Bob’s Memoir: 4,000 Years as a Free Demon
Part VI
A Woman’s Work
27
Unharnessed Joy
I WAS IN SAN FRANCISCO—Oh, I don’t know. Fifty… seventy-five… eighty years ago? Paying attention to dates and time is a pain. Whenever I get tempted to, I find a quiet place to hide and go to the infinity room for a while. When I come out of the room, I have no idea what century it even is. Anyway, this was last century.
As I was saying: San Francisco. I owned a little shop down on Haight Street and was just trying to maintain a low profile in this crazy country. North Beach was too crowded and expensive, so I moved down to Upper Haight. I started off selling liquor and cigarettes. Then I moved into souvenirs as tourists started coming around. Seemed everyone wanted clothes like what my girls wore when they came in to work in the shop with me. So, they started sewing things up in the infinity room and bringing them into the shop to sell. The weather was great most of the year, so the lightweight cottons we wore in the desert weren’t out of place. I put a couple of dressing rooms in the shop and before long, I was doing a bigger business selling clothing than liquor. And to prettier girls.
I especially enjoyed going up to North Beach on Friday or Saturday nights and hanging out with the poets and drummers. It was after one of those outings that I remembered a drum I had from way back when. I went into the infinity room to find it. It was there, in the back of the magic room under a scenery prop from our Greek theatre days and a bit of dyed silk from China. I pulled out the silk and suggested the girls might try something made out of that and they got all excited about it. Finally, I found Ninra’s drum. I wasn’t going to take the original drum out into the air of the natural world. I wasn’t sure how well it would hold up. But I made a copy of it with my duplication spell and sat to learn to play it. I wasn’t very good at maintaining a constant rhythm on the djun-djun, but as far as I could tell, no one who played in the café bars had a sense of rhythm anyway. I guess they were all playing jazz—a little off key and half a beat behind.
I took the replica up to the Beach with me one night and sat in while a couple of poets recited incredibly long poems. People liked the effect of me squeezing the drum and getting it to change pitch in the middle of a strike. They nodded their heads and said, “Play it, man. Say it.” I got the message. They wanted me to contribute some poetry while I played. Shit. Well, like I said, it seems like what you needed in this club was a fast tongue and about any old story. I took a deep breath.
I was floating alone on the deep blue sea
with no work or place I needed to be.
I heard a noise behind me and looked around.
There was a babe there swaying with the rock of the boat
and not a stitch of clothes—covered only by her long blonde hair,
and that was almost no cover at all.
None at all
No cover at all
Just her long blonde hair
And no cover at all.
A girl like this, you don’t molest;
just sit and wait to see how she’ll move
and if she’ll offer a smoke
or drink your wine.
And you hope that heaven
has just answered your prayers.
Your prayers, your prayers
Answered your prayers
And sent you a goddess
To warm up your nights.
Then she stepped into my arms
and I was lost.
And found and lost again.
I tell you this babe took me straight to heaven
And dropped me a million miles back on the sea.
It’s a million miles from heaven to sea
But it makes no difference how far you fall
If you’ve been to heaven
In the arms of a goddess.
But no one believes in the goddess these days.
No one will take the risk to assail heaven.
No one gives sweet offerings of honey cakes
Or chilled goat’s milk
to satisfy her appetite wherever it takes you
and let her have whatever you are.
Whatever you are, whatever you are.
Do you dare let that babe know
Whatever you are?
Don’t ask me—she already knows.
I ended with a springing note that fell on a silent crowd and was eaten up by the smoke. I think I really had them, right up to that last verse. I guess I’ll keep my day job.
My performance didn’t fall completely flat. I had a few new customers at Erosland Boutique. We’d adopted the name ‘Boutique’ after we started carrying clothes and jewelry. Supplying clothes, jewelry, alcohol, and tobacco had kept a whole country in the infinity room active and producing. People in the infinity room were always working to find new and creative projects. As long as they were working for Bob, their needs were all met.
