Authors: M. Jarrett Wilson
The partygoers wore a wide array of
costume. Some women wore gowns while others wore barely anything at all.
Likewise, some of the men were fully dressed in tuxedos while others simply
wore codpieces or capes. It surprised X for a moment that people were not
wearing garb typical to raves, attire that was wild and almost clownish, and
then she reminded herself that this was supposed to be a ball.
One thing everyone had in common was
that each person wore a mask, though they varied in their size, shape, and
theme. There were Venetian masks of every type:
long-nosed ones, full face masculine and feminine ones, jesters, and
simple eye masks which bore feathers that extended above in large, floating
auroras. Other masks were more ominous: devils, demons, pigs, bulldogs, and
leather executioner hoods. One woman wore a simple black nylon mask which bore
holes only for her eyes and mouth.
High-heeled women wearing the same
kind of black thongs and rhinestone masks as the woman in the entranceway
floated through the crowd carrying trays covered with drinks or hors d’oeuvres.
Most of the women X saw were more than just
attractive; even with their masks, they could be classified as beautiful—it
shone through their disguise.
X began to wonder about the identities
of those hidden by the masks. The women outnumbered the men. For all X knew,
some of the women were prostitutes or porn stars, and some if not all of the
men, like Compton, were the elite upper crust of society, famous and
recognizable behind their ornate disguises.
Compton
let her know that he needed to use the restroom,
and X felt that she better do so as well. The drinks they had enjoyed in the
limo were starting to catch up with them.
X asked
Compton
if he knew where the bathrooms were, and he
replied that he did, that they were upstairs.
Compton
followed X back through the salon, the leash
which she held draped gently over her shoulder, and once they had reached the
staircase, they made their way up its wide curving steps, each of them holding
onto the wrought iron banister which ran up its side.
Once at the upstairs hallway, X and
Compton continued past several bedrooms. Sounds of lovemaking escaped into the
hallway, the moans, gasps, and cries mixing with the rattle of bedsprings or
the banging of headboards hitting the wall.
They approached a bedroom, its door
still ajar. Inside, at least a dozen people squirmed and writhed over one
another, some on the bed and others on the floor. A woman at the center of the
plush rug was being penetrated in every orifice, the warm fuck of other men
still on her face, breasts, belly and back.
The door had been left open as if to
say, go ahead, come on in, you’re invited. X considered telling
Compton
to go into the room and stand in the corner, to
stand there and watch the scene, observe the lesbians licking one another,
observe the men ejaculating their loads. Just watch. He would be unable to
participate because of his chastity belt, unable to join in because he had been
told by him dominatrix to do nothing other than observe.
Instead, she kept him with her and
they continued a little farther until they reached the bathroom door. An
intoxicated man wearing a cape stood in front of them. A large sign on the door
said in French, English, and Italian,
No
Sex in the Bathrooms.
X allowed
Compton
to go first. The chastity belt that he wore had
holes at the end that would allow urine to pass through, so there was no need
to unlock the contraption. X took her turn and then told
Compton
that she wanted to see the basement where the DJ
and dance floor was.
Down the steps they went, past the
entranceway and then through the dining room (where X picked a couple of pieces
of cheese off a tray and popped them into her mouth) then down another set of
stairs that led to the basement. The room was dark and smoky and pulsing, the
bass of the music throbbing through them as they entered the large room, the
sound pushing each beat into their marrow as they moved closer to the giant
speakers that throbbed as multi-colored lights pulsed, seemingly in synch to
the music. The DJ spun his tunes, his arms fast and wide as a puppeteer.
There were signs on each wall that
said
No Sex on the Dance Floor
, and
as X scanned the mass of gyrating bodies, it seemed that the revelers were
obeying that rule while pushing it to the boundary of its definition. A few
large bouncers wearing partial executioner’s hoods stood near the periphery of
the large room, one big man leaning against the stone wall, the others with
their thick arms crossed in front of them, the men on the lookout for fights or
for people not abiding by the rules.
At either side of the DJ were cages
which contained topless dancing women wearing those same rhinestone masks. X’s
whole body hummed, vibrating with the frenzy, the motion of the dancers, the
penetrating shafts of light, the primal pulse of the digitized beats.
X looked at the crowd, hypnotized. The
people blended into one another, the mass of them coagulating and congealing,
dissolving, evaporating, and then re-crystallizing in a phantasmagoria. The
dance was exorcising demons and inviting deities. There was a wild, feral
energy in the air, an atmosphere of intoxicated abandon. It was infectious and
permeating. The mass of the group was greater than each separate individual;
together, their density increased.
A dancer came over to them and blew
some glitter onto X’s body, the golden powder flying off the woman’s palm and
onto X’s face, chest, belly, shoulders and dress, specks of glitter which
caught the
strobing
light and reflected it in a
thousand stars, a cosmos, a universe, making it appear not so much that she had
been touched by Midas, but grazed.
Compton
was with her, still attached to his leash. A
feeling was beginning to come over her, something foreign and in addition to
the sensation that follows the consumption of alcohol. It was more peaceful,
loving almost. Warm.
“Come over here with me,” she said,
although she didn’t need to command him so, he being on a leash and willing to
follow her wherever. But he obeyed and went over with her to the wall. It
seemed to him that she was seeking out its shadows.
