Chapter Seven

‘KEEP STILL, YOU SILLY boy! And try not to blink, or I might put your eye out!’

I tried not to breathe as Clio worked with swift deftness, flicking the tiny brush with neat little upward strokes, coating my eyelashes with the black make-up to put the finishing touches to my transformed face. Her own warm, sweet breath flowed over my countenance; her glistening lips were only inches above mine, which shone with the same bold shade she was wearing. My skin felt sealed in the cosmetic mask she had spent so much time and effort applying to my features, transforming me into a creature I scarcely recognised, exotic and weirdly thrilling.

It was oddly liberating. I felt safer behind the disguise, less shamed by my servility and the physical degradations of my lowly status in this new household. At first when they had brought me here to this much larger, older house, built in the colonial style, several miles from the township and the school where we had lived, I was crippled with shame, dumb with the ignominy of my situation. Adamu and Muriamu, Ant’s house servants, stared in utter disbelief that first day when I climbed naked out of the back of his truck, then they ran, shrieking with laughter at my pale, cringing frame before I crept into the shelter of the big old, thatched building. Even now, after almost a month, they invariably sniggered when they came in from their quarters behind the screen of bamboo bushes, and the veranda was still often crowded with youngsters and other workers from the farm or the workshops, all coming to stare at the naked mzungu.

I hated exposing myself to their mockery, so I was relieved to find that I was hardly required to leave the house. And there was more than enough for me to deal with in the life-changing aspects of my new existence as bond slave to my new mistress and master.

Now, as I sat there obediently on the bed, submitting myself to Clio’s intense and expert ministrations, I marvelled at the speed with which all three of us had adjusted to our contrasting roles. I had feared Ant Van Reis most. After all, he was the unfamiliar element in our intimate triangle, and there was still somewhere inside me that masculine sense, however subdued, of shame at having been usurped in my traditional role by his taking my wife from me. On the other hand, there was greater shame at my recognition of that undeniable facet of my sexuality which had cast its shadow over my relationship with Clio from the very beginning. “Less than a man” was a phrase that had recurred with increasing discomfort the longer we had remained together. That’s why we had come to this present crisis and its subsequent sea change.

She was brutally frank now. ‘This is how it should be,’ she announced, on that first day when we were all three settled in Ant’s spacious, untidily cosy living room. ‘How youshould be.’ She nodded at my unclothed frame. ‘Go through to the bedroom. Second on the right. Bring me my hairbrush. The long-handled one with the floral back.’ She clapped her hands briskly. ‘Come on! Chop chop! Fast as you can!’

Blushing furiously, I nevertheless turned and moved swiftly to obey, the hateful bass rumble of Van Reis’s chuckle behind me as I fled. I was shaking with nerves as I returned carrying the narrow brush and handed it to her. ‘Your first lesson, Marty. Come here.’ She moved over to the large cushions of the cane settee, and settled herself. She was wearing one of her many light cotton flowered dresses, and pushed its short skirt high up on her thighs, exposing her brown legs to an immodest degree. She patted them. ‘Spread yourself here, there’s a good boy. Hurry up!’

For an instant, I stared, my mouth open, and she repeated her command, still with crisp good humour. ‘Come along! Don’t make me angry, Marty.’

She was still smiling, as I moved somewhat tardily to lower myself across her cool bare thighs. I was deeply conscious of Ant’s soft laughter, the amusement in those grey eyes. Then I felt myself crushed against her as I hung there face downward, my impotent sex so close to her own. My buttocks clenched at the sudden touch of her cool hand running over my curves. ‘Such a lovely little arse, don’t you think, Ant?’

‘If you’re that way inclined!’ he laughed easily.

‘Oh, you know what they say. Variety is the spice of life and all that, eh?’ She was caressing my bottom still, letting her nails trail lightly along the tight cleft, and I felt my excitement growing, throbbing against her now warming flesh. And from the sudden deepening chuckle she gave, I guessed she was aware of it. ‘Now now! You naughty boy! Lie still and I’ll be gentle with you – even though it’s not your first time!’

She laughed merrily as she delivered the first blow: a vigorous enough crack, which rang like a shot and I jerked at the flash of burn across my behind. My heels jerked upward and I cried out involuntarily. The strokes fell swiftly, with loud reports, and my bottom clenched and lifted, my feet scissoring at the fusillade that sent the fire scorching through my flanks. ‘Please! Stop!’ I pleaded, only dimly aware of the indignity through the flare of pain. It was soon over, and she pushed me vigorously clear of her, so that I rolled at her feet as she smoothed down her crumpled dress. I was mortified at their grins. I stood and massaged my stinging behind.

‘Say thank you to your mistress.’

