What The Market Will Bear

for Lori Selke

i serve at the pleasure of the Goddess. my Mistress commands me to write this at Her behest. That is Her word. Behest. She says if i have an MBA from Harvard and a Ph.D. from MIT i should have a vocabulary to show for it. She says right now i have nothing to show but my body. i am naked. Stripped of everything. Even my hair from my neck down. i write in a little girl's diary my Mistress gave me. It's pink and plastic and covered in cartoon drawings of red and green and yellow girls with huge eyes and a green monkey in a turban. She wants to me to write down everything She does to me the next three days. i must offer it to Her. If She is pleased, She will let me return.

I am called Lysistrata. Mistress Lysistrata. Few of my clients will get the irony when they hear of what I've done on this Web site. Irony and the power to rule millions rarely go together.

They assumed Mistress Lysistrata is simply my name. I told them it is Greek. I told them I am Greek. They replied, "But you don't look Greek." They imagined Christina Onassis or Zorba. "I wax," I answered and ordered them onto all fours.

I know who I am and I know who Lysistrata was. Both of us sick of the ways of men. Both of us mindful of how to use what is between our legs to control the dangling bits between theirs. I cannot stop a war as she did--or I did not when I had the neck of the emperor of the free world beneath my boot, to be more truthful--but I hope I have stopped one of its newest weapons. (Click here for the cure.)

I give you this post-post-modern (ie, it has a plot; it has a heavy-handed moral) spin on ancient drama's give-and-take between chorus and actor. It tells not all, but enough.

Our good doctor came to me and I to him by word of mouth. Highly recommended. A force to be reckoned with. A shaper of destiny. And in the end, one of us was.

I'm sure he expected enforced feminization. Put him in panties. Wrap his shriveled pink prick up in a satiny bow. I have only one thing to say to that: bush league.

my Mistress' limo was waiting outside the FDA yesterday. Last minute lobbying before Friday's high noon and the government shuts down. i was in a new suit. It didn't fit. Too big. i've been doing the Atkins diet. my wife's idea. All the fats you can eat and then some. Bacon cheeseburgers--hold the bun--for breakfast. Steaks with butter for dinner. And walk the stairs at work every day. i've lost sixty pounds. my Mistress is tapping me on the shoulder with Her crop. No more lies She says. OK. 57 pounds. i'm used to rounding up. Still a lot. And a good thing too. i've been sitting on my ass for the last 3 years. Plus i wanted to look my best for my reward. A gift from my business partners. Sweet fuckers. They told me about my Mistress once our product began Phase III. 6 months later here i am waiting for the FDA to give us the green light.

Our mystery man may be the guru of virology (Click here for his CV) and a whiz at genetics who can map and resequence DNA, but string together more than a few words and fewer syllables he cannot. No verbal double helixes here. Nor single helixes. Not even a base pair sequence. Not even a rudimentary grasp of spelling and grammar. A weak-wristed, splayed-fingered grip. I've had to edit his entries down to their myriad missing-in-action commas and quotes. Barren patches on these pages I have kept as a tribute to the original chaos from which all life has tumbled like clowns out of a dented red toy car. A necessary bit of editorial license and largesse so that only one of us would be [sic] of our lackluster Pepys by this second limp entry.

i was blindfolded for the ride to my Mistress'. Some kinky and pricey-looking leather replica. The driver put it on me then wrapped duct tape around that. i told him if i lost any more of what little hair i have i was gonna bust his nuts with the tire iron. He just laughed and shoved me onto the floor. It was a long ride--a lot of it was waiting in traffic. Roll. Stop. Roll. Stop. Then we picked up speed. It felt like an hour after we got out of traffic. i really have no awareness of time without a watch. Even with a watch. A final stop. i was dragged out of the car and pulled roughly godknowswhere like some bawling kid through a mall. Up stairs, then a long period of no stairs and then around corners left and right and down stairs and down more stairs and then no stairs and our feet began to echo really loud. i heard a voice. A woman's. It must be my gift i tell myself. Her voice was musical but cold. Like a killer who would stroke your head before blowing it off. Take it off i heard Her say. i flinched.

"Flailed" would be a more apt description. He looked like a string puppet undergoing electroshock. Who knew the brain behind Proteus would be such a live wire? I waited a beat, listening for the tell-tale trickle. I watched for the stain to appear like a vision of The Blessed Mother in an oil slick. Nothing. He had not let go of all control. Yet.

i heard the tearing before i felt it. Everything's blurry. i couldn't see. Only feel the burn where the tape ripped my hair out. And smell. A musty smell. Not bitter like jizz but definitely funky. Same genus. It smelled like a workroom under a house. Dirt behind all the cinderblock walls. Wet dirt. And dark like the shadow wavering in front of my eyes. Like an image under the microscope coming into focus. 10x. A blonde in a leather dress holding a riding crop. 100x. A tall woman with brown hair with blonde highlights that falls to Her shoulders. They're bare and lightly tanned. She has large dark eyes and a long thin nose and wide red lips and a jaw and matching cheekbones that could cut glass and breasts like two loaves of golden bread rising up out of Her black leather dress. What a dress too. It pushed up Her breasts and held tight around Her little waist and dropped down like a long skirt. But with no front. It's cut out and She's wearing nothing underneath. Except boots that lace up the front and stop just above Her knee. And that brought my eyes right back up to Her privates. my Mistress is frowning. She says i'm holding back. No man says privates. What would i say if She weren't reading my every word. Pussy. And it looked perfect. Just a bit of hair and all that smooth skin and big lips trying to cover up that dark pink slit.

Cover up indeed. We'll get to that soon enough. For now, suffice it to say I was less than flattered to read his weakass rhapsody on my nearly priceless beauty. What woman would thrill to hear her breasts compared to bread cooling on the rack? Perhaps the paramour of one Mr. Poppin' Fresh®, The Pillsbury Doughboy". Certainly our diarist is doughy in the extreme. But he's never giggled no matter how hard I've poked him.

I think he misses carbohydrates more than he knows. Certainly more than his wife.

