Honest Masks

by Barbra Novac

  Chloe glanced at her watch and thought about how much she was spending already. “No. I can’t look. Please don’t tempt me. I have a meeting that I’m already late for.”

  Chloe stayed silent for the rest of the purchase, not wanting to spend too long in the store. She’d already overstayed her fifteen minutes, and she knew Gary would be waiting for her next door. It seemed rude to be making this purchase while he was waiting, despite Chloe’s desire to steer their relationship toward friendship. Besides, the sooner she went to see him, the sooner she’d get home.

  At the pub, Gary was still busy having a glass of wine while talking to one of the group who had evidently stayed when the others left. The girl had long blonde hair and a popular sort of figure. Chloe recognised her as a girl from the cafe next door who had the men gossiping regularly. She seemed genuinely interested in Gary, and Chloe hoped Gary might be interested in her. She thought he’d seen her when she came in, but his focus on this woman increased, and Chloe hoped he was distracted enough to stay with her.

  She took a seat nearby, close enough for Gary to see her, but far enough away for her not to encroach on his style if he decided to stick it out with the cute blonde.

  Not to be deterred from his goal, however, Gary soon waved good-bye to the girl and her friends, taking a brief second to check Chloe was watching, and then moved toward her table. He ordered her a generous glass of the best red wine on the menu and sat heavily beside her in the booth.

  “Sorry about that,” said Gary, a little too quietly so Chloe was forced to move her ear closer to his face. “They mean nothing to me, I promise. I was just chatting.”

  “I don’t mind if you want to spend time with them.”

  Gary ignored the comment and looked down at her package. “What have you got here? Is this why you were late? What is it?”

  Chloe moved the bag to the other side of her seat, but not before Gary had a chance to notice the finely rolled cotton.

  “Cloth? You bought more cloth? What do you do with it all? Is this what you work on at nights? What is it for?”

  For a moment, Chloe forgot where she was. She looked into Gary’s troubled eyes and saw another soul. Moved by the fabric, Chloe felt a desire to reach out. Here sat a person, surely with desires and yearnings like herself. Riding on a wave of longing, Chloe revealed herself.

  “I have secrets like everyone, Gary. Don’t you? Don’t you have a passion that drives you to the brink? A kind of hunger inside you that would send you to heaven, if only there were enough hours in the day to make it real? Don’t you have a calling that drags you from the mundane and forces you to fly?”

  Too late, Chloe saw the distrust cloud over Gary’s eyes. This small movement told her Gary had shut off any feelings he had for a wild life, and he was enmeshed in the appropriate way of life. Quickly revealed behind the distrust was the slightest moment of fear and then a superior kind of knowing Chloe had forgotten to dread. She watched this entire emotion pass through Gary’s face, and she knew she’d said too much. She’d forgotten she wasn’t talking with a real friend.

  “Passions are masks so that you don’t have to face the truths of life, Chloe. You should know that better than anyone. Sure, the day is dull and long; sure, we all feel that. But you have goals that make you a fit member of society. You are not an island, after all. Passion leads to the artistic life, and artists are society’s parasites, providing nothing but troubled thought and worrying ideas.”

  “Of course. I just…”

  “Just what, Chloe? Forgot for a moment? Forgot who you are -- who your ancestors were -- and what has happened to the people you love the most in your life? You think I don’t remember what you said that night to Susannah, but I do. When are you going to grow up and get over this?”

  Chloe turned, her face reddened, toward her wine. She drank down a large gulp, hoping to throw Gary off this line of talk. The anger in his voice troubled her. Of course, he knew her history, but the aggression and the frustration he displayed made Chloe uneasy.

  In an effort to escape, Chloe thought of the cotton in the bag and the design to be recreated. She thought of the little piece of world she had in her apartment and the creation being built there, and she wanted to go. More than before, she wanted to escape the oppressive nature of his reason, the destruction of rationality, and the common sense of life.

  Chapter Four

  Max clinked on his glass, signalling his forthcoming speech to the crowd.