I gaped at Ant’s jovial words, then shivered at the deep, deep thrill that quivered right through me at their import.

My thoughts returned quickly to the present as Clio gave one last flick at the rich curl of my black eyelashes and stood back, staring appraisingly. ‘There! You look absolutely gorgeous. I’m quite jealous! Take a look at yourself.’ She gestured towards the dressing table mirror, and I stared in fascination at the transformed image gazing back at me: the subtly made-up face, feminised, yet harmonising strangely with the new silk-smoothness of the slender form beneath.

Just a few days before, I had accompanied Clio and Ant on a rare trip out of the house and the compound. For this treat I was given a crisp new white kanzu, the traditional garment worn by native males after the advent of the colonial missionaries, which was an exact replica of the Victorian nightshirt. Its thin cotton was scarcely proof against the power of the direct glare of tropical sunlight, as I soon learnt, to my intense embarrassment – I was not given anything to wear beneath it, my only other item of attire being a pair of cheap rubber flipflops. However, after my recent habitual nudity, such comprehensive cover seemed luxurious, coming as it did almost to my ankles. And I soon learnt to avoid the full blaze of the tropic sun whenever possible.

Although my shameful presence in the new household of my wife and her lover was an avidly salacious topic of sniggering speculation among the town’s small expatriate community, none of them had actually seen me in my degrading role, and my heart began to beat rapidly with apprehension at the thought of being exposed to their scorn. It was with a great sense of relief that I noted that Ant was turning, not into the township, but onto the long, narrow, potholed strip of tarmac that ran for 350km to the capital. Then relief was replaced by fresh apprehension as I speculated on what lay ahead for me. My fears were fuelled by the long journey, for already I had learnt better than to ask. “Speak when spoken to” was a lesson I had absorbed quickly. But even myalarmingly vivid imagination failed to anticipate what lay ahead, until Ant dropped both Clio and myself off outside the fashionable beauty salon where Clio had been a regular client whenever she could make it over the past year and more. ‘See you at the City Bar round about four!’ Ant called, with a final wave before pulling into the busy traffic of one of the main boulevards.

The salon, and the expensive boutique to which it was attached, was owned by Madame Carina, a Greek. She was a striking individual, both small in stature and extremely slim. It was impossible to assess her true age, though she was clearly past the bloom of youth. Her features were finely moulded, aristocratic looking, her complexion deeply tanned, whether by nature or by artifice. ‘It’s an all-over tan!’ Clio had chuckled after one of her early visits, which, in view of the smirking lascivious murmurs and hints of Madame Carina’s ambivalent sexual preferences from the womenfolk, made me wonder just how Clio had made such a discovery. ‘She believes in a hands-on approach!’ Clio had chuckled. ‘Especially for the massage!’

My embarrassment flooded through me as I followed Clio obediently into the salon. Madame Carina swept forward with a cry of delighted recognition. Her arms opened wide as she embraced Clio enthusiastically. She was almost six inches shorter than my wife. Her figure was slight – her breasts were scarcely outlined in the flowing full-length kitengegown of vivid flowered patterns she was wearing. She reached up, nuzzled at Clio’s neck and ear with an intimacy and enthusiasm that stopped just short of being questionable. Clearly, an appointment had been arranged, for she was immediately ushered through the curtained doorway towards the inner sanctum. While I stood there in blushing uncertainty, Madame Carina released Clio and came up close to me. For a wild instant, I thought she was about to embrace me too, but instead she raised a delicate hand and brushed its fragrant palm in light caress across the base of my neck and my jaw, lingering enough to make it in its own way every bit as intimeas her greeting of Clio.

But then suddenly they were abandoning me, both grinning widely, and Madame nodded towards the long narrow couch, elevated like an operating table and covered by a spotless white sheet. ‘Make yourself comfortable,’ the Greek smiled, in that husky, attractive tone. ‘Take off your clothes. All of them.’ She turned towards the grinning Clio, one long arched eyebrow raised. ‘Complete depilation, you said?’

Clio snickered and nodded. ‘Full works. Brazilian.’

As they moved out, both laughing, Madame Carina spoke to two figures who appeared in the doorway, then she and my wife disappeared arm in arm.

The two young girls who came in were outstandingly lovely. Their light brown complexions, and the comparative fineness of their features, indicated that they came from the western, mountainous region. Their breasts thrust pertly against the snug restraint of their white overalls. All at once, everything was yet again literally out of my hands. Ashamed as I was, I was already familiar with that sense of helplessness, of total incapacity to act of my own accord, and surrendered as they quickly relieved me of my sole covering, and my insubstantial footwear, and pressed me back naked on the crisp coolness of the sheet under me.

