Chapter 32: The Fate of A Dancer

Greg Masterson had asked me to use whatever influence I had with the ballet company to help the dancer, Jennifer Maisten. I also knew this would please Stephanie who had put Masterson up to this in the first place.

I knew that Jennifer was a criminal who had embezzled money from the company. When the public prosecutor had declined to prosecute her, the company had launched a successful private prosecution. The company then was empowered to pass sentence on Jennifer within the statutory guidelines. They had used this power with a vengeance, as there were many directors furious with her at the time.

I knew that sometimes the passage of time causes angers to fade. Sometimes an organization might be willing to take a second look at something — especially if they liked the person making the request. I went way back with the company, knew most of the Directors, and was known by them in turn as a heavy financial contributor. I thought therefore I had a chance to sell them on some leniency for Jennifer.

First I wanted to convince myself that Jennifer deserved leniency. Even if she were released on parole there could still be some stiff conditions for her to fulfill — including sexual conditions.

I decided to drop by the theatre one evening when I knew she would be rehearsing. As I entered the rehearsal room with the mirrored walls and the wall mounted barre that all the dancers used, I noticed that while most of the dancers wore normal rehearsal attire of leotards and tights, there were also a few, including Jennifer, who were nude except for their ballet shoes and leg warmers and, in Jennifer's case a short classical tutu skirt extending stiffly and horizontally out from her waist. She wore neither the customary bodice with it nor the underwear and the skirt itself left none of her charms to the imagination.

Jennifer was acting as a stand-in for one of the principal dancers in the rehearsal of the famous dance from "The Sleeping Beauty" known throughout the world as the "Rose Adagio"¹. As such she danced the role of the princess Aurora, dancing in turn with each of four fully clothed suitors. Each suitor in turn would provide her a point of balance and stability while she twirled en pointe on one slender leg and with the opposite leg raised skyward — nearly 180 degrees from the supporting leg. The view of her private parts this provided was breathtaking. I knew that, while they were willing to let Jennifer do this dance in rehearsal as a stand-in, that they had no plans to let her perform the Aurora role before the public, with or without clothes.

The Artistic Director Leonard Morrison warmly greeted me. He had recently been promoted to that position upon the retirement of the previous Director. While he now had responsibility to supervise other choreographers, he continued to actively create new works himself. I asked him if he could spare Jennifer for a brief interview and he readily assented. He told me Jennifer and the four suitors were due for a break anyway and to limit the interview to thirty minutes. He instructed Jennifer to remove the tutu so that it would not become wrinkled. Soon I found myself alone with Jennifer in a small office nearby. I locked the door against any interruption, took a seat behind the desk and kept Jennifer standing there for a long moment while I looked up and down her beautiful body, naked but for her ballet slippers. This was the same girl I had seen masturbate unconsciously when she was in the sensory deprivation cylinder for her slave training.

She stood erect, her feet shoulder width apart, and kept her arms hanging at her sides as any well-trained slave would. The office seemed quite a bit cooler than the rehearsal room. She seemed a bit unsteady, shifting her weight nervously from one foot to the other. It was a pleasure to watch the alternating muscular tensions in those gorgeous legs. It was a pleasure to gaze upon the perfectly flat and well toned abdominal area of her body, her cute navel, and to drop my gaze still lower to take in her well trimmed pubic area.

"You are probably wondering", I began, "why I summoned you here."

"Yes sir, Mr. Steelforth, I was wondering that, sir."

I continued to enjoy the sight of her standing there in all her nakedness. I was going to savor this interview, not rush it. I wanted her to be quite conscious that I was enjoying the sight of her body, and that the interview would proceed according to my timetable, not hers.

"I want to know you Jennifer, and for a reason I cannot yet disclose. Suffice to say I am here as a representative of your owner. It is very important that you open up to me. Hold nothing back. Let me see the real you!"

"The real me sir? I am not sure what that means."

"It means I want to know what goes on inside that pretty head of yours!"

By now I was noticing her starting to shiver from the coolness of this room. I saw there was a folded blanket on the credenza.

"I know how important it is to you dancers", I remarked, "to keep warm when not exercising so your muscles don't cramp. Here, I give you permission to wrap yourself in this and take a seat", I said handing her the blanket.

"Thank you sir!"

The girl wrapped herself in the blanket that was only large enough to cover her from just above her breasts to just below her crotch. This left her delicate shoulders and collarbone bare as well as her slender and quite muscular thighs. Still it would be enough to preserve her body heat and yet still leave me with a tantalizing view. I had often noted how typical it was for a dancer to have strong muscular legs in combination with an upper body that seemed almost fragile in its thinness.

