Leash or Tether Dance

Leash Dance

         ”Klio looked about. I could see she was pleased to be so approved of, in her basic elements,
     as a naked female, but too, she was alarmed, having some inkling as to what might be the
     entailments of such preferences.”

"Have her perform," said one of the men.”

“I shook the slave leash, now on her, This movement was transmitted through the leather,
until it jerked and snapped at the ring, on the leash collar.”

"Oh, please , no!" she wept.

     "I have shaken the leash, once," I said. "You did not then perform. Fortunate it was for you
     then that you were a free woman, and not a slave. Even so, I was not pleased. Do you
     understand?"

"Yes!" she said.

"Now, when I shake it again, you will perform."

She put her head down, trembling.

"Do you understand?" I asked.

"Yes," she whispered.

"You must remember, gentlemen," I said, "she is only a free woman."

I shook the leash and Lady Klio, naked, attempted to perform.

Some of the men laughed.

"Surely you can do better than that," I said.

She sank to her stomach, in the dirt, at the bottom of the trench, weeping.

"Whip her," said a tall fellow, watching her, with his arms folded.

She looked up at him, frightened.

     His eyes suddenly glinted. I had not seen what passed between them but I suspect that he had
     seen in her eyes something swift, some flash of sudden fear and recognition, that she had
     seen him as her Master.

Then she put down her head again and there, in the dirt, shuddered.

"On your knees," I said. "Now."

She cried out, and rose quickly to her knees.

"Knees spread," I said.

She knelt there, her knees spread. She blushed crimson. It seemed she could not take her eyes
off the tall fellow.

"Perform," I encouraged her. "Move. Call attention to your charms."

Again Lady Klio began to perform, as she could.

     "It may not be much, gentlemen," I informed them, holding the leash, "but surely for such a
     woman it is an unusual activity. I suspect that she is not accustomed to doing it. Perhaps in
     the future she will be better at it. Look, gentlemen. Little as it may be. I suspect this is far
     more than was provided for the many chaps who paid for her meals, her lodging, her
     wardrobe, her transportation, her luxuries, her claimed needs, her numerous bills.

"Continue to perform," I said. You may leave your knees, but do not rise to your feet.

She regarded me, in wild protest.

"Yes,?" I said.

"Do not make me do these things," she begged. "Do not make me dance and writhe so. I am
a free woman!"

"Your freedom will soon be a matter of the past," I told her. "How well you do now could
influence the quality of your life in the future."

     "Do not fear," I said. "I know you are truly a slave. I learned it in your kiss, when you were
     shackled at the wall at the Crooked Tarn. I think that perhaps, in the same kiss, you learned
     it." The men laughed. She sneaked a glance at the tall fellow, and then, hastily, put down her
     head.

He smiled.

     "Lady Elene, of Tyros, your friend, whom you remember front he Crooked Tarn, and the
     coffle," I said, "is even now in a slave collar." It had been put on her within moments of her
     sale. Klio looked back at me.

     "In her performance," I said, "the slave, unrestrained, emerged quickly and in moments the
     woman discovered that it was she. It pleased the men abundantly. It brought a good price. It
     is now collared."

Klio sobbed.

"Frankly," I said, "I had not expected you to be inferior to her."

She looked at me, angrily.

"But perhaps the women of Tyros," I said, "are superior to those of Cos?"

"I think not," said a man, rather angrily.

There was laughter from the others. I supposed he must be Cosian, natively.

"But then," I said, "it is said, I have heard, that those of Port Kar prize Cosians as slaves."

"Show us what a Cosian can do," said a man.

"Thus," I said, "it seems that it is not, really, that the women of Tyros are superior to the
women of

Cos, but merely that, in your particular case, you are inferior to the Lady Elene."

She looked at me, again angrily.

     "But that is only to be expected, upon occasion, I suppose," I said, "that some woman of
     Tyros would be superior to some woman of Cos. Too, it is no disgrace to be inferior to the
     Lady Elene, who is quite attractive and, in time, might even make a dancer."

"I am inferior to Elene," she said, angrily.

The men laughed at her vehemence.

She looked at the tall fellow.

I quickly then, that she would feel the authoritative signal of the leash and collar rings while
she was looking at the tall fellow, shook the leash.

"Ah!" said a fellow.

I was quite pleasant then with Klio.

