Lucy

A small stage, large enough for a rock band if they don't jump around too much. Dark wooden floor, pale background. There are crowd noises, around fifty to a hundred people.

Jerry and Lucy walk onto the stage from the left. Jerry is sinewy, not burly; he has a sort of hungry look. Early 30's. Intense. Fill in the details as you like. He is wearing some sort of blue-gray robe and a small backpack. Barefoot. Lucy follows him somewhat hesitantly. He is holding her wrist. She looks vaguely nervous. Age 25-28 or so. More or less conventionally beautiful, with something a bit exotic if you look carefully. She wears a red japanese kimono, and is also barefoot. She does not look at the audience.

They stand together at the center. Jerry puts his hand at the back of Lucy's neck. Is he massaging it? They bow together. Did he push her head down to make her bow with him? It is not clear from the audience point of view.

Jerry speaks resonantly. "Thank you for inviting Tom and Lucy here tonight. There was an emergency and Tom could not be here, he asked me to perform in his place. I am Jerry Salida, I have been Tom's friend for a long time." He shrugs off his backpack and empties it onto the floor. Various small shapeless bundles fall out, with a few small clanking noises. He throws the pack to the side.

Jerry reaches down and grabs one of the small bundles. He walks behind Lucy and holds her shoulders. He pushes her off balance and she gracefully kneels onto the floor. He sits behind her and holds her wrists. She bows her head and lets him pull her hands behind her. Jerry makes a complicated motion and the bundle opens up, it becomes a rope that he swings through the air. He makes more complicated motions that can't be seen in detail because he is sitting behind Lucy. She is looking down. Her hair hides her face.

He pulls the rope slowly across Lucy's shoulder, above her breasts, and back. Two strands. It appears to get tight and she gasps. Then again, slowly, and then eventually four strands below her breasts. As he reaches around her and adjusts ropes, he touches her in various ways, impersonally. He carefully adjusts the folds of her kimono and slowly pulls the lapels back under the ropes. This exposes her shoulders and the tops of her breasts. Of course he touches her breasts some through the kimono while doing that. She looks embarrassed. He collects her hair in one hand so that it does not cover her face, and tugs at it to raise her head. Her eyes move to the side, still not looking directly at the audience. He slowly takes another rope over her shoulder, past her neck, between her breasts and around the ropes on her breasts. There is something hypnotic about the motion, slow confident sliding, rope slithering in and out, gradually creating a complex pattern.

He stands, smoothly pulling on a rope tied behind her, and she franticly stands also. Jerry seems to push at her a little, she loses her balance and must move with him. He turns her around, and the audience can see that her arms are tied behind her in another complicated pattern. The turn continues.

He releases her and picks up something from the floor. It is a metal ring with a rope attached to it, and he throws it into the air and catches it, tying it into place below an overhead beam that is not visible to the audience. He ties Lucy's harness to the ring hanging from the rope. Now she can only move a step in any direction. He slowly ties a complicated loop around her right knee and attaches that to the ring. He adjusts its length, and now her knee is in the air. Her bare leg extends from a slit in the kimono, and she cannot take any step at all. He steps behind her and to her left; he holds her hair to position her head and gives her a quick kiss on the lips. She returns it, then looks annoyed.

Jerry speaks again. "Due to the sudden emergency, Lucy and I have not had any chance to practice. This is a serious concern, because our art is potentially dangerous. While Lucy is a superb model, still we must proceed carefully, and the slow pace will require more rest breaks than usual." He adjusts the rope on her knee, and now she must stand on tiptoe to keep her left foot on the floor at all. He adjusts the rope farther, and she swings on her side. Her slit kimono trails below both legs, and the audience can see much of her thighs.

After a few swings he stops the motion and lengthens the knee rope. After some effort she manages to stand on her left leg, bent over. He lengthens the other rope until she can sit. Then he sits behind her and slowly undoes her bonds in the reverse order they were added. First he releases her knee, then the connection to the ceiling, then the ropes around her chest. When the last ropes are off her chest, her kimono falls open some more, revealing more of her cleavage. He hugs her from behind and rocks with her while she breathes deeply.

Then he begins again. He ties her arms with her right elbow high and left elbow low. Ropes above and below her breasts. A connection to the ceiling rope, and he pulls on the rope to shorten it and she stands. He pulls back her kimono more under the ropes, revealing her breasts entirely. She turns her head and looks away, and her hair mostly covers her face. He unties the kimono sash, the obi, and tosses it aside.

