Untraining Yourself Ch. 03

Even though Emily had still not managed to satisfy her desire to be fucked, she was still feeling better about escaping from the United States. There, like all girls, she had come of age sexually in a public ritual called the Festival where an older man had penetrated her up for the first time, beginning a period where she was eligible for training by all men with daughters her age or older. In Canada, where she had fled to, this was not the case.

She also no longer worried so much about being discovered and thought a freak or a victim because of her experiences. She was even thinking about reaching back out to David, the young man she'd taken home and confused with her blowjob skills and lack of knowledge of condoms, opening up to him, and asking him for another date. ('Really, it would be a first date', she reminded herself. 'Picking someone up isn't a proper date.')

But that next morning when she went to get the newspaper, there was a letter waiting for her that broke her composure. It had been forwarded by the Catholic relief agency which had helped her get settled in and written a letter to her father to tell him that she had made it to Canada and was alright. They hadn't given out her address for her own safety, but had told her that they would send along any mail that came for her, and she briefly thought it was from him.

But when she saw the return address, she realized that it was from her mentor. He was the man who had helped her get over her self-consciousness and showed her how to open up and embrace what her body was built for, and then given her all the pleasure she could handle. Even now, she remained grateful for his attention and care. She read it.

"Ms. Emily,

Your father is still too shocked and disappointed by your illegal departure from his house and from your training to write to you. I know you initially struggled with being trained, as many girls of your intellect seem to, but I thought we were past all of that and I am most aggrieved that you have thrown away everything I put the time in to train you for. I thought you were a good girl, Ms. Emily, but you have been a very bad girl indeed. You have brought shame onto your family and your town and I am telling you now that you are to come back. While I only train good girls, I will work with your father -- who understands now that he should have been much firmer and more hands-on from you from the start - and with the local authorities to come up with an appropriate punishment for you. After that, if you work your hardest, you can be a good girl for me again. "

Emily read his name at the bottom, signed with his characteristic flourish. Her hands were shaking and tears were streaming down her face. Some part of her thought that he would understand why she had to leave, that he might even be cautiously supportive, and now she saw that was foolish. She had been so certain that leaving had been the right thing to do. If you were sure that something was the right thing, then how could following through be anything but good?

She'd always been told that being a good girl was not just about obedience for the sake of obedience, but obedience to your father and the other fathers because they knew better than you did about what you needed. But in this case, as her father came closer to wanting to train her himself - something that most fathers did not do, but that he was entitled to if he wished - she had known what she needed, and that was to get away. But in her confusion, she still could not stand the idea of her mentor calling her a bad girl. She thought to herself that she had been wrong, and that she would have to go back.

While she couldn't have explained why, the idea of going back and being punished and then absolved filled her with relief. She thought of her mentor and his muscular body. She thought of the pleasure he had shown to her, the way he had introduced her to weightlifting and been patient and supportive and charmed as her body filled out. The incredible way they had celebrated her 19th birthday together, when he had shown her that her purpose and her pleasure both could lie in serving two men at once, and then held her in bed until she fell asleep. She could not bear the thought of disappointing this man, but at the same time, she knew that he could not be correct.

She peeled off her short navy pajamas and stared at her body in the mirror. The girl in the mirror looked back, her face tear-stained but defiant, her body petite but strong. She admired the fullness of her breasts and the slope of her waist into her hips, and the legs and butt she'd spent so much of the last few years building with her mentor's assistance.

She spread her legs and, using her fingers, spread open her labia and exposed the wetness inside her hidden parts, doing the special greeting he had worked on her with to get past her initially painful shyness about displaying her genitals. She next tried to see herself as her mentor and father would- a bad girl, in need of punishment. She stuck her tongue out and watched it. She circled her clitoris with her fingers. She lay back on her bed, her legs spread, and pushed her fingers in and out of her pussy, crying out.

She muttered to herself that she was a bad girl, trying to enjoy the idea of it as her body further responded to her own touch. The buildup of emotions coursed through her body and she felt herself shudder over and over at a distance, responding to her fingers, tensing and relaxing, hearing herself say "thank you" and not knowing who she was saying it to. And, for the first time, that pleasure seemed like something her body was taking, something she could have independent of deserving it, independent of being a good girl or a bad girl or any other kind of girl except the kind who was going to find pleasure where it could be found and have it.

A crazy idea occurred to her. Instead of looking for affirmation from a man that she was a good girl, she would go out, find what she wanted, and take it. But that thought was immediately followed by the memory of her failed first attempt to meet her sexual needs in Canada, where she had asked an older gentleman in a grocery store if he wanted to have her, and his kind rebuke of Emily had caused her to want to hide under her sheets forever. But then she remembered something that Benjamin, the professor she had done a mock training session with the day prior, had mentioned: in Canada, there were apps where you could find a man to go out with or take home.

