The Final Veil: Who had kidnapped America's favorite belly dancer? Page 12

  "How about a glass of Coke?" I asked.

  "Yes, master, Coke," she said. She then rose to her feet and walked over to the serving tray and proceeded to pour me a Coke and herself a Coke using only her mouth and tongue to manipulate things. She did it so quickly and skillfully that it took no more time than it would have taken me to do it myself, and she did it better, too, because she focused on what she was doing with her whole concentration.

  My Coke went into the ice glass. Hers went into one of two bowls.

  She picked up the bowl full of fizzy Coke in her mouth and walked back in front of me and knelt down and set it on the floor in front of her, and never spilled a drop of it, or appeared to be in any danger of doing so. Then she knelt with the bowl in front of her and looked up at me.

  "Drink," I ordered her, because she obviously wanted me to.

  She knelt down in front of the bowl and her shoulder length brown hair momentarily obscured the bowl. But I heard slurping sounds, and when she returned to her upright posture there was liquid on her face and the bowl was half empty.

  She looked up at me again. This was what constituted small talk for her -- she knelt in front of you and looked at you expectantly. No words.

  "I understand you are a former member of the ALFALFANs," I said.

  She nodded.

  "Why are you telling me about them?" I asked. "If any of them are involved with kidnapping April, the consequences for them could be grave."

  "That is only fair," said the animal. "The consequences of being kidnapped could be very grave for April. And I really do not think any of the alfs I counted as my friends are involved. But if they have done such a terrible thing as kidnapping, they must face the consequences."

  "How did you get started with the alfs?" I asked.

  "I was a dancer and a committed feminist," said the animal. "The alfs were a committed feminist dance group that specialized in belly dance. It was natural."

  "Feminist belly dance," I said. "What is that?"

  "Feminists believe that belly dance originated with movements to ease childbirth, and that it's a female thing associated with worship of the Moon Goddess," said the animal. "They believe that men have no place in belly dance, not even as an audience. The dance is seen as a form of female empowerment, and male interest in it is imposing the patriarchy on a dance sacred to women."

  "This would be at odds with April's style of dance," I said.

  "I think the alfs and most feminist belly dancers would consider it to be unfortunate but not terribly surprising that April's dancing would become popular," said the animal. "It is exactly what they mean when they talk about dance corrupted by the male gaze."

  "What do you say?" I asked. "What do you think of April's dance?"

  "This animal would say that it is not the dance, it is the dancer," said the animal. "April arrived at a brilliant interpretation of belly dance as an exploration of the male-female dynamic. That is the secret of her success, not mere pandering to the male gaze, as many feminist dancers think. Many who came before her, and many who came after, have pandered to the male gaze much more directly, without her success. That is because April's dance incorporates the male/female dynamic and transcends it, whereas the other dancers merely express the female element of the dynamic."

  "Ah," I said. "You've thought about this a lot."

  "I have thought about a lot of things a lot, over the last six months, and plan to do more thinking over the next six months," said the animal.

  "That's why you are taking a year as a animal, to think," I said.

  "No," she said. "I am living like an animal to have a year outside of human experience, so that when I return to human experience it will be on a deeper level. The thinking is just a byproduct. The Goreans are kind enough to permit me this opportunity."

  "How did you go from being an alf to being a Gorean animal?" I asked. "It's quite a transition, I imagine."

  "My dance led me here," said the animal. "I discovered in my dance that my belly responded very powerfully to thoughts of being taken by a man when I danced. Others noticed and criticized my dance as pandering to the patriarchy. But I could not help it, I was following the true line of my dance as it came from within me, and it led me to the sort of belly dance that females perform for males. I had so much criticism after a time that I knew I had to leave."

  "So that's why you left the alfs," I said. "What made the alfs break away from the ALFANs?"

  "The alfs danced their way to a different place," said the animal.

  "What do you mean, danced?" I asked.

  "The people who are the fore of the alfs started out as a feminist dance troupe made up largely from the ALFAN's membership. They began meeting just to practice feminist belly dance, with no real political agenda that was separate from the ALFANS'. But when you dance, it changes you. And it changed them. They became more action-oriented. They got with the notion that the deed is its own propaganda, in fact, they decided that nothing really happens without the deed."

  "The deed?" I asked.

  "Some real, physical act that challenges the male hegemony," said the animal. "They felt that propagandizing alone never does anything more than take advantage of whatever slack the patriarchy might permit you, but would never really change things for the better."

  "Kidnapping a celebrity might be such a deed?" I asked.

  "It might, under the right circumstances," replied the animal.

  "Did they ever plan anything like that while you were with them?" I asked.

  "No," replied the animal. "They were talking in terms of blowing up buildings or taking over a TV station or breaking into a women's prison and freeing the inmates."

  "They were going to break INTO a prison?" I asked.

  "They're dancers, not thinkers," said the animal. "And I don't think the word "planning" is the right word for what they were doing. It was more in the manner of a light-night college dorm bull session, and it was often fueled by alcohol and grass. I mean some of them were advocating investigating the magical properties of belly dance, and using it to cast spells on men in general to make them gentler and more respectful of women."

