POINT OF VIEW
CHAPTER 4 — SELF.
It is always interesting to look at my work from another perspective.
K. is kneeling in front of him. She’s naked. His hand cups her chin and lifts her head to look at her face.
“Own me,” she begs him. “Please.”
Contact
Mister Talv’s apartment is cool and dark. I am looking down at K., a lithe, small breasted young woman, her upturned face flushed with arousal. Her full lips are slightly parted and in her eyes is a look of absolute carnality. There is something resonant in her compliance—something that reminds him of the girl with the piercings and the steel collar—but she has her own distinct, animal physicality.
I relish his feeling of control, and the language he uses to express it. Mister Talv will give her what she wants.
Exactly. What. She. Wants. Whether she knows it or not.
“I was wondering when you were going to ask,” he says.
He has no accent—once it might have been vaguely Eastern European, of course.
“But it is not your place to ask things of me. I will own you when and if I choose.”
I’d borrowed a few more memes from Mister Talv on my way out of the club with the unmarked red door. Obviously K. wasn’t going to be allowed in there without some radical plastic surgery, a significant investment in skimpy couture, and a change of career direction that just might be a bit too radical for her right now. But there are plenty of other high-end places in the city where Mister Talv likes to relax and drink.
I added a few to K.’s list of trusted hangouts.
It only took a week.
K.’s idly Facebooking over a Cosmopolitan, and trying very hard not to update her status from “single” to “total slutwhore”, when she feels someone approach.
“Hallo,” says a voice, male. “Do I know you at all?”
Looking up, she sees a tall, lightly tanned guy in his, what, late thirties? Early forties? He’s got longish dark brown, almost black, hair, very well cut. His chin is artfully stubbled. A quick look tells her he’s dressed casually but expensively, and his clothes hang well on an athletic looking body. He is very obviously a rich man. His eyes spark vivid green.
The guy is staring at K., a slightly puzzled look on his face, half smiling, half frowning. She raises an eyebrow.
“You do look really very familiar,” he continues. “Have we met before?”
K. can’t place the face or the voice. He’s not American, she thinks. European, perhaps? He is intensely charismatic, magnetic almost. K. feels the stirrings of attraction in her belly. She smiles back.
“No … I don’t think so,” says K.
He looks at her intently. There is something in his eyes she hasn’t come across before.
“I know you,” he states. “I am certain.”
K. is seriously turned on by this guy and she’s not quite sure why. But hey, that thing with Jerome didn’t work out, so let’s look on the bright side. A few stray memes swirl and surface, heightening the feeling. I feel her nipples tighten under her T-shirt. A sharp intake of breath at the sensation.
“Well now, mister—”
“Talv.”
“—I can tell you for absolute certain, no, we haven’t met before.” And smiling wider, “Because if we had, I’m absolutely certain I would’ve remembered you.”
“Well, for sure we’ve met now,” says Mister Talv, sliding onto the next bar stool with absolute assurance. “Haven’t we?”
He had her from the start.
He wanted to see her move, for his pleasure. She danced for him, naked and lithe in the candlelight.
(K. has never been an exotic dancer in Prague. Now she sees herself gyrating and writhing, her small breasts standing proud, and a single phrase drifts up to her from somewhere... kurva me pevne jako skutecny coura devka ... She knows exactly how to show off her skills to someone for real. Poslušná holka.)
Her mouth was his to use. The first and favourite trick I gifted her. If anything, he is slightly bigger even than her first … and, mouth stretched wide, her lips and tongue worked him with obsessive concentration.
(K. has never been to Algiers. But in a white room under the heat of a North African night, thick with the smell of sweat and candles, she sees herself pleasuring a faceless man. She has serviced him often and knows exactly what to do.)
Obéissante.
A simple pair of metal cuffs kept her secured to his bed. He had toyed with her for a while, gently stroking her while she writhed like a snake under his touch. She could hardly breathe for arousal but he wouldn’t let her even get close.
(There are many places K. has never been. Now she flashes on herself tied to some sort of wooden frame, splayed wide, tugging futilely at her bonds, and yet knowing that these bonds will never break. She feels the lash of a crop on her buttocks and shivers.)
Reading her desires, he tied her feet to the posts of the bed and spread her wide. She had never felt more naked, and never more free. “My cunt is warm and wet and open and hungry,” she moaned, as he played with her helpless body.
(She sees herself bucking and writhing as he punishes her for that, and then for nothing at all, just so that she knows she can, and will, be punished.)
He wanted to use her like … like a … and all it did is turn her on more and more. She wanted to serve him, to service him, and to draw her own sweet pleasure from that submission.
(She has never been to New Orleans, but she knows how just to draw him into her, sometimes just using the muscles of her pussy, and then how to roll and ride it forever, if he will only let her… Vraiment, ta pute.)
I’ve often considered my motivations for helping people (and God knows I’ve had plenty of time to think about it). A particular inspiration came from when I was helping Maslow develop his now-famous hierarchy of needs. When it comes to my unusual disembodied situation, certainly there is no need to worry about physiological Survival—food, shelter, and all the rest of it—let alone Security of the self. That sorts out levels one and two in the hierarchy—the basics.
Next level up, my psychological needs are equally irrelevant. “Belonging” is hardly an issue when you are a roving memetic point of view, which rules out level three. As for “Esteem”, I do admit to a certain pride and feeling of accomplishment in what I’ve achieved over the years and centuries—not least, in staying alive for so long. There’s no prestige or acknowledgement to be had here, though. I am invisible to the world. Ah well, it’s a cross I bear.
The one driver that keeps me going is what they call, in the jargon, “Self-Actualization”.
As a sort-of-self, with all of my basic needs and psychological needs covered elsewhere, I am motivated entirely by sort-of-self-fulfilment. I need to express myself; be creative; realise my full potential, make my art, make my mark. My point of view is entirely level five.
Living in others, this is what I bring to their party.
Anyway, enough about me. You want me to shut up so you can hear what’s happening to K., am I right?
Of course I am. I know you. Let’s go.