He had mentioned one in particular, and Emily quickly searched for it and installed it on her phone. She was not a big smartphone user -- in the United States, while it was standard for adults to have them (and for girls to get them as they came of age so that they could install the app by which trainers could find them), it was not normal to be constantly using your phone the way that she had noticed seemed to be the case in Canada. She had known how to use the basic functionality, but she would read a book if she wanted to read, and if she would make friends from school or church, or with the girls who were the daughters of her father's colleagues from the university -- girls, she thought to herself, who she would never get to see again. (It occurred to her now, thinking about it, that the other professors much more often had daughters than sons, and she wondered why she had never noticed this before and puzzled briefly for an explanation.)

But after installing the app, she was able to follow the instructions. She kept in mind the caution Benjamin had given her about not putting up naked photos, and she uploaded a few stills from videos she had taken of herself in the gym to review her form: in them, she was in a sports bra and a brief pair of shorts with a barbell on her back or in her hands. There was a section for text about yourself and what you were looking for, and she filled it out with the following:

"For the longest time I wanted to be a good girl, but now I'm not so sure that's something I want to be, or even that it means what I thought it did. I want to ask for what I want and maybe even take it."

She wasn't sure if that was too short, but almost soon as she saved her profile, she started getting messages from men. Anything that called her a bad girl she deleted: she still hated that idea. And some of the messages were crude in a way that surprised her and she was not prepared for. While Emily adored sex and very much wanted to finally fulfill her body's still unmet craving for it, she didn't like anything that seemed like the man thought sex was dirty or humiliating. This was one area, she thought to herself, where she appreciated her upbringing and training. She had always been taught that wanting sex was natural and good, and while in retrospect she thought that some of the sex she'd been made to have was perhaps neither, she still generally believed this.

But there was one message from a man in his early twenties which surprised and intrigued Emily. It read, "Having to be a good girl all the time seems like a lot of pressure. Maybe I could try to be good for you, and you could see if you like that instead?"

Emily didn't know what to make of that. The idea of a man, even a young one, trying to be good didn't make sense to her. The men who had trained her had always seemed so confident, so assured that they knew what her body needed and how to give it to her. She worked so hard to impress them with her fitness routine and her compliance. She had always been devastated when she failed to please them and had to be punished and elated when the punishment was over and she could return to being a good girl. What did it even mean for a man to want to be good for her? She briefly forgot about the letter she had gotten from her mentor, and decided to, in the open-minded and good-natured spirit of research, respond to this and find out more.

She wrote back that she would like to explore that and to see what he could do to be good for her, and he made some suggestions which, while unexpected, excited her. The man - his name was Ariel, and he was a graduate student at the university that Emily would begin to attend in a week - was tall and thin with olive skin and dark brown curls and had a picture of himself biking, and another one where he was in a kitchen stirring a pot using a wooden spoon. Emily liked the idea of a man cooking for her -- since it had just been her and her father for so long, she had done most of the cooking, while he would sit in the kitchen with her and grade papers or write. She wondered briefly how he was doing with her gone and then put the unhappy thought away and got back to Ariel.

They messaged back and forth revealing new small tastes of themselves for the other to enjoy. Ariel offered her a foot rub and a glass of wine and to show off his body to her. Emily was fascinated by the idea of getting to lean back and be the one judging, to get to appraise the body of a man who wanted to please her with some of the ardor with which she had wanted to please so many trainers, but especially her mentor. She offered him pieces of her story -- that she had been used to trying to please men but wanted to try something else. That she was entirely new to whatever this something else might be. And she sent him pictures of herself that she would set to disappear quickly on the app, enjoying the feeling of teasing him.

They agreed to meet at the cafe down the street for breakfast. He assured that there was no pressure to go home together afterward, and he wanted her to feel safe. Feeling impish, Emily responded that she was going to be the one in charge and as such that she also wanted to make sure that he felt safe. She changed out of her pajamas and, pausing to think of what made her feel powerful, what she could imagine wearing to enjoy a man trying to be good for her, she put on gym clothes -- a sports bra, a brief pair of shorts that showed off her well-built ass and quads, and a tank top, along with her sneakers. She liked how they displayed the body she'd worked so hard to develop, a body that could do things that she hadn't known were possible, both in the gym and in bed. She left her face bare of makeup and her hair pulled back into a ponytail.

It was a sunny day, and Emily enjoyed soaking it in on all the parts of her exposed skin as she walked down the street to the cafe. She arrived first and saw that both of the people she'd noticed working at the cafe previously were there -- the young woman with the shaved head and the nose ring and the young and very thin man with the long hair. They were behind the counter, and she saw that they were standing so close to each other that they were almost touching. Emily wondered if they were having sex and, if so, how that had started and what it was like. She ordered a latte and a croissant and waited for Ariel in what was fast becoming her favorite armchair.

As she waited, Emily started to feel nervous and a bit silly. What did she know about having a man display himself for her, about deciding what she wanted and evaluating him the way so many trainers had evaluated her? With Benjamin the previous day, she had struggled to even articulate what she wanted him to do with her. Did Ariel expect that she would tell him what to do right away? What if, having failed to be a good girl and having let down her father and mentor and her whole town, having committed this act of rebellion, she also failed at whatever other task she was attempting here?

