The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

“Hello, is this Lucky? Um, you probably don’t remember me, but I worked with you about 20 years ago, and I just saw your name in a journal article and.... Oh, gosh, listen to me! I haven’t even told you my name. This is Marsha, but like I said, you probably don’t remember....”

If only she knew. I recognized her voice immediately, and a wealth of memories came flooding back into my head. How can you forget one of the best hypnotic subjects you ever worked with? The sexual tension between us back then had been thick enough that you could have happily smothered in it, but circumstances kept us at arm’s length. I’d fantasized about her for years.

“Marsha! It’s great to hear from you! How have you been? What are you doing these days?”

She told me how, soon after I’d left the company, she’d had a baby, how her daughter had excelled in school and had was now in a top college on a full academic scholarship. And how, as soon as her daughter was settled, she set about divorcing her ne’er-do-well husband. I’d gotten the “Hi, I’m divorced!” phone call a few times over the years; women testing to see whether I was unattached—or could be pried loose. But this was the first where I felt there was unfinished business between us.

I wasn’t surprised at what she said, though. Marsha was smart, and if her daughter had inherited her intelligence and drive, she’d have a leg up. And the only dumb thing I’d ever seen her do was marry Rob. He was no slouch in the brains department either, but the guy spent all of his waking hours trying to beat the system instead of advancing himself. He took pie-in-the-sky jobs in shaky companies that evaporated in weeks or months. He always talked about what he was going to do instead of what he was doing. He invested their savings, their down payment on a house, in some penny stocks and lost it all.

I remembered that day clearly. It was lunchtime. We were scheduled to meet. Marsha came into my office and closed the door.

“Can I talk to you for a minute?” She was trembling all over, and her voice shook. Big tears welled up behind her dark-framed glasses. The sadness in her normally-bright blue eyes broke my heart.

I waved her into a chair and grabbed the box of tissues from my desk drawer. She apologized profusely as she lifted the glasses, dabbed her eyes, and let them drop into place again. The savings had mostly been hers; he had promised her that he could easily double or triple their holdings. I listened to the sordid tale, and counseled her as best I could on class action suits against the investment company, and the chances of recovering anything. We talked about strategies for rebuilding their nest egg, and how to protect it from future “investments.” After she calmed down, she said, “I still love him. But I’ll never trust him with a cent of my money again.”

Then she smiled bravely and said, “I’m sorry about ruining our hypnosis session today, but under the circumstances, I’m just not up for it.”

I assured her that it was all right and that we’d reschedule. She gave me a hug that lingered just a little longer than necessary and left my office.

“Yes, I’m single again. And I’m so over Rob that I can’t believe I ever felt anything for him. Can you believe that the loser wanted to still live here after the divorce, to redo the garage into an apartment? After I’d bought out his share of the house?”

I comiserated, then asked her if Frank Sinatra was still her favorite singer. She expressed amazement that I’d remembered that about her. She’d have been more amazed if she knew how many other details were burned into my memory. Like the shape of her breasts. One of my friends had called them “teacup” breasts: a near-perfect hemisphere on the bottom, gently concave on the top, a generous handful. Thank heavens for clingy knit tops. Or the curve and recurve of her waist and hips. Her face, which managed to be very pleasing to look at without being a traffic stopper, framed by straight, medium-brown hair and her ever-present glasses.

“Do you remember the times when you tried to hypnotize me?”

That was a funny way to put it. She was a somnambule, one of the five or ten percent of the population who could go into a really deep trance. I’d hypnotized her a number of times.

“Actually, you were an excellent subject, Marsha. I remember our sessions very well.”

It had all started with Sinatra. We were having lunch at the local dim sum place—she would eat Chinese food for every meal if given the chance—and she was waxing eloquent about Sinatra being the utter master of phrasing and the ultimate interpreter of lyrics. I disagreed, saying that the honor belonged to Ella Fitzgerald.

She challenged me to give some examples. I said, “Take ‘Witchcraft’ and ‘You do Something to Me.’ Both songs are about being hypnotized, or the hypnotic effect of being in love. Sinatra’s playful reading of ‘Witchcraft’ reduces the hypnosis—’down and down I go, round and round I go’—to a parlor trick by a cute girl, robbing her of her power, minimizing the ability of the hypnotist to truly leave someone disoriented, dazed, spinning. And when Ella sings, ‘you have the power to hypnotize me,’ you believe her. When Sinatra sings the line, he might as well be reading it from an eye doctor’s wall chart.”

