Quid Pro Quo

Barbara was talking on her cellphone as I entered her office. She pointed at the floor so I got down on my knees to wait. After wrapping up the call Barbara told her receptionist Jan over the intercom that she didn't want to be disturbed for awhile, then walked to a cabinet in the rear of her office. I was fearful that she would pull out the gag and whip, but Barbara surprised me once again when she returned with a bottle of wine and two wine glasses.

Barbara poured the wine, then kicked off her shoes, removed her jacket and kneeled down in front of me for the second time that day.

"You've had quite a day, Danica," she said as she handed me a glass of wine, then clinked it with her glass. "Cheers," she said with a smile as she took a sip. I followed suit as I nervously looked into her eyes. Barbara's unpredictability always left me feeling a little unsettled even when she was being nice.

"Danica, today was an important day for the Mailgirls program here at DDE and I want to reward you for everything you've done to make it possible. For the next few minutes you're not a mailgirl, you're not a number, and I'm not your superior. We're just two people having a glass of wine and a conversation together."

"Yes ma'am," I responded.

"And no 'ma'am's' either," she said. "Do you know what 'quid pro quo' means, Danica?"

"Yes," I nodded. "It means a fair exchange. I give you something and you give me something."

"That's right," she said. "In this case it means I promise to answer any question you ask me with complete honesty if you'll do the same for me."

"Okay," I said. The use of the phrase "quid pro quo" reminded me of a scene from The Silence of the Lambs and I could picture myself as a frightened young Clarice Starling with Barbara in the role of Dr. Hannibal Lecter. That image didn't really give me a warm, fuzzy feeling about how this might turn out.

I took a sip of the wine and thought about what I wanted to ask. I had about a million questions but I wanted to make it a good one since I had no idea when, or if, I'd be given this opportunity again. I finally settled on one.

"Okay, Barbara, how about this. Why are you doing this really? I mean all of it. Me, the Mailgirls, the condo, Anna...everything. I know you've told me some of it but I don't think you've told me everything."

Barbara laughed as she swirled her wine around in her glass. "That's a very broad question. I promised you an honest answer, though, so I'll do my best." She took a sip of wine and then spent a minute thinking about how to respond.

"When I was in graduate school I took part in a very interesting psychological study," she said. "It involved student volunteers taking on roles as prisoners and prison guards and studied how they interacted with each other based on their roles. There were two separate groups of men and women volunteers and I was a volunteer in the women's study."

"I suppose you played a prison guard," I said.

"No, I was a prisoner. Our roles were randomly drawn to eliminate any bias in the selection."

"So what happened?" I asked.

"The guards were given khaki uniforms bought from an army surplus store and some wooden batons as symbols of their status. They were told they couldn't use any physical force against us but could otherwise do what they felt was necessary to maintain order. The prisoners were given loose fitting coveralls to wear and were only told that they'd been arrested for armed robbery and were being held in jail. Our 'cells' were merely taped off areas with mattresses in the basement of one of the Psych buildings. The prison guards worked eight hour shifts but the prisoners were confined for twenty-four hours a day. The study was supposed to last a week but it was abruptly ended after six days because things were getting so out of hand."

"In what way?"

"The guards began becoming crueler and more authoritarian with each passing day while most of the prisoners either passively accepted this or turned on their fellow prisoners to gain favor with the guards. It wasn't playacting either. By the end, each group had internalized their roles so completely that it felt like a real prison. The tape on the floor had become as real a barrier as steel bars."

"So did you internalize your role as a prisoner?" I asked.

"To a point, yes, although probably not as much as some of the others. And you know me, I manipulated both guards and prisoners whenever possible to gain favor," she said with a smile. "By the end, though, I did feel like a real prisoner to a much greater degree than I would have ever thought possible."

I took another sip of wine and thought about what she'd told me. "So Mailgirls is your real life version of this experiment? You want to see if the mailgirls will internalize their roles as lowly slave girls?"

"Not just the mailgirls, but the regular employees as well. I wanted to see if they would internalize their roles as your masters. And they are. It's happening. Tower employees are treating you in ways they would never dream of treating any other co-worker, or anyone else in their lives for that matter."

"Okay, I see that. But what's the point of it? If your 'experiment' is producing the results you expected then why continue it? What's your endgame?"

Barbara smiled and took another sip of wine. "My endgame, Danica, is to someday be allowed to walk openly down the street with you a step behind me, naked and wearing a collar showing the world that you belong to me. I want to be seated in a restaurant and have you kneeling nude on the floor next to my table. I want to create a subclass of beautiful nude female servants, not just within the corporate culture, but within the culture at large."

I reeled in shock at this. "That's totally nuts, Barbara. That'll never happen."

"Really?" she replied. "Just a few months ago people were saying that it would be impossible for any company to get away with attempting a Mailgirls program in this country, but we're doing it. And there are quite a few companies watching us very closely to see what happens here."

"But you're talking about a huge cultural shift, Barbara. I just don't see it happening."

