Decadence (8 page)

The room exploded in laughter like they were in an urban comedy club on blue humor night.

She was a judge. An adjudicator who came here to escape the judgment of others.

The adjudicator blew kisses, told everyone to have a great evening, and she hurried toward Eros. Her shoes caught my eye. They were Louboutins, black and double-strapped high heels. Fur spilled across the front of her shoe and rose to her calves, then exploded into a wonderful part that hung over the upper strap, reminded me of a pair of UGGs. I chuckled and imagined those were made of squirrel fur.

A woman leading a half dozen well-dressed, martini-sipping women came in and announced, “This is my goddamn divorce party. I'm going to have fun and catch up on all the sex I let pass me by.”

The room applauded and glasses were raised as if Rihanna had said cheers, drink to that.

When I finished doing my makeup I barely recognized my face. Dramatic highlights. Dark shadows. High arching eyebrows. Sharp cheekbones. Smoldering eyes. Lips dark like desire. Soft red transitioned to soft orange to soft yellow to soft white. My mask. Caribbean skin painted with the hue of the fire that lived within. My body was heat personified and I had become the fire that lived within.

I found an unoccupied mirror, took in my reflection, modeled, wanted to see what men would desire, what the critical eyes of other women would judge. The red heel and the beaded platforms were stunning. My legs were toned, and the heels made my back arch more, made my bottom provocative, made me taller and more powerful, added to my already existent confidence, made me as beautiful as beautiful could be. In every spot in the room, on every woman, there were lavish shoes. I had to admit. It felt good. Getting dressed, or getting undressed, to defy convention, it made me feel superior.

Bret. I thought about Bret.

I tried to imagine his reaction if he were to see me this way.

Bret and I had run early yesterday morning, had completed a long run on the Silver Comet Trail. Fifteen miles. There was a moment while we were walking, drenched in sweat, that he reached over and grabbed me around the waist. I had lost my breath. It was a Tiffany-diamond moment. But he let me go right away. Then he waved good-bye as he drove away, country music playing, again no time to sit and chat and share a cup of tea or a meal at J. Christopher's. I had wanted him to hug me again, needed that more than I had desired sex. There was something that I felt each time he drove away. It was a burn. An emptiness.

Wearing a lavish,
pink DECADENCE towel that covered me from my areolas to my yoni, I followed a dozen other loquacious fairy-tale queens and Rapunzels as they sashayed toward the sexual promises in Eros. Their walks were runway perfect, showy, meant to draw attention to femininity, but keeping near them made me feel safe. I had no idea what to expect once I entered this arena. I was aware of me. With each step I eased down a hallway filled with grand arches. A swanky red carpet led to the meeting area, where men waited for their dates. We exited the undressing room as if we were stars at a Hollywood premiere. The ceiling was ringed with soft lights as if we were in the mouth of luxury, maybe the Burj Al Arab Hotel. To the right was the mini-cathedral. That was where some came to marry. No wedding was scheduled tonight. Would love to see that type of wedding.

As I stood there and stared at a very handsome man, a woman moved by me, heels clacking on marble, and she walked to him, kissed him, and immediately he put her on her back, took her right there, on the floor. Her legs were apart and he held the heels of her shoes like they were handlebars. He rode. People casually went to watch.

Maybe my past saw me then, saw me as my heat distracted me.

I felt self-conscious. I felt aroused. I hurried away.

Dozens of lingams were on display. Short and thick, long and thin, like branches from oak and sequoia trees, that twenty-first digit of a man with more complexions than Baskin-Robbins had flavors, and each was unique, had its own texture, its own taste, its own aroma. They were nourishment for both the starved and the curious. The uniqueness in the shape of each fascinated me. Some curved to the right, some to the left, some hung straight, some were circumcised, some still had nature's hood. My spirit was as mesmerized with the boldness and nakedness and sex of others. Some were like collops, folds of flesh on the body, some with big outer lips, some with no lips at all, just a vertical slit that marked the gateway to a man's paradise. Most had been given Brazilian waxes, no triangles of pubic hair for the public to see and none at the opening of their chocolate stars.

There were dozens of oversize red leather sofas, each large enough to house a ménage à trois. Couples and trios flirted, made out. There were armless chairs and two women straddled their men as they gave each other soft kisses and chatted, shared laughter as they engaged in foreplay or fornicated like they were high on opium or wine. There were benches at the right height for women to be taken doggie style, or for a man to lie on his back while she rode him. And that was what women were doing. Watchers enjoyed the view from bistro tables and barstools. Mirrors lined the corridor.

