The Sisterhood of Slaves Pt. 02

"'Though I am slave,' she said, 'yet for the first time in my life, I am free.'"

— John Norman, Nomads of Gor

After he lost his job at the Wooden Pony Club, Richard moved back in with me. I was by now renting a house on the edge of the university campus, and with Matthew out of my life there was room enough. And while taking him in undoubtedly went against my better judgement, I felt not just sorry for but responsible for Richard. I had always thought of him, and treated him, as a little brother (an obnoxious but endearing little brother). At the same time, I was blaming myself for the break-up with Matthew, and part of my guilt was feeling that, engrossed in my research and distracted by my waitressing and then my lecturing, I had been neglecting him, pushing him away. So my accommodation with Richard was, I guess, a form of reparation.

But I overcompensated by pandering to Richard's bad habits. He seemed to have reverted to his old ways. He became more self-absorbed. He showed no ambition, never looking beyond the next party or pub session. He was neglecting his studies and barely passing his subjects, doing just enough to ward off expulsion; and because he no longer held down a steady paying job, he was always short of cash, as a result of which I took care of our living expenses. I also attended to just about all the housekeeping chores. Whenever I asked him to at least clean up his own mess, he would dismiss my eminently reasonable request with something contemptuous like "That's woman's work." Considering that I was the one paying the bills, I found his attitude more than a little ironic. However, I was falling back into my old ways as well, putting off the inevitable showdown.

So I guess I was a soft touch. However, my big-sisterly instincts were dragging me in opposite directions. I could indulge his whims and vagaries, or I could lay down the law. Yet just as I got working on my "start pulling your own weight" speech, I noticed a slight change for the better. All of a sudden, Richard appeared more focused, had begun finally to show some maturity. He found a part-time job and even contributed a small share of the rent money.

That was my excuse for avoiding a confrontation, and it's the way things might have remained if Richard had been more discreet about his private business. Of course, this may well have been a façade. He was going out almost every night but gave no indication of a romantic interest. And then, purely by accident (or so it seemed at the time), I discovered that he was meeting somewhere with Matthew. Despite my curiosity, I tried not to be distracted from my own affairs; but eventually, too intrigued to leave well enough alone, I considered following Richard to his rendezvous, like some skulking private eye. I resisted the urge. Instead, one evening as he was about to leave, I challenged him. He was walking out after dinner, leaving his dirty plates on the table for me to clear away.

"Don't worry about the mess," I said.

"Thanks, I won't," he answered.

"So, are you meeting Matthew?"

He turned and gave me a quizzical look, less "How do you know?" than "Why do you care?"

I made it clear, by my expression alone, that I would harass him until I got an answer.

"Okay, we're going to the club. Wanna come?"

"The Wooden Pony?"

He laughed. "It's a place on campus."

"What's it called?"

"You won't have heard of it."

"Then it's a secret club..."

He didn't reply.

"Really?" Now I just had to find out. "Let me get my bag."

"Fine." He held up his hand and then pointed at my legs. "No jeans," he said.

"You're wearing jeans."

He just stared at me.

"Right," I said. I went to my bedroom, took off my jeans and put on a skirt. Half-expecting him to have left without me, I returned to find him standing impatiently in the doorway.

The house was located near the university, so it was just a short walk to the shopping precinct in the middle of the campus. Here there are rooms that the students' union hires out at low cost to various clubs and other organizations. Where Richard took me was in the basement of a building in a side street. I had no idea it existed. It reminded me immediately of the Wooden Pony, drab on the outside, brighter on the inside. But the similarities stopped there, even discounting the disconcerting "Leave your weapons at the door" banner which spanned the entrance. Richard knocked and we were ushered in by a corpulent doorman dressed in a red tunic, a fur cape and tall leather boots.

The place was a cross between a pub and a nightclub, with a bar, half a dozen tables made from old barrels, and chairs and stools hewn from gnarled tree trunks. Umbrella stands were stuffed with javelins, longbows and battle-axes. Coat racks were draped in furs. There was a dance floor which was simply a cleared section in the middle of the room. Oddly, this was covered in fleecy mats and pelts which would have made dancing difficult, if not treacherous. There was an alcove at one end of the room that had been converted into a rudimentary kitchen. The toilet doors were marked "his" and "hers" with stenciled silhouettes, of a shaggy-bearded barbarian warrior and a shaggy-haired naked woman. (That looked promising!)