"I want you to take me back nearly two years now to when you were embezzling money from this ballet company. I want to know what your thoughts and feelings were then toward the company. Be honest."

"I was resentful. I thought they were always passing me over when there were good roles. They were passing me over for others who couldn't dance as well as I because they were prettier. It seemed unfair. I would never get one of the principal roles. The only way I could have a chance at these roles would be if I could get plastic surgery for my face. But I had no way to pay for that on the salary of a low level company dancer."

"So you embezzled."

"Yes sir."

"I assume that you did actually get the plastic surgery since your face is as pretty as any I have ever seen in this building."

"Yes I did sir. And thank you for the compliment!"

"Are they still passing you over for principal dancer roles?"

"Yes sir. But now it is not because I am not pretty enough. It is because they wish to punish me further for my crime by stunting my dance career."

"Do you think your sentence was fair?"

"I knew by the end of my trial", she responded, "that what I had done was wrong. I knew I had to make restitution for it. I also knew there was no way I was ever going to be able to repay the company such a large amount out of my meager salary. I also knew that restitution alone would not be enough. I had to be punished severely for my actions to deter others from committing similar crimes."

"So you accepted your sentence of slavery as fair?"

"Well ... yes. Yes sir I mean. Indenturing me would not have been enough for what I had done. I accepted that I needed to be enslaved to satisfy the punishment requirement as well as the restitution requirement. I accepted that I needed to lose all my freedom and all my rights for some years in order that the ballet company and the public would be satisfied that I had been suitably punished for my crime. Anything less would not have been fair to the company."

"But I hear in your voice that you have reservations about your sentence?"

"May a slave speak freely sir?"

"Yes, Jennifer. That is what I am giving you permission to do."

"I don't object, Mr. Steelforth, to the parts of my sentence that provide real money value to my owners, even though many of these things are humiliating. Making me dance nude for the ballet company is a fair punishment. Or making me work 60 hours/week between two jobs. Or even forcing me to provide sexual services to many of the managers and clients over at Masterson Automotive."

"I think I hear a 'but' coming", I said, trying to reassure her that it was ok to continue.

I saw a tear begin to form and trickle down one of her well tanned cheeks. Since her enslavement there had been few if any opportunities for her to express her feelings about all this to anyone.

"What I object to is the pointless sexual humiliation I must constantly endure — like working nude in my cubicle over at Masterson with all the well dressed clients smirking at me, attending staff meetings in the nude, rehearsing nude here every night, being fucked every day by some stranger — not to earn money for my owner but just to satisfy a requirement in my sentence that I be fucked daily by strangers."

I was impressed with her attitude so far but felt I needed to press her further.

"But what you are saying Jennifer", "is that you accept the need to make restitution but don't think you should experience punishment just for the sake of punishment."

"I don't mean I shouldn't be punished. I just mean that the punishment part of my sentence seems excessive. I am genuinely repentant for the crime I committed. I was sentenced to five years of sexual humiliation and monthly public whippings. I have endured this for a year and a half already. When is enough enough sir?

"That is a good question Jennifer. I like your attitude and I want to help you!"

As I said this I placed my right hand affectionately on one of her luscious slender thighs and felt in my palm the warmth of her being. I felt the beginnings of stiffness in my penis as I did so.

"I am going to try to see if something can be done to alleviate your situation. Greg Masterson cannot relax any of the terms of your sentence. Only the ballet company can change your sentence. Do you know Frank Matters, the lighting designer?"

"Oh sure. Frank is a great guy — always so courteous to the dancers. And he is kind of cute too!"

"I have heard that Frank is looking for a new lighting operator and gopher since Stephanie won her freedom. I know he has the hots for you. The job would almost certainly involve having sex with him. How does that sound?"

"With Frank it would hardly be punishment sir!"

"But that's just it Jennifer. If we are to succeed you need to convince a lot of people around here that the sexual aspect of that job is abhorrent to you — that you would hate having sex with Frank!"

"I don't understand sir."

"I want to get them to accept the job with Frank as satisfying the non consensual sex part of your punishment!"

I saw a light of understanding in her eyes now.

"And I will also see what can be done about some of the other humiliating parts of your sentence."

"Thank you sir. I will be ever so grateful to you!"

"Stand now Jennifer, fold the blanket neatly and put it back on the credenza."

The girl quickly complied with my order. As she did so I admired her nakedness yet once more, particularly her muscular buttocks as she was bending over to put the blanket back. I could not resist the temptation to caress her buttocks gently. I unlocked the office door and indicated by gesture that our interview was over and that she might return to her rehearsal warm-ups.