She didn’t concede the point, but asked, laughing, “And where did you learn so much about hypnotism?”

So I told her.

“That’s so cool! I’ve always been fascinated by hypnosis. Would you hypnotize me?”

Several days later we met in my office over (what else?) Chinese take-out. I answered more of her questions about hypnosis, then induced her with a permissive Dave Elman technique, starting with her eyes closed, relaxing the eye muscles, then spreading the relaxation through her body. I then moved on to mental relaxation, then deepening. It’s a good technique when you want to teach self-hypnosis because the subjects know how they got there. I also like to teach my subjects/students to use a self-reported “yardstick” depth scale, so they can manage their own trance depth.

She went deep quickly, and was soon beyond 36. Like some other subjects I’d encountered, she had to invent a longer scale because she went deeper than her preconceived notion of depth. I did all the usual “proofs” of hypnosis, had one arm float while the other was weighted down to immobility, had her forget her phone number, etc.

She woke from the trance with a smile on her face, saying, “Oh, that felt great! But it wasn’t like what I expected.”

“What was your expectation?”

“That I wouldn’t be in control—I mean, I did all the things that you told me to, and I didn’t have to try to do them, but I had the feeling that I had some control over the situation if I wanted it.”

Hmm. That was interesting. She had the expectation of being out of control, but was still eager to be hypnotized.

“Well, as I told you earlier, different induction techniques produce trances of different intensity because the imagery is different and it engages your subconscious differently. For instance, I didn’t say anything like ‘You’re getting sleepy;’ all of my imagery was focused on calm and relaxation. You’d feel different if I used a classic Hollywood ‘look into my eyes’ induction.”

“OK, let’s try that,” she said brightly.

My cock stirred appreciatively. Intellectually, I knew that there was nothing magical about an eye-to-eye fixation induction, but it pushed all of my hypno fantasy and dominance buttons. I was going to enjoy this.

“Look into my eyes,” I intoned. “Deeply and directly into my eyes. Concentrate on the sound of my voice as you look deeply and directly into my eyes. Look deeper, deeper into my eyes and concentrate on the sound of my voice.”

Her pupils dilated as her eyes went out of focus.

“Your eyes are beginning to feel very tired and heavy. Tired and heavy. But you must continue looking deep into my eyes.” Sheesh, I was laying it on thick. “They’re getting so tired and heavy, so tired and heavy, they just want to close. Your eyes are tired, tired and heavy. Your whole body is tired, tired and heavy with sleepiness. You want to sleep. You’re so tired now, so tired, your eyes want to close, they’re so heavy, but you must continue to look into my eyes.”

Her eyelids were fluttering, and she was beginning to slump a little.

“Now sleep!” I brought a hand down over her eyes, and she sagged back in the chair.

“Deeper and deeper now, deeper and deeper, into a deep, restful, relaxing sleep.”

I deepened her a bit more, tested her depth, then gave her a posthypnotic suggestion that when I picked up a certain pen from my desk, she would go to my bookcase and withdraw a specific volume. I told her that she wouldn’t remember the suggestion upon awakening.

I brought her out of the trance and asked her how it felt.

“That was different! I didn’t feel as much in control, and your voice faded out at one point, even though I knew you were still talking to me. But I still didn’t feel out of control the way I expected.”

I picked up the pen. Without missing a beat, she pushed back her chair, rose, and went over to bookcase, saying, “You know, I never read this, and I noticed that you had a copy. Do you think I should read it?”

She returned to her chair.

“Now remember,” I said.

She looked surprised. “You made me do that?”

I just smiled. “But you’re looking for something more? How would you imagine that I would put you in a trance where you’re out of control, as you put it? Did you have a preconceived notion that I should have asked you about?”

She pondered for a moment. “Swing something in front of my eyes?”

I smiled inwardly. One good cliche deserves another.

“Sure, we can do that.”

I rooted around, found some string, and tied it to a big, silvery washer that was in my junk box. It wasn’t a pocket watch or an ancient jewel with mystical powers, but it would suffice.

This was her third induction in 30 or 40 minutes; this was going to be a walk in the park. I held the pendulum in front of her.

