Read-Along-A-Gor: Fighting Slave of Gor, chapter Two

 

Chapter Two: Syringes

 

(In which we read, Fighting Slave of Gor)

 

Oh, no, our hapless hero and heroine awaken in a cement floored garage with lightbulbs swinging from cables! What is going to happen to them! I think we can guess… Both Jason And the lovely Miss Henderson are in a state of compete denial as they wake from the gas to find burly men with weapons preparing to process Miss Henderson for shipment to Gor.

 

Not that either of them yet believes that Gor exists. 

 

Gorean slavers on Earth are of course almost always described as ‘balding’ and ‘virile,’ and so they are here. We learn little else about them as they appear briefly, serving only as a mechanism to abduct the wriggling Earth girl. They are rarely, if ever, given any individual characteristics, though we learn that they tend to operate in mixed groups of predominantly Goreans with some dominant Earth males as support. 

 

Jason’s first real shock, other than finding he has been kidnapped, is when the beautiful Miss Henderson, the chaste Madonna of his dreams, refers to one of the men as ‘master’. His reaction is twofold:

 

Dreadful, dreadful.

 

But how exciting, too, it was for me to hear the proud Miss Henderson, she to whom I would scarcely dare aspire, she of whom I would scarcely dare dream, address that word to a man!’

 

Jason is half way shocked and no doubt half way aroused by the concept that Miss Henderson might relate to men in that fashion. But this should come as no surprise. From the very first chapter the delightful Miss Henderson has demonstrated how she is prepared to submit herself to a Gorean man with hardly any coercion. Her visit to the slaver in the past had her, by her own admission, seen her half stripping herself before him and serving wine with only a stern look to compel such submissive responses. To my mind this is too soon, and I think many of Norman’s Earth girls submit to life as a kajira too quickly and easily, undermining the more erotic possibilities of the girl struggling to reman defiant and only gradually losing control. I tend to take a different approach to Mr Norman and my Earth heroines are hopefully a little more feisty. The end result is often the same, but hopefully the journey to that transition point is a little more delicious. Too many of the Earth women in the official Gor books turn out to be doormats early on, and  find that a bit dull and frustrating, considering the genre. 

 

The same doesn’t necessarily apply to Mr Norman’s Gorean free women. By and large these women remain defiant, or at least indignant, far longer than their Earth girl equivalents, in similar situations. I have no idea whether this is a deliberate difference on the author’s part, but I tend to enjoy the ‘spicy’ scenes with Gorean Free Woman being captured and dominated more than the Earth girl equivalents. 

 

Elinor Brinton, in Captive of Gor, is of course the exception to the doormat rule for Earth girls. 

 

I paid homage of sorts to this second chapter in my own opening chapter of Mistress of Gor, when Eric Michael Anderson (who isn’t named as such until the end of Harem Girl of Gor) lies half drugged near the transport capsules, observing the beautiful and helpless Miss Elizabeth Bentley being stripped and prepared for shipment to Gor. I played on the fact that people would attribute a similar set up as we find here, between Jason and Beverly, and assume a story going forward with Eric/Emma trying to locate Elizabeth through the course of the trilogy, only for me to circumvent that assumption when it turns out in a dramatic plot twist that Elizabeth Bentley is actually a major villain, most certainly not requiring rescue. 

 

Jason continues to talk to himself in John Norman speak, which is so stylised it doesn’t even begin to resemble the way real people think:

 

I struggled to suppress these thoughts, to generate comforting dismay and guilt. What a bounder, and cad, I was! Was I so primitive and coarse, so deplorably insensitive, so unimproved, so unreformed, so masculine, as to relish the mere audition of the word 'Master' on the lips of a beautiful woman? Yet I could not repress my envy of the heavy man. Yes, envy! And, too, how natural it seemed that one such as Miss Henderson should so address one such as he.

 

This, in itself, isn’t a criticism, as I find the overblown stylistic overtures of dialogue part of the charm of the Gor books, and I go out of my way to have my own characters often speak in very obtuse ways. If anything, I often take it a step further and border on the prosaic dialogue flourishes of characters in a Jack Vance novel. 

 

Chapter two introduces us to the way in which women on Earth are prepared for transit:

 

I watched in horror as Miss Henderson’s clothing was cut from her, completely. A crate was then brought forward. It opened from the side. Inside it were various straps. One of the men busied himself with gagging the girl. The gag was of leather, black, and effective. It buckled behind her neck with two buckles. I gathered they were taking no chances on the possibility of the effects of the drug prematurely wearing off. The heavy man then brought forth a long, narrow, rectangular leather case. In it, aligned, each held in its place by the construction of the interior of the case, each in its cushioned slot, was the remainder, some six or so, of what must once have been a series of something like twenty steel anklets.

 

Not speaking these two men then, as I watched, from my helpless, prone position, placed Miss Henderson in the crate. They placed her sitting in the crate, its open side to her left. Her head was first drawn back and fixed in place. There was a ring on the back of the gag straps and a ring within the crate. These two rings snapped together, holding her head back. A heavy black belt then, attached in the container, was looped about her waist. She was thrust back in the container further. Then the belt was tightened about her and buckled shut. Each of her wrists was then strapped back, her left wrist on her left side, her right wrist on her. Right side, the back of each wrist against the side of the container against which her back rested. Because of the smallness of the container her knees must be thrust up. Both ankles, then, one on the left, one on the right, were strapped in place.

 

None of the details are essential to the plot, but from a bondage point of view the sobering descriptions of the minutia of slavery described usually in first person speech, add to the eroticism of the scene. The fact that the descriptions are so clinical, coming from a character who has effectively found himself in a horror situation, gives it a sort of ‘detached’ viewpoint. Bearing in mind that the Gor books present little to no actual sex scenes, the eroticism derives from verbal word play and an obsession with every small nuance of the practical considerations of slavery.

 

Not that Jason is at all detached in his viewpoint as the slinky Miss Henderson is stripped of her garments and delicate high heeled pumps with gold straps (a fashion choice that I found very attractive, as I love wearing high heeled pumps with straps, and I was certainly there with Miss Henderson when it came to her footwear):

 

I suppose I should not have looked upon her, but I could not help myself. Clothed, she had been beautiful; naked, she was fantastic. I could scarcely imagine the joy and power a man would feel, having such a woman at his feet.

 

You can probably see in Jason Marshall, the template and inspiration for my own character of Simon Rogers who professes all manner of high minded ideals about women and then counterpoints them all with his beastly actions, often justifying everything to himself repeatedly. Simon is distinct from Jason in many character traits, but the inspiration for him comes from Fighting Slave of Gor, and Jason Marshall in particular.

 

One of the central Gor tropes is specifically alluded to in chapter two when one of the slavers informs Jason:

 

"Free a woman," he said, "and she will try to destroy you. Enslave her, and she will crawl to you on her belly, and beg to lick your sandals."

 

Those two lines neatly sum up how we see the free female characters act throughout the series. While free, they are generally obnoxious, but when enslaved, they become needy and responsive. 

 

Beverly is sedated ready for shipment and then it is Jason’s turn to be dealt with. At first the slavers decide to kill him, for they are only shipping women to Gor, but after he pleads for his life, one of the men decides that maybe Jason might be suitable merchandise for a different, much smaller market – the market for silk slaves for rich Gorean women. 

 

A confused and very scared Jason is sedated and added to the shipment. The first Earth man to be transported to Gor as a slave.