  The one hundred twenty women, men, and children, laughing and chatting at different tables in the large dining room at Genius Loci, stopped what they were doing to listen to Max.

  “A big thank-you to everyone for coming tonight! We’re celebrating the favourable inspection results, as well as welcoming our new guests.

  “I received word this morning that, again, those who would try to harm us have faltered in the face of pure reason and their inability to outthink us over issues concerning rule of law! Intellect will always win over brute strength, and we are the new breed, evolved beyond the need for force, into an intellectually based humanity. We are the Ubermensch. We are the hope for the future, and again we stand undefeated.”

  A large cheer roared, accompanied with laughter at the disproportionate strength of Max’s words. The red wine and spirits had flowed freely for several hours now, and the party was well into its deepest point of revelry.

  “Now, to my large extended family, and I call you that because each of you has genius flowing through your families’ veins, let’s make welcome tonight the guests we have at the table!”

  Ten people sitting near the head of Max’s table stood and took brief bows before everyone present. Again the crowd cheered and hollered, clapping and stomping their appreciation to say their thanks to the people who had stood.

  Among the guests were two alternative rock musicians who’d come to the house for a month seeking inspiration, a female particle physicist who wanted to use one of the labs, a husband-and-wife medical research team who’d been invited by Max to intellectually spar with two of the university PhD students, a philosophy professor from Oxford, two women portrait painters who won their week at Genius Loci by being the Guggenheim’s emerging artists of the year, and a writer who’d been short-listed for the Booker Prize three times.

  As the guests sat down, the families made a move to pack away the children. Max and James rose and made their way through the crowd, kissing good-byes and wishing them all well. Husbands and wives of the farm who had small children missed out on the hedonistic pleasures of the parties Max and James threw, but this was part of the rule. Everyone knew that when their time came to breed, they gave the offspring everything and committed all they had to the intellectual development of the children. This was how it had always been.

  As soon as the families were gone and only the partiers remained, Max stood up and asked for everyone to move toward his table.

  Forty or so revellers sat excitedly around the table, which had been cleared of everything except the wine, spirits, and glasses.

  Max stood, leaned down, and kissed James sensuously on the mouth in front of everyone. The partiers cheered as Max stood and said, “We are the libertines! We are those who love our partners as the world has never known love, but who taste from other bodies as the world has never known lust!”

  Everyone clapped and cheered again.

  “Tonight I have a special treat for us libertines to herald the start of the sensual side of the party. The rule is there is no straight or gay; we reject all of society’s labels. Everyone tastes from everyone, and no one is refused because of their sex. However, permission is always sought, and anyone is free to withdraw at any time.”

  Max paused to kiss James again, giving the libertines more to holler and hoot about.

  “But now, to start off the festivities.”

  At that moment, two men and two women from the commune walked in with a large wooden tray on their shoulders. Each one stood at a cor
ner of the tray, which was about the length of a body. Standing at the table, they shuffled the tray a little awkwardly and laid it carefully on the table, down the centre. At that point, Max reached forward and pulled off the sheet covering.

  It was a man. A man naked but for chocolates, fruit, and cream, hired for the night by Max to enhance the pleasures of all present.

  He lay on his back, a large cluster of fruit sitting precariously at the delicious V below his navel. Whipped cream, which spilled down the line where his legs met almost to the base of his thighs, held the fruit in place. His skin shone with a thin layer of oil that smelled richly of coconut. His open eyes looked around from under dark lashes, setting off perfectly his sandy blond hair.

  His abs rippled with small fruity chocolates and blueberries, while a gather of strawberries lay above them at the base of his curvaceous chest. His pecs were so tight the skin drawn across hard muscle looked like it could tear away under the strain. The rounds of his biceps bulged against his sides, giving his upper arms perfect masculine power.

  Everyone oohed and aahed at the arrival of this breathtaking creature supplied for their pleasure. Max stood at the head of the table and announced, “Dessert, everyone! Please enjoy.”

