The Juliette Society

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.

Dickie’s sitting talking to me, expounding on the mechanics of cement with his legs crossed. His cock and balls hang listlessly over his thigh, looking about as bored as I feel.

Freddie’s a lot younger, young enough to be Dickie’s son, and he seems to be wearing the cassock that goes with Dickie’s cape; as if they went halves on the costume rental and flipped a coin to see who got what.

As Dickie talks, I’m overcome by an ineffable sadness, but I’m trying my best to hide it. I’m trying to seem interested and maintain a conversation. But I’ve never called anyone Dickie in my life and I’m not about to start. So I call him Richard instead.

I say, ‘Richard —’

‘Dickie,’ he says, cutting me off for the third or fourth time, ‘call me Dickie.’ And for the third or fourth time, I pretend like I haven’t heard.

‘OK, Richard,’ I say, ‘so give it to me again, what are the advantages of using high slump and shrinkage-reduced concrete?’

I’m taking in just enough lingo to be able to fake it, throwing something back to make him think I’m listening.

Now I’ve shown a smidgen of interest, and it almost kind of sounds like I know what I’m talking about, Dickie takes it as a go-ahead to really let rip. I zone out.

On the wall behind Dickie there are a series of framed reproductions of scratchy, primitive drawings of men and women fucking in various configurations. I recognize them immediately as the drawings from a book Brigitte Bardot is flicking through in Godard’s Contempt, the book that the vulgar American producer has given her screenwriter husband in order to help him sex up a script by German director Fritz Lang that’s all arty Greek myth with zero box office potential. He’s given Bardot’s screenwriter husband a book of Ancient Roman pornographic art to jerk off to in the hope that it will bleed into his writing and give this producer enough bang for his buck to put asses on seats. And the pictures, that are in that book and on these walls, were created for a specific purpose, as a kind of instructional sex manual and erotic stimulant for the patrons of a brothel in Pompeii, which was where they were found. And I’m guessing they’re here for the same purpose too.

Dickie’s talking and the only words I register are ‘discharge’, ‘vibrators’ and ‘staining’. I lose track of whether he’s still talking cement or just talking dirty to me, but I figure that if ready-mix concrete gets Dickie hard, he’s probably a man who’s easily pleased. I’m just not the right person to do his pleasing.

Staining, I say.

‘Yeah, doll, staining,’ he says. ‘From impurities. In the water.’

Oh, I say. And zone straight out again. I look around the room at all the other naked men and women, of all ages shapes and sizes, and I wonder what industries they work in.

Plastics. Biotech. Small arms. Petroleum. Pharmaceuticals. Logistics. Futures commodities.

Because all those nameless faceless bureaucrats who head corporations you’ve never even heard of but whose influence and decision-making extends invisibly into every corner of your daily life – from the pills you take before breakfast, to the gas you put in your car and the memory foam pillow you rest your head on at night – those people have sex lives too. They have to fuck. And I imagine this is where they do it. Right here. At a high end sex party like this, designed to protect their dignity, if not their modesty. Wearing masks so they can be as anonymous in their private lives as they are in their public ones.

I feel a sudden urge to pee, and realize it’s the perfect excuse for us to ditch Dickie and Freddie.

I say, ‘If you’ll please excuse us, gentlemen. We need to go to the ladies’ room.’

We walk away as fast as our heels will carry us, to an upstairs bathroom.

We’re standing side by side at the bathroom mirror, touching up our make-up and I say to Anna, I thought that scene with Marquis de Sade was bad. ‘What is this place?’

‘They call it the Juliette Society,’ she says.

‘What the hell is that?’ I say.

‘I don’t know much more,’ she says. ‘That’s just what they call it. Let’s put it like this, the Fuck Factory is for regular people. These people aren’t regular people.’

I can see that, I say. ‘How on earth did Bundy get access to this place?’

‘Oh, you know,’ she giggles, ‘Bundy’s full of surprises. He moves in mysterious ways.’

‘How do you mean?’ I ask, intrigued.

‘Well,’ she says. ‘He may look low rent but he comes from money. He’s got a thing for rich girls who are like him and will do anything for him. The kind of girls that have six-figure trust funds but work as strippers. He’s even got a website for them.’

‘Let me guess,’ I say, ‘Filthy Rich Bitches?’

‘How did you know?’ Anna says, sounding genuinely surprised.

‘Just an educated hunch.’

I’m reapplying my lipstick and Anna’s dusting her cheeks with blush. She’s checking her face in the mirror to make sure it’s evenly applied and, as she does so, she says, ‘You know, older guys really know how to please a woman.’