"No one saw Mailgirls coming either until Hiromoto did it. He was in a unique position of wealth and power to attempt it, but even he couldn't have succeeded if the culture hadn't already been shifting in that direction. Nudity had been becoming more acceptable for years, on television and movies, in games, even in public. Cultural changes often take place in a slow, incremental manner but every so often the tectonic plates give way creating an earthquake that alters the landscape. In this case Hiromoto's Mailgirls program was that earthquake."

"Yeah, but you're basically talking about legalized slavery. That was abolished by the Emancipation Proclamation and the Constitution."

"It would never be called slavery, Danica. You're right, there are constitutional prohibitions to it and there are too many negative connotations to that word anyway. That's why you're called a mailgirl and we don't allow the use of words like 'master' or 'mistress.' And the woman must always give her legal consent in the form of a contract."

"But why just women? Why not men, too?"

"Because it would be far more difficult to accomplish with nude men. Fair or not, a lot more people from both sexes are uncomfortable in the presence of a naked man. Besides, I prefer the aesthetic beauty of the female body."

I thought about everything she was saying and an idea suddenly occurred to me. "Okay, Barbara, let's say that this society you dream of that allows naked servant girls actually comes to pass. You're a beautiful woman, how do you know that some powerful person wouldn't entrap you into becoming their naked servant girl?"

Barbara smiled at this. "That's a very good question, Danica. I hadn't really thought of it before. I think it would be very difficult for anyone to trap me into signing that contract so I guess if it happened then all I could say is 'well played.'"

"Well played? That's it? So everything is just a game to you?"

"Not everything," she replied. "But Mailgirls? Yes, that's a game to me and it's one I'm playing to win. And if I can expand that concept into the rest of the culture at large I'll do that, too."

"What if you fail?" I asked. "What if the whole thing comes crashing down on your head?"

Barbara shrugged. "Then I fail. It wouldn't be the first time and won't be the last. I'd rather be a spectacular failure than a mediocre success."

"You're not afraid of failure?" I asked.

"Danica, have you ever read the sonnet 'Ozymandias' by Percy Bysshe Shelley?"

I shook my head. "I don't think so." Barbara closed her eyes and began reciting it to me.

"I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: "Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them on the sand,

Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:

Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away."

After she'd finished Barbara opened her eyes and looked into mine. "What does that poem mean to you, Danica?"

"It means that nothing lasts forever, not even the works of mighty kings."

"That's right. Time is the great equalizer. Whether you're a king or a pauper, in time any evidence of your existence here will eventually be erased."

"That sounds depressing," I said.

"Does it?" she replied. "To me it sounds liberating. We mustn't fear either success or failure because someday all that will be left of either are the barren sands. The only thing that should be feared is living life in half measures while we're here."

As Barbara spoke I wasn't sure if she sounded more like a lunatic or a visionary. Maybe both. Perhaps it required a little lunacy to become a visionary.

I took another sip of wine and something popped into my mind that had been nagging me for awhile. "I have another question I'd like to ask if you don't mind."

"Go ahead."

"What about Anna?" I asked. "How does she fit into all of this? Was she planted by you the same way that Kelly was?"

"No," Barbara replied. "Anna just fell into my lap. My original plan was to put you and Kelly together in the condo with her in control of you. I could see early on, though, that Kelly wasn't going to work out for a variety of reasons. Fortunately Anna came along to take her place."

"But why do you need someone to control me outside of work?"

"I need you to test the boundaries of public nudity away from work so I need someone who'll force you out of that condo and out into the world. As your boss I can't do that myself. I can't be seen leading you naked around town. Not yet anyway."

I was startled again by how open she was being about her plans for me. "So why are you telling me this anyway? Aren't you afraid that I might try to bail out or escape my role in all of this?"

"Perhaps you will," she replied, "but I doubt it. When things were at their worst during that study any of the prisoners could have walked out at any time. There were no bars holding us in our cells, the building's doors were unlocked, and the guards weren't allowed to physically restrain us. No one did, though. We all knew that we weren't really prisoners and our captors weren't really prison guards but we became our roles anyway."

"And you think I'll internalize my role so completely that I'll be unable to walk away when my contract ends?" I asked.

"Yes."

Barbara drained her glass of wine and set it on the floor. "Now it's my turn, Danica," she said. "Quid pro quo. Earlier today when you began kissing me, what would you have done if I'd let you continue?"

I thought about how to respond to that and decided that since she'd been honest with me, I'd be honest with her. "I would've kept going as far as you would have let me go. All the way if I could have. I don't think I've ever wanted to make love with someone as much as I did in that moment."

Barbara smiled. "Someday I'll allow you to do that, Danica. I'll allow you to explore every inch of my body, but you'll have to earn that right. You'll have to earn it through continued obedience." She then leaned in and gave me a long moist kiss and I began to melt in desire for her all over again. As I began to reach out for her Barbara pulled away and rose to her feet.

"You've had a very long day, Danica," she said. "Go collect Anna and go home."