And as for his mangling of metaphors and viruses, he deserved far worse and got it.

She said something and i looked up. You may look Me in the eyes only when I say you may. And She said this very softly. Like She was singing to Herself. i got goose bumps and focused on Her tattoo. It goes across Her chest--above Her breasts [writing illegible]. She just whacked me hard across my back with Her crop and i dropped my pen and this diary. She commands me to write Her heaving bosom. Right above Her heaving bosom. Now She's laughing. Write! i am a good little monkey. i am a good little monkey. i am a good little monkey. Good. You know how to listen. Now tell the story you stupid shit. The tattoo is the Medusa's head She said more loudly. One look at Her and She turns men to stone. It's working i said. i was getting hard. my Mistress laughed. She told me that i do not know the first thing about hard. But i will after my three days in the tomb. Eyes on the floor, Dr. Dumbass.

It took him a moment to realize what I'd said. Then he looked up--time for the operant conditioning to begin--and I finally saw what I long to see in the eyes of men like him: fear. Fear and lust. A profitable combination.

my Mistress slapped me across the face. Eyes on the floor or I'll knock them onto it. She didn't shout it, just whispered it in my ear. i looked at the tip of Her boot while She told me Her name. Mistress Lysistrata. i nodded. i didn't know what to say. I'm Greek She said. You don't look Greek was i all could think. I wax She said louder and more annoyed. On all fours. i got onto my knees the second time She hit me. The first time i was too shocked. i'd never been hit before. The commands kept coming. From this nanosecond forward, you will speak only when commanded to. And you will do all that I ask or be returned to where We found you.

An empty threat. I would not return him until I'd made a lovely bomb of him. There came a familiar series of knocks at the door. A Morse code devised between friends. I relaxed and smiled to myself. "Rise and meet my pet groomer," I said to the back of his head.

i got up as quick as i could. Out of the corner of my eye i saw this guy coming into the hall from a room on the right. That was the first moment i realized i'd been standing in a hallway all this time. He's naked. Except for a gold ring in the head of his dick. The first thing i thought was ouch. That and this fag has no body fat. His name is Theo my Mistress said. Short for Theodoros. my Mistress then told me it means gift of god. It fits. He must a model. Or gay.

"Theo, I have another dumb beast. What can you do with it? Perhaps a rinse?"

He smiled. At my Mistress and me. Then he walked over to me with his pierced dick waving back and forth. i didn't look at it. i never looked down once. But i could still see the flash of gold. And then he raised his hands for my neck and i backed up. i didn't know if he was going to kiss me or strangle me. Next thing i felt was my Mistress' crop pressing up hard under my chin.

Gently but firmly, I told our Dr. Demented, more or less, the following: "You will let Theo touch you wherever and however he wants. You will thank me for the privilege of being manhandled by a real man. One flinch, one pout and you're out, naked as the day your mother never should have let you be born." He tensed up as if preparing for the volley from a firing squad. Perhaps he was more farsighted than I imagined. I pressed my crop deeper into his second chin. "Well, I don't hear a thank you," I sweetly hissed. He muttered something. I pressed further. Politeness is so rare in these lawless times. "Thank you, my Mistress," he blurted. I stepped aside to let Theo begin his work. "Leave his socks and shoes on him," I whispered.

The fag didn't speak a word. He just looked me in the eye and smiled as he undid my tie and then removed my jacket and unbuttoned my shirt and pulled off my T-shirt. He didn't do anything queer like lick my tits. He was very professional and i barely felt his fingers on me. Maybe i was numb. Maybe cold. All i really remember was my Mistress smoking while She watched us. i could see Her hands while i stared at Theo's head sinking down below my stomach. It was some really smelly cigarette in a very long cigarette holder. All i could think was Cruella DeVil. Not that my Mistress looks anything like her. It's just i've seen the animated and the live-action 101 Dalmatians nearly 101 times with my daughter. She's four. my daughter. my Mistress says that it will be obvious to anyone smarter than me that She Herself is not four. She also wants me to write that She can live with being compared to Cruella a lot better than having Her heaving bosom equated with a rack of rising bread.

It was tobacco soaked in ouzo. My own concoction. I've called them Cruella Slims since.

i could feel him undoing my buckle and then my zipper. He pulled my pants down and helped me step out of them. i kept waiting for him to take off my shoes and socks before he went for my underwear. He didn't. Then i felt it. His fingers pulling the waistband of my boxers away from my skin and pulling them down. i never felt so cold. i tried to stay as calm as i could. i left the rest of my body behind. i was a head. Just a head. Then my Mistress began to laugh.

I was not laughing, as you might assume, at his dick. If he lost a bit more weight, he'd have a rather average-sized one. No, I laughed at how ridiculous he appeared as he stood beside my Theodoros, naked save for black socks and wingtips and his eyes scrunched together so tightly he looked like he was holding back tears or expelling a reluctant fart. "What lovely dress manacles you're wearing," I complimented.

She took Her crop and pressed in under my balls. i tried not to jump but i didn't expect that. i didn't know what to expect anymore. i prayed She wouldn't take a whack at them. Look what we have here She said. Dr. Lawrence H. Bergson III. The driving engine behind Proteus, that upstart startup. Rival of august Genetech and co-creator with the good folks at Narque Pharmaceuticals of the newest noxious AIDS drug, Elanovital. i watched my dick and balls bounce. Then She pulled the crop away and i could feel my balls fall. Then my heart.

