Essence of Jasmine
Part One, The Power of Sexy
Saturday morning. Surely everyone’s favourite time of the week. No work to get up for and the bulk of the weekend still ahead. The glow of Friday night sex still fresh in our bodies, breakfast in bed, and the prospect of perhaps more sex to come before getting up time. Right now I’m at the breakfast in bed stage; decaffeinated Earl Grey tea and an almond croissant, brought to me not ten minutes ago by my husband. The early morning sun is shining through the tree outside the window and painting our bedroom walls with shimmering patterns of orangey-yellow dapple. Perfect. It’s all perfect.
Well not quite perfect. There is a slight dilemma I am chewing over in my head. It stems from the weather forecast for today which says it’s going to be hot. Twenty six, maybe twenty eight degrees is on the cards and for the modern, elegant lady of fashion, hot weather is something that‘s rather hard to deal with. And so we should get up and get going while it’s still cool. Get ourselves down to the marina, get out on the boat, and while away the heat of the day out on the cool sea. But the problem with that plan is that I don’t want to get up. I haven’t had the post-breakfast sex part of our Saturday routine yet and I’m feeling particularly frisky this morning. But if I start quenching my sexual thirst then I’m not going to settle for some ‘before-we-dash-out-to-work-style’ quickie. I’ll be wanting a full Saturday morning workout and that means it’ll be twelve o’clock by the time we get out of the house, already cooking outside and I’ll be in for a sweaty toasting.
But the thought that there’s a price to be paid for staying in bed and having sex is making it all the more exciting. I’m getting hornier and I need to play. I look over at my husband. He’s looking at stuff on his phone and is showing no signs of turning into Captain Caveman. And that’s not really surprising because this little breakfast is not the first nourishment I’ve taken on board since I came to bed. Last night I was on top form and the satisfied glow still hasn’t faded from his face this morning. But I am the sexiest woman in the world and The Caveman is a simple and predictable creature. I know exactly how to call him up and use him for my pleasure.
I slip out of bed and into the bathroom. I need the loo first anyway. I unlace the corset I’ve been wearing all night, take off the silk slip underneath it and freshen myself up a little. Then it’s on with a fresh slip and corset, a racy one in red and black stripes, but I leave the laces slack. Sliding back into the bedroom in some high heeled slippers, I pause by the bed and turn my back to my husband.
“Can you lace me up Honey?” I ask in my best ‘fuck-me-right-now’ voice. I’m well practised in the art of lacing myself into a corset, but I know he can’t resist me when I ask him to do it. By the time my waist is safely confined, Captain Caveman will be rampant and I’ll be in for a jolly good seeing to. I love sex in a corset. It is an unexpected bonus that I discovered early on in my journey as a tight lacer. There is something about the tight, unyielding embrace that seems to amplify the sensations coming from further down. Come on Caveman, ravage me. Make me gasp for breath.
It’s a quarter to one by the time we get out of the house. The heat is oppressive and despite gallons of antiperspirant and a very low-cut dress, I’m thinking I might just melt. The air-con in the car provides temporary relief, but it’s airless and baking at the marina. But I am happy despite the heat. It was worth it. I might be sweaty, but I’m glowing with a post-orgasmic aura. Captain Caveman didn’t disappoint.
But it seems the price I have to pay for my uncontrollable hormones is rather higher than I expected. The boat engine is broken. Most people nowadays have fancy eco-electric boats, but Marina wiring is usually too flaky for all that electricity demand and many are the times we see nobody can go out because the power went off and their boats didn’t charge. We have a trusty old diesel and so aren’t ever cursed with flat battery syndrome, but today it seems we are cursed with broken cooling pump syndrome and so it’s got to be fixed before we can go out.
It’s a simple enough little job really; just unbolt the cover, pull the little rubber paddle wheel thingy out, shove in a new one and bung the cover back on. Easy. And so it’s Captain Caveman, he’s called James really, to the rescue. Except he’s not the world’s greatest mechanic. After an hour of waiting I really am starting to melt. I would jump over there and just do it myself, except that I’m rather fond of this dress. I made it myself and there’s nearly eleven yards of fabric in the skirt alone. It’s going to get ruined if I take it anywhere near an oily old boat engine, and so I just sit out in the cockpit under the sunshade and try not to be too irritable or smug.
“Where have you got to now?” I ask, trying to hide my impatience.
“Well, the cover’s off,” he replies uncertainly.
“Yeah. The cover was off twenty minutes ago. No progress since then?”
“Erm. The impellor seems to be stuck. I can’t pull it out.”
“Tried levering it out?”
“How do I do that?”
“Oh, get two screwdrivers. Dig the tips into either side of the rubber impellor and lever it out against the housing.”
“Won’t that damage the rubber?”
“Well maybe, but the whole point of the exercise is to replace the rubber bit with a new one. So what does it matter if you chew the old one up a bit? Dummy.”
“Oh, yes. I suppose. Well you know I’m not very good with mechanical stuff.”
“Ah, you sound like a man from the bygone age of equality. You can’t get away with that sort of talk nowadays. Men were going to build the world and women were going to bring beauty to it, remember? Wasn’t that the deal? Well, am I not being beautiful? I’m keeping my part of the bargain.”