As I walked back through the rehearsal room I got the attention of Leonard Morrison. He was obviously too busy creating a new dance routine to really talk now but I arranged to return the next day for an interview with him.

My next stop was to visit Frank Matters. My plan partly involved politicking various members of the ballet company staff — so that they would support my request when I put it before the Board of Directors. I strongly suspected that the prospect of having Jennifer as his lighting operator and sex toy would help persuade Frank to join with other staff members in arguing for leniency for her. He invited me into his office.

"It's been quite a while Bill", he began. Ever since that night — was it 6 months ago — when you came into this office and talked to my then assistant Stephanie. How is she doing now that she has been freed?"

"Very well last I heard. Thank you for your interest. That sort of leads right into what I wanted to see you about Frank. I heard that you went through a number of different girls as temporary lighting operators and none of them really worked out for you. Did I hear that right?"

"That is fairly accurate", he replied. Another problem is that these temp women they send me aren't all that attractive or all that young — if you know what I mean!"

"I know very well what you mean you old pervert!" I said with a broad grin and slapped him on the back.

"I may actually have a solution", I continued, "to both your problems. Do you know the dancer, Jennifer Maisten?"

"Hell yes. I tried a couple of times to see if I could get her as my assistant. What a hottie! The Artistic Director said that was not possible since she was already dividing her time between two jobs."

"That could change — I am trying to arrange things so that she works full time here in the theatre — say thirty hours a week as a dancer and maybe ten to 15 hours a week as your assistant."

"I'm listening!"

It all depends", I continued, "on whether I can get her criminal sentence modified, and that would be up to the company's Board of Directors. Might you be willing to work with me on this?"

"Tell me more."

"Jennifer's sentence calls for her to endure, as punishment, non consensual sex at least twenty times per month. She has endured this punishment, along with whippings every six months, for a year and a half now. I don't know how much more she can take. I am afraid if I go to the Board for sentence modification and just ask for this punishment to be cancelled, they may well turn me down. There are some on that board that were furious with her for the theft two years ago and argued strenuously for the sexual punishments to be part of her sentence."

"So you propose what then?" he replied.

"I am going to propose that they 'force' her to be your assistant and have regular sex with you!"

"But Jennifer likes me", he responded, "and I feel that she would willingly have sex with me."

"But it must not appear so", I said. "You and I and Jennifer are all going to have to be good actors. We will stage some sort of incident where others see you being rough with her and that you slapped her face. When they tell her she is going to be your new lighting operator and comfort girl, she will protest that she would rather die than "have sex with that man!"

"I guess I am not above playing a game with you Bill, but what would all this accomplish?"

"I can then go before the Board", I continued, "with a proposed sentence modification that says that her non consensual sex punishment can be fully satisfied by being assigned as a sex slave to you for the remaining three and one half years of her term. This will relieve her of the awful business of having to fuck twenty different strangers every month."

"Do you think the Board will go for it? Will they really think being assigned to me would be a true punishment?"

"Actually Frank, it may not matter if all of them believe it as long as some do. The directors who see through this little charade may well vote our way anyway — because we will have given them a face saving way to justify changing her sentence without appearing to be canceling the sex punishment part."

"Don't sentences have to be changed with the judge's approval?"

"Yes, but that is usually only a formality once the original plaintiff has agreed to the change."

"I'm onboard. What will I need to do?" he asked.

"Just wait for further instructions for now", I replied.

That evening I felt very lonely. Although I had hopes my relationship with Stephanie would eventually work out after her therapy was finished, I was feeling an immediate need for some things that Stephanie could not yet give me. I called the schoolteacher and sex therapist Sherry Wilson. She had become my best friend, and this was a "friendship with benefits". She wasn't busy that evening and invited me over. We got comfortable over a couple glasses of wine and I began to unburden my soul. I told her about today's events and what my strategy was for improving Jennifer's situation. She approved. She filled me in on what had been going on with Tom Jenkins therapy. I told her about how Stephanie had entered sex therapy and how I would be partnering with her in that. Then I got into what was really occupying most of my waking moments.

"Sherry, I think I can tell you this as a friend. I have both physical and emotional needs that Stephanie may not be able to satisfy for months or perhaps years."

"So you come to me, Bill, to fill those needs now?"

With that she stroked my thigh gently and I began to feel aroused. She wrapped her arms around me and squeezed.

"Are you jealous of Stephanie?"

"No, I have known from the beginning that you and I would only be friends and not romantic partners. And I have enjoyed you on that basis and enjoyed the sex and hope it can continue a while longer. She is the one who is romantically a match for you Bill."

"Why do you say that?" I replied.

