“You what?!” Sally looked outraged. “What do you mean you’re letting him dominate you?”

Mary Jane blushed. “I…well…” She was not sure quite how to explain herself. She adjusted the dress Benjamin had given her earlier that day, cognizant of the foreign way it fell over her body.

“What does he do to you? What does he make you do?” Sally demanded.

“Well…he had me wear this dress. I wrote down fantasies for him to read. And…” She hesitated. “And I’m not supposed to have an orgasm until the next time I see him.”

Sally put her hands up in a gesture of unbelief. “And you like it?”

Her stare was so intense that Mary Jane felt herself retreat under it. “Yes,” she admitted. “Yes, I do.”

They were sitting on stools at their kitchen counter, sharing a bottle of wine and an ice cream cake. Sally took a ferocious bite of her cake and drained her wine glass. “What about your autonomy? What about your agency? What about your pleasure?” She got up from her chair and rummaged through the pile of magazines on the coffee table until she found the document she was looking for. It was a short pamphlet, titled “Getting to Know Your Body.” She thrust it at Mary Jane. “Here. Take this. I got it at a class.”

Mary Jane flipped through the pamphlet, which contained a plethora of quite graphically illustrated instructions on how to stimulate one’s own clitoris. The corners of her lips twitched. “What kind of class was this for again, Sally?”

“It was a class on female pleasure,” Sally said brusquely.

Mary Jane let out a laugh. “Was it…probative?” She joked, “Did it give you some penetrating insights?”

Sally was not to be swayed off her track. “This is important! We should all be having orgasms. It’s good for us. Seizing our pleasure back from the patriarchy.”

Mary Jane closed the pamphlet and took a pensive sip of her wine. “Has it occurred to you,” she said slowly, “that what’s pleasurable for you might be different from what’s pleasurable for me?”

“It doesn’t seem to me like your arrangement leaves any room for your pleasure at all.”

Mary Jane searched for words. “He sees me,” she said finally. “He knows me. He wants to know about me. What could be more pleasurable than that?”

“An orgasm,” was Sally’s blunt response.

Mary Jane laughed again, less in amusement than in frustration at the sheer absurdity of it. “I feel happy, Sally. Really happy when I’m with him.”

Sally gave a long, theatrical sigh.

“I’m a lost cause, I know,” Mary Jane teased. She aimed her hairband at Sally and shot it at her forehead. Sally shot it back at her, missed, and descended into laughter.

“I’ll get you on my side one of these days,” she said. “In the meantime…” she pushed the pamphlet toward Mary Jane, “make sure he reads this.”

***

Loyal to Benjamin’s instructions, and against Sally’s continued protestation, Mary Jane refrained from touching herself that night, and the night after that. But Benjamin’s injunction could not keep her mind from wandering back to her encounter with him. Her thoughts returned incessantly to the feel of his hands as they held her, steadying her. In her mind’s eye, she undressed herself for him again and again, peeling away each and every layer with deliberate care. The activity induced a hum of excitement in her core, a great, cavernous hunger, and it took all her willpower to withstand the urge to sate it.

Each morning, Mary Jane read to herself in a whisper the words Benjamin had given her on their first night together: “I submit to Benjamin. My greatest desire is to please him. I have no secrets from him.” The words settled into her body–on her tongue, in her fingers, deep in the pores of her skin. With each repetition, they seemed to become more and more imbricated in her being.

Two days after their encounter in his office, Benjamin came to discover Mary Jane at the front desk of the library. He smiled widely when he saw her. “You look beautiful,” he remarked under his breath, handing her a stack of books to put in the return pile.

“Thank you, Benjamin.” She put a hand on top of his as she took the books. “So do you.” He was wearing a bright blue checkered suit, and he wore it with a confident, easygoing flamboyancy that she found quite striking.

“I came by to take a look at you the other day, when you were wearing the dress I gave you.”

“I didn’t see you!” Mary Jane exclaimed, surprised.

Benjamin grinned. “I didn’t mean for you to.” He leaned over the desk toward her and said in her ear. “Has it been difficult to follow my instructions this week?”

She nodded. “Yes, Benjamin.”

“Good. I’d like to see you tonight, if you don’t have any other plans.”

She felt a rush of excitement in her chest. “I don’t have any other plans. I’d love to see you.”

“Say ‘Yes, Benjamin,'” he murmured.

“Yes, Benjamin.”