“Well what do you know? The impellor’s out. Your screwdriver trick worked.”
“Of course it did. Now get the new one in and let’s get out to sea. Have you any idea how hot it is sitting here in this outfit?”
oOo
Jazz is getting tetchy. And I can’t say I blame her. She must be melting sitting out there in all those layers. But she’s right. She does look beautiful. And the fact that I’m just a mediocre mechanic is only part of the reason this little job is taking so long. She is the other reason. It’s hard to stare down at a broken diesel engine when there’s such a lovely sight sitting out there in the cockpit. I say sitting, perching would be a better word. She’s perched on the edge of the seat with her bustle spread out behind and around her like a waterfall of pale blue and white striped fabric. And above the waterfall rises a tiny waist that broadens into a beautiful chest which rises and falls behind the low neckline of the dress with every breath she takes. She asks if she’s not being beautiful, but she’s way beyond that. We’ve been married for nearly ten years now and she’s still the most beautiful sight I’ve ever seen.
It must be hard for Jazz to live in our brave New Society. A society that restricts and controls her so rigidly. When she was a carefree child she was brought up to expect that she could, and would have everything. Those were the days of feminism and equality, when women were told they were the equals of men, and that they had no limits, and should get out there and do everything men did. And it was obviously a philosophy that Jazz subscribed to, because the first time I set eyes on her was when she landed a helicopter right in front of me.
I was eighteen at the time and with my newly acquired driving licence, no trip out in my parents’ cars was too boring or mundane. Even picking up my little brother from his gliding club was a chore I volunteered for with hidden enthusiasm. And so as I sat on the bonnet of my mum’s car, parked at the club, waiting for my brother who was nowhere to be seen, this helicopter appeared and circled round, then dropped down as if it was going to land. As it approached I couldn’t see the pilot for the sun reflecting off the windscreen, but the helicopter had little windows under its chin to let the pilot see the ground below, and through them my eyes locked on to the bizarre sight of a white stiletto heeled shoe on the control pedal. As the helicopter came lower the sun cleared from its windscreen and my eyes lifted to take in the view of the pilot who was the owner of the remarkable shoe. And what a view it was. A leather jacket, sunglasses, masses of curly hair, huge headphones, and the most gorgeous face I’d ever seen. I was utterly transfixed by her and stared in awe as she landed not forty yards from me and shut down the helicopter’s engine. As she climbed out of the cockpit the world could have ended around me and I wouldn’t have noticed. She reduced me to an open mouthed zombie.
Now things are so very different. Life’s menu is supposed to contain only feminine pastimes for women now and flying a helicopter is unlikely to be included on it, and while that is perhaps okay for the young ones who have never known or expected anything else, for the older ones like Jazz it must be tough to have lost so much. To grow up in a world of freedom and equality, and then live in a world of restriction and restraint. But then she was one of those who rejected equality and feminism. When the battle of the sexes turned into the civil war of the females, she was one of those who instigated it. Perhaps that’s why she never complains about how things turned out. This is not exactly the world that her side wanted, but it is a world they helped create.
oOo
At last. It seems he’s done. The engine’s running and I can hear water splashing out of the exhaust. Well done Husband, you get a cookie. And I get the prospect of an afternoon out on the water, chilling in the sun and maybe catching some fish. I’m not really into fishing, but it’s always satisfying to be able to do a man thing and do it better than my husband. I wonder how I would have turned out if the law of the land had not intervened and forced me to become the woman I am now. When I was a girl I was always torn between wanting to be a girly girl with my friends or to go mucking about with engines and stuff with my dad. I honestly don’t know which version of that girl would have prevailed. Was there such a thing as a glamorous tomboy?
When I was a kid my dad was a helicopter pilot. He and his partner used to have a business that specialised in aerial filming, but that came to an end when those remote control drones appeared and everyone filmed with them instead. So they sold up and my dad became a freelance jobbing pilot. Usually this just meant acting as a glorified chauffeur to some millionaire or some obnoxious business types with a large expense account, but often he had delivery or maintenance flights which had no passengers or clients on board. And whenever it was possible he would take me with him on these solo flights. He would let me take the controls too, and by the time my feet could reach the rudder pedals I was a dab hand at flying. He taught me how to land and take off, about dangerous flight phases, how to avoid vortex ring state and how to autorotate. And I loved every minute of it. There was no doubt in my mind what I wanted to be when I grew up. We flew all sorts of helicopters together, some old, some new, some sleek, smooth and fast, others rattly boneshakers, but my absolute favourite was the Hughes 500 with its distinctive egg shaped body and low slung rotor. Ooh, even now I can remember the thrill.