"My balls fall and then my heart." How like a country-western ballad written by a focus group. There is a word for the heartbreak of the heartless: bathetic. It comes from the Greek word for depth: bafos. Bathos. Wasn't he one of the Musketeers? you ask. No, that would be Porthos. Which sounds like pathos and that is what bathos aspires to. But pathos is suffering that wrings tears of blood from the sufferer. Think of Christ's Passion, if you are so inclined. (In my case, you can take the girl out of the Greek Orthodox Church but…) Pathos is passion's long-lost forefather. Bathos is when pathos trips on a banana peel and falls Icarus-like into the depths of a bowl of children's cereal where it is forced at toy-gunpoint to wash in the syrupy-sweet milk that is left behind when there is no more sugar-coated grain to eat. Simple water can wash away all traces of this pain.

my Mistress took Her crop and placed it under Theo's dick so his balls swelled. His dick started to balloon too. i still wasn't sure who he did--guys or girls--but i knew where with a dick like that. Pornos. Still he looked a hell of a lot better than any of the guys in the ones i've seen. You like what you see? my Mistress asked. Take a good look. Here's a dick that can actually satisfy a woman unlike your wilted blade of grass. If you're a very good boy, My very bad man, I might let you find out for yourself. That's when little Larry cringed for the both of us.

Little Lar cringed for all three of us. At this point, I had planned to wax Big Lar all over, but I didn't have the time for all the squirming and shrieking--even with his lips locked in a long kiss with some cheap piece of duct tape. So instead, I used Nair. Did you know they make Nair for Men? They have for over a decade. What a triumph of civilization.

my Mistress sounded pissed all of the sudden. She ordered Theo to take me to the showers and wash away as much of the outer beast as he could. He then went and grabbed me by the balls and pulled me into the room he'd come from. i did my best not to jump out of my skin, but i'd never had a naked man take me by the family jewels.

And I'd never seen a duck waddle so fast to water. Or quack so hard when confronted with the delicious aroma of today's cutting-edge depilatory.

i smelled the Nair before i read the bottle and knew what the fuck it was. God that stuff reeked. i don't know how my wife has used it all these years. i'd rather have the razor.

No, my ignorant keeper of the Y chromosome, you would not if you knew all the places it had to go.

Theo wiped it all over me. Over my back and chest. Under my pits. Up my crack. Down my legs. All around my dick and balls. Then my Mistress told him he had 5 minutes to kill. So he went and started to stroke my dick with even more Nair. i closed my eyes. i couldn't watch. i just tried to keep breathing. The stinky cigarette smoke and that fucking Nair were giving me a killer headache. i wanted to puke. No matter what i did i could feel his hand tugging on me. Like he had all the time in the world to get me off.

It was the most deliciously disinterested handjob I've seen. My Theodoros, always the pro. It was perfect. Nothing frightens the hardcore heterosexual male like the thought of another man near his beloved privates. And nothing humiliates him like the thought of the man between his legs growing bored.

Is it hard yet my Mistress said. i opened my eyes and looked down. No thank god. Pity She said. OK. Wash him clean. And Theo let go of my dick and pushed me slowly under the water. i felt his hands all over me. Like they were on me but not trying to touch me. And all i could think was this is my gift as i waited for him to turn off the water and give me a towel. He dried me off himself. i felt like the biggest queer in the world. The biggest queer baby.

"Why don't we look as smooth as our little girl's pussy," I said. All mock enthusiasm. Clapping my hands with brittle glee. "Here," I added as I tossed Theo the chastity belt, "clamp this over his dangling bits. And you, when Theo's done wrapping you in your crome-and-leather swaddling clothes, it's time to get down on all fours again and lay you away in your manger."

i just stood there and let Theo put the chastity belt on me. i couldn't think what else to do. i was too stunned to run and it hurt less than the Nair or the handjob. He yanked it once and i got onto my knees. my Mistress pushed the end of the crop in my face. Bite down She said. i did as She ordered and was led from the shower room down the hall to the last door on the left. my Mistress snapped Her fingers and told me to heel. i stopped. Let go of the crop you dumb dog She shouted. i did. Then She whacked me hard on the ass but i didn't move. Good boy She said. She whacked me harder. 12 more times. i think it was 12.

It was 13. Lucky 13. The Goddess' favorite number.

i couldn't count because i was trying not to scream or cry. When She stopped She touched me for the first time. She patted me on the head and i shivered. No you didn't do what I think you just did? She said. She was laughing too. Did you shoot with no hands? i shook my head since i didn't dare disobey and speak. Bad puppy my Mistress scolded. She didn't sound mad though. No dinner for you tonight. And straight to bed. She tapped me lightly on my ass with Her crop and said to go. i crawled into my room. It was empty. OK, almost empty. No windows. White walls. One very bright light bulb. No shade. 100 watts. A TV monitor bolted up into the corner. Playing CNBC without the volume. And in the corner across from it was a pile of straw and a chewed-up blanket that smelled like a dog. A very dead dog. His water bowl is still here. Plus no toilet. Just a drain in the center of the floor. my Mistress walked over to the straw and blanket and bent down and dug around in the straw. She came back with the girl's diary and the oversized pink pen with a clear plastic end filled with glitter. i've spent a lot of time since then watching the sparkling metal dots float up and down. Counting them and memorizing their colors. Open this and write She said as She threw the diary at me. Write I serve at the pleasure of the Goddess. And i wrote. Pages and pages. i wrote with Her for what seemed like 30 minutes. Maybe an hour. Until my Mistress left. i'm still writing. i'm too angry? frightened? horny? to do anything else. After what i've seen since She left. The last thing She said to me tonight was Listen up you sonofabitch. Her voice still soft and sugar and spice. Except now it makes my skin prickle like someone's turned the air-conditioning in here even higher. She was tapping Her boot with the crop. Waiting to see if i'd forget Her commands and look Her in the eye. i didn't. i wouldn't. She spoke again. i shivered happily. If you soil yourself on the outside like you have on the inside then to the pound in DC you go. As is. You will hold it till I decide I'm ready for you to part with it. Piss too boy. She closed the door and locked it. i heard Her laugh and then Theo and then the door to the room behind the wall with the TV opened. Then silence. i kept writing. For a long time. Then i heard Her and him and the TV channel flashed and there's sound. It's like i was at the movies. The sound was so loud and all around me. i couldn't get away from it. Even if i closed my eyes. But i couldn't. It was my Mistress on TV and She was naked and straddling Theo's dick.