He opens the kimono itself and pulls it back under the ropes, until it is mostly behind her except for her arms in the sleeves. She is wearing some sort of white thong under the kimono, and nothing else. He talks. "We make sacrifices for our art. It is an erotic art, and some people look down on us for that. The pay is good but not great, and we must travel. Lucy is not a prostitute. Let me make that clear. She gets offers, the highest so far was two hundred fifty thousand dollars for a long weekend. The offers are so high because she does not do that; no doubt if she did they would quickly get lower."

He puts his hand on her back and pushes her forward a little. She has to arch her back to stay on her feet, and her breasts stick out more. "We cannot use drugs. Do that, become unreliable in performance, and in a few weeks you can lose a reputation that took years to create. I've seen it happen. A woman develops a taste for expensive drugs. She must sell her body to get them. Then she fails at performing, and within months she is only a cheap junkie whore. Riggers have it worse than models, we don't have that to fall back on. An unreliable rigger is a threat to models' lives and no one will work with him." He runs his hands gently across Lucy's stomach, and then up to her chest. He adjusts the ropes under her breasts.

"Lucy, though, is a great artist. She studies yoga to get flexibility that hardly any ballerinas can match. And she has a spirit -- a certain elan -- that is unparalleled. She maintains her dignity in circumstances that few could. She endures pain, she faces things that would humiliate another woman, and she turns it all into art. I am honored to perform with her. Please, give her a hand." We hear applause while Jerry again pulls her hair to make her show her face to the audience. "Look at them," he commands, and she does. She smiles, an open happy smile.

While she stands there, watching the audience applaud her, Jerry picks up two more rings and hangs them from beams above on either side. Then he reaches for the rope that is still attached to her right ankle. He ties it to the ring with a complicated knot that lets him easily adjust the length. As he shortens it, she raises her foot off the ground, turning one way and another to find more comfortable positions. He adds another tie just below her knee, and another at midcalf, distributing the load. As he shortens the rope her other foot goes onto tiptoe and he stops there for awhile, and then slowly takes it a little higher and she loses the last connection to the floor. When she reaches with her foot, it only makes her swing. He attaches her other foot to the third ring, and now her legs are splayed wide. She can close them, or she can draw her knees up to cover her breasts, but anything she does takes continuing effort and she must inevitably drop back into the open position.

Jerry stands to the side so he won't obstruct the audience's view, and adjusts her thong. He squeezes it together in back so that it entirely fits between her buttocks. He squeezes it together some in front also. This requires him to touch her rather intimately, and he strokes her butt and inner thighs. "Lucy had no connection to this work until she met Tom. She did ballet. He gradually introduced her to the art as part of their lovemaking. And then he got her to do mild scenes in front of friends, as a sort of exhibitionism. They made passionate love afterward."

Lucy starts to move as if she wants to get away from his touch. But there is nowhere to go. He could easily reach her however she moves. The effect is more a seductive wiggle. Her breasts jiggle when she moves, and he strokes those. "And then, then Tom was proud that she was so skilled and so beautiful that people would pay to watch. He was proud of her. And the money helped. They took a vacation to Russia, and gave a performance at a festival. That paid for the trip plus two months rent. Lucy started to realize that this work was not just part of her sex life, but an art, a calling separate from that. But Tom was always her rigger. Sometimes he had someone else do the ropework, but only under his supervision. This is her first performance without Tom, ever. She is doing exceptionally well."

Jerry reaches to the floor and picks up something. It unrolls, it's white, about three inches wide and four feet long. He waves. It is a whip and it makes a sound rather like a gunshot. He strikes Lucy on the bottom with it, another gunshot sound. After a long pause, one on the back of her thighs, higher than before because her feet are tied as high as her head. An upward stroke on her back. After an even longer wait, one on her breasts. The loud smack each time. Lucy's face is impassive, as if she's somewhere else entirely.

