Molding Susan's Tummy

My proposal to Susan was simple: because it would give pleasure to both of us, the two of us should cooperate in a program which would result in a subtle, but real, transformation of her body.

Susan's body was already very pleasing. Because she has a rather small, compact frame, her body has the enticing charm of a fruit in danger of passing from ripe to overripe. Thus, the appropriate adjective to describe her figure is "succulent," not svelte. In fact, it is only because she is willing to discipline herself that she is able to present the world with a clearly defined waistline above a belly which is firm but more rounded than flat. The discipline involves constant vigilance to both her diet and her posture.

For my tastes, Susan's body type is more appealing than either the bony, emaciated or the bulky, Amazonian female bodies which dominate our media. Besides its soft femininity, I enjoy knowing that Susan experiences a small but definite sense of tension deriving from her need to monitor her body lest its attractive roundness lose out to a less than attractive flabbiness, and I have devised various games which allow us to exacerbate and enjoy that tension.

For example, one of our favorite games is to have Susan stand naked in front of a wall mirror while I, standing close behind her, massage her relaxed tummy with one hand and tease her breasts with the other. Of her own volition, Susan responds by reaching her arms over her head, which she rests on my shoulder, to place her hands behind my neck. The effect on her body is to stretch it taut so that her abdominal muscles are distinctly palpable through the soft fleshy padding which covers them. After a while, my massaging hand starts to apply more pressure, and what began as a gentle rubbing evolves into a rather strong kneading of the muscles to which her position has afforded me ready access. At first, Susan's natural reaction is to protect her tummy by tightening her muscles, thereby letting my fingers dent her soft flesh but preventing them from penetrating into the muscles themselves. However, because it causes the surface of her stomach to bear the full brunt of my probing, she soon abandons her initial tactic in favor of a compromise in which her stomach muscles become maleable without losing their tone. The result is lovely. Namely, my fingers now can penetrate into the lower strata of her muscles, which have arranged themselves into flexible sheets which can be prized apart but not deformed.

Of course, I can only surmise what sensations Susan experiences while I knead. On the one hand, from the sensual way that her body writhes as I probe, I know that the sensations are intense to the point of being painful. On the other hand, her complicity in what we are doing makes me believe that she is deriving real pleasure from the game in which she is a willing participant. Indeed, her writhing represents an acquiescence with rather than an escape from what is happening to her body. To wit, she never attempts to move her tummy out of harm's way but instead seems only to be making sure that all facets of her stomach muscles receive their fair share of attention. In particular, she is always careful that, at some point, she presents me with the most intimate part of her stomach: her belly button. The musculature which surrounds the navel is a thing of beauty. Suddenly, the planar surface of muscle is interrupted to accommodate the dip left by our prenatal past. In order to accomplish this, the muscles form a delicate cup which seems to invite penetration. As anyone who has tested his own navel can vouch, it is not always easy to bear the consequences of this invitation being accepted. Indeed, having a finger delve into ones navel and then explore its environs can be an excruciating experience in which ones whole body becomes involved. Thus, if Susan were not getting pleasure from my manipulation of her stomach muscles, it is impossible to believe that she would take such care that I include a protracted and thorough manipulation of her navel each time that she presents her belly to me.

Returning to my proposition, what I suggested to Susan is that we embark on a program which would be specifically devised to enhance the pleasure which we both derive from our time spent exploring and manipulating her tummy. With this in mind, I asked if she would be interested in having us plan an exercise regimen to strengthen her abdominal muscles in a way that would increase our mutual pleasure in them. I had no desire to turn my succulent Susan into either a stringy clone of Twiggy or a wrestling partner for Tarzan. Instead, my goal was to augment, in a mutually exciting way, the assets which Susan already possessed.

Her hesitation before accepting my proposal was understandable. She had already experienced the intensity, bordering on pain, of having me work on her tummy, and so it was not immediately clear to her whether she should agree to increase the exposure of her abdomen to my sometimes less than tender mercies. I interpret her eventual acceptance as additional corroboration that our pleasure is indeed mutual. This interpretation is further substantiated by the fact that her acceptance came without coercion and after, rather than before, she learned the details about what I had in mind.

I explained to Susan that it was my intention to exercise her stomach in a way which would increase its strength but not diminish its roundness. More precisely, I hoped that the already distinct dip which forms her navel would become more pronounced and available to my attention. In other words, it was my intention that her abdomen should become more, not less, sensitive to my proddings. In addition, I wanted the exercises themselves to tire her muscles and leave them sore enough that she would be aware of them even when they were not being prodded or exercised. In short, I made it clear that, by slowly but steadily increasing the demands which we would make on her muscles, I hoped that her abdomen would become, at least for a while, a part of her anatomy which she would find difficult to ignore.