As I strolled, men introduced themselves, or girlfriends or wives came over to make my acquaintance before they presented their boyfriends or husbands, all game for play. They asked to please me, asked to be able to learn me, know my body and all of its senses, relish in my flavors, made offers casually, their lust and desire held on chains, as if I were inside of their home and they were simply offering me a glass of ice water to quench my thirst. I was the new girl. The unconquered one. In their eyes I was the vestal virgin in the building. And that, in and of itself, made me an aphrodisiac in high heels. All offers were enticing, stirred the curiosity in me, but all were denied; I kept moving, had to keep moving, had to keep my lust on its chain as I enhanced my walk, sashayed through light and shadows, through the echoes of love and the heartbeat of lust. The club was spotless, smelled clean, smelled more of laughter and fun than of the aromas I had imagined would be endemic to places where people engaged in group sex. It smelled like Pier 1, so many wonderful and competing fragrances under dim lights.

I paused in front of a gigantic fishbowl filled with condoms. They had the Ramses brand, a condom named after the great pharaoh Ramses II, who fathered close to two hundred children, a man who obviously only sexed bareback. An assortment of pills to help with erectile issues was on display as well. Men chatted amongst themselves as they reached by me, as they took pills like they were jelly beans. Some popped more than one. Pills that might cause blindness, heart attacks, and death were being taken to maintain a man's ego.

More lingams had stolen my attention, as a good lingam should, but not until I moved my eyes did I notice that most of the men wore expensive watches. Tissot. Maurice Lacroix. U-Boat. Bell & Ross.

As random acts of love and lust took place feet away from where they stood, men and women chatted amongst themselves as if they were in suits and ties and standing in the hallway of a Fortune 500 company. With each step, as I drew closer, I stepped into a seductive den of foreigners. Without warning I felt a wariness, felt like I was an outsider. Sweat sprouted in the palms of my hands. I rubbed my hands on the towel that I wore, first aware of masculine eyes, then of semierect parts that defined them as man.

Across from that area was a library. A library filled with decades of erotica. I was a book whore. The nerd inside of me wanted to rise up and lead me to books, but my yoni pulled me away. Outside of the library there were glass aquariums shaped like the bodies of men and women, goldfish swimming inside.

I didn't know that his sea-green eyes had seen me then. Had no idea that my past was in my moment. Hormones guided me. I was too busy enjoying my heated gait and the powerful way my heels made me feel, too busy being a tower of sensuality and supremacy as I regarded all the colors, all of the designs of stilettos, all of the wonderful jewelry many women wore, and the nudity of aroused men before me.

My sexual aggravation overflowed. I watched a woman suck lingam. She had three very yummy lovers. She went from one to the next, smiling, this her game, this her fun. She focused on one. There was so much joy in her face, in her body language, in the way she fed her need. Soft gentle sucking, soft suction, and then suckling, suckling, suckling, moistening him with her saliva, stroking, suckling, taking the head, sucking, licking the length, sucking his balls as she masturbated him. I watched one of her lovers have an orgasm. It seemed so natural. I watched the one she fellated passionately come, watched her suck him in a beautiful manner, her oral massage rhythmic and done with ease, with a smoothness I'd never witnessed, as if she were in the bathtub, drinking wine as she listened to arousing music. She sucked him until he became hypersensitive. She looked up at him and smiled, and then she took him inside of her mouth again, now toying with his sensitivity. As he reeled from his orgasm, he found his balance, thanked her, kissed her, tongued her for a moment. Then when he stepped away, without hesitation or reservation she took the next lover, the one she had been masturbating, eased inside of her mouth. She licked him slowly. Brushed his lingam against her lips. Rubbed her nose against the tip. Licked each side in circles. He looked so high, as if she were taking his mind, body, and soul to a new place. A few women casually masturbated their men. Some were in conversation with others as they chatted and took to their knees and gave their men blow jobs, did that as if it were no big deal. More than a dozen began fucking in just as many positions. It was like being at a party and when music played, after one couple started to dance and broke the ice, the group joined in. Soon my hands rose, touched the towel over my nipples. I wanted to touch myself, see if I was wet, see how embarrassingly wet I had become. Then I returned to blinking, to breathing, returned to walking. I eased through the crowd and moved on, my legs wobbly, my clit swollen. Men smiled at me. A few women did the same. They knew I was aroused. Each smile was an invitation.

My heels click-clacked until I made it to a dramatic glass walkway. I swallowed and looked down. Below the glass walkway were countless bedrooms, half-dozen alcoves of lovers.

With orgasmic faces, Doers looked up, eyes glazed, saw their audience, then went back to each other. In one bedroom a woman rode a man reverse cowgirl as another woman blessed his face with her sex. The women looked and saw the crowd staring down at them. Then they leaned into each other, kissed as they used both the lingam and tongue of a capable man to their advantage. They had beautiful bodies, curvy, with broad noses and powerful features. Three of the brown-skinned women were doing the head-top, where they literally danced on top of their heads with their legs bent, body moving like waves of the ocean.