“Watch the pendulum as it swings back and forth. Watch it as it swings back and forth, back and forth. Your eyes are glued to the pendulum. They can’t look away, they can only watch the pendulum as it swings back and forth, back and forth.”

I was using about two feet of string, so the pendulum had a nice, lazy pace to it. I timed my words accordingly.

“Your eyes are glued to the pendulum, they can do nothing but follow the pendulum as it swings back and forth, back and forth. Your ears can only hear the sound of my voice as you relax more and more.”

I stopped swinging the pendulum, and its arc began to shrink accordingly.

“As the pendulum slows, you become even more focused on it. Totally focused on the pendulum, totally focused on the sound of my voice.”

It stopped, and she stared fixedly at it. I gave the string a twist with my fingers and the washer responded sluggishly. As it wound back the other way, I twisted the string the opposite way and the pendulum began to spin accordingly.

“As the pendulum spins back and forth, back and forth, your eyes are getting tired, tired and heavy. So heavy you’re having difficulty keeping them open. They want to close. You’re trying to keep them open, but you’re losing control. Losing control as the pendulum spins back and forth, back and forth. Losing control. Your eyes are tired. Your body is tired. Your mind is tired. You want to sleep. Deep, deep sleep. But you won’t sleep until I say it. So tired, tired and heavy.”

Her eyes were lidded, fluttering. She was more than ready.

I lowered the pendulum, saying, “Follow the pendulum, down, down, deeper and deeper.” Her eyes followed it down, and her head began to bow. I pushed her head forward as I said, “Sleep!”

Her whole body sagged forward. I gave more deepening suggestions as I brought her back upright by pulling lightly on her shoulders. Her head lolled; she was as limp as cooked spaghetti. I gave her another posthypnotic suggestion, telling her that she would be compelled to pick up the brass paperweight from my desk when I asked about her cat. I asked her for her depth. It took her a moment or two to find her voice:

“Fifty.”

I then awakened her, appreciating the view as she stretched, with a big, sleepy smile.

“Wow, that’s what I expected! I really felt hypnotized that time! You’re amazing!”

I debriefed her a little more and we chatted a bit. Then I said, “How’s Cleo doing?”

Her eyes were drawn to the paperweight. She picked it up, and put it on her lap. Then looked puzzled.

I held out my hand. “May I have that back?”

She continued to look confused as she handed it back to me and I placed it on the desk. I said, “But you never told me how Cleo’s doing.”

She reached for the paperweight again. This time I picked it up first, saying. “Now stop. Stay exactly as you are. Don’t let anything change.”

She froze with her arm extended, looking at where the paperweight used to be.

“What’s your depth now, Marsha?”

“Fifty,” she said in a voice that managed to be toneless and surprised at the same time.

I walked around the desk and lifted her arm straight over her head. It stayed there.

I said, “Now continue.”

She leaned forward, as if to retrieve the paperweight, but couldn’t lower her arm, and froze again.

“What’s your depth now?”

“Fifty-five.”

“Very good. When I count to three, your arm will fall to your side, your whole body will go limp, your eyes will close, and you’ll go even deeper. One, two, three!”

She slumped in the chair. She was really deep.

I told her that her cat, Cleo, was here in the office, and was about to jump up on her lap. “Open your eyes and invite her up. Pet her. She’s purring, isn’t she?”

She stroked the imaginary cat and nodded, a happy, distant smile on her face. “Cleo’s going to go away now, but you’ll see her at home tonight. Close your eyes now.”

She sighed, and her hands fell into her lap. I gave her a trigger phrase with which to re-enter the trance, told her that she’d remember everything, and then awakened her.

She came out of the trance with another stretch and a smile.

“Wow, that was really something! I really felt like I wasn’t in control. You said things and they just happened. I really felt like Cleo was here—I could feel her weight on my lap, the buzz of her purring. I could feel her fur between my fingers! But how did I get re-hypnotized? I was picking up that paperweight and....”

She stopped as she tried to make sense of her reaction to the posthypnotic suggestion and how she wound up catatonic and in a deep trance.

I briefly explained Erickson’s discovery that subjects carrying out a posthypnotic suggestion momentarily recreate the trance in which they receive the suggestion. And, by carefully timing an interruption, the hypnotist could capture and extend the trance, and give new suggestions, as I had done. Moving her arm above her head had been a physical “suggestion,” creating a catatonia that overrode the suggestion to pick up the paperweight, and the conflict drove her deeper into the trance.

