Essence of Jasmine

Part Three, Taking the Third

 

Hoping to appear sultry and provocative, I glide across the living room towards the sofa and the coffee table on which James has set up the dinner. You can’t wiggle your hips much in a corset, but you don’t have to when your figure looks like this. I’m starving and can’t wait to get stuck in to my sweet and sour pork, Cantonese style. I have a healthy appetite despite the lack of space in my abdomen. The corset pushes my digestive bits up against my diaphragm and it’s my lung capacity that suffers rather than that of my stomach. With my diaphragm constantly squashed upwards I can only breathe with the muscles of my upper chest and it’s this that makes my breasts appear to heave with every breath I take, which if I’m wearing a low-cut dress, seems to have a strange sort of mesmerising effect on any men who might happen to be looking in my direction. James takes his dinner on his lap and slouches back into the sofa. I sit upright, perched on the edge of my seat where I can reach the coffee table and my food. It might seem to others that I am never relaxed, constantly sitting or standing to attention, but actually I’m relaxed all the time. I don’t have to hold myself upright to avoid slouching because the corset does it for me. Contrary to what non-corset wearers think, it’s not an uncomfortable thing to wear once you get used to its unyielding embrace. Tonight that embrace is feeling a little more unyielding than usual. It’s my penance for my afternoon of being an undisciplined slob, but I’ll be back to normal by morning.

 

After we’ve eaten I transfer myself to my chaise-long. I don’t need the support of chair or sofa backs, indeed it’s not comfy to try to use them, but the chaise lets me feel casual and sexy. I can half sit and half lie on it and make myself look like a Victorian whore. God but we’ve had some great sex on this chaise, and perhaps we’ll have some more tonight if Captain Caveman has any lead left in his pencil.

 

I have always being a very sexual being. I love sex and have had rather a lot of it, and I hope to have a lot more before I’m finished with this life. I rather like the idea that my leaving this world, at the age of about ninety, will be due to my heart succumbing to the strain of the orgasm I am having. When I was young I considered it my right to offer my body to anyone I felt worthy of receiving it and treating it well, or treating it badly depending on my mood. My somewhat polygamistic nature meant I had lots of friends who happened to be boys, but never proper boyfriends. Did that make me a slut? Some people might have said so, but those people weren’t having as much fun as I was. When I met James, some seven years after that day I had apparently bewitched him with my body and a helicopter, we became good friends and he was delighted when I slept with him, but I think it tortured him that I still slept with others and refused to make myself his, and his alone. I have been faithful to him since our marriage, but I think my nature is a source of some unease for him.

 

Since sex for the single person is often preceded by a night out, it was not unusual for it to happen to me after, or even at a Maddy Bash. You might think that the boys would have been put off by the sight of the ladies all covered up in layers of frumpy Victorian morality, but you’d be wrong. Very wrong. Our legs might have been covered but there were plenty of glimpses high stiletto heels below, and plenty of flesh and sexual innuendo on display higher up. Elaborate hairdos, tightly corseted waists and low cut dresses that left heaving bosoms on display. I had one cut so low off the shoulder that its puffy little sleeves pinned my arms by my sides and seemed to guarantee a sexual encounter would follow after the dancefloor. And when the moment came and I would send someone under my skirt, the act of finding their way through the layers of petticoats, stockings, slips and panties seem to inflame their passions and intensify their urges. I used to fantasise about wearing a chastity belt and sending some hapless wretch to fight his way through my skirts on a pussy hunt, only to find his way barred by cold, hard steel at the last moment. I had some wickedly evil fantasies back then.

 

And the act itself, of sex while dressed in all that finery was something special. To transform yourself in an instant, from elegant lady to wanton whore, to press against the confines of your corset to try to breathe, to accommodate him inside you when there was just no space, to try to scream when you had no air. The sexual equivalent of cranking up the volume and adding a sub-woofer. And afterwards you would try to restore some composure, smooth your dress down hoping it was not ruined, and try not to look too dishevelled. It was the hair that was the most difficult. Makeup could quickly be patched up, but once a hairdo was destroyed you were looking like a slut for the rest of the night.

 

Sex was something that seemed to appear on Jane’s mind too. After our knock-em-dead meeting with the publishers we went out to celebrate and she ended up with a boyfriend. That seemed to temper her rigidly supressed sexuality and the bud showed signs that it might became a flower after all. We worked away together on her book and I had to try hard to keep it from becoming ‘our’ book. I was just filling in until I could go flying, or at least that’s what I told myself.

 

The money from the publishers gave me something of a dilemma because it committed me to working with Jane to finish her first book and we reckoned that would take about a year, but it also meant I could afford to buy the flying time I needed for my pilot’s licence. But there was no point in having a licence if I had to work as an artist. I decided to do my flying in small chunks. If I averaged four hours a month, that would spread it over a year and hopefully get me my licence just as my commitment to Jane came to an end. So I found myself a flying school and signed on. Their helicopters were awful. R22s, powered by piston engines that made them feel like lead, but they were cheap, at least less horrendously expensive than anything with a turbine. And there was also the bonus that my instructor was called Phillip and he was hunky and cute. He soon discovered that there wasn’t much he could teach me about flying or about the theory of how helicopters fly. Indeed it sometimes seemed like I knew more than him. I mean, gyroscopic precession the cause of phase lag? Did anyone seriously believe that old myth? Idiot. We did however find that my knowledge of things like radio procedure, flightplan reporting and airport etiquette, was sadly lacking. Phillip instructed me on these, and sometimes after an afternoon in the air we would go and find somewhere where I could instruct him about how the flightplans and etiquette formalities of a real woman could take a man all the way to maximum altitude and back, as long as he had the stamina to keep up.

