A Life Without Trousers
Chapter One
"Those trousers you're wearing are really quite disgusting, David. Take them off at once!"
Everyone looked at my trousers and then back at Orly expecting him to laugh, but I knew there would be no laugh. He was deadly serious.
I swallowed hard and stood up. My heavy heart started pounding as I met his cold steely glare. I pleaded silently but I knew deep down it was useless and, with bitter resignation, I began to unfasten my belt.
"David, what on earth . . . ? What are you doing?" Yvonne enquired in a state of mild and amused agitation. She cast anxious glances at tables nearby. "You're making a ridiculous spectacle of yourself. Fasten them up immediately!"
How I wish I could have followed her orders instead of Orly's, but my fate was sealed and, with a deep breath at the inevitability of it all, I finished opening my trousers and pushed them down over my hips.
I was conscious of some gasps and titters from the immediate surrounding area of the crowded pub' terrace that summer evening and there was a smattering of ironic applause as I stepped out of my trousers and passed them over the table to Orly's outstretched hand. My face, I imagine, was scarlet, as were my boxer shorts in which I now stood.
"You called his bluff there, old son. I take my hat off to you for your bottle," Guy sniggered, embarrassed for me.
"There's been quite enough taking off without you removing anything Guy, thank you very much," Yvonne interjected. "For goodness' sake put them back on, David, and sit down!"
"He shall not put them back on, Yvonne. I shall not allow him to. I told you I found them disgusting," Orly remarked as he emptied the contents of my trouser pockets onto the table. "So offensive are they to me that I shall dispose of them at once!" and so saying, he hurled them into the river.
I sank back into my chair amidst cackles of jocularity as I bleakly watched the current take my trousers into mid-stream and slowly progress past the little island downstream towards the river meadows and the city beyond. At that stage I was happily unaware that my trouser-wearing days were drawing to a close.
It was a warm evening and I had only worn a short-sleeved shirt, but I shivered now as a breeze riffled through the hairs on my arms and legs as I sat in the pub's riverside garden in shirt and boxers and shoes and socks.
Orly looked across at me with a smirk of triumph glinting in his eyes.
"Drink up, old chap, you're buying the next round, remember?" and he passed me the twenty pound note rescued from my trousers which he had given me earlier that evening for the very purpose of buying a round.
The immediate entertainment value of my humiliating exposure, the very public divesting of my trousers and their subsequent unexpected departure down the river had run its allotted span and the various tables soon began to ignore us all again, with only the occasional idle glance across at my bare legs. It being summer and indeed some young people of both sexes wearing shorts in the immediate area, I did not appear too odd to a casual observer. I just had to ensure that my shirt tail concealed the boxers' fly.
Guy volunteered to get my round in to save me having to go up to the bar in my underwear -- especially after they had been tweaked off my hips by a passing coterie of ladettes - and I was pleasantly surprised Orly did not object to his going on principle. Yvonne kept giving me questioning looks and observing Orly.
"Are you two all right? I mean, has there been a row or something," she hissed at me at one point when he was talking to Gerald.
"It's fine," I lied to her, surprised at the matter-of-fact calmness of my delivery.
I relived the moment of standing up and taking off my trousers in front of all those people, stepping out of them and handing them across the table with everybody watching, and I shivered and drank deeply from my pint of bitter. It felt cold and wallow in my mouth.
I drew in a deep breath as I slowly began to realise my whole life had just changed with Orly's first order. I was no longer my own man. I was his.
And, as I recognised this change, I began to tremble uncontrollably so I had to put my pint down in case anyone noticed. There was also something else which unnerved me. At that very moment of realisation there had been a definite if momentary thrill and even, to my utter disbelief and amazement, an unwanted blood surge into my member nestling so close to imminent exposure beneath a well-placed shirt flap.
The Honourable Orlando Urquhart was fabulously wealthy; so much so it was almost obscene. He wore it well though. He came from "old money" and so there was little that was overtly or even vulgarly ostentatious in his various trappings. It was just that if you could recognise quality when you saw it then you knew instantly that the best was always what Orlando Urquhart considered to be right for him.
I envied him his wealth; I freely admit it. His life seemed so care-free. If he saw something he wanted then he bought it, or had it engraved and delivered. I had expensive tastes too but I lacked the budget to finance them and therein lay my trouble. Orlando had bailed me out a couple of times at school to spare me parent-grief.
The first time I had to rely on him to settle my debts at university, he said: "Really, David, my dear boy, you must learn not to be quite so profligate with my money or I shall start to exert controls over you."
I fawned over him in puppy-like gratitude and promised the moon as an undying token of my esteem and friendship.
"One day I may ask you for it," he smiled sardonically and patted me on the head as he dismissed me from his presence with yet another largish cheque.
