The Job Jar
Chapter 3
3. Sexbots and Strangers
We dipped into our job jars the following weekend. I drew “Dust all the high stuff.” Ceiling fans, tops of bookshelves, cabinets; not too bad.
She drew “Wear something sexy to bed tonight.” She grinned and gave me a big hug. I half-hoped that she’d find the note sexy enough to jump-start a romp in the sack here and now. But it wasn’t to be. Work first, play later.
Over the next several weeks we hit the job jars a couple of times. She got her spa day and a real task—clean out her side of the closet, which was bulging with stuff she didn’t wear anymore. She was surprised that I’d put that in there, but I just gave her a Cheshire Cat smile and said, “Oh, I’m just full of surprises.”
We had other things to do the next couple of weekends, then it was back to the job jars. She gave a little sigh when she read hers. I didn’t have to ask what it said; Burt makes his own luck.
I had replaced all of the slips with “Let me hypnotize you.”
“A deal is a deal, I suppose,” she said, waving the slip like she wanted to throw it away. “When do you want to do this?”
“Tonight will be a good time. Let’s go to Hakubana for dinner and we’ll do it when we get home.” She loved sushi and a beer and I knew it would put her in a pleasant frame of mind. She wanted to know what I had in mind, but I was purposely vague and just said I wanted her to find the experience pleasant and enjoyable.
After we got home, I took control of the situation, not giving her time to object or find something else to do.
“Why don’t you sit over here and we’ll get right to it.”
“But….”
“Relax, Hon. This will be easy. And I promise you, if you find any part of it unpleasant, I’ll never bug you about it again.”
She sighed and settled back, resigned.
I grabbed her hand, held it up in front of her face and told her to stare at her palm. Pretty much the same induction I’d used the first time. Like causes produce like results; all I had to do was rewrite the ending.
I said the magic words that made her arm heavier and heavier, and watched as her eyes followed her hand down to her lap and closed. As I talked her deeper, I felt satisfaction and relief—and a little stirring in my pants. But it was time to get to work.
“Jan, we both know that the last time we did this, it caused you stress and discomfort. I know that you put it aside years ago, but right now I want to address any residual tension, any hidden pockets that could interfere with your enjoyment of this trance. As you continue to relax, I’d like you to imagine that we’ve got a special balloon here, one that you can inflate effortlessly, just by exhaling.”
I paused for a beat while she got the image in her head.
“Now I’d like you to find any tension, any bad feelings, any leftover negatives that might interfere with your enjoyment of this trance and breathe them into the balloon. It’s very stretchy and it won’t burst, so you can begin now… take a deep breath, that’s right, and exhale that tension, any negative feelings towards hypnosis into the balloon.”
As she sighed and exhaled, I said, “That’s right, you can relax more and go deeper as you exhale any tension, any leftover negatives into the balloon. Good. Now again, another slow, deep breath, find the tension, any negative feelings about me hypnotizing you, and let them go as you exhale as you relax as you exhale and go deeper and relax and exhale and go deeper….”
I asked her if all the tension was gone and she nodded faintly. “Are there any other obstacles to your enjoyment of this deep, relaxing state?”
She shook her head. “Good. Then let’s release the balloon. Let it drift away, floating away, getting more and more distant in the sky, until it’s gone. And all the tension is gone with it, nothing left but pure relaxation and the wonderful pleasure of being in hypnosis.
“In a moment, I’m going to have you open your eyes, and as I say, ‘Jan, deep asleep,’ your eyes will close again, and you’ll find yourself even more deeply relaxed than you are now, much more deeply relaxed, totally focused on my voice.”
I had her open her eyes on the count of three, saying nothing about being awake or out of the trance. My theory is that the best possible hypnotic subject is a person who’s already in hypnosis, and reinducing and compounding the trance takes them very deep and also locks in the rehypnosis trigger. She opened her eyes in that unfocused, trancey way, and I could feel myself throbbing.