Every once in a scene, I like to put the crop down and be a true-blooded Greek passive. My asshole bobbing on the fat head of God's gift. I was Aristotle's empty vessel of womanhood gone awry: painfully--he was almost too big--and pleasurably--thank the Goddess he was--awry.

I played with my clit. For myself and for the camera. I'd interrupted Dr. Mangled's regularly scheduling program with the following news flash: outside you can kill millions, here you are impotent.

I rubbed my fingers over my lips. They were slick to the touch. And flushed. My lips and I both. I parted them with one hand to get at my clit with the other. I thrust my hips forward and pushed down on Theodoros. With each sharper and sharper wave of warm pain, I brailled my clit with greater abandon until all my lips were mouthing for the camera. Laughing obscenely at him. I knew he could hear us through the wall. I was nearly singing now.

"You're hung like a fucking bull, my Minotaur. Fuck me, Theodoros. Fuck me, you fuckin' bull." Until I babbled the word "bull" with every wave of each orgasm. Until Theo shot and shouted what I've ordered him to say.

"Go bull market."

Saturday. Early evening i think. i'm wet and in love. i can't jerk off and rubbing against this belt hurts so i'll write. OK, first Theo's definitely not gay. He likes fucking my Mistress too much to be gay. But he's too pretty to be part of the real world. Definitely works in pornos. Probably gay for pay.

Even a fool can be prescient. Or a closeted collector of Jason and the Argonuts 1, 2, 3 and 4.

i woke up to my Mistress kicking me in the ass. Rise and shine, Cinderfella She said as She kicked me harder and harder. i have no idea what time it is or where i am. i haven't had any coffee. i have a headache and blurred vision and i smell like a dead dog and there is straw stuck to my face and in my asscrack. Get up She ordered. i do. i'm remembering everything about yesterday now. Come here and let me unfasten your pacifier.

Fortunately for me and Little Lar, I'd had a cup of Greek coffee--"1 part coffee grounds and 2 parts sugar" as Theo describes it--and was nimble enough in mind and finger to undo the chastity belt.

Piss my Mistress commanded. Keep your eyes on the floor fool. Preferably focused on the drain. Then out of nowhere She slapped the side of my head. i hear the heavy metal from Her rings bouncing off my skull before i feel the stinging pain. i wanted to scream out. Beg for mercy. Beg for coffee. i almost beg to go home. And if you dare to get hard without My say-so you've lost your golden opportunity to piss this morning. i think of the dead dog i smell everywhere and don't get hard. i piss. It makes a loud sound. Not as it hits the floor but when it goes down the drain.

I made him crawl to the bathroom to shit. I didn't want to waste the day when the good doctor had so much work to get done. When he crawled back, painfully slow and head hanging down so he can almost suckle his swinging breasts (he has learned he has no toilet paper in his bathroom), I crouched and hit him on the back of his head with a box of Crayons. Sixty-four shades of wax. Sullen and silent like him. Each a miniature effigy of Dr. Bergson that I would like to take to a candle and melt.

"If I were truly cruel," I told him, "I'd order you to spin that straw into gold. You are good at turning things into gold, even death. But I am a much kinder and gentler person than you, Dr. Death. I will give you a simple task and yet reward you for it with gold. Gold more precious than any you hoard away in vaults."

i barely felt the crayons hit my head. All i could think about was my ass. She boxed my ear with the crayons and i listened. my Mistress commanded me to use them to list as many toxic elements and substances as i can remember from my training and my work and diagram their chemical composition. She doesn't put my chastity belt back on. She must be waiting for my shit to dry too. i feel like a fucking baby. Naked. Covered in my own shit. On all fours. i'd cry like a baby too if my Mistress would let me. She doesn't say a word. i watch Her feet in the shiny black boots with long thin heels walk to the door and leave.

I returned after six hours to see how Dr. Bergson's arts-and-crafts project was coming I long. I could see faint streaks of color all around me as I put down the two dog dishes I'd carried from the kitchen. One filled with fresh water and one with chunky peanut butter. I was tempted to put a bit of straw in both but decided to wait until I'd really looked at the walls.

It was the usual rogues gallery of toxins. In waxen and washed-out colors, there sprawled one enormous cave painting of rampaging porcupines, their quills skewering letters and numbers alike. But I spied something I did not expect to see. I could only imagine it was an overlooked insight from his unconscious. But still a spark of some conscience. The right hand might know what the left hand does after all. For there, front and center, were too small letters. Unadorned but utter death in their elemental simplicity. Am. Lucky atomic number 95. Americium the beautiful, ringing out the call to arms in smoke detectors like a radioactive bell from sea to shining sea.

my Mistress was very quiet as She looked about my cell. i didn't dare to look Her in the eye. Just a quick glance at Her profile. Re-memorizing every feature. Every efflorescence of Her genes. She taps the top of my head now with Her crop. There's the vocabulary I knew someone with too many useless degrees should possess. But I still haven't forgiven you for the bread/breast analogy [writing illegible]. She just hit right down the center of the diary and i dropped it. Write She commands. i was watching Her walk slowly along the wall like She was grading an exam. Looking for faulty notation. Or judging a work of art. Then She started laughing. i shivered for real this time. She's either going to toss me out naked with my ass caked in shit or She's going to give me a prize. i watched Her feet waiting for them to turn. Only then would She talk to me. i had no idea what time of day it was or how long i'd been drawing on the walls. But it felt the same amount of time passed before She spoke to me. Crawl to me She said in Her softest and most terrifying voice. i scraped my knees getting to Her as fast as i could. She was on the opposite side of the room. Good doctor She laughed. i was so afraid. i had no idea what She would do with me. Sit up on your knees. Now. i did. What do you see? my Mistress. Good eyes, Einstein. What do you see? She said as She came even closer. i was face-to-face with Her privates. my Mistress is tapping Her foot angrily as i write this now. Be honest She shouts in a whisper. i was face-to-face with Her pussy. What do you see? She asked. The sex of my Mistress. She laughed even louder now. Who the fuck are you? Simone de Beaver. i didn't understand and She laughed even more. Beg Me for your reward, Dr. Bergson. Beg Me to shower you with gold. Do it. Say: Please, Mistress, shower me with gold. Say it now. i did again and again and again.

