the experience of strangers, 11: the shame of statistics

“That report I asked you to do.”

I blink, swallow, and glance over at Mr. Johnson. “You mean here, now?”

“Yes,” Master Z says, ”I want my brother to hear your report as well.”

“Oh.”

“Do we have a problem?”

“No… no sir.”

I reach for my ever-present notebook. Last night before bed, I’d gone through this thought exercise, made notes, and did some calculations. I was ready with the numbers, but not emotionally ready to report it out like this, especially in front of his brother.

I take a deep breath and then start in: “I have to begin with the point that before my life in D/s—”

“Shae,” Master Z interrupts, “ I think you should stand up for this.”

I nod, slowly stand, and continue: “Well, I was saying that early on I didn’t date much… through my twenties… and most of it has been in my D/s life…” I am embarrassed and reluctant and it is making my words come out slowly. I am more prosaic in the delivery than MAster ZS wants, I’m sure. The brother’s presence is throwing me off. “So most has been in the past six—”

Master Z interrupts again. “Back up. What was the assignment I gave you? The subject of the report.”

“I’m sorry. Yes… Well, it has to do with the frequency of times I have done oral—”

“What was the exact question I posed to you? I know you remember my words — you wrote them down.”

I flip through some pages in my notebook. “You asked… how many cocks I have sucked.” I am addressing Master Z but I can see his brother out of the corner of my eye. He is grinning. I blush and try to continue.

“So, number of different, well, different cocks, different men… there have been just six or seven, it seems.”

“And who are they?” Master Z prompts.

“Their names?”

“Yes.”

“Um, well… Seth, Luke, and Stephan in my pre-D/s life. But they were most just one time or so. Michael I dated first before entering into the life under him—”

“He was the first you served as a slave?”

“Yes… And then there was Kevin, first as his slave, then as his escort.”

Mr. Johnson jumps in: “You were an escort?”

“In a manner of speaking.” I briefly relate the facts of my unusual relationship with Kevin. This has already become a surreal conversation. It feels like I’ve been called into a meeting in the office of the top general, and in front of two men I really don’t know, am reciting details of my sex history.

The brother asks something more about my escorting. “No, I wasn’t with an agency,” I say, “it wasn’t like that. Just a kind of role I had with just him, with just Kevin. For a time.”

“And after Kevin?” Master Z asks.

“I am being, well, used to be, shared with a Master McKenna.”

“So, by my count, there are six — six cocks — you have serviced.”

“Well, there are seven. You, sir, yesterday.”

---

Humiliation is not always applied at the end of a whip or by means of a walk in the park on a leash. Humiliation is sometimes a conversation.

Sticks and stones, so it goes, but words actually can hurt — at least humiliate — you. But only if they’re true. And this that I am reporting to Master Z and his brother is all true, from my list of early paramours in my vanilla life to the complicated relationships I’ve had as a slave to others. I’m undressing my life in front of strangers, admitting to them what I am and have been.

I realize that Master Z planned this particular humiliation from the beginning yesterday when he asked that question. He knew his brother would be here this morning, and he has staged this as an event of his dominance of me. He wanted to put me on a virtual stage, and use it for his emotional dominance of me. His brother’s presence as a witness intensifies and deepens my disgrace.

I know I am certainly not Master Z’s first slave, and his brother seems to readily know his part in this play. I wonder how many times before they have put on this act…

---

“That was only the first part of the report,” Master Z notes.

“Yes, sir.”

“We want to hear the second part.”

I bite my lip, slowly nodding. “Of course.”

“First, Shae, I want you to take off your coat.”

I say nothing, looking at him with a long pause, daring the edge of insubordination. Finally, I slip the blazer back from my shoulders, then off of my arms. I stand fully topless then in from of the two men.

The brother whistles. “Nice,” he says.

“They are, aren’t they,” Master Z says. He turns to me and tells me to identify the subject of the second part of my report.

I take a deep breath. “This is the number of occurrences totally with each of those men.”

He paraphrases: “The number of blow jobs you performed in your entire life.”

I pause, again for a long time. “Yes.”

“Proceed.”

“Well, first, I was not very active sexually before I entered slavery. That was most of my twenties. So, while I had relationships with three men, they were not so sexual. As I recall—”

The brother interrupts this time: “Why not so sexual?”

The absurdity of the moment washes over me. I am standing topless in front of a man’s brother, whom I just met, and while he is staring at my naked and flushed breasts, I am answering his question about why I was less sexual as an adult woman in my earlier life.

“I came from a strict religious background,” I say. That seems to be enough. Thankfully, the brother doesn’t want to probe and prosecute Baptist theology.

“So,” I continue, “in my dating relationships pre-D/s life, there were just six occurrences as I recall.”

“With those three men,” Master Z paraphrases again, “you sucked their cocks six times… You need to say it like that.”

“Yes sir.”

“I entered a slavery under Master Michael. He had me for nineteen months. He preferred me in other ways, so the number is not so significant, but maybe three times a month. So, I performed…” I pause, re-wording myself as I speak: “I sucked his cock fifty-seven times.”

---

I think of humiliation as a profound and deep embarrassment. I think of shame as humiliation fraught with moral failure. They are different, and not always experienced together.

