The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Bullshit.”

The day’s meetings at our industry association conference were over and it was time for drinks and snacks before the dinner, the too-loud band, and inevitable inspirational speaker. I’d been regaling Larry, the executive director of the association, with my views on how an important, emerging technology I’d worked on, code named Dragonfly, would affect our business, the industry, and society in general. I was just warming to my topic, dusting off the socioeconomic repercussions, when her clear, contralto voice stopped me cold with that single, jarring word.

“Excuse me?”

I turned to see a medium-height blonde with expensively streaked hair, blood-red nails, and aquamarine eyes, attractively dressed in a tailored suit. I suppressed my anger as I looked at her with a raised eyebrow. She looked right back at me with steely defiance.

“I said, ‘Bullshit.’”

Larry obviously knew her and he reddened a bit as he said, “Uh, Lucky, this is MaryJane, MaryJane, Lucky.” He gave her a brief rundown of my background and told me that she was one of the hottest consultants in the industry, that she had just gone out on her own from a prestigious firm. I didn’t really need the backgrounder; everybody knew MaryJane, or EmJay, as she called herself, by reputation, if not in person. She nodded in agreement at his glowing words, challenging me with her eyes the whole time, as if daring me to disagree.

I smiled tightly at her and said, “Are you always this much fun on a first date?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she smiled right back, with a don’t-get-cute-with-me expression. “I read what you said when you were quoted in that trade rag last month. I respect what you’ve done with the technology, but you’re dead wrong about how it needs to be rolled out and integrated.”

“I’m sure I’ll hate myself for asking this, but what, exactly, did you find so wrongheaded?”

She went on to describe her plan for introducing the standard, licensing the technology, and rolling it out in a variety of products. Her plan was long on incentives to the companies that would use the technology, but short on customer benefits, and didn’t address demand creation at the customer level at all. I could see why she wowed ‘em in the boardroom, though—she conveyed excitement and authority. I looked at Larry for clues to his opinion, but he remained poker-faced. Damned politician.

I looked at the ground thoughtfully, one hand supporting my opposite elbow, the other hand on my chin, and took the time to check out her legs. Heavy-ish bones for a woman, muscular calves. Sturdy, but not unattractive ankles, shapely feet tucked into bone-colored pumps with a medium-height stacked heel. She shifted impatiently as she waited for my reply, and I let my gaze drift up slowly, not attempting to hide the fact that I was giving her the once-over.

Her thighs were solid, filling out her sheath skirt, flaring out to womanly hips, which turned back in sharply, suggesting a narrow waist. Her bustline was small under the silky, scoop-necked shell, and she was narrow through the shoulders, despite the padding in her jacket. Her neck was long and elegant, disappearing into her hairline and curving pleasantly into her jaw. Her lips were as red as her nails, full, expressive lips, maybe a little too big for her face. Flat cheekbones, slightly complicated nose, high forehead, thick, but well shaped brows arching over those aquamarine eyes.

Which were now staring angrily at me as pink dots the size of quarters appeared on each cheek. Good parts, but somehow the whole seemed greater than their sum.

“Well?”

“I’m tempted to give your plan the same brief review that you gave mine, but that would be doing it an equal injustice. It deserves more consideration and reflection than that,” I smiled.

She took the compliment and mild rebuke in stride, and said, with a tight smile, “Well, perhaps we’ll get to discuss it further.”

Larry beamed, and put a hand on each of our shoulders as he said, “That would terrific! Just what the association needs. I have an idea...”

At that moment, the too-loud band stopped playing. Larry’s assistant tapped on the podium microphone and asked everyone to take a seat, that dinner was about to be served.

EmJay walked over to a table near the band with a “reserved” sign on it. I started to head for the table where I’d seen Tami, a cute little engineer from one of the Texas consortiums, sit. I’d asked her to save me a seat and was hoping to become much better acquainted with her during the conference. She had short, jet-black hair, Asian features, and was sharp as hell, making something of a name for herself in technical marketing. I knew she was a regular on the “nerd bird” flight between Austin and San Jose, and I was planning on pitching her a line about teaching her self-hypnosis to help deal with the stresses and strains of incessant air travel. And if something else came from our hypnotic encounters, well, that would be just fine, wouldn’t it? I was hoping for a deeper relationship. Much deeper.

My reverie was shattered as Larry grabbed me by the arm. “Uh, Lucky, I found what you and EmJay were discussing to be fascinating...”

Fascinating? We’d exchanged opposing points of view and a couple of barbs.

“... and I think we should pursue it further. EmJay has volunteered to head up a task force to plan the rollout and coordinate the member companies’ efforts. Since you’re one of the key people behind the technology, I think your presence on the committee would be invaluable.” Beneath his smooth demeanor, he had a pleading look.

