Social Contract
"You have the right to bare arms," she says, slipping the ropes through
my fingers, and then around my elbows, pinning them painfully together
and cinching them through the window handle above my head. "Just not
these arms."
Her skin is the color of pasta. She has large cheeks, a careful mouth.
"Harry Truman invented the national security state," she says, my right
leg pulled at the ankle by a long cord that finally connects at the base
of a radiator. My other leg spread, the rope looped around the
refrigerator. My legs spread akimbo, my body utterly vulnerable. "The
people have to be afraid, Truman said. That was the way Harry Truman
thought. We have to fear the communists. Franklin Roosevelt was dead.
Long live Franklin Roosevelt."
The nipple clamps hurt. The ball gag she has stuffed into my mouth makes
it impossible for me to answer her, if there was an answer to be given.
She didn't ask me if I wanted this. She's stronger than me, especially
since my accident. I never fight her anymore. She does what she wants.
"The Geneva convention holds that you can't torture prisoners. America
is a signatory to the Geneva convention. Are you a prisoner?" I nod my
head. She closes my nose shut with two fingers. I can't breath through
the gag she has forced into my mouth. There is a moment of peace. This
is it, I think. I am going to die. And then my body starts to flop, the
panic coming through me involuntarily, and she's laughing, and she lets
go of my nose, and the air rushes into my body in deep, sweeping
breathes, and her laughter fills the room with its cruelty.
"We don't care about treaties," she says. "Hitler didn't care about
Versailles and they gave him Czechoslovakia, the Rhineland, and Austria.
Anshlung. That's what they call it. But Hitler had his problems.
Repressed homosexual." Her hand runs along my stomach and the top of my
leg and then down beneath me, her finger touching my anus. "Are you a
repressed homosexual? You don't seem to like sex very much. I think you
are." I feel her finger slip slightly into my anus and then out. "So he
died in a bombed out bunker in Berlin in 1944, with his new wife. What
the hell for?" I watch as she stands and walks to the closet and dips
through the door, rummaging through the sound of paper bags. She has
such long legs. She's a cyclist. Her long thin body is knotty with
strips of muscles. Then she's in front of me, between my legs, looking
gleefully into my eyes, forcing something large into my ass. I scream
into the gag, a muffled gasp, a blunt dulled shriek. Whatever it is goes
in and it burns and it stays there, throbbing slowly. The pain begins to
subside. But she still has something in her hand and she squeezes it and
an electric shock shoots through my bowels, my eyes bulging in my face,
my body pouring sweat onto the sheets.
"I was wondering if that would work."
She smiles, warmly, happy, and content. It's been twelve years now since
the first day we met. A couple of waiters in a young restaurant on the
edge of the city, working to make ends meet. We didn't know what we had.
"We don't care about treaties," she continues. "In 1954 Eisenhower
signed a treaty that provided for free elections in Vietnam in two years
time. But when it came due he changed his mind. He said if Vietnam had
free elections Ho Chi Minh would receive eighty percent of the vote. And
that wouldn't be good for America. So much for democracy. Do you feel
cheated? Look at the Iranians. The Shah served us well for twenty-five
years. Then they took hostages." She steps forward, her naked foot on my
stomach, she walks over me, and then places her foot on my face. She
rubs her foot over my face, back and forth, across my nose. She steps on
the clamp on my nipple and I let out another involuntary dull scream.
"Cheated by our vows, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, to
protect, till death do us part. Do you think we've parted too early? Did
you think things would be different when you pledged your allegiance in
school, and at the baseball games? That your country would protect you,
while the bombs fell and U.S. installed dictators sent death squads into
the villages of South and Central America to kill the women and children
first. Here is your democracy." Her foot presses hard on my face, and my
nose hurts, I think it's going to break. With the heel of her foot she
pushes the gag further toward the back of my throat. Tears spring from
my eyes, soaking the fabric around my ears. "You should be able to
answer some of my questions. You should.
"I'm not blaming America," she says, sitting heavily on my chest, and
then turning around, facing away from me. Her long back, straight and
proud, the bulb of spine and her dark hair which she's taken to wearing
short. She's wrapped a chain around my penis and balls and she's slowly
making it tighter. "I was born here, same as you. I'm not blaming
anybody. It's just that you have the right to remain silent, and maybe
the Republicans really did win the election, and maybe they didn't. It's
too close to call. Both sides believed in three strikes you're out. Life
sentence, no parole. How many strikes do you have?" she asks, turning
her head to me briefly and then going back to her task. "There's no
welfare here. You'll have to work for what you get."
I've surrendered myself to the continuous pain. I've allowed the pain
running through my body to numb my mind. This is my wife. This is what
we have. Who would have thought we would have lived in this apartment
all this time.
"And then the wars came." Another shock rings through the electric plug
in my ass, pain striking through me, her hand in my hair pulling hard,
her other along my ribs, buckling forward as if she was riding a horse,
her feet sliding back toward my cheeks. And then stopping. She's
loosening the chains. Gently wrapping her thumb and forefinger around my
penis and balls. "And they flew planes into our buildings and our
buildings crumpled and fell to the ground. We have to defend ourselves.
They would have done it anyway, whether we deserved it or not. That's
the way people are. And the president didn't want to consult congress
anymore. He asked them to dissolve themselves, to remove themselves from
the conflict. And of course they did. Self-preservation, in the face of
terror.
She slides her body back, so her ass is just in front of my nose, the
smell of her and her flesh totaling my vision.
"Do you remember Bukharin?" she asks. "It was 1936, and he confessed in
a public address to the people. He turned on his fellow Bolsheviks,
Kamenev, Trostsky, Zinoviev, all Jews. He wanted to save himself. But
Stalin placed him under house arrest anyway. Koba, why do you need me
to
die? he asked in his unanswered letter to Stalin. But who was he to
ask
for forgiveness? All of the original Bolsheviks subscribed to a doctrine
of terror, of starving their own people. It was merely the rooster
coming home to roost." Her hand is in my mouth, fishing out the gag,
plucking it from between my cheeks. She rubs her fingers inside my lips,
massaging my gums. And she's right, I breath so much easier now. She
undoes the rope at my ankles and my knees slide together, my legs
bending on their own will. She undoes my hands from the window and
releases my elbows but keeps my hands tied together. My hands tied, I
curl into a ball, pulling the tear soaked sheet with me. And she curls
behind me, her body circling my body, her knees forcing between my
knees, one hand underneath my head and across my chest, the other
between my legs, gripping my penis. I can feel her body, her strength
which seems to increase everyday even as mine declines. Her body is so
firm, intent and purposeful.
"My darling," she says, a whisper, her voice like the cars on the
street, penetrating into the darkness. Thank God for the evenings, when
the sun is down. "I'll protect you." Her breath swimming across my ear,
searching through my hair. "You don't have to worry. Never worry. Never
ever worry again. I am here. I will keep you safe."
Stephen Elliott's fourth novel, Happy Baby, was co-published by McSweeney's and MacAdam/Cage in February, 2004.