Scarlett (NC-17)

[This story is dedicated to the lovely Scarlett Devine.  It's a bit jumpy and pretentious...sorry.]

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This is a story about power. 

This is a story about gender. 

It is about society’s constructions of the female and the male, about feminine and masculine, about girly-girls and manly men, about frilliness and delicate beauty on the one hand and rough skin and ruggedness on the other.  

This story is about the balance of power between a woman and a man.  More precisely, it is a story about a woman and a man establishing a balance of power. 

* * * *

In my forty-four years, nobody has questioned my masculinity.  Whatever gods (or goddesses) may be, they endowed me with all the trappings of manliness: sinewy muscles; strength enough to chop woods and move refrigerators; the athletic ability and resolve to do Ironman triathlons; a deep, resonant voice; a thick salt-and-pepper beard; and a degree of hirsuteness that recalls an ancient uncivilized past. 

Scarlett appears to be just as thoroughly the archetype of femininity, a pre-Raphaelite model come to life.  Her narrow face and delicate chin, high cheekbones, just-full-enough lips, and porcelain skin could be a model for classic beauty.  Her wide hips and full chest, separated by a narrow waist, veritably scream “Female!”  Scarlett’s thin hands equally demonstrate the feminine ideal, with her long elegant fingers and long painted fingernails. 

* * * *

How did we meet?  Does it matter?  Perhaps we met at a holiday party, reaching for the same morsel of brie.  Conceivably, we rolled our mats out next to each other at a yoga class.  It’s possible that she and I ran side-by-side in a marathon and fell into conversation as the miles slipped by.  It’s just as likely that we backed into each other in a used bookstore, in the aisle for the metaphysical poets.  Maybe she is my supervisor at work.  Or then again, maybe she works for me. 

How we met is different story for another time.  This is a story of how we negotiated power.  A physical negotiation. 

* * * *

Men aren’t supposed to cry.

Society tells us that.  I hadn’t cried in thirty years. 

Scarlett made me cry. 

* * * *

When we first began to struggle against each other, when we first realized that we had a yearning—a veritable need—to dominate the other physically, my strength advantage was obvious.  I gripped your slender wrists and twisted your arms easily, forcing you to the ground beneath me.  Your muscles strained in my grasp but the power differential was too great: you could not escape me. 

Staring down at you, squirming defiantly yet hopelessly in my grasp, I basked in my strength. 

“I’m too strong for you,” I said, my voice full and commanding.

You paused in your struggles and looked me square in the eye.  And you smiled.

* * * *

As the tears rolled down my cheeks, as I begged Scarlett for mercy, a small part of my mind detached itself from the present and mused about the nature of power and gender.  Was she any less feminine, or perhaps more feminine, for battering and emasculating me?  Was I any less masculine because she had controlled and dominated and violated my body so completely?   

This line of thought was interrupted, quite rudely, by the piercing sound of my own screams.

* * * *

I don’t remember exactly when or how you shifted the balance of power.  The first trace of tarnish on my shining confidence came when you refused to submit, when you smiled rather than acknowledging my superiority.  How could a mere woman dare continue to compete with me?  Didn’t you realize it was futile?

For ten minutes—then twenty, then thirty—you wrestled from a position of inferiority.  I pinned you on your back, or held you captive in one dominant hold or another, never allowing you a momentary chance to escape or gain an advantage over me.  And yet this entire time you refused to quit, refused to whimper, refused to acknowledge my strength.

Our bodies glistened with sweat as I twisted and controlled you.  I tasted the salt on your neck, on your cheeks, as we struggled.  At times your full breasts and your ample bottom rubbed against me as though we were making love instead of war, and I marveled at your feminine perfection.  And yet I remained focused, bent on dominating you, asserting my power over you.

* * * *

Now, later, after the event…when I see you, back at yoga, or at school, or in the office…how will I react?  Will I hang my head in humiliation when you enter the room?  Will I wonder whom you have told about your subjugation of me?  And how will you respond: will you tease and torment me, reminding me constantly of your absolute victory?

* * * *

It is a fallacy, of course, to read too much into the study of a person’s physical features.  A superficial physical appendage cannot really reflect the nature of one’s personality, character, heart. 

And yet…Scarlett’s hands.