I let fly. And after all the baklava and Greek coffee I'd had whiling away the afternoon, it was a sweetbitter stream. I was truly mellifluous. But with a bite.

Zeus had come to Danae once more. But the tables had been happily turned and then overturned. My living chamber pot started when my stream splattered against his lips and across his face. We grew closer--I to give and he to catch my rain of gold.

Sunday. It has to be. i had the worst fucking sleep of my life. The floor was cold and hard and i was colder and harder. i'm writing in this stupid fucking diary to get feeling in my hands again. It's March and She's got the air-conditioning on. If She doesn't let me touch Her today i'm out of here. i'd come licking Her elbow.

It was another Greek who said that wisdom is a drop wrung from suffering. He must learn that he is truly impotent.

They were clips--like a video on MTV back when they showed videos. God i feel old. There's no music though. No sound. i had to make it up in my head. Her song. Her shouts. And all these pasty white bodies beneath Her. Squirming. Sometimes just with Her. Sometimes with Theo and Her. Sometimes a group of them together in this fucked-up kind of chain that starts from Her ass and trails back. And i think i recognize some of the faces from TV. Maybe a senator or news anchor. i swore one of them looked like the President. But most of them i'd never seen before. And all the time i was watching i'm going crazy because i want to jerk off. i want to be under Her. Any part of Her. Her boot. i want to be whipped and kicked and fucked. i'd do anything to be one of those lucky fucks. i'd even do one of them to be near Her. God i'm sick.

It is time for a bit of history for those who have come of age in the last ten years. Those who are old enough may skip ahead to avoid remembering the past. I understand. I would if I could. (Click here for the next Bergson entry.)

Like Cassandra, my true namesake and the one, true patron saint of every fucked soul who falls continually afoul of irony, I have watched the topless towers of my beloved city fall and it drove me mad. Mad enough to let go of my unfinished dissertation: The Melian Dialogue: An Overheard Conversation on Democracy's Realpolitik Repeated in a Textual Game of Telephone in the Greatest Literary Hits of Dystopia. The dissertation I was working overtime on a phone-sex line to keep writing after I'd spent every other cent school, the government, my parents had given me, let it go like the papers whirling about in the smoke outside that smelled like burning human flesh because it was the smell of burning human flesh. My brother's, in fact. Mad enough to give into the endless requests of a repeat client with friends in high places (the greatest understatement ever oversold to get a grieving girl to fuck the shit out of a man who was impotent because he was omnipotent) and meet for a private session. A session that surprised us both. A session that led to the birth of Mistress Lysistrata. Not quite like Venus, born of the severed genitals of a god and sea foam. Close. I was born out of the shrunken genitals of a Good Ol' Boy from the Grand Old Party. And the billowing gray froth of carnage, collusion, and collision that rolled out from Lower Manhattan on a fall morning. And ferocious enough to channel the Goddess on Her bad-hair days.

But that is not the story I want to tell. Yet. And perhaps never all of it. Instead, I want to let our young sleepers know about a fabricated fairytale told in the dark to make them feel safe night after night. It is for you that I have added this whole sad story of me and Dr. Bergson, a pornographic preamble of sorts, to his scientific paper to follow. And I don't want you to miss one second of its titillation. And since I know you glossed over The President as the mere ramblings of a man with blue balls, I will gloss The President for you.

And, in doing so, I realize I will have to tell you some more of my story after all. They are intertwined now.

Once upon a time in a country with the same name as ours, The First Patriot was called The President. But president always reminded certain people of certain elections and The First Patriot is for life: the life of our glorious country; the life of democracy; the life of the free; the life of the righteous; the life of the unborn and the reborn. The times demanded it. I imagine they will not stop demanding it in your lifetime either.

It came in a flash that blinded all eyes before they could blink. San Francisco vanished in a hellish puff of smoke. Our President had been liberating the Protectorate of Iran when a country called North Korea fired a missile and San Francisco was no more. And as for North Korea, we exchanged one irradiated peninsula for another.

But this you know, more or less. It is ancient history. Something a Greek, no matter how watered down the wine of her blood may be, is very familiar with.

There was much shock for some and awe for others--others whom I have come to know too well. Those "friends" in high places. There were emergency meetings. There were emergency powers. Emergencies came and went. The power remained. And The President was one day called The First Patriot in a speech by the then Vice President. (You call him The Second. Or as The First Patriot calls him, Shotgun.) "First Patriot" was a strategically placed honorific (Shotgun always knows what he's doing). An inspiring moniker that came and ran wild in the mouths of the media and took the word "president" away with it. That reduction happened almost overnight. Especially if you compare it, as I have night after night, to the ten very long years it took to inflate a man into The Father of Our Homeland.

So yes, that was indeed The First Patriot. I have known him well and often. This does not mean I am Mother of Our Homeland. Poor woman. But I have been its Mistress.

How? you scoff incredulously. A simple matter of economics. You don't charge $10,000 a day for your services and not "stumble" across the faceless ones who run the American Imperium--especially when you live in one of the states that is a suburb to the American Rome. I could name dozens of them, but it would be like reciting from a phonebook. Just meaningless names to you. (Click here for my virtual black book.)

Yes, these noble patriots shun the limelight like General Cincinnatus who returned to his farm after vanquishing the enemy and rejecting the calls of the Romans to be their king. Or better still, General Washington. How some clamored to make him King. One King George to replace another. And now, after patiently waiting for two hundred years, the shades of these long-dead monarchists have their wish.

All thanks to the illumined ones (for this is how the faceless ones prefer to be addressed when you are privileged enough to look them in the eye and order them to kneel and lick you in the crotch). I am sure each of them is grateful too. In fact, this whole long story of the Dominant and the doctor is my thank-you to them as well. Read on and you'll see.

