“Chris, of course. He’s ready. Hell, if he stays with me much longer, I’m going to buy him.” Janna pulled her charts out of her briefcase and passed them over to Anderson with a barely contained look of glee on her face. “Trainer, I don’t know why you sent him to me, but he’s a treasure. Picks things up almost by osmosis, I swear. Remembers everything he’s taught, and can pass it on using better language and better technique than most of the trainers I know, including me! I’ve already changed some of the language in my workbook.”
Anderson’s coffee cup clinked sharply as she set it down on the saucer. She took the folder and opened it in her lap, her mouth pursed in consternation.
Damn it if Janna didn’t fall in love with the little wise-ass,
she thought furiously.
“What do you mean ‘he,’” she asked crossly, scanning Janna’s neatly printed notes.
“Well, frankly—I’m not quite sure what to call Chris. He is bisexual, at least from a functional definition; shows no real preference for men or women, responds mostly to dominance and submission, period. But when it comes down to his own sex—it just seems right to call him—him. And he prefers it.”
“Slaves don’t have preferences,” Anderson muttered.
“Of course not,” Janna said with the right air of submission. Anderson sighed and kept reading. Truth was, she disliked being a bully—but it came in handy now and again.
“What did the doctor say?” she asked, her voice gentler.
“There’s a full report in the back, but basically, he was as puzzled as I was,” Jenna said, recovering neatly. “He said he could call Chris a cross-dresser, but we decided that Chris doesn’t get an erotic charge from being mistaken for a man—Chris just feels right when looking masculine. I’d say he was a candidate for a sex change, but the Doc said he never heard of such a thing. He was supposed to get back to me on that, but I haven’t heard from him.”
Anderson snorted. “Follow up, I’d love to hear what other theories he comes up with. Drugs? Home abuse?”
“Some drug use, but not for a year now,” Janna said immediately. “Said he went cold turkey to help clean up his act for you. He’s a run-away, as I’m sure you realized, but he was pretty clear that his parents didn’t smack him around much or anything. Just the usual tomboy stuff, you know—always on him for not fitting into the pink box.”
Since Janna was herself on the butch side of things, Anderson only nodded and turned her attention back to the report.
The file format was easy to read, comfortingly familiar. It was, after all, her style. So it was easy to find how much time it took to teach Chris the basic positions and responses—no surprise, anyone who had trained someone else could be assumed to know them already. OK, then, the more advanced work, the logic problems, the distraction exercises. Hm. Here, you could see a talent beginning to show through. The service training took a more normal length of time, but that was mostly because Chris had apparently been taught less-than-correct styles of table service, and had no idea what it took to manage things like financial records.
But after that, Janna had entered her program of breaking. This was the reason why Anderson had sent Chris to her, because when Janna got it in her head to break someone, she went at it with the single minded devotion of a pit bull. She was truly merciless, and had a delightfully perverse sense of humor that lent itself to pretty extravagant humiliations. It was one thing to chain someone up and beat them every day until they cried and begged you to stop. It was another thing entirely to reduce someone to tears with a word, a touch, even a caress. Plus, this sort of program often revealed the true nature of a client—are they a stubborn fighter with no sense of scale, holding on to dignity way past when it would have been appropriate to surrender? Are they afraid of things that might be central to service to a particular owner down the line? Do certain behaviors, names, articles of clothing, roles—make them angry? Unavailable in any way?
In other words, what would make Chris flee from this life?
Nothing, apparently. Or rather, there was something, but Janna had not completed her own program. Curious.
“Tell me a story,” Anderson said, putting the file down. “What is he like to play with?” Instantly, she realized which pronoun she had used and cursed to herself.
Janna nodded and thought for a moment. “Takes a beating like a cross between Gary Cooper and a porn star. Stands up to it bravely and willingly—but then surrenders to it. I had to do a little work around permitting him to express the pain, but once he understood, he let it all go for me. Apparently, he’s done some heavy, heavy shit—excuse my language, Trainer—but look at the photos if you doubt me.”
Anderson fingered the envelope of photos, pulled one out and whistled, low. “Hm. Whips. Cutting ones. Is that... a brand? On his arm?”