Because we were both aware that it at times would require considerable discipline and some courage for her to accept the rigors to which we would be subjecting her tummy, I thought it important that we figure out ways to mitigate the drudgery of the exercises themselves. In the end, we arrived at two basic plans, each of which would admit sufficient variation to prevent it from becoming dull. The first plan was to introduce a certain amount of ritual into her regimen. With this in mind, we agreed that, upon returning home in the evening, Susan should pamper her body. She should begin by taking a protracted warm bath in which she could relax from her day at the office and soothe those of her muscles which were suffering residual soreness as a result of the exercises they had been made to do on the previous day. Further, with the help of bath oils during and body lotions and powder following her bath, this should be a time for her to luxuriate in the comfort and beauty of her body. On the other hand, at the same time as she was pampering her body, I was confident that she would find excitement in the knowledge that soon the oils and powder in which she had lavished her body would be mixed with her own sweat and that the soreness which she had relieved during her bath would be renewed, and sometimes increased, by the exercises in which we would soon force them to engage. Indeed, I knew that she would appreciate the irony of pampering her body in order that it be primed to more fully experience the opposite.

When she had finished with her bath, she was to put her now warm and fragrant naked self into a clean leotard. The leotard was to be made of a soft material which would cling to but not alter her natural shape. Further, the leotard was to be the sort which wraps around the midriff and is held to the body by a couple of cloth stings: one around the waist and the other tied in a bow behind the neck. Finally, the leotard was to be cut so that the pleasing softness of her breasts and roundness of her tummy would be fully visible. Once she was in her leotard, her only obligation before my arrival was to keep her muscles warm and relaxed in anticipation of what lay ahead for them. During this period, she was free to read, nap, listen to music or do anything else which might suit her fancy. However, I hoped that while she waited for my return, she would occasionally press on or tighten her stomach muscles in order to gauge just how hard it would be for her to bear the resumption of their ordeal, about whose rigor she would by then have no doubt.

I say ordeal and emphasize her lack of doubt about its rigor because, from the very beginning, I wanted to impress on Susan that, although I wished her to derive pleasure from her exercise program and have it allied in her mind to our sessions before the mirror, I wanted it to be a pleasure which arose from a distinctly different relationship to both her body and me. Namely, while her muscles were being made to work, I wanted her to think, at least metaphorically, of both her body and me as the enemy: her body because it was causing her pain, and me because my role was to make sure that she would continue to endure that pain past the point at which she would have stopped if I were not there. In order to produce this state of mind in her, I insisted that throughout her exercise sessions I, not she, would be in charge of determining exactly how much stress her stomach muscles would be made to absorb. Of course, I allowed, and even encouraged, her to communicate to me what her body was communicating to her. On the other hand, it was understood that, even when her discomfort was extreme, only I who would decide when she would be allowed to desist from the exercise which was source of that discomfort. When exercising muscles, especially muscles which are already sore, there is a pain threshold past which it is difficult to push oneself. Nonetheless, as Susan already knew from the time she had spent with my fingers probing her navel, there is a second, higher, threshold past which the sort of pain which we were planning for her undergoes a transformation and becomes a subtle aphrodisiac. In addition, her previous experience had taught her that there was considerable excitement to be derived from savoring her own ambivalence about submitting her body to a program specifically designed to make it achieve that higher threshold.

The second of our schemes for preventing Susan's exercise program from becoming dull was the establishment of an ultimate goal toward which her efforts would be directed. On the one hand, we wanted to be sure that the goal was attainable. On the other hand, we wanted to be certain that it could not be attained with ease. After some research, we found what we wanted in an advertisement. The advertisement depicted a girl who was literally hanging upside down while performing abdominal curls. The device which kept her suspended was a horizontal bar to which she was attached via a pair of specially constructed, well padded leg braces. Exactly how she could have gotten her feet up to the bar was not explained, but no explanation was required of the purpose for which she had been hung from the bar. Indeed, even though the model for this picture had been carefully selected for the strength of her body, her face clearly reflected the intense strain which she was experiencing. Extrapolating from our own experiences with abdominal curls while lying on the floor, we could easily image the difficulty of performing them while hanging vertically upside down. In fact, we knew that it would be possible for Susan to do so only after she had undergone a lengthy and concerted training regimen. Thus, after a brief discussion, we decided that emulation of the model in the advertisement would be the ultimate goal which we set for Susan.