 

Things worked out pretty much as I planned. At the end to the year Jane had her first book and I had my licence. Of course a licence didn’t mean a job and as my dad had always warned me, they seemed to be somewhat scarce. So I agreed to stay with Jane and work on book number two, but on the understanding that I would be off if a pilot’s job came up. It was four months before one did and there was a reason why I was offered it in preference to more experienced pilots. It was because of my other unique qualifications, two of them to be precise; my breasts.

 

The job was to be the personal pilot to one Hugo van Mortinson, an aging, wrinkly playboy who had a mansion in Hertfordshire that looked like a Disney version of Camelot. Had it been in somewhere like Las Vegas it might have looked cool, but in the green English countryside it just looked naff. It did however have a hanger that housed an Aérospatiale Twin Squirrel, which was good, and I thought that if I could stand the gaudy, cleavage-inducing uniform for a while and get my flying hours up a bit, then I would be able to move on to something more dignified. But it was awful. He was awful, not that I saw much of him, his friends were awful, the house was awful, everything was awful. The only thing that made it tolerable was the friendship I developed with a nice young lady chauffeur called Samantha who also had to wear the same Strippergram-style uniform as me. The helicopter turned out to be little more than a status symbol and it was hardly used. In the month I managed to stick it out I flew for only three hours. One trip to take a bunch of drunken knobheads to a party and back. I walked away in disgust to see if Jane would have me back.

 

Another year, another book, and a host of packaging artwork jobs went by before I got my next chance to fly. A job with a big electricity company, flying engineers about while they inspected pylons and wires. That sounded much more like my sort of thing. Mucking about at treetop level, getting into awkward spaces, ferrying stuff up remote mountains, and no obnoxious millionaires. A dream come true. And they seemed happy to take the unofficial hours with my dad that were on my CV into account too. Emails went back and forth and I was off to an interview.

 

But as soon as I walked into their office I could tell something was wrong. Something about me unsettled them and while they obviously wanted to give me the job, there seemed to be some reason they couldn’t. In our written communications I had given my name as Jazz because I never used my proper name, Jasmine, and it hadn’t occurred to them that I might be a woman. And that was a problem because their company had taken on one of the new ‘gender diversity and femininity promotion’ policies with The Revenue. Employing me to do a male orientated, overalls and clumpy boots pilot job was just not going to be possible, even though they wanted to. I was distraught when they told me. I begged them and told them I could fly femininely. That I could fly in a skirt and heels, even in a bloody bustledress if they would let me, but it was no use. Rules were rules.

 

I was completely destroyed by it all. Not only had I lost the chance of my dream job, but everything I had believed in was gone too. Being a Ninne, being a disciple of Maddy, being a modern, confident woman, it was all thrown back in my face just like the feminists had said. They had been right all along and I had been too young, too stupid, and too full of my own sexuality to see it. I had known that men hold the power in this world, but I had thought that a woman who had a power over men would ultimately be the one in charge. How wrong I had been.

 

It was Jane who picked me up and lifted me out of my pit of despair. She took me back and never once said ‘I told you so’. She got me drawing again and she turned our loose arrangement into a proper company with me as an equal partner. I can never repay my debt to her for what she did. I might never have survived those dark days without her. In the months that followed, the sexy and stylish slut called Jazz ceased to exist. I became dull and boring Jasmine Errington, a plain and quiet girl whose dreams had been shattered and who did nothing much except work. I gave up on my appearance, on dressing up, on Maddy Bashes, on my waistline, and even on sex. I skulked around in scruffy old clothes looking worse than Jane had ever done. Only my shoes continued to hint at the sexy woman I had once been, but that was only because I had worn heels so much that my feet hurt if I wore flats. And I watched all that was going on with a new scepticism and scorn. I watched women going to work in their smart new uniforms and where once I would have seen style, elegance and joyous femininity, I now saw only oppression and subjugation.

 

There were two things that brought me out of my miserable, catatonic state. One was Jane, who constantly stood by me and encouraged me to be myself again, and the second was just the need to have sex. After months of hiding myself away my fanny was burning for attention, and that meant I had to fix myself up and get out there. Jane convinced me to take her to a Maddy Bash. I knew it wasn’t really her thing and that she was just trying to lift me up, but I agreed to do it. I dressed us both up, squeezed us both into corsets and we went out, and it was fun. I rediscovered the sensual joy of wearing a corset and the entertaining challenge of navigating the world in a bustledress. I met lots of old friends and as we chatted and danced, the old me resurfaced from the depths I had been hiding in. And I had sex too, which was totally unexpected and rather worrying because another thing I had given up on in my months of self-pity was the pill.

 

I returned from that Maddy Bash with a renewed vigour. Deep down I had never stopped believing in Maddy’s dream and somehow I felt it could still be achieved and be a beautiful future for everyone, if only people like me would fight for it and fight to stop it being usurped and corrupted. Andorra Peterson was not her mother. She looked like Maddy and she sounded like Maddy, but the words were different. Where her mother would have used inspiration and persuasion, Andorra was using coercion and compulsion, and the dream was being poisoned.

