POINT OF VIEW
CHAPTER 3 — MEMORY.
Experts. What do they know?
After a bit more of this sort of wanton behaviour, your average so-called specialist might argue there were fundamental shifts going on in K.’s personality traits. Sure, maybe influenced by biological processes and needs, but in turn created and reinforced by what she was doing. They might be worried that some of the errant thoughts K. was fixating on meant that her identity was changing. (But what is “identity”?)
A cognitive psychologist would probably have it that K.’s internal states—like motivation, decision-making, thinking and attention—had altered significantly over a short period. Wants had led to thoughts had led to decisions that led to more wants and to more decisions. A neurologist would suggest her brain was laying down a physical reinforcing neurological path, a heuristic to achieving her wants. (But what is “want”? What is “decision”?)
A behaviourist would argue that all of her behaviours were a straightforward result of stimulus, response, conditioning.
A psychiatrist might be wondering about her relationship with her father, but that’s a whole other story, and I can’t be bothered getting into it.
All wrong; all right.
I’ve spent many hours in many bodies entertaining therapists of one stripe or another, and I must conclude that you can only really know another mind if you’ve actually been there. (All the gibberish I gave old Freud in those sessions ended up in his book, by the way. How I laughed.)
Forget the complicated doublespeak. The algebra is remarkably simple. Inaccessible to rational thought, the logic of dream and desire and reward ticks like clockwork beneath the smooth mirrored surface of K.’s consciousness. One tick follows another. A cog is added, that meshes with another cog, and tock reinforces tick. Very soon, it has nothing to do with me whatsoever. The memories and the dreams and the memes are all there is, and all they want to do is express themselves. It’s just another point of view.
K. surprises me again, emerging from Jerome’s bathroom holding a length of cord from his bathrobe. She swishes it in front of her uncertainly.
“I—” she begins haltingly, and drops her eyes. “I want you to tie me up? Please?”
Wow, I think, this is new—where did that come from? I take a look and see this one has been bubbling in the background for a while along with her ideas of giant dildos. I haven’t been paying enough attention. I await developments with interest.
He looks at her seriously, a little shocked. Jerome’s a gentle guy.
“You sure about that?” he replies. “I’m not really into that scene, y’know?”
“I—”
“And what am I supposed to do with you then?” he smiles, trying to take the edge off. “Whip you? D’you see a whip round here?”
“I—I’m—”
“I’m no expert, but this stuff doesn’t happen in real life, honey. At least, not in my life. Now come here.”
“—”
K.’s disappointed, hurt, embarrassed. She can’t speak. She can’t explain to him. She sees Jerome can’t give her this—it’s just not his thing—and as she sees this, she also sees, thanks to me, that there others who can, and will. I know this to be true.
She drops the cord sheepishly and goes to him, knowing that after tonight it won’t be quite the same.
Even as he makes love to her that night, the thoughts won’t leave her alone, and her arousal is a relentless Babel of distraction. Thoughts of: submission, compliance, conformité; possession.
Thoughts of being taken. Her thoughts.
As she comes, clutching his back, strange words form in her mouth.
Later, I gift K. a few more helpful memories of my own, including a few choice ones from that time I spent at that chateau outside Paris. Memetically rich and compelling new memory-fantasies, bright and clear and complementary to her own vague stirrings of need.
Who’s to say what’s real?
“Own me,” she whispers to herself, confused, in her half-sleep. “Enchaînez moi.”
She spends the subsequent days confused, avoiding him, her hours dominated by these unfamiliar desires. After a while Jerome stops calling, and she’s glad, but uncertain where to turn.
She has the map, but the map is not the territory; the territory is all her own.
I need to help her find her way.
I leave K. behind, and through handshakes and kisses and hugs and accidental brushings and casual touches and random greetings, I make my way through the city. For once, I’m travelling at speed. I stop only to glance at their thoughts and desires. I know what I’m looking for. I just need to find it. There won’t be too many degrees of separation, with any luck.
Contact a rush of images, normal, family, job, stress—nothing here for me, handshake
Contact can’t seem to shake this pain in my side, better see someone, what will she say if it’s—no nothing, bump
Contact they say the Doll’s House has a new set of girls in, may go take a looksee tonight if—no, too mundane, greet
Contact
Contact
Contact
Contact purposeful strides towards a woman in a red dress, she’s finally split up with her husband and now he will make his play, zeroing in, kiss
Contact he’ll do for a rebound fuck but that’s it, hope he hasn’t got any other ideas, smile, c’mon let’s go get a drink, bump
Contact four martinis and no tip, what the, son-of-a-bitch, think I’ll go full time at -
- here. Yes. There is a place where the powerful men of this city gather. An image of an unmarked red door. This man works the bar. I symbolically pat myself on my non-existent back, and hunker down to wait.