As for poor Cincinnatus, immortalized in the name of an American city few are proud of, I feel it is time to let his shade return to the sweet sleep of oblivion. For the illumined ones bring other Romans to mind. This mind, at least. Like the imperial families of old, they crave, in those cavernous spaces created only when doors are closed, all manner of excess and release--from their powers, because of their powers. I like to think that if my patrons read any history they would be flattered by my comparing them to Caligula or Nero, both feared as much for their political cunning as their cruelty, both ruling longer than one would imagine for a tyrant so vicious to sleep with his sister or murder his mother. I won't do that, however. I think of the illumined ones as latter-day stand-ins for Heliogabalus, the most decadent and depraved of Rome's emperors, a boy who let others deal with politics so he could have more time to dispense cruelty, and a high priest who, after reading the omens from the innards of a sacrificed child, walked on gold dust to his dinners of camels' heels, peacock tongues, and flamingo brains before he retired for the night with the whores and wives and sons of Rome. Or in the case of our rulers, French cuisine served on plates made from the melted treasures of Ur and Sumer and ancient Babylon set on a table of Lucite in which float fragments of clay tablets telling the Epic of Gilgamesh.

Of course, by shunning the limelight, the illumined ones believe they will avoid Heliogabalus' end: chased screaming through the streets of Rome by his own army and his own people till he was skewered in a public toilet and dragged back through the same streets on the end of a hook.

Perhaps.

They are not our emperor, they insist, merely his throne.

All that matters is that for now they live and they allow me to live.

But why me?

Supply and demand. For power, my dear children who think Kissinger is a heavy metal band, truly is the ultimate aphrodisiac. And Mistress Lysistrata supplies it very well.

In time, the illumined ones gave me to the First Patriot in gratitude for all he has done for them. Just as they gave me to Dr. Bergson. And in gratitude for all they have done to the world in my name as a citizen of the New Rome, I will return Dr. Bergson to them, wrapped in a red ribbon.

i think it's still Sunday. Definitely the perfect day to follow the perfect night. For all i fucking know it may be Monday morning. i want to sleep but i hurt too much. i fell asleep in my Mistress's bathroom after i scrubbed it twice with a toothbrush.

Big Lar is rounding up again. He scrubbed the whole bathroom once with a toothbrush and then he scrubbed the floor a second time where he'd soiled it.

After my Mistress kicked me awake again She made me lick the peanut butter from my bowl like a dog. On all fours and with my tongue. It was chunky. The peanut butter. i couldn't have any water until i was done. She would take the bowl from me She said. So i tried to chew and swallow what i could. Make loud gumming sounds. She said the noise i was making reminded Her of a certain deceased nonagenarian senator who loved to eat Her out. That means he was in his nineties She laughed. i nodded and lapped at the same time trying not to picture one more old corpse touching Her beautiful body.

The senator's tongue was mauve with age and cigar smoke, but it was as skilled at giving pleasure as it was at telling lies.

my Mistress kicked my dish away when She was tired of hearing me eat. She was angrier than yesterday. She and i both knew She'd had a long night. She told me to crawl over to the water dish and drink then rise and piss. Then She ordered me to take off my socks and shoes. Now that you're buck-naked it's time for you to do some chores She said.

I made Death's best friend crawl doggy-style all the way from his cell to my bedroom. It was an ungodly mess, which is actually an odd choice of words considered how many men with god complexes I had in that room the night before. And now it was time for their lapdog to clean it all up.

i had to take all the sheets and towels and carry them to the laundry room down the hall. Into the washing machine and then into the dryer and fold the towels and remake the bed. And in between i had to pick up all the condoms and lube packets off the floor. my Mistress sent Theo in to get all the toys and take them wherever She keeps them. i ignored him even though he said hello and goodbye by slapping my ass. When i was done making the bed he came back with a mop and bucket from my Mistress. He told me to mop the floor, working my way out of the room, and then take the bucket to the laundry room. Yes sir faggot sir i wanted to say. But i didn't. i just fucking mopped. It seemed like i'd been cleaning Her bedroom for several hours now. When i got to the laundry room, there was another bucket with a can of cleanser and a toothbrush and a note from my Mistress to clean every inch of Her bathroom if i wanted any inch of Her love.

I watched him on the cameras and had a good laugh. Then I forgot about him. Business first. It was several hours after I'd seen him start to clean the bathroom before I could remember to return. I was a bit disappointed. I'd expected much less from him. Even the grout was a shade or two of white just below bleached. But I was ever the professional. I stood in the door and coughed. He nearly wet himself. Then I began. "Not bad for a man. This floor's clean enough to eat shit off," I said. I squatted down in front of the Dr. Domestic so he could see and smell my pussy. He was bright red and smiling. He expected me to shit. So I slapped him hard.

You fool She said. You do what you are. You shit. i didn't know what to do. Just squat and go She said in Her softest voice yet. i couldn't balance on anything. i squatted and my legs began to shake. i was a little nervous. But that wasn't really it. It was the position. Normally i would have fallen over or gotten up. But She was watching. i shook. i turned red. i shook some more. And i pushed.

There is nothing more refreshingly odd but reaffirming than watching the mighty abase themselves with the lowly everyday acts that bind all of us to these waterskins. Shit or die, even for the nearly almighty.

Shit he did. And die he will do soon enough.

It was gross. And those nuts fucking killed coming out. And the worst was i liked that my Mistress was watching me. i'm so sick.

I thought it would have steamed or stunk of sulfur and brimstone. The palette of brown hues was both highlighted and dulled by the brilliance of the white tile. All very artistic. If the shit had been gilded I could have passed it off as a Jeff Koons.

i kept praying my Mistress wouldn't make me eat it.

"I'm so glad to see our mutual friends gave you the blood money I asked for," I said as I pulled a wad of bills out of my bread rack. I waved what was left of the three thousand dollars in his face. "You thought a few of these were for my tip." It was the first time I laughed honestly with my Pillmaking Dumb Boy. "A hundred dollars. I make this by the minute, you dick. And now you've gone and crapped all over my once-pristine bathroom. But there's no toilet paper to wipe your mess up. You're fucked, dude. But wait. What's this? I'm holding 1, 2, 3…17 Benjamins. Perfect. You can clean up your filth with your filthy lucre."