I mentally smacked myself on the forehead. Larry, having heard my viewpoint, knew that if I didn’t participate, EmJay’s approach would screw it up. But he needed her high profile, her energy, and her brook-no-opposition approach, too. I realized in a flash that I had no choice but to join the committee, if only to keep EmJay under control. He guided me towards the table with the “reserved” sign, saying that we could discuss it over dinner. I looked over my shoulder to Tami, with a stricken expression as Larry led me in the opposite direction. She made a sad little face at me, tilted her head, and stuck out her lower lip in a comic pout. Her lip looked like a dark, tasty, red cherry. I must have whimpered or something, because Larry half-turned to me and gave me a funny look.

He sat me down at the table, directly across, of course, from EmJay. She gave me another one of those looks, and the too-loud band started playing again. Dinner was pretty much as you’d expect—shouting over a mediocre meal at a woman who both attracted and irritated me. Just like my first marriage. I could see Tami over EmJay’s shoulder, and she would occasionally make a face at me. She was one hell of a technical marketer, and evidently a bit of a flirt, too. At one point, EmJay realized that I wasn’t hanging on her every word and turned around to see what I was looking at. She saw Tami, who smiled sweetly, then turned to her dinner companion. EmJay turned back to me, rolling her eyes with that “Men!” expression that women learn when they’re about 13.

Conversation, or the argument, if you prefer, got a little easier when the band took a break. We actually made a little progress under Larry’s fawning prompting, agreeing to co-chair the committee and recruit other members, so that all the big players were represented.

The band returned, and struck up a lively swing number, right out of the 1940s. EmJay looked at Larry, looked at me, looked at the band, and looked back at me.

“Can you dance?” She yelled over the music.

Slightly dumbfounded at the question, I nodded in affirmation. I come from a time when boys and girls took ballroom dancing lessons in elementary school and went to dances. As men who can (and will) dance have become an increasing rarity, this social skill has pleased and surprised more than a few women.

“To this?”

I nodded again. Next thing I knew, she’d come around the table and grabbed me by the hand. She dragged me out onto the dance floor, where we were utterly alone. I picked up the beat and we started doing a jitterbug, or more properly a Lindy hop.

With a dance like the Lindy, it takes a minute for you to scope out a new partner, figure out what spins and twirls she knows, and how aggressively she wants you to execute them. EmJay was right there from the start. We were side by side, doing the basic step, step, back-step move, her right hand in my left, my right on her waist. I lifted my arm to spin her out, with the merest pressure on her back with my right hand. She was gone like a shot, twirling out to arm’s length, letting our outstretched arms snub her spin, both of us leaning back as our arms went taut. I reeled her back in, pulling her to my side, and spun her back out again on the next downbeat. She used my arm for leverage as she went under it, putting some additional speed into her spin. I held her at arm’s length and reached out my other hand for her free hand. The step brought us together, apart, together, apart, as we circled one another. She was putting some hip into it, and her saucy moves had captured the attention of guys around the periphery of the dance floor.

Like the whirling dervishes of Sufi fame, I find a circling dance to be somewhat hypnotic. You’re focused on your partner, and she’s more or less a fixed point as the rest of the room swirls around you and fades into the background. You’re her focal point, too, and even a fast dance can create a strong sense of intimacy. EmJay surprised me again, though, by pulling me close as the dance step brought us together, our bodies almost touching. We stepped away, then she snapped me in close again. I pulled her arms out straight on either side of her, and stepped in with a little turn, so that our hips grazed. Then out, then in again, so that our opposite hips touched. She was a blur of floating hair, flashing eyes, rounded calves, and flaring hips. Her exertion re-energized her perfume, and I caught a whiff of vanilla and something darker.

Still holding both hands, I spun her, then myself, then spun her one-handed out to arm’s length. I could almost envision her in a poodle skirt, starchy white blouse with a Peter Pan collar, and a ponytail. I spun myself, catching her free hand, then twirled her back in. She leveraged off my arm again and spun herself in close to me. I caught her opposite hand as she turned in, so that she was held tight against me by one of her arms and one of mine. Her left buttock, muscled and firm, pressed into my hip, then she went to spin herself out on the next beat. I kept my arms in place around her waist (which was, as predicted, slender), and held her there through the next measure, but letting my feet keep the beat. She turned her head sharply and looked at me in surprise, her hair flying out and brushing my cheek, releasing another little cloud of scent. Her bottom swished across my hip to my crotch, and then back again. The move felt intentional.

I held her there for another couple of beats, then unwound her from the little prison formed by my arms. I was feeling a little turned on, and she had a pleasant glow in her cheeks. Hmm. Maybe our relationship would improve. We did some other fancy stuff, and generally looked like we’d been dancing together for years. She followed leads beautifully and communicated what she wanted to do with subtle hand pressure and weight shifts. The song ended and I twirled her out with a flourish, and we both applauded the band. I turned to EmJay with a smile.

