Navel Eye

In our forties, bored with dull jobs in dull places, Amy and I pitched everything and moved south to begin again in a seaside college town. She took a position as professor of costume history at the small college there. The school was known more for its parties than its graduates. I worked from home, raking money from the Internet. We bought a small, secluded house there, just off campus and in walking distance of the beach.

Once Amy was established in her post, she dusted off her belly-dance skills and organized a belly-dance club among the college girls. She danced group lessons with them in our house, teaching them the belly-button magic that came to her so naturally.

There always were a half dozen or more of them, though the names changed. They were more disciples than students. The little priestesses came to the temple in our house to worship together. She taught them not mere dance and fashion, but the allure of a woman's belly, her erotic heart. And the bevvy of belly-dancers caught up some of her intensity, though no one ever came close to Amy. They watched her walk with breathless girl-crushes.

She taught them not just the movements and the attitudes, but the deep roots of the dance, that the girl's navel is the eye of the goddess. That the man who is lured and enslaved by it is her ritual sacrifice.

They strutted across the campus, bare-bellied in their cropped tops printed with the name of their troupe -- "Belly Pride" -- in gold letters.

And at every full moon day, they gathered in our yard for their ritual. In the back yard of the house, set among a stand of pines, stood an old concrete swimming pool. It was turfed in now, and only about two feet deep. A circle in the soil, just perfect for our shared desire. I dug pit holes in the earth and set a sturdy steel railing all the way around it, with one entrance. Then I strung a mesh of rope from the rail, to complete the enclosure.

Amy's belly-lessons plunged from dance to sensual sorcery, and the girls blossomed with her, from students to priestesses. They walked out with us to the pool, each bare-bellied in her own chosen way. But Amy led them, stunningly enlaced in a perfect belly-flaunting dress. She led me by one hand. By the other, she led my opponent. Both of us were naked.

He would be a different man each time, typically some boy from the college -- a wiry, tough youth or a solid jock, all beef and muscle. Often the boyfriend of one of the girls, or some one they had chosen together and seduced into it. The priestesses trailed behind, in pairs.

With the salt breeze off the sea and the hush of the trees above, Amy and my opponent and I stepped down into the navel-shaped pool. The girls then formed a ring around the railing. Their bellies gazed down at us, a ring of unblinking navels, each anonymously unique, some virgin-pale, some bronzed and brazen. Their voices commented and speculated. But Amy's witching eyes held my gaze.

With a wise gaze and casual up-strokes of her long-fingered hands, she had both cocks instantly hard in her warm palms. And she held us both there as she explained the rules of the fight in her low, lascivious voice. She addressed both of us; I knew the rules by heart already, but it was my eyes she held with her glittering stare as she spoke.

"You may grapple and shove and pull one another. But you may only punch with a closed fist, and only in the stomach. If one of you goes down from a belly-punch, the other will hold back until he rises again. You will fight till I declare an end to the ritual."

Then she stepped back, but held her place in the arena, the queen of bare-bellied beat-downs. The priestesses began to cheer my opponent, and we raised our fists and set to work.

I am expert at this. I know how to lead with my belly. I square my stance and keep my belly soft, and let my opponent drive right into it with his punch. I know how to fall back in such a way that my arms tangle with the ropes and leave me caught and exposed and vulnerable for a belly-whomping. I know how to get winded and go down, suffering loud and long, then slowly regain my feet for more.

And he belts me with a punch right in my belly. His fist whomps me plump in the stomach, and my body folds right over. Bellyaching, staggering away from him, turning, I drop to my knees. Suffering like a bare-bellied wimp. My goddess just watched me get beat up by a bellypunch.

I glance up and catch her eyes. I see the deep arousal in them as she watches me doubled over and belly-aching, suffering from that punch in my belly.

He hauls me upright, and effortlessly buries his fist in my stomach. It catches me soft-bellied. He slams that fist into my belly and knocks the wind out of me. I double up again, with my hands pressed to my punched belly.

Amy blurts out: "Oooh! Right in the belly!"

The girls pick it up at once.

"Slug him again," one says. "Hit him in the belly!"

He shoves me back upright. He pulls his arm back and pounds another punch into my belly.

My mouth flies open as my body slowly crumples. I stagger away from him, suffering.

My lover needs me to feel the fullness of humiliation. She purrs, “Uh, right in the belly!”

Her priestesses mimic her. "Uh, right in the belly," they say.

I straighten up and try to fight him. But he just laughs, enjoying the attention.

"I was hoping you'd get back up, so I can give you another punch in the belly."

Instead of another big belly-slammer, this time he hits me with a series of sharp jabs, with his knuckles, right in the pit of my stomach.

One-two-three! I can't even protect my belly. Each punch drives me back. Then he gives me a belly-full of fist.

I slowly fold forward till my forehead almost touches the dirt. Both hands clutch my punched belly.

And his girlfriend cheers him while he beats me up:

"Go on, hit him in the belly. Give him a belly-ache. Oh, nice punch, right in his belly."

There is no surrender in this fight. My belly-beating will continue until Amy decides I have given enough to please her. She allows him to have my belly for his personal punching bag.

She looks down at me, doubled over and belly-aching. She says, "What's wrong? Can't take it in the belly?"

He grabs me, pulls me forward, then shoves me and I stagger back. I flop back against the ropes, then bounce off them, belly-first, right into a ferocious punch.

I clutch my stomach and bend far forward. I fall and I roll onto my back and lie in a pose of bare-bellied submission. Breathless and beaten by a punch in the belly.

Amy looks down at me, on the ground. She says "belly-wimp." Then she holds his hand up as he stomps his heel down in my belly for his victory pose.