In order to have the goal be an integral part of Susan's routine well before it would be attainable, we immediately bought the requisite bar and braces. In addition, I decided that, from the start, Susan should do her exercises while attached to the bar. For one thing, I knew that this would help her keep her goal in view. Secondly, it was clear that we could easily invent a variety of quickly achievable but interesting approximations to ultimate goal which we had set for her. Thus, on the very first day when I arrived home and found Susan waiting, lovely and fragrant in her leotard, I had to figure out exactly how I was going to get her attached to the bar. Susan is small, but she is neither sufficiently light nor I sufficiently strong for me to simply lift her to the bar by like a trussed chicken. The solution at which I arrived sounds a little crude, but it sufficed. First I attached the bar inside a solid door frame at slightly over Susan's height. Second, I moved a high backed chair so that its back was directly under the bar. Third, I placed several firm pillows on top of a sturdy footstool, which I then moved so that it was touching the seat of the chair. Finally, I had Susan climb up onto the precarious perch provided by the back of the chair and the pillows on the footstool. With her hips resting on the chair-back and her shoulder blades on the pillows, I was able to first lift her legs the extra inch or two needed to get the clamps on her braces over the bar and to then lower her body again until her hips returned to the back of the chair.

Once her legs were connected to the bar, Susan's perch became much more stable. At the same time, it became obvious to her that just to remain in her present position would be trying and could easily be made quite demanding. For example, although her shoulders were resting on the pillows, her head had no support. Either she had to raise so that it would be in the same plane as her shoulders, or it would have dangle off the edge of the pillows. Similarly, she was confronted with the analogous problem about what to do with her arms. Realizing that the solution to these problems could provide the initial stage of her training, I told Susan that, until I said she could let it drop, she was to keep her head up high enough for her to see her belly and that her arms were to be kept snug against her sides. Although I knew that these instructions would force her to work her stomach muscles, I was not sure exactly where or how hard she would have to work them. In addition, I wanted Susan to know that I was not her disinterested drill sergeant, but someone whose hope was that her efforts would give us both pleasure. Thus, shortly after I had her assume her pose, I ran my hands over her tummy to determine exactly which muscles were involved and how hard they were working. I was pleased find that it was the muscles in her lower belly which were under the greatest strain. A prominent ridge of tight muscles ran from the lowest point of her pelvis, past her navel, and up to her diaphragm. By pressing against the sides of this ridge, I could make out some of the individual muscle groups which she was using, and I began to massage these both to let her know that I was enjoying their effort and to increase her own awareness them. As my fingers probed and rubbed her muscles, a brave, if somewhat pained, smile came onto her face. However, after several minutes her smile was replaced by a look of concern as it became evident that she was approaching the threshold at which, if I were not in command, she would stop, and, in a slightly husky voice, she asked me when I would allow her to rest. Having spent some time considering what criteria to apply in deciding when I would grant her respite, I explained to Susan that it would be her own muscles, not I, who would determine just how long they would be made to persist and that I would relent only when I could feel that her muscles were on the verge of spasming.

As the expression on her face left no doubt, my words offered her no comfort. For this reason, I told her that, although I intended to be rigorous, I promised do my best to recompense her for her travail with as much pleasure as possible. To substantiate this promise, I reached behind her back, undid the string which held the middle panel of her leotard closed, and bared to both of us her already trembling tummy. Even though I, and even more she, already knew that her muscles were hard at work, what we saw when I bared her tummy came as a surprise to both of us. In particular, we had not realized just how prominent the muscles of her abdomen had become. The ridge which I had palpated earlier had become a clearly defined bulge which narrowed as it approached her pelvis and was widest in the area around her belly button. At the same time, we were both fascinated by the way the trembling of her muscles caused her belly button to change shape as different muscle groups became exhausted. With the hope that it would accentuate this intriguing phenomenon, I commenced a gentle but firm massage of her belly button. Obviously, the sensation which my finger now produced was more intense than Susan had experienced in our sessions before the mirror. For one thing, Susan's tummy was already under considerable duress, which meant there was essentially no way for her to adjust her muscles to ease their accommodation of my finger. Secondly, as distinguished from our earlier games, in this game she had explicitely relinquished control to me. As I had hoped, in spite their increasing her discomfort, these differences enhanced rather than diminished the intensity with which she responded to what was happening to her body. In fact, for at least five minutes, Susan closed her eyes and performed a wonderfully sensual dance in which her hips undulated while, except for its ever increasing trembling, her belly remained fixed with my finger embedded deep in her navel.

However, in the end, her muscles became exhausted and, as my finger, which by then was over an inch below the rim surrounding her belly button, told me, they could stand no more. As soon as this threshold was reached, I withdrew my finger, went over to the footstool, and cradled her head in my hands. Although her relief was immediate, her chest continued to heave and her sweat continued to flow, and so I knew that it would take some time for her to fully recover. Therefore I readjusted her pillows to accommodate both her head as well as shoulders and went to get a towel with which to dry her damp body.