Just when I think I’ve heard it all from Anna, she’ll drop another pearl of wisdom, another gem that turns my head. She never ceases to amaze me. And she says it as if it’s the most casual thing in the world.

‘How so?’

‘Because they’re as horny as eighteen-year-olds but their bodies just can’t keep up.’

I burst out laughing.

‘I’m serious,’ she says. ‘They go at it like maniacs until they’re winded, then they have to stop to recover and build up their stamina. Then it starts all over again. That way they can keep going all night.’

‘But aren’t young guys like that too – what’s the difference?’

And as I say it, I feel like I’m back in that room with Dickie.

‘Young guys always have something to prove,’ she says, twisting her lipstick open. ‘And, as a general rule, the ones who are really good-looking are so vain they have zero imagination in the sack.’

‘Yeah, I know exactly what you mean,’ I say, recalling my All-Star football player ex.

‘They usually want to fuck in front of mirror so they can check themselves out from every angle,’ she continues, ‘as if they’re directing their own personal porn movie. They’re fucking themselves and you’re just part of the set design. But old guys are more concerned with making sure you feel good. And they always want to try something new, because they’ve done it all before and know every trick in the book.

‘And another thing,’ she says, while adjusting her mask. ‘A hard cock never shows its age. It really doesn’t matter how old it is, as long as it’s still fully functional. And these guys, you barely have to touch them. They pop a Viagra and they get hard in a flash.’

She clicks her fingers.

I don’t know how long we were in the bathroom, but when we come out it’s not the same party. Not at all. The energy in the place has changed. It’s as if while we were away, someone rang a bell, like the one that signals the opening of the markets at the stock exchange and, a split second later, the trading floor becomes a frenzy of activity, an orgy of keystrokes.

No one’s talking now. Everyone’s fucking. Partnered off in twos or three and fours, or maybe going solo, just getting off on watching.

We’re standing at the top of the stairs and I’m taking this all in and, I have to say, it’s pretty overwhelming and I realize that this time there’s nowhere to hide, nowhere to run. It’s time to put up or shut up. I need to take a minute to gather myself, to take a breath and dive in.

‘Go down,’ I tell Anna, ‘I’ll join you in a minute. I just want to watch up here for a little bit.’

‘OK,’ she says, and bounds down the stairs like a lamb galloping in a field, eager to join the fray.

I’m leaning over the banister, looking down the well at people fucking in the main room, and I catch this guy across the way staring at me. And I really don’t know what it is with me and strange men at the moment. I must be giving off some kind of smell.

Something draws me to the mask he’s wearing, so much more elaborate than the others I’ve seen here. And then it hits me. He’s the man from my dream, the Renaissance man in the harlequin mask who unlocks me.

I figure all this out in the split-second from when I first see him to the moment he starts moving towards me. My heart starts pounding. I’m paralyzed with anticipation and he’s honing in on me like a predator drone. Time slows down. It feels like I’m watching him move towards me in slow motion. I’m taking him all in, lost in the details.

He carries himself with a swagger, so cocksure and certain of his appeal. His skin is tanned and leathery but his body is taut and muscular and toned. He looks like he takes care of himself, like he works out. His physique is speaking to me and it tells me that this man knows his power and how to use it. And he looks good for his age, whatever that is, but I’m guessing he must be in his forties, at least.

Now he’s so close I can smell him. He smells rich. By the time he’s in front of me, I’m hooked. There’s something about him, but I just can’t put my finger on it. Then it hits me. Something about him reminds me of Jack.

Not Jack now. Jack later. Jack sometime in the future.

I always told myself that I wanted to grow old with Jack. Sometimes I liked to imagine what we’d be like when we’re in our fifties or sixties, when we’d lived half a lifetime in each other’s company. I wondered how we’d look with all that living under our belt, how we’d relate to each other, how we’d fuck.

And this guy, I’ve decided right then and there, that he represents my fantasy of how Jack might turn out when we’re older, what he’ll look like, how he’ll carry himself.

And I know how that sounds. It sounds like an excuse, and in a way it is. It’s an excuse that my brain has come up with to explain the way my body is feeling. Because I feel an immense attraction to this man, whose identity I don’t know and never will. A man who’s a blank canvas to me, on whom I can project whatever fantasy I want. And live it and experience it. For real.

He offers me his hand. I take it without hesitation or reserve. When he leads me back downstairs into the main room, it feels like we’re like two dizzy young lovers out on the boardwalk for a Sunday afternoon stroll.

As we walk in, I see Dickie and Freddie, already double-teaming on Anna, and I can’t say I’m surprised. She’s on her hands and knees on this worn antique leather couch. Freddie is at her rear. And Dickie has his dick in Anna’s mouth and one leg up on the couch. He has his hands placed on his lower back, just above his hips, the way you sometimes see guys posed in porn when they’re getting a blow job. As if he’s got lumbago.