“Jan, deep asleep.”
Her eyes closed again. She sighed and slumped more as I repeated the phrases of relaxation, total focus on my voice, and took it to the next level.
“As you continue to relax, I want you to notice how pleasurable it is to be in hypnosis, how good it feels to be so deeply relaxed, how strong the connection is between us. You are utterly focused on the sound of my voice and you know that you have my full attention, that I am completely focused on you and on making this experience as pleasurable as possible for you. Take a moment now and feel the pleasure, the connection between us, the sensual pleasure of total relaxation.”
I counted off three or four of her slow breaths and repeated the eyes open-reinduction, with greater emphasis on feelings of pleasure and closeness. There was something decidedly hot about hypnotically seducing my wife.
This time I brought her all the way out of the trance, counting her up out of the depths.
“… two, one! Eyes open, wide awake, feeling alert, refreshed, good all over, from head to toe!”
She sat up and stretched, gave me a lovely smile.
“Ohh, that was wonderful! We should have done this years ago.”
She put her arms around me and gave me a big hug.
“You know, that’s why Sigmund Freud gave up on hypnosis.”
“Huh?”
“He was using it to help in his analysis of all those hysterical ladies in Vienna. Some of them came on to him. He woke a woman from her trance and she threw her arms around his neck. So he quit using it.”
“What an idiot,” she murmured as she pulled me closer.
Her embrace turned into a heavy slump against me as I said, “Jan, deep asleep.”
I reinforced her trigger a bit, then got started on phase two. I sat her back on the sofa and told her how good it felt to respond to hypnotic suggestions, how much pleasure it gave her. I leaned on the sexy elements without getting overt: how good it feels, pleasure deep inside you, wonderful feeling of warmth, that sort of thing.
Her head lolled forward and her hair hung down around her face. I directed her attention to the job jar.
“Whenever you pull a blue note out of the job jar, something very special is going to happen. You’re going to respond to whatever the note says, exactly as you would if it were a suggestion given to you while you were in a deep trance, just as you are now. You’ll find yourself doing whatever the note says, with no effort or planning on your part, just the deep pleasure of responding to a hypnotic suggestion. You‘ll also respond easily to any additional suggestions I may give you as you carry out the suggestions on the note”
I reinforced the suggestion a couple of different ways and told her that there was no need to remember the special power of the blue notes when she was awake. She was a little disoriented when I brought her out of the trance.
“Did you hypnotize me again? Hmf, I guess you did. I didn‘t expect that ‘deep asleep‘ thing to work so well.” She gave me an amorous smile. The pleasure suggestions had evidently had the desired effect. She leaned towards me and was surprised when I offered her the job jar.
“But, but we did that this morning!”
“Humor me,” I smiled.
She gave me an I-don’t-get-it sideways look as she reached into the jar. All of the slips were blue, of course; I’d switched them during her trance. I didn’t care which one she grabbed.
She unfolded the slip and stared. And stared some more. On it, I’d printed,
FREEZE.STAY JUST AS YOU ARE,UNABLE TO MOVE UNLESSI MOVE YOU.
I took the slip from her hand and got a throbbing thrill as she remained focused on the spot where it had been.
I pulled her to her feet and lowered her arms, saying, “You can stand easily and comfortably.” Her lips were slightly parted, as though she was about to speak, but her face was relaxed, other than a questioning arch to her eyebrows.
I closed the blinds in the front and the pulled down the shades on the other windows. No free shows for the neighbors.
I walked up behind her, circling her waist with one arm and kissed the side of her neck. She made an “uhhn” sound that wasn’t an objection. I said, “You’ll remember everything that happened while you were frozen, except how you got that way.”