He grabs her hair with his free hand and turns her face to the side, and kisses her. She kisses him back. He pulls her head away and then pushes it forward for another kiss, with open mouths. He turns to the audience. "If it was Tom, her kiss would mean 'I love you'. But she has met me maybe three times in five years, at conventions. A kiss can have many meanings. One of them is 'Please don't hurt me'. If a woman kisses someone hoping he won't hurt her, what will he do?" They kiss again. He backs off and whips her bottom. They kiss, and this time she kisses more eagerly. "He will do absolutely whatever he wants. A woman who does that is no better than a slave." They kiss as he holds her breast and massages her nipple. He backs off and slaps her face. Lucy looks startled and then unhappy. He kisses her and she kisses him back intensely. When he backs away she looks like she is about to cry.

"When a woman is kissed after she has been slapped, it feels like being kissed for the very first time. Putting all that aside, this is not what Lucy's kiss means. She is an artist, practicing her art. She is performing for you."

Jerry drops the whip and touches her thong. It comes apart. Her thong is a single strip of cloth, about six inches wide and eight feet long, cunningly wrapped around her. Her pubic area is unshaved, the same color as her scalp. She speaks for the first time. "Red!

Jerry adjusts a rope and her right leg drops to within a foot of the floor. He touches another rope and it unties, and she is standing on her left foot. Then the first rope is undone and she is standing. They sit together. The complicated rope sculpture on her front comes undone and he pulls her kimono around her and hugs her. All in a few seconds. He asks her, "Was it the fundoshi?" and she nods. She says, "Yellow." She is crying a little.

He speaks loudly. "I owe an explanation to our guests. Each model has things she will not do. Some will not show their nipples, some will not come in public, and so on. They look helpless on stage, but they have rights. It was not on the list Tom gave me, and Lucy did not mention it. All of my models go bare, I did not think it would be an issue. The communication failed." He and Lucy are holding each other and rocking together. "It is more than just a temporary lapse. A model and her rigger have a special understanding. He always respects her limits, and then when she is ready to try something new, it's a special time for them. Tom and Lucy can never do this for the first time, because it has already been done to her. I can only say I'm sorry."

They hug each other for awhile longer. She looks up, and he says, "Performance?" She nods. He ties her kimono around her at the waist. Then he reaches for his pack from a sitting position. In one smooth motion he sprawls forward with his weight on one knee and a foot and a forearm, somehow like a lizard, graceful but not particularly human. He reaches a long way for the pack and drags it back to him, and pulls out a dagger and a couple of metal ovals. He puts the dagger between her legs, and then carefully puts it back into his pack. They both stand, and the front of her kimono now has a carabiner strung through a hole near the bottom edge.

She looks almost as she did at the start, but now she stares back fearlessly at the audience. He removes the ropes that still trail from her arms, and she massages her wrists. He moves behind her and puts his hands firmly on her shoulders. Slowly he begins to slide her kimono back, and down. Her shoulders are exposed. She bites her lip and looks determined. He moves further, and the tops of her breasts show, and her upper arms, and then her nipples, and stomach. She pulls her hands out of the kimono sleeves, and the top half of the kimono falls. Jerry pulls her sideways and she presents her hands to him, and he slowly binds them together in front of her. Then he pulls them up, over her head, and behind her. He again takes ropes above her breasts and around her chest, below the breasts, and slowly builds up another complex pattern. He connects the center overhead rope to this harness and lifts her into the air. She spins, and the carabiners in front and back widen her skirt a little. He slowly lowers her, and she manages to stand when her feet reach the ground.

He binds her right foot and ankle again and pulls it high above her head, until she is doing a full split. Her weighted kimono shows considerably less flesh than the fundoshi would have. She breathes deeply and looks perfectly calm, like someone doing a yoga exercise. Jerry says, "Our schedule is completely shot anyway, so I want to try something special. I'll ask for a volunteer to come up here. There is no danger but it may be a bit undignified, and you'll get within three feet of Lucy... OK, you in the front." He points.

"Now, the truth is that this whip is actually a toy." He picks up the whip and strikes Lucy across her clothed bottom, her back, and her breasts. "It makes a lot of noise but it is almost painless. It's just for show. In fact, being held in a kinbaku pose is itself far more painful, particularly when the pose continues too long. That's why we keep changing the pose, and also Lucy is incredibly flexible, and she's good at relaxing into pain. The whip can serve as a distraction from the pain of the pose."