This is the place.
Businessmen, politicians, racketeers, old money, new money, self-made, inherited, bought, stolen, taken: all relevant human life is here. The women here are obviously heavily vetted escorts, as cold and beautiful as statues in their elegantly revealing dresses. As he mixes their drinks, I ignore them and scan the room through his eyes.
Here is a man. Middle aged and expensively dressed, silver hair swept back, a slight floridity in his face. City Hall. Not him.
Another man. Loud, brash, ugh, some sort of financier, hedge fund type. Not him. Nor that crook he’s talking to.
I scan. No. Not him, nor him, nor him, nor -
Here is another man. Tall and athletic, dark haired, interesting green eyes, a winning smile. He is the centre of a group of laughing men. All the women are looking at him.
The bartender hands a cocktail to a stunning blue eyed ice goddess and before I can even drink in her cheekbones her hand brushes his and
Contact she wants that man there, the one with the green eyes—paid or unpaid, she doesn’t care, there is just something about that guy that makes her panties wet just looking at him, last time she’d never come so hard, so what she’s going to do is go right up and talk to him, yeah, the rule is we’re just supposed to sit here and wait like toys in a damn window but what if he, what if one of the others, what if, oh oh oh he’s coming to the bar, straighten up, smile -
“Tere õhtust, Katya,” he says.
“Good evening, Mister Talv,” Katya replies, smiling. She offers her cheek to him, and Contact he’s had this slut before, and why not tonight, he’ll make her beg for -
His name is Karsten. Almost everybody calls him Mister Talv.
I tune out the flirty multilingual chatter and browse the pictures in his mind.
Beautiful icy Katya, putting out like the pro she is. To be expected of course.
A voluptuous redheaded woman in her early 30’s—chained to a … what the hell’s that? Wooden beam type thing? Looks custom-made … whipped, humiliated, begging for release.
Same woman, gagged so he doesn’t have to listen to her, bent over a … a … I don’t know what you’d call that, it’s quite something though … wrists shackled as he...
More. Variation after variation on a theme. His apartment, right here in the city. Lots going on there, it would seem.
A hotel bar in another city, somewhere on the West Coast. A large-breasted girl in a tight blouse and a steel collar. Blue eyes and dark, bobbed hair. A lift of the breasts and a direct gaze; a slow parting of her lips. She doesn’t speak.
Same girl, stripped. Her firm breasts stand out in a proud jut. Cosmetic surgery of course, but good work. Her nipples are pierced, and a large, heavy clit ring completes the look, and he thinks it complements the heavy collar.
The soft chink of an O ring. Matching steel bracelets.
Blindfolded, chained to the wall, hands above her head, and completely unable to move, writhing and panting in desperation as he tugs at the chains attached to her piercings. She shows extraordinary levels of arousal.
A tug on her chains. A sex toy ordered to perform. She’s very user friendly.
The tingle of pierced tongue against cock.
A strange tattoo at the small of her back ... and I’m suddenly distracted. What is that mark exactly? A QR code of some sort? Advertising?
Very, very interesting indeed. I meme the curious-looking tramp stamp tattoo for future reference.
While I’m at it, I meme the whole rich sequence of events, and I wonder what that girl’s story is.
I sense a deep seated regret that he didn’t get to spend more time with pierced-mute-steel-collar-girl; he never saw her again, despite the regularity of his visits to that same city and hotel. Even as he’s reeling in Katya (or vice versa) he flashes on this memory and frowns slightly, wondering why of all the many women he has had, this one unnamed sex toy in particular sticks in the mind.
Opportunity knocks.
I cross-pollinate a memory, fantasy, meme, dream, of another blue-eyed dark-haired young girl—K.—on her knees, this girl tightens her lips and takes along slow draw on him, an ecstatic slide from base to tip. “Own me,” she murmurs. K.’s face, a face he has never seen, lodges clearly in his mind.
Hand into glove, the memes become one.
Mister Talv will know K. when he sees her.
Mister Talv is an expert. He will know what to do.
Now all I have to do is make sure they meet.
I make my excuses and leave, through backslaps and handshakes and kisses and hugs and accidental touches, and the next morning I’m back with K.
Home. For now.