“Thanks,” she said, with unemotional finality, as she walked off the floor, calling to a woman that she wanted to talk to.

I felt somewhat deflated and kind of stupid standing there, even though others had joined us on the floor. I walked out to the foyer area to get a soda, semi-oblivious to the good wishes and attaboys I got from the watchers. I was thinking about the only other time I’d danced with a woman who was overtly sexual during the dance, and stone cold the next minute. It was at a good-bye party for a former coworker, and we were in the back room at some steak and ribs place close to the office. There was a jukebox in the room, and one of my guys had hacked it so that it didn’t need quarters anymore. I can’t remember her name, but our dance is etched in my memory.

It was a medium slow song, and she asked me to dance. I’d danced with half a dozen other women, so I didn’t think anything of it. She put her head against my chest, one arm tightly around my back, and slipped her leg between mine, so that I could feel the warmth of her crotch on my thigh. She stepped from foot to foot in time with the music, my leg trapped between hers, leading me around the floor, holding me tight. I immediately sprang to life, and was throbbing against her, just below her waist. She shifted a little so that her hipbone pressed into my rod and made a side-to-side motion across it, all the while pressing herself against my thigh. I could practically feel her steamy warmth taking the crease out of my pants leg.

The song ended, and she pulled free of my still-clutching arms, like EmJay, with a simple, almost expressionless “Thanks.” After all but dry-humping me, she walked back to her friends without so much as a smile. I thought about it on and off for years. Did she have a thing for me? Was I supposed to make the next move? Or maybe that was just how they danced wherever she was from, hot and close, maybe analogous to those Middle Eastern cultures where it’s OK to fondle your kids’ privates in public. Some years later, when the lambada made its brief, spectacular appearance to the club scene, I idly wondered whether little whatshername was behind it.

All my thinking about it wasn’t getting me answers, though, and turned from the bar to seek out Tami. I didn’t have to look too hard; she was steps away, approaching me with a grin.

“Lucky! You’ve got some great moves—I’m beginning to see a whole other side of you!”

“Yeah, well, it makes me popular with all the maiden aunts at family weddings.”

“I’ll be it makes you popular with the not-so-maiden aunts, too,” she said archly.

I waggled my eyebrows at her appreciatively and apologized for not having been able to sit with her at dinner. And missed the setup for a nice hypnosis lesson afterwards, I thought.

“So what was the big powwow with Larry and EmJay?”

“Oh, forming up a committee to coordinate the rollout of Dragonfly.”

She nodded. Her consortium had been involved in developing the VLSI and cross-licensing it to several chip companies. She’d been involved in some of the negotiations, which were always delicate.

I brightened. “Speaking of which, you should be on that committee!” I had quick, fast-forward visions of Tami and me in a number of locales, as we met around the country.

“Oh, I don’t know, I’m not sure I could work with EmJay,” she demurred.

“I’m co-chairing the committee with her.”

She looked at me appraisingly, tilting her head in that fetching way. “Hm. That could make it tolerable.”

I encouraged her, and we talked about the enormity of the coordination task and the fun of making it all work on schedule. I told her she could be the PR liaison if she would also be the recording secretary, a good job, actually, since her name would go on all the press releases. I’d pretty much gotten her agreement when a bunch of women from her dinner table came out of the ballroom. They’d made plans over dinner to go out on the town, and it was clearly a girls-only event. No action, hypno or otherwise, tonight, I thought, as I wished them a good time.

We had the first committee meeting at EmJay’s new offices. She was proud of her digs and wanted to show them off. A dozen of us flew or drove in from various places by noon, started with a working lunch, and worked through the afternoon. EmJay and I had hammered out an agenda and Tami had distributed it, and I thought things would go smoothly. They didn’t. EmJay challenged me at every twist and turn, forced people to take sides, and generally made the process miserable for everyone.

We broke in the late afternoon, and people drifted off to check into their hotels, make dinner reservations, check voicemail, and such. Tami sat at the conference table, finishing up her notes, then slumped back in her chair, a bit wiped out from the strenuous afternoon. She’d tried to mediate a couple of times, then given up. EmJay and I taped some of the flip charts to the wall, not speaking to one another other than a terse, “Hand me the tape.” I had a pounding headache. I was wasted.

I sat down in one of the chairs, closed my eyes, breathed deeply ,and let it out in a big sigh. I needed to get my act back together. I was tired of her baiting me and tired of stupidly rising to her bait. I was about to say my key phrase to myself when EmJay said, “Are you sleeping? What are you doing?”

I half-opened my eyes. “Going on vacation. And you’re not invited.”

“What?”

“Self-hypnosis, EmJay,” I sighed. “I’m going away for a week or two and I’ll be back in five minutes with a much better attitude.” I wasn’t trolling for subjects; I just needed to get my head back together.