  Immediately the group leaned over the man on the table. Men and women picked at the fruit and the chocolate, enjoying the pleasures of eating before they enjoyed the pleasures of his flesh.

  Max leaned forward and lifted a piece of kiwi fruit off the man’s left breast. He turned, offering it to James from the end of his finger. James looked Max in the eye and leaned forward, his mouth seductively open, and sucked the fruit off his lover’s finger. Max’s dark grey eyes turned to a stormy mood as his lover set his blood to boil. James reached out and took Max’s hand. Turning it, he moved his face over it and licked small circles on the flesh in the centre of his palm. Max felt his dick harden. He wanted to run his hands over James’s hard, smooth ass, but he’d have to wait for the others to catch up.

  Turning away from the most beautiful man in the room, Max looked over at the orgy unfolding before them. One of the musicians had climbed onto the table. He placed his hands on either side of the legs of the dessert and was busy nudging fruit away luxuriously with his nose, lips, and tongue.

  When he got whipped cream on his face, he looked up, and the particle physicist, who had already removed her shirt to display two perfectly round, medium-sized breasts, licked it off his face in long, sensuous strokes, much like a cat licking its paws clean. He massaged her breast with one hand and rubbed the bulge in his jeans with the other. Then he returned to lick his way up another notch to the mass of fruit everyone wanted to see go.

  The professor from Oxford sat between the husband-and-wife team, turning his face to kiss one and then the other as the happily married couple rubbed the giant bulge between his legs. The two female painters had joined with the young students from the farm in a small orgy away from the table on their own. One girl already sat astride a young man as he sucked the pulsing dick of his friend, who kissed the other woman painter. She spread her legs deliciously as her friend moved closer so she could lick her sex to ecstasy with her long, snaky tongue.

  Max sat back and unbuckled his trousers. James bent over the table kissing the dessert as Max removed his jeans in order to get that gorgeous cock out for all to see. Max wanted to encourage everyone as best he could so he could have his taste and fill of as many dicks as he felt like tonight.

  James moved and wriggled easily to help Max finish getting his jeans off, then stood briefly to lift his T-shirt over his head. James worked out hard, like most of them did at the farm, and had a beautiful body. As he bent to continue kissing the gorgeous young man in front of him, Max reached for one of the many bottles of lube he’d arranged to be brought in with the dessert. They sat in various baskets around the table along with condoms, dildos, oils, and vibes.

  By this time, the fruit was eaten, knocked away, or squished between willing flesh. The musician sucked on the enormous hard rod of the young man on the table. He’d pull his head back and move a hand to fist the shaft, and then place his head over it again swallowing it deeply. His clothes had gone at some point, and Max could see the other musician behind him, working his own face into the crevice of his ass. Max loved to see men who usually only slept with women “break their cherry” in front of him. It was the biggest mind fuck, for them and for him. Orgies, when done properly, had no match for sensual excitement. He might get to enjoy one of those virgin asses tonight.

  The thought made Max’s wood pulse all the more. He stood up and removed his tux jacket and tie and unbuttoned his shirt. Quickly, he removed his tux trousers and his underwear. His cock pointed to the ceiling, hard and ready. He squeezed the tube of lube over James’s midback and watched the lazy, heavy drips river their way down his spine to the top of his ass. Then the little stream disappeared into the appetizing dark space.

  Max reached around for the wife still hard at work with her husband on the professor. He took her hand and slid it down James’s back toward the base of his spine. She stopped kissing the professor, who went directly toward her husband.

  Max let her hand go and watched it slide of its own accord, following the lube trail between James’s butt cheeks. James, still kissing the gorgeous newcomer, grunted and shifted his legs wider to give her easier access. Curious, the woman got on her knees as Max gently pulled James’s ass apart, so she could see deep into his wet, willing hole. Taking his cue, she moved her finger to the opening, gathering up lots of lube to smooth over the tight, ready notch.