Behind the bar were two attendants, male and female. He was cleaning an earthenware jug, clad in a buckskin vest over a rough-twill long-sleeved shirt, with leather trousers and sheepskin boots; in other words, looking like he'd stepped out of a cheap Viking movie set. She was wearing, in addition to a broad leather collar and steel bracelets, a barely-there metal-mesh bikini. I had seen these before; in fact I once owned one (which I had made for a "renaissance faire" because that's what women wore back in ye olden days); but on mine the chain-mail was lined on the inside with fabric. This one was simply metal against skin, revealing just about everything that even the flimsiest bikini is supposed to hide. It must have been rough on the nipples, as well as irritating, chafing around the edges and, down below, plucking a few pubic hairs. Indeed, I noted that the girl's movements were all very measured; but even then she occasionally winced. Why, I asked myself, would she choose to wear it like that? I was not really thinking straight.

A waitress was wandering between the tables, also in collar and cuffs and wearing a microscopic bikini, although this one was of soft, gentle-on-the-tender-parts suede.

There were half a dozen young men standing or sitting at the bar, and maybe a dozen others at the tables, some playing cards and others a dice game. Most were in costume, the same sort of faux barbarian garb worn by the bartender (and with no obvious intimation of whimsy or irony). They were quaffing from tankards or, in a couple of cases, horns. But they made much less of an impression than their female companions.

I counted seven young women besides the two staff servers, three at the bar and four at the tables. All were kneeling, sitting or squatting on the floor, in various states of undress. Two were completely nude. Their heads were bowed, their eyes downcast, but from what I could tell out of humility, not shame. All wore leather collars with short tethers attached. The naked girls made no obvious attempt to cover their exposed parts. One of these, crouching at the feet of her master perched on a bar-stool, was cleaning his boots. He kept tugging at her halter, so her head was bobbing up and down as she was trying to work. The girls all looked up as we entered, but quickly averted their eyes again.

The barman frowned and pointed to a sign on the end of the counter: "Property must be leashed."

I was about to say "Not a chance... let's go," when Richard said "Freewoman."

"Don't get many in here on weeknights," the barkeep growled.

"What shall it be, Sir?" the girl asked, her metallic bikini shimmering and softly rustling.

Richard ordered a beer and a wine. "She's paying," he said, not even looking my way.

The girl said "Thank you, mistress," as I proffered my credit card. I smiled. Even mediæval taverns accept plastic these days. But all she did was record my personal details. In fact, I saw no money of any kind changing hands. Most of the customers had a bar account; others used bronze medallions for buying drinks and clay tokens for gambling.

Snubbing me completely now, Richard took his drink and moved along the counter to take the seat beside the guy with the freshly polished boots. They shook hands and had a few words. The slavegirl looked up, but only to the men's chest height, and said "Good evening, Sir Richard."

He did not answer but patted the top of her head. Her master tapped her shoulder and the girl began buffing Richard's shoes with a rag and brush. I noticed she had beside her a little box with a fine collection of cleaning items.

Not really knowing what to do now, having squandered my opportunity to escape, I stood at the bar silently sipping my wine. I kept glancing at the other women, in particular the naked ones, and they stole a few glances back at me. I was feeling awkward and stranded, and it didn't surprise me when two men got up from a nearby table to stand on each side of me, uncomfortably close. They were quite young, about Richard's age.

"Very nice," one of them said.

The other looked past me, towards Richard. "Any chance this one's for sale?"

I had an answer ready, but Richard pre-empted it... which was probably a good thing.

"No, sorry; not tonight, anyway."

The pair looked disappointed.

The one who had spoken first gave me a long hard stare.

"I know you," he said. "Have we met?"

I replied that I doubted it, but there was definitely something familiar about him.

He looked hard, thought for a moment, and then his face brightened.

"Got it!" he exclaimed, loud enough that everyone in the room turned to see what was happening. "You're... you teach my statistics class."

That figures, I said to myself. Of all the beer joints in all the towns in all the world...