There was one day, not long after I turned seventeen, I was planning a Saturday afternoon of shopping and chilling in a cool coffee place with my friends. We always tried to go out with a coordinated look on our shopping excursions and that day’s look was to be ‘cool, but slutty’. An awkward combination but I think I had pulled it off by doing ‘cool’ with a short leather biker jacket and black beret, and teamed them with ‘slutty’ in the form of a black and white striped mini-dress, too much make-up and white stilettoes. I was all set to go when my dad called up the stairs that he had just got a last minute flying job and did I want to come. Now that was a tough choice; shopping with my pals, or flying with my dad. Had the helicopter in question been something like a crappy old Robinson then shopping would no doubt have won, but apparently it was something I hadn’t flown before, something called an Agusta 109. A quick look at the web revealed a beautiful, sleek looking machine. Long and smooth and fast, it even had a retractable undercarriage. There was no way I was missing out on that, and so with no time to change, I swapped my beret for my trusty Aviator sunglasses and ran down to join my dad in his car. He was on the phone when I got in and he didn’t notice what I was wearing until we were halfway to the airport. He was not happy at his daughter’s slutty look. I tried to argue it was cool, but white stilettos were a tough sell for that.
When we got to the ex-RAF base that was pretending to be an airport, and parked in amongst a mass of steel maintenance hangers, I was told in no uncertain terms to wait discreetly in the car while my dad went into an office to do paperwork, pick up the keys and file his flightplan. And sitting outside the office was the most elegant looking machine I had ever seen. The Agusta was just how it had looked on the web; long, sleek and smooth. It had a low, close coupled, four-blade rotor and the bulges in the upper body spoke of twin engines. I was thinking it looked good for maybe 170 knots flat out. Oh, yes please.
Despite my instructions to stay in the car, I could not prevent myself getting out and walking over to the beautiful bird. I peered through the side window into the cockpit and looked longingly at the joysticks. I could feel myself connected to that rotor through them. I was in love.
Just then, a sandwich van appeared and parked up nearby. A bunch of mechanic types, five or six them, all dressed in immaculately clean overalls, soon assembled around it to get their lunch, but it was clearly not the van’s menu that held their attention. I pretended to be oblivious to their presence, but of course I was discreetly checking them out just as they were checking me out. Or rather they were ogling me. But that was just fine, I was still partly doing ‘slutty’ after all. I decided to up my ‘cool’ by not just drooling over the Agusta, but looking like I had some purpose. I wandered around the lovely machine doing my casual pre-flight checks like my dad had taught me. I checked the rotor blades for signs of bird impacts, and the tail rotor for loose linkages, and I pressed on the tyres with my stiletto heels. All the while I was of course really checking the effect I was having on the assembled audience, which seemed to be suitably spellbound.
I was running out of things to check when my dad emerged from the office and seeing what was going on, immediately unlocked the Agusta and ushered me inside. Fortunately he did not shout at me for disobeying his instructions to wait in the car, for that would have really blown my cool. While he went to the car to get some stuff, I continued my performance for the mechanics from behind the Plexiglas windscreen, casually reaching up to the overhead console and pretending to fiddle with something like I knew what I was doing. To be fair, I did sort-of know what I was doing. It didn’t take me long to find the battery switches, the fuel shut offs, the engine management panel and of course not just one, but two engine start buttons. By the time my dad joined me in the cockpit I reckoned I had just about got it all worked out.
If there was one thing I loved about my dad it was that he was a good sport. He knew exactly what flirtatious happenings were going on on that take-off apron, and he let me play it to the last. He deliberately sat with his arms folded and directed me through the start-up procedure. The mechanics watched me doing it all and I could see some jaws starting to drop. And when we were all set and the rotor was up to speed, my dad continued to keep his arms folded, although I bet he was coiled up like spring waiting to pounce on the controls if I got it wrong. But I didn’t get it wrong. I eased up the collective and I lifted my love off the ground, turned her into the wind and slid elegantly forward and upward into a clear blue sky, leaving a cauldron of male hormones behind me. And as the Agusta responded to my every touch I realised that I could have had the same level of control over the young men we left behind. There was nothing that any of them would not have done for me had I gone back and asked. I discovered that day the power that a woman can have over men. I discovered that day the Power of Sexy.
And it didn’t stop there. When we got to our destination, a little private airfield with a gliding club, and I set the Agusta down, my dad went to find the helicopter’s owner and left me to organise some transport home. And here I discovered that the most effective tool for this task was not as you might expect, a mobile phone to call a taxi, but instead turned out to be a pair of Aviator sunglasses, hooked precariously on the neck of my stripy mini-dress, their meagre weight managing to pull the already dangerously low cut dress a little lower. The Power of Sexy was indeed a force to be reckoned with. In my dad’s temporary absence I had no shortage of offers for a ride home including one from a cool-looking young guy who said he lived very near us and was going home anyway. It turned out he was a liar because he actually lived many miles away from us, and worse, he left his little brother behind, such was his rush to drive me home, but I can’t have objected to his dishonest and dubious behaviour too strongly because eleven years later I married him.
