Club Himeros (5 page)

“It’s still early,” Ms. Olive said.  “People don’t usually fill out the upper floors until later, so this is a good place to camp out if you’re fighting a case of the jeebees.”

“I am, I think,” Lindy said.  “I don’t really understand what I’m doing here.  And… where’s your shirt?”

“
You
should definitely consider going without next time, Ms. Burgundy. And I don’t know what you’re doing here either, but I don’t know what
I’m
doing here.  Just be happy you are.”

“I don’t know about that.”  Lindy was feeling a lot of things, but
happy
and
grateful
weren’t on the list.  “What
is
all this?  That Mr. White told me… a lot less than I realized until after he disappeared.”

“Yeah, so it’s a secret club.”

“Yes I… I got that much.”

“A secret
invitation-only
club, and I guarantee whoever runs it—and nobody knows who runs it so don’t even ask—did all sorts of background on you before deciding you’d fit in here.  I mean, think of how cool you have to be just to get in the door, right?”

“Somebody decided to invite me to an orgy. I’m not positive that’s a compliment.”

“It’s not an orgy.  I know, I know, you saw some things, probably right when you came in.  Those are the exhibitionists.”

“That’s a funny thing for a topless girl to say, I have to be honest.”

She laughed.  “First time I came here, Burgundy, I spent the whole night talking to people on one side of the room while watching people on the other side of the room having one
hell
of a good time.  And I kept wondering, hey, why aren’t I doing any of that?  I have a mask on, it’s not like anybody even knows me, so why not join in?”

“What if I don’t want to?”

“Then don’t.  I’ve met folks who’ve been coming to this club for a long time, who swear they’ve never done more than talk, and watch.  The point isn’t to fuck some stranger, it’s to enjoy other people in a way we don’t get a chance to all that often.  If that’s sexual, super, but it doesn’t have to be.”

“Of course it has to be.  Look how we’re all dressed.”

“A
little
sexual, then.  But nobody told you to pick out that dress and those heels, hon. Ooh, this looks interesting.”

On a couch nearby, a man and a woman had just sat down.  The woman was naked except for the G-string, and Lindy realized it was the pair she’d just seen downstairs, Mr. Orange and Ms. Kinda-Lime Green. 

The man was telling the woman something inaudible to Lindy, but with a sort of jerking on the chain that indicated whatever it was had the weight of a command.  In response, Ms. Lime Green got off the couch and onto her knees in front of him.

“Tell me about the chains,” Lindy said, as Orange pet the woman on the head. 

The lighting being what it was, there were difficulties in identifying the exact mechanics of what they were watching at this point, but it seemed like the naked woman on her knees was now pleasuring herself with her fingers.

Olive was playing with her own nipples while this was happening, a kind of long-distance act of participation. 

“They’re a signal,” she explained.  “If you wanna be a sub, you put a chain on.  If you wanna be a dom, you look for someone wearing one and ask for permission to dominate them.”

“Seriously?”

The woman’s wrist curled up between her legs—at least two fingers now—and she was rocking her hips back and forth, touching her own erect nipples, panting.  The man only watched and spoke quietly to her from time to time.  It was hard to understand what he was getting out of it.

“Not
very
seriously.  This is like playtime S&M.  The real stuff is more hardcore and a lot more private, with less actual sex.” Olive turned to Lindy.  “You interested?”

“How do you mean?”

She smiled.  “You know how I mean, Burgundy, don’t play dumb.  Some people are subs, some are doms, some aren’t either.  Which are you?”

“I guess I don’t know.”

The man on the couch leaned forward and cupped the woman’s chin in his hand.  He whispered something in her ear, and she came.  It was an electric burst of trembling energy, her back stiff and chin up, not falling only because his hand was behind her head now, holding her up until it was over.  Then she was leaning forward with her head in his lap as he played with her hair.

What did he say to her?
she wanted to know. 
What words could have done that?

Lindy kept expecting to be appalled by this display, but all she felt was excitement and an irrational need to talk to the couple and figure out what had just passed between them. 

She was
really
turned on.

Olive appeared to have responded similarly, based on her nipples and how interested she was in touching them.  “Watching is a trip, right?  And being watched is a turn-on, and the masks make all of that possible.  You don’t know who I am, and you’re never going to, and that’s why it’s okay for me to be here without a shirt.  And why it’s cool for you to keep looking at them.  You can touch if you want.”

Olive was talking now about her own breasts, and to that end Lindy did sort of want to.  Utterly sober and well past any
exploratory phase
excuses she concocted to explain that night in the dorm with Tina, she wanted to get a hold of Ms. Olive’s breasts.  She wasn’t even sure if it was a sexual impulse or just that they were glorious.

“No, thank you,” she said, somewhat unconvincingly.  “I have a pair of my own.”

Olive smiled.  “So dom or sub?”

“I don’t know.”

“You saw what I saw, who would you rather have been just then, the one following the commands or the one issuing them?”

“I enjoyed watching.”

“Mmm, so did I, that’s not what I asked. Human beings get aroused by other human beings getting aroused, that’s why the porn industry exists.  Like I said, this isn’t an orgy, but it’s a pretty good social experiment, right?  Put a bunch of young, open-minded attractive people in a room together, take away the shame and the guilt, toss out a few hints, like a mandatory G-string or a collar, and if that doesn’t do it, put out a bowl full of condoms.  Look at what happens.”

Lindy was becoming very curious about what Ms. Olive might do for a living when not prancing around topless.

“So,” Olive said, “you want to obey or be obeyed?”