  "Did you get any sense that they might carry out any of these plans, however farfetched?" I asked.

  "No, I never once worried that they might actually carry any of their plans out," said the animal, "any more than I ever worried about the things said in late-night bull sessions in college might come to term. To put it bluntly, bullshit has a distinctive aroma."

  "I hear you," I said, grinning. "Do you think they might have ... progressed ... in your absence?"

  "I don't know where their dance may have taken them," the animal said.

  "You keep referring to the dance making them do things," I said. "I don't understand. Could you help me understand a little better?"

  "I take it you have never engaged in any kind of formal dance training," the animal said.

  "None," I responded.

  "Well, then, I can try, but it will be harder," said the animal. "Dance changes you, especially dance that's adopted as part of a lifestyle, rather than as a fun exercise. In belly dance, we learn to physically express our feelings through our bodies. It is a very hard thing for some of us to learn, because as women we are raised to control our physical expression at all times, especially those that involve sexuality and sensuality. In belly dance, we suddenly learn that our sensuality and sexuality are grand and glorious things, which we must express freely in our dance in order to dance properly. This alone wreaks enormous changes in the mind. Women who have gone through belly dance training tend to come out of it more alive, more sensual, more sure of themselves."

  "I see," I said.

  "No, you don't," said the animal. "That's just the beginning. If you become a dancer, one who practices dance regularly and who uses it as a means of self-expression and self-discovery, the effect is much more powerful. If you are dancing as a group you soon find the dance expresses the group dynamic and that chan
ges in the dance can actually presage changes in the way the group thinks and acts. In essence, the dancers' bodies know what they are going to do, long before they are consciously aware of it. That's what is generally meant by the term 'where the dance takes you.'"

  'So, the dance would tend to make the group more purposeful?" I asked.

  "To put it very roughly, yes," the animal said. "Dancing makes one more physical."

  "Who were the leaders of the group when you were with them?" I asked.

  "Sandy Wrathbottom, Virginia Lowenstien, Billie Jo Culpepper, and me," said the animal.

  "That figures," I said, grinning.

  "What, that I was a leader?" she asked.

  "You sure aren't a follower," I said.

  The animal woman said nothing.

  "Where did the group meet, usually?" I asked.

  "We rehearsed at the Bethany Church auditorium in Decatur," said the animal. "We used to put on dance performances at the General Purpose Playhouse in Buckhead. And we hung out at the Starbucks in the Ansley Mall shopping center."

  I had struck gold, I thought. "So if I went to the Starbucks at Ansley Mall and asked around, I'd probably be able to meet some alfs," I said.

  "No," said the animal, with the beginnings of a smile on her face. "You would not meet some alfs. You are a male, a het male, the very essence of the patrimony. You might as well walk into a church with horns on your forehead and carrying a pitchfork. You might be surrounded by alfs, but nobody would admit to it, and nobody else would point them out for you. Best you could do is leave your card and explain what your business was. Even then, I wouldn't hold my breath."

  "What if I sent in a female agent?" I asked.

  "Depends," said the animal. "The alfs are exquisitely sensitive creatures, for the most part, when it comes to detecting bullshit from outsiders. If they catch wind that your agent is not their friend, they'll clam up fast. And they probably will."

  "OK, then," I said, figuring I had what I needed.

  "May a girl speak?" asked the animal.

  "Shoot," I said. I didn't bother with Gorean niceties because I didn't think the animal before me was all that much of a Gorean. I wasn't sure what she was.

  "I would like to ask master a question, as I have answered so many of yours," said the animal. "You have some lines around your eyes and mouth, the marks of sorrow if I am not mistaken. How did you come to get them?"

  I knew what she was talking about.

  "A few years ago, I was a detective working for a local police agency," I said. "I had always wanted to be a cop, because I felt I could do a great job of helping people and protecting them. But then we were involved in the drug war, just like we are now. And I wound up participating in a lot of drug busts. And sure, we brought in a few drug kingpins, but mostly we wound up busting poor and middle class people. Sometimes we busted people who were growing a few hundred pot plants in their basement, maybe, for their own use and maybe to sell to their buddies. They were not 'kingpins.'

  "I really got sick of watching screaming women separated from their crying children and hauled off to jail," I said. "And I knew the system pretty well by then. I knew those kids were fucked, and their parents were fucked, with the kind of penalties we have in place for selling drugs. And there was just no way I could see what we were doing as a good thing. So I quit the force. My wife couldn't handle me being self-employed, so she divorced me." (I didn't mention my infidelities, somehow it seemed wrong to do so, maybe a privacy thing, which was ironic, in this very Gorean place I found myself in). "It was a tough time for me, because I wasn't sure I was doing the right thing. I mean, some of the drug users we busted were crack addicts who really did need some kind of help -- they were a danger to themselves and their kids. Mandatory treatment programs or something, I dunno, but locking them up in cages where they might get raped, and taking their kids away from them forever just didn't make any sense to me. So I quit. But I'm all better now."

  "You're lonely, though," said the animal.

  "Not really," I said.

  "Yes, really," said the animal. "Your body declares it, loudly, to anyone who understands the language of bodies."

