brought about by the invasion.

Indeed, I recall vividly the hush-rushing of my own breath upon the moments of my first trials when I fell into Perdition. This sensation, however, dwindled with further exercising, I knowing naught save pleasure in my pumpings. The male was the giver, the female the receiver, as my grandmother in her own time then ordained. Hands placed but lightly on her hips, her stallion was constrained to work himself therein, thereout, ever with grace, not grunting nor uttering lewd sounds but conducting himself majestically until sperm cascaded deep within, was there received and held. Were the male (perhaps being young and lacking caution) to utter utterances of lust-were he to do so-then upon withdrawing, his penis would be strapped to his belly by means of a leather “scold,” or sheath, being thus contained and constrained for a week or more so that on his desiring to urinate it needed to be released temporarily by an older female servant, this shaming and yet training the offender.