“Was I really such a good subject? It all seems so far away now.”

“Let me answer by asking a question. Do you wash your hair in the sink or in the shower?”

There was silence on the line for a moment.

“In... in the shower.”

“And do you remember why?”

We were taking a coffee break, and Marsha mentioned offhandedly that she was thinking about getting her hair cut short. As any normal, red-blooded male would, I objected, saying that it looked nice long.

“It’s just that it’s getting too hard to wash it in the sink.”

“Why don’t you just wash it in the shower?”

“I don’t take showers; I take baths.”

I laughed. “Oh, you’re another one of those people who saw Psycho and wound up with a shower fear?”

“No,” she said seriously. “There’s something about the water hitting me in the face that creeps me out; it terrifies me. I mean, I could do it if I had to, but it’s really unpleasant.”

“Now that’s interesting. A real, live phobia.”

She looked startled at that.

“Does it manifest itself in any other ways?”

“Um, if I’m in a pool and there’s any splashing, I’m the first one out of there.”

“But you can put your face in the water?”

“Yes.”

“Doesn’t that strike you as a little odd?”

“I suppose so. But I’ve been like that ever since I was a little kid.”

I mentally rubbed my hands with glee. “Would you like to find out why? And maybe put an end to the fear?”

“What do you mean?”

“I think we could find the cause with a little hypnoanalysis. And if you can find the cause, you can usually stop the behavior.”

“Hmm,” she smiled. “That sounds interesting. I think I’d like to try that.” She gave me an arch look. “And besides, I’ve been looking forward to you hypnotizing me again.”

I did my best not to leer as I smiled back.

We met in my office a few days later. I asked her a few more questions about her phobia, but she had no idea when it started or why.

I said, “Marsha, relax now,” and she slumped back in her chair. I gave her a few deepening suggestions, but it was clear that she was deep right from the outset.

I began an age regression. I figured a birthday or Christmas when she was 12 years old would be a good starting place. “You’re going back, back in time, as though you were rewinding the movie of your life. You can see it all clearly as we turn back, back to the time when you’re 12 years old. You’re 12, and it’s Christmas. You can see your surroundings clearly, your brothers, your parents. Tell me what’s happening. Can you see the tree, presents?”

Her brow knitted in a frown. “No. No tree. No presents. Daddy won’t allow it.”

Oops. Her voice was higher, more girlish, but her comment about Daddy spoke volumes.

I asked her to tell me about school, about some of her friends. I established that the fear of water splashing in her face was already established.

“Let’s go back, then, to your tenth birthday. You’re ten years old, and it’s your birthday. Is there a party?”

“In school.”

“Why in school?”

“Miss Houston knows about Daddy.”

Wow, two for two on Daddy. “Your daddy doesn’t allow parties?”

“No. He gets real mad sometimes. Goes to bed.”

“What do you do when daddy gets mad?”

“We try to cheer him up, but he just gets madder and gets a headache. Mommy has to get him to take his medicine again.”

Hmm. Depression, paranoia, taking it out on everyone around him. This guy wasn’t Ward Cleaver.

“Did Daddy get mad one time when there was water or a shower on your face?”

“Yes.”

“Is it OK to tell me about it?”

“Yes.”

“Go back, then, back to when it happened. See it happening; tell me about the day, as it’s unfolding.”

She sighed and shifted in her chair. “We’re having a picnic at my uncle’s farm.”

“You’re there at the picnic. How old are you, Marsha?”

“Eight.”

“Good, go on. What’s happening?”

“We’re on a picnic. My brothers my cousins and I are playing hide and seek while the grownups talk and make lunch. They’ve got a big tarp up over the tables. There are trees, some bushes, and a big meadow. I’m little, so I can hide in spots where the grass is tall. But they keep seeing my tee shirt because it’s red.

“Then Tommy is ‘it’ and we all run. I run far down the meadow. I find a sinkhole and I jump in. My eyes come right up to the top of it. It’s a good hiding place. Nobody can find me. I hear their voices far away. Then it starts to rain. Not hard, just a little shower. Then I hear the grownups’ voices. Daddy and Uncle Ted and Mommy. Aunt Mary. They’re all calling for me. At first I think it’s part of the game, that the big kids are cheating. So I don’t answer.