In the short time that it took me to get the towel, Susan's breathing had returned to normal and her mind had started to drift into that lovely state of lassitude which over-exertion often evokes. As the first step in a plan to make sure she would feel amply rewarded for the travail which she had just born, I carefully removed the remaining string holding her leotard, thereby exposing the rest of her torso to our gaze. I say our gaze because, in some sense, Susan was still a little confused about exactly whose body she was looking at. After all, she had relinquished its control to me, and both of us had cooperated in denying it the relief for which it had begged. Under the circumstances, it is not surprising that she should look upon her body with a fascination nearly equal to my own. What met our gaze was a striking version of the familiar hills and valleys of Susan's breasts and abdomen. Its most striking feature was the color of her skin. Namely, its usual pleasing pinkness had transformed into a rather mottled but attractive ruddy hue. This change was most pronounced on her lower belly. However, with decreasing intensity, it extended up all the way to her throat, making her breasts even more enticing than usual and her nipples a richer color than I had ever seen them before. From the look in her eyes, I could tell that she was pleased with the effect, and I know that I was. Thus, it was an enormous, mutually enjoyed relief when I reached for her breasts and began caressing them. As my attention to her breasts continued, Susan's lassitude was replaced by an increasing excitement, and, after completing the disrobing which I had started, I was able to bring her to a well deserved climax. The fact that she was still partially suspended did nothing to diminish the experience for either of us.

It is one thing to submit to something painful once, it is quite another to continue submitting, even if the pain is mitigated by enormously satisfactory erotic pleasure. Thus, I have no doubt that it was with increasing ambivalence that Susan prepared herself for her daily stint on the bar. In order to prevent her from becoming sour, I took every opportunity to bolster her morale. In particular, to increase the importance of her body in her own mind, I bought her a variety of new bath oils, powders, and leotards; and to let her know how important her body was to me, before proceeding to her exercises, I insisted on inspecting her body to make sure that she was being careful to keep her legs and armpits smooth and free of hair. Besides the pleasure which we both derived from these luxuries and intimacies, I think that they helped Susan never doubt that, in spite of the suffering to which we were subjecting it, her body remained something for which we both had enormous respect. Another method I employed to keep her interest high was to make frequent, if only minor, variations in her preparations. For instance, I would sometimes ask her to be sure that her nipples would be clearly visible through her leotard when I arrived home the following day. Because my time of arrival was uncertain, this meant that she might have to keep her nipples excited for as much as an hour or more. In order to make this easier for her, I bought her a pair of little suction cups which, when placed on her nipples, would impart a mild but constant stimulus which was sufficient to keep them pleasingly plump. I believe that the pleasure which she derived from this attention to her breasts was made more interesting by the knowledge that her erect nipples would be refused full satisfaction until her stomach muscles had won it for them. In a slightly different direction, I would occasionally ask Susan to place a smoothly finished, inch long dowel in her belly button, use a wide sash to bind the dowel tightly in place, and then purposefully worry it back and forth by flexing her newly strengthened, but somewhat tender, abdominal muscles. My idea was that such activities would give her the opportunity to discover and enjoy how much firmer the muscles in her tummy were becoming and, at the same time, to contemplate the ambiguity of her feelings about exposing them to the renewed demands which soon would be made on them.

As I had promised her, the difficulty of her exercise routine increased slowly but inexorably. For several days I had her repeat the program of the first day, only instead of waiting for exhaustion before giving her any respite, I stood by her hips and used my fingers to carefully monitor the state of her abdomen. Knowing that, being already sore from the work they had done during earlier sessions, her muscles would complain from the start, I ignored the grimace which would immediately appear on Susan's face. What I used as my signal was the onset of trembling which would begin near her pelvis and progress up the muscle ridge in her lower belly, a ridge which was becoming more prominent with each day. As soon as I saw that the trembling had reached her navel, I moved from her pelvis to her head. However, I only cradled her head enough to give it partial support. Thus, although my action certainly provided Susan's muscles with some relief, it gave them less relief than she would have chosen for them herself. Instead of really supporting her head, I used my hands and fingers to caress her flushed face, stroke her hair, and massage her neck. As a result, Susan's stomach muscles continued to play a major role in the keeping her head from dropping. Nonetheless, the relief I provided was sufficient to allow her muscles to recover. When I saw that the trembling in her lower belly had subsided, I would abandon her head and take up again my post near her pelvis, and we would start all over again. Much to my unmixed satisfaction and her satisfaction mixed with consternation, we were soon able to repeat this cycle several times before her muscles would give up and begin to spasm. On each cycle, I would try different techniques to comfort and excite her. For example, when I was by her pelvis, I would not only bare and stroke her midriff but I might also cup her crotch or run my fingers over the miraculously fine skin at the juncture of her thighs. When I was stationed at her head, I might bare her breasts and see whether, in spite of her distress, I could make her nipples respond. When her nipples did respond, I would be purposefully cruel by making their further pleasure commensurate with the demands which she was making on her abdomen.