And, surprise, surprise, Dickie’s got his socks on. But they’re expensive-looking socks. Argyle dress socks. By Ralph Lauren.

Freddie’s clearly not so particular. He’s buck naked. I’ve got to give it to her, Anna’s really going for it. She’s showing those two fellows a real good time. Dickie has a grin on his face a mile wide, as you would if you had a cute young chick as filthy and willing as Anna slapping her cheeks with your penis, the way Anna’s doing, and slut-talking him at the same time.

‘You’re a dirty old man,’ she says to Dickie. ‘A dirty, dirty, dirty old man. Dickie, Dickie, Dickie. And his filthy old dickie.’

I’m not sure if she’s talking to Dickie or his penis but I’d say they’re both enjoying it equally.

Then she turns around to Freddie and tells him, ‘Oh yeah, daddy, ream with your rod. Do it, daddy Freddie, just the way I like it. Oh, fuck, yeah.’

My masked man leads me all the way to the end of the room, as if he’s parading me in front of everybody, showing me off. He motions me to sit in this oversized antique easy chair with red suede upholstery. I sit down with my legs closed together and my hands on my lap, as prim and proper as a Catholic schoolgirl. He looks at me, smiles, and taps the arm of the chair. And he doesn’t have to say anything, I already know what he wants, what he expects.

I swing my legs up over each arm of the chair and slide my butt forward to the edge of the seat. He kneels down in front of me, takes my left foot in his hands and starts kneading the sole with his thumbs, walking them up and down the way a cat tests a comfy chair before it settles down. When he reaches the top, he brushes his thumb along the base of the toes, then sweeps his finger up the length of each toe, separates them, and explores the space between.

I close my eyes so I can shut out the world and concentrate on each caress and touch and, before I know it, he’s kissing the sole of my foot, sucking on each toe, circling around and between them with his tongue. And it’s heavenly.

I feel him running his fingers up the inside of my legs, tracing around the crotch and brushing against my pussy, then parting the lips with his finger and thumb. My pussy is already damp and wet and sticky. I feel him lapping at my pussy with long, steady, insistent strokes of his tongue, the way a cat cleans its fur. His mask is pressed up hard against my clit and the nose rubs back and forth against it, as he works his mouth around my crotch, licking, flicking and sucking. I feel his tongue probing around my hole. He plunges inside and it feels so good that I let out a moan and slide my hips forward so I can spear myself on his tongue. But as soon as I do, he withdraws, teasing me.

He puts his hands on my legs, clasps them together and lifts them up so my feet are over my head, and pussy is sticking out, wet and plump and in full view. I wrap my arms around my legs to hold them in place while he puts one hand on my thigh and gives my pussy a quick little slap with the other. I give out a little yelp, and I don’t know whether it’s in response to the sting or the sound, but it gives him an incentive to do it again. He slaps my pussy again and I can feel my clit throb as his hand withdraws.

Then his mouth is back on me again but this time it’s fixed firmly around my clitoris, and I can feel him drawing me into his mouth, sucking hard then flicking the head with his tongue, sweeping it across the hood, blowing on it, sucking on it again, licking it. And every time he’s gone through a cycle of sucking, blowing, biting and licking, he switches it up so I don’t know what’s coming next. And it feels so good that I let out a series of little syncopated pants and moans.

While he’s doing this, his fingers find my hole, which is so wet that I can already feel a trail of juice dripping down to my asshole. And he doesn’t waste any time, he slides his fingers right inside, probing around the soft fleshy mound behind my clitoris. He’s sucking on my clit and pumping his fingers back and forth into my pussy and I can feel myself about to come and I couldn’t stop even if I wanted to. I can feel the nerve endings tingle, sending shocks of electricity rushing all over my body. It surges through me. I buck against his mouth and feel his teeth, his tongue, his lips all pressing against my clit.

Then I feel him slide a thumb slick with saliva into my ass, thinking he’s got me so distracted that I won’t notice, and it brings me back down to earth with a bump. I look him in the eye and very firmly tell him, no. If I could read his face, I’d probably see disappointment, but he consents, and I don’t really care if he thinks I’m a prude. It’s not about that. I’m no anal virgin. It’s just that I want to keep something for myself. I want to keep something for Jack. And this isn’t like the Fuck Factory. It’s not a free-for-all that’s every man or woman for himself. Here I’m in control and in my comfort zone and I can take it as far as I want.