"Goreans, in their simplistic fashion, often contend, categorically, that man is naturally free and woman is naturally slave. But even for them the issues are far more complex than these simple formulations would suggest. For example, there is no higher person, nor one more respected, than the Gorean free woman."

— John Norman, Hunters of Gor

My new companions introduced themselves.

"Welcome to Gor," Paul said. He was the one from my class.

"Can I get you another wine?" Stuart asked (and seemed relieved when I politely declined).

So this was a Gor tavern. I had read about online Gorean communities. This was the first I knew of a real-world, flesh-and-blood version.

Somewhat to my embarrassment I found myself the focus of attention. My original courtiers were soon joined by several others. I refused a couple more offers of drinks. They were interested that I had read several of John Norman's Gor novels, and impressed that I knew the infamous author's name was the nom de plume of a philosophy professor. And they did not seem offended by the fact that I found the books to be rather amateurishly written and poorly plotted, the pseudoscience preposterous and the Nietzschean ideology distasteful. Paul, for example, confessed that he was more interested in Gorean culture than the "literature." (He actually used air quotes when he said the word.)

While I was there none of the women spoke to me, but they listened intently, and I could see that one of them at least (the second nude girl) really wanted to join the conversation, from her place at her master's feet. The industrious little slave with the shoe-cleaning box took the opportunity to spruce up the footwear of all the men who had gathered around me. Her blissful smile as she worked made me think "It's nice to have a hobby."

"So, you're thinking of joining us?" Stuart said.

I held my tongue.

"Freewoman or slave?" someone asked.

I looked around, and down, at the girls on the floor.

"Shouldn't you ask her man that?" said another.

To my pleasant surprise, that earned a few snorts of derision. Indeed, my perception was that the men liked having a freewoman to talk to. The slavegirls were mere chattels, not worthy of attention except for the service they provided... but that did not seem right either. I suspected that I was not seeing the whole picture.

In fact, I felt sure of it when one of the young men mentioned the Wooden Pony Club. "Nice show," said another, and a third nodded. The rest looked puzzled, but no more was said of my performance; and I was reassured that the tavern clientele understood discretion. Still, it bothered me a little that this connection existed between the two establishments, and I wondered where Richard fitted in.

I stayed for only about an hour. Strangely enough, Matthew never turned up. (That's why I suspect that Richard had set me up for this.) As I left, my curiosity about Richard's nocturnal affairs at least partly sated, without any prompting he joined me, so I wouldn't have to walk home alone in the dark. It was atypically chivalrous of him. And that was the last I thought I would see or hear of the Gorean tavern.

But the following week, I taught the undergraduate class which included Paul. Afterwards he asked me what I thought of the tavern and if I intended to go there again.

"Interesting. Doubtful."

He paused, and his face bore that morose look people have they are about to ask a question of which they already know the disappointing answer. But he swallowed his words before they came out.

"Well then, it's a definite maybe," he said instead, and smiled.

But I did return. The tavern and its culture intrigued me. It was so comically outré that I was sure it was an elaborate joke, a satirical role-play. If so, then kudos to the nude girls in particular for their commitment to the game. And I think that's why I went back, to see how far the Goreans pushed their make-believe. Of course, what I should have realized is that when you live out a fantasy in the real world, no matter how outlandish it may be, it is the real world.

It was Friday evening and I had nothing much to do besides work. That was depressing. I hadn't heard from Matthew. I had long since written him off as a romantic prospect, so was not particularly disheartened. But all my friends had, like Emily, gone their own ways after graduation. I'd had no real social life for three months. So I cooked Richard a rather elaborate dinner, which I had started preparing as soon as I arrived home from a hard day's work; and when he came in late he was apologetic. As amends, he wanted to take me out.

Knowing exactly where he had in mind, I was dubious; but I decided (despite a peculiar sense of foreboding) that this was a way of reconnecting with him.

"You're not going to sell me, are you?"

He laughed and shook his head. "They couldn't afford you."

If that was the finest compliment I was going to get, I would take it graciously.