It took a week before the strength of Susan's muscles had reached a point at which we felt it safe to take the next step, that being the removal of her hips from the back of the chair but not of her shoulder blades from the pillows on the footstool. Although I had no qualms about imposing some pain on her abdominal muscles, I wanted to take every precaution against producing pain in her back. For this reason, I carefully arranged her body so that gravity would tend to shape it into a gentle convex bow when I slipped the chair-back out from under her hips, and, after a little experimentation, I discovered that this could be easily accomplished by immediately pushing the footstool towards her legs as soon as the chair was out of the way. Once Susan's body was suspended in this way, I no longer needed to make the position of her head the primary means by which I could control the way in which tummy was being exercised. Indeed, I now had her let her head and arms fall back comfortably over the pillows supporting her shoulders. When she had assumed this pose, I placed a hand on her lower belly and told her that, as I raised my hand, I wanted her, without flexing her knees, to keep her tummy in contact with my hand by making her abdominal muscles increase the convexity of the curve formed by her body. At first she had trouble figuring out just how she could follow my instructions. To help her find out exactly which muscles she would have to use, I located the muscles which tightened when she was doing what I wanted and pressed my fingers into them to make sure that she knew which ones they were. In this way, she soon found that she could do what I wanted, but only if she called on the same abdominal muscles which were already sore. On the other hand, she was pleased to discover the similarity between the movements which she was being asked to perform and those which she made naturally when making love.

By simply changing the height of my hand, I could modulate the stress on Susan's stomach muscles. When I sensed that she was flagging, I would pull back the midriff flap of her leotard and administer a couple of brisk, but not severe, slaps to the damp bulge of muscle surrounding her navel. As Susan knew, those slaps were meant not as a punishment but as a reminder of the goal which we had set for her, and her response was renewed effort to achieve that goal. As in the earlier sessions, I insisted on Susan persisting until her muscles spasmed, but I permitted her periods of respite both to give her relief and to prolong the time that her muscles could be made to work. At this stage, relief meant that my hand was lowered to a level at which it required only moderate effort for her to maintain the initial curve of her body. My favorite way to divert her during these periods of relative relief was to kneel at her head, release her breasts from her leotard, and run my hands over her taut body, starting at her diaphragm, running over her flattened breasts, and continuing down her damp but exquisitely sensitive armpits and inner arms which her position made beautifully available. She rewarded my attentions to her body by voluntarily performing exactly the contortions from which her tummy was being rested, thereby confirming the connection between these movements and sexual ecstasy. In fact, by alternating between her upper and lower body, I could induce Susan to undulate her torso in a way which was simultaneously aesthetically pleasing and devastatingly lascivious.

Because the third step would be such a large one, it took another ten days before I was confident that Susan's tummy was ready for the third stage in our program. However, when her stomach could spend twenty minutes before exhaustion doing what was required of it at stage two, I decided we could safely move on to stage three. My goal for this stage was to have Susan develop her abdominal muscles to a level where they would be able to hold her torso horizontal to the floor while she was suspended from the bar. In preparation for this stage, I lowered the bar so that Susan's rump would drop a foot when I removed the chair-back. I then had Susan mount her perch as before, only this time after removing the chair from her hips and telling her to straighten her legs, I positioned the back of the chair behind her rump and wedged its legs against the door sill so that it would not slide back. Next, I asked Susan to cross her arms over her chest and tightly grip her upper arms with her hands. Finally, I removed the top pillow on which her shoulders were resting and told her to lift her shoulders off the remaining pillows.

It was a surprise to neither of us that she was unable to obey. After watching her struggle to no avail for several seconds, I became concerned that, unless we proceeded with great care, she could easily strain her back. My reason for propping the chair behind her rump was to lessen the danger for her back, but that precaution alone was no guarantee. Thus, rather than having her continue to struggle and possibly injure her back, I grabbed her under her arms, hoisted her about six inches off the pillow, and told her that she was to let herself down as slowly as possible when I released her. Much to Susan's credit, she made no attempt to cheat and, in the spite of the consequences for her abdominal muscles, she kept herself off the pillows a full ten seconds. Her relief at having her shoulders supported once again was profound, but short lived. As soon as she had caught her breath, I hoisted her up again and made her resume her Herculean fight against gravity. In fact, I made her do five repetitions before allowing her the rest for which, by then, she was in desperate need.