***

Mary Jane arrived at Benjamin’s apartment that evening at precisely 6:00 PM. She had decided to wear the same black dress Benjamin had given her, and she had curled her hair and made her face up especially for him. He nodded approvingly when he let her in. Like his office, Benjamin’s apartment was littered with books–on the shelves, the coffee table, even the couch. There was a charming shabbiness about he whole apartment: each worn piece of furniture and frayed book cover seemed to have a story to tell. He walked her over to the couch, which had piles of books on all but one of the seats. He sat down in the only open seat and motioned for her to kneel before him. She did so.

He tilted her chin up with two fingers and planted a kiss on her lips. “How are you feeling today?”

She smiled up at him. “Very happy to be here!”

“I take it you had a good time the other day, then?” There was a glint in his eye–either amusement or arousal, or perhaps both, Mary Jane wondered.

“Yes, Benjamin!”

“Have you been thinking about me?” He probed further.

“Yes, Benjamin.”

“What have you been thinking about?”

His eyes were searching, taking in every expression, every movement in her face. It made her self-conscious about her expression. Did she look serious enough, she thought? Did her face convey her emotions adequately? “I…well,” she began. “I’ve been thinking about how you made me undress for you. And about how it felt when you held me by my neck and my hair.”

“How did it feel?”

She smiled. “Like there was nothing else important in the world except you.”

He grinned. “There wasn’t. Not for you in that moment, at least.” He reached over to the coffee table and picked up his copy of Surveiller et Punir. He flipped through the pages until he found one that he had dog-eared, and handed the book to her. “I thought we might continue our study group,” he remarked. “Maybe include some practical exploration.” The corners of his mouth twitched. Mary Jane giggled in response. “Read aloud from here.” He indicated a line in the text.

She began to read aloud in deliberate, precise French. “‘Bentham’s Panopticon is the architectural figure of this composition. We know the principle on which it was based: at the periphery, an annular building; at the centre, a tower.'” She looked up at him.

“Continue,” he ordered.

“‘This tower is pierced with wide windows,'” she continued. “‘The peripheric building is divided into cells. All that is needed, then, is to place a supervisor in a central tower and to shut up in each cell a condemned man. They are like so many cages, so many small theatres, in which each actor is alone, perfectly individualized and constantly visible.'”

“You can stop reading,” he said. She looked up at him. “Well? What did you just read? What does it mean?” His tone was unmistakably professorial–kind but discerning, curious about her comment but with a clear answer in mind.

Mary Jane ran a finger over the words again. “This place Foucault describes,” she said slowly, contemplating. “He calls it the panopticon. It’s a place where everyone is constantly under surveillance but can’t see who is surveilling them.”

“Precisely!” He encouraged.

“It’s a perfect metonym for disciplinary power, isn’t it? Power that instills itself by knowing, by seeing.” She tapped the book on his knee. “Like you do with me. Knowing everything there is to know about me.”

He nodded approvingly. “Yes indeed. There’s more, isn’t there though?” He raised his eyebrows for her to go on.

She wondered about the passage–the image of the prison cells “like so many small theatres.” What else made this sort of power distinct, other than its propensity to make visible? “The prisoners in the cells don’t know when they’re being watched,” she observed. “They just know that at any moment they could be being watched. So they have to behave all the time as if the supervisor’s eyes were on them.”

He winked at her. Evidently, this had been the answer he was looking for. “I think we can play with that idea, don’t you?”

“Yes, Benjamin!”

“Stand up.” She did so. He took hold of the hair on the back of her head and used it to guide her toward the door frame between the living room and the kitchen. He positioned her in the frame and adjusted her posture, guiding her to raise her chest and relax her shoulders. She let him mold her body, feeling herself yield like liquid under his hands. “Hands at your sides,” he murmured. “Feet shoulder width apart.” She obeyed. “Chin up.” He lifted her chin with his finger. “Smile.” Obligingly, she smiled. “Now, I want you to stay exactly like this. For as long as I say.”

Through her smile, Mary Jane let out a whine of protestation. In answer, Benjamin gripped her neck firmly and whispered in her ear, “Your mouth will get tired, I know. And your back and your feet. But you’ll stay like this for me. Because it pleases me. You said you liked waiting. Now I’m going to make you wait. Understood?”

“Yes Benjamin,” Mary Jane assented, then resumed her smile.

