  
Tether Dance
I jerked the tether on her throat.
"This is a tether," I said, "It is to be well incorporated in
your dance. You are a tethered slave. Do not forget it. You may fight the
tether, you may love it. It may confine your body, you may use it to caress your
body, an invitation to your master, a surrogate symbol of his domination of you.
You need not dance always on your feet. A woman can dance beautifully on her
knees, moving as little as a hand, or on her back, or belly or side. In all
things do not forget that you are a slave."
"Are you now commanding me to dance before you?" she asked.
"Yes," I said, "you dance now as a commanded slave. And if I
am not well pleased have no fear but what you will be well beaten, if not
slain."
"Yes, Master," she said.
I then struck my hands together, and, terrified, the girl danced.
She had not been taught the tether dance, one of the most beautiful of the
slave dances of Gor, but she improvised well. Indeed, it was hard to believe
that she had not had training. I am inclined to believe that the need dances and
display dances of the human female may be, at least in their rudiments,
instinctual. I suspect there is a genetic disposition in the woman toward this
type of behavior and that certain of the movements, closely associated with
luring behavior and love movements, may also be genetically based. One reason
for supposing this to be the case is that a girl's growth in certain forms of
dance skills does not follow a normal learning curve. It is rather like the
human being's ability to acquire speech, which also does not follow a normal
learning curve. It seems reasonably likely that facility in acquiring speech,
which would have enormous survival value, has been selected for. Similarly, a
woman's marvelous adaptability to erotic dance may possibly have been selected
for. At any rate, whatever the truth may be in these matters, feminine women,
perhaps to the horror of their more masculine sisters, seem to take naturally to
the beauties of erotic dance. At the very least, perhaps inexplicably, they are
marvelously good at it. These genetic dispositions, of course, if they exist,
can be culturally suppressed.
I watched the girl dance. She was quite good...
"Now you are becoming a woman," I told her. She knelt on one knee,
her right; her left leg was flexed; the tether was taken, in a turn, about her
left thigh; her hands, too, were on her left thigh; her head was down, but
turned toward me; her lip trembled. "Continue to dance, Slave," I told
her.
"Yes, Master," she said.
I watched her, and marveled. It is interesting to note that such movements,
those of slave dances, despite the inhibitions of rigid cultures, may occur in a
girl's sleep, and may even occur, almost spontaneously, when she, nude, alone,
passes before a mirror in her bedroom. How shocked she may be to suddenly see
her body move as that of a slave. Could it have been she who so moved? Later,
perhaps to her surprise, she finds herself standing before the mirror. She is
naked, and alone. Then, perhaps scarcely understanding what is occurring within
her, she sees the girl in the mirror has begun to dance. The movements are not
dissimilar perhaps to those of women who, thousands of years ago, danced in
firelit caves before their masters. Then, knowing well that it si she herself
who is the dancer, she dances brazenly, boldly, before the mirror. Well does she
present her bared beauty before it in the movements, the attitudes and postures
of the female slave. Then perhaps she falls to the rug, scratching at it,
pressing her belly to it. "I want a Master," she whispers.
I now stood up. My arms were folded.
The girl now was upon her knees at my feet, the tether on her neck slung back
behind her to the slave stake. Still in her dance, she began to lick and kiss at
my body.
I then took her by the upper arms and held her, half lifted from her knees,
before me.
"Please do not whip me," she begged.
I then, by the upper arms, dragged her to the side of the slave stake. I put
her on her knees there. She looked up at me. "You danced well as a
slave," I said.
Explorers of Gor, page 360
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