“Tommy yells, ‘All-ee all-ee in free!’ so I know the game is over. I try to climb out of the hole, but the dirt is soft. My feet slip and I fall back down. I yell ‘Over here!’, but I think they can’t hear me. Or can’t tell where it’s coming from.

“I’m looking up, and the rain is in my face. I keep yelling, ‘Over here!’ Daddy’s face appears over the edge of the hole. He looks a hundred feet tall. I reach up my arms, but he grabs me by the elbow and it’s like I’m flying out of the hole. He holds me under one arm, carrying me across the field, and he’s yelling. He has his headache face on. He says, ‘Marsha has ruined it; we all have to go home.’ Everybody’s mad at me because I spoiled the picnic. I try to tell him that it’s all right, but he won’t listen. Nobody will listen. It’s not fair.” Her voice choked with emotion on these last words, a child’s outrage at a capricious, adult-run world.

Poor kid. I took a breath. “And the next time you took a shower or got splashed, the water reminded you of how angry your father was? And how scared you were?”

“Yes.”

“And even though you forgot about the picnic, the feelings stayed?”

“Yes.”

“Is it OK to leave the fear in the past, with the memory, to leave it behind and not feel the fear and the anger?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Now as you come forward in time, back to today, let the fear recede, let it stay where it belongs, a passing thing that happened when you were young. It was right for the time, but you don’t need it anymore. Let it fade as you come forward in time, back to the here and now. You can remember the incident if you like, and you can remember how you felt. But there’s no longer any need to associate water, rain, a shower, or splashing on your face with those emotions. Is that OK?”

“Yes.”

“And you may have other feelings about your father, good and bad. But they have nothing to do with water on your face, do they?”

“No.”

“Now imagine for me that you’re preparing to wash your hair. You enjoy washing your hair, the feel of your fingers massaging your scalp, your hair flowing around your fingers. It occurs to you that you would really enjoy washing your hair in the shower. Imagine how nice it would feel to stand there under the shower, each droplet massaging your scalp, cleaning your hair, rinsing it, and leaving it clean and wonderful feeling. See yourself in your mind, enjoying the feeling of water cascading over you, refreshing you, so clean and fresh.”

I was having a hard time keeping my imagery on track, as my mind filled with images of Marsha in the shower, rivulets of water running into various interesting places.

“Now see yourself enjoying the shower so much, with the other memories so far in the past, so irrelevant, so distant, that you joyfully turn your face up to the gentle cascade of water, enjoying the wonderful feeling of it on your face, letting it stream over you. Want that to happen. Watch it happen in your mind’s eye. And it will happen.”

Marsha had gently inclined her head back, as though she were actually showering, actually letting the water run in her face. I knew we had a cure.

I brought her out of the trance with a few more words of encouragement and reinforcement. She stretched and smiled as she opened her eyes. But as she looked at me she blushed deeply, from the hollow of her throat right up to her hairline, then looked away.

“What?”

“It’s nothing.”

“Come on, tell me. It’s OK.” She was still in that just-awakened haze and likely still suggestible.

“It’s just that....”

“It’s OK. You can tell me.”

“It’s just that, oh, I...” She steeled herself and blurted, “When I was taking a shower I felt like you were there with me, talking to me, encouraging me. Then when I opened my eyes, there you were, and you were looking at me so intently, and it was like I was still in the shower for a minute, that’s all.”

She blushed even more, and I did my best not to make a big deal of it, even though fireworks were going off inside my head at the idea that she was fantasizing about me seeing her naked.

“It’s OK,” I said. “A little fantasizing is harmless. For both of us.”

She looked at me in surprise and my smile told her that my thoughts had been very much on the same track.

The next morning she stuck her head in my office and flipped the ends of her hair at me.

“Guess who washed her hair,” she sang, “in the shower!”

I grinned and said, “That’s great! Did you have any company?”

“In your dreams, fella!”

I wanted to tell her that she was right on target, but instead I said, “Seriously. Tell me about it.”

She sat down and told me that it had unfolded pretty much as I had described—a feeling that it would be really nice to wash her hair in the shower. She’d had a moment’s hesitation when her gut roiled a bit in fear, but then she refocused on the image and enjoyed the shower and shampoo immensely.

“I can’t thank you enough—you are amazing! You should be in private practice, Dr. Lucky!”

“Helping someone like you is all the reward I need,” I demurred. “And besides, if I did it for a living, it might get old. I wouldn’t want that.”