Scarlett’s thin, long fingers, tipped by perfectly shaped and pink-polished nails, clearly provide a window into her combination of strength and beauty.   She takes care of her hands, pampers them, spends time making her nails objects of splendor…and yet her long fingers possess a prodigious, even frightening, strength.

* * * *

The tide had long since turned.  We both knew that you had won, that you were the victor.  It was clear that you honestly owned me, more completely than a person can own a dog or a tract of land.  And still I was trying to fight back.  I refused to admit what we both knew I would eventually admit. 

You were behind me, beneath me, your long legs snaking up around my waist and wrapped around my own legs, your feet hooked inside my calves, and you were spreading my legs apart in a torturous grapevine.  Your left arm was wrapped around the outside of my left elbow, and with your left hand you grasped my right forearm tightly, more tightly than I could have imagined, and you held my right arm captive across my chest.  Your free right hand was draped over my mouth, creating a powerful, airtight seal, and your thumb and index finger pinched my nose shut.  I felt your sharp nails digging into my skin as I pathetically thrashed in your grasp.  I fought to breathe, knew I would pass out soon.  Your breath was warm and soft in my ear as you whispered all the ways you were going to hurt me, torture me, humiliate me.  Periodically your tongue snaked out and the wet pink tip traced the outline of my ear and I squirmed even more, still in vain.

“I spy with my little eye,” you whispered.  “An erect penis!  Why is your penis hard, Matt?” you teased.  “Is it because that is the only part of your body that you can move?  I’ve got your arms, your legs, even your head all at my mercy.  Were you looking for the one piece of your anatomy you could still control?”

I strained against you feebly, pathetically.

“I’ve got news for you, Matthew,” you continued to whisper.  “I control your penis, too.” 

As you spoke you unlaced your right leg and pulled your thin size eleven foot up to my crotch.  I couldn’t see, as you were holding my head back, your hand still taut over my mouth, but I could feel your big toe and second toe open up to grasp my penis, first gripping it at the tip, then working their way up and down the shaft.  My entire body quivered.

All the while my vision was narrowing, the edges growing grey and dim, as you controlled my oxygen. 

“What a lovely position, Matthew,” you said, your moist breath in my ear.  “I could kill you”—you pressed hard against my mouth and nose for emphasis—“or I could jack you off”—now you jerked my penis with your agile toes.  “Whatever should a girl do?”

That’s when my first tears appeared.

* * * *

At one point in the contest, early on, I held you off the ground, my arms like iron bands around your thin body.  Your feet dangled above the floor, your arms hung helplessly at your sides, and you grunted incoherently as I squeezed the life from you.

Or so I thought.

An hour later your right foot was still off the floor.  It rested solidly on my throat.  Your wiggled your toes, with their perfect pink toenails, into the skin on my neck as you balanced your weight on my fragile windpipe.  I pawed impotently at your calf (your beautiful, milky white calf, shapely and deadly) while my eyes tried to focus on your face, seemingly twenty feet above me.  Your gentle teasing laughter brought your visage into focus. 

“Please,” I tried to say.

Your pink lips exaggerated into a feigned pout of sympathy.  “Aw, does the little boy have a problem?” you taunted, twisting your foot and forcing me to gag.  My vision began to fade at the edges again.

Helpless beneath you, my eyes traced up your leg, insanely sexy in another context, to your waist, upon which your long fingers rested, up past your shelf-like breasts to your smiling face…your beautiful face.

Then the edges of my vision collapsed, leaving your smile as the last image on my brain.

* * * *

A man’s power is in his arms.  Hammering, chopping, sawing, punching, lifting: those are the activities that define a man’s life.  We control nature, control our environment; we clear land, erect buildings, plant seeds, harvest crops.  When we fight we hit and grab and throw.

A woman’s power is in her legs.  For all of men’s manipulation of the world, there’s one thing they can’t do: they cannot create life as women do.  A woman squeezes life into the world.  Life enters the world between a woman’s legs.

A woman’s legs are for squeezing.

* * * *

The first time you trapped me between your thighs I easily forced my way out.  You tried to lock your ankles but I pried against your creamy skin and escaped.

The second time you wrapped your legs around my torso I couldn’t free myself so quickly.  You laughed—that giggle of superiority, how I grew to hate it, to fear it—as I struggled in your velvety vise.  But I used my brute force to break free.

