Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel
Read Safe Word: An Erotic S/M Novel Online
Authors: Molly Weatherfield
Tags: #Erotica, #Fiction, #Sadomasochism, #General
by
Molly Weatherfield
To my husband, with love
I'm grateful to be writing pornography in its most expansive
era in two centuries-and to have received encouragement
and criticism from three of the era's prime movers: Susie
Bright, Pat Califia, and Carol Queen. Thanks to all of them,
and to the staffs of Good Vibrations and Modern Times, where
I've read from early versions of this book. Excerpts from this
book, in somewhat different form, have been published in
Pucker Up and in Sex Spoken Here, edited by Carol Queen and
Jack Davis. Thanks also to the editors of Black Sheets, and to
Gareth Branwyn, Tristan Taormino, Grant Antrewes, Richard
Kasak, and Jennifer Reut.
I also want to thank Thaisa Frank for her provocative
questions about what I think I'm doing. And I need to acknowledge that Carrie's comments about Clarissa and Justine are
based on Angela Carter's argument in The Sadean Woman.
The next set of acknowledgments is necessarily more
anonymous, but no less heartfelt. Thanks to Ellen, Jeff, Roz,
Barbara, Jim, and Ellie, meticulous readers of the second draft,
who pointed out the dull spots and inconsistencies with such
good humor and enthusiasm that I didn't doubt that I could
fix them. Not to speak of my assorted errors, linguistic, culinary, and typographic.
My husband slogged through every draft, including
some truly awful stuff at the beginning. He kept his cool
when I got defensive, was right more times than I have ever
admitted, and hung in through waves of soul-searching and
revision. He's a gifted, loving, and stubborn reader. And he
knows where the stories come from, too.
Dear Carrie,
You will continue brave and beautiful, I know
In a year, you'll be much more so than you are now
I sold you at this auction because I wanted to
see if I-and you-could pull it off. But I also did it
because if I hadn't done it, I would have wanted to
call the whole game off and see if we could become
friends. Or lovers. Or something. Go to the movies
together and see if we liked the same ones. I still
want to, and this is both surprising and disturbing.
I'll be at the Place d'Horloge in Avignon next
March 15. That's two weeks after your term of service ends. Come if you want to....
efore the French revolution, the family of the Marquis de
Sade owned half of Provence. They'd begun getting rich in
the middle ages. The first family member to have his name officially recorded, Louis de Sade, provost of Avignon, financed the
building of the St-Benezet bridge-the famous pont d'Avignon-
in 1177, and the family coat of arms can still be seen on the
bridge's first arch.
The Sade family made its money in textiles, lumber, brewing, and ropemaking, as well as from collecting the tolls on
the Pont St-Benezet. It was possible, in those days, for a rich
merchant, banker, or shipper to obtain a title. The family consolidated its position by a series of marriages to the oldest nobility
of the region, and by its services to Avignon's wealthy and corrupt exiled Papal court. Italian functionaries at court detested
Avignon and longed for Rome: The brilliant young courtier
Petrarch wrote that the winter mistral winds turned the area into
"a sewer where all the muck of the universe collects."
Avignon's medieval walls still stand today, though half of the
bridge was washed away when the Rhone flooded in the seven teenth century. The huge Palais des Papes-its interior wrecked
and ransacked when the French National Assembly annexed it in
1791-is populated only by the echoes of a century of intrigue,
excess, and debauchery. The city itself is heavily touristed, like
much of Provence, and a bit pricey. And in the summer, the central Place d'Horloge is packed.
On this particular day in mid-March, however, it was sunny
and lively without being oppressively crowded. An American man
was sitting at one of the cafes that line the square, drinking coffee
and frowning as he tried to read a French architectural journal.
Trendy, he thought, trendy and pretentious. Not that he was sure
of that assessment. His French wasn't great, and his concentration, right then, quite minimal. He'd placed himself so that he
could see down the rueJean Jaures, toward the train station, and
he'd been glancing up eagerly whenever a slender young woman,
especially one with close-cropped hair, came from that direction.
Lots of attractive people were strolling across the Place that
day, lots of women he liked looking at, the Provencal sunlight
shining through the plane trees on their little French breasts
and big French educations. And since he was extraordinarily
good-looking (his gray hair merely signaling an elegant way
of approaching forty), none of this was going unnoticed. Once
one of the young women he'd been watching turned back to him
and smiled. "Would," she said, "that I were she." It took him
a moment to negotiate the French grammatical construction in
his mind before he returned the smile, shrugging apologetically.
He got up and went to a tabac. My first pack in six months, he
thought, damn her anyway.
There were ten Gitanes stubbed into the ashtray when, early
in the afternoon, a slender young woman, with very short brown
hair, walked quickly into the Place. She was pale and pretty, and she wore a leather jacket, big white shirt and little black
miniskirt, black stockings and cowboy boots, dark wire-rimmed
glasses. She had a backpack made of soft red leather slung over
her shoulder, and she carried one of those little notebooks they
sell in papeteries, its satiny pages marked by faint purple grids.
Pas mal, thought the woman who'd smiled at him earlier.
Not bad. Not so fantastic as he is, but a good body, anyway. And
a bit of style-gamine in very expensive leather. The haircut is
good-not quite shaved, but close enough. It makes her look poignant, vulnerable. And young Jean Seberg selling the Herald
Tribune on the Champs-Elysees. Oh, but she is that young, I can
see that, now that she's turned her head a little. She's very young,
isn't she, twenty-three, twenty four, perhaps? Tiens, Monsieur,
not very original of you.
She sniffed disapprovingly, ready to pay her waiter and
move on. But there was something about the tableau that held
her attention. She watched the man straighten up in his chair, his
nervousness rolling off him like beads of water, his face falling
into confident, authoritative lines. And-almost in responsethe girl slowed her pace as she approached him, still vulnerable,
but increasingly knowing and deliberate in her movements. The
woman felt her face grow warm, as though she'd been peeking
through a keyhole.
Enough, she chided herself-enough of this pair and their
slightly indecent game. And as she drifted out of the square, she
muttered to herself (in English, for she admired the American
cinema), Fasten your seatbelts. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.
The man smiled appreciatively as the girl in boots slipped into
the cane-backed chair next to him.
"Well," he said.
She giggled a little. "Well. "
It seemed that neither of them had prepared any other opener.
He stubbed out his cigarette while she took off her sunglassesher gray eyes were mutable, surrounded by shadows-and put
her notebook into her pack. They exchanged dazed, slightly
ironic smiles: How do we get beyond this ridiculous moment?
A waiter came by and she turned to him gratefully, ordering a kir
in offhand, fluent French. A kir, and yes, he nodded-another
coffee for Monsieur.
"I'd forgotten," Monsieur dutifully pitched her a second
opening line, "how good your French is. You lived here when you
were a kid, right?"