I kissed, nuzzled, and chewed and sucked on her earlobe. She was wearing a simple button-down shirt, tucked into her jeans. I reached up and cupped a breast as I continued to nuzzle and kiss. I couldn’t unbutton her shirt one-handed, so I stepped around in front of her and undid them. The jeans were beltless; I unsnapped them and pulled the shirt tails out. I slid my hands up her belly and traced the outlines of her bra. I slipped the shirt down over her smooth shoulders, straightening her arms, and gently kissed the swells above her bra cups. Her nipples were hard through the sheer fabric and I teased one with my teeth while firmly holding the other between thumb and forefinger. She managed a gasp. Her lips were a bit more parted, full and pouty with excitement, but she hadn’t moved otherwise.
Her bra was the next to go and I devoted some serious attention to her breasts. A couple of times it seemed like her knees wanted to buckle, but her body corrected and she remained upright. I stood in front of her, slipped my fingers up into her hair and tilted her face up to mine. Her eyes met mine, shiny with excitement. I teased her lips with my tongue, kissing all around her mouth, taking little nibbles on her lower lip, something I knew she liked. She was breathing hard through her mouth and it seemed like she was trying to return my kisses, but couldn’t. I slipped a hand down into her panties and wasn’t surprised to find her warm and wet. There wasn’t much room for my hand, however, so I pulled her jeans down—easier said than done. The reason women look so great in their jeans is because they’re tight. It took a while to get them over her hips and I instructed her to put her hands on my shoulders as I pulled them and her panties down. I lifted one of her legs and it stayed suspended, marionette-like as I pulled it free. I pressed her knee lightly and she stood on two feet again.
I’d had to kneel down in the process and there were her sweet, dark curls, right at eye—or tongue—level. I resisted, however. Just because she was frozen and aroused didn’t mean she suddenly liked oral.
I worked my way back up her tummy to her breasts, standing slowly, replacing tongue with my fingers, she was flushed all the way down to the tops of her breasts and her breath was getting ragged. Time for us to make love.
“You’re unfrozen, free to move,” I said.
She wrapped a leg around me, grinding against my jeans, grabbed my face, and kissed me hard and deep. Her hands moved down and started to pull my shirt up without breaking the kiss. She pushed her breasts against my chest, then broke off long enough to pull my shirt over my head. She locked eyes with me, shook her head in wonder, and we moved to the bedroom.
She took me into her with an urgency that I’d seldom experienced. Her fingernails dug into my ass as she pushed me home. She came almost immediately, then came again. She was perspiring freely, making unintelligibly hot sex sounds, alternately clawing the sheets, raking my back, squeezing my butt. One moment I was in control; the next moment I was completely gone, banging her as hard and fast as I could, gasping for breath. As I came, she arched to take me as deeply as possible and she came a third time.
The next morning I woke to find her on one elbow, her hair matted and wild, staring at me with a half smile.
“What, what, what did you do to me?” She gave her head a little shake of wonder. “That was so hot—frozen like a statue while you played with my body—I don’t think I’ve ever experienced anything like that.”
I pulled her down for a lingering, tender kiss. I slid my hand up from her waist, seeking her breast.
“Oh no, don’t get me started again, you!” She smiled as she pushed my hand away. “We’ve got to go to your parents’ today and you know how your mom hates it when we’re late.”
Point taken. I got up to pee while she slipped her robe over her naked shoulders.
“I’ll put on some coffee,” she called over her shoulder.
I laughed at my own reflection in the mirror. My hair was sticking up crazily. I half turned to survey the scratches on my back, smiling at the memory.
“Hey Hon, come look at your handiwork!”
No answer.
Hon? Jan?”
I looked out of the bathroom; she hadn’t returned to the bedroom. I walked to the living room, stepping over various bits of clothing. Jan stood there in front of the coffee table, staring at a piece of blue paper. She’d picked it up out of curiosity and the suggestion kicked in all over again.
I was instantly hard at the prospect of a replay of last night’s wild sex, but a larger, cooler head prevailed. I took the paper from her hand and put away the job jar.
“There’s no need to remember that you were frozen just now,” I said. “In a moment, you’ll continue to the kitchen to put on the coffee.”
