The dregs of dinner swim in soupy ponds and unidentifiable cold swells. Thanksgiving, and the wine runs out. A scandal. Remnants of a larger party, we sit listless around the Provençal farmhouse table in Ignatha’s two-bedroom Charlton Street high-rise. Simone’s a latecomer with an aloof air, brashly hiding all of her twenty-one years. A voluptuous, tall blonde with a vintage look—’50’s French bombshell—attired in nouvelle vogue. Simone, unlike all the others present, hates her youth.
All but me. The primitive rover with one eye permanently dilated. The interloper from Joyce’s Catholic and irredeemably Irish male dreamscape violating this feminine, pagan world of goddesses and demigoddesses, amazons and nymphs, mothers and daughters, sisters, cousines, aunties and nieces, and banshees, maybe the Bacchae.
I sit on the muted paisley upholstered wing chair as they regroup on the chocolate leather couch. I watch. Idle conversation. A pause. Then a gesture. Simone reaches out and tousles the hair of Arable, the tall elegant Portuguese; Arable turns to Nadya, supine on the soft leather; she caresses shoulders, arms, bellies, breasts but lingeringly, the better to tease. Throat. Ah, is there a tenderer place on a feminine body than the throat? Ignatha, tiny, doll-like and greedy, strokes them. All over. Simone turns to me with a glare of reproach. I look down and see I have my cell phone in my hand. I’m clicking, praying fervently for extra memory.
Do you want to be in the photo? she asks.
Yes! I sing.
Nadya moves nearly four inches to her right on the couch. My large untoned hips shouldn’t really fit in there. I bolt and wedge myself into the space. Instantly arms surround my neck and shoulders; fingertips caress my nipples like kisses; hands stroke my arm, my thighs. I reach beyond Nadya and stroke her hair. Simone turns to me, feline, moving up to meet my downward stroke. With the other hand, I hold the cell out at an extreme right angle and snap away. Simone, the sexual arsonist, languishes in the center of the puddle. She rises and turns to me.
I have to show you something in the bedroom. Give me five minutes. Then she pulls me into the center of the pile. The others continue, indifferent to substitution. Caressing, fondling, and kissing every exposed inch of skin. She disappears from the living room.
I can’t imagine anything more delicious than what I feel at this moment, in the middle of a harem of beautiful women all intent on the same purpose. But I wait five minutes as instructed and follow her. I rise. The breasts, calves, fingers and mouths recede.
I walk to the hallway off the main room. I see a door in the distance opened slightly, light flooding down and partly illuminating the whetstone floor. I follow it, slowly, my heart in my throat. I put my hand on the door and push it open. I see her, lamplight casting golden hues, reclined on the bed, her back to me, sheets and clothing in disarray and her beautiful big, bare ass slightly quivering, the barest tremor. She groans. I stare, transfixed, transformed, transubstantiated. I kneel at the bedside. I reach out slowly and touch the white skin, dimpling from the chill. She moves and sighs. I run my tongue athwart her hips up to that most aching nerve. I kneel closer. My breasts graze her bottom. I lean down again and lick, taste, kiss, bite the flesh; skin like marble, pink, reddening. She groans, surges toward me, then away. My glossa wanders heedlessly; parts and plunges into the blazing cool depths. That wayward member discovers the pursed mouth of her anus; my nose inhales a scent of peat smoke and humus, ears perceive the sound of fingers gliding in and out of wet. My tongue tickles and licks. Buttcheeks firmly in hand, my tongue probes, intrudes and violates. She is a boiling sea. Dies Irae! she croons softly.
Christian? I ask.
I release one cheek and reach around her hip, down the slope of her belly. I discover her hand moving furiously over her vulva. I cover hers with my own and match her rhythm. Then blind fingers touch along the unknown shore, farther below, to a warm wet cove. I fill it with fingers. With mouth, teeth, tongue, and hands engaged, soon I am Ulysses clinging to a wreck in a tempest. I reach with my free hand to unzip my trousers, reach to my own throbbing flesh.
Suddenly. Trousers roughly yanked to my knees. Hands cup my cheeks. Arms encircle my waist. Stinging bites and drenched kisses, fingers part my own cleft. A strange tongue disrupts! Explores my moist dark spaces. Hands run over my chest, pinch my nipples. Play upon my own guileless thoughts. They lift me over Simone’s naked, prone, form. I am face-to-face with her and she awakes, open eyed, a cry of protest on her lips. The others cover her mouth with kisses. They cajole me to lie on my stomach. They blind me once again. Strong hands, (Nadya?) grab my wrist and attach cuffs. They free me of my trousers. Metal buckles fasten, chains clink, liquid squishes from a bottle. They drag my ankles apart. They attach my legs to the bedposts. There is giggling, moaning, sighing, groans and shrill whimpers. I feel warm thighs on my back, and then something large and stiff, probing, discovering my unopened flower. Strong hands raise my hips easily, fingertips lightly explore. Hands pull my cheeks farther apart, the stiff head fills me. Involuntarily I rear up, but determined hands hold me. Lips cover mine. A tongue explores. Helpless, I am. Thighs slap my cheeks, the six stubby inches of smooth erect silicone feels like liquid fire coursing through me. I expand to take it. I move in tandem. Fingers stroke my own tender nexus. They are unrelenting and a scream escapes me. Then, a cessation. More liquid on my lower back, chill at first then agreeably warming. A fingertip traces my vertebrae to the point of division and edges toward. The finger intrudes, kneads, withdraws. Again. Then a larger object supplants it. It opens, pushes, slips in. I flail like a puritan soldier, bellow like a gored beast. I descend into a primal state of animal pleasure. I swoon with gratitude.
Eyes open. A minute (or hours later) the harem coalesces and radiates. Ig is tying Simone’s wrist with clothesline. Nadya dons a leather ceinture and loudly slaps a paddle into her palm. She eyes Simone’s large bare thighs greedily. Her jagged incisors bare themselves. Arable wields a minicam while pleasuring herself. I stare into the black eye of the lens. I feel my body. A sizable plug still lodges in my anus.
Did someone forget something? I ask.