Although I had anticipated that Susan would find that this stage in our program made demands on her abdomen of an entirely new order of magnitude, I had not expected that it would provoke from her an entirely new reaction to those demands. Up to now, Susan had chosen to not communicate either her pleasure or distress to me verbally. I had been able to guess from the expression on her face and the tension in her body what she was experiencing, but, until now, she had not described those experiences in words. However, after I allowed her to stay on the pillows long enough to regain her composure, Susan felt a compelling need to share with me the experience which she had just had, an experience the likes of which she had never had before. She said that the sheer enormity of the effort which we had required from her abdominal muscles had been transmitted through her tendons to every part of her torso: all the way from her shoulders to muscles in her groin, which, as I confirmed by running my hand over them, were still twitching. Further, she explained that when I refused her respite and she realized that her muscles would be forced to repeat their effort, she experienced a desperation which was terrifying and, at the same time, wonderfully exciting. Never before had she realized that by completely relinquishing control over her body, she could alter so thoroughly her relationship to it. Specifically, by the time that I had lifted her for the third time, she stopped thinking of her body as her own. Instead, she found herself emotionally and intellectually detached from her body, and the pain we were making her muscles endure only heightened her appreciation of the body which had once been hers.

Impressed by the intensity and depth of Susan's "extra-corporeal" experience and worried that further repetitions might change her attitude toward them, I decided to devote the rest of her time on the bar that day to activities which would not distract her from continuing her reveries. Thus, with the idea that it would prolong and enhance her ability to appreciate her body as an aesthetic object, I undid the strings around her midriff and neck so that her entire front, with the exception of a narrow band running diagonally from her left hip to her right shoulder blade, was revealed to us. In addition, to give her body greater mobility, I removed the chair so that her hips could swing. I then, after asking her to tell me precisely which ones they were, began to palpate those of her abdominal muscles which had been subjected to the greatest strain. Just as I had hoped, Susan was as fascinated as I by what I proceeded to do to her body. Without any prompting from me, she kept her head up so that she could watch my fingers probe each of the muscle groups which she had mentioned. Of course, this meant that these same muscles were being called upon to maintain the position of her head and were therefore back at work. As a result, even though the demands being made on them now was trivial by comparison to those made earlier, the tension in Susan's abdominal muscles was sufficient to prevent my fingers from penetrating into them. Hence, at each group, I, using the lubrication provided by her own sweat, massaged and worried the muscles under my hands until a gasp from Susan would tell me that it was time I move on. After visiting in this way every section of her tummy, I tucked my left hand into the V at her crotch, moved my right hand to the bulge of muscle just below her navel, and, after encouraging her to tighten the muscles in her groin as if she were making love to my hand, I gently rocked the cradle formed by her body. Even though I insisted that Susan force her abdominal muscles to maintain the convex bow in her body, the muscular strain which this rocking caused was mild enough to allow Susan to continue savoring the memory of her recent experience as well as enjoy the sensual stimulation afforded her by the hand now being hugged by her inner thighs. Nonetheless, the toll which their earlier workout had cost them caused the muscles in her tummy to begin trembling after fewer than five minutes of rocking, and I brought this trying but successful session on the bar to an end immediately after I sensed the tremble of her abdominal muscles was about to become a spasm.

As we both knew, further progress would be slow and come only after many grueling sessions on the bar. In addition, I suspected that Susan would not experience her enthralling extra-corporality during each session, and my suspicion proved to be correct. Thus, it may seem hard to account for Susan's enthusiasm, albeit occasionally tempered, to have her abdomen resume its daily struggle against gravity. My guess is that, besides her determination to complete the program to which she had committed herself, her adamancy arose from two sources. The first of these is analogous to the motivation, familiar to athletes, like marathon runners, coming from their desire to trigger an endorphin high by pushing themselves "beyond their limits." Having once achieved the separation of her mind from her body, Susan was willing to make considerable sacrifice in an attempt to achieve it again. Because I thought that it would facilitate her transition to the state she sought, I encouraged Susan to introduce a little self-hypnosis into her preparations. While luxuriating in her bath or lying comfortably in her leotard, I suggested that she try inducing in her mind the state which accompanied her experience of extra-corporality. Whether or not it was by this means and although it never became possible for her to guarantee herself the desired effect, she did greatly improve her rate of success.

My conjecture is that vanity was the second source of Susan's positive attitude toward her daily regimen. As was increasingly apparent to both of us, her efforts on the bar were producing visible, tangible, and delectable changes to her tummy. As I said before, Susan's body was succulently charming before we started persecuting her abdominal muscles. However, like ninety nine percent of the female tummies on display these days, Susan's had lacked the tautness which is essential if an untucked, too short blouse is going to be an asset and not a liability. Thus, when after the second week of our program, the lovely roundness of her stomach had acquired an attractive firmness, she was justifiably proud. In fact, I noticed that she had purposefully altered her dressing habits so that, both in public and around the house, her stomach was more likely to be visible. In addition, when Susan was hanging from the bar and I had opened the flap over her midriff, we could see and admire the traces made under her skin by the increasing definition of the muscles in her belly. What had been at the beginning a single, undifferentiated bulge of straining abdominal muscles had undergone a transformation and become a pleasingly sculpted ridge in which individual, strong, if somewhat sore, muscles were clearly evident.