“Well, there’s a second career just waiting for you, all the same. But it got me to thinking.... When I was in those trances where I felt like I had no control, could you make me do something against my will?”

“Hmm. That’s an interesting question. The textbook answer is ‘no,’ but if I make you feel like you want to do it, is it still against your will? Or if I give you a series of suggestions that distort reality, so that it seems like the right thing to do, is it against your will? Or are you asking if you will rob a bank or kill somebody at my command?”

She looked a little startled. “I guess I mean the latter. But if I don’t feel like I have any control, do I actually have any?”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully. “Researchers have fought about this one for decades. The literature is full of articles that prove and disprove the absolute control of the hypnotist. There are enough anecdotal cases, though, that I believe that it’s safe to say that there are individuals and hypnotists for whom there is complete control. It’s the proving and disproving that’s tricky. We’d have to design an experiment that determines that there’s something that you would not do in normal life, but not identify the act to you, and then command you to do it, while providing safeguards so that it wasn’t harmful to you or another person. But if you were either aware that there were safeguards or had the expectation that I was providing safeguards, it could affect your degree of participation... see the problem?”

“Yes, it’s complicated. If you ordered me to go down to Accounting and shoot old Tim Sherman and I did it, it might prove that I had no control, or it might prove that I assumed the gun you gave me was loaded with blanks.”

“Yep, that’s the problem in a nutshell.”

She looked thoughtful, then said, “Ultimately, I don’t care about theories or generalizations. I just care about me. I think you should come up with an experiment that satisfies my curiosity.” She stood up and left my office, smiling, giving her hair a provocative flip as she did so.

After the regression our relationship changed subtly. There was an implied, but un-acted-upon intimacy. I’d always noticed when she walked past my office door. But now she noticed that I was noticing, and made sure that I noticed that she noticed. A little sideways glance or half smile was all it took, but it seemed like she pulled her shoulders back just a bit or put the merest amount of sway into her steps, too.

I only hypnotized her once more, though. It was over lunch at, of course, the local Chinese restaurant. I’d had this particular fantasy for a while, and I figured I’d never find a better subject with whom to induldge it.

“What do you suppose it would be like,” I asked, " to be hypnotized without your knowledge, to be brought into a trance and held there, while the rest of the world was unaware?”

“I don’t know; sounds kind of cool. But how could such a thing happen?”

“You could be sitting there, just as you are now,” I waved a hand in her direction. “And another person,” I waved in my direction. “Another person could be talking to you, just as I am now. And despite the noise of the restaurant, he would be speaking softly, yet you can hear every word clearly.

“You’d find yourself focusing on his voice, paying close attention to what he was saying, and that focus, that concentration causes the other sounds to fade away,”

I widened my eyes just a little, just in case she hadn’t gotten the clue that I was hypnotizing her, and held her gaze.

“Then you’d find your body relaxing as you focus on the sound of my voice, and those outside noises fade, as though we were sitting inside our own personal bubble. And you find that you don’t need to close your eyes, but you relax inside, relax, let all other thoughts float away, just following the sound of my voice, relaxing, until you realize that you’re in a deep trance, that it feels very pleasant, a wonderful, floating sensation, just you and me inside the bubble, and it takes no effort to remain here. And although you remain in a deep trance, you’ll be able to eat your lunch and act normal, as you float inside our private bubble of calm and quiet.”

Her gaze was rapt at this point.

“And now, as the waiter brings our food, you’ll act normal, as though you were wide awake.”

The waiter put our plates down and asked what we wanted to drink. I asked for a Coke, but Marsha just looked at him.

“How about iced tea?” I suggested.

“Iced tea. Iced tea would be fine,” she said with a distracted smile. She seemed to be having a little trouble in her dual role of hypnotized subject and lunch partner.

As the waiter turned away, I said, “Continue to relax here inside the bubble, let everything else fade away.” Then I understood. The waiter was from outside the bubble. Maybe she couldn’t hear him, or maybe his words were just irrelevant to her.

So I added, “If it’s necessary to interact with anyone else, you’ll do so as though you’re not hypnotized; you’ll act normally and appropriately, but you’ll remain, floating, in a deep trance.”

Her expression didn’t change, but she picked up her chopsticks and started eating. When the waiter brought our drinks, she smiled and said “Thank you” softly.