"Because you have told me", she continued, "how you and she interact. I know you make her feel visible. And more to the point she makes you feel visible — in ways that go beyond what you and I have. Don't take this the wrong way, Bill, but I think the age difference between the two of you may be an important factor. You take almost a fatherly interest in her, which she has not experienced with men her own age. You are somebody she can look up to and admire for all the fine qualities that make you who you are."

"But don't you see the same things in me she does?" I replied.

"I like you Bill and am certainly aware of some of your better traits, but I don't think I see the total package the way she does. And I, perhaps, cannot look at you or any man with quite the innocent eyes that she can. It may be that the work I did as a prostitute for many years has colored my perception of men, made me more cynical I expect. As a result I don't expect as much from a relationship with a man as she does. And probably I cannot give back as much as she can. I am not a romantic, but you are Bill!"

"Are you suggesting that I should marry her?" I replied.

"Yes! Go to her Bill. Tell her you love her and want her to be your wife. You will need to be patient, as her therapy will take time. I tell you this as your friend. Someday, when I have lost you, I may regret having been so candid."

The arousal I had felt earlier had faded by now. But I still felt very affectionate toward Sherry and gave her a big hug. I had much to think about, so I made my excuses about having to get up early tomorrow and went home without the physical release I had planned.

The next day I felt it was time to put my little ruse into action. I called Frank Matters and encouraged him to go ahead and stage an incident that would convince everyone that he and Jennifer were bitter enemies. By mid morning he had sexually harassed Jennifer in front of witnesses, insisting that she come to his office and fuck him. When she resisted his demand he slapped her around for several minutes and finally stormed off to his office calling her all sorts of names.

Later that morning I had my meeting with Leonard Morrison, the Artistic Director. He was pleased to see me.

"Congratulations", I began, "on your recent promotion. I came to talk about Jennifer. I come as a representative of her current owner, Masterson Automotive Group."

I would like, if you don't mind, to gain some insight as to what her prospects might be here as a dancer.

"I am always more than willing to discuss any of our dancers with you Bill. You should know that after all the years you have supported us in our fund raising campaigns."

"Before I go into her prospects", Leonard continued, "I think you might find it instructive to see just how good a dancer she really is!"

"I saw her just yesterday", I responded, "as a rehearsal stand in for Aurora in the Rose Adagio. I could not have been more impressed!"

"Yes, but I think I can show her to you in another way. The company has recently acquired a 'Virtual Dance Simulator Machine' (VDSM). This is a computer controlled machine programmed to train dancers to perfectly emulate a model dancer image that they see through virtual reality goggles."

"I think I have a general idea", I replied, "what you are talking about. I recently visited a self-defense training school where they used 'Virtual Fight Training Machines'. This must be something quite similar. Right?"

"I have heard something of how those work. Our machine has some similarities but also is quite different. Jennifer is just about to start a practice session in one of these machines. Have you the time and interest to see her practice?"

"Of course!" I replied eagerly.

He led me to a large adjoining room off the main rehearsal room. There was Jennifer in the process of removing her tutu. She was then entirely naked but for her ballet shoes. She smiled to acknowledge my presence and Leonard's presence and then put on a pair of virtual reality goggles and an earphone headset.

"Complete nudity", he said, "is a requirement for any dancer using this machine. The machine needs all the information that the naked body can provide as to the positioning and tensioning of all the muscle groups."

The machine bore some striking resemblances to the 'Virtual Fight Training Machine'. Like that machine it consisted of an open three-dimensional framework that defined an action area. In this case, however, the action area was 24 feet by 36 feet — much larger than the 8 ft by 12 ft area of the fighting machines. Attached to the framework at many points were video cameras.

"Before a dance student can experience a multi-sensory training session", he continued, "he or she must have had a series of hypnotized sessions in a simple audio-visual trainer. Jennifer has had this hypnotic training so that she will be able to experience certain physical sensations that will help her adjust her muscles to match those of the virtual dancer. These sensations will be produced by coded subliminal visual cues flashed on her retinas."

"Jennifer will find herself mimicking the attitudes and movements of a model dancer. She will 'see' the model dancer's bodily positions through the virtual vision capability of the goggles and "hear" the dance music through the headset. This computer controlled machine will train her to think fast and keep on dancing through any discomforts until she can perfectly imitate the movements of the virtual dancer. The machine will cause her to feel a certain discomfort in any muscle group that is not perfectly emulating the model. She will discover that there is a 'sweet spot' for each and every one of her muscles where that muscle will feel just right and that only happens when that particular muscle is doing exactly what the corresponding muscle on the model dancer is doing."