     My expectation, I then felt, that she would prove to be the most exciting and desirable of the
     two, was borne out. That was why I had saved her for last, of course, for use in the trench
     closest to Ar's Station. To be sure, I might have been somewhat prejudiced, for I remembered
     Klio's lovely dark hair, and I tend to be partial to brunets. Who, eventually, would prove to
     be the best slave I did not know. Let such women compete desperately with one another, and
     with other slaves, each striving to be the best.

One of the men cried out with pleasure.

     That had been an excellent leash move, to be sure. Klio displayed herself brilliantly on the
     leash. Such things seem very natural for a woman. Perhaps they are, to some extent like
     slave dance, instinctive, the biological template, or genetic dispositions for them, having
     been selected for , the biological need of a woman to belong, to be approved of and to love.

"Superb!" said a fellow.

     I wondered if Klio, sensing these deep, dark, wonderful, frightening things within her, the
     rightfulness of the destiny of submission to men for her, and such, had not, perhaps in the
     privacy of her own chambers, before her mirror, put the leash on herself. Perhaps she had
     then, there, before the mirror, in the privacy of her own quarters, moved similarly. It is not
     unusual for women to do this sort of thing, alone, often in bonds and chains, expressing
     plaintively therein their longing for a master.

"Superb! Superb!" cried for another fellow.

Klio, I recalled, had chosen a dangerous way of life, one which she must surely have
realized, on one level or another, might lead to the collar.

" 'Klio', " I said to the men, "might be an excellent name for a slave, do you not think so?"

"Yes!" said more than one.

     Klio flushed with pleasure. Somehow it seemed she became even more sinuous, more
     sensuous, then.
     I saw that she was paying a bit too much attention to the tall fellow.

"On, your belly," I said to Klio. "There, that fellow," I said, indicating a grizzled sapper to
one side, his hooks near him, "address yourself to him, about the feet and legs."

He grinned.

"No!" said the tall fellow.

I had thought this move on my part might bring him into action.

Klio stopped, and turned, from her knees, to regard him.

"I will buy her!" he said.

"She is not cheap," I said. It seemed to me I might as well get what I could for Klio. I fear I
must admit occasionally to a streak of opportunistic greediness.

"A silver tarsk!" he cried.

     "Done!" I said. I had not really expected anything like that. Klio, redeemed through
     Ephialtes, had only cost me thirty copper tarsks. Perhaps I should have held out for more,
     seeing the eagerness of the fellow, but, after all, I was taken by surprise by the splendid
     offer, and even opportunistic greediness has its limits, particularly when surprised.

"On all fours," I said to Klio.

Immediately she went to all fours.

"A silver tarsk," I said.

     It was placed in my palm and I put it in my pouch. I then removed my leash and collar from
     her neck. I had not even returned the leash and collar to my pouch before I heard a decisive
     click and a small cry from Klio. She looked up, collared, a slave, at her Master.

"She dances, the leash dance well, does she not?" I asked.

"I will improve her in it," said he, grimly.

Klio quickly bent her head, unbidden to his feet, and kissed them.

"Share her," said a fellow.

"Let her dance again," said another, "not in the leash."

"Proffer her to the arms of each of us," said another, "in turn."

"She is mine," said the fellow.

"We are your comrades in arms," said another.

"True!" said another.

     "Have no fear," said the tall fellow, " I will share the slave, and my good fortune, with you,
     but do not forget that in the end it is I alone to whom she belongs, that it is mine alone
     whose slave she is."
     The men crowded around Klio now, and I could hardly see her among them. Even the fellow
     from the low wooden platform, which page him a vantage over the top of the trench, had
     joined them.
     Renegades of Gor, Pages 170 - 178