“I don’t think I want either.”

She nodded.  “Like I said, some of us aren’t one or the other.”

“But you’re a sub?” 

Lindy had never spoken to anybody about this sort of thing, so she was already drifting into a strange place, comfort-wise.  Bondage had been normalized enough as a concept to be reflected in the shoes she was wearing, but while she could comprehend easily enough that dom = dominant and sub = submissive, she had never discussed what it really
meant
. 

“Sometimes.  If I don’t meet someone who clicks it’s no big thing.”

“How did this work?  That pair, I mean?  You’re saying they just met?” 

The two were relaxing now.  The girl was off her knees and on the couch like a normal person, and they were talking.  Save for the masks and the lack of clothing on the girl, they might have been in a coffee shop.

“They didn’t come here together, if that’s what you mean.  This isn’t a couples club.  I bet you they met earlier tonight.”

“That was a… surprising degree of intimacy for strangers, wasn’t it?”

“Last time I was here,” Olive said, “I spent a good hour talking to my dom about all sorts of things before we got into anything sexual.  We covered what I wanted and what he wanted, both liked what we heard, and went from there.  But look, this isn’t
just
that kind of club, all right?”

“So you’ve said.”

“No, well no, I mean it’s not just all about sex, and when it
is
about sex it’s not just about the dom-sub action.  You’re not going to see a lot of chains being used.  These are just short-hand for an interest.”

“What did he get out of it?”

“He got to watch, like we did, but she gave him control over her.  That’s what he was in it for.  Did you see him give her permission to come?”

“Yes, but that’s… crazy.”

Olive smiled.  “It’s only crazy if it’s not what you’re into.”

*   *   *

More people were starting to fill out the floor.  The lighting being what it was, their presence was mostly hinted at by shadows moving against the walls, but here and there were glimpses: a fishnet-covered leg, a tattooed shoulder.  Heels clattered on the hardwood from different parts of the room, voices in low conversation with occasional explosions of laughter.

Lindy stayed where she was on the couch, sipping from her water bottle and trying to figure out what to do next.

She was not the type to go out and meet strangers in parties.  It was something she always used to rely upon Michael to take care of, as the more gregarious of the pair.  There were times, when she was being particularly reticent, that he would go out into the crowd, introduce himself to someone he thought she might enjoy talking to and bring them back to her, like a bear catching fish for his mate.

Michael wasn’t there, though, and she was in a place where everyone was supposed to remain strangers even after engaging one another.  It was either the perfect party for her or the exact opposite.  It was hard to tell which.

“So what
are
you into?” Olive asked, after a while.  They had been sitting quietly and watching people.

“I’m still not sure why I’m here,” Lindy said.  It didn’t really answer the question.

Olive got up from her chair and sat down next to Lindy, at an angle, so they could talk comfortably without anyone turning their head.  It put her well inside Lindy’s personal space, which was doubly awkward given how little her new total stranger friend was wearing, but she didn’t say anything about it.  There were a great many things going on around her that far exceeded her comfort level for a range of reasons that were much more extreme than a topless girl on a couch.

“It’s filling up in here,” Olive said.  “I don’t want to have to shout to you over people.”

“Sure, it’s fine.”  Lindy inched over to give Olive—whose knee was touching Lindy’s thigh—more room.

“So what is it?  You have a boyfriend?  Or a girlfriend?”

“I did until recently.”

“Aww, I’m sorry.” 

“I was thinking… it’s crazy, but I thought that was one of the reasons I got an invitation in the first place.  I mean, they couldn’t have really
known
, but this feels like the kind of club you only get in to if you’re unattached.”

“You may be right.  I wasn’t seeing anybody my first time.  I’m engaged now.”

“You’re… does he—or she—know about this?”

“No, of course not.”

“But what happens if you get married?  I mean, when you get married?”

She shrugged.  “I’m assuming I’ll stop getting invitations and they’ll have to find a new Ms. Olive.  It’s a shame, right?  I love coming here.”

“I wonder if they ever run out of colors.”

Olive laughed.  “I think this club might be owned by Crayola.  Oh and it’s a he.  I like girls too, but I’m engaged to a guy.  You?”

“We weren’t engaged.  People acted like we were but…. oh, a guy.  It was a guy.  He’s in the process of moving out.”

The conversation with Vivi came back all at once.  She’d managed to put that away, or at least bury it under the acres of strangeness she’d encountered since being dropped off at the door, but now it was back.

“What happened?” Olive asked.

“I don’t know.  People keep asking me what went wrong, and I don’t even know.  Is that terrible?”

A man and a woman took up a couch in their little circle.  Both were fully clothed, nobody had on any chains, and they looked like they were deep in conversation about something entirely normal.  He was in a black suit, a white shirt and a blue tie that matched the blue of his mask, and she had on a modest tan dress and low heels, with a brown mask.  They might have been at a church function or in the break room of a downtown office but for the masks.  Yet directly over the man’s shoulder she could see the naked sub, now straddling the dom’s lap.

“It had to be
something,
Ms. Burgundy,” Olive said. 

As much as Lindy eyes couldn’t help but find their way to Olive’s revealed breasts, Olive was clearly having the same issue with Lindy’s legs.

“But I don’t know what it was.  It wasn’t a fight.  He just
left
and it turns out I was okay with that.  Honestly?  I think I might be bad at sex.”

Olive laughed loudly enough to draw the attention of the blue-and-brown couple.

“And I can’t believe I said that out loud,” Lindy added.

“C’mon,” Olive said.  “Maybe you two just weren’t compatible.”