Read Exit to Eden for Free Online Page B

compared to this? But with the strongest, sweetest sensation of relief, I thought: "It's too late now, Elliott. Can't say, 'Let's call it quits now, gang, and all go out for a steak dinner and a couple of beers.' " I mean it's over because it's begun. That's the beauty of it. It's for real, as Martin had said.
    There was this glorious sense suddenly of really being
in
it for the first time over my head. I'd done this inalterable violence to my own life, and this was exhilaration, this feeling. I wouldn't have gone back then for anything in the world.
    ******
    The sounds I heard undoubtedly meant that more and more slaves were being brought in. I heard the pat of their bare feet and the click of the heels of the handlers. I heard a groan here and there, the creak of a chain or the chink of the metal of the buckle sliding over the hook. The leather cuffs were tight around my wrists.
    There were mostly small sighs, moans. Both male and female noises. And it seemed some of these cries came from behind gags.
    I was sure that some distance away someone, a man, was struggling, and a scolding voice confirmed this immediately, calling him by name and telling him to "behave." It was almost cajoling. The "you know better than that" tone of voice. The sharp crack of a strap sounded and I heard a loud moan. Then came a real thrashing, sounds so keen they were like fingers stroking my skin.
    I was trembling. It would be awful to be punished like that for bad behavior. It wasn't like being humiliated for someone's pleasure, being an exotic champion of pain. No, it was being a failure down here in the hold of the ship, a bad slave.
    The thrashing seemed to go on forever. Then I heard random cracks of the belt drawing nearer, grunts, groans. I could feel movement around me. And the belt caught me on the thighs and then on the butt, but I stood very still and didn't make a sound.
    ******
    Hours passed.
    My arms and legs ached. I'd doze for a while and then awaken, feeling naked all over, the passion in me like a knot.
    Once I woke up and found myself writhing as if trying to touch another body, the desire was so keen, and I felt a whack from a thick belt.
    "Stand straight, Elliott," said a voice, and with a flush of embarrassment I realized it was the young blond one with the pretty teeth.
    Then I felt his large, cool hand open against the flesh he had just struck. He squeezed it hard. "Only six hours to go, and they want you in prime form." And I felt his thumb on my lips telling me to be quiet, as if I had dared to speak.
    The sweat broke out all over me. I couldn't tell whether he'd moved away or he was right beside me. It was awful to me that I hadn't been perfect, and yet I was so aroused it was exquisite, that perfect stab in the loins of pleasure and pain.
    ******
    When I awoke again, I knew it was deep night.
    Some inner clock told me and also the dead quiet of the ship, though what the noises on board had been before I couldn't have told.
    It was just quieter now, that's all.
    ******
    Unwelcome flash of home, the last weekend with my father in Sonoma, the blaze of the log fire in the game room, him standing opposite me across the green felt of the pool table, getting ready to call his shot. Last rain of the season washing down the windows over the olive-green hills, and a wholly unexpected rebelliousness rising in me, something that too sadly resembled malice.
You think you are so very sophisticated, you think you have always anticipated everything, understood every little twist and turn, analyzing and evaluating and predicting the eventual pattern of every "phase" before it even began, handing me the treatises on masturbation, and the
Penthouse
and the
Playboy
magazines when I was fourteen, and the pair of two-hundred-dollar call girls in Las Vegas on my sixteenth birthday
—
not one but two, goddamn it, two call girls
—
and then that brothel, that gorgeous brothel full of black-eyed smiling little boys in Tangier. All the