She ate somewhat mechanically, regularly selecting a morsel, eating it, and looking off into the middle distance as she chewed. I had to remind her to drink some of her iced tea. She changed her field of view periodically, but didn’t initiate any conversation. When I asked her questions, she answered them in a voice that was a notch or two lower and quieter than her usual animated speech, but she didn’t volunteer anything further.

At the end of the meal, the waiter brought orange slices and fortune cookies. I had to prompt her to eat her orange slices and asked her what her fortune was. She broke open the cookie and read it to me, somewhat tonelessly.

All in all, having a hypnotized lunch partner was rather boring, but every time I looked at her and realized that she was mine to command even as she downed her spicy Hunan delight, it sent a bolt of affirmation into the bulge in my pants.

I paid the bill and said, “As we leave the restaurant you’ll come out of the trance; by the time you’ve taken ten steps beyond the door, you’ll be wide awake, feeling great.”

She rose as I did, and would have left her handbag hanging from the back of the chair if I hadn’t reminded her to take it. We walked out of the restaurant, and were a few doors down when she stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me.

“Where are we going?”

“Back to the office.”

“But what about lunch?” she asked, with obvious consternation.

“We just had it.”

She turned around and looked back at the restaurant. She licked her lips.

“What did I have?”

“Spicy Hunan delight.”

“What did I have to drink?”

“Iced tea, same as always.”

She shook her head, searching for the memory. But she had a spontaneous amnesia for the trance, and couldn’t find it.

“I remember sitting down... we were talking. You asked me something, something about hypnosis....”

A quick cascade of emotions flashed across her face as she put two and two together.

“You hypnotized me!” she accused.

I held up my hands in mock surrender.

“Did I spend the whole meal in a trance, or did you erase my memory of it?”

“You were in a trance the whole time.”

She shook her head again, trying to figure it out, looking for a memory. “Wow, I could have been abducted by aliens, for all I remember about lunch.”

She blushed deeply, right up to her hairline.

“What?”

She recovered, laughing. “I just thought about how they always perform sexual experiments on their victims in the tabloids. You didn’t examine me, did you?”

“No, I swear!”

“Your loss,” she said lightly, and tossed her hair dismissively.

All too soon after that, though, I got the big break I was looking for and I pulled up stakes and moved to the opposite coast. I’d spent hours fantasizing about the perfect “experiment:” the flirtation between us was real, it was just a matter of how it might wend to its natural conclusion in the most interesting way for both of us. Did she want me to command her to strip and give herself to me? Did she want me to build a fantasy world in her head, a beach shack on a tropical isle, where we would go skinny-dipping in a blue, moonlit lagoon, and tuck flowers behind our ears? Or should I mine her personal fantasies through induced dreams or automatic writing, then do my best to make them come true?

The opportunity, however, never presented itself. And now, here she was, on the phone, telling me she was available. While we talked, I’d opened a browser window and typed her name into a search engine. I got a couple of dozen hits. After I eliminated two women in the midwest with the same name, I had a bit of a profile on her: A big thanks from the local school for organizing the bake sale. Results from a number of 5K and 10K runs, with finishes in the top half, sometimes better. She might be 20 years older, but it seemed likely that she was still in good shape. I liked the sound of that.

“So yes, you were a terrific subject, and I really enjoyed helping you get over that fear. Why did you want to minimize that?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I suppose I thought that you had forgotten all about me, and I didn’t want to make too much of it in case you had.”

“I understand. Nobody likes to be forgotten. I remember you, Marsha. I remember you very well.”

The pleasure in her voice was obvious. She knew that I wasn’t free, but she needed some affirmation. I knew what would come next.

“I’d love to see you, to catch up on old times. Do you think we could meet over a cup of coffee some time?”

“I’d like that. It might even give us an opportunity to answer a question that’s gone unanswered for a couple of decades.”

“Oh?” She laughed. “And what’s that?”

“Will you do something against your will under hypnosis?”

“Do you think you could still hypnotize me?” I heard the smile in her voice.

“Sure. Right now, if you like.”

She laughed again. “One thing at a time, Lucky. One thing at a time!”

The ball’s in my court. I’ve got her number and her email address. She works for one of the lecture circuit lizards who are an inescapable feature of our industry; she writes all his best material and does much of the research for his books. His office is maybe twenty minutes from here.

Who knows what will happen next?