As I hobbled out of my jeans on a sprained ankle, one knee popping and my hand failing to open, I looked down at my slave girl there, admiring her form and saying so, indicating my approval of the attire, to which she reminded me there was none.

The patriarchal bestowal of favor still untaken, I indicated that one would have thought, having acquired a slave girl of such extreme proportions off the used block at the Robert E. Howard Memorial Slave Girl Collectors Convention, that one would expect more signs of hard use. Despite recently being forced to watch Black Dynamite and being made to memorize, “You can either hit the sheets or hit the streets,” and being conditioned to respond positively to, “Bitch, nah,” a streak of the petulant free woman remained, as evidenced by her reminder that slave girls, properly preserved through pampering, retain their value, and that one is much more apt to purchase a gladiator with some miles on him that almost immediately breaks down after taking him for his first test ride, than one is to be disappointed by a slave girl.

Thence, her scintillant eyes glinting with the fire of the female who feels herself ascendant and gaining power over her fading master, she simpered, “Baby, are you still going to show me how to use the sword?” nodding at the claymore, which I had placed over her headboard to commemorate her taking.

“Of course,” I intoned, making a mental note to keep postponing the event.

Then she nodded at the combat knife she had purchased for my protection—which is illegal in so many ways I left it on her headboard rather than risk being taken into custody over carrying it—and asked, “Baby, from reading so much of your combat arts erudition, I understand that the knife is really the best defensive weapon. Will you show me how to use that?”

“Bitch, nah.”

“Why?’

“Get me a beer—a shot of whiskey too.”

After dutifully serving, she pressed for an answer, “Why not the knife, Baby?”

“Because it’s a little too effective at close quarters for my comfort—okay?”

Some ways down that whiskey river I woke up, sure I was alive by the pain in my head, got dressed, grabbed the T-Cane and pack and headed out into the Harm County night, she watching me go like an earthling viewing an alien liftoff, from behind this bath towel bra that seemed a washcloth.

When I got to work and punched in, I checked my phone and saw this text, from Wed, Jun, 7 11:22:

“Just knocked over your carefully constructed bitch booby trap that you built on your side of the bed [with empty beer bottles] to keep bitches from coming up on you by surprise…”

Yes, there is more than one way to enforce patriarchal norms.

You young bucks out there, take note that the beer bottle palisade should be constructed 12-18 inches from the bed, works best on tile or hard wood, that you should maintain low lighting on that side and do not let your tactile senses slacken in case a suddenly unruly wench decides to creep up on you across the very field of her recent conquest.

A History of Runaway White Slaves in Plantation America: Part Two