Whatever the reasons for Susan's willingness to continue, continue we did. Two more weeks were required before I felt ready to move her to the fourth, and final stage, and we made huge demands on Susan's tummy during those two weeks. Each session, I would give her less help when she lifted herself off the pillows. Further, after a while, I not only increased the number of repetitions which I asked her to perform, but I also forced her to do several repetitions in a row without allowing her shoulders to actually touch the pillows. On those days that she failed to separate herself from her body, she was often close to tears by the time that I finally let her rest. On the increasingly frequent days when she did succeed, she was in a state of exhausted ecstacy when her initial labors were over. In either case, after she had caught her breath, I proceeded, as on the first day of stage three, to essentially bare her body and rock her to and fro with one hand in her groin and the other at various places further up her torso. Besides using these periods of relative ease to prolong her exercises, I wanted to reward her for the arduous work we had made her tummy do. Thus, I was happy that, even though her abdominal muscles had to remain clenched throughout, I could often bring Susan to the verge of orgasm while she was rocking. One technique which I found particularly effective for this purpose involved the accentuation of the contrast between the tightness in her belly and the softness of her breasts. I did this by "milking" her breasts. That is, I would squeeze her whole nipple, including the surrounding areola, and, by gently pulling up, force its sweat slickened surface to slip through my fingers. As a result, Susan both saw and felt her breast go from its relaxed position flat on her chest, through a mildly distorted conical shape as her nipple rose, and finally, upon release, bounce back to its relaxed position on her chest. Because her groin trapped one of my hands in her crotch, I could milk only one breast at a time, but, in the end, I made sure that both breasts contributed to the excitement building in Susan's body.

When the two weeks had passed, I asked Susan if she felt prepared to take the step which would bring her to our goal. By this time, she had no illusions about the demands which that step would require her to make on the muscles in her belly. Indeed, although she was now able to actually lift herself from the nearly horizontal position in which the pillows had been supporting her, she knew that it would be an entirely different matter to attempt an abdominal curl while hanging vertically, upside down. Hence, it was with understandable trepidation that she agreed to move ahead. Because I wanted to provide her as much moral support as I could, on the day of reckoning I arrived home in time to be present during her preparations. Sitting on the edge of the tub, I scrubbed her body and took great care to shave off any bits of stubble on her legs or in her armpits. Wrapping her in a large towel, I escorted her to her bed, where I had her lie on her back while I attempted to allay her fears by gently stroking her body. Because anticipation of what lay ahead had disturbed her sleep the preceding night, the warmth of her bath combined with the stroking of her skin had a sufficiently narcotic effect to make her slip into a peaceful sleep.

Leaving Susan to enjoy her nap, I went to make the alterations necessary for her upcoming session on the bar. Basically, all that I had to do is raise the bar to the top of the door frame so that she could hang vertically from the bar without having her head hit the floor. Once this had been done, I let Susan doze for a half hour before waking her. I wanted her to get enough rest to restore her stamina, but I did not want her to nap so long that she would suffer a post-nap hangover. When she was awake and once again compos-mentis, I told her my decision that from now on she should be naked during her time on the bar. In large part, this decision was a completely selfish one: I wanted to enjoy watching her uncovered body. Nonetheless, there was another reason why I chose to make this change in her routine at this point in our program. Namely, as I said earlier, Susan had greatly increased her ability to derive narcissistic pleasure from the changes we were affecting in her body, and so I thought that she would appreciate an unobstructed view of her body as its shape metamorphosed during her upcoming sessions on the bar.

With all the practice we had had getting her on and off the bar, it required far less time to get Susan hanging upside down from the bar than it took for either of us to become accustomed to the consequences of doing so. Of course, Susan had a much harder job than I. Because of her inverted position, she was completely disoriented, and the fear which this disorientation engendered was exacerbated by the rush of her blood to her head. But even if one ignores these psychological and physiological disturbances, inverting the human body, particularly one as shapely and distinctly female as Susan's, causes fascinating changes. Suddenly, Susan's hips were where I expect her breasts to be, and rather than tapering down from her chest to her waist, her ribs now taper up from her chest to her waist. Her breasts themselves had also undergone a dramatic transformation: the usually shadowed, gently curved undersides of her breasts had become the upper-sides, been pulled nearly flat, and made into her breasts' most prominent surface. Finally, although the features of her face had not really been altered, it took time to get accustomed to seeing her nostrils above the rest of her nose, her eyebrows below the sockets of her eyes, and her hair falling down from her scalp.