I went back to the bathroom and got into the shower.
And so it went. Sex was still missionary-style, but it was new and exciting for both of us because of the scenarios. And the house was looking pretty spiffy—I was highly motivated to dip into the job jar. Of course, not all of the “jobs” in Jan’s jar were hypnotic, but some of them were erotic nonetheless. One day she pulled “Tell me a favorite sexual fantasy.”
She looked at me. “Are you serious?”
“Absolutely. I get to clean the gutters, but first you make my job infinitely more enjoyable by telling me a cherished fantasy.”
She looked dubious, guilty, nervous. All at once.
“Come on,” I said. “I’ll pour you a cup of coffee.”
As I handed her a cup, she took a deep breath and steeled herself.
“OK. I’m in a bookstore.”
I smiled. She was a voracious reader. What better place than a bookstore?
“I’m poking around the bargain table, picking up various books, flipping through them. There’s a man on the other side of the table, but I’m not really noticing him. Suddenly I see a Robertson Davies book on the table and I reach for it. He reaches for the same book at the same time and our hands touch—it’s an electric, tingling sensation that slams through my entire body. I look up at him and our eyes lock. He says, ‘Do you like Davies?’ I tell him how much I admire his writing and he’s very interested. He talks about his favorite Davies book and invites me to join him at the coffee bar.”
“Robertson Davies?” I smiled.
“Sometimes it’s Anya Seton,” she said defensively. “Anyway, he gets me a cup of coffee and our hands touch again. It’s the most intensely electric, erotic feeling. I’m irresistibly drawn to him, and I can see that he feels the same. He takes my hand. Next thing you know, we’re in the storeroom, up against the shelving, my skirt is up, his pants are down and I’m trying my best not to moan or cry out as I come.”
“Whew, in the bookshelves, standing up? That’s pretty hot.”
“You’re making fun of me.” She looked petulant.
“No I’m not. That’s a terrific fantasy—sexy stranger, interested in you, instant connection, instant gratification. What could be wrong with that?”
“It makes me feel a little guilty,” she said. “Like I’m cheating on you.”
I leered. “Well, if you want to make it up to me….”
She punched my arm. “I think I hear the gutters calling you. Maybe after you shower and smell sweet again!”
I mentally filed her fantasy for future reference. I’d had lots of other ideas. It was clear that she was turned on by being frozen or immobilized. I think that was just as surprising to her as it was to me, but we exercised many permutations—invisible restraints holding her on the bed, being stuck in various compromising positions, slowly turning to an ice sculpture and requiring some very personal ministrations from me to thaw her out again.
I didn’t always use the job jar for these; sometimes they were part of our sex play and sometimes I’d take her by surprise.
Some evenings we’d both be on our laptops, answering emails, doing work, IMing with friends, the usual stuff. If one of us came across an interesting website, we’d often drop the URL into the other’s IM window, even though we were only feet apart or perhaps in another room. One night I dropped the address of a full-screen hypnospiral into her IM, casually calling, “Hey, check this out.” over my shoulder. I’d built it on my site and used a tinyURL to disguise it.
She clicked on it, said, “What the…” and trailed into silence.
Phrases began to fade onto the screen. Then they’d pull down into the spiral, shifting in color, getting smaller before disappearing. I had to admit, the effect was pretty good and the animation was very smooth. After the usual deepeners, the phrases got increasingly erotic. I got hard as I saw her posture change, heard her breath come faster, watched her nostrils flare with passion. She licked her lips. Her hand brushed her breast lightly, then fell to her inner thigh, thumb pressing upwards, fingers working. She moaned softly The final phrase came onto the screen and didn’t fade:
GO TO BURT. MAKE LOVE TO HIM.