Here, as I stand before them, my naked breasts with no place to hide, I feel both. My humiliation is in the recitation of my oral sex history. There’s nothing wrong in what I’ve done, per se, and in fact, these men are secretly delighted, for they lust in hearing my sex experiences. They are undressing me publicly, literally and historically. That part is humiliating but not really shaming.

But another part of my being is becoming clearer to them as I speak.

In slavery, of course, you do things because you are ordered to, and you fall back on that excuse, looking to that to absolve you in some way. I am not that kind of girl, you say to yourself and imagined others, adding, I was made to do it. “Why do you get into such a situation with a person who makes you do it?” is the following question, and you readily say its because of your submissive need, your DNA, your gene of submissiveness — I was made this way.

Yet, you very well know that deep down you submit to not only the slave life but so many specific things in it because you want to. The other parts are true, certainly — you have the need that makes you seek the life. But then, you also desire it. A lot.

As I report out, the numbers are mounting, and my “lurking desire in the have-to” becomes more revealed, like Oz behind the curtain. I dread them probing this more specifically, how I love it so much, and how I would likely do this eagerly apart from my slave life.

---

The men say nothing and just sit looking at me in prurient lust. I have no idea if they think that “Michael number” is a lot or not so much. How do you figure that, what’s a normal number? And I want to say more about how my service of him was often an act of devotion and if not love itself, love-making. It wasn’t just “drop to your knees,” though sometimes was.

But this exercise in humiliation doesn’t allow for that kind of contextual commentary.

Topless and awkward, I continue: “Then, Kevin. Kevin loved me giving him fellatio, and so when he had me as his slave, it was nearly every day. I looked back through my calendar, and he had me for about eight months before Amanda took me with her to Denver. I averaged his number to about 3.75 times a week, and so the total—“

“How can you give three-quarters of a blowjob?” the brother interjects, laughing. “Do you walk away before he cums?”

I blush again, aware of my bare breasts becoming warm. “No, of course not… I mean, well, it’s just an average. Kevin traveled for business sometimes, about a week a month, so I figured it this way as an average for all the weeks. Just easier to figure. When he was not traveling he had me like that four or five times a week.”

Mr. Johnson continued laughing. Master Z, smiling too, asks, “So what’s the Kevin total?”

“Well there was also my escort period with him, which I’ve included.” I hear myself, realizing this sounds as if I’m delivering a year-end financial report, and Master Z wants me to be more explicit. “So,” I conclude, “I sucked Kevin’s cock 152 times.”

The brother whistles again. “You must love it.”

And there it is. Spoken, though maybe not yet fully realized. I say nothing in response.

Master Z nods at my choice of words, that I’ve finally reported out in the phraseology he prefers, about sucking and cocks. He prompts me to finish.

I realize the men don’t care about my methodology of calculation, and I’ve kind of gone all Excel-spreadsheet on them, hiding my humiliation in a maze of columns and rows.

I now mention Master McKenna just briefly and provide his total: “Over eleven stays with him,” I say, “I’ve sucked his cock some 24 times.”

---

Of course, numbers don’t matter, and here, I realize, are used strategically to put me through this planned humiliation. To the two men, it’s nothing more perhaps than a leering conversation about my bra size. It is objectifying and sexualizing, which is Master Z’s whole intention for staging this.

No, the numbers don’t matter really, except they do matter to me, kind of. They remind me how far I’ve come from my chaste, virginal, religious life that persisted in me until my late twenties. They remind me that my slaveries to men have been extensively sexual — how making me service their cocks on my knees has been the handy-dandy way of reducing me to being a sexual container of soft lips, warm mouth, and wet tongue. And the combination of my chaste past and profligate slavery is a testament to my deep submissive need — I am so desperately submissive that I do this. Over and over.

This leads to the further way it matters. I wrestle still, as readers know, with my view of myself. I’m not ever terribly self-critical, but I am sensitive to what I am deep down, which is why I write so often about how I am seen by others, what I am called, and the roles and labels that exist for a woman like me. I embrace the term “courtesan” because it adds dignity to my lower life, my base desires. I have been an escort, of a kind, but I do not like to think I’m a whore, though I also wear that label sometimes. I am a sex slave, I know, but I like to think of that in a fuller, more altruistic way than most people could ever think of it.

So as I am reporting my math homework on oral sex in front of these two men, when the brother says, “You must love it,” he has named it and applied a label to me.

This is where the shame comes in. This is the shame I begin to feel in this undressed moment, my growing numbers appearing now in crimson red. The men are peeling away not only my clothing but also my veneers of self-respect and self-justification. They are beginning to see me as that which I try so hard not to appear to be.

The numbers are a mathematical proof that I am, indeed, a slut.

---

Master Z has been jotting down the subtotals this whole time. He takes a moment to add them up.

“I come up with this,” he says finally, as if pronouncing a verdict. “Shae, you’ve sucked cock 241 times.”

I nod. My chest is flushed and splotched, and my nipples have elongated and reddened. “Actually,” I say, “it’s 242 times.”

Master Z looks up, puzzled.

“You, sir. Yesterday.”