oOo
I wish I was more of a practical type. I left school and went to study law, and then went straight into practice. I’ve only ever been a lawyer. But I find there is a great pleasure in fixing things and I envy those who are good at it. Taking something that is broken and useless and transforming it back into a functioning thing has a satisfaction all of its own, made all the greater if you can then enjoy using it. The boat engine is purring away nicely and we’re touching twenty knots as we slip out between the headlands and into the open sea. I’ve got over my initial fear that my freshly repaired pump is going to blow up, and now I’m relaxing into a lovely day out on the water. Jazz appears out of the cabin as we surge gently through a low ocean swell, but it’s a very different Jazz to the one who disappeared below ten minutes ago. It always amazes me how quickly she can strip herself out of all those layers, even on a moving boat, and re-emerge from the cabin transformed like a butterfly in reverse. Gone is the elegant and stylish Jazz. The fancy dress, the hat, the gloves, the high heeled boots have all disappeared, replaced by one of my old tee shirts and what looks like the bottom half of an illegal bikini. She still looks fabulously sexy of course, but it’s a very different kind of sexy. She joins me by the outside helm and the wind picks up her now loose and un-tamed hair sending it billowing about in a big curly cloud. She slips on some sunglasses and shoots me a relaxed smile. And the reason she can slouch around in such a casual and unladylike manner is because we have a French flag on the back of the boat.
It is a curious feature of maritime law that a ship on the ocean does not sail in a lawless vacuum. It carries with it all the laws of its home nation. Everything from employment legislation to the definitions of different types of murder apply on the ship just as they do in the country where it is registered. This situation remains even if the ship is located in another country’s waters. It is in effect a floating island of home wherever it is steaming or docked. And it doesn’t just apply to big ships. Even a little twenty five foot sports fisher like the one we have retains the laws of its port of registry, which for us is La Rochelle. And in France they don’t have femininity, at least not in law. They still have equality and feminism and so as long as she’s on this boat, Jazz is free to be whatever she likes and the gender Nazis can’t touch her. It’s not the only reason we have a boat, but it’s part of the attraction.
About five miles offshore is a big sandbank called The Skerries. It covers up at high tide, but when the tide drops it reveals itself and turns into the most delightful beach in the middle of the sea. It also forms a perfect wave break and shelters a wonderful, crescent-shaped bay of calm water behind it. On a fine summer’s day like today there might be fifty or more boats anchored in the bay, and twice that number of people fishing or swimming or relaxing with a drink, or soaking up the sun on their foredecks. And hardly any of the flotilla of little ships here will be flying a British ensign. Mostly it’s the French Tricolour that flutters in the breeze, but there is a sprinkling of other European flags too. We all come out here so our wives and girlfriends can switch off, relax, put their femininity on hold for a few hours and just be human beings. Baggy tee shirts, shorts, flip-flops, even bikinis are all on show here and it’s all one hundred percent legal, as long as they don’t actually set foot on the sand.
Jazz is driving as we slip round the end of the sands and look into the calm and crowded bay beyond. The sands shift about in the ocean swells and are never in quite the same place, and so most people give them a wide berth, but Jazz always seems to know the shortest possible route. It’s like she knows the depth just by looking at the water. Maybe it’s the colour, or the waves, or maybe she’s got some kind of sixth sense for water, but she’s never run us aground yet.
“Max and Claire are here,” she says as I look over the side at the disturbingly shallow looking water.
“Yeah? I reply. “Wanna go and say Hi?”
“Sure. I’ll head on over to them.”
“Shouldn’t we be a bit further off Jazz? It’s very shallow here.”
“No, we’ll be fine. I’ll bet there’s a meter and a half all the way into the bay.”
How can she know that? She can’t possibly how deep it is up ahead, but she’s right as always. We slide over the shallows into the deeper water of the bay and Jazz brings us up alongside a smart, navy blue and white Nimbus.
“Ahoy there shipmates,” shouts Jazz at the sunbathing woman on the Nimbus.
“Jazz. Hi there,” drifts back an American accent from the woman. “And James, hi. You comin’ alongside Honey?”
“If you’ll have us. Can we have some fenders out James? And lines?”
“Oh, yes Ma’am,” I reply with feigned indignation.
“I see you’ve still got him well trained,” says the American woman.
“He’s learning. Where’s Max?”
“Under the floor in the cabin. Apparently something called the callorifier ain’t working. We can’t get no hot water.”
“Probably an air lock. I’ll have a look.”
Jazz brings our boat up alongside the Nimbus and we secure the mooring lines. She bounces up onto the bigger boat and I follow to find an ice-cold Gin and Tonic in my hand almost before I’m aboard. Oh the joys of a boat with a fridge.
oOo
It’s great to find Max and Claire here. They’re from the US and are over here because Max is working on the new nuclear power station that’s being built along the coast. Apparently it’s going to be some sort of fast spectrum reactor cooled by molten metal, and it’s going to eat up all our existing nuclear waste. It’s the latest thinking and the great hope for the end of fossil fuels. And it’s no coincidence that it’s being built here in Britain. It is a government sponsored symbol of a nation that is re-inventing itself and becoming a major player on the world stage, a status that it used to enjoy and has never really coped with losing. Max is from Philadelphia and Claire is from Birmingham, Alabama, and she speaks with a wonderful Southern drawl. They’re our neighbours at the marina and we’ve become good friends in the last couple of years. Claire especially. She is becoming like the sister I never had. We make each other laugh and we make each other cry. There is something special between us.
