She then, gently, removed the bark skirt from her hips and dropped it to the side. She then flexed her knees and lifted her hands, the backs of the wrists facing one another, gracefully over her head. "Wait," I said.
"Master?" she asked.
"Have you begged to perform?" I asked.
"No, Master," she said.
"You may do so now," I said.
"I beg to perform before my master," she said.
"Very well," I said. "You may do so."
"Thank you, Master," she said. She then danced before me, of her own free will, a girl in need, and one desiring to please her master. Her dance grew ever more desperate and, at times, I had to throw her from me. Then she lay at the slave stake. She held out a hand to me.
I went to her and seized her by the upper arms and threw her to her feet. She looked at me, frightened. "You did not do badly, Slave Girl," I said. "But now it is time for you to learn how to truly dance before a man."
"Master!" she cried in misery.
"Be as you were," I told her. Immediately, frightened, she stood again before me, knees flexed, hands raised above her head, gracefully, the backs of her wrists facing one another, in one of the attitudes of the slave dancer. I jerked the tether on her throat. "This is a tether," I said. "It is to be well incorporated into 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 always dance 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 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 supressed.