Was it the third time?  The fourth?  Eventually you captured me with your legs, crossed your ankles, and squeezed until I couldn’t breathe.  Your long thin fingers, the fingers of a Tiffany’s ring model, seized my wrists and pulled my arms slowly away from your constricting legs, your pink fingernails digging into the skin on my wrists, pulling my arms over my head…leaving me helplessly trapped between your crushing thighs.  I remembered how easily I had broken free only moments ago, but now I could only kick and twist and curse and—worst of all—listen to your delighted giggles as my rib cage felt as though it would burst.  And as I struggled, a part of my brain focused on your feet, your ankles locked across my stomach, and marveled at how slim and delicate your toes were, how perfectly your toenails were polished. 

You constricted your legs around my body in waves, thrusting then relaxing, each time weakening my walls…my physical walls…my emotional walls.

* * * *

“How do you rape a man, Matthew?” you asked. 

I didn’t reply.

“Can a woman rape a man?” you continued.  “Is it even possible?”

I didn’t speak, just grunted and moaned as you wrenched my body.  I had stopped resisting; at this point I hung limp in your grip as you abused me.  At that moment I was sitting on my bottom, my legs in a vee in front of me.  Your pelvis rested on my shoulders, your legs like thin marble columns on either side of my head, your feet inside my inner thighs, forcing my legs outward.  Your hands grasped my forearms, next to the elbow, your grip surprisingly strong, so tight in fact that some of my tears came from the pain in my arms.  But most of the pain was in my shoulders as you pulled my arms upward, forcing me to salute the sky, yanking with such force I thought you’d tear my arms from my shoulder sockets.  I was, again, completely at your mercy, completely unable to move.

“I mean, of course I could sodomize you.  I have a few lovely strap-on dildos.  A pretty pink one would look so sweet in your mouth.  Is face-fucking the way to rape a man?  Come on, Matthew, answer me…this isn’t supposed to be a monologue you know.  I’m no Prince Hamlet.  OK, if you’re not going to answer…

“I could sodomize you without a dildo.  My fingers are long, my nails are sharp.  I could use my birdie finger…give a new meaning to ‘up yours,’ right?”  You laughed as you gave me a renewed stretch.  A small pool of my tears formed in front of me.

“Maybe raping a man means forcing him to ejaculate against his will?  Is that it?  Or, how about this: what if I rolled you up and forced to you shoot your load into your own mouth?  Is that humiliation enough?”

* * * *

For a man, power is not just about winning.  It is also about making sure the other knows that he has lost.  Humiliation.

Scarlett wanted me to know that I had lost.

* * * *

When we first spoke, the first time I heard your voice, the first time I saw the way your lips curled ever so slightly, so endearingly before you smiled…at that point, could I ever imagine that I would submit to you?  Fear you?

Worship you?

* * * *

I was stretched out into an X.  You lay atop me, your pelvis grinding into mine.  Your legs wrapped around mine and then forced them outward, as though they were vines that were tearing my limbs from my body.  Your hands grasped my forearms and you stretched my arms out at 45 degree angles, and though I am no weakling I couldn’t break free.  It felt as though you were drawing and quartering me. 

Your face, your elegant face, hovered above mine.

“You want to kiss me, don’t you?”

I didn’t reply.

“You only resist because it’s not on your terms.  You don’t want me to force you.”  You paused and let this sink in.

Then your eyes widened slightly, and your lips spread slightly, and I saw your glistening teeth and a hint of your tongue…

and suddenly your mouth was on mine, and I fought because it seemed I had to, but your tongue plunged in, forcing my own tongue aside, and I squirmed and strained but you held me more tightly than chains, while you probed me and used me with your tongue…

* * * *

“Kiss it,” you said, proferring your foot and wiggling your toes.

“Kiss it,” you commanded, your calves pinning my arms to the floor as you lowered your milky derriere to my face, reaching back to spread your cheeks with your slim fingers, positioning your anus directly above me.

“Kiss it,” you whispered, lowering your left breast toward my mouth, your nipple huge and hard.

“Kiss it,” you demanded, scooting forward on my chest and settling your moist vagina on my mouth. 

* * * *

“Will I see you again?”

Pause.

“I don’t know.  That’s up to you.  Do you want to see me again?”

“After all this…how can you ask?”

Pause.

“Thank you.  For everything.”

“Thank you.”

Hug.

Can a woman rape a man? (NC-17)

 

“Do you admit it?  Want me to stop?” Katie stared down at me, arching one eyebrow.