“Yep.”
“Who the hell would brand such a child?”
“Would you believe the child? Wait ’til you see the transcripts of my tapes; apparently, he had a friend of his do that sometime last year. Made the brand himself out of a cut up coffee can, and they heated it up—get this—with a shop-lifted butane torch. Made a clamp out of Chinese take-out chopsticks and a rubber band.”
“My God,” Anderson muttered. “Real masochist, then.”
“Oh yes—definitely a turn on. But more than that, this kid comes alive when you’re cruel. Beautiful responses, really, deep breaths and hissed intakes, little cries, building up to full throated screams. For someone who used to work with one of those ‘just stand there and don’t make a sound’ types, it’s positively miraculous. Add a touch of humiliation to anything, and his entire body reacts. He stiffens just enough to make it interesting to really push. On the negative side, he’s definitely not a bondage fetishist. I think he’s offended by bondage, somehow.”
“What is—Chris—good for?”
“Practically anything, for the right owner. And that’s the tricky thing. I’m not quite sure why, but he’s got to belong to someone who... will understand him? I don’t know if that’s right. Basically, I’ve been treating him like a transvestite, and that seems to be the best way to handle him.” Janna spread her hands in a shrug. “But with that aside, he can be a great house-servant, absolutely a demon when it comes to details. A personal assistant is also another way to go. He has no real education to speak of, but with a college degree in something useful he’d shoot up in value so fast your head would spin. About the only limitation he has is as a sex slave.”
“Not interesting in that area?” Anderson asked, one eyebrow raised.
“Oh, no, he’s very interesting, sorry to be so imprecise. But, well—he’s—not attractive in a conventional sense. Not masculine enough to be right for the gay men or the straight women, and if we tried to make Chris into a pretty girl, well, I think we’d lose all his value in a minute. As a butch lesbian type, I think we could make a really good case—but that market is nearly non-existent as far as I know—only six sales I could find last year, and that was world wide. But he’s willing, and talented, in a charmingly eager way. The right owner could make him into a great pleasure slave—but there’s that right owner to come up with again!”
“Now tell me why you didn’t obey me.”
Janna’s dignity didn’t allow her to blush easily. Instead, she hardened, one of her few faults. “In my judgment, breaking Chris would have been a vast mistake. He’s strong, but he’s as bendable as a reed with the right motivation. As you have frequently noted, playing with clay is a lot more fun than playing with dust. You want to know how to break him, it’s in the final notes. Pretty easy, too. But if you do that, Trainer, with all due respect, you will ruin him. I swear to you, on my honor, that every piece of training I have tells me that.”
“But you still think I could sell him right now?”
“Like I said, I’d buy him.”
“And what would you do with him?”
Janna bit her lip and then gave her trainer a crooked grin. “I’d make him a junior trainer under me,” she admitted. “And that’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“I have ten applications sitting on my desk right now, from people who went through the accepted route to find me,” Anderson said. “I don’t need an arrogant, confused child to get underfoot. Tell you what—Chris is useful as an under-trainer? Take another three months, and then I’ll let you know what we’re going to do. I’ll cover any additional costs of the training myself.”
“That’s very generous of you, Trainer.”
Anderson waved her hand and then reached for her cooling coffee. “I know. Just don’t ask me why, I’m never going to see a cent back on this troublemaker, I know it.”
* * * *
It was later on that evening, after Janna had left, when Anderson recalled the mystery of exactly how Chris had found her. She re-examined the events in her mind, and realized that she had been assuming that it was Kyle who had been Chris’s first contact. And what was that phrase that Chris had used, that first day? “Are you compelling me to obedience?” Damn if it wasn’t one of her own phrases, but none of her trainees would have been so sloppy as to let it slip to a street kid. Someone who had to give you a learner’s permit for identification, she could see the blurry print even now, in her mind’s eye, Chris Parker—That was when she realized who had sent her this talented little mystery.