I closed my eyes again, triggered myself, and went swirling down some dark, musty storm drain that finally emptied into a gently flowing stream in a verdant forest. I could hear EmJay’s voice echoing down the storm drain, and an exchange with Tami. Then I was a leaf on the stream, turning this way and that. Clear water cleansed me and cool air refreshed me. I left their voices behind and floated on down.

I gave myself appropriate suggestions and my little leaf-self soon fetched up on a sandy beach. I sprouted little legs, went through a billion years of evolution, and became human again, with a whole new outlook. I opened my eyes, stretched, and glanced at my watch. Five minutes. I looked around, mildly surprised to see EmJay and Tami staring at me.

“Didn’t you hear us?” Tami asked.

“You were like, unconscious,” said EmJay.

“No, and yes,” I said, pleased to find that I was looking at EmJay and actually smiling.

Tami’s almond eyes were wide. “Did you really, um, self-hypnotize yourself?”

EmJay was looking skeptical. “Maybe you have that sleeping sickness or sleep apnea or whatever.”

I looked at Tami, ignoring EmJay. “Yup. I do this to relax, clear my head, recharge my batteries, and tap into some extra energy, whatever. Part of me knew you were still in the room, but most of me didn’t care—no offense.”

“And you can just turn this on and off whenever you want?” EmJay’s look grew more skeptical.

“That’s right,” I said with equanimity. I gave the usual explanations about how it’s a natural, but altered, state of consciousness, but focused and amplified, and how I could give myself suggestions.

“So what did you tell yourself to do?”

I continued to smile at EmJay, feeling mellow. “Well, after I gave myself suggestions to feel relaxed, refreshed and recharged, I told myself to listen to your ideas, to evaluate them, and to give you appropriate feedback, and to separate those activities from emotional content. I imagined a scenario where we both aired our conflicting ideas calmly and plotted courses of action and outcomes, so that we would choose the better course.”

She reddened a little. “Hmph. Well I guess we won’t know if it worked until tomorrow. But it still sounds like a crock to me.”

Tami said, “Oh, I don’t think so! I’d love to learn how to do that. I mean, look at the difference in him. He does look like he’s been on vacation.”

Things were looking better and better. I smiled some more and told her I’d be happy to teach her. She asked me how, and I said that the easiest way would be for me to simply hypnotize her to orient her to the mental and physical state, and give her the suggestions so that she could bring it about herself whenever she wanted.

Tami started to say something, but EmJay cut her off.

“So first you say you can hypnotize yourself, and now you can hypnotize others, too? And you’re going to hypnotize her so that she can hypnotize herself?” She snorted derisively.

“EmJay, I’ve hypnotized hundreds of friends, acquaintances, and coworkers. And hypnosis and self-hypnosis are all the same thing, anyway. I’ve taught the technique many times.”

She was going into attack mode again. “I dare you to hypnotize her,” she said, pointing at Tami, who was a little taken aback by her outburst. “I dare you to hypnotize her right now!”

Dare? What is this, sixth grade? I calmed myself.

“If were to hypnotize Tami right now, it would be because she wants me to, not because you want me to,” amazed again that I was still smiling. “And I prefer not to have an audience. I have nothing to prove to you.”

EmJay opened her mouth and closed it again. Tami spoke up. “I do want you to hypnotize me. I want to learn how to hypnotize myself. And I don’t mind if EmJay watches.”

EmJay seemed pleased at this. I turned to her, looked her right in the eye, and said, “If you really want to watch, I’d like you to sit quietly. Sit quietly, observe carefully, and say nothing. Keep an open mind, open your mind to what I’m doing, and you’ll be pleasantly surprised.”

She bridled a bit at what she thought was an admonishing lecture. I held her gaze until she finally gave a grudging “OK.”

I smiled, nodded, and said, “Good. Very good.”

I chose a chair for Tami to sit in, and arranged another one at right angles to it, a few feet away, and gestured for EmJay to sit there. “So you can see, so you can watch what I’m doing.”

I stood. I wouldn’t normally, but I wanted to position myself where both women could see me easily. I began an eye-closure induction, which I also wouldn’t normally do, but which was perfect for my rapidly developing plan.

I fished in my pocket for a quarter and held it up above their heads, showing them the tails side.

“I’d like you to look at the quarter now, look at it, look closely at it, see if you can see the eagle’s head. Look closely and concentrate, try to make out the eagle’s eye. Even if you can’t make it out, imagine that you can see the eye; you can see a tiny silvery dot, a tiny silvery eye staring back at you. Concentrate on the eagle’s eye, concentrate on it, and listen to the sound of my voice.”

EmJay was looking at Tami, who was gazing intently at the quarter. Her eyes, as I’d hoped, followed Tami’s line of sight up towards the quarter. She looked at me, but I kept my gaze on the quarter, as if there were no other worthwhile thing in the world to look at. She looked at it, looked back at Tami, then at the quarter again as I continued my patter.

