The Juliette Society (16 page)

14

I remember it all now. I remember everything. I remember the time I first became aware of sex. Not the act but the stirring. I remember it as if it happened yesterday. And this is going to sound really quaint, and might even be a little hard to believe, but I swear it’s true.

When I was eleven, or twelve, thirteen – I can’t remember which – my best friend showed me some dog-eared and yellowing sheets of paper she’d found in her dad’s desk drawer and we lay on the floor in her bedroom while she read them out to me.

It was a sex story. A really filthy story but written as a letter. Pornography without the images. Pornography before video tapes, DVDs, cell phones and the internet. Pornography where the dirty pictures are inside your head.

We figured out that this letter didn’t originally belong to her dad but her grandpa, who had gone overseas to fight in the Vietnam War. The only part of him that came back home was a battered footlocker filled with dank and moldy reminders of the place he’d left behind and the family that lost him. A silk slip belonging to her grandmother that still bore faint traces of the perfume she wore on their first date, some photos of her dad as a tiny baby that were old and faded and looked as if they were streaked with tears, and a bundle of peeling letters tied with blue ribbon. And this letter, the letter that told the dirty story, was one of those. It was addressed to him. But we didn’t know who it was sent from because we couldn’t find a signature. It seemed to be missing and there was no return address on the envelope it came in.

A few days ago, I found the story posted up on an internet forum. The same basic story but the details were off. A couple of people commented that they thought it started as something passed around on mimeographed sheets as beat-off material for soldiers stationed overseas. And passed down through all the ages and all the wars since then until it ended up in my friend’s dad’s desk drawer and found its way into her innocent hands.

If I knew then what I know now, I would have told her to stop before she got to the end. I would have told her to stop before she’d even started. Put the papers back where you found them, back in the drawer. They’re not ours. This is not for us. We don’t need to know what’s there. Not now, not yet, not ever.

Children have many beautiful, natural talents that are to be envied and admired. The one thing they lack is foresight.

For some reason, they just can’t make the connection between running down the road with their laces undone and a nasty trip and fall in the immediate future. Along with two grazed knees that will sting like nothing else they’ve ever felt.

That if they poop in their pants it’s going to feel unpleasant, and smell real bad. Not to mention that whole business of running to mommy and fighting to tell her what’s happened through all the floods of tears. Because while a child lacks foresight, they are not without cunning. So if poop comes out one end, it must be time to turn the waterworks on at the other. If only to inspire enough pity to make the humiliating process of cleaning up afterwards that much easier to bear.

So if I knew then what I know now, when my parents took me to the Christmas grotto in our local shopping mall for the very first time, as a toddler in my pretty pink frilly dress with striped candy canes stitched around the skirt, and walked me over the white astroturf, past the creepy-looking mechanical elves who waved their arms stiffly like a grandma at a New Year’s party rocking out to Katy Perry, and plopped me down on Santa’s big, red log-sized knee so that he could lean in until his white beard was hanging in my lap and ask me the obligatory question about my heart’s desire, I would have looked up into his rheumy, gin-soaked eyes with all the childlike innocence and wonder I could muster and said, ‘Gimme foresight.’

It would have saved a whole lot of hassle, heartbreak and shit-stained underwear later on. It would have saved me from myself.

And back then, lying there sprawled across the shagpile carpet in my friend’s bedroom as she clutched those yellowing sheets in her hand and prepared to read them out loud, I might have been right on the cusp of womanhood but I was still a child. What did I know?

So I egged her on.

We were like Adam and Eve preparing to take a bite of the apple. Curiosity got the better of us, we couldn’t stop ourselves and we ate the whole damn thing up in one go and almost pissed our pants from laughing at all the really dirty bits.

But the rest of the story, the stuff that was dark and weird, just seemed strange and alien to our young, still innocent and developing minds. Because we didn’t understand, because we hadn’t experienced anything that would give it meaning or context, it didn’t affect us. Or at least, I thought it didn’t. And here’s something I can’t really explain.

Somehow the story as I first heard it from my friend – all of it, every last word and detail – stayed with me, burrowing deep into my subconscious like a parasite, where it set up camp and made a home for itself.

And for years and years I never knew it was there.

I’d forgotten hearing not only the story but also the sequence of events that lead up to it. And my friend, now she’s just a voice without a face or a name and fleeting half-formed memories are all the proof I have that she even existed.

Except in my dreams.

In my dreams, I remember everything. I remember exactly how she told the story, how it went and how it made me feel.

In my dreams, I run the scenes back and forth, adding new details here and there that make it seem more vivid and believable, discarding others. Keeping some that feel as if they need to be there as a running stitch to stop the fabric of the story from falling apart at the seams.

But the second I wake up, it’s gone. I lose all memory of it. Except for little strands here and there, but never enough that I can put it all together so that it would make any sense to me during my waking hours. Then, at night, it will all come flooding back again and the dream starts over.

Over the years, I think I must have slowly refined and reworked the story into a beautiful and complex patchwork of sexual desire, a catalogue of my wet dreams from puberty all the way into adulthood.

At some point over the last few weeks, something happened, something that brought the dream to light. All of it, every last bit of it has come back, invading my conscious mind. And now the story is as real to me as my own life. And my life, like Séverine’s, is starting to resemble a waking dream.

And I can’t lie, it scares the crap out of me to see what’s been inside for me so long, gestating and growing. But it does explain a lot, at least, about the path I’m on, the things I’ve seen and the places I’ve been. About the reasons I’m drawn to Anna.