 

But while the self-pitying Jasmine was still busy metamorphosing back into Jazz, a lady named Shania Betridge was already making a stand against Andorra Peterson and her increasingly authoritarian behaviour. Miss Betridge was completely unknown to the public until she found a loophole in the law and used it to challenge the government. She worked for an insurance firm which like most large and medium sized companies had adopted ‘gender diversity’ policies in order to cash in on the tax benefits. With her company’s new policies, Miss Betridge now had to wear a uniform to work while her male colleagues did not, something she took great exception to. And so she challenged the rule by declaring herself transgender and that she was now to be referred to, and treated as a man. The law, as it stood recognised the rights of transgender people and the company had no choice but to comply with her demand, releasing her from her uniform requirement. And so she was photographed for the nation’s press, standing in front of her employer’s building wearing a somewhat ill-fitting man’s suit, complete with tie and fedora hat, but still looking every inch a woman with long blonde hair, a shapely chest and even high heeled shoes peeking out from under her trousers. Suddenly everything was in uproar. If she could do this then so could any other woman who didn’t like what was going on, and where would that have left Andorra Peterson and her great game?

 

The government had to act swiftly, and it did. The law was hastily amended so that transgender people actually had to be physically transformed before they could be legally recognised as being the other sex. That stabilised the situation, since not many women were prepared to have their vaginas turned inside out just to make a point. Miss Betridge was defeated, but she had achieved her goal which was to make the government look incompetent and despotic and undermine its whole New Society agenda. Andorra Peterson appeared on the telly, hardly able to hide her incandescent rage. She berated Miss Betridge for what she called her ‘stupid stunt’ and declared that the ‘feminist scourge’ had to be defeated. Not just pushed underground, but wiped out once and for all. We saw in that speech how her mask slipped and how she was not her mother’s true successor. She had become a despot.

 

But as with everything else Andorra Peterson did, her public fit of rage was a carefully calculated charade. It had been her plan all along to provoke a final showdown with what remained of feminism to clear the way for her revenge on womankind, and Shania Betridge’s protest gave her just the excuse to she needed to lay down her ultimate provocation. She announced that all employed women would have to wear a uniform to work, regardless of their employers’ ‘gender diversity’ policy. And just in case that wasn’t enough to bring the masses onto the streets in protest, she went on to announce that it was to become a criminal offence for any woman, at any time and while located in any public place, to wear any item of clothing not specifically licenced for, or meeting the guidelines laid out for women’s use. In other words, women were banned from wearing men’s clothes in public. Of course that would have had little practical effect, being that it was not something that happened all that much anyway, but its symbolic significance was huge. The state was telling women how they had to dress and backing up this demand with heavy punishments for non-compliance. And this outrageous and seemingly unenforceable law was made possible by the fact that there was already a legal definition of what was and what was not clothing for women because of the subsidy system that had been brought in several years earlier to ‘help’ women become more glamorous and feminine.

 

Andorra Peterson wanted a showdown, and I was going to oblige her. I and just about every woman in the country were going to oblige her. This was not Maddy’s dream and everyone could see that. This was just plain old persecution and it would not stand. The bitch was going down for this. The internet and its chatrooms buzzed and the day was set. Two days after the new law took effect we were going to march. We were going to defy the law and borrow our husband’s and our boyfriend’s suits and we were going to march in such numbers that the law would be impotent to stop us. Tens, hundreds, even perhaps thousands they could arrest, but we were going to march in millions. We were going to bring the government down.

 

And so we marched. Over three million in London, a million in Glasgow and hundreds of thousands in Belfast. We marched through the streets in warm September sunshine, all dressed in our illegal clothing, and daring the police to arrest us. The police arrested no-one. Not even the organisers or the speech makers. It was a perfect, dignified, non-violent and rather feminine protest. Andorra Peterson was nowhere to be seen. The government’s credibility looked in doubt, and the internet buzzed with talk of a repeat performance.

 

It was ten days after the march that a bland, official looking envelope arrived in my mailbox. Its contents were to plunge my life into complete turmoil. Inside the envelope was a letter from the Crown Prosecution Service. It said that I was being charged with the offence of being improperly attired in a public location and that if convicted I faced an unlimited fine and/or imprisonment for up to eight years. Included with the letter was a catalogue of CCTV images, each with my face marked out by a computer overlaid box. There I was, clearly highlighted in dozens of photographs, wearing a man’s suit complete with tie. They had me for sure, but I was just one of millions. Surely they weren’t charging us all. It didn’t take me long on the internet to work out that they were indeed not charging us all. In fact it seemed like nobody else was being charged like this. Now I started to panic. Why was I being singled out for this? Why me and no-one else?

 

It turned out that there were others who had also received the letters, each of us highlighted in our own set of photos, but we were few and far between. And this was terrifying because it separated us from the mass. Together in the crowd we had seemed untouchable, but singled out like this we were defenceless. We all had to reply to the letters which gave us the options of pleading ‘guilty’ or ‘not guilty’. A ‘guilty’ plea would skip the need for a trial and we would receive notification of our sentence in due course, while a ‘not guilty’ plea would trigger a trial, but since the evidence seemed fairly irrefutable, a guilty verdict seemed inevitable with presumably a harsher sentence to follow. I was distraught. Eight years or an unlimited fine. This was life destroying stuff.

 

The internet was full of encouragement and bravado. ‘Don’t worry’ people would say. ‘Make a stand. We’ll protest for you. Get you released. The government will fall. You’ll be heroes.’ But that was easy for them to say; they weren’t the ones who would be going to prison. ‘Guilty’ or ‘not guilty’, I was doomed either way.

