Chapter 40: Liberation bondage

The time for Janelle's art class exhibition was drawing nearer. They had each been allocated a space at a collaborating art gallery downtown, one that every-so-often hosted an "amateurs week" of emerging artists. Janelle had picked sculpture as her medium, and naturally she continued to develop her fem-domme themes.

She was finding the whole artistic process quite cathartic. It was forcing her to analyse her feelings about why she was the way she was. And about the way she wanted to structure her relationships with men.

Not necessarily lots of men. One man would be quite enough, if he fit the bill. If he had what it took to give her what she needed, each time the clock started ticking and certain urges built within her like a time-bomb.

A man like Doug.

But she had to keep suppressing any actual identity from her mind. Keep "the man" as an abstract concept. A symbol of all men.

The instant she gave "the man" an identity, there was danger that she'd start to compare him with Doug.

Worse, she might start wanting "the man" to be Doug.

That just wasn't going to happen. Do a U-turn out of that particular mental dead-end street right now, she'd tell herself.

How the heck can she work on a sculpture of a man, without identity?

Make it faceless? Just a form? An embodiment of all men?

How was she going to get that across, yet still convey servitude, sacrifice, a testing of the limits of an ego, all without an identity?

Then it hit her.

An idea that was radical. Different.

And artistically, quite risky.

Don't have a man at all.

Focus on the apparatus. On the test that was going to be faced... by whoever.

Forget an embodiment of a man.

Make it an embodiment of what a man would have to endure, for her sake.

Now she had the makings of a concept. She had an idea she could take forward and express in her chosen medium. Wood, and wrought-iron, and... leather.

If there were to be any human figure in it at all, naturally it could only be herself. A self-portrait, as a life-sized figure in wood. Not necessarily recognizable as herself — she wasn't sufficiently advanced as a sculptor to pull that off quite yet. But at least a representation of herself. A figure of a women obviously young, gifted, and black, not to mention extremely sassy. Right at the centre of these goings-on. In the driver's seat.

"The man" would be absent from this study altogether. A vacancy, waiting to be filled. This woman was out there, and looking.

And the apparatus would make it clear what she was looking for.

Restraints.

Physical discomfort.

Public humiliation, as a test of ego.

A willingness to endure.

Queen, and knight.

Janelle began researching sex toys and BDSM gear, but found them too clichéd for what she intended. This was not fantasy stuff, with fur-trimmed edges. This had to be real heavy-duty.

Then a Google search uncovered some old images of slavery in the Deep South, and of Africans being brought across to America. Being from the 'hood, she'd always felt so far removed from all of that "Roots" stuff to never pay it no mind. Even now, it didn't strike any kind of chord in her concerning what her ancestors might have gone through. No, what struck her most was the possibilities of leg-irons, and public floggings of naked haunches.

But with the roles reversed.

A white male (in absentia) lashed to the flogging frame.

A black woman wielding the cat-o-nine-tails.

Perfect.

How to make it sexy? Erotic?

"She" — that is, the portrait of herself, would be getting off on it.

One hand wielding a whip, the other between her legs playing with herself. An expression of serene self-absorption permeating her Nubian features.

She decided to run the idea past Sue when they next got together for their habitual expensive coffee.

"I don't really get it" Sue remarked, looking up from the sheaf of sketches in Janelle's opened folio, "Are you, like, making a statement on behalf of your people?"

"Fuck my people! This is about me getting my freak-on! About filling the void in my life!"

"Oh. I see."

"No you don't. Something's still missing, if you don't get it."

"You need to make it more sexy, somehow."

"What could be more sexy than a man allowing himself to be tied up and whipped long enough for me to get a climax out of it?"

"You have to admit, Janelle, that people like us may well be a minority in the overall spectrum of sexual tastes".

A long pause, as Janelle's brow furrowed in concentration. A little light had just clicked on in her brain, and was all the while glowing steadily brighter.

"That's it! You've got it, Sue!"

"Got what?"

"We have to preach a message! Win converts to our cause!"

"What cause?"

"Sexual liberation."

"Though bondage?"

"Through bondage."

"I'm still not with you."

"Don't worry. You got me started on something. But I can't quite express it yet. I got some serious thinking to do."

"Anything I can do to help?"

"You done plenty already. But tell me this — why are our men so attractive to us?"

"MY man, you mean. You don't actually have a man, as of this minute."

"Don't be bitchy, just answer the question. Do you enjoy being intimate with Dave?"

"Sure I do."

"Why?"

"I guess I must love the slob."

"But you been loving him even more lately, right?"