She handed me a hundred-dollar bill. i tried to get as much shit up with it as i could. It made a mess and got all over my fingers. That was stupid She said. Always overreaching. Well, brainiac, unless you're going to analyze its chemical composition, go flush that down the toilet. And don't you dare clog it or you head's going in after.

Seventeen-hundred dollars later, my bathroom floor looked like a pair of new underwear with one nasty racing stripe.

my Mistress left me with another toothbrush and a bucket of water. i was to clean the floor and them clean myself up in the shower. i don't know how long it took. i just remember soaping my crack for like thirty minutes. And wanting to throw a fucking fit when i turned the shower off and saw that none of the towels i'd washed all day ever made it back into the bathroom. There was nothing to dry myself off with. Not even a piece of toilet paper. Not even a spare hundred to wipe my feet with. So i went and sat on the toilet and waited till i was dry enough not to leave any wet footprints on the carpet in my Mistresses bedroom. i didn't even want to think what She would have done if i'd been stupid enough to do that. Minutes--hours--days pass and i think i'm good enough to make a run for it when i hear the door to Her bedroom open and close. It's my Mistress and Theo. And then, from the sound of it, it's Theo in my Mistress. They fucked for hours. And i feel asleep on the floor waiting for them to stop. Until Theo came into piss. He was as surprised as i was. And i have to give him credit for being the bigger man and not pissing on me when he so could have. He told me to get back to my room before our Mistress saw me. And i started to go but once i saw Her asleep i stopped. All i wanted to do was crawl in bed with Her, sleep at Her feet even. Anything. Just finally touch Her.

I'd heard my bigger man pissing. Actually, I followed the thunderous echo of the rumbling water in the bathroom out of my dreams and back into a somewhat deformed state of wakefulness. (Men love for the world to hear them piss; see, everybody, I've got one helluva noisemaker.) Through my half-closed eye, I watched a shape stand in the doorway. Backlit in blinding white like in every version of an alien abduction. Theo had let himself go to shit overnight was all I could think. Then a second shadow stood behind the first and told it to get out of the room before I woke up. It went. Who the fuck is that? I was asleep before I could answer.

my Mistress fucked me. She fucked me to death. She's laughing as She stands behind me and reads this. Mistress Lysistrata commands me to keep writing. Okay. Okay. i'm writing. See. Keep reading. What the fuck did You do to me?!

I have washed him clean in the baptismal font of the Church of the Free Market. This is not the same as showering him with gold. That is Old World. Dead world. This is the New World Order. Deader still. I have pushed his head under the waters, raging and white with the billion chits of one day's bids, and waited until the unseen hand of the Almighty Market decided to let him bottom out or rise, rise, rise.

She made me get on all fours in my pile of straw while She sat in a chair behind me. And She fucked me up the ass with Her shoe while She made me watch the TV.

I thought of sitting on Theo's back. Very de Sade. The family that fucks together…

I love Theo too much to do that.

Instead, I got a chair. A cushion covered in silk. A latex glove. A bottle of lube and strapped on a custom-made eight-inch pump in fuck-me-dead-red latex. It's cheap-looking but the boys love shiny objects. Well, as long as they don't end in a point. Which this did. A well-hidden one on the base of the Lucite heel. There, sealing the heel, was a material made of a newfangled polymer that would dissolve using the heat generated by the body itself to release the blood contained inside. The lube and fucking only increased the friction and sped up the process. What would take several hours happened under one. (Thank the Goddess.)

Amazing what you can get when you fuck the right people.

i saw my company logo and then She turned on the sound. All they could talk about was how the FDA wanted more tests on our new drug and that Narque was pulling out.

Someone had been a busy domme the morning before. I'd called my "friends" at Narque and the FDA. I told them that Bergson was being a good boy, but something told me Bergson might overreach if he got too big, too rich too fast--and these boys trust my gut impressions without question. All it took was two betrayals by men they trusted when I told them not too. When I'm not giving pleasure to the illumined ones, I'm observing how the new potential members do under duress. It's paid the bills for a life teaching could never have afforded me.

Narque said the drug worked now and they would not invest more. Then the usual bullshit about the impact on innocent victims and the American consumer. And then i watched 80% of my worth disappear as the stock price dropped each time it crossed the screen. Everyone must have sold their shares in Proteus in four hours. Except me.

Go bull market!

And all i could fucking do was sit there like a dog with a shoe up my ass and scream--maybe cry i don't remember now. But my Mistress was laughing so hard She was coming.

I was laughing at myself, believe it or not. Here I was avenging my years of complicity and I was finding myself aroused. Not by the sight of a nondescript man with an unbelievably tacky shoe fucking his ass. In. Out. In. Out. It looked like I was doing the gas-brake cha cha cha as I sped my way through rush hour in Washington. And not by the falling stock prices of Proteus. Nor the screams and cries and blubbery protestations to a god we all know, deep in our heart of hearts, to be stone-deaf. But by the rush of knowing that by fucking over the illumined ones' golden boy I was plucking the ley lines of real power to near perfection. Like a lyre. Sappho herself would have been proud. I had spent so many months composing my New World Order Symphony and now it was playing out so well I could almost hear the future roar of my intended audience.

I felt my chest flush.

Medusa's Blonde Highlights Revenge Tour had begun.

If only I could turn the illumined ones to stone. I knew I wouldn't topple them. No one person could. A billion might. But I would make them bleed. A stinging paper cut to make the lords of earth yelp.

I was wet with pride. I strummed along on my clit as I tapped my toe on Bergson's quaking ass. And I came so hard it felt like there was thin blue flame burning beneath my skin. To keep from falling out of the chair and letting slip my Trojan shoe before it had delivered my raiding party, I laughed. At myself. At Little and Big Lar. At life. At death. At the Goddess herself.

And then She tells me She's infected me. There was blood in the heel of Her shoe. She gave me AIDS.