It is interesting that Claire has opted to leave a land where they still have normal life for women, and come to live here in this country where conditions for the female sex could be described as unique, challenging, strange, perverse, or appalling, depending on your point of view. She says she likes all the femininity stuff, all the dresses, hats and shoes. She says they make her feel special, like a proper lady. Of course it’s different for her because if she gets fed up with it all then she can just leave and go back to the US. If I ever get fed up with wearing a corset, the only place I can come is out here on the boat. This is my special place now. The place where I am free to be a different me for a few hours. To be grubby and mucky. To fish and gut what I catch, and then barbeque it right here on the boat without worrying about ruining my dress. And Claire comes out here because… actually I don’t know why she comes out here. She likes being a lady and wearing all the stuff. Perhaps she comes out here because she hopes I’ll be here. That’s a nice thought.
I go into the cabin of the Nimbus. It’s much bigger than our little fisher and it has a proper saloon, a galley, a head with a shower, and a big double berth in the forecabin. All the luxuries of home. And here I find Max. A bear of a man, six foot four and looking like a grizzly. He’s got the floor up and he’s looking confused.
“Hello Max,” I say cheerfully.
“Jazz, the very woman I need. What’ya know about callorifiers?”
“Claire says you’ve no hot water. You should have a boat like ours. We don’t have to worry about things like hot water, fridges, heaters, showers…”
“Yeah. Can you see Claire going for that? She likes her comforts.”
“Have you tried purging the pipes for airlocks?”
“Err, no. How do I do that?”
“Got a bit of rope and a screwdriver? I‘ll show you.”
“Coming right up little lady. You are a lady aren’t you? You sure know your stuff.”
“Absolutely a lady. But only on the outside.”
“I don’t think I wanna know what you’ve got on the inside. Here you go, rope and driver.”
I take the rope and loop it round the main coolant hose on the engine’s heat exchanger. Then I use the screwdriver to twist the rope and make it tight so it crushes the hose.
“Can you start the engine and rev it a bit?”
“Sure thing Jazz.”
He fires up the engine and gives it some throttle. With the cooling hose crushed, the pump tries to divert all the coolant through the callorifier. The force of the pump will drive any airlocks from the hoses. After a few seconds I can feel the hoses warm as the hot water circulates through them.
“Okay, done,” I shout to Max. “Should be okay now. Claire can have a shower on the way home.”
“You are amazing Jazz. Claire will love you.”
“Well I kinda hope she loves me anyway. And you too Max.”
“Well Of course I love you, but don’t tell no-one eh?”
I love getting my hands dirty with something mechanical. It reminds me of when I was a kid and days spent on my dad’s boat. It was very old and made of wood and it was broken more often than it wasn’t, but it was beautiful and I spent many a happy day tinkering with it and varnishing it. We were very close, me and my dad.
In my late teenage years it seemed like my life was placed frustratingly on hold. I knew what I wanted and that was to fly, and I didn’t need to study for qualifications for that, I just needed a licence. But I couldn’t even apply for one of those until I was twenty one. And that of course was highly unfair because I could already fly like a pro. Thwarted in my real desire, I decided to go off to university and study art and illustration, something that like flying, I both enjoyed and had some degree of talent for. By the time I’d finished with that I’d be old enough to get a licence and go flying for a living. In the long summer break between school and uni I got myself a temporary job as a runner for a TV production company. The name ‘runner’ was a traditional title for the role of general dogsbody and gopher, and there turned out to be very little actual running involved, which was just as well really, because as a budding practitioner of the Power of Sexy I always turned up at work wearing high heels. Along with big, bouncy hair and plenty of lipstick I found them an essential tool when it came to getting some special, off-the-menu sushi for a diva artiste, or getting a policeman to cone off a busy street so we could film in it. The Power of Sexy was all it needed and high heels were an essential part of that.
In my young naivety I assumed that all women used the Power of Sexy to some extent, to manipulate men, to make their lives easier and to get what they wanted, and so I was rather confused by a story that appeared in the news at this time. It concerned a young woman who claimed to be an actress, but couldn’t have been a very good one because she was actually working as an office temp. Her agency had sent her to a large accountancy firm, but on arrival at their office she was sent away because she was not dressed according to the office dress code. Specifically it was her flat shoes that were the problem and the code specified that women working there should wear heels of between two and four inches. And I found all this confusing because although the woman looked rather plain, she was hardly ugly and with a little effort she could surly have been able to wield a little Power of Sexy, and so why would she not want to wear heels? My heels not only made me feel good about myself, they also made my job easier and that was absolutely worth a little aching at the end of the day. Surely even the most flat footed of women could manage a desk job in two inch heels.
What I found equally confusing was the angry, venomous reaction of commentators in the media. The company was made out to be the villain of the piece. How dare they operate such a discriminatory dress code! How sexist they were! How dare they even consider women as in any way different to men! This did not make any sense to eighteen year old me. It didn’t seem discriminatory because men at this company also had to abide by a dress code of a suit and tie. And as for women being different to men, well that seemed fairly obvious. But what really got me was when people starting demanding that high heels be banned in the workplace. And these people claimed to be speaking on behalf of all women. Well they certainly weren’t speaking for me.