“You laid some really deep shit on us last night, man,” a customer said. I glanced his direction and recognized one of the poets from the café. “Don’t let the cubes in the room get you down. They’re trying but just can’t cut it. Um…” He paused to light a cigarette. “I liked that drum you played. Got any in the shop here?”
That gave me pause. I hadn’t thought of selling the djun-djun. It could be another whole industry.
“I can get them. Don’t have it today, but later this week,” I said.
“Cool. Don’t rip me off with the price, okay?”
“Wouldn’t dream of it.”
I needed to go visit some music shops and find out what a fair price would be for a small drum. I’d done the same kind of research when it came to selling clothes. I had no idea what things were worth in the current currency.
He left and I started meeting more people from the beat café. Some just wanted to hang out and look at the hot mommas who worked in the store with me.
Before any of the girls were allowed in the store or to accompany me to a beat café, they had to learn the language. They only worked a maximum of one day a week, so they didn’t get a lot of practice in the natural world. I tested them on the language myself. As years progressed, it seemed that was less important as no one understood anyone anyway. At first, some of the girls sounded like a mashed-up recording.
“Hey, Big Daddy. Cast an eyeball at this neato merch. I bet you’ve got a hot momma waiting at home and this little dress would really razz her berries. She’ll have you out for a little back seat bingo at the passion palace before you know it. I’ll clue you, my boyfriend got me one and he had it made in the shade. And that’s good because he’s usually on a trip for biscuits when it comes to pleasing me. Not this time. I flipped for him. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, give me the bread for this and take it home to your baby. And shoot low out there. They’re riding Shetlands!”
I knew what all the words meant and I still couldn’t understand her! But they got better at it as time went by and ended up sounding like pretty normal hipsters. Business was good.
Which brings me to the subject I was going to talk about.
More and more people moved toward the Haight and some of the cafés got a makeover into really hip joints late at night. Daytime they still mostly just served coffee and donuts. The scene changed when it got late. I have to say, I might have helped things change. But the change didn’t stop where I wanted it to.
The culture was changing from the beat to the hip and the neighborhood had a lot more kids who really weren’t old enough for either smoke or liquor. I had to keep them out of parts of the store and I really hated that. Back in the day, we didn’t have all these age laws about who could smoke or drink. Alexander had conquered the Greeks by the time he was eighteen, and believe me, he drank whatever he wanted.
Oh, brother. America was already turning me into a crotchety old man.
So, I went with the flow and expanded the shop out the back door. We got a reputation as a head shop and it was bitchin’. A little ganja, which we grew away from where anyone could interfere, in the infinity room. We also kept an eye out for kids who were on their last legs. It was sad. They came here to turn on, tune in, and drop out. And for some of them, that turned out to be a little more than they could handle.
It was a lot like being a rescue mission—something my harem was very familiar with by this time. We’d pick up a kid who was strung out and had lost her bearings. I always checked on her to make sure she’d fit in with us, but then we took her into the infinity room. Sometimes a guy, too. I hated to take kids that left families and friends behind, but it was really the only choice for many of them. If I’d left them alone, they’d have been dead in days. And after we got them where life had meaning, they were very different people.
Oh, yes. The point of this story. Erosland Boutique became a gathering point for all kinds of demonstrations. I never turned anyone away, so people felt safe and comfortable, even when tensions were high. Like they were with civil rights, Viet Nam, and the feminist movement.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that ‘feminist’ was a description of what I’d been all my life. You might say, “Hold on, Bob. You’ve got a harem of who-knows-how-many women that you have sex with. They all worship you and you say you’re a feminist? How so?”
Well, I’ve always believed that women were self-determinate. I never forced myself on anyone and I always treated my women with love and respect. I didn’t expect any of them to do anything I wasn’t willing to do—though there were many things they were much better at than I was. All the way back when Josie became my possession, it was her choice and she’s never regretted it.
Anyway, when a group came to me and asked if they could hold a rally out in front of our store, I welcomed them and did what I could to make sure it was a safe place for them to have their demonstration.