 

But there was a third option on the form. A confusing and somewhat bizarre option. I could request that the charges be set aside. That meant they were not dropped, but the prosecution would be placed on indefinite hold. I would not go to prison nor would I lose my entire life’s wealth in a massive fine. But this seemingly merciful outcome came at a price. In order to receive it I had to agree to be an ‘active instrument in the promotion of femininity and feminine behaviour’. Specifically I would have to present myself to the public at all times as a paragon of femininity by dressing myself according to the rules and guidelines set out in appendix 4 of the letter.

 

And laid out for me in appendix 4 was the legal jargon of what that meant. The exact definition of what I would have to wear. A didactic, technical, bureaucratic and very male-sounding specification for that most beautiful of feminine creations, a Maddy-style bustledress.

 

I read through that description over and over. I could not believe how they had taken something so abstract and artistic and boiled it down to a set of numbers but there it was. And as I read it my choice became clear; imprisonment within the walls of a prison, or imprisonment within the gilded cage of a corset and bustledress. How had life dealt me such a hand? I had just five days to work out how to play it.

 

Jane read the letter and she could not believe it. I went to a solicitor who read the letter and he could not believe it. But it was there and it was real. And I had to decide.

 

It soon became obvious why I and some of the others with letters had been targeted. We were known Ninnes, regular attendees at Maddy Bashes, known lovers of Maddy-fashion. We were the ones most likely to take that third option. And the rest? We assumed they were known feminists. The ones most likely to choose prison as a form of protest. The ones who would be made an example of to terrify the rest. Almost five million women had marched. How many were going to receive letters of doom?

 

In the end, I ‘Took the Third’ as it became known. Perhaps I was a coward to do that, but I couldn’t face the alternative. I tried to convince myself that it would be okay, that it was only dressing up, something I did and loved anyway and I would just be doing a bit more of it. And that my Victorian ancestors had done the same, and they had done it compelled by nothing more than the fickle hand of fashion. It can’t have been that bad. Given time and Maddy to inspire me it was something that I might well have chosen voluntarily, but to have it imposed me like this was horrible. It hurt. It hurt a lot. It felt like capitulation. It felt like collaboration. I felt like a traitor. But I Took the Third anyway.

 

 

oOo

 

 

I have a sort of a love-hate relationship with that chaise-long. I love the way Jazz looks when she ensconces herself upon it. Despite the rigidity of her underwear she somehow manages to drape herself over its curved surfaces as if she had been a liquid, poured over them and solidified into shape. She turns the living room into her boudoir with it and it becomes the seat of her power over me. And therein lies the source of my hate for that chaise. She is a drug, and I am a helpless addict. If I could resist her and deny her what she wants, deny her what she needs, even just a little, then it would restore something of my emaciated male ego. I am the man. I am supposed to be in charge, but yet I am worm compared to her. She could squash me out of existence with one casual swipe of the stiletto heel that dangles provocatively over the edge of that chaise. I hate that piece of furniture.

 

I look across at her, reclining on her throne, the open negligée showing what she has to offer, her hand lying casually over her crotch, apparently protecting her modesty but actually filling my mind with the image of what lies beneath. She thinks she has me hooked and that she is reeling me in, but tonight is going to be different. Tonight I am ready for her and I am going to change the balance of power. Tonight I’m going to be the one in control. I’m going to block her out, and break her hold over me.

 

It’s winter. It’s raining and it’s cold. Our boat is laid up in a yard. It sits, raised off the ground on wooden blocks, displaying its dirty bottom all covered in weed and barnacles from a summer in the water. I’m lying on the wet ground under the boat and I’m scraping away at its bottom. The dirt and barnacles are dropping on me, dropping on my face and in my eyes. It’s horrible. It’s the worst job in the world, and it’s keeping my hormones under control. With my head filled with the most unsexy image I can think of, I am weakening her power, holding myself under control, and she has no idea what’s coming.

 

“You look like a spider in your web,” I say as I approach the chaise-long.

 

“Mmm,” she replies, reaching a hand out slowly towards me and beckoning me onward with creepy-crawly-like gestures of her fingers. “Fancy being a fly?”

 

“Perhaps,” I say, taking her hand and letting her snaking fingers intertwine with mine.

 

Under the boat my arms are aching with the effort of scraping. The barnacles are and sharp and they cut my fingers making them bleed. So unsexy.

 

Time to make my move. Time to hold my nerve and take her by surprise. I kneel down and pull her hand close to my chest. From my back pocket which she cannot see I discreetly pull a pair of handcuffs. I encircle her beautiful wrist and the ratchet clicks shut before she realises. A look of complete surprise comes across her face as I let go of her hand and hold her arm up by the steel cuff around her wrist. I let the boat scraping disappear from my mind. I don’t need it now. I have her. I will give her some time to weigh up her options and realise that she has none. However this plays out, I am now the power.

 

The sultry, cool and in-control Jazz that I have the amazingly good fortune to be married to is very different to how she was when I remade her acquaintance all those years ago. It had been seven years since I had first met her and fallen under the spell of my beautiful pilot girl. In that time I had been off to law school, qualified and found my first job as a junior solicitor in a small practice. But I never forgot her. I carried her image in my head and elevated her to the status of a goddess to which none of the women I dated could hope to match up. I often wondered where she was and what she was doing. It was perhaps an unhealthy obsession which would have died away eventually had it not been for the events of one otherwise mundane looking day in the office.