But you see, I had been accepted by the "fast set" as my exceptionally old-fashioned father might have said, had he known. I was living beyond my means, almost beyond Orlando's means too. Great gourmandising revelries held in country village pubs with a reputation for fine food, drinking only the finest wines. And gambling!
We would gamble extravagant sums of money on two flies on a wall -- which would reach the ceiling first or just fly away? Anything and everything was fair game for our bets and we outbid each other audaciously and with little thought of where the money would come from.
Anyway, the sky fell on me all at once on a particular Thursday. One of the chaps had got a bit nasty and pressing over the amount outstanding that I owed him and reported me to the college authorities. That was it; the "fast set" dropped me, instanta! At the same time the ATM machine chewed up my cash card and that night, trying to recoup some of my losses I hit a losing streak at quite a big card game with serious players. When I say serious, it was in a gambling club (a bit of a dive, actually) and they had bouncers who roughed me up a bit first. I was quite frankly fearful for my life at one stage and was literally frightened out of my clothes. They took my watch, the lot, then insisted on the ultimate humiliation of stripping me of everything, even my underpants, in front of a fascinated and jeering crowd, threatening to cut off my manhood too if I tried to resist.
So the eventual mortification was to be turned out into the night -- or rather the early hours of a Friday morning - stark naked amidst hoarse laughter and heartlessly spiteful remarks. There was no hope of making it back into college at that time before the break of dawn and my options were exceedingly limited. I can tell you I was sobbing helplessly as I skulked down cobbled side alleys wondering how on earth I could extricate myself from this god-awful mess I had got myself into. Orly was my only hope, my only saviour, so it was to his doorstep I scuttled clutching my dignity in both palms to conceal it from a cruel and laughing world.
He stood in his elegant night attire gazing down at me from his doorstep, his face expressionless.
"What's the matter, David? Were you worried I wouldn't recognise you with your clothes on?" he mused drily, affecting to be totally unsurprised by my nude appearance at three-thirty in the morning.
"You've got to help me, Orly," I forced the words out through a throat constricted with emotion.
"Oh?" his eyebrows raised in surprise. "And just why, pray tell me, you think I have got to help you?"
I pleaded and eventually he let me in. He led me through to his sitting room, poured me a brandy and then said: "All right, David, tell me the whole sordid story," in a rather exasperated "we have been here before" kind of weary voice.
I took a slug of my brandy, one hand still fiercely protecting what bit of modesty I had left. I glanced down at myself to see it was pretty ineffective.
"Could I perhaps have something to wear?" I ventured tentatively.
"Story first!" was Orlando's firm response.
So I stood foolishly and vulnerably stark naked in his front room and out poured the whole sorry story of my downfall and degradation. It was movingly told; I wept myself. Orlando, however, remained stony-faced throughout and regarded me with unfeeling eyes.
"Of course, you realise the university authorities regard borrowing beyond one's means and unpaid gambling debts particularly seriously, don't you?" Orlando said at last, having left me to finish both my sobs of self-pity and my brandy before putting my glass down and once more cupping my private parts together with the other hand that had remained there less effectively on its own.
"You say these men have threatened to report you to the proctors?" he sought clarification and I nodded glumly. "Doubtless you know, if they carry out this threat, you will be instantly rusticated, sent down and your parents notified."
I gazed at him in horror.
"Orly, no! My father would go up the wall. I'd never hear the end of it. The shame on the family escutcheon - all that sort of stuff . . . can't you help me out of this?"
Orlando stood up hastily.
"I wondered how long it would be before you got round to expecting me to come sailing to your aid again, you ungrateful bastard!" he sneered.
I grovelled. I told him I wasn't in the least ungrateful, that I valued his friendship like no other, that I fully realised how much I already owed him and that if he got me out of this scrape then that would be it. He would see before him a changed man, subservient to him in every way, desperate to prove my sincerity and eternal gratitude by carrying out his every wish. I begged him to settle my debts whereupon all my worldly goods I would bestow upon him . . . except my father's watch that I pleaded with him to barter with the men I owed for its return.
Orlando stood looking at me with those piercing eyes of his. There was a hint of cruelty there that made the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. His stare made me all the more conscious of my nakedness somehow, even though he was only in a towelling robe over his striped silk pyjamas.
"A changed man, you say? Subservient to me in every way?" he mused abstractedly, a small smile playing on his thin lips. "Ready to carry out my every wish, whenever, wherever, no matter what?"
"Yes, yes," I responded fervently.
"So, if I settle these debts and get you your watch back, from henceforward you and your possessions are mine?"
I baulked slightly.
"Erm, yes, that's about it." I began to have doubts.