“Concentrate on the quarter, watch it carefully, concentrate on the eagle’s eye, the tiny, silvery eye, staring back at you. And as you continue to concentrate on the eagle’s eye, you may find that your eyes feel a need to blink. It’s OK to let them blink, let them blink whenever they want.”

Both women blinked.

“And you may find that concentrating on the eagle’s eye makes your eyes feel a little burning and tired. Burning and tired, and you may feel the need to blink again.” They both blinked again. “And you may have noticed in that brief moment while your eyes were closed that the tired, burning feeling was relieved, that they felt very comfortable. The next time you blink, take note of that pleasant feeling in your eyes, take a moment to savor it, to feel how good it feels while your eyes are closed.”

Tami’s eyes closed, then opened. EmJay blinked rapidly a couple of times, then looked at Tami. She was fighting it. But the whites of her eyes had reddened a bit; she was definitely feeling the effects.

“As you continue to concentrate, you feel the tired feeling in your eyes becoming stronger, your eyes are becoming more and more tired. Each time you close them, the feeling becomes more comfortable, more delicious, more desirable. You feel the lids becoming heavy, heavier, very heavy, wanting to close. Let them close; enjoy that delicious, comfortable feeling as they get heavier and heavier, as they relax and close.”

Tami’s eyes were closed. EmJay was staring fixedly at Tami, her eyes heavily lidded, redder than before. Hypnotizing multiple subjects is always an annoyance because people have their own pace, different levels of susceptibility. The fact that EmJay didn’t know that she was being hypnotized wasn’t really an issue; she probably thought at this very moment that she was sharp as a tack, observing Tami.

“Let your mind drift back over the last few minutes, remember how it felt as your eyes became more and more tired, how comfortable they were when you blinked, how nice it felt to close them. How very tired they are, how nice it would feel to close them, how they want to close, to remain closed.”

I knew that the repetition would just reinforce Tami’s early trance, and that she wouldn’t even notice the shift back to the present tense. EmJay’s eyes closed for a moment. She opened them, then closed them again. They stayed closed. I could guess what she was feeling—that she would just close them for a moment, that she’d open them again real soon, but in the meantime....

“Notice how pleasant and relaxed your eyes feel, how that pleasant, relaxed feeling is beginning to spread to other parts of your body, radiating out from your eyes, relaxing your facial muscles, your neck muscles, spreading down across your shoulders, into your arms, your chest, and back, down into your lower body, your legs, all the way down to your toes. Let your body become more and more relaxed as you follow the sound of my voice, relaxing more, every muscle becoming relaxed, very relaxed, deeply relaxed.”

Tami’s head was lolling; EmJay was fighting to keep her head erect, but losing the battle as her neck muscles would relax, then snap back a little, but not quite as high as before. I continued to deepen their trances until I was sure that EmJay wouldn’t rouse herself spontaneously. I took them through several deepening exercises, and soon both of them had that sack-of-laundry look of the deeply entranced.

I took a moment out, letting them drift and relax with no suggestions, and studied them. EmJay in her beige suit, a white shell covering her small chest, her powerful thighs and calves. She must work out on a Stairmaster, I thought, probably to keep her figure from going bowling-pin. Tami’s delicate Asian features, neatly wrapped in a black suit dress with big gold buttons. Lean, taut, perfectly proportioned, but with a delicate, doll-like quality that drove a lot of guys wild, me included.

“In a moment, I’m going to place my hand on your shoulder. As I do so, you will become more relaxed, more open, highly attuned to the sound of my voice and the meaning of my words. During the times that my hand is not on your shoulder you may hear my voice or not, but the words will pass through you and have no meaning for you. You’ll rest and relax in this very pleasant state.”

I placed a hand on EmJay’s shoulder and said, “As you continue to rest and relax, I want you to envision our meeting tomorrow, and all subsequent meetings. See yourself working collaboratively, cooperatively, attuned to the larger goals of the committee, listening to and evaluating multiple points of view, using your considerable analytical skills to evaluate fairly, without prejudice, without assumptions, your goals firmly focused on the overall success of Dragonfly. See yourself conducting such a meeting. Feel the approval and admiration from the people around you. Feel the special pleasure of meshing with other team members, working harmoniously, and in synchrony.”

I didn’t want to lay it on too thick, and I didn’t want to mindfuck her to the point that she was useless, agreeing with everything. But neither the project nor I could stand another day like today.

“EmJay, you’re known for your strong, well-founded opinions and your ability to express them. See yourself harnessing, directing, focusing that power, attuning it to the weighted deliberations of the committee, putting its power behind consensus, consensus that you helped to shape. Want this to happen. See it happening in your mind’s eye. Let it happen.”