Jan was the perfect image of feral arousal as she rose from her chair and crossed the room, eyes huge and glistening, lips parted, floating like Botticelli‘s Venus. I stood to meet her and she simply enveloped me in arms, legs, cascading hair, kisses, and love bites. We shed various articles of clothing as she pulled me down on the sofa. She took me in greedily. As her hips bucked up to meet mine, I whispered, “You can stay in hypnosis or not, as you wish. You can remember or forget the spiral, as you wish.” She merely grunted in reply and proceeded to screw my brains out.
She chose to remember it all and later complimented me on my Flash skills as well as my creativity. And mentioned in a purposely offhand way, “Oh, and you’re a pretty good lay.“
We sat at the kitchen table, sharing a bit of dessert. She gave me the look and the wry smile.
“Life with you certainly isn’t dull. Sometimes I wonder how many tricks you’ve got up your twisted little sleeve.”
“Believe me, I’ve got the best incentive in the whole world.”
“Thank you,” she said with obvious pleasure. “I’m just glad you can get your geek on and get your freak on at the same time. And that it works for me, too.”
I seldom gave any directives about remembering or not remembering; I generally left it up to her. She enjoyed our hypnoerotic activities and I enjoyed hearing her reactions and discussing her experiences with her. Other times, she’d be totally amnesic, no sign of having remembered any part of it. And she never seemed to figure out that some of the slips in the job jar were hypnotic.
She was ever the willing hypnotic subject, but never my slave (not that I wanted that) which she proved pointedly one day.
From the back window, I saw her gardening in the yard with her Bluetooth headset in her ear; she‘d been talking with her mom. I got a tremendous flash of inspiration. I called her phone and when she answered I triggered a trance. I saw the stillness come over her as I offered a few words of deepening and rapport.
“Jan, as you go deeper and deeper, you feel a wonderful and strange transformation happening within you. You feel as though you’ve become a robot inside your beautiful human skin. You’ve been programmed for a very special purpose, and you love your programming. You are Sexbot Jan, and you are guided and instructed by the communication module in your ear.”
I figured she was enough of a science fiction buff that she would know “proper behavior” for a sexbot, and she didn’t disappoint me. At my command she rose slowly from the garden, blank-faced, and stepped slowly towards the house. I instructed her to pause, turn in a full circle, then proceed to the house.
“Stop. Identify yourself,” I commanded.
“Sexbot Jan reporting, sir.” Her voice was mechanical, monotonic. Her posture was stiff, shoulders back, head high, breasts defining themselves invitingly beneath her tee shirt. The smudge of dirt on her cheek was endearing; her green gardening gloves seemed to enhance the robotic look.
“State your capabilities, Sexbot Jan.”
“Sir, I have all the capabilities of a human female.” She stared into space.
“Sexbot Jan, switch to arousal mode and begin removing your clothing. Prepare for pleasurable intercourse.” I almost burst out laughing as I said this, but she didn’t flinch.
She also didn’t respond.
“Sir, Sexbot Jan regretfully informs you that her current programming is for nocturnal sexual activity and that gardening overrides are operational.” Completely poker-faced.
Got me. If you ever thought that hypnotized subjects are mindless drones, here was a perfect example of how one can comply with the trance and still assert individualism and choice.
I sighed. “Very well, Sexbot Jan. You may return to your gardening activities and discontinue sexbot mode.”
She turned stiffly and returned to the yard. When I passed her later the headset was gone. She never mentioned the sexbot experience.
I’d thought about her sexual fantasy over the past several weeks. I thought about ways to incorporate it into our hypnotic games. I seeded the job jar with this:
THE MAN IS A STRANGERBUT YOU FEEL A STRONG CONNECTION.YOU’RE IRRESISTIBLY ATTRACTEDHIS TOUCH IS ELECTRIC.
The following Saturday, I drew my chore; she reached into her jar, pulled out the slip, read it. She looked up, confused, uncertain. “I, uh…”
“Yes, ma’am, about the landscaping in the yard.” I provided a context for my presence in her kitchen. “I can sketch out a few ideas for you.” I smiled, grabbed a pencil and some paper and turned to the window. “I’d like to get a feel for what you want,” I said. “But I can do it right in this room.”
