Wealth & Fascination

originally posted June 15, 2005

“The business fascinates you,” she said.

Of course it does. I have spent countless ahns improving other fellows’ women and asked for nothing in return. How many times have I slapped a girl on the ass and sent her home with redoubled sense of purpose and place in the world; asking nothing more for compensation than the service she provided? I don’t regret it in the least. Such things come naturally to a man; like walking or breathing air they are natural responses to the world around you. It does fascinate me that I can be paid, and handsomely, for it.

Aside from the slaves Sana and Emily, who is now called Vulo, the women in the Boarding House are cast offs. Some were picked up at cost from the Municipal Pens; unwanted or sold simply to pay off debt. Others were abandoned, left behind wretches in danger of being slain or pressed into involuntary service at commissaries or textile mills. Some may have survived for a time, on their wits and intuition alone, as street urts turning sexual favor and pitiful begging into meals. Others may have risked the humid swamps or deep, green forests of Gor to become outlaws, panther girls or talunae. None would have lasted long. Each, deep in her heart, is a slave that longs to please men.

These forgotten women, passed over for whatever reason by others, are becoming the scandal of Ar. Mere chattel have become the subject of gossip, outrage and indignation. They have come to represent my audacity. I have improved, and continue to improve, each and every one of them. Men pay handsomely to taste them. High Caste fellows, Scribes, Builders and the like, risk reputation and, perhaps, their very lives to enter the Anbar for a blissful ahn between their thighs. They leave satisfied. Some empty their wallets and pouches just to lay an entire evening with one of my girls. Others, I know, have given more to them. Past heated lust and the occasional trinket that will inevitably be confiscated, they have given their misguided love and tenderness. Yes, I said love. What else explains the irrational jealousy some display? What better sheds light on the coddling and deference some of them receive? The whores, to their credit, lap it up but never forget what they are. Whether it is the rough use of subsequent customers, the sight of the kurt hanging over the hearth’s mantle or the rumbling in their belly that half-rations of gruel will cause, they are reminded.

Perhaps each of them will have an enamored suitor that loves them truly and will pay heavily to purchase them, body and soul, releasing them from my chain one day. If that should happen, I have no doubt that the lot of them will fondly remember the way I conditioned them, exploited them and held them uncompromisingly to an exacting standard. In doing that, something as innate to me as breathing, something I would do to the women that crossed my path anyway, I am slowly becoming wealthy.