It was a lengthy business, the depilation of my body, in spite of the fact that I considered myself almost totally hairless to begin with, apart from the little cluster of curls over my pubis. I was aroused. Who wouldn’t, being so intimately ministered to by two such lovely girls? And they clearly found the experience more than a little out of the ordinary, judging by their often poorly suppressed giggles. But, fortunately or no, my excitement was scarcely visible by any physical signs, except the hint of a little less limpness when their white gloved fingers held my prick out of harm’s way to complete the removal of the last few pubic hairs from its immediate vicinity, and the few stray tendrils from the already satin softness of my balls. The application of a heavily perfumed moisturising lotion with which they covered every portion of my newly exfoliated limbs and body, brought both embarrassment and guilty pleasure of a totally different kind.

* * *

Clio laid the last of her cosmetic tools aside as I stared fascinated at my reflection in the long mirror. ‘There now! Aren’t you the sexiest little lady-boy the world has ever seen? I swear! If it wasn’t for this little tiddler, I’d be jealous as hell of you!’ She gave a painfully playful flick with her forefinger to my penis, which, beneath the newly denuded, smooth milky patch of my pelvis, looked more diminutive than ever. ‘I might still be!’ she continued, in her jocular tone. ‘You look so damned good Ant might even start fancying you. Wait till he gets a look at you in all your finery!’

She kept me facing the mirror, standing close behind me, and pulled me in to her, her chin resting on my shoulder, her breath rousingly warm on my ear. She let her right hand trail over the silkiness of my chest, down the very slight curve of belly, to rest on my cock, which, unimpressive as it might be, quivered and sent thrilling darts right through me at her gentle, mocking caress. No doubt she felt the tightening clench of my buttocks against her belly and the front of her thighs. ‘I think you could turn anyone into a bum boy, you minx!’

My prick was undoubtedly stirring now. The rosy head, almost as long as the wrinkled, thickening shaft that bore it, lifted, trembled, and the movement was transmitted to her delicate fingers. She gave her own thick murmur of pleasure. ‘Or would you prefer to go the whole hog, my little tranny?’ I could feel her lips brushing the lobe of my ear at her sexy whisper. Her manicured, painted nails grazed lightly along the fold of my foreskin. ‘European clinics are far too expensive. But there’s a place in India – Ant was telling me – they take young boys – some sort of ritual thing, religious, maybe – they take the lot off! Balls and all!’ Her hand suddenly moved, opened, the fingers like claws, the nails digging in as she cupped and clutched at my testicles, and the newly shrinking tube above. She gave the captive flesh a vigorous shake. ‘How does that grab you, Marty? You’d be a realMartina then, eh?’

She chuckled and released me with a vigorous little shove. ‘Meanwhile, you’d better make sure you’re a good little boy, or we might just decide to do a DIY job and de-knacker you ourselves!’

Despite the light-hearted way in which they were delivered, Clio’s words stayed with me, especially as, over the following days, she became almost obsessed with her new fancy to unsex me, at least figuratively. She treated me like a doll, making up my face, insisting on day and night lotions, the lavishing of care and expensive creams on my skin, so that my body became softer, and more feminine, and, both to my secret shame and delight, my mind too began to transpose. There had, of course, always been that tendency in me, from my earliest days. It had led me to my present bizarre situation. How can I deny it? I still had that helpless feeling, an insidious part of the thrill, of being caught up in the web of my own deviant fantasy, which made me victim, and slave. Only now the worlds of fantasy and reality had meshed, or collided, in one exotic confusion – dominion and submission, pain and pleasure, all inextricably mixed, and holding me firmly as any physical chains and fetters.

I became Clio’s “creature” in almost every sense of that kinky word. True, I had been subservient to a degree throughout our life together, but now her possession of me was complete. She ruled me, completely and literally. She would sit there on the edge of the bed, or on the cushions of the settee in the living room, and command me to fetch the hairbrush. Off I would pad, to bring the instrument of chastisement to her and prostrate myself over her knee, to receive the stinging blows. They were painful enough, but the ritual would arouse me just as much as it hurt, that masochistic melangeof pain and pleasure which had always been part of my nature.

And in those first days I really did feel myself to belong to herrather than to her lover. Not that I didn’t recognise his domination over me. But there were fewer demonstrations of his mastery. For a start, I saw far less of him. He had his businesses to run – the stock farm, the transport. Then there was the hunting, and sport too. He spent a lot of his leisure time with his male cronies – he was “a man’s man”, as they say. Whereas Clio had never rated socialising. Real relationships for her had to involve passion. And since falling for Ant, all her desire was focused solely on him. She virtually shunned her old acquaintances. Which meant that she spent many hours of the day alone – except for me. I really washer slave – her faithful attendant: Charmian and Iris to her Cleopatra; her companion, her ladyboy, her figurative eunuch.