She straightened herself. She smiled. Her eyes were moist. "What I am now going to do," she said, "I do fully and completely of my own free will. I have sexual needs. I shall exhibit the desperation of these needs before my master, in the hope that he will take pity on me and satisfy them. It is also a girl's hope that in what she does her master will not find her fully displeasing."
She then, gently, removed the bark skirt from her hips and dropped it to the side.
She then flexed her knees and lifted her hands the backs of the wrists facing one another, gracefully over her head.
"Wait," I said.
"Master?" she asked.
"Have you begged to perform?" I asked.
"No, Master," she said.
"You may now do so," I said.
"I beg to perform before my master," she said.
"Very well," I said. "You may do so."
"Thank you, Master," she said.
She then danced before me, of her own free will, a girl in need, and one desiring to please her master.
Her dance grew ever more desperate and, at times, I had to throw her from me.
Then she lay at the slave stake. She held out a hand to me.
I went to her and seized her by the upper arms and threw her to her feet.
She lookd at me, frightened.
"You did not do badly, Slave Girl," I said. "But now it is time for you to learn how to truly dance before a man."
"Master!" she cried in misery.
"Be as you were," I told her.
Immediately, frightened, she stood again before me, knees flexed, hands raised above her head, gracefully, the backs of her wrists facing one another, in one of the attitudes of the slave dancer.
I jerked the tether on her throat. "This is a tether," I said. "It is to be well incorporated in your dance. You are a tethered slave. Do not forget it. You may fight the tether, you may love it. It may confine your body, you may use it to caress your body, an invitation to your master, a surrogate symbol of his domination of you. You need not dance always on your feet. A woman can dance beautifully on her knees, moving as little as a hand, or on her back, or belly or side. In all things do not forget that you are a slave."
"Are you now commanding me to dance before you?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "you dance now as a commanded slave. And if I am not well pleased have no fear but what you will be well beaten, if not slain."
"Yes, Master," she said
I then struck my hands together, and, terrified, the girl danced.
She had not been taught the tether dance, one of the most beautiful of the slave dances of Gor, but she improvised well. Indeed, it was hard to believe that she had not had training. I am inclined to believe that the need dances and display dances of the human female may be, at least in their rudiments, instinctual. I suspect there is a genetic disposition in the woman toward this type of behavior and that certain of the movements, closely associated with luring behavior and love movements, may also be genetically based. One reason for supposing this to be the case is that a girl's growth in certain forms of dance skills does not follow a normal learning curve. It is rather like the human being's ability to acquire speech, which also does not follow a normal learning curve. It seems reasonably likely that facility in acquiring speech, which would have enormous survival value, has been selected for. Similarly, a woman's marvelous adaptability to erotic dance may possibly have been selected for. At any rate, whatever the truth may be in these matters, feminine women, perhaps to the horror of their more masculine sisters, seem to take naturally to the beauties of erotic dance. At the very least, perhaps inexplicably, they are marvelously good at it. These genetic dispositions, of course, if they exist, can be culturally suppressed.
I watched the girl dance. She was quite good.
The needs of human beings are a matter of biology. The values in a culture are the values of certain men. Many people take the values of their culture for granted, as though they were somehow a part of the furniture of the universe. They should realize that the values they are taught are the values of particular men, and often, unfortunately, of men who, long ago, were short-lived, ignorant, uninformed, unhealthy and qute possibly of unsound mind. Perhaps human beings should, from the viewpoints of contemporary information and modern medicine, re-evaluate these perhaps anachronistic value structures. Values need not be something one somehow mysteriously "knows," a result of having forgotten the conditioning process by means of which they were instilled, but could be something chosen, something selected as instruments by means of which to improve human life. It is not wrong for human beings to be happy.
"Now you are becoming a woman," I told her. She knelt on one knee, her right; her left leg was flexed; the tether was taken, in a turn, about her left thigh; her hands, too, were on her left thigh; her head was down, but turned toward me; her lip trembled. "Continue to dance, Slave," I told her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I watched her, and marveled. It is interesting to note that such movements, those of slave dances, despite the inhibitions of rigid cultures, may occur in a girl's sleep, and may even occur, almost spontaneously, when she, nude, alone, passes before a mirror in her bedroom. How shocked she may be to suddenly see her body move as that of a slave. Could it have been she who so moved? Later, perhaps to her surprise, she finds herself standing before the mirror. She is naked, and alone. Then, perhaps scarcely understanding what is occurring within her, she sees the girl in the mirror has begun to dance. The movements are not dissimilar perhaps to those of women who, thousands of years ago, danced in firelit caves before their masters. Then, knowing well that it is she herself who is the dancer, she dances brazenly, boldly, before the mirror. Well does she present her bared beauty before it in the movements, the attitudes and postures of the female slave. Then perhaps she falls to the rug, scratching at it, pressing her belly to it. "I want a Master," she whispers.
I now stood up. My arms were folded.
The girl now was upon her knees at my feet, the tether on her neck slung back behind her to the slave stake. Still in her dance, she began to lick and kiss at my body.
I then took her by the upper arms and held her, half lifted from her knees, before me.
"Please do not whip me," she begged.
I then, by the upper arms, dragged her to the side of the slave stake. I put her on her knees there. She looked up at me. "You danced well as a slave," I said.
Explorers of Gor, Page 360 - 363