With a piece of stiff leather I fanned the coals in the brazier. An iron protruded from the coals.
Eta passed me again, a haunch of meat upon her shoulder, grease from it in her hair. She was vital, barefoot and tanned. Her body was beautiful in the brief rag she wore. Her only jewelry was a sturdy steel band, looped closely, quite attractively, rather snugly, about her throat. She was a long-legged, sensuous, hot-eyed slut. She was the sort of woman, I supposed, whom the men of Earth, in fear, would not even dare to let enter their dreams. Yet she seemed to fit in well at the feet of the mighty men of Gor who, without thought, would handle her well and get much, and all, from her.
How disgusting she was! I hated her!
I had been in the camp now for better than two days. We had arrived in the late afternoon of the day before yesterday. In the vicinity of the camp, upon our approach to it, my captor had taken his shield from me, which I had been bearing for him. One does not approach a camp, even one's own, unarmed. One does not know what may have transpired in one's absence.
He had left me alone, kneeling, while he had scouted the camp. Shortly thereafter he had returned, and gestured for me to rise and follow him.
He approached the camp singing, and striking his spear blade on his shield.
Call words were exchanged.
Royally was he greeted by the men of the camp, who rushed forth to welcome him, men among whom I gathered he was chieftain. They shouted, and clasped him, striking him upon the back and laughing. I stood back, frightened of such men. Then a long-legged dream of a girl, Eta, had stood, timidly, near the entrance to the camp, where thorn brush had been wedged aside, during the daylight hours. She had stood there, not daring to approach. Then my captor had indicated that she might enter his presence. Radiantly, joyously, she fled to him, and knelt before him, putting her head to his feet. His shield and spear, and helmet, he handed to another. At a word from him, then, she leapt to her feet and he took her in his arms, as though he might own her, and she kissed him, too, as though she might be owned. Never had I seen human beings kiss like that. It seemed a deeply sensuous complementarity that shook me to the core. It was the kiss of lovers, but more than the kiss of lovers. It was the kiss of a lover who is owned and of one who owns his lover.
Then he laughed, and thrust her to one side. Then all turned to regard me.
How I wished that he had held me and kissed me as he did her. How jealous I was. Then, suddenly, realizing the eyes of all upon me, I was frightened.
The men, and the girl, stood about me. I stood straight. They moved about me. I reddened, assessed. Comments were exchanged. I sensed myself being discussed with open frankness, as might have been an animal. Some of the comments, I sensed, were less than completely flattering. Some, I sensed, were clearly disparaging. Most cruelly I resented the laughter. At that time I had not been brought by strict diet and enforced exercise to optimum measurement. Perhaps, too, at that time, I was not standing as well as I might have. I was standing straight, but perhaps too stiffly, too immobilely, not subtly in movement, in my breathing, the movements of my shoulders, the tiny movements of my head, almost imperceptible, but contributing to the impression of a profoundly alive body, one richly latent with the promise of incredible responsiveness. But mostly I suspect I was found wanting in subtle psychological dimensions, available to the acute observer as a consequence of almost subliminal cues. These matters are conveyed by subtleties of facial expression and physical demeanor. I was a girl raised in a culture predicated on the denial of primate biological realities, a girl from a world in which hypothetically cogent animals denied, denounced and hysterically strove to suppress their own animality, a world in whose social insanity even sexuality had now come to be politically suspect. Most simply, as a normal girl of my world, I had been negatively conditioned with respect to men and sex. In the last few years, an accretion to this form of conditioning, I had been taught that men were my equals, and that men and women were the same. If this were so why then did I feel so small and slight among the Gorean men, and tremble when they put their hands upon me? Among the men of Earth, thoughtful, and cute and kind, I had not felt small and slight, nor did I tremble when they put their hands upon me; I had felt only irritation, and would push them away; I did not dare to push away a Gorean man; I might have been put under discipline; further, I found myself longing, though I did not admit this to myself at the time, to lie lovingly in their arms, theirs. I think the major reason I so failed to impress the men at the camp of my captor was because at that time I had not yet been taught to come alive as a woman. I did not yet know what men were like, or what they could do to me. I did not then know how they in their power could wrench out my insides and bring me to my knees before them. I had not learned their manhood; accordingly I had not yet learned my womanhood. Sexually, I was, like most girls of Earth, negativistic and inert.
Only on Gor, in the presence of my captor, had I, at times, begun to suspect that there was an incredible, glorious world of experience, not forbidden on this planet, to which my nature as a female fully entitled me, could I but dare to be myself. But my fear was groundless. I needed not dare. I needed not decide to become myself. Gorean men do not tolerate pretense and hypocrisy in a girl such as I was to be. Against my will, I would be forced to be what I was.
Much did my captor's men jest with him on the deficiencies of his prize. Laughing, did he strike and kick at them. And the girl, taking his arm, smiling, kissing at him, pulled him away from me. They turned, the entire party, and went into the camp, leaving me outside. I stood aside, alone. I was furious. I had, in effect, been spurned, rejected. Nothing in my experience had prepared me for this treatment. I felt the gravel of the canyon under my feet, the sunlight reflected from the walls. My fists were clenched. Who did these barbarians think they were? I was the most beautiful girl in the junior class at an elite girls' college on Earth, perhaps in the college as a whole. The only exception might perhaps have been the beautiful senior in anthropology, Elicia Nevins. We had been great rivals. But she had only been an anthropology major, whereas I was an English major, and a poetess. But then I recalled the beautiful, intelligent-seeming, hot-eyed slut in the brown rag. In a world where there might be such women, I realized, gasping, Judy Thornton's beauty and even that of an Elicia Nevins would not be particularly outstanding. As I would later learn, the value placed on girls such as we were, a Judy Thornton or an Elicia Nevins, girls of our quality, would commonly be a tiny sack of copper corns, a few more, a few less.