The Juliette Society (17 page)

The vanes possess my body and all I see are the eyes, electric eyes of blue and rust and green, that stroke and flutter and lash me into a trance. Dividing and multiplying, into a thousand and more, staring down at me. Hungry eyes that want to consume me. And I want that like I’ve never wanted anything before.

A bell rings. The three women peel away in a flash. The auditorium falls quiet. And I’m blinded by the light again, floating towards it, in the silence, in the space that’s left between wanting and being.

A man appears before me, at the foot of the chair, wearing a harlequin mask that’s hooked over his ears, covers his whole face down to his mouth and extends over and around his head. It’s made out of something that looks like burnt leather and molded with a nose, cheeks, and eye sockets – as if he’s wearing a face on top of his face. His naked torso, his broad shoulders and powerful arms, all sharply defined and beautifully contoured, look to me as if he’s been carved from stone. The Renaissance ideal of a man. My ideal of a man. What I can’t see, like the statues in the Vatican, is his sex, which, I imagine, hangs there with intent just below my own, beyond my field of vision.

He steps up and there are no words exchanged, no looks, no niceties or introductions. No foreplay. He grips my legs just above the ankles to steady himself, leans back, looks down, takes aim and thrusts.

As he enters me, there is an audible gasp from the crowd, one gasp made of many, and although I can’t see the reason why, I can feel it. I can feel myself opening up to take him. I can feel him opening up a part of me that’s never been accessed before. As if, in one determined thrust, he has broken through and released my desire. I find myself thinking about the bow of a ship forcing its way through the ice. And I know this is just the beginning but I’m already wondering how far I can go, how much I can take, and I want it all.

I’m distracted from his thrusts by the appearance of another man at his side. And then another, and another. Six, seven, eight, nine, forming a wall around me. All masked, naked and aroused. And others that line up behind them.

There is no bell this time. Hands swarm all over my body, pawing at my breasts, my legs, pulling at my mouth, splashing the sweat that gathers at my belly. And the intensity of their lust startles me.

I wonder who these men are and where they come from. I look at them and imagine, behind the masks, the men I’ve fantasized about alone in my bed. The men who offer friendly smiles as I pass them in the hallway of my apartment building, undress me with their eyes on the street, or steal glances on a crowded subway train.

These same men come to me as I touch myself in the deep of night when my sexual fantasies blossom, when I feel inside the deepest part of my body as if I’m being loved by them, caressing my own breast as if it’s the hand of another. These hands that are upon me now are the hands of all the lovers I’ve never had and always wanted. The hands of the man who lives opposite, whose touch I’ve never felt.

What I don’t know, even as this is happening to me, is that he is here too, sitting with the crowd in the auditorium, watching me. That he was brought here by a friend who, sensing his dissatisfaction, offered him a night’s entertainment. A very special entertainment at a most exclusive club, accessible to only the very wealthiest of patrons.

He is wearing a mask, like all the others, to disguise his identity. His initial shock at seeing me, the object of his desire, there on stage, is soon offset by the stirring he feels at being able to cast his eyes over my body, up close and in such magnificent detail, and the swell of excitement that passes through the audience.

He wants to intervene and show himself to me but fears what might happen, fears that he might bring terrible consequences on us both, that we might be set upon and torn apart. And finally, he lets go of all those thoughts, submits to his urges and throws his lot in with the lust of the crowd.

If I had only known there was someone I knew out there, that he was out there, things might have been different. I might not have submitted to my fate.

The gag is removed from my mouth, the rope that ties my hands is loosened. I’m set free. But I don’t cry for help or fight my way out. Freedom means something different to me now.

I’m hungry. As hungry as the feathered eyes and the hands that claw and grab me. And so I instinctively reach for something to fill my need, to fill my mouth and busy my hands. My body is red and raw from being slapped and pinched and grabbed. The same fiery red as the flaming oak leaves. And I don’t mind because I feel at one with my nature now, I feel that my body was made for this.

For the first time, I’m able to raise myself up off the seat and look beyond the men who tug at themselves as they wait their turn at my side, and out into the stalls of the auditorium. I see bodies all around, row upon row, arranged in twos and threes, connected at the hip and by the mouth. Figures interlocked and moving. Like glyphs in an alphabet of desire. A universal language that needs no explanation. And I realize it’s all because of me, and that’s the biggest turn-on of all. It was my desire that brought me here, that created this, and I suddenly understand what it means to be maddened by lust.

And that’s where the story left off on the last page. Where my dream would cut off night after night, year after year. No matter how much I thought I could mold and change it, I could not make it end. And I’ve dredged my mind to see if there’s something I’ve overlooked or forgotten from the first time I heard the story, something I’d missed. And all I could come up with was this.

We sat on the floor and tried to imagine all the possible endings. Fairytale endings where the girl’s secret admirer rushes onto the stage to rescue her like a shining white knight, and dashes her off through the big green door, back to her apartment where they live happily ever after. Because, to children, all tales have happy endings, and that’s what it was to us, a fairy tale, like Sleeping Beauty or Hansel and Gretel, no more dark or frightening or unreal.

I don’t believe in fairy tales anymore. I know better than that.

Happy endings are shit for the birds.

And the dream?

I’m living it now.

I know that.

The end remains unwritten.

15

Everyone’s been in a situation like this.

You’re at a party.

You’re just standing there – or sitting – minding your own business, taking in the scene. Or maybe hanging out with a friend, talking about dumb stuff that only you and her know or care about, laughing at your own private jokes. And, out of nowhere, this guy approaches you.