Much as I would have liked to spend more time admiring, and perhaps caressing, Susan's inverted body, I knew that unless her abdomen were put through its paces without delay it would be too late. Therefore, as soon as I saw that her body was stable and in no danger of slipping off the bar, I knelt by her head and told Susan to use her abdominal muscles to bring her body into the shape of an upside down question mark. Knowing how difficult this would be and wanting to avoid her succumbing to dizziness, I kept her head up by cradling it in my hands. However, I made sure that it would be the muscles in her belly that would be the major combatants in her war against gravity. To our mutual astonishment, after a brief struggle, Susan's body assumed the desired curve, and the two of us stared with wonder and admiration at the beautiful shape which her trembling tummy was being made to maintain.

After moving the footstool into a position where it could replace my hands as a support for her head, I went to stand so that the backs of Susan's legs brushed against my chest and I could reach around her hips to palpate her abdominal muscles with my hands. I have never played a musical instrument, but I think my feelings at that moment were very much the same as a bass fiddler's at the moment when he has settled his instrument into place and begins to play on it. For one thing, as Man Ray made explicit in a famous photograph, a shapely female body bears a striking resemblance to a bass fiddle. Secondly, I had assumed my position for the purpose of playing Susan's body with my fingers as if her abdominal muscles were the strings on which I would perform a staccato passage. Whatever the accuracy of my music simile, play the sinews of the muscles in Susan's tummy is exactly what I did. For a while I strummed them with my fingers in a way that made it obvious to both of just how beautifully strong but exquisitely vulnerable they were. Later, hugging her body against my own and using the heels of my hands, I subjected her abdomen to the sort of deep massage administered by practitioners of shiatsu.

All this lasted for at most five minutes, but those were five minutes which neither of us would ever forget. Susan had achieved a sense of extra-corporality more or less simultaneously with her achievement of the curved shape in which her body was to hang. Thus she was able, with remarkable detachment, to share my appreciation the silent music which my manipulations of her stomach muscles were drawing out of them. When the heels of my hands replaced my fingers, her whole body swayed as I burrowed deeper and deeper into her abdomen. Besides the trembling in her muscles, her only visible response was in her eyes, which opened wider and wider as she marveled at the resilience of the swaying body which was, but no longer seemed to be, hers. However, the pleasure which her body was affording us came at an enormous price being payed by the muscles in the tummy which insisted more and more vehemently that, no matter what she might think, that tummy was hers. Thus, about five minutes after she had raised her body, Susan was forced to retreat to the vertical position from which she had started. Perhaps it was her excited state of confusion or maybe it was the accelerated rate at which blood was coursing through her body, but Susan's resumption of an inverted, vertical position did not bother her anywhere near as much as it had initially. To the contrary, and much to my surprise, her body seemed to have already adjusted sufficiently to inversion that, although sweat continued to stream from all her pores, her breathing became nearly normal within minutes of her abdomen's release from its labors. In fact, after several minutes, Susan expressed a desire to try lifting herself for a second time.

I was skeptical about her chances of succeeding, but, seeing no reason why she should not be given the chance, I took my position at her head and waited for her to begin. Heroic as her efforts were, Susan could not repeat her earlier feat. Nonetheless, she did far better than I had predicted and, in spite of the rebellion being staged by the muscles in her stomach, Susan lifted her body into a curve which bore greater resemblance to the hook on a "y" than it did to an upside down question mark. Of course, even this compromised curve was maintained only by her placing huge demands on her abdominal muscles, which, again became alluringly visible under the flushed and damp skin of her belly. Succumbing to their allure, I returned to my post behind Susan's legs, circled her hips with my arms, and, once again began to play the instrument which was her body. However, this time I evoked the music from her belly button. As I said before, whenever the muscles surrounding her navel are being called upon, Susan's navel deepens and its walls undergo a subtle transformation which result in her belly button becoming simultaneously more accessible, more enticing, and more sensitive. Thus, with only minimal pressure, my fingers were able to elicit exquisite sensations which radiated out in concentric circles from her navel and reached a crescendo when they reached her groin. Needless to say, the brief cadenza which I played was deeply satisfying to the musician and his instrument alike.

As was the case when we moved to stage three, after the drama of our transition to stage four, further progress was slow. In fact, Susan has yet to reach the goal which we had set for her, although each session on the bar brings her closer. She is now able to spend up to ten minutes performing partial abdominal curls without any physical, as opposed to psychological, assistance from me. Even if the ultimate goal remains unattained, the rewards of her striving continue to accumulate. In particular, her tummy is now a thing of beauty from which we both take great pleasure. To enhance this pleasure, she enjoys wearing clothes which call attention to the newly visible contours in her belly. For example, I often find her lying on the couch wearing nothing but panties and a sweater which fail to meet, thereby leaving her belly button enticingly framed by a band of deliciously firm flesh. Of course, her efforts on the bar and our daliances at the mirror afford us plenty of opportunity to have her tummy provide us with less tranquil pleasures. All and all, we are both still glad that we embarked on our program, although neither of us particularly cares any longer whether she will ever reach the goal for which that program was designed.