As the story rumbled on over the next weeks I became more and more enraged by it. People, mainly women claiming to be feminists, kept clammering on about discrimination, equality and the boring, grey, sexless world they wanted to create. A world where women had to be not only equal to men, they had to be the same. That sounded like a horrible world to me and I wanted none of it. And who needed all this equality anyway? To me, men were weak and simple creatures, easily controlled and manipulated by any woman with the Power of Sexy. Who needed to be equal to that when proper women like me were so obviously superior? It increasingly sounded to me like the feminists were just women who had not discovered, or just couldn’t be bothered to use the Power of Sexy, and so they needed to campaign for rules and laws to make up for their own inadequacies. But in doing so they kept presenting themselves as victims. Victims of discrimination, victims of abuse, victims of men. And how can you expect to be considered equal when you keep playing the part of a victim? Strong people are not victims. When confronted with adversity or unfairness strong people get out there and do better. They don’t go off whining on the telly about how unfair it all is and campaigning for a world which would rob us real women of the Power of Sexy. For the first time in my young life I felt I had an enemy, and that enemy was the feminists.
And when I went off to university I found I was not alone in my disgust for the feminists. I met many young lady students who also had the Power of Sexy, and we weren’t going to stand around and let it be taken from us. When the feminists got their way and high heels were indeed banned in the workplace, to be replaced by the horrible sounding “safe and appropriate footwear”, we were informed that this would include the university. We were to be banned from wearing our heels on campus. This was the final straw and it would not stand. On the day the new rule came into force, I and all of my friends, even those who didn’t normally wear heels, all went to class in stilettos. The feminists tutted at us and called us traitors. The boys laughed and congratulated us, and the university management smiled wryly and did nothing to stop us.
And now we had a clear divide. The high heeled shoe. To the feminists it was the spawn of Satan. An invention of a male dominated world to keep us women fragile and weak. To us it was a badge that said we were proper women. That we had no problems about equality because we knew we were already superior. We could do anything a man could do, and we could do it looking fabulous in our heels. We had the Power of Sexy. The high heeled shoe became the dividing line between them and us and there was no sitting the fence. If you tried to be non-committal and wear some silly little two inch things on your feet, then you just looked like you were too weak to take a side. You were either with us or against us. You were either a feminist or a feminine. A Nist or a Ninne. And unless you went around in a floor length maxi skirt all the time, everyone could see at a glance which side you were on.
Universities are often the birthplaces of revolution. Young people, fresh out of school have a passion for their beliefs which is untainted and undiluted by the realities of life in the real world. I and my fellow Ninnes were all born this side of the Millennium. We had never lived in the twentieth century and had never experienced real discrimination or abuse. We didn’t see the need for feminism. To us being equal meant that if some bloke groped your tit or pinched your arse then you could just turn round and thump him, or better, stamp on his foot with your fabulous heel. We didn’t need reporting procedures, industrial tribunals or sexism witch-hunts. And we certainly didn’t need to be told what we could, and could not wear on our feet. Outside of the cloistered halls of academia, in the real world our numbers were relatively few, but the effect we had was dramatic.
For years the goal of the feminist movement was to make sexism a dirty word. Akin to racism it became something of which the establishment was terrified. Even just the accusation of sexism was enough to send politicians, at least male ones, into a frenzy of self-flagellation. It became impossible to even question anything the feminists demanded because to do so would surely have been sexist. We Ninnes changed all that. We could, and did speak out against the Nists, and we could not be accused of sexism because we were women. We could think the unthinkable and say the unsayable. Women and men were different and we wanted to stay that way. Equal opportunities and equal pay were absolutely fine, but beyond that we wanted to be left to choose whether we became some sort of man-clones or remained as women. And we were confident that we could look after ourselves in the world without all the political correctness, the equality policies, the positive discrimination and the women-only shortlists. And of course we wanted to wear our high heels to work. We broke through the taboos, and though we may have been outnumbered in our own sex, we enabled a most powerful ally. Batting for our side we increasingly had the men. They wanted women to be sexy, and we wanted women to be sexy. We soon formed an unstoppable alliance. In any war, you can’t hope to win if half of your own side turns against you, and the battle of the sexes was to be no different. The Nists were doomed.
oOo
I think we’ve been on our friends’ boat for about five minutes and already Jazz has fixed something. She is a real force of nature, with a genius for mechanical things that seems at odds with her passion for being an ultra-feminine woman. She has so much energy and so much talent, and yet she lives now in a society that restricts and constrains her in a rigid straitjacket of rules. To me she seems like a lioness in a circus. She jumps to the tune of the ringmaster, partly because she loves to perform to the crowd, and partly because he has a whip, but if she were to try, she could smash past that whip and devour the man with a single bite. Inside those dresses and corsets and behind the make-up lies a siren who could enslave us all, if she put her mind to it.