“We are people! We are not the property of men!” shouted a speaker at the rally.
They’d asked for and we provided a trash barrel for them as they intended to mimic gatherings that had begun after the Miss America Pageant in New Jersey. I found it moderately amusing, but was sympathetic with the cause, nonetheless.
“Women must come together and fight for equality in the workplace, in the government, and in the home. We will shuck off the vestments of bondage and make our place in the world as equals, not as chattel.” With that she tossed a mop into the trash barrel. Another woman stepped up to toss a copy of Playboy magazine in the barrel. Another threw in a pan. And then one lone brave woman stood in front of the barrel, reached under her shirt, and in a move that had puzzled men for nearly a century, stripped off her bra and threw it in the garbage. There were a lot of cheers, but no one else moved to copy her.
I wholly approved. I couldn’t imagine why she should ever need to wear such an instrument of torture. She didn’t need the support. The bra only emphasized the minimal size of her breasts, as if they needed the extra layer of padding to be feminine. I thought she looked perfectly wonderful.
That was all there was to the infamous bra burning events. I’m sure one or more were actually burned, just as a few young men burned their draft cards, but they were symbolic. There was no horde of women stripping off their underwear and throwing it on a pyre. One check of the prices of those things and you’d understand why. As the rally broke up—peaceful and celebratory—I went out and collected the trash bin to take to the back for disposal in our dumpster.
“Excuse me,” a timid voice said. “Uh, would you mind if I get something out of there before you dump it?”
I turned to find the woman who had stripped off her bra. I reached down into the barrel and pulled it out to hand to her.
“This?” I asked.
“Yes. This is so embarrassing.”
“You don’t really need it, you know. I can’t think of one thing that article of clothing does for you except make you uncomfortable. You’re welcome to come in the store and use our changing room if you’re really going to put it back on.”
“Just like a man,” she huffed as she followed me into the store. “To a woman this is a sign of bondage. To you, it’s a symbol of sex. Take it off and we’re easy. Leave it on and we’re frigid. If we’re small in the chest, build it up. If we’re large, press it together and shove it up and out. A cruel thing invented by men that traps us whether we wear it or not.”
“That may be. But you’ll find the women here in the store… let me see if there are any who… no… none of the women working here today has ever worn a bra. Ever. In their lives,” I said.
“They’re all… naked under those flimsy clothes? Aren’t they afraid of being raped?”
I turned on her, nearly giving way to my fury at the suggestion.
“If anyone attempted that, I would kill him,” I growled. She was taken aback. She didn’t go into the dressing room, but came on into the store to look around, the bra hanging forgotten from her hand.
“Sounds rather caveman of you,” she said. “Women shouldn’t need to depend on men to protect them. We shouldn’t need to be protected and if we did, we should be able to do it ourselves.”
“Hmm. I agree. Watch this.” With those words, I slipped up behind Maya, who happened to be working that day. She was a slight girl, about fifteen when she’d entered the infinity room; but that was about three or more centuries ago. Still, I was easily twice her size. I grabbed her around the waist and slapped a hand across her mouth. She reacted at once, slamming a foot down on my instep and elbowing me in the balls. She grabbed my arm and sidestepped, flipping me over her shoulder in such a way that I landed flat on my back with her foot on its way to my nose. She pulled herself up short and threw herself backward and away from me.
“Bob! Why did you do that? I could have hurt you! Are you okay, baby?”
I caught my breath and nodded. I rolled to my side and raised an eyebrow at the braless protester.
“Is that what you had in mind?” I asked.
“That was unbelievable. Are you all right, little girl?”
“Don’t insult me, chica. I’m older than you,” Maya said. “You put him up to that? You think I want to hurt my man? You should pay for that.”
I think Maya was ready to lay her hands on the woman and I was trying to get in a position between them.
“I’m sorry! I didn’t know he was going to do that. I just said women should be able to protect themselves. You were amazing. Can you teach me how to do that?”
“Are you going to join us?” Maya asked. “Who are you?”