 

To help prevent solicitors unwittingly doing the bidding of villains, laundering their money and such, it is a requirement that we check and record the identity of any clients we do work for. I had been tasked with photocopying the passport of one such new client who had come to the office for a consultation, and as the page rolled out of the copier I set my eyes upon the image of my dreams. None other than my very own pilot girl gazed back at me from the picture on the passport. I stared at it for an age. It was her, unquestionably her. The beautiful face, the curly hair, the nose, the lips, the tiny birthmark, they were all hers. And now I could see she was not called ‘Jazz’ at all. She was Jasmine Amanda Errington. Even her name sounded like poetry. And she was there, in that very building, just two walls away from me, in a consulting room with my boss. In a complete and total breach of etiquette I interrupted her meeting, apparently to return her documents to her, but of course in realty just to look at her and see if she remembered the boy who had given her a ride home all those years ago. Of course she didn’t recognise the clumsy oaf who barged rudely into her meeting. She clearly had other things on her mind. She looked distraught, frightened and on the verge of tears. I was probably saved from making a complete fool of myself by the glares of my boss which forcibly suggested that leave the room immediately. I left her documents on the table and retreated back to the office with my mind in turmoil. What do you do when the lady of your dreams suddenly turns up as a real life damsel in distress?

 

Well of course I had to slay the dragon that threatened her. And if her problem was a legal one then I was going to be her solicitor in shining armour. I waited until she left and then ran out into the street after her. I clumsily introduced myself and reminded her of when we had met before. She still didn’t recognise me, but she did remember that day at the airfield and the ride home from a gawky young man, and probably out of some feeling of obligation she reluctantly accepted my insistent invitation to let me buy her a coffee.

 

In the local Costa I realised just how deeply troubled was my beautiful pilot girl, now matured into a stunning lady. I felt bad for having bothered her when she clearly had more important things to deal with. And then she showed me the letter, the reason she had been at my office, and I read it with astonishment. Prison for wearing a man’s suit? Surely not.

 

Of course I told her not to worry, and that I would find a way to save her. I sat up all night reading law books and searching for that way. The evidence against her in all those photos was unassailable. She was guilty for sure and so the only defence would be to show the actual law she had transgressed was somehow flawed or unconstitutional. But just because a law is ridiculous doesn’t mean it is illegal. I had to find something that proved it was challengeable because it was in conflict with another pre-existing law. Human rights legislation looked promising at first, but there was nothing in that about humans having the right to wear what they wanted. The right to religious expression? Nothing there either. Indecent exposure legislation? That only dealt with covering the genitals. Everywhere I looked I just came up with dead ends. The law had been written by lawyers infinitely more knowledgeable than me. My beautiful pilot lady was screwed and I could not save her. Either she was going into prison or she was going into a corset.

 

I called her and tried to be upbeat about it. I was working on it and would find something. But there was so little time and she had to respond to that letter. I was actually relieved when she Took the Third and stayed out of prison. I had not been able to slay her dragon but she didn’t hold it against me. It was the beginning of a friendship that grew into love and eventually to us being married. Without that ridiculous law I might never have found my beautiful pilot lady. It is strange the things we need to be grateful to.

 

 

oOo

 

 

Handcuffs? Really? Ooh, Husband, I wasn’t expecting that. Well I suppose all credit to you for being unpredictable. Who says married sex is boring sex? This changes things a bit. Or does it?

 

I look at my husband, at his face, trying to read his mind. Usually I can only see uncontrollable caveman lust when I provoke him like this, but now there is something different. Something more complicated than lust. Something colder, more calculating, and yes, smug. He’s caught me out and he knows it. Well done Husband, I’ll give you a cookie later. Now I need to work out how to play this and… Oh yes, I see it now. Clever. Very clever.

 

He has indeed caught me in a little trap, not so much the physical trap of the handcuffs but more of a power play trap. I can of course just say ‘no’ and then he would have to release my wrist, but that would ruin the moment. More importantly it would leave him on top, at least in the metaphorical sense. I invited him over here, I presented myself and dared him to be the caveman, and now he’s gone all clever on me. But I can’t wimp out. You can’t challenge someone to a game and then run away when you find they’ve learned to play dirty. I have to play, and I’ll have to play dirty too.

 

And so ‘no’ is not an option. We play. He’s waiting. He’s waiting for me to make my move. Well done on the self-control there husband. Am I losing my touch or has Captain Caveman suddenly evolved? Okay so handcuffs means we’re gonna do some bondage. That’s fine. I’ve done some of that before, in fact I do it every bloody day with my corsets and heels and stuff. No point in struggling, that would be like saying ‘no’, and so let’s run with it. Let him put me in his bondage. I’ll take his bondage and I’ll use it against him. He thinks he can resist me does he? Wait till he gets a load of me in handcuffs.

 

I’m glad I didn’t flinch and pull my arm away as a reflex. That would have been uncool and coolness is the name of the game now. Whoever is the coolest is the one in control. Okay, I know what to do. Cool Jazz, keep it cool and seductive. Let’s put this little insurrection down.

 

I let a hint of a smile creep over my face and slowly raise my other arm, stretching my fingers towards him. I offer him my wrist for him to take and secure, for what use are handcuffs if they’re only on one hand. I can almost feel the red heat of seduction flowing from my body. He’s toast.

 

But no, he’s not toast. Not toast at all. Come on, cuff me you bastard. Cuff me and be dammed, don’t just kneel there like a lemon. Where the fuck is all this self-control coming from? Are you an alien in James’s body? Can’t you see your irresistible wife doing her thing? Cuff me!