You don’t know who he is, neither does your friend. You don’t even remember seeing him before. But it’s possible you might have caught a glimpse of him when you first arrived and thought nothing of it. You might have even smiled in his direction. Not really meaning to. And he misread it as a signal, took it as his cue.

Now he’s right there, standing in front of you. He says, ‘hi’ and introduces himself, because to him a party is where you’re supposed to meet people. And he’s decided he wants to meet you. But that doesn’t necessarily mean you want to meet him. In fact, thirty seconds in his company is more than enough to make up your mind that you don’t. You’ve only just become acquainted on a first-name basis, but you already know everything and anything you could ever want or need to know about this man. And you’re already trying to work out how to get away.

This is that party.

Dickie is that guy.

Dickie works in concrete. Ready-mixed. He’s been in construction and aggregates all his working life. He’s the Chairman and CEO of one of the world’s biggest building material supply companies. Concrete is his life and he is so very passionate about the subject. He’s trying to convince me that the first recorded uses of cement are as important to world history as the discovery of fire. That his métier in life is as significant to the cultural development of humanity as archeology, medicine and philosophy combined.

But he’s no Mother Teresa. Dickie has offices in every conflict zone around the globe. He’s making enough concrete to rebuild countries faster than they can be destroyed. ‘War is big business,’ he tells me.

Anna is talking to Dickie’s pal, Freddie, a hedge fund manager. She’s all giggly and she looks like she’s enjoying herself. Dickie might be filthy rich but his conversation skills are as dry as the business he’s in. Dickie is boring the pants off me.

If I was wearing any pants, that is. If I was, Dickie would have bored them off me by now.

But I’m not.

This is what I’m wearing: a black floral lace band that covers my eyes, white knee-high stockings, red slingback stiletto pumps and, wrapped around me like a blanket, a floor-length cape – ruby red to match my favorite lipstick. This time I’m not wearing my underwear.

Anna is wearing a filigree metal mask shaped like a butterfly and an emerald green cape that she’s draped around her curves like a fur. Together, we look like two phases of a traffic signal.

The masks and capes are part of the door policy for this little soiree. Not leather and denim. Masked and anonymous. Because this is a themed sex party. An
Eyes Wide Shut
party.

This is worlds away from the Fuck Factory. This place is different. It’s exclusive and elite.

I wonder what Kubrick would make of this. Stanley, not Larry. He crafted a meticulous fable about the intersection between sex, wealth, power and privilege, his last masterwork, the longest single shoot in film history, a movie like every movie he made, where every detail, every nuance of its construction and staging is there for a specific reason. A movie that he put so much passion and work into that it killed him and he never got to see how it was received.

Which is probably for the best. Because the one thing Stanley Kubrick probably did not foresee is that the very people he made the movie about would take the story literally. The conspicuously wealthy few whose power and privilege gives them free reign to live by their own social, moral and sexual code, one that just doesn’t apply to the rest of us; who think decadence is something you can buy with the flash of a credit card, or pick up in a showroom, would mistake it for little more than an elaborate commercial for a high end swingers club, little more than an excuse for a place like this.

We’re in the living room of a large, tastefully decorated private house filled with antique furniture and reproductions of fine art. It’s somewhere in the country. Exactly where, I don’t know, and neither does Anna, because we were driven up in a car service arranged by Bundy and we both dropped off on the way up, rocked to sleep by the sound of the engine, the trail of blinking tail lights ahead of us, and the gentle motion of the car as it swung around the curves of winding country roads once we left the city. And the next thing I knew, Anna was touching my shoulder and shaking me gently, saying, ‘Catherine… Catherine… wake up. We’re here.’

Now we’re inside, I realize I have no idea where we are and there’s no way of knowing, because it’s dark outside and all the windows are shuttered. It feels like we’re on the set of a movie. All of reality is focused and contained within this house.

There are large tables stacked with so much luxury food it looks like a Roman banquet. Magnums of Veuve Cliquot in ice buckets. Silver rolltop servers overflowing with Beluga caviar. Huge platters of seafood – oysters, mussels and prawns – planted in ice like flowerbeds. Terrines of foie gras. And these people are so blasé about their wealth that no one seems to be eating it. Stoic-looking butlers in tuxedos and black eye masks pass in and out of the assembled guests serving champagne.

It’s as if somebody has unlocked a door for me that’s always been closed, a door to a place I never knew existed and invited me to come inside with them. And why wouldn’t I want to take a look, to experience that? What life is like in the forbidden zone?

Right now, it doesn’t feel like an orgy. It’s all rather genteel and polite. It feels like a bourgeois cocktail party. And I look over at Anna as if to say, really? Is this what we came all the way out here for? Is this the best that Bundy can come up with? And at the same time, I’m kind of impressed because these guys are in another league entirely. And completely out of his. Way out.

Which is why we’re here, me and Anna, and Bundy and his ludicrous body art are not – because he’d only stand out like a sore thumb – but he has provided the girls. And Anna, she moves between all these worlds with grace and ease. Her sexuality gives her an access-all-areas pass and I’m her plus one.

I’d say Dickie’s in his sixties, minimum, possibly older, but he’s at an age where the numbers cease to matter and are even harder to predict. Dickie has a shock of swept-back grey-white hair and a body like a sack of potatoes, lumpy and uneven and weighted toward the bottom. He’s wearing a Zorro mask and a white satin shoulder cape with red piping, the kind priests wear. Other than that, Dickie is, for want of a better term, defrocked. He looks less like a member of the clergy, more like a retiree superhero with nudist tendencies. Captain Concrete.