We switch. He sits in the seat and I climb up onto the arms, crouch down and slowly lower myself onto his cock. And my pussy’s so wet it slides right in, right to the hilt, and now it’s my turn to make him moan. I raise myself up off him again. Trails of thick, creamy white pussy juice slide down his cock and pool in his pubic hair. I spit in my hand and pump it along the shaft, sheathing with saliva and juice, and keep pumping it until I hear this low, insistent moan that lets me know I’m doing the right thing.

I slowly lower myself on his cock again, lean forward so my hands are resting on the arms and my ass is slightly tilted up at an angle, pulling his cock up with it. I alternate between slowly swiveling my hips and drawing back and forth and I can hear that low ghostly moan start up again. I’m sliding back and forth on his cock and his hands reach around to cup my breasts, his finger and thumb reach up to grab my nipples and hold them firmly in place.

Now he’s got me loose and wet and willing, he’s got another trick up his sleeve: he wants to share me with others. And I don’t know how they know, or if he gave them some kind of signal, but I’m suddenly aware that I’m surrounded. And I’m not afraid.

There’s a wall of male flesh separating me from the rest of the room, as if I’m cocooned. And I feel safe.

When some peel away, others take their place immediately. And I want that. The more, the better.

I lose track of how many masked faces and anonymous cocks approach, heads bowing as they move forward, begging for attention. I grab for everything in my reach with everything that I’ve got and once I’ve got a taste I realize I’m still hungry for more. The more I get, the hungrier I am and it doesn’t stop until I want it to. And I don’t.

The sex just keeps getting better and better and better. The orgasms get more and more intense and just when I think I’ve reached the peak, another one comes along that takes me even higher and I don’t want it to stop, because the pleasure is so intense.

It feels like my body is being jolted with electricity. Not just every time I come. Every time I’m touched. Like I’m being hit with a taser, over and over and over. I experience pleasure so intense it feels like pain. Dopamine floods my brain, adrenaline courses through my body and I lose track of time.

It feels like I’m fucking non-stop for twenty-four hours. And I figure if I want to I could probably keep going for another twenty-four. My body would keep going as long as my brain was stimulated. And here’s the thing: the mind never really gets tired from physical activity, it just gets distracted and bored. That’s when fatigue sets in. But if you can keep your mind focused there’s no telling how far you can go.

I go further than I ever thought I would and if I could see myself there, in that room, surrounded by all those men, I don’t know that I would recognize myself. I’d probably recognize Anna.

When I get home, I’m sore all over, my muscles are aching like I’ve hiked over a mountain and I’ve had to use every part of my body just to reach the summit. I feel invigorated, but exhausted and all I want to do is take a long hot soak.

While the bath is running, I take a look at myself in the bedroom mirror. And I’m glad Jack’s not here, so he doesn’t get a chance to see where my body is reddened from being slapped and pawed and pinched. At the same time, I’m still in a state of excitation and so fucking horny. If Jack was here, I would have his cock in my mouth in a second. I’d jump his bones and make him punish me with his cock even more.

I light a jasmine-scented candle, put some tea lights around the bath, pour in a few drops of lavender oil, and ease myself down into the water, inch by inch, until I’m all the way in and I can feel the heat start to relax my muscles, the steam seeping into the pores of my face and body, and I start to sweat it all out.

I sleep better than I’ve slept for a long time. I sleep like a baby. And when I wake, my body still aches but my mind is clear and focused. I’m getting ready to go out and run some errands and I write Jack a note, because he’s coming back today and I want everything to be perfect, in the hope that he’ll think again and we can figure something out. I write a note that tells him how much I love him. And I really mean it. I mean it more than I ever have. I want him more than I ever have.

Just before I’m about to head out the door, I rummage through my purse to check my keys are in there. Instead of my keys, I find a roll of notes. Hundred dollar bills. And I can’t for the life of me work out how they got there or when. I pick them up and just stare at them. In shock. I’m paralyzed by a jolt of realization, as if someone’s just knocked me on my ass and I’ve come to, struggling to work out what just happened.

I should have listened to Anna. ‘Bundy’s full of surprises,’ she said and I thought it was just another one of those silly things she says. Now I get it. He turned me into the very thing I never wanted to become. I got sucked into Bundy’s screwed-up reverse Pygmalion fantasy, where every female is perfection waiting to be turned into a whore. Bundy remade me as Séverine. Belle de Jour. The dish of the day. One of Bundy’s bitches.

I feel dirty and used. My stomach feels empty and I can feel nausea welling up inside me. I feel so sick that I want to throw up. The nausea gives way to anger. And all I can hear is this voice in my head, raging.

How could you be so stupid?

I’m shouting at myself in my head because Bundy turned me out and I didn’t even see it coming. I told myself I was in control, that I was smarter than that.

And I wasn’t.