Did I set up a few double entendres in advance? Oh yeah.
“That… that would be great,” she said, still a little flustered. “I’d like to see what you’ve got. Er, what ideas….” She blushed furiously.
I sat down at the table and drew the rough shape of the patio. I added some foliage, sketched out a garden area.
“… and we could put some succulents in here. They’re such, I don’t know, sensual plants, engorged with their natural moisture….”
“Mm, succulents,” she said. She was wearing tracksuit pants and a top with a somewhat scooped neckline. She leaned forward, pressing her upper arms together, making some cleavage. My wife was giving me a show. I’d seen it a million times before, but this was like the first time—I was getting serious wood.
She scooted her chair around to my side for a better view. Her shoulder pressed against mine for a moment and she smiled up at me through her lashes.
“So, what do you have in mind?”
I picked up the pencil and drew a vaguely penile shape along one side of the patio. “We could put in a koi pond here…” I looked up. “If you don’t think it would make things too wet.”
She swallowed hard. “Can I see that?”
I handed her the sheet, brushing her hand with my fingers. I heard a little gasp and her hand trembled.
“This looks very interesting. But is wetness a problem?”
“Not at all. It just needs some tender loving care.”
“Would that be … hard?” She said, her eyes locked on mine.
“Oh yes, very hard,” I assured her, returning her gaze. “But so good, so worth it.”
She swallowed hard again, her mouth dry. I covered her hand with mine. She clenched my fingers hard. I unwrapped her hand and held it in both of mine, straightened her fingers one by one, ran a finger up and down each one, tracing into the V as my thumb pressed gently in her palm. She was wide-eyed as I drew her hand to my mouth and kissed her fingertips. I sucked on her index finger, up to the first knuckle.
“Oh, God,” she said in a small voice.
With a finger under her chin I guided her lips to mine and kissed her gently but firmly, then pulled away slowly, almost imperceptibly. Her lips were full, moist, slightly parted. Her eyes were closed, her lashes dark on her cheeks as the kiss and its oh-so-recent memory blurred in her mind. Her eyes flashed open for a moment, then she pulled me to her, kissing me fervently.
We stood slowly, wrapping our arms around one another, our hips pulling together like they were magnetized. My jeans soon joined her pants and panties on the kitchen floor. Magnets and notes scattered from the refrigerator door and the bottles and jars inside clanked and jingled merrily with our rhythm as I pinned her against the door. She had her strong legs hooked around mine, her arms around my neck, as I held her bottom. I was buried to the hilt in her and worried that I’d split her in half. But she worked herself up and down on my shaft, her moans getting stronger and stronger. I felt her muscles, inside and out, clench around me as she came and she rode me all the harder until I came too.
I staggered back into a kitchen chair and she straddled me, gasping for breath, winding down, milking me, and finally collapsing against me with another, smaller orgasm.
As I held her, her breathing changed and she seemed to be asleep for a few minutes and I held her tenderly. She roused slowly, lifting her head from my shoulder.
“Burt? What…?” She surveyed the room, me, herself. “Oh my God, that was so weird. You were you, then you were a stranger and it was my fantasy only right here, and we….”
She lifted herself from my lap, reached for a napkin to blot the general wetness, went in search of her underpants. There was a little pipe cleaner magnet caught in her hair. We could never figure out exactly what kind of animal it was supposed to be; we’d named it Fred. It looked like it was trying to hide in her tresses.
I laughed, combing him out of her hair with my fingers. “Honey, Fred has decided to….”
She turned and stared at me. She wasn’t laughing.
“You hijacked my fantasy?” Her voice went up half an octave. “You hijacked my fantasy!” Her words were tight, seething. “You had no right to do that, to play with my head like that, to force yourself into my dream, dammit!”
“Honey, I….”
“Just shut up! Don’t talk. Don’t say anything.” She picked up her clothes and stalked out.