"From thenceforward you would have to live by my strict rules, all chance of self-will totally subjugated. There would be no turning back, David. I would have invested time and money in you and I would want to see a fulsome return for that in all you do and say."
I blenched a little, cleared my throat and found myself stammering out a quavering: "I'd be more than prepared to give you some of my ----"
"No, David," I was cut short. "This time it's all or nothing! You have a moment to decide; unquestioning obedience in all things, no matter how demeaning or degrading. Remember, you brought all this upon yourself, David. Could anything be more humiliating than the present state you find yourself, standing stark bollock naked in the rooms of a friend pleading with him to get you out of the hole in which you got yourself?"
I glanced down at myself ashamed. I did feel extremely foolish standing there.
"You're right in some of the things you say, of course, Orly," I began.
"All, or nothing," he repeated in ringing tones.
"I agree," I murmured softly at last.
"I demand absolute automatic compliance, deference and submission from the start," he rattled out.
"You shall have it," I meekly replied.
"You will give up your college rooms and move in here. Your commitment to me shall be total. I am going to oversee your entire life. Decisions about how you live, travel, what you eat and drink, what you wear and do not wear, from henceforward, will be decided for you by me or my appointees."
I nodded dully, resigned, as I thought, to my fate, little realising quite how all-embracing this life-changing agreement would be.
Orly went on insisting that there would be a written contract drawn up which I should have to sign giving him complete authority over me and in which I would waive all my rights in his favour for as long as he deemed fit. I was forced to glumly agree.
"There will, however, be a trial period," he continued in ominous tones, "during which I shall test the sincerity of your desire to conform to my wishes in all things in return for my help. If I detect any wavering reluctance to instantly fulfil my demands then the agreement is terminated and the matter of your debts to me will be put into the hands of the courts. And with your record you may be very certain it would mean a jail sentence. Is that clearly understood?
I swallowed hard and mumbled that it was.
"Excellent," he said, suddenly throwing himself into an easy chair and crossing his long legs, he rested his chin on steepled fingers, regarding me with an almost amused air of insouciance. "Test number one, then. Spread your legs apart and hands behind your neck!"
With an inward groan of mortification, I dropped my eyes and unclasped my fingers. Trembling, I drew my hands away and placed them on the back of my head as I slithered my bare feet further apart. Thoroughly conscious of my complete and utterly demeaning exposure before him and my total subjugation, nothing of me concealed at all, not even my armpits, my eyes teared up.
"Shoulders back, laddie; head up. Present yourself properly for me."
I complied with as little reluctance as was impossible to conceal. As I stood there, blatantly devoid of all means of cover, I uttered a silent oath and a quick prayer. Please not now of all times, I wordlessly begged of my Maker as, with a growing sense of horror and disbelief, I became aware of a slight but sudden stirring within my reproduction system. I watched with hot red eyes as Orlando Urquhart studied my - prior to this - entirely private parts with what appeared to be almost undue fascination.
"Would it be possible to put something on," I asked tentatively, maintaining the stance to which I had been ordered.
"It would seem to be quiteimpossible since you arrived here with nothing," Orly remarked blandly.
"I was meaning perhaps I could borrow something . . ."
"I think not!" Orly barked quite sharply. "It is all this borrowing that has reduced you to the position in which you now so miserably find yourself, David. Don't you see that? I see it as my mission to be a constant reminder of where your profligacy got you, so my first rule will be no clothing at all whenever you are here alone or with me."
"You mean until I move in and bring my stuff with me?" I anxiously sought clarification.
"You have no stuff, David! Of that let us be clear. You forfeited it all to me."
"S-s-so you will keep me here . . . naked? All the time?"
"As a constant reminder."
"But what if people call?" I asked.
"You will be allowed a small hand towel to clasp round your loins as though you were caught about to shower," he responded after a moment's consideration. "You may thank me for my magnanimity in this. It is more than you deserve under the circumstances."
I grudgingly did so.
"But what if my parents call?" I asked a little more desperately.
"Doubtless they have both seen you naked before?"
"Well, yes, of course, but that was some years ago," I added. "I can't let them see me naked nowadays."
"You have no option, David," Orly stressed. "The question is will I allow them to see you naked." He stared at the ceiling for inspiration. "Let us say my decision for each visit will be judged according to your attitude and behaviour prevalent at that time.
"I must reiterate for your benefit, David, you are no longer `your own man'," he added. "You are mine instead!"
[This is the end of the first part of a projected story about a young man who gets himself into financial trouble at university and is forced to adopt a very subservient and deferential way of life in order to survive. I submit it with a view of it being published on your site, Sirs, should it find favour with you and beg for advice as to whether you deem it worth continuing with. Thank you.]