OK, enough personality repair. I gave her a trigger phrase, and told her that in a minute or two her eyes would open, that she’d be wide awake, that she’d have no recollection of having closed them, and no memory of the things I’d told her, but that my words would become more and more true, that their effect would grow stronger and stronger in the minutes that elapsed before she awakened. I was taking a calculated risk, not having tested her depth or assessed her suggestibility. But what the heck—things would either get a lot better or a lot worse.

I lifted my hand from her shoulder and placed it on Tami’s. Her bones felt delicate, birdlike, under my fingers. She slumped a little more as she slipped deeper into the trance.

I saw EmJay rousing, her head coming up, eyes opening. She started a bit, as though she’d been caught napping,

“Tami, continue to rest and relax, deeply relaxed, a very pleasant sensation, one that you can return to whenever you like, as you hear the phrase, ‘Tomiko, deeply relaxed.’” I used her formal Japanese name, figuring that it would connect at a deeper level than her nickname. “As you hear the phrase, ‘Tomiko, deeply relaxed,’ your body will relax, your mind will relax, and you’ll find yourself in the same deep, restful, relaxing state that you’re in right now.”

EmJay shifted in her chair. She was alert and watching closely. I lifted my hand from Tami’s shoulder and turned to EmJay.

“She won’t hear me when my hand isn’t on her shoulder. Notice how completely relaxed she is.”

“But is she hypnotized? Will she really go back into a trance when you say that?”

“Yes. She’s an excellent subject. Here, I’ll show you.”

I placed my hand on Tami’s shoulder again, performed an arm levitation, made it rigid, and had EmJay try to bend it. She reacted with surprise when it didn’t budge, so she put some weight behind it. She moved Tami and her chair, but the arm’s relationship to her body never changed. I then awakened her, having given her a posthypnotic suggestion to have forgotten her employer and what she does for a living, and, of course, to forget that I’d given her the suggestion. She’d remember when I said “Dragonfly.”

Tami came out of the trance with a sweet, sleepygirl smile, looking first at me, then EmJay, then back at me.

“Whoo, That was nice! Like a refreshing nap.”

EmJay said, “Do you remember what happened?”

“I was staring at the eagle, then I was just drifting. My arm floated in the air. Then it got locked in place, and you tried to bend it.”

“That’s all?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

I interjected, “Where do you work?”

She looked at me, wondering why I would ask such a stupid question. “I’m at, uh, I’m... ohhh, I’m... Jeez, I’m drawing a blank!”

“Well, maybe you can tell me what you do there.”

“I’m a... oh hell, I don’t remember what I do!”

She got a little agitated and went for her purse. “I’m sure it’s on my business card!” She looked at the card as though it were printed in a foreign language.

“Yeah, that’s me, but it’s not ringing a bell.” The confusion showed plainly on her face.

“Come on, Tami,” EmJay prompted. “Why are you here at my office?”

“I’m on the committee. I’m here to work on... to work on....”

“Dragonfly,” I said.

Tami looked at me, startled, then grinned sheepishly. “Of course! How could I have forgotten.... Oh, you told me to forget! Wow... that was really amazing.”

EmJay looked at her closely. “You really didn’t remember?”

“Nope. Not a clue.”

EmJay gave me a bold, sideways look, turned back to Tami, and said, “Tomiko, deeply relaxed.”

Tami’s eyes closed and she began to slump. I lowered her into the chair. EmJay looked at me in surprise. I looked back at her in annoyance, then turned to Tami and said, “Rest and relax, pay no attention to our words until I place my hand on your shoulder.”

EmJay said, “Wow, did I just hypnotize her?”

“Not exactly. You said her trigger phrase. I hadn’t been specific about who could and couldn’t say it to trigger a trance because I generally don’t have an audience, and no one would have known about the phrase. My fault for forgetting. But I take it you’re more of a believer now?”

EmJay just nodded, looking wonderingly at Tami.

I placed my hand on Tami’s shoulder and modified the suggestion, telling her that only she or I could trigger the trance, and then gave her some general instructions on how to use self-hypnosis. I brought her out of the trance, reinduced her, had her waken herself, induce herself, and reawaken herself. EmJay tried to trigger her again, but Tami just shrugged and smiled apologetically.

“The first time you said it, it hit me like a ton of bricks. But doesn’t really do anything now.”

Both women had more questions about hypnosis and self-hypnosis, and I answered them, hypnotizing Tami one more time to illustrate a point. I asked EmJay if she’d like to try it, but she demurred. It was getting late so we finished tidying up the conference room and left, Tami and I for the hotel, EmJay for her home.

We pulled into the parking lot, Tami’s rental car right behind mine. We had identical Camrys, and had joked earlier about mixing up cars and keys. As we finished checking in, I said, “How about dinner?”

“Call me when you get settled,” she said, as she headed for the elevator.