Unlike the first time, he donned a costume, albeit resembling more a wayward hippie than a barbarian warrior. The best I could come up with was a floral peasant blouse, a ruffled knee-length skirt and boots. Richard advised me that "to fit in" I should pull the top of the blouse off my shoulders and undo the lace-up front down to my midriff. He took a couple of steps backward to study my décolletage and cleavage, and nodded his approval.

"It's come to this," I sighed, "taking sartorial advice from you."

The pair of us looked like flower children dropping in from the 1960s. And as we strolled across the campus to get to our destination, it said something about the Friday night university culture that neither of us looked at all conspicuous. When we reached the tavern there was no need for the doorman because Richard had a key. The place was crowded, with maybe fifty people in all. This time there were as many women as men, and the atmosphere was much more casual. The clientele were in a range of ages, from barely legal (to drink in a bar, that is) to late thirties or early forties. Although a few of the females were naked, there was very little kneeling and squatting. Some of the slavegirls were no more déshabillé than myself; but their collars and leashes set them apart from half a dozen of whom I took to be the fabled freewomen. Not all the females were beauty queens or supermodels, but neither was every male fit to hunt sleen in the mountains of Sardar.

Whenever a slave spoke to a newcomer or stranger for the first time, she opened with the words "La kajira", which means "I am a slavegirl." (It perturbed me, just a little, that I knew the translation.) Since she was already identifiable by her collar, it was more an affirmation than an introduction, of what she was, of what she was not, of how she wanted to be spoken to and treated. Protocol, I quickly learned, was important here (and enforced mainly by the females, both free and slave).

Conversation rarely crossed gender or caste lines. The slaves mingled with each other, but rarely with the freewomen. Every so often one would be summoned by her master to perform some service — to dance for his friends, to fetch him ale, to display her breasts (if she was not showing them already) or her latest tattoo or piercing. There would then be some poking, and the comments could be crude, although I saw no groping or intimate probing. The girl's reaction would be a quiet, eye-rolling sigh of resignation followed by a plastic smile. But I could tell that the slavegirls loved the attention. This was something I learned while working at the Wooden Pony Club, even during my rides on the eponymous beast. It explained their presence in the tavern and their devotion to the game. They were the main attraction, in fact the tavern's raison d'être. Without them, it would have been just another hangout for dorky role-playing fantasists. And everybody knew that. So the real power structure in the tavern was the inverse of the nominal pecking order, and I was fascinated by this paradox.

But freewomen therefore had an equivocal status. They looked down on the kajirae. In turn, they were looked down upon by the males, being of less intrinsic value than slavegirls. Constrained by hauteur as much as by the Gorean code of conduct, they did not appear to be having much fun. Their speech, dress, behavior and demeanor were strictly defined and demarcated. They did not sing the men's bawdy ballads and were not permitted to gamble. They did not speak to the men unless approached. They drank only in moderation. Whereas for a warrior overindulgence with the beer mug or the wine cup was a source of manly pride and a cause for jest, freewomen who allowed themselves to become inebriated risked their liberty.

There were no female warriors. They had no place in the tavern. (In the Gorean canon there exist "panther girls" with martial skills, but they roam the wildness.) On the other hand, every man was a warrior (or a potential one). The elaborate system of castes described in the Gor novels was not replicated in the tavern. Even the barkeep wore an empty dagger scabbard on his belt. And this was a distinction to which mere females could not aspire. For "the insignia of men, like male garments, become empty mockeries when permitted to women" (John Norman, Mercenaries of Gor).

To put it bluntly, your status in the tavern was defined by what you had or did not have between your legs. It was as simple as that. It mattered not at all what other qualities you might possess. And while there were male slaves in the tavern, every man had it in him to be a warrior.

The existence of male slaves (kajirus/kajiri) only surprised me for a short while. Even freewomen could own slaves (of either sex). But they were hard to spot. This was because, in the Gorean mythos, all males were presently or potentially warriors. To preserve the dignity of their sex, male slaves were neither collared nor compelled to wear distinguishing clothes (let alone forced to be naked). Only slavegirls were obliged to display the distinctive tokens of their status as property. So I looked about. There was likely to be a kajirus or two in the room, but I had no sure way of knowing. It was certainly not etiquette to ask, and none ever publicly acknowledged his master or mistress.