 

Cool Jazz, keep it cool. That’s what he’s doing and he’s getting the upper hand here. I get it, cuffed wrists is not it. He’s won a little victory. He forced me to offer and then refused me. And now I have to offer something else. Clever bastard. So what to offer if not cuffed wrists? Cuff me to something? The chair leg? What would that achieve? Oh, I get it. Cuffed wrists are actually it, but he wants them behind my back, not in front. In front it doesn’t mean much. I could still move about, still be in control, and it’s easy for me to offer just by raising my arm. Behind means so much more. So much more restrictive, even helpless, and so much harder to offer. I’ve got to somehow roll over and present my back to him and can I even do that in this corset without looking ungainly and losing my cool. It’s hard to be seductive if you’re having to wriggle about like a slug. Dammit why didn’t I offer this in the first place? It would have been so much more than required and such a statement of how dirty I could play. And now I have to offer it because I’m forced to. He’s turned his nose up at my first offer. I underestimated you Husband. I won’t do it again.

 

I withdraw my offered arm and he lets go of my other one. I look at the handcuffs dangling from my wrist. Such an erotic sight. It stirs something deep inside me, something primeval. I realise I’m starting to pant. That’s good in a way because it’ll make my breasts heave and he can’t resist that, but it’s bad in that it shows I’m losing control here. Horny was ten minutes ago. Now I’m positively spiky. I’m supposed to create the lust, not feel it. I actually want to be chained up, not just so I can use it to drive him wild, but because I want to be chained up. Calm down Jazz. Cool, remember? He’s won round one, let’s not let him win another.

 

I decide that standing up is the only real possibility for turning my back to him without losing my elegance. I have to hold on to that. I have to make him the one who wants it more, and then I can give on my terms. Surely he won’t be able to resist me when I stand up. If I lose this negligée in the process then the full effect of my figure, my legs, my waist, my hair and the laces of my corset, all the things that he can’t resist and that rob him of his self-control will be right in his face. He probably won’t even get me properly handcuffed, such will be his rush to pull my knickers off and relieve himself inside me. And then I will have won, but it will be a shame; I’m rather fancying being properly handcuffed for a while.

 

I offer my hands behind me. He has to accept. I can’t really offer much else. How much more submission could he want? To my relief he accepts my offer and I feel his hands place the metal cuff on my free wrist. Now I am his, but I’m always his really. He’s bigger than me and could have me by force whenever he wants, handcuffs or not, so in a way nothing has changed. But can I be sexy enough to seduce him with my hands behind my back? I bet I bloody well can.

 

I moan seductively as the metal ratchet clicks. I’m not really having to act here, I really do feel like those handcuffs are connected to my fanny. I need him in me. Sod this game, I just need him in me.

 

Cool Jazz, calm down. I can feel the hard bulge in his trousers against my legs as he handcuffs me. He’s heading to the same destination as me, but he has to get there first or else things might never be the same again. I might end up as his love slave. Imagine, me enslaved to him rather than other way round. The thought is terrifying.

 

I tug at the handcuffs and it is as I thought. I am his prisoner, but the game is still very much to play for. I wait. Any second he’s going to pull my knickers down. He has to! What man could do otherwise? But he doesn’t. Not only do my knickers remain in place, he walks away from me. What the fuck? He walks over to his sofa, his seat of power in this room, and he sits down. I am left standing here, hands behind my back and I can’t believe it. Where is all this coming from? Where has this version of my husband been hiding all these years? How can he resist me like this?

 

Round two has gone to him. He’s comfy on his sofa and I’m standing in the middle of the room in handcuffs. If he wanders off and goes to bed then all is lost. I will never have power over him again. I have to continue, I have no choice. I have to submit yet again and go over to him. I have to ask to continue. He’s winning. Only a knockout blow is going to save me, but that’s okay; I’m rather good at those.

 

I sidle across the floor to his sofa. I’m in enemy territory now while he is on home ground. I push my shoulders back and my tits out. I do it way more than the handcuffs enforce. He watches me and I watch him. We try to stare each other down. The handcuffs feel tight. They’re pushing me on and I feel like they’re taking me over. Their connection to my fanny is becoming unbearable. I need release. And in front of me is that release. The bulge in his trousers, that is my release. Don’t do anything Husband, don’t spoil it. Don’t move, don’t unzip. Dominate me. Show me how in control you are. Make me beg. Make me come to you. Make me unzip you with my teeth. Make me release you with my tongue.

 

What the Fuck Jazz! What are you thinking? You want him to win? Get a grip woman! Get a grip.

 

But I can’t help myself. I submit to him. I do actually unzip him with my teeth and he bursts out like a cannon on a pirate ship. My mouth is open and I am about to capitulate utterly. But on the verge of total defeat I recover something of myself. I fight the urge and back away. I remember the game and what is at stake. He has to succumb. I am the power in this marriage and he gets only what I give. That’s how it is and that how it will stay. I look up at his face. He is surprised at my withdrawal. He thought he had won and he’s let his guard down. Now is my moment. I lean forward, open my mouth and push my tongue out as far as I can. I let him watch as I gently and deliberately touch the tip of my tongue onto his knob, proving beyond doubt that I am still in control of myself. I hold it for a second and then twitch just ever so slightly.

 

And the walls suddenly come crashing down. Unable to control himself any longer he grabs my head and forces it down onto him. I am ready for it but he is so swift that I barely get my throat to respond in time. I get him down and hold my wretch under control. But my restraint has also gone and I suck away like a wanton whore, forcing him all the way down me and burying my nose in his pubes. I’m not coming up for air till he cums.