"For comparison, look at this whip." He reaches down and picks up another, smaller brown whip. "This is not as impressive. It doesn't sound as impressive when you crack it." He cracks the thick white one in the air. It makes a whistling sound and then something like a gunshot. He does the same with the small brown one. It sounds like nothing at all before it makes a dull pop. "It doesn't look impressive. It doesn't even look or sound impressive when you use it." He hits Lucy gently on the back with it. She arches her back, pulling against the ropes. Her face looks agonized, her mouth open in a wide square. She makes harsh gutteral sounds and then starts to weep. "It's completely useless for performances. I don't know why I even keep this thing."

The volunteer arrives onstage. He is a big middle-age white man, run a little to fat. A wide moustache. He is wearing part of a business suit, without the coat and tie. Jerry reaches out his hand. "It's good to meet you. I'm Jerry. And your first name?" They shake hands. "Samuel." He is staring at Lucy. Jerry says, "Lucy can't shake hands right now, she's a little tied up. It wouldn't be quite appropriate for you to shake her boob." He is close enough to do that. Lucy jiggles a little and smiles at him. Her face still has tearstreaks. "I want to hit you once with the toy whip so you can confirm that it's only a toy." He waits a beat while Samuel absorbs the idea and starts to reject it. "You don't have to drop your pants though it would be sporting to, considering that Lucy has shown you everything."

Samuel looks out at the audience. No help there. "OK, I'll do it."

Jerry says, "Good man! Stand like this." He stands sideways almost in front of Lucy, and bends over and holds his ankles. Jerry then gets out of the way and Samuel starts to do the same thing. He loosens his belt and drops his trousers, revealing his boxer shorts. He bends over, holding his legs mid-calf. He doesn't look very flexible. Jerry asks, "Are we all ready?" He slowly raises the white whip. He swings it, slower and gentler than he had for Lucy. There is the whistling sound, the gunshot -- somewhat muffled -- and Samuel whuffs. After some seconds he inhales and bellows. He looks like he's about to fall over, but he manages to straighten himself. He balls up his fists and takes a step, and then notices that his pants are around his ankles. He stops to pull them up.

Jerry says, "Oh my. Now I remember that I have never used that on someone who was not already experienced with being whipped. We will refund your admission price, and come talk to us backstage afterward, we'll take some polaroids and Lucy might kiss you on the cheek if she feels like it, and --"

Samuel shouts. "The hell with that! I'm gonna whip you!"

"Very well," Jerry replies. "But let me loosen Lucy up first, she shouldn't keep that position much longer." He goes to Lucy and starts to slowly untie her. Samuel waves the whip and Jerry shrugs and does it quick. Lucy sits on the floor and watches expectantly.

Jerry bends over and pulls up his robe, which now is clearly another kimono, a simpler one. He tucks the hem into the belt. Under the robe he wears only a fundoshi like Lucy's. He holds his ankles and bends his elbows, his chest almost between his straight legs and his head looks lower than it ought to be. He is as flexible as Lucy, but somehow on her it is erotic and on him it doesn't quite look human. He waits. Samuel holds the whip as far away as he can reach and delivers a tremendous whack. It sounds louder than ever before. Jerry does nothing. Samuel does it again. Nothing. He looks around. He says, "Let Lucy do it." The crowd starts shouting, getting louder, "Lucy! Lucy! Lucy!"

Jerry stands up and says, "Yes!" He smiles.

Lucy gracefully stands and takes the whip. She motions to Jerry and he bends over again. Lucy looked sexy getting whipped, but somehow Jerry seems vaguely pathetic and sleazy. She adjusts his fundoshi to make sure it covers none of his bottom. She carefully narrows it in back, and pulls almost like she's giving him a wedgie. While she makes sure it is snug between his buttocks she touches his testicles through the cloth, and it's hard for an observer to tell whether she gives them a gentle squeeze.

She smiles. It's hard to describe that smile. Aloof and affectionate? Friendly and contemptuous? Superior and supportive? Mean and happy? It is at any rate a very domme smile. She raises the whip dramatically, and waits for precisely the right moment. Then she quickly delivers nine strokes all to exactly the same spot. And then, just when it is clear that it is over, one more. And then after an even longer delay, another. She grabs Jerry's hair and pulls him forward and up, he has to step forward or fall over, and then once in motion he has to follow her lead. When he is standing she hands him the whip. Then she walks -- almost dances -- over to Samuel. She holds his hand and stands on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. Her bare breast rubs against his sleeve and she smiles at him -- a bright, innocent, little-girl smile. She goes back to her usual spot and stands there.