And that just makes me love her more. But it’s a complicated and rather darker form of love, and one I am not at all comfortable in feeling. To see this wonderful woman imprisoned inside a beautiful, restrictive shell that is only partially of her own making, fills me with a strange desire. A desire to finish the job. A desire to restrict her completely. To take away her last vestiges of choice and control, and to leave no outlet for that furnace of energy that burns inside her. And then she’d either explode like a volcano, destroying me and all others in her path, or she’d find complete peace and serenity as the conflicts within her die away. There is no way to know which, and therein lies the thrill of the dream. And a dream it must remain.
Max and I are on the aft deck of his boat. We have a line each in the water behind us, but nothing’s biting. Even the ubiquitous mackerel seem to be somewhere else. But that doesn’t matter because there’s something else to keep us entertained. From our vantage point we can see into the cabin through the open patio-style doors and onward to the foredeck through boat’s windscreen. And there a scene is playing out that would that hold the attention of any red-blooded male. Jazz has ditched my old tee shirt and is lying face down on a towel while Claire straddles her bottom, rubbing sun cream into her back. Actually the sun cream went in quite some time ago and the rubbing is now continuing for other reasons. It feels rather voyeuristic to watch them like this because I’m pretty sure they can’t see us through the sloping, tinted glass of the windscreen. Claire is a fine looking woman, probably in her early forties, a little older than Jazz. She has thick, black hair which is long at the front but fairly short at the back in a strange but alluring bob style, and it frames an attractive face with a small birthmark on her left cheek, a minor defect that actually seems to enhance her beauty. Cradled in a moderately substantial bikini are a pair of nicely rounded breasts that heave provocatively above a narrow waist. A waist that is managing to retain the shape of the corset inside which it is normally confined. Jazz lies beneath her, her own breasts squashed against the towel she is lying on. Her eyes are closed but her expression speaks of the intense pleasure created by her friend’s massaging attentions.
“Can I ask you something personal?” I say to Max, dragging my eyes unwillingly from the foredeck.
“Sure you can,” replies the ginger-haired and bearded American.
“How do you feel about your wife behaving like that? You okay with it?”
“Okay with it? Why shouldn’t I be?”
At that moment Claire raises herself up a little and Jazz rolls over onto her back. Her bare breasts become the new recipients of Claire’s attentions.
“My God, would you look at that,” says Max as he draws air through his teeth.
“You don’t feel uncomfortable, or jealous of her effectively making love to another woman?”
“Now it seems to me that the crux of your question hangs on the word ‘another’. See, if she went off with another man to get what she should be getting from me, then the word ‘another’ would refer to me and hell yes, I’d be jealous. I’d rip the varmint man’s head off and lock Claire in the basement for a year. But here, the word ‘another’ refers to her. If she goes to another woman then it’s to get something that I can’t give her, and so why do I need to feel jealous at that?”
“I’m glad to hear you say that. I was wondering if I needed to be worried for Jazz.”
“Heh heh. Not in the least. She’s welcome to help herself to what Claire has to offer, as long as they don’t go totally lezzie and run away together. How about you James? How do you feel about it?”
“I feel like it’s a beautiful thing to see, and it would be a shame to let any petty little feelings of jealousy spoil it. And I also think that I wouldn’t be able to stop it if I wanted to. I think Jazz is like the sea. We come out here in our little boats to play and enjoy ourselves, but the sea has the final say. We cannot control it and it will bite us if we don’t respect it.”
“It is fun though, don’t you think? To try to control them. And deep down, do they not like to be controlled? Claire could have stayed home when I came to work over here. I like to think that she came because she can’t bear to be apart from me, but there’s more to her than that. She likes what you Brits have got going on here. Some folks tried to get something similar going back home, but it was killed off pretty quick. I suppose it takes a real shock to change a country so completely. Something like what happened to your Prime Minister Peterson.”
Prime Minister Peterson. That was a while ago now. I suppose it all started in the post-Brexit years, a time when the country was deeply divided. Those who hadn’t wanted to leave the EU were poised, ready to blame everything and anything that was less than perfect on those who had brought about our departure. Many politicians had set out their stall on the premise of being able to say ‘I told you so’. But they never really got much of an opportunity. Shortly after we left, the EU’s inherent troubles resurfaced. The deep rooted problems caused by the lop-sided wealth of the Euro, the sovereign debts, and the uncontrolled migration of people had never been solved, only pushed from view and patched up with sticky tape. When the pressures eventually broke that sticky tape apart, another crisis ensued, and as had been demonstrated previously, when things turned nasty in the EU, cooperation and unity went out of the window and it was every nation for itself. This time the countries of the North were less inclined to send their money to the South, and the South were less inclined to accept intrusive control from the North. In the turmoil, economic confidence collapsed and recession set in. And it was obvious we were lucky to be out of it all. Our divided country healed its wounds and moved forward. Released from the shackles of EU bureaucracy and free to trade with the rest of the world, the economy recovered, and then boomed, and the good times eventually rolled in. And although that was great for a population weary of years of austerity, it seemed to drive the final nail into the coffin of the terminally broken British political system.