He took something black out of his back pocket, unfolded it, and showed it to Mary Jane. It was a padded sleep mask. “Close your eyes.” He positioned the mask over her eyes. She opened them a crack but found that the mask obscured her vision entirely. She felt Benjamin run a finger over her shoulder and down her arm. “Now we’ll learn some real discipline, won’t we?” He muttered. “I’ll be going about my evening, but you’ll know that at any moment I could be looking right at you. And you’ll have to remember to stay exactly still like that. Nothing else matters to you.”

“Yes, Benjamin.”

She heard him walk away, then return. Crack! In an instant, she heard the swish of a cane and felt a sharp imprintation of pain on her upper thighs. She gasped and cried out, backing away instinctively. He caught her dress and pulled her back toward him. “Posture,” he ordered. With a whimper, she obeyed. “Smile.” But Mary Jane was flustered from his attack. Would he strike her again, she thought? Her thighs still burned from the impact of the first blow, and her heart pounded in fast, irregular beats. Benjamin gripped her hair and twisted it painfully. “I said smile,” he intoned. “For me.” His tone was firm, unrelenting. It was clear he would not let go until she obeyed. Shaking, she forced her lips into a smile for him. He loosened his grip on her hair. He ran the cane over her thighs again, caressing them, as if considering whether or not to strike again. It took all of Mary Jane’s willpower not to back away from him. “Are you afraid?” He asked.

“Yes, Benjamin,” she whimpered through her smile.

“Good.” He ran the cane down her chest, across her breasts and her stomach. “Because I want you to know that I can hurt you anytime I want. And I will, if you don’t stay still and keep your posture for me.” He walked away from her. She heard the couch creak as he sat down on it. “This cane isn’t the only trick up my sleeve,” he continued in a casual tone. “No, I can give you pain, make you uncomfortable, in many different ways. I’ll leave you to ponder the possibilities.” The rustle of paper told her that he had picked up a book. She took his ensuing silence to mean that he had begun to read it.

Smile for him, she wondered. Her heart was racing. She could feel it in her throat. Her fingers tingled. Her core was moist with arousal. What more would he do to her, she thought, if she forgot herself and relaxed her posture or her face? Bite her? Scratch her? Choke her? Tie her tightly with rope? The idea sent a tremor of fear through her body, but at the same time, a hum of curiosity. She kept her chest elevated and her arms relaxed. Stand up straight. Feet shoulder width aside. Smile. She repeated the instructions to herself so that she would not forget herself and start to slack.

She was like a painting, a puppet in a theater–framed in the doorway, still and silent. All that was left now was to wait. It did not take long before her cheeks began to feel sore from smiling. For Benjamin, she wondered, as she forced her lips to maintain the position. It is for his pleasure that I am smiling. Her feet began to hurt, and she shifted her weight just slightly, hoping it would not be enough for him to notice.

“I saw that,” he admonished.

“I’m sorry, Benjamin,” she said through gritted teeth. In one swift motion, he had gotten up from the couch and struck her again on the warm, sensitive skin of her thighs. She screamed, and he stopped it with a kiss on her lips. His hands held her head, and his fingers curled around her hair. Her scream of protestation turned into a moan of pleasure.

He returned to the couch. Except for the occasional sound of a page turning, all the was silent. The clock on the wall ticked. Mary Jane’s thighs burned. Her feet hurt. The muscles in her face ached. And yet, through the pain and discomfort, Mary Jane felt a strange sense of calm creep over her. She was not embarrassed by the way Benjamin was using her, not by the discomfort of her position, nor by the humiliation of being made to smile through the pain. Benjamin had seen into her so thoroughly–perhaps even more thoroughly than she herself had ever done–that she felt as if nothing else he did or made her do could embarrass her. She wanted to please him. She wanted to submit to him entirely. She wanted to look exactly the way he wanted her to look. In this moment, all other fears and aspirations dimmed in comparison to this one great purpose: to be his and his alone.

Lost in wondered, Mary Jane realized that she begun to slouch. She adjusted her posture quickly and silently, and from Benjamin’s ensuing silence, she gathered that he had not noticed the aberration. Chest elevated. Shoulders relaxed. Smile. She repeated the instructions in her head, determined to follow them unwaveringly.

Presently, Benjamin got up from the couch, rummaged around in a drawer, and approached her. He pressed something cold and sharp to her neck. She could not tell what it was. A knife? She drew in a sharp breath. He traced a line down from her neck to her dress with the instrument, and she realized that it was the dull side of a pair of scissors. He cut a small nick in the top of her neckline, then ripped open the front of the dress with his hands, exposing her bare breasts. She let out a small gasp.

“That’s a better view, don’t you think?”