I unpacked, checked voicemail, plugged in my computer, checked e-mail, and took a rinse-off shower. I called Tami.

“Hi! Ready for some dinner?”

“I’m ready for something,” she replied archly.

“Shall I meet you downstairs?”

“Room ten-oh-three,” she replied, and hung up.

My heart was pounding as I knocked on her door. She was wearing an extra-large Intel tee shirt and, as I would discover shortly, pink silk panties. The ultimate nerd seduction outfit. She tilted her head in that way of hers, her eyes narrowing in merriment, and pulled me, slightly dumbfounded, into the room.

As the door closed behind me, she wrapped her arms around me and kissed me ardently. My hands explored her bony little back, and soon the rest of her. She tugged my polo shirt out of my pants, peeled it over my head, then went for my belt buckle. Moments later we were stretched out on the bed, skin to skin, letting the sexual tension build until I plunged into her and she engulfed me.

Some time later, while we were waiting for room service, I said, “You know, this isn’t how I expected this evening to go.”

“Really? What did you have planned?”

“Oh, a nice dinner at that Indian restaurant, a little hypnotic seduction over dessert, then bring you back here to ravish you.”

“Mmmm, sounds nice. My priorities were a little different, though. Maybe next time,” she said, laughing softly into my neck. She pulled back. “But what’s this about hypnotic seduction?”

I outlined a couple of scenarios for her. She ooh’d and ahh’d at some of my ideas, interrupting once with a slightly incredulous, “You can do that?”

“All that, and more. And now that we’re better acquainted, we’ll have lots of opportunities.”

She responded by snuggling closer and nuzzling my neck.

When I finally got back to my room I had two voicemail messages, both from EmJay. The first asked if we could meet; that she wanted to talk with me. She’d called again about two hours later, and left a long message of apology for her behavior today. She’d been thinking about it, and promised that tomorrow would be a better day.

And so it was. The meeting went smoothly, with lots of give and take, lots of opposing ideas, but no entrenchment. The day flew by, and when it was over, we all congratulated one another for a job well done, and I praised EmJay highly for her leadership. She glowed as others joined in.

Tami and I were lovers for the 24 weeks of the project and for a few months afterwards, then we drifted apart, not having the opportunity to see one another regularly. She was an eager hypno-playmate, sometimes suggesting fantasy scenarios for us.

I’d gotten to know EmJay a lot better during the project, too. She did have a Stairmaster in her office. Although she knew that Tami and I were lovers, she and I became good friends, confidants. I discovered a charming side to her bluntness—a disarming way of asking things she wanted to know directly, without pretense, without beating around the bush. She could jump topics wildly, asking me my views of the Papacy and the Reformation one minute and what I would do if I had breasts the next. Sex came up semi-often in our conversations, and once I even asked her about that dance when we first met.

“Oh, it was all about power and symbolism. You lead, I submit. But if I seduce you as I submit, then who has the real power?”

Who, indeed? I mulled that one over. I even asked her about the nameless girl who half-humped my leg that time.

“Your head’s still spinning over her, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, I guess so.”

“Well, then she accomplished her mission.”

“But....”

“But nothing.”

I decided that I still had a lot to learn about women.

Five years had elapsed. I probably hadn’t learned much more about women, but here I was in town again, and EmJay was buying me dinner at the excellent Spanish restaurant in my hotel. It was a thank-you for having thrown a big piece of business her way. She’d married, had twins, a nanny, and had published a book on technical marketing and the economics of a startup. We’d stayed in touch by phone and seen each other at industry events (and danced when there was a band).

We were at a small table in a dark corner. We reminisced a lot over dinner, but the conversation careened in typical EmJay directions as things popped into her mind.

“Were you sexually aware as a young child?”

“Huh?” She’d caught me flatfooted yet again.

“Most children are, as I read in a child-rearing book recently, ‘dead below the waist’ until some time between the ages of six and twelve. But a few kids are very aware of their gender, their sexuality, that there’s a difference between them and the opposite sex, even if they don’t understand it. Were you like that?”

I thought a minute. “Yes, I guess I was.”

“How old were you when you started masturbating?”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out for a moment. “Good old EmJay. You really know how to floor a guy.”

“Are you going to answer the question?”

“I, uh....”

She looked at me in a humorous, pitying way, like a cat toying with a mouse. “So what you’re saying is that you can’t remember a time when you didn’t masturbate.”

I looked shocked, embarrassed, but I didn’t deny it.

She patted my hand. “That’s OK. Me, too.”

If it was possible to look more shocked, that’s how I looked.

“My mother, my aunt, my grandmother were always telling me to get my finger out of my panties,” she laughed. “But I always figured that if it felt that good that there couldn’t be anything wrong with it.”

I still looked like a fresh-caught carp—mouth open, but incapable of speech—so she went on.