“No,” I gasped.

“No, you don’t want me to stop?” she asked, giggling.  “OK then,” and with that she pulsed her legs again—her legs that were wrapped around mine in a grapevine.

“Aaaahhh!” I screamed.  It felt like my legs were being ripped from hips.

“Just say it, honey, and we can stop this,” Katie said. 

I tried not to look up at her.  Her brown hair hung down at me, framing her cute face.  I tried—continued to try—to pull away, to escape from her grasp, but to my ongoing humiliation, I couldn’t twist my arms out of the grip of her hands.  She had my arms pinned to the ground above my head.  Her broad hips were planted on my own pelvis, anchoring me to the carpet, and her legs were entwining my own.  With each passing moment my muscles grew more tired, and her advantage over me increased.

From the sofa, Liz, my wife, asked again, “Can you really not get up?  This is embarrassing.”  Her voice was icy with impatience and contempt.

If it was embarrassing for her, it seemed to be the peak of humiliation for me.  And yet it was just beginning.

“Just admit it, Matt,” said Katie, “and I’ll let you up.  We can stop here.  Otherwise, I’m going to do it.”

Realizing that maybe, just maybe, she really could do it, I renewed my struggles, redoubling my efforts.  But Katie, amazingly, held me securely to the floor.

Katie, with her flabby triceps.  Her dangling, maternal breasts.  Her widening hips.  She was a cute woman, not an amazon, not an athlete of any sort.  Just a thirty-something woman, average-sized, with big brown eyes and chestnut hair and a smattering of freckles. 

It had started an hour earlier.  Katie was my wife’s best friend.  The two of them loved to discuss books.  I knew it would be a bad idea, but this afternoon I had joined them in their discussion.  The book in question had a violent rape scene, and somehow in our discussion I had corrected Katie when she said that people have always raped people. 

“You mean, men have always raped women,” I interjected.  “We need to be precise.”

“No,” Katie replied, “I mean people raping people.  Men rape men, too, and women can rape women.  And women can rape men.”

“Oh, please,” I snorted.  I didn’t have any patience for Katie’s feminism.  “Women can’t rape men.”

“Of course they can.  Not in exactly the same way that a man can rape a woman, not in the sense of insemination, but---“

“Not in any sense,” I cut her off.

“Good grief,” said Liz, rolling her eyes, hating it when Katie and I got into an argument.  “I’m going to the bathroom.”

Katie and I ignored her departure.

“Actually,” Katie continued, “there are three ways a woman can rape a man.  She can sodomize him with an object, or perhaps another body part…finger, fist.”

I cackled derisively, but Katie forged ahead.

“Second, she can force him to ejaculate against his will,” Katie said, counting now on her fingers.

“What man doesn’t want to ejaculate?” I quipped. 

She ignored me.  “Or, third, she can force him to ejaculate inside her.  Stealing his seed, as it were.”

“You are so full of shit,” I said.

Katie shrugged.  “Just because you don’t accept it doesn’t mean it’s not true.  A woman can rape a man.  I could rape you.”

My mouth opened to reply, but I stopped short, processing her last statement. 

“Ok, ok, ok,” I began again.  “It’s one thing to say that some random woman somewhere could rape some guy.  But YOU could not rape ME.  That’s the dumbest thing I ever heard.”

“That sounds like a challenge.”

“What’s the dumbest thing you ever heard?  What sounds like a challenge?”  Liz asked as she walked back into the room.

Katie turned to her.  “May I rape your husband?” she asked. 

Liz stared, confused.

“No, you may not rape me,” I blurted.  “You CANnot rape me.  You’re smaller than I am, weaker, and you’re a fucking WOMAN!”

“Matt and I have a disagreement,” Katie tried to explain to Liz.  “And I would like to demonstrate to him that it’s possible for a woman to rape a man.”

“I don’t think he would let you,” Liz said, uncertainly.

“Well,” said Katie, “that’s part of the point.  If he allows me to rape him, then it’s not really rape.  It has to be against his will.  I am asking you for permission, since he’s your husband and you’re my friend.”

“This is all preposterous,” I shouted.  “It doesn’t matter if you have anyone’s permission or not.  You can’t physically do it.  You’re too small!  You’re a woman, for christsake!  Look at me!  I’m a man!”

Liz shook her head.  “You two do whatever you want.  Just don’t break my furniture.”  She rose and walked out of the room.