In the dream, I’m a little older than I am right now. I live alone in a large city. Jack is not there. He’s not part of the dream and never has been. I haven’t had a boyfriend for years and I loathe going back to my empty apartment after work. So I go for a walk at the same time every day, just as dusk is starting to draw in. More often than not, I keep to my neighborhood and simply take a stroll around the block. At other times, I catch a cab to a nearby park and wander aimlessly along its gentle, rolling avenues lined with stately elm, oak and cyprus trees, past a bandstand high on a hill that looks like a Greek temple.

On this walk, I bask in the beauty of the city and it takes me outside of myself, allowing me to escape my thoughts. And on the clearest of evenings, when the entire city seems lit by an unearthly golden twilight glow, I’m overwhelmed by an incredible sense of well-being that remains with me as I return home, making the long nights that much easier to bear.

But underneath it all I’m desperately unhappy and deeply unfulfilled. A wild passion burns deep inside me and I long for the day when I will find someone to not only share my life but help fill the aching need to satisfy pent-up sexual desires that seem to become more frenzied and extreme as the sexless, loveless years go by.

There is someone, though – a neighbor, who lives in an apartment opposite – but we’ve never met, we’ve never spoken. When he passes me in the hallway, I try to catch his eye and he lowers his to avoid my gaze. But at night, I know he’s watching me. I can feel his eyes upon my body. I can feel his longing and desire and I know he wants me. And so, as I’m getting ready for bed, I’ll walk around in the nude with the lights on and the slats of the blinds on my windows tilted open to give him a good view. And when I’m in bed, I masturbate to the image of him in his apartment, pressed against the window, stroking his cock, watching me. I can see the passion on his face. But it never goes any further than this. Him watching me. Me watching him watching me. A feedback loop of carnal longing that’s never fully consummated.

One particular Fall evening, as I’m about to go out for my walk, my best friend calls. We talk for a while and when I leave my apartment building, it’s almost dark. A cab hurtles past. Without thinking, my arm shoots out to hail it. The vehicle swerves to the curb and squeals to a halt half a block ahead. I dash to catch up to it, bark my destination breathlessly into the driver side window and slump into the passenger seat.

The cab is suffused with a sweet chemical odor, like peppermint, as if it has just been cleaned, and the interior lights are all turned off. I’m so wrapped up in my thoughts it doesn’t even occur to me that I’m sitting in the dark.

I sense a movement off to my side. A gloved hand holding a rag appears in front of my face. I hear myself scream. But too late.

I am being carried in the arms of a great, hulking man. I feel the cool night air brush against my face. And I turn my head to see a large emerald green door looming above me. The door swings open. I see no one and nothing behind it. I’m carried beyond the threshold and enveloped in pitch blackness once again.

Then I become aware of a bright light bearing down on me from above, warm as the late afternoon sun. I wonder if I lay down in the park for a minute and fell asleep. I wonder if this has all been a terrible dream. My senses tell me otherwise.

My hands are constricted behind my head, as if I’m lying on top of them. There is a tightness around my mouth. I’m dry and parched. I hear rustling sounds, at first right beside me then echoing in the distance. As the unfamiliar details stack up, confusion gives way to fright.

I force my eyes open and I’m blinded by the light. Shadowy figures block the source by moving across it, allowing me to make out my surroundings.

I’m in an old, old theater, looking out into the auditorium from a stage illuminated by a single spotlight. The audience is comprised of men and women dressed for a masquerade ball. They look back at me blankly through eyes veiled by Venetian masks, murmuring expectantly as if waiting for a performance to begin.

I’m reclining on some sort of gynecological chair raised up to waist height. My feet are locked into metal stirrups. My hands, I now realize, are bound tightly underneath the headrest, with rope that scratches and burns against my wrists. I’m gagged by a red cloth. My field of vision restricted by the few inches I’m able to turn and lift my head.

I feel utterly helpless. But I don’t panic. My mind is sharp and clear, buzzing with adrenaline and wiped free of emotion. Resistance, I decide, is useless. Resistance, I think, might make things worse.

Three women, the figures I saw, flutter and swoop around me like birds. They wear egg-shaped hoods made of black chiffon, cut open in a downward curve from the tip of the nose, with eyeholes the size of silver dollars. And matching caped boleros hemmed by a leather halter that runs along the chest and under the arms, leaving their breasts exposed.

One of the women produces a pair of shears and, in one quick fluid movement from neck to hem, snips the dress from my body. I feel the cold steel of the blade as a drip of ice water running from my neck to my belly. The fabric drops like a magician’s curtain. My pale white skin is rose-flushed from the heat. Next, my panties are snipped at the hips. The embarrassment I feel at being exposed makes me squirm.

The first woman falls back. Two others move in to take her place, as if the whole thing has been choreographed for my benefit. One rouges my nipples, applying color with lipstick, rubbing and pinching to smooth it out, leaving them a deep crimson red that reminds me of the brilliant autumnal shades of the oak trees that flame against the silver-blue sky during my early evening walks in the park.

The other uses a pin brush, the kind used to groom dogs, to comb the tight curls of hair between my legs. As the metal rakes my skin, blood rushes to my head and makes me dizzy.

The three women position themselves around me, one on either side, another in front, holding large sprays of peacock feathers up in front of their faces, enshrouding me. And one by one, in rotation, they lower the feathers, fan and sweep them across my body then lift them up again. And then the next. Fan, sweep, lift. Fan, sweep, lift.

They feather my arms, they feather my pits, feather my breasts and feather my nest. I feel my sensitivity heighten, becoming aware of every tiny filament as it dances across my skin, anticipating where the next will fall and the shape it will trace.