“People like us radiate something. We’ve always been in touch with our sexual selves. We know how to please ourselves and we know how to please others. But it’s not the same kind of sexuality that macho alpha males radiate. It’s deeper, more subtle. And it takes one to know one.”

“And you saw that in me?”

“Yep. Didn’t you see it in me, too?”

“Well, I saw something... that dance... but then the fight we had over Dragonfly....” I blushed, remembering my stealthy attitude adjustment.

“I was angry with you, too, for bringing out some of my rutting behavior—the dance—when I wanted to prove my intellectual worth.”

“So that’s what our fight was about?”

“I think so.”

“Weird.”

We were discussing world oil supplies and the Gulf War over dessert, when I decided to pull an EmJay.

“Remember the first Dragonfly meeting at your office? The day I hypnotized Tami?”

“Oh yeah, Tami! What ever happened to her? That was so cool, but I think I was jealous—even though I was mad at you, I wanted you to hypnotize me, too, but I couldn’t tell you that....” Her words came tumbling out.

“Well, no problem then, because I did hypnotize you.”

She stopped short. “You what?”

“I hypnotized you. You fell into a trance at the same time Tami did. I talked to you, then awakened you, and you watched me work with Tami.” I ducked a little as I saw anger flash, then fade in her eyes.

“Did you do it on purpose?”

“Yes.”

“And I don’t remember any of this?”

“Evidently not.”

“And did you hypnotize me any other times?”

“Nope.”

“Did you give me any suggestions while I was under?”

I blushed. “Uh, yes. Remember those suggestions I gave myself about working collaboratively with you?”

“Yeah....”

“I gave you the same suggestions.”

The anger flashed in her eyes. She started to say something, then stopped as the anger faded again. “Hmph. Well, I guess it worked for the best then. It was one helluva smooth rollout.” She paused, then gave me a suspicious look. “Anything else?”

“Eagle eye, MaryJane.”

Her eyes reddened and became somewhat lidded, and her facial muscles became a bit slack. Wow, still effective after more than five years. Amazing.

“What...?”

“I told you that as you hear the phrase, ‘Eagle eye, MaryJane,’ that your body would relax, your mind would relax, and you’d find yourself in the same, deep, restful, relaxing state that you were in when you first heard the phrase...”

The whites of her eyes got much redder, redder than I’d ever seen a subject’s. She was really felling the relaxation. She slumped a little in her chair as she hung on every word.

“... ‘eagle eye, MaryJane.’”

Her eyes remained open, but it was off to trance-land for EmJay. I didn’t have an agenda, so I just told her to rest and relax, to notice how pleasant it felt, how nice it was to be back in hypnosis again. I’d been looking at her all night, and she was as attractive as she ever was, but the sultry veneer of trance made her look downright alluring. Her lips were parted, pouty with relaxation. My heart hammered, and I felt echoing throbs a bit lower down. The contrast between her gemlike, blue-green irises and the insane red surrounding them was surreal. Her eyes, though heavy, remained locked on mine.

I thought about all of the provocative conversations we’d had over the years, wondered what kind of sexual tension bound us together, wondered about her theory about people with early or lifelong sexual awareness. I thought about my hotel room, a mere elevator ride away.

“How do you feel right now, EmJay?”

A pause. “Close. Very close to you.”

“What do you want to have happen now?”

Before she could answer, our waiter came by our table, looked with concern at EmJay’s slack face and slumping posture, and said, “Is the Senora all right?”

EmJay roused herself, shaking off the trance, and managed a charming smile. “I’m fine, really. I’m just a little tired.”

“Yeah, and I tell really boring stories,” I added lamely.

EmJay asked him for the check, and he departed.

“I can’t believe you hypnotized me without me knowing it back then. And you just did it again!”

“But you remember being hypnotized this time.”

“Yes—and it was very nice, but too brief. I was just getting into it.”

The waiter brought our check. After she’d paid, she rose from the table, saying, “Well, I guess I’d better be getting home....”

I walked her out to the front. We stood close to one another as the valet retrieved her car, not quite knowing what to say to one another. He pulled the car up and handed her the keys as she tipped him. I walked around to the driver’s door with her. She opened it, and we faced each other over the top of the window.

I kissed her good night with the door between us. She started to turn, to slip into the seat, and stopped. She placed a hand atop mine and spoke quietly. “You know, you could have had me just then.”

“Too bad the waiter broke the spell.”

We gazed into one another’s eyes for a moment, then a moment longer. Her eyes reddened. She licked her lips, swallowed hard, and looked at me, lips parted, pouty again. I grasped her hand and lightly guided her around the car door. I knew it would be our first, our last, our only time. I took the keys from her other hand as she looked wonderingly at me. I lobbed them to the valet, and called, “Another hour or so.”

I twirled her once under my arm as we walked into the lobby.