“Ok, big boy,” Katie grinned, kicking off her shoes.  “You better try to defend yourself.”  She walked toward me. 

I stood up, dumbfounded that this was actually happening.  We locked hands awkwardly.  She tried to push me down to the floor.  I easily overpowered her.  In a few seconds she was on her back and I was straddling her, holding her wrists to the carpet above her head.

“See?” I asked, sympathy and condescension in my voice.

Katie didn’t reply.  She bucked and twisted and gritted her teeth.  I felt as though I was sitting atop a bobcat.  Her body was amazingly limber and flexible.  Somehow she slipped her wrists free from my grasp and bent herself in two, then snaked her legs around and scissored her thick thighs around my stomach.

Now it was slightly more even.  I was able to recapture her arms, only to have her wrench them free again.  This pattern repeated itself several times: I would subdue her, then she would escape.  Her legs, however, became ever tighter around my abdomen. 

Then it happened…I went on the defense.  Rather than trying to control her, I realized that I was trying to free myself from HER grip.  I pulled at her feet, trying to unhook her ankles.  Her red toenails seemed to mock me as I clawed at her ankles.  Now it was she who seized my wrists, pulling them away from her feet.  I easily twisted my wrists from her grasp, only to have her grab them again.  This pattern repeated itself several times, until…

I lay still, not trying to break free from her grip, just trying to get a deep breath.  During our struggle Katie had been squeezing me methodically, and now I was gasping for air. 

“I’ll tell you what,” she said.  “If admit that I’m right, and if you kiss my feet now, I won’t rape you.  We can stop now.”

“Fuck you,” I snapped.  I renewed my struggle but couldn’t break free from her legs. 

“It’s the other way around,” said Katie.

We lay on the floor for an interminable amount of time, me occasionally try to break free, while she squeezed the life out of me.  At some point she releazed me from her scissors.

I rolled away from her, wheezing and gasping for breath.  She pushed me to my stomach and straddled my lower back, all her weight pressing down on me.  Katie twisted my right arm into a hammerlock, and I barely resisted.

“You know,” she said, “I wasn’t actually sure if I could rape you.  I was just mad.  But now,” she paused, then giggled, girlishly.  “Now I realize that I really can!  I’ll give you another chance, though.  Do you want to admit that I can rape you?  Or do I have to prove it?”

I didn’t answer.

Katie shifted herself so that her feet rested on the floor on either side of my face.  She was still perched on my lumbar.  “Kiss my feet,” she said.  

I didn’t reply.  Katie grabbed my hair and forced my head down onto her right foot.  She wiggled her toes as she rubbed my face back and forth.  I tried in vain to escape but she kept rubbing my face on her foot.

“Not going to kiss it, huh?” she laughed.  “Ok.”

Katie got off me, then rolled me to my back.  Before I could recover and fight back she lay down on top of me and wrapped her fleshy thighs around mine, hooking her slim feet inside my calves.  I couldn’t fight her off when she grabbed my arms and pinned them to the ground.

At this point Liz came back.  “Holy shit,” she said, seeing Katie holding me prisonor.  “Did you let her do that to you?”

“Nope,” Katie answered for me.  “He’s been struggling the whole time.”

Liz watched for a while in disbelief as Katie taunted me and asked me if I conceded.

But I couldn’t concede.  My manhood wouldn’t let me do it.  Even with Liz watching…or maybe especially because my wife was watching…I couldn’t submit to a woman.  Yet I knew that I couldn’t escape.

Finally Katie stopped asking me.  She looked up at Liz.  “OK, I’m asking you again.  As your friend.  May I rape your husband?  To prove this point?”

Liz was disgusted.  “If he can’t outwrestle you, he deserves to be raped,” she sneered.  She rose and stomped out of the room.

Katie looked down at me.  “What should I do first?  Sodomy?  Forced ejaculation?  Or do you want me to ride you to cum inside me?”

I couldn’t answer.  I turned my head and looked away.  Tears began streaming down my cheekbones.  Katie tensed her muscles again and I whimpered, my legs throbbing.  Knowing it wouldn’t do any good, I pushed and pulled with my arms, but her hands held my wrists tight. 

Katie bent down and licked the side of my face, then bit my cheek, hard, right below my eye.  I cried in earnest now.  “This is going to be fun,” she whispered.