 

I slept all night in those sodding handcuffs. My shoulders were like concrete in the morning. He says he won because he resisted me and forced me to go begging to him. I say he lost because I it was my choice to submit and he lost control before I did, if only by a millisecond. Maybe it was actually a draw. Maybe we need a rematch. Maybe this marriage is going to be a little dangerous from now on.

 

 

oOo

.

 

Morning sunlight sneaks around the curtains and dapples the walls of our bedroom. Jazz is in the shower but I’m still in bed, reflecting on yesterday, last night in particular, and feeling a little sore down below. Have I broken the power she has over me? Probably not, but I think I might have weakened it a bit. Perhaps she will let me call the shots a little in our sex life from now on.

 

Jazz returns from the shower wearing a towel which is soon discarded onto a chair and I see her in her naked glory, unfettered and unembellished. She stands by the mirror and checks herself out from top to toe. It is twenty one years since I first saw her but the time has not diminished her looks. She is still my lovely pilot lady.

 

“You’re beautiful,” I say.

 

She turns and looks at me with a confident smile.

 

“I didn’t ask,” she says flatly.

 

She sets about the complex task of getting herself dressed with a practiced fluency that belies its challenge. First her stockings, black and sheer, coming halfway up her thighs, and then, bizarrely, her boots. It’s easier for her to bend down and lace or zip her boots without her corset, so they go on at this early stage. Next it’s a thin slip, cut low and short so it hardly covers her nipples and crotch. Now comes the main event of her underwear; her corset. Today it’s a delicate peachy pink satin affair with a fairly minimal amount of white, lacy edging. She places it around herself, fastens its busk and then comes over to the bed. She turns her back to me and waits for me to lace her in. She knows I love to do this but unlike yesterday, there’s no foreplay in it this morning, it’s just a sensual interaction. I don’t have to heave on the laces. Her waist has only been free for twenty minutes or so and it is still retaining its unnatural proportions. Unlike my waist which is soft and squishy, hers is firm and rigid. It’s not a case of squeezing her in, more like just preventing her from expanding. The corset tightens quite suddenly as I work the slack from the laces. It has to meet all the way down or else she won’t be able to fasten her dress which will be cut precisely to match it. She grunts a little as I make the final tugs, but they are contented and sensual sounding grunts.

 

And now she is at the point where she always seems to have some indecision. Is she going to use suspenders or garters? And if it’s suspenders then how many? Two, three or four on each side? And do her panties go under or over them? Today it seems it’s suspenders, peach ones that match the corset, two a side and panties on top. No, she’s changed her mind. The panties are going underneath because it looks neater and the bottom of the slip doesn’t get stuck inside them. She obviously feels that she’s not going to have to get them off quickly today. Now that’s sorted it’s time for her bustle cage, an intricate construction of springy plastic strips and elasticated netting that creates the strange, some would say bizarre, shelf-topped bulge over her bum. She has a lovely bum and it’s a shame that it’s always hidden like this, but the bustle does have an appeal of its own and it does wiggle about so sexily when she walks. The cage is held in place by a thin belt that goes over her hips and ties in front.

 

With her lobster-like tail now securely attached it’s time for petticoats; two layers of them. White frilly things that reach down to her ankles. I don’t know exactly why she wears two of them; one would seem like plenty, but I think she likes the feeling that there’s plenty going on beneath her skirts and I do know she likes to flash a bit of white when she lifts her hem to climb up stairs or clear some obstacle on the ground. Next item is an underskirt, a plain, dark coloured skirt that reaches right down to her heels. It’s made of some slippery, Teflon coated fabric that dirt and water can’t stick to because its hem gets dragged around on floors and on the ground outside.

 

And now it’s on to the top layers; the fancy embroidered and decorated, and outrageously expensive things that make a woman into a lady. Today she’s going with a green and grey stripy look, in a satiny fabric that makes the grey almost become silver. First there’s an overskirt; a hugely complicated collection of layers, ruffles, drapes, scallops, gathers and every other trick the dressmaker can think of. It covers most of the underskirt but keeps itself well up above the mud and dirt zone at the bottom, unless of course it’s an evening gown in which case it goes right to the ground and even trails along behind her. Finally there’s a bodice to match her skirt. Snug fitting over her torso, especially round her corseted waist, it is cut low at the front, displaying her ample bosom and has puffy little sleeves which stick up perkily at her shoulders and end at her elbows in dangly, lacy cuffs. The vertical green and grey stripes of the bodice follow the curves of her waist and emphasise the incredible hourglass-like shape.

 

Now dressed for the day, she studies herself in the mirror. Of course she’s not finished yet. She looks like a sexy wench rather than a lady of refinement. She still has to do accessories, jewellery, make up and of course tame her great mop of curly hair that currently tumbles over her shoulders and down her back. It’ll take her the best part of an hour to do all that, but it will wait until after breakfast. She flicks her hair away from her face and cradles her waist in her hands, looking satisfied with the image she sees in the mirror. But I know the conflict that is going on inside her. She loves making herself look this way and she feels great pride with the result, but although she keeps it well hidden, she still feels anger and resentment at the way it is forced upon her.

 

“You’re still beautiful,” I say.

 

“I still didn’t ask,” she replies, and heads off downstairs towards the kitchen leaving the rustling of her skirts behind her.