  She massaged gently around James’s ass, leaning in every now and then to take a long lick up and down his dangling ball sac. Then she moved her face toward Max, licking and sucking expertly on the deep purple, plummy end of his engorged cock. Max concentrated on pulling slowly on James’s swollen dick. He enjoyed watching this woman working both of them. Soon, she slid two of her fingers into James’s hot, hungry hole, which begged for attention in front of her.

  Max looked up as she worked James to get him ready. The first musician was preparing to sit hard on the willing cock he’d been sucking, and his friend and the physicist were lubing him up, making him ready. The Oxford professor was naked, in a deep embrace with his man, their hard dicks bouncing and rubbing against each other. Max was so turned on, he felt sure he’d make his way to everyone tonight, female and male, playing in the room.

  Max felt a hot hand on his cock and looked down to see the smiling face of the wife looking back at him. She was pulling gently on his dick, ready to feed it into James’s ass. Max moved around behind his lover. The wife slicked her fist up and down Max’s cock, adding lube. It wasn’t necessary. Experience had taught Max how to enter his lover, and they could pleasure each other like no one else. Max spread his legs around James, so that he could feel the brush of thigh on thigh. He steadied the head of his dick at James’s ass and hesitated for a brief moment.

  James leaned back against Max, signalling him to go ahead. It was a little routine they used every time, to make sure it was intense and pleasurable for both of them.

  Max pressed gently forward as James’s most private space opened up easily and naturally for his man. James lifted his ass high and curved his back, a move Max loved so much. It was sexy, because it made Max’s cock glide in so easily. Gently Max eased his way deeper into James’s body. James had stopped kissing the other man at this point, his head back in ecstasy, relishing every moment of his most favourite cock.

  Buried to the hilt inside of James, Max pulled his dick back almost out, then pushed it back in very slowly. He did this a few more times, so that James could get used to the wild feeling, waiting for James to show that he was comfortable and loving it as much as Max.

  As Max moved gently in and out of James, the wife, now naked and eager to get involved again, moved in front of him, carefully taking James’s rock-hard cock into her mouth. Max smiled because he knew this would be the end fo
r James. Sure enough, James let out a loud groan as he pressed forward into her mouth.

  Max felt his own orgasm rising. Nothing turned him on more than James coming while Max was inside him. James braced his hands, palms down on the table in front, as Max moved a hand between the two of them to feel James’s balls convulse just as he unloaded into the hot mouth encased over his cock.

  This sent Max into a spiral, and he felt the churning of his own orgasm pump and melt as he poured himself into his longtime lover. As his dick still leapt in its tight sheath, Max leaned forward, kissing James’s naked back passionately, wild with the love these orgasms always inspired within him. James reached around, feeling for his hand, and Max grabbed at it. They held each other’s hands tight as their members relaxed, and they unfolded into two separate people again.

  Smiling at the woman they’d just made love with, they both stood up and took her by the hand to lift her to standing also. James leaned in to kiss her and then Max. She glanced down at their members, still semihard, and asked, “Fellas, do these things ever go down?”

  “Not for a long time yet tonight.” James grinned as he leaned in for another kiss.

  Chapter Five

  Chloe saw Gary sitting at the table in the cafe, waiting for her. After leaving as fast as she could from the pub, she’d tried to avoid him for the past few days. This meeting was at his request and made loudly in front of others. She wasn’t late; he was early, ready and always waiting. She walked over to him and casually plonked herself down at the chair.

  “Hey there.” She smiled sweetly as she lowered her face to meet his gaze, which had dropped to the table a few seconds after she’d entered the room.

  Chloe had taken a risk today and wore dangling blue earrings that hung below the base of her bob. Her makeup was a little too dark for a day at work, and her dress was a deep Chinese blue satin, tight against her rounded body, happily showing off the curve of her belly and the full waves of her thighs. Conventional beauty had never attracted Chloe, and she had no desire to conform. One of the unattractive things about women today was their desire to be thin. It was boyish and pandered to convention in a way that made a woman look desperate. Dependence, even on fashion, was an ugly thing.