For a hundred years we had indulged in seesaw politics, lurching from left to right and back again. The Left would try to fix society, but would break the economy in the process. Then The Right would take over and fix the economy, but in doing so set up social tensions that would bring The Left back to power. And so it went on for most of the twentieth century, seesawing back and forth. But as the twenty first got going, the system began to break down. Socialism had died and The Left adopted the same policies as The Right. The Right didn’t know how to react. The political parties became clones of each other and debate descended into personal insult. The public lost interest and didn’t want to vote for any of them. Focus groups and career politicians replaced the old guard of passionate political leaders. And then there was Europe. The new arguments, internationalism, isolationism, Europeanism, environmentalism, all cut across the old party divides and in the chaos the parties descended into civil war. And so the stage was set for change, and when it came, it came with a storm, and it looked like nothing anyone had seen before.
A new political movement calling itself The New Society swept to power. Its leader was one Madeline Peterson, a glamorous woman in her fifties. Despite her age she had what Jazz would call ‘The Power of Sexy’ and she used it to captivate her audiences and deliver powerful, rousing speeches. She was a self-confessed and very vocal Ninne and she courted controversy straight away by attending Parliament wearing high heeled shoes. When it was pointed out that Parliament was a place of work and therefore high heels could not be worn there, she just smiled and said “High heels? Pfft, these aren’t high. You should see what I wear for my husband”.
Mrs Peterson promised to release women from the drabness of feminism. She started small, but to universal praise, removing VAT from women’s sanitary products, a long campaigned for change. But then she went further, doing likewise for cosmetics and women’s clothes. She exempted the fashion industry from corporation tax, and of course she invited high heels back into the workplace. To her fellow Ninnes it was music to their ears and they loved her for it. Men seemed to love her too, in fact it was only the feminists that weren’t happy. Marginalised and on the defensive, they adopted the tactics of the suffragettes from a century earlier and became soft-core terrorists. A favourite tactic was to park a large lorry across a motorway and then cut the airlines so that the brakes would lock on and prevent the lorry’s removal. It caused horrendous traffic jams and while it was an effective form of protest, it did little to endear the cause to the commuters who couldn’t get to work in the morning.
Traffic protests aside, Mrs Peterson was on a roll. As the economy continued to thrive, people remembered there was more to life than just working to pay the mortgage. We rediscovered the joys of dressing up and going out for no other reason than to be seen and to feel good about ourselves. Women in particular were inspired by their Prime Minister who always dressed like a woman from the 1950s. She wore hats and gloves, snugly fitting suits and dresses, seamed stockings, and of course always high heels. The Prime Minister was a fashion icon. Men too joined in the fun. Three piece suits, colourful waistcoats and even the Fedora hat were all the rage. We all felt good. We all felt that ‘The New Society’ was here to stay. Women were beautiful again, men were handsome again. Drabness was gone and colourful fashion was everywhere.
And then the unthinkable happened, and it happened on a day of celebration and charity. The ‘do-silly-fun-things-for-charity-day’ was a well-established feature of British life. Children in need, Comic Relief, Sport Relief all followed the theme, and in the new age of fashion and couture we were to have Dress Relief. People would dress up as famous historical or literary figures for the day and be sponsored by their friends and colleagues, and then there would be a big telethon on the BBC in the evening where celebrities would join in to raise money for good causes. And it was championed by none other than the Prime Minister herself. Her husband was Sherlock Holmes, complete with deerstalker and pipe, and she was Irene Adler, resplendent in a scarlet Victorian dress with a tightly buttoned bodice and huge bustled skirt. The day coincided with the great fashion house Prada opening its new headquarters in London, which was rapidly becoming the couture capital of the world. Mrs Peterson went along to say welcome and give one of her rousing oratories. She stood behind a small lectern, looking out at the assembled crowd through the delicate net veil of an elaborate hat, and spoke of how equality between the sexes had been born of good intentions, but had failed to produce happiness for women. Like socialism, it was dead and it was time to move on. The way forward was not to try to turn women into pseudo-men, but to revalue those qualities that women offered to society. Women were not the same as men, they brought different things to the party of life. Those things were just as important and they complimented those brought by men and made human society more than just the sum of its two sexes. Men and women were not equal, but they did have equal importance. As she spoke, a lone protester ran onto the stage and shouted “the Ninnes are all traitors”. Then she shot the Prime Minister three times with a handgun. The elaborate hat was blown clean off the Prime Minister’s head as she collapsed and it fell onto the corner of the lectern where it hooked itself and hung like an instant memorial. Madeline Peterson was dead.
“We should celebrate and nurture our differences, for we demean ourselves when we supress them." These were her last words and they became her epitaph.
The assassin was of course a lone nutter, but she singlehandedly destroyed any vestiges of feminism that remained. The whole country was in shock and mourning, and someone had to be to blame. The Nists became public enemies and were vilified and ostracised. And how could you tell who was a Nist? Simple, you just looked at their shoes. After the assassination, a woman publically wearing flat shoes, the badge of a feminist, risked scorn and abuse. High heels became the only way to be safe. The persecution of the Nists was perhaps the first sign that the New Society had a hidden dark side. But if there is one thing a politician can do to silence their critics and make their policies unquestionable it is to die while in office, or better still, to get themselves assassinated. After Madeline Peterson’s death everything she had preached became like the word of God. Femininity was the new religion and it was to be worshiped with reverence.