On their heads, effortlessly, they used their hands and legs to get momentum and slid across the floor like they were moonwalking and they did it upside down in diamonds and pearls and Manolo Blahnik and Balenciaga pumps. They slid from lover to lover, from man to man, from waiting tongue to waiting tongue. Chills moved up my back.

I was overstimulated. Had to walk it off before I grabbed someone.

A man of average height came out of a private room—olive skin, hair short and dyed blonde, clean shaven, another man with colorful tattoos up and down each arm—and the door was left open long enough to see a woman on all fours, her head moving in a smooth rhythm, giving one man deep throat while another lover pleased her from behind, working in concert so beautifully. It was the judge, the adjudicator. Her face looked different now, as we all looked different when our orifices were filled with lingam. She had been comical in the dressing room. Now she was serious, severe, in deep pleasure, getting the bejesus fucked out of her, on the verge of giving an angel its wings.

The door to her private chambers closed. Her court was in session.

One alcove had its curtains apart. Inside, there was a group of about a dozen lovers. A woman of about forty was in there with them, in a chair, legs crossed, palms on knees, and she told them to slow down, told them to listen to the woman, feel her body, feel her response. Fucking looked so fucking good. Looked damn good.

She saw me and said, “Watcher or Doer?”

I swallowed and replied, “Watcher.”

“Then watch.”

As the crowd became shoulder to shoulder, I marinated.

Soon a woman approached me, attractive with plum lips and a genteel smile, nude in amazing golden seven-inch stilettos. Her face as mathematically perfect as it was beautiful: large eyes, full lips, high cheekbones. As she watched the lovers in session, she rubbed her fingers back and forth across her pearls, smiled, and eventually gave eye contact as she flirted, as she talked. Her English wasn't comprehensible, sounded as good as my attempt at German, which was her native tongue, but she also spoke decent French.

I said, “
I am fluent in French as well
.”

“
Really? Not many Americans speak two languages, let alone speak French
.”

“
My stepfather is French and we had French weekends in our household, that Romanic language the only thing we were allowed to speak for two days
.
Used to hate those days, but glad we had them.
”

She touched her hair, her pupils dilating as she moved deeper into my personal space. I didn't reject her advance. She touched my breasts. In response I traced my fingers over her thighs and derriere, and as the moans from the lovers in the room in front of us increased in volume, I stimulated the nerves that innervated the clitoris. She moved closer to me, made our breasts kiss. Her erect nipple touched where my erect nipple hid behind my towel and electricity surged through my body.

She said, “
I love man, but I like to be with woman. I eat . . . eat pussy with my mouth. Good
.”

She made
pussy
sound like the most beautiful word in the world.

I said, “
I love to come on a woman's tongue. Would love to come on yours
.”

With my response she lost her breath. A rush of excitement flooded her eyes. I cleared my throat and cleared my head, a mind that was filled with too much uncertainty. I declined her marvelous offer. Immediately I felt her disappointment, experienced an unpleasant visceral feeling of sorrow. Her shoulders slumped a little. She didn't make the cry face, but with her full, sinuous lips she pouted. A sexy lip pout that had probably disarmed many men. I imagined that she had been spoiled as a child and that treatment had followed her into adulthood. I mimicked her childish lip pout. She grinned like a woman who knew when her game had been exposed. Game recognized game. Still she held my hand, licked my palm up to my wrist, then she told me that the offer to join her party stood. Rejection increased my stock, had made me that much more desirable. She kissed my cheeks, then she sashayed away, stilettos and pearls making her as royal as Princess Grace, her womanhood strong and enviable, her confidence magnetic.

My honey flowed. She made me tingle. She made me curious. Not many women could motivate me in that direction. When it had happened, when I had submitted to that curious part that lived inside of me, it was beautiful. Women understood women. I rubbed the back of my neck, again a habit I needed to master. Watching the woman give passionate and profound oral sex, watching the Jamaicans dance upside down, all that I had seen, my body had become so sensitive that the wind from the ceiling fans titillated me. Sexual energy crackled in the air and I expected to see streaks of lightning across the ceiling.

I'd almost walked into him then. But the sounds. The rhythmic moans had pulled me away from the crowd. Years had gone by since last we loved, since we had fought, and he watched me walking away.

In another area, three couples explored one another. Slow road to rapture. Extremely lustful. Very loving. Big turn-on. Everything, every couple had been a big turn-on. Inspired, glorious envy.

This wicked lifestyle was a compartmentalization. We partitioned our existence with others. We never gave anyone all. Not our mothers. Our fathers. Our lovers. We engaged in segregation, hid our total selves, compartmentalized in order to simplify things, to keep from being questioned, to keep from being judged. Each compartment was a place we went to feel safe about that part of our existence.