* * * *
She had last been there almost three years before, shortly after he had told her that he had moved. It was his dream apartment, a few blocks north of Christopher Street, in that area that was half filled with charming tree-lined streets and meat packing plants. Not to mention the gay sex clubs that dotted the area, and the easy access to the piers, where all manner of sexual behavior took place. He had told her about the men who had their little adventures in the backs of the parked 18-wheeled trucks and then took trains home to the suburbs. And of course, the back rooms where men could take on all comers in hours of carnality that boggled even the mind of a professional slave trainer.
She walked up to the second floor and knocked on his door, and heard him shout, “It’s about time, you cocksucker, get in here!” Sighing, she opened the door.
“Is that any way to speak to your trainer, Ronald?”
He was lounging on a dilapidated couch, dressed in nothing but a pair of green khaki-colored boxer shorts and a stringy tank top, neither of which left much to the imagination about his sexy body. His jaw, dotted with a few days worth of dark beard, dropped in suitable shock even as his body unfolded to rise gracefully and eagerly to greet her. “Anderson! I can’t believe it!” He ran to her and threw his arms around her in a crushing embrace, which she accepted for a few seconds before poking him strongly in the chest and pushing him back.
“Parker?” was all she said.
“Oh, shi—ooot,” he said, catching the profanity as it started to come out. He had the decency to look somewhat abashed, lowering his head shyly as he scratched his chest where she poked him. “So, you figured it out, huh? Or did the little faggot finally tell you, so I have to kick his ass next time I see him?”
Anderson shook her head in disbelief. “I don’t believe you, Ron,” she said, moving through the apartment and kicking various garments out of the way. He scooped some more off the best chair for her and she sat down. “I don’t believe that you would send a minor to me. And I just don’t understand why you—why everyone is so eager to deny your sister’s real sex!”
“Huh. Well, I figured that would be the easiest thing about Chris to understand, Trainer,” he said, pulling a pair of jeans on over the shorts. “You Marketplace folks never run short on guys liking to be girls, you know. Chris is just the opposite, that’s all. The little punk’s always been like this; hell, he was on the street sooner than I was! Well, I guess I wasn’t the best role model.” He found a long-sleeve shirt and pulled it on, and as he tucked it in, headed into the postage stamp sized kitchen.
No, Ron wouldn’t have been the best role model for anyone, Anderson reflected. A brilliant scholar who left home to go to Israel, left the kibbutz to go to school, left college to become a slave, and then left slavery because it was too “boring” and became a leather-clad master, a pool shark, and occasionally a very expensive hustler.
So much potential there, so much grand potential. But he was restless, and needed change. No amount of training could stop the urge for novelty in one’s life. She had told him so herself, when she let him go from the advanced training he had requested. He had seemed disappointed, for a little while. But then his eyes lit up, and he had asked, “So, can I call you Imala now? Can I take you out for a drink sometime?”
Surprised, she had said yes to both. And now, years later, he had sent her this... this strange problem.
He elbowed himself back into the room and gave her a glass of soda and sat on the couch again. “Look, Anderson, I didn’t know what else to do with him. The idiot was getting into trouble like you wouldn’t believe. Every couple of weeks, he’d show up with the snot beat out of him, and short of calling the cops, I didn’t know what to do. I swear, he has a talent for finding the most psychotic freaks you can imagine, the crazier, the better. And only two people in the whole world cared about his ass, and neither of us could do much to help him, not really.”
“How about your parents?”
“What about them? They fu—they tried to have him committed, OK? The kid’s not insane, he just needs, you know. Direction. Training. Someone in charge.”
“So I’m a baby sitter?”
“No! Jeeze, you think I’m stupid or something? I was in the world, Anderson; I can see that he’s got what it takes. In fact, if it took you this long to figure out who he was, I’m betting you’re not even training him yourself, are you? You passed him onto someone.” He grinned, his heavy black mustache turning up charmingly, and she sighed. No, Ron was never stupid.
In fact,
she thought,
why isn’t he spotting for us?
She would ask him later, when she wasn’t so mad at him.
A knock sounded on the door and Ron yelled, “Beat it, you’re late! Come back tomorrow, asshole!” Footsteps on the stairs, no hesitation. Anderson raised one eyebrow. Apparently Ron had turned out to be a much better top than bottom. “And you couldn’t provide Chris with a little direction and training?”