Saving Sunni (18 page)

“Can you explain to us how that works, three people in a relationship together?”

I looked over at sage, but she still showed no desire to talk, so I took a deep breath and plunged in.

“It’s called polyamory, and it literally means ‘many loves,’” I started. “We believe that it’s possible to love more than one person.”

“And you all live together? Can we ask about the dynamics of that? Do you all share a bedroom? A bed?”

I nodded. “Yes. We share a bed. It works out quite well.”

“Is there a problem with jealousy?”

I glanced at sage. She looked completely blank.

“Of course, sometimes,” I said cautiously. “Every relationship has issues. You just have to work through them.”

Dr. Carter wore a thoughtful expression.

“Do you have any moral reservations about your situation?”

I was startled and unsure how to take her comment.

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Well, most people agree that it’s immoral to be in a physical relationship with more than one person,” she explained.

sage came to life next to me. From the way she started, I half expected her to jump to her feet and either make a break for it or attack the teacher.

Instead she spoke, and her voice held none of the nervousness I knew she had felt. “It’s immoral to cheat on your partner, but this isn’t cheating,” she said, and from the students’ startled expressions, I knew no one had expected her to actually talk.

“In true polyamory, everything is aboveboard and negotiated,” she went on. “No one thinks it’s wrong to love more than one of their children, or their parents, or their friends. This is no different from that. The fact that Rutger loves sunni doesn’t mean that he doesn’t love me too. Once you accept that, there’s nothing to say we can’t all live together and be a family.”

“Does everyone in this lifestyle live together like you do?”

“No.” I jumped back in, feeling ridiculously anxious now not to be outdone by sage. “There are as many different ways to be poly as there are relationships.” That didn’t sound right. “I mean, people do poly in lots of different ways. Some groups are all involved with each other and live together, some people have partners in different parts of the country, and some groups have really complicated networks that are always growing.”

“What do you consider to be the benefits of this lifestyle?”

“There are lots of benefits,” sage said. “If you have more than two adults in a family, you can have multiple incomes, role models and child care providers. There is a bigger support system in place to deal with catastrophic events. And, of course, some people are naturally wired to be polyamorous, so they don’t need to fight their natural desire to have more than one partner.”

Dr. Carter looked impressed during sage’s speech, but the last part made her frown again. “What about the children? Isn’t it confusing for them?”

sage shook her head. “No more than any extended family. Children in poly families don’t need to be told the details of their parents’ sex lives any more than children in traditional families do. Studies show that stability is a much more important factor in a child’s life than what we might consider ‘normalcy.’ So a stable poly family would actually be much healthier for the children than having a single parent who goes from one relationship to the next.”

Dr. Carter nodded thoughtfully. “I can see that,” she conceded. “So tell us about this bdsm lifestyle that Mr. Wulfgar was talking about.”

I looked at sage to see if this was one she wanted to tackle. She shrugged slightly, so I took a deep breath and tried to remember what Sir had said during his interview.

“Well, it’s based on power exchange, or at least ours is. We have agreed to be submissive to Rutger in exchange for being treated in a certain way.”

The professor’s eyebrows went up. This was what she had been waiting for. I heard a gasp from the audience and stole a quick glance. Several of them wore shocked expressions.

“So you’re saying that you agree to be completely submissive to this man? And what does that entail?”

I shifted nervously in my chair. Dr. Carter smiled as if she was confident there was no way I was going to be able to rationalize this.

“It’s not quite the way it sounds,” I said hesitantly when I felt sage come to life next to me.

“It’s a negotiated relationship,” she said, and the students’ faces swiveled in her direction again.

“And what does that mean?”

“It means that we all take responsibility for clarifying what we want from the other people and agreeing to give them what they want,” sage explained. “We have a contract that details each person’s responsibilities to the others. Within that agreement, we have both”—she gestured to me and then herself—“committed to be submissive to Rutger, and he has committed to take our needs and desires into account in every decision he makes.”

“And you feel this is a beneficial relationship to you?”

I didn’t like Dr. Carter very much. She seemed to want to undermine everything we said.

“It is, actually,” sage said, nodding firmly. “It cuts down a lot of the sh—crap in most relationships. The big things that couples usually argue about are already negotiated, and there is a structure in place for dealing with the day-to-day stuff that comes up.”

“But what if you don’t like the decisions he makes?”

I tried to jump in again, but sage was too quick.

“The structure of the relationship means that we also have the responsibility to tell S—him if we’re unhappy about anything,” she said. “It doesn’t mean that we get to dictate anything, but we have the right to make our opinions known.”

“Whether we want to or not,” I muttered, and there was surprised laughter in the audience.

“What do you mean by that?” Dr. Carter said, looking at me sharply.

“Well, some people have a tendency to just let everything slide,” I explained, looking at sage. She blushed. “And when you’re in a power exchange relationship, you have to express yourself when you’re…asked to. Even if it gets you in trouble sometimes.”

A girl in the front row raised her hand. “How is this different than relationships in the past, when the man was always in charge?”

sage smiled slightly. “Who says the man was always in charge?” she asked. “It was expected, sure, but you know there were plenty of women who bossed their husbands around, just like today.”