Once again, we round up. I infected him with the strain of weaponized HIV he had genetically engineered. It can survive airborne for four hours. We sat those long hours together in his cell that I had specially retrofitted for just this moment. I infected us both so that he would die from his handiwork. Or not.

Now, I told him, there truly is a race for the cure.

She fucked me to death. i'm going to die. Why did you do this me?! WHY?!

Death and Broadway have many stages. Up to a month before I met our good doctor, I'd been taking in daily matinees of denial and bargaining like those out-of-towners who went to see Cats every time they were in New York. Then there came a moment when I was no longer mourning my brother's death or those of my parents (my years of bargaining with the illumined ones made sure that the latter two were of natural causes). Now I was welcoming my own.

That moment? When a garrulous client who liked to "confess" under "torture" told me about a weapon of mass destruction that would usher in the illumined ones' greatest dream: The United States of Earth. It was the golden egg laid by a project called Semper Vi. A project masterminded by the brightest of the illumined ones but made science fact by one genius. Dr. Lawrence H. Bergson III.

It was at that moment that St. Cassandra came to me and doused me with water and touched me with the Tazer she uses for a magic wand and I saw the light. The high-priced leather padded blindfold slipped from face. I was like my benefactress in more ways than name and family tragedy alone. I too was no more than a slave for a royal household, the house that conquered my country. But I wasn't going to die like Cassandra: an afterthought, slaughtered while Clytemnestra was Lizzy Borden-ing ol' king Agamemnon.

And Semper Vi?

Proteus was the front. It worked on curing AIDS--slowly for the paying customers and swiftly for those printing the money. Dr. B., my confessing client told me, had already engineered a mutation in HIV that created a form of the virus that progressed only so far and stopped, consumed with chasing its own tail and killing off any of its viral and more virulent kin. It was in the last six months, however, that Bergson truly earned his keep. He'd broken the virus' genetic code even further. He'd engineered it to surpass itself. Far and beyond what old-fashioned evolution had given us with drug-resistant HIV. He'd created an HIV virus that could exist in the open wilds of oxygen long enough to infect any who came in contact with it.

Weaponized HIV.

And why not weaponized Ebola? What's the point in killing your customers overnight? And who's going to drill the oil for less money than your own people? No, infect your enemy and have the drugs ready. How much money can China cough up? Beats selling them just Coke and cigarettes. And imagine how many petrodollars the Iraqis and Iranians we blew to bits could have pumped out. (The lack of treasure in the sands of Syria doomed them in any war plan.) It would have made the original $25,000-a-year price tag on Fuzeon, the bitters in many an AIDS cocktail nowadays, or the proposed sticker price of $40,000 for a year's worth of Elanovital seem as quaint as the ¢10 hamburger.

As the illumined ones say one unto the other: Render unto Caesar what is Caesar's; render unto God--oh, fuck Her.

(I've said the second half of that prayer myself. Not as an adversary like the illumined ones. But as a lonely child. If there is a big-G Goddess, She has a lot to answer for. Then again, it's hard to look after others when you're being gang-raped by the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost for two millennia.)

And as the illumined ones say unto us, their little ones, the children they suffer: Whatever the market will bear.

But airborne, you fret. Won't that spread? Like a plague. Like the plague. And it is the mother of all plagues.

Of course there would be a vaccine ready if the process were further along. Any child who knows his ABX-Files knows this. The illumined ones would already be inoculated against this death, perhaps they have been against all deaths. Perhaps this is why they like to be called the illumined ones.

Perhaps.

i am going to die. Even if i can stop the virus. Before the deadline my Mistress has given me. One year from today. All the specifics for synthesizing a vaccine or everything She's recorded will be shown to the world. She says that what CNN and Fox won't air, the Web will. They're going to kill me.

Yes, he will die. I will die. You will die. But he now has the luxury to choose the day of his death before our "betters" do.

My expiration date has long come and gone. It is only a matter of minutes before they will have read here that I've turned.

i did it. my Mistress is so happy She kissed me. i don't want to leave Her again. i will be killed now. Whoever i was before, that's already dead.

What do you know? Our Dr. Death is a genius after all. Weaponized HIV has a flaw. A brilliant flaw. It can be killed by Bergson's latest creation. A souped-up modification of the earlier version of the virus that attacks all other strains of HIV. I have renamed it Ouroboros, after the ancient symbol of the snake swallowing its own tail. A virus even the illumined ones don't possess.

Better still, it can be synthesized. (Click here.)

i am simply Mistress Lysistrata's mutinying mutator now. Her mutinator. Her gene gnome. Her dork lord. These are Her pet names for me. They mean more to me than the money i've lost. More than the family i've lost. They're safer without me. If i was smarter or a better person, i would have driven them away on purpose. i'm dangerous. Any obsessed fuck with a hardon is. i'm just on the losing side of obsessed fuckers. But i don't give a shit. i am Hers. i obey. Always. Even now. That's everything.

I did not think he would do all that he did. The Mother moves in mysterious ways. Blessed are the lost ones for they are everywhere. This is the illumined ones' greatest fear. It will be their Trojan Horse. Irony, thankfully, is the mother of all bitch goddesses.

* * *

If you are reading this now on a printed page, it means that the plug has been pulled--on my gadfly Web site (where I am now posting this and a thoroughly dry but detailed description of how to synthesize Dr. Bergson's Ouroboros strain of HIV to combat weaponized HIV), my company, my staff, Dr. Bergson, and myself. We are, I am no longer of service to the illumined ones.

Don't cry. Death was less painful than life. Thank heaven for little pills.

And irony of ironies, new school samizdat gives way to old. Bytes and bits into wood pulp, smashed and stretched and smoothed. Cyber-smoke signals congealed into ink. In the beginning as in the end was The Word.

Now you know a secret; pass it on.

For, if history--even the one penned by the victors--teaches us anything, it is this: The dead have the last hollow laugh.

I, Kassandra Angelaki, have never served any man. Ever.

They have served me.

I serve at the pleasure of the Goddess.