Compton
wondered what she would do. He waited eagerly in
anticipation of her next action.
X looked at
Compton
and he looked at her. The whites of her eyes,
usually so clear, had reddened and her pupils had dilated.
She thought of
Compton
and his silly origami. As X looked at the man
now, she felt that he, like the paper, might be creased and bent in whatever
way she wished, into whatever she wished. Likewise, she felt as if something
within her was unfolding, opening like a flower does in the morning after the
sun has warmed it. Each part of her being was a room that she could enter and
explore without fear. She wasn’t afraid of
Compton
, hadn’t been for some time now. She didn’t love
him either, or maybe she did. What was love anyway but a bunch of chemicals
streaming through the brain? Whatever it was that she felt for him, they were
connected by more than the leash.
“I’ve been drugged,” X said.
Compton
knew that the piece of candy that she had eaten
contained a drug, and he had thought for a moment (just a moment) as he had
watched her take the candy from the tray that perhaps he should inform her of
the nature of the confection. It was the same tray every year, the same marking
on the hands of those who had ingested the drug. Instead, he had allowed her to
eat the candy, knowing fully that she was quite likely unaware that it was more
than just a simple piece of chocolate.
“It was the chocolate on the tray,” he
said. “It’s Ecstasy. I thought you knew.”
Ecstasy. She had never tried the drug
before.
It wasn’t that X was unfamiliar with
drugs. She had tried her fair share of them, but had left behind everything
except marijuana shortly after leaving college. Even that, she used
intermittently at most. The drug that now affected her neurotransmitters was
something that she had not previously tried simply because her cohort of
friends had been just enough older than the age group with whom the substance
became wildly popular that she had been excluded from its usage. The popularity
of drugs came in and out of fashion; only addicts chased every popular
substance.
X leaned into
Compton
and whispered in his ear.
“You are a terrible liar.”
Compton
did not try to defend himself, he only reached
his hand up and caressed X’s bare ribcage, moving his touch down to the indent
of her waist. She, too, wrapped her arm around
Compton
’s torso and pressed her body into his. She wanted
to touch him and have him touch her.
Against her lower belly, she could
feel the hard plastic of the chastity belt that
Compton
wore. His penis, erect, filled the sheath
entirely. Most other men would have been painfully constrained and their
erection would have retreated from the discomfort.
Compton
, however, enjoyed the pressure. He thrived on
pressure.
X put her hand up to the stubble on
his jaw and ran her fingertips over it.
“I know who you are under your mask,”
she said, “and I forgive you.”
What was she forgiving him for,
Compton
wasn’t sure,
perhaps
the
fact that he had allowed her to take the drug without warning her, or was she
forgiving him for the person he was? He didn’t know.
Maybe
both.
Compton
, his mouth close to X’s ear, began to lick her
earlobe. He pulled the flesh of it gently between his teeth, the sound of his
deepening respiration moving through X’s ear canal and journeying down her
spine before spreading out to her arms and making her fingers tingle.
X pulled away from him slightly and
looked into his eyes, their orbs framed by his mask. Maybe he was everything
she wanted wrapped up in one body. He was successful, intelligent, handsome,
submissive. Maybe she was meant to love someone whom she did not want to love.
Maybe there was a lesson in it.
She reflected on her feelings: it was
the drug. No wonder people got addicted to drugs. They got addicted to the
feeling the drug induced.
X began to feel a connection to each
person in the room, to the mass of them. Lights bounced off them and through
them. They were all in this together, sharing this moment, breathing the same
air. She moved towards them, the music overtaking her, leaving
Compton
there at the wall, watching. X danced, her body
rubbing against man and woman, a storm of euphoria overtaking her.
15.
Thirst. By the time it arrives, the cells
are already depleted. Lips crack like the desert, eyes redden, the mouth turns
to cotton, and the body screams to the brain, get your ass in motion, what do
you think makes up most of the weight in that sack of shit you’re toting around
anyway.
The movement of the crowd had gradually shifted her into its center, and
when X looked for
Compton
at the wall where she had left him, he was
nowhere to be found.
X left the room, making her way up the
narrow stairs and into the grand salon where the bar was. As she waited at it,
watching the bare-chested man mixing drinks behind it, she remembered the
bartender she had fucked back in
California
. Michael. That was his name, Michael, like the
archangel. She wanted to see him again. He was an ocean away.
X got a drink, some pineapple juice
with a shot of vodka, then went into the dining room where trays of food had
been set out, much of it gone by now. She picked up a mini-cucumber sandwich
and took a bite. The dancing had made her stomach rumble.
And then, from the periphery of her
vision, she saw Simeon across the entranceway in the grand salon. X was unsure
if she would be able to recognize him at this masquerade or if he would even
show up at all.
But there he was. She
could tell that it was him by his height, his hair, but especially from the way
he stood, all pompous and self-absorbed.
X didn’t want him to recognize her,
didn’t want to interact with him while the drug was still in her system.
Something deep within her wanted to continue to despise him, and she didn’t
want its crust to be broken, the protective layer of her abhorrence, so she
fled.
X slipped out of the dining room and
went up the curved stairway, running almost, her feet sore by now from all the
dancing. Fucking heels, good for nothing shoes. Behind her, Simeon followed,
skipping every other step and catching up to her at the top.
“Stop!
Wait a minute.”