“Yes, Benjamin,” she concurred, willing for an excuse to move her mouth from its position, if only for a moment.

He ran a hand over her breasts, squeezing them thoughtfully. His hands wandered back to the tear in her dress. With a clean, decisive motion, he ripped the dress all the way down to the hem, exposing all of her torso. He inched her underwear down her legs. The excitement and arousal had made her nether regions swell and moisten. When he grazed his fingers against them, the barest touch induced a gasp of pleasure. Benjamin wet his fingers, then dragged them up from her stomach to her chest, leaving a trail of moisture behind. His hand lingered on her chest, rising and falling with her breathing. Mary Jane stayed silent and still, keeping her posture exactly as he had instructed.

“Good,” he murmured in her ear, “very good.”

Benjamin walked past Mary Jane into the kitchen. She heard him pour himself a drink, then heard footsteps walking away from her down the hall. Figuring that he must have left the room, she allowed herself a brief moment to adjust her posture. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, stretched her neck, and moved her face.

Crack! Benjamin hit her with the cane, hard, on her rear end. She gave a frightened squeal and dropped to her hands and knees from the force of the blow. “I’m sorry, Benjamin!” She gasped. In answer, he pulled her toward him by her hair and struck her again. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry,” she wailed, as he dealt another searing blow to her rear end, then another.

“What did I say about keeping still?” His voice was calm and collected. He took the blindfold off of her eyes and came around to face her, standing over her. Mary Jane’s entire body shook from the aftershock of the blows. She was breathing heavily, and her skin felt hot where he had struck her. She looked up at him, squinting her eyes in the light. He looked neither pleased nor upset. “You’ll need to be taught a lesson, of course.” It was a statement of fact, a logical outcome of an action.

“Yes, Benjamin,” Mary Jane breathed.

He knelt down next to her so that he was at eye level. He tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “I won’t hurt you any more than you can take,” he assured her. “If it’s too much for you, you can let me know.” Looking into his eyes, behind his convincing show of stoicism, she detected a steady warmth. “I want to give you something you’ll remember,” he informed her.

He left the room and returned with a small duffel bag. He rifled around in it and produced several objects: the first, a thick, leather collar; the second, a pair of handcuffs; and the third, a length of rope. “Stand up,” he instructed. She did so. He stripped her of the tattered dress so that she was completely nude. Standing behind her, he guided her hands together behind her back and snapped the handcuffs around her wrists. “How do your wrists feel?”

“Good.”

“Can you get out?”

Mary Jane tried to wrestle her wrists out of the cuffs, but they would not budge. “No,” she said. “I’m helpless.”

He grabbed a fistful of her hair and tilted her head back. “Say it again,” he murmured in her ear.

“I…I’m helpless,” she breathed.

He let go of her hair. He took the collar and fastened it around her neck. It was so tall that it forced her to keep her chin elevated and her shoulders relaxed. No need to remember to keep her posture the way he wanted it, then–she had no choice but to follow his instructions. “Can you breathe?”

“Yes, Benjamin.”

He looped a length of rope through the collar, pulled it through a hook just above the door, and pulled it taut. The rope pulled up on her neck, and she was forced onto her tiptoes. “How about now?”

Mary Jane drew in a labored breath. The restraint around her neck limited her breath, but it did not stop it entirely. “I can breathe,” she told him, “but it’s harder.”

“Good. You tell me if you can’t breathe, okay? Say something, and if that doesn’t work tap my leg.”

“Yes, Benjamin.” Mary’s legs were trembling from the effort of standing on her tiptoes. She struggled to balance on them, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Benjamin’s hands held her waist, and she used them to help herself balance.

“It’s not so easy, is it?” He murmured. “Your calves are going to be sore tomorrow.” With effort, she drew a heavy breath through the collar. “You’ll remember to stand still and straight for me next time.”

“Yes, Benjamin,” she sputtered.

“Say it,” he ordered.

He slapped her thigh with his hand so hard it made Mary Jane gasp. “I’ll remember to stand still and straight for you next time,” she whined. He slapped her again, sending a stinging pain through her sensitive thigh. Instinctively, she tried to pull away from him, but the rope held her prisoner where she was. There was nowhere to go. Her calves hurt. Her neck was already beginning to feel sore. She whimpered in protestation, and the sound of her struggling seemed to inspire new excitement in Benjamin. He slapped her again, this time on her breast, then again on her rear end, then again between her legs. He pinched her and squeezed her and scratched her, attacking every part of her body with his willing hands.