 

I did not give up on Jazz after she Took the Third. I kept searching for something, some archaic old law that might set her free. But the sight she made dressed in all her now compulsory finery made me feel rather ambivalent about my search. I started to take a keen interest in the laws that were being used to govern women’s lives and in particular the cases that resulted from that great march of the millions. The establishment was very clever. It kept issuing those letters in a continuous drip feed. It kept those who received them feeling isolated and unprotected by the masses, just as Jazz had been, and it created an atmosphere of fear. Millions had marched. Millions now nervously checked their daily post with trepidation and apprehension.

 

No-one knows exactly how many letters were sent and how many women have Taken the Third. The government has never revealed the figure but about a million is the usual number one hears. A million in a female population of thirty million. One in thirty. But it’s a bit more subtle than that. Old people tend not to go on protest marches, and neither do children, so most on that march were between eighteen and sixty years old and that demographic only covers about half the population. It means about one in fifteen of adult, working age women have Taken the Third. Before the march it was not particularly unusual, but still something of a novelty to see a woman in the street dressed up in a ‘Maddy style’ outfit. After the march it started to become more and more common as the letters spread their insidious rules to more and more women. I have no real evidence, but I strongly believe that the letters were not sent out randomly, but predominantly to women of a certain appearance. They targeted the attractive women. The ones whom the others would see as icons and want to emulate. If you have many of the most attractive women in your country looking and dressing in a particular way then you have a fashion movement, regardless of the circumstances. Years ago, someone had gone out in ripped jeans, quite possibly by accident, and had started a trend that was copied by millions and lasted for decades. Now there was a more onerous, but it has to be said, infinitely more beautiful fashion to follow. 

 

And so Madeline Peterson’s dream had been achieved, sort of, but in a way she would have found abhorrent. Although she called herself a Ninne, she was perhaps the greatest feminist of all in that she wanted women to be whatever they wanted to be. If they wanted to command a big company then that was fine, but if they wanted to stay home and care for their kids then that was fine too. And if they wanted to dress up and look amazing then that was wonderful, but baggy jeans and a scruffy tee shirt were also just fine. It was the wearer who was beautiful, not the clothes. Now we have the Ladies of the Third who lead the way, because they have to, and then there are those women, particularly the young ones, inside whom the dressing up gene is strong and who follow the fashion and embrace it joyfully. There are those who have found they feel empowered by dressing in the new trend, and there are those who have discovered that old fashioned clothes invoke old fashioned chivalry, and they like it. Of course there are also plenty of women who hate the whole thing and want nothing whatsoever to do with it. And the rest are somewhere in between; they like looking stylish and fashionable, but there’s a limit to how far they will go to achieve that. The extremes of ‘Maddy fashion’ filter down into more moderate styles for them, and of course everyone is constrained by what is available in the shops, what carries the subsides, and what is illegal for them. Whatever else we have in this country, surely no-one can deny that we have the best dressed women in the world.

 

And what of Andorra Peterson? Well she continues to court controversy, but it may well be from beyond the grave. She disappeared from her house one night and has never been seen since. Conspiracy theory heaven. Some say she was abducted by feminists. Some say she was done away with by the government because she had become an embarrassment. Some say she was sold as a sex slave and is chained up in a basement somewhere. Some even say she is chained up in their basement. No-one knows the truth. One thing is certain though, she and her mother have left a legacy, a controversial legacy for sure, but one which seems in no hurry to die. Men love beautiful women and women love being beautiful women. And is a woman more beautiful if she wears a fancy dress with a nipped-in waist and a big long bustled skirt, than she would have been in the days of ripped jeans and flip flops? That’s a question with many different answers. Beauty might be in the eye of the beholder, but it also feeds the self-esteem of those being beautiful.

 

To the rest of the world our country might look ridiculous. They see our women dolled up, some would say imprisoned, in their ludicrous and over-the-top dresses, but it has actually been that way for most of our history and who knows, perhaps the ‘sensible’ fashions of the twentieth century will turn out to be just a temporary blip. Perhaps feminism and equality will turn out to be like communism; something born out of injustice, that was widely desired and fought for, but when it was achieved everyone decided they didn’t like it very much. Communism ultimately failed because it went against human nature; it tried to make everyone the same when we are actually all very different and we like being different. Perhaps feminism has the same problem. It is only a minority who, like Jazz have been coerced into transforming themselves into ladies of yesteryear, but it is surprising how many have joined them voluntarily. Soon there will be a new generation of young ladies for whom none of it is bizarre or stupid or oppressive for they have grown up never knowing anything else. Most seem keen to join in as soon as they are old enough. Will it become the accepted and universal norm as it was all those years ago? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

 

Today we’re going to visit Jazz’s Dad. He’s an old man now and his health is failing. He doesn’t talk very much but I will see the pride in his eyes as he looks at his daughter and sees the incredibly fine woman his genes have created. She’ll make him lunch and then we’ll head to the airport where we’ve booked a helicopter, and she’ll take him off flying for the afternoon, just for the fun of it. And I’ll be waiting for them when they return. As they come down from the sky I will look up and watch as high heels nudge at pedals and a joystick competes for space with a skirt not designed to fit in a cockpit. And afterwards they’ll both make fun of me over the day I first saw her and fell under her spell. She is supposed to be restricted and oppressed, but yet she is cool, confident and in control. And she’s happy too, although she wouldn’t admit that. There is talk nowadays that the ladies who Took the Third might be released from their bond and I wonder what Jazz would do if that happened. I rather suspect she wouldn’t change a thing.