  "I understand the language of bodies," I said.

  "Not like a dancer," she responded.

  "I FEEL OK," I said, a little testily.

  "It's your body, it's lonely," she said. "It tells women's bodies of its loneliness. Like touch hunger."

  "Touch hunger?" I asked.

  "Single people, living alone, who don't have sex partners or children get it," said the animal. "It's not the same as horniness, it's just a hunger for intimate physical contact with someone else. It's not a mental thing or a sexual thing, it's a purely physical thing, the craving of one body for the touch of another."

  "And I have touch hunger?" I asked.

  "No, your body indicates you've been touched quite intimately and fairly recently," said the animal. "And of course, there's the smell of her, too. Both of them, in fact. And the Mexican food you had for lunch, with beer."

  "That's scary," I said.

  "When you live in your senses, as an animal does, they become very sharp," she said.

  "What is my body telling you right now?" I asked, grinning.

  "Same thing it's been telling me for the last half hour," she said. "That you would really like to fuck me."

  "Oh," I said.

  "And I doubt if you can read my body the way I can read yours," said the animal, "but I would be really, really grateful if you would fuck me before you leave me. I would really, really like that."

  "I can do that," I said, smiling at her.

  "May I suck your cock to get things started?" she asked.

  "Well, what about you?" I asked. "I mean, are you warmed up and all?"

  "I am ready to be entered at this very moment, master," said the animal. "You are a very attractive man. Kneeling naked before you makes me wet."

  "I see," I said. Coquetry was a lost art here. But then, it wasn't what you'd expect from an animal.

  She crept forward on her knees, her eyes downcast. Maybe not so much "downcast" as focused on my cock. When she reached my lap she had my belt unbuckled, my fly undone and my zipper unzipped in seconds with that magic mouth of hers. She found my cock immediately and began sucking it. She was very different from Joy, whose approach had been so intense. She seemed more interested in experiencing my cock with her mouth than in making me come as quickly as possible. In fact, I had a sense that she was in no hurry at all, that she was right where she wanted to be, kneeling before me with my cock in her mouth and her hands cuffed behind her.

  I relaxed and let her do as she wished with my cock, pulling my pants down slightly so my zipper wouldn't be pressing up against my cock.

  For the next few moments I just sat there with my eyes closed and we related to one another as male cock and female mouth. She wasn't in any hurry, and thanks to my experiences earlier in the day, I wasn't on the point of exploding as soon as her lips touched my cock.

  It was amazing, the way she used her mouth. It wasn't so much a combination of lips, teeth, and tongue as it was one single living organism that engulfed my cock and communed with it.

  Eventually, all this relating to her mouth had its predictable effect on my cock. It got hard, then it got very hard. She continued to relate to it until I was almost ready to come, then she pulled back and sat back on her knees.

  "Thank you master," she said with great feeling, as if I had just given her a drink of water after a long thirst.

  "The pleasure was mine," I said.

  She smiled, then opened her mouth wide and tilted her head back. It took me a second or two to figure out that she was telling me she was ready for her gag.

  I found the gag on the floor next to my chair where I'd discarded it, picked it up and pushed it into her mouth. I wasn't worried about any dirt from the floor. In the first place, it was a very clean floor. In the second place, I knew she didn't have any qualms about wh
at she put in her mouth.

  I buckled the gag in place, tight. I knew she would want it buckled tightly, though probably not painfully so.

  When it was properly fitted, I leaned back and looked at her. The ball was in her court now, so to speak.

  She leaned back and looked at me for a moment wit those animal eyes of hers. Then she threw her body to the ground to her left, rolling with her shoulders expertly to minimize the shock of her landing.

  She wound up lying face down on the rug, facing away from me. She gave an expert flip of her butt, and the tail that had obscured her private parts now lay on the small of her back, leaving her pussy exposed to my penetrating male gaze.

  She had not been kidding about being wet. Her shorn labia gleamed with moisture.

  She began to do a dance using only her butt. It moved slowly side to side at first and then picked up its tempo, and as the tempo picked up her butt rose in the air as she drew her knees together. Her tail shook and shimmied atop her butt, sometimes obscuring her private parts, sometimes revealing them.

  Finally, her butt was at full height, and with a final expert flip her tail once again obscured only the small of her back, and her pussy was once again fully exposed, and her pussy lips gaped wide revealing the darkness between them, and I was drawn to that darkness, and I put my cock in it.

  Then we fucked, fucked as animals might fuck, without thought for the morrow or our feelings or anything but the instincts that drove us. When I heard her crying out and moaning into her gag, when I saw her fingers moving spasmodically, I knew she was overcome, and I came.

  Afterward, I left her lying just as she was, slumped in that total relaxation that some women display after orgasm. I did not speak to her -- she was gagged, and back in her animal state, and I had the information.

  On the way out, Kat asked me, "Did she help you in your search for April?"

  "Very much," I replied.

  "She will be glad to know that," said Kat. "She is a very good person."

  "Yes, she is," I said. "I rewarded her as best I could."

  "You are a kind master," Kat said, knowing exactly what reward the animal would have wanted.