“I’m Liz and I don’t know who you are to join. Is it a self-defense club?”
Ali and Esmeralda were working as well and came up beside Maya and me. They put their arms around us.
“We’re much more than a club,” Esmeralda said. “We’re family. It might be a little too much for you to understand at first. You should get to know Bob a little.”
“Are you like, Mormon or something? Isn’t that a little illegal?” Liz asked.
“Mmm. More like a commune, I suppose you’d say. Regardless, we’re not recruiting. With that said, however, I’d like to get to know you better. You showed remarkable courage at the rally and even in coming into the store with me without your armor on.”
She looked down at the bra in her hand as if it were something foreign and she didn’t know where it came from. She quickly stuffed it in her handbag.
“Okay,” she said suddenly, as if she just accepted an invitation that I wasn’t sure I’d made. “There’s a great little restaurant just off Grant in Chinatown. It’s not expensive, but I can’t pay for all of you. I can pay for myself.”
“We don’t go out at night unless Bob has something special for us. We like to go home after work,” Ali said. “Give us a minute to get him cleaned up upstairs and you can have him for the night.”
“The night? I… I’m sure I won’t need him for the night… I mean, it’s not like a date with your husband or boyfriend or whatever he is,” Liz stammered.
“Don’t worry. You can date him if you want to. Most of us just sleep with him,” Esmeralda laughed. “Free love and all that, you know?”
I locked the door to the shop and went up the back stairs to the little apartment above. The girls all gave me a quick kiss, told me to have fun, and went through the gateway into the infinity room. I did a quick clothing change so I didn’t look quite like a shopkeeper and went down to join Liz. On the street, I waved down a cab and she gave the driver directions to the restaurant she’d chosen. We went upstairs to find a charming dim sum restaurant. The servers immediately began bringing trays heaped with plates that we helped ourselves to as we talked.
“So, I see that the movement is getting too focused on defining a new role for women instead of freeing them from a life determined by expected roles,” she said as we ate.
“Exactly. If you are simply saying a woman has to be something different than she is, you are forcing her into a life path the same as she was before. True choice means a woman should be able to choose to work or to be a stay-at-home wife and mother. Of course, it means that men should have that choice as well. Many are trapped by society’s expectation of what they have to be in order to be considered a man.”
I believe she was a little surprised that I understood so well what the women’s movement was about. It turned out that we got along well, even laughing at each other’s jokes. She came home with me and came to my room.
“I’m a fully liberated woman,” she declared. “I can choose to have sex with anyone I want to. It doesn’t mean I’ve accepted a life role or that I’m less of a good woman.” It sounded a bit like she was defending her choice to herself. Whatever she needed.
“I agree. As two consenting adults, we should be able to do as we please when it comes to a personal relationship,” I said.
And Liz definitely pleased me. I had subtly been following the unguarded points of her nipples through her shirt all evening. When the shirt came off, I found them even more delightful. She seemed to think my nipples were just as attractive and spent time tonguing them just as I spent time with hers. She soon found what a talented tongue I had and couldn’t believe I would go down on her and lick through her thick red bush.
“But men only want you to suck them off,” she said. “They never want to return the favor!”
“Stereotypes, sweetheart. Don’t box me in with all the other men you’ve known,” I said as I lapped at her button until she screamed in delight. She was delicious and I vowed that if she allowed it, I would feast between her legs often. When I finally parted the folds of her pussy with my cock, her eyes sprang open as if she didn’t know what was happening. She was very vocal.
“What are you putting in me? That can’t be your cock! It’s huge. Oh, my god! I’m being stretched. I’m so full! Oh! Make me come again! Take me. Fuck me, you monster! Possess me!”
Oh, those magic words. I was a little reluctant, but it was difficult to pass up that kind of invitation from a woman so open to possession. I would need to teach her a little about what it meant to be an independent woman. I’d been there. And she needed to know fully what it meant to be a possession.
I moved into her body, her mind, her heart, and her soul. I possessed her.
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