There was more laughter. “And there is a huge difference,” sage continued. “For one thing, this kind of lifestyle is completely voluntary. None of your parents—I hope—are pushing you into marriages or insisting that you obey your husbands. If it’s a choice, it’s not oppression, right? And for another thing, it can be and frequently is the woman that’s dominant in a power exchange relationship. Some people, both men and women, like being dominant. And some men as well as some women enjoy being submissive. Nobody is forced to be one or the other. And there are always choices. Women in the past didn’t have a lot of choices. Divorce was a disgrace and there weren’t a lot of career options open to single, much less divorced, women. If one of us decides to leave this relationship, we don’t have to worry about being ostracized or outcast by society or our families. If we’re truly free to choose our own lives, why is this choice unacceptable?”

I watched her in amazement. I had no idea she could be so eloquent. Dr. Carter also looked stunned, but she recovered.

“Isn’t it true that these relationships often include beatings?”

I wanted to ask her if she had listened to Sir’s interview at all. I waited to see if sage was going to continue her streak, but she nudged me a little as if I was shirking my responsibilities.

“It’s called ‘scening’ in the bdsm community,” I said. “It’s negotiated, just like everything else. Some people really like the stimulation of sensual play, or they get off on the endorphins of pain. Nobody is forced to endure any kind of scene they haven’t agreed to.”

“How can you be sure of that?” another girl in the back asked. “It was impossible to tell from the video of you on television that you’d agreed to that activity.”

“That’s where personal responsibility comes in,” sage interjected. “There are probably abuses, like there are in any kind of relationship. You never really know what’s going on between other people. But if you’re going to do a public scene, there are safeguards in place for the submissive, if they are being taken further than they want to go. In any public dungeon in the country, for example, someone yelling ‘red’ is going to bring the rest of the people running to help them. It’s a way to ensure privacy as well as safety for the people who are playing. Nobody will bother you if you’re adhering to dungeon rules unless you call a universal safeword like ‘red.’”

“Why not just say ‘stop’?” asked one of the males.

sage smiled. “Because some people like to do resistance play, and yelling ‘stop’ or ‘don’t’ or even ‘ouch’ can be part of the scene. The safeword has to be something that you wouldn’t ordinarily say, but easy to remember at the same time. ‘Red’ has just become the accepted standard. If my safeword is ‘aardvark,’ and I’m yelling that in the dungeon, trying to get the scene to stop, no one else is going to know what I want. If I’m yelling ‘stop,’ they’re just going to assume it’s for dramatic effect, like sunni yelling when Sir was waving the knife around. But if I really want the scene to stop, I know that everyone is familiar with ‘red.’ I wouldn’t say it unless I was serious.”

The class was impressed, and sage flushed with pleasure. She came across as someone who was confident, and had something valuable to say.

Dr. Carter smiled. “Well, I think you’ve expressed your opinions very well. Does anyone else have any questions?”

A girl raised her hand and asked what it felt like to be flogged.

“It’s mostly like a heavy massage,” I said. “Usually the ‘top,’ or the one doing whatever action is being done, will start out very softly and increase the pressure gradually. Your back starts to feel warmed up, kind of velvety, and by the time they’re on to the bigger, heavy floggers, you’re ready for it and it’s pretty enjoyable. The endorphins can actually take you to an altered state of consciousness. Not for everybody, but it’s a fairly common thing.”

“You mean you can get high from it?” the boy asked.

sage nodded. “Some people do,” she said.

Dr. Carter stood up so quickly she almost knocked her chair over. “This has been very informative,” she said, cutting off anything else sage might have been going to say. Several of the students were disappointed, especially the boys who had perked up considerably at the new topic.

The teacher expressed the gratitude of the class for our presence, and sage and I left, giving a quick wave to Debi. She was smiling proudly.

When we were out of the room and heading back to our car, I turned to sage. “I had no idea you were so good at that,” I said, slapping her on the back. “You were great!”

She smiled at me. “That was actually kind of fun,” she admitted. “I’m shaking a little, though. I think it’s from the nerves, or endorphins, or something.” She held out her hand to show me, laughing.

“Do you think public speaking is something you might want to do with your education?”

She frowned. “I don’t know how that would work. Just having the degree probably wouldn’t qualify me to be a public speaker. I’ll probably just be some kind of counselor.”

“Maybe you could write books. That could get you chances to be interviewed and things.”

“Maybe. But I don’t think I’m a very good writer. I doubt I could get published.” She shrugged as we reached the car and got in.

Chapter 18

When we got home, Sir told us that he had called Debi’s father. We had stopped to buy groceries, and I wondered if he would be angry that we went to the store without him. I wasn’t really sure anymore what was acceptable and what wasn’t, in terms of us being out alone. But he only glanced at the bags.

“He told me that he would help me continue my immigration proceedings, but he couldn’t guarantee anything,” Sir leaned against the counter as we put away the food.

“Did he seem hopeful?” sage asked.

“Not really.” Sir picked up a jar of salsa from the counter and stared at it intently, turning it over and over in his hands. Was he was thinking about how hard it would be to get good salsa in Austria?

“If I don’t have a job it will be much harder to justify my application,” he went on after a minute.

We both stared at him, groceries forgotten.

“What are you going to do?” I asked finally.

“I think I need to look for another job.”

Nobody said anything as that statement sank in. My first thought was that it would solve everything for him to just get another job, but it wouldn’t be that easy. I could see sage’s face going through the same series of expressions that mine was.

“A new job where, Sir?” she said in a small voice, just as I came to the same conclusion.

“That is certainly a good question. It could be anywhere, but the chances of me being able to remain in Denver are quite slim. Both of you will need to decide before then if you want to come with me or stay here. I’m not saying that I will definitely have to leave, but it is a strong possibility. Give it some thought. We’ll discuss it more as things progress.”