But when Ariel walked in, his obvious and overwhelming nervousness freed Emily from her own. He was wearing a gray tee-shirt and jeans and sandals, and he fidgeted with his empty belt loops as he looked around the cafe and met her glance. He came over to her and introduced himself with an attempt at a hug that he quickly decided should be handshake instead and sat down briefly at the chair next to hers before remembering he hadn't ordered, and then walked over to the counter to order a tea and wait for it, and then finally came back and sat down. She thought he looked very cute with his tight jeans and thick dark curls, and when he spoke, she detected a faint accent that she found herself enjoying but could not place.

They initially just chatted about school, with Ariel telling Emily about how he was beginning his second year as a philosophy Ph.D. student, and her telling him about her math and science studies and how she'd tried to get a jump on some of the readings and problem sets in preparation for her first semester as a transfer student. Emily summoned up what she'd learned about what men liked from her training, and she was pleased that her confidence and big smile and genuine interest in him seemed to calm him down, and soon they were talking like friends, and she decided to broach the topic that had brought them there.

To summon the confidence necessary, Emily reminded herself of what she'd been taught about her body and her desires being natural and good -- even though she was pretty sure this was not what her trainers had in mind. "I've never had a man try to be good for me. It's always me trying. But I'd like to."

Ariel blushed and smiled at her "You're very pretty, Ms. Emily. Can I call you that?", and she nodded, struck by the different way he was saying her name than she was used to hearing it. "Maybe after all that work you have put in trying to be good, maybe you deserve to have someone doing that for you?"

He paused and she contemplated that idea and liked it. She thought about what she would do if she were a trainer -- if she were entitled to enjoy a man's body, if it were her job to teach him what he needed to know so that he could not just bring her pleasure, but also bring all the future women who had his body pleasure as well. She liked the sense of power, but also of feeling responsible for improving him.

Unsure of the details of how this would actually work but trying to continue to act like she knew -- and wondering if the trainers who had worked with her had ever felt this way -- Emily put her hand on Ariel's knee and squeezed a little. "You should be good for me. How about we plan on starting with you taking your clothes off. You can show me your body and how you understand that I deserve to see all of it." She realized as the words came out of her mouth that they might not even make sense to him, since they were coming out of her extremely specific experiences as a girl in the United States, but as she saw his eyes widen, she could tell that something he said had resonated with him.

"Please, Ms. Emily. A pretty girl like you, she deserves anything she wants from a man." And now Emily found herself surprised. She'd heard a lot growing up and in training about girls' prettiness, about how this was pleasing to men and proof that their bodies were meant to be used, how they were jewels meant to be accessed only by highest-status and most-deserving of men, those who had succeeded in marrying and having daughters, and raising them to Festival age and releasing them to be trained. She had never thought about the idea that she herself might be entitled to anything, except perhaps for men to take an interest in training her, but even that had to be constantly earned with good behavior and attention to detail in her appearance.

Trying to act boldly even if she wasn't entirely feeling it, Emily determined that she would explore this situation and learn everything she could, even if it seemed like it might not lead to the penetration that her body had been craving for so long and that she had yet to satisfy. (Except, she reminded herself, with the glass toy that had been used with her to great effect.) She asked him some questions about what he was going to do for her, and he made some hopeful suggestions involving kneeling for her on the floor and rubbing her feet and showing her how he could open up and put a toy inside of himself. (She tried to swallow her shock at the idea of a man being penetrated. This was another idea she had never been taught to contemplate.) She decided she was ready to try this out, and she asked him if he wanted to go to his place or hers. He leaned toward her and reminded her of what they've talked about over the app, that he had a bottle of white wine in the refrigerator and every intent of pouring her a glass so she could drink it while he took off his clothes for her.

They finished their drinks and walked home together. He explained that he lived in graduate student housing just a couple of blocks away. He asked her if she knew where she'd be living. She explained that because she was a transfer student and had enrolled late, she did not yet know what dorm she'd be living in and might find out only a few days before it was time to move from her temporary apartment. He asked her why she'd moved to town before the beginning of the semester, and she shrugged and told him that there were things happening at home that she wanted to get away from, which was true although obviously not the whole story, and he accepted this explanation and did not probe further.

Ariel's apartment was, like Emily's, in a large building with carpeting that had seen better days. He let them in with a key and they walked up three flights of stairs, Emily glad in that moment that she was in good enough shape not to be made out-of-breath.

He let her in and gave her a brief but upbeat tour of his place, which was about the same size as her own studio apartment. It wasn't messy, but it overflowed with books. His living room area was a battered brown couch and a wooden coffee table half-covered in papers, and he gestured for her to sit down there as he went to the small kitchen area.

"If you decide it's too early for wine, I have seltzer. Or if you want something harder, there is a liquor - it's like licorice, but not sweet." Emily decided to go for the glass of wine and was pleased when Ariel handed her a glass of white wine in a champagne glass and brought out a bowl of strawberries to go with them. Now home, he seemed more comfortable, and when he took off his sandals, she followed his cue and untied her sneakers, and he followed that with interest.