by Doucette, G
Olive was much more voracious. Lindy had no intention of staying until sunrise, but she got the impression Ms. Olive would be meeting people and performing sexually with them until she ran out of people and they told her it was time to leave.
Lindy couldn’t remember ever having that kind of sex drive, and was a little envious. She also couldn’t imagine her blond friend being someone’s wife someday. But that was how the masks worked. Whoever Ms. Olive was underneath it, but as long as she was at club Himeros, the mask persona was all she had to be.
Ms. Burgundy was having a lot of trouble absorbing that attitude.
“Walk around,” Olive said again. “I know you’re shy, honey, but there’s no reason to be.”
“What else is there to see?”
“I don’t know! And neither do you. You won’t know until you see it, will you?”
“Will you come with me?”
She could bring herself to walk around with Ms. Olive on her arm. That would almost be the same thing as bravery. But she already knew the answer was no.
“I insist you get out there and meet someone without me. If you’re worried nobody will want to talk to you, you’re crazy. Not with those legs on top of those heels. And you can always pull open the front of your dress and let the girls out. You’d be amazed how great a pair of boobs are as an ice-breaker.”
Lindy laughed. “I guess that’s true, but I’m not half as daring as you are.”
“Maybe not yet.”
Ms. Olive held her face and kissed her full on the lips. “Now go out there, young lady, and mingle.”
So she left the corner and walked around, and tried to figure out how to mingle.
Michael knew how to small-talk other people. That was what made him so good at parties. Lindy used to try—with his coaching—to get better at it but never did get it right. But the tricks he showed her wouldn’t work all that well at club Himeros. He had all sorts of techniques to recall names and faces and one or two telling details that would make it possible to sound as if he knew the person in front of him better than he actually did. In this environment—where nobody had a name or a face—he might have been as stymied as her.
Lindy’s default approach to dialogue with strangers was to linger at the edge of other people’s conversations and wait for one of the people talking to turn and engage her. She never wanted to interrupt. In a regular party it didn’t really work. Here, she expected to fare no better, unless she resorted to using Olive’s technique and just take off some of her clothing.
So she walked around and looked for ways into conversations somewhere between lingering on the edge and full-frontal nudity. By definition everyone there was a stranger to everyone else, so there was no way she could intrude on an existing relationship or butt into something where she was the unwelcome new person, but somehow that didn’t really matter. Everyone, it seemed, was in either mid-conversation or in the middle of something else that would have been even worse to interrupt.
There was an awful lot of something else going on, too. After leaving the corner, she walked the length of the floor. As Ms. Olive predicted, the place had filled up over time. Lindy was not gifted with an accurate internal clock and there were no timepieces in the club, but it felt like two or three hours had gone by since her arrival, and there were a whole lot more people.
The increase in head-count only made the irrational contrasts worse. In one area she saw six men and women in formal evening wear discussing local politics and sustainable growth, which sounded like the most boring conversation imaginable, except that one of the men had on no pants—it turned out the men had been issued G-strings as well—and two of the women had their breasts out. Behind their couch, two men were making out furiously.
In another spot, a man had a woman pushed up against the wall. Her legs were open and wrapped around his hips. Each time he thrust forward the muscles in his butt tightened, something Lindy found captivating. She wanted to get closer and maybe even find a way to contribute somehow, but she was hardly the only one with this notion. There were two women already there, one on either side of the couple. They were holding the woman’s arms, which were outstretched against the wall. If it didn’t look and sound like she was enjoying herself enormously, Lindy might think they were helping hold her down for something involuntary.
* * *
On the next floor Lindy found a more slavish devotion to earth tones in the furniture, another table of goodies that included more water and towels and also some lubricant, and something called bondage tape. The lighting there was poorer: where the other floors had overhead lights to work with, this one was all lamps and yet another fireplace fire. To make up for this, there were flexible glow-sticks on the table next to the lubricant. The glow-sticks turned parts of the floor into an X-rated sci-fi carnival funhouse.
The darkness without the glow sticks would have been preferable, Lindy thought. There were also no apparent opportunities to just have a normal conversation with someone, as the hedonism was just that much more intense there. She walked around for only a minute or two before deciding to try the top floor.
Given that each level up to that point had been either a continuation of the strangeness found on the lower level or an increase, and considering the glow-stick action on the penultimate floor, Lindy was anticipating something even more garish and extreme at the top: toys, equipment, or some drastic expression of kink she’d never encountered or considered before.
She was surprised, then, by how tame it was.
The essential motif was the same: specific areas defined by furniture and lighting, darkened corners for privacy if needed, a fireplace with a fire, and so on. But there wasn’t anybody in those darkened corners, and the people sitting out in the open were all just talking amongst themselves. Maybe it was that the lights were a little brighter, but where every other level felt like a cross between a club and someone’s living room, this last floor felt like something between a furniture store and a theater green room.
It felt like a place she could breathe, and maybe relax for a little while.
She stopped by the table for a bottle of water and to examine the other products. There was another selection of condoms, more of the light chains, but that was all. She took a bottle and found an unoccupied couch near the fireplace.
She’d been sweating underneath the leather mask all evening, and felt certain if she took it off she’d find a nightmare of running mascara looking back at her, but for the most part the night had been cool and comfortable. Despite this, the warm air from the low-burning fire felt nice when it blew across her bare legs. She could imagine it not feeling comfortable for all too long, which was probably why the couch near the fire was the unoccupied one.
It was also nice finding a part of the room where she could be alone for a while, where nobody was actively engaged in coitus right in front of her. The evening had turned her into a tense ball of anxiety, and the only release she’d found so far was the kind Olive had offered. That hadn’t happened only because Lindy had stopped it. Now she felt a little like an over-stretched elastic.
“Hello. Can I sit?”
Lindy jumped in surprise. She hadn’t even noticed the man until he spoke.
He was in suit pants, a white dress shirt and a tie. The shirt was unbuttoned at the neck and the tie was loosened enough to show off the collar all of the men were required to wear. Unlike the chokers, which looked more decorative than functional, the collars were quite clearly that and only that: a wide leather strap with a D-ring in the front. Nearly every guy she’d seen started out their night with a buttoned shirt and tie, probably to hide the collar underneath.
The lighting made it difficult to tell for certain, but it looked like his mask was cream-colored.
“Of course,” she said.
“Thank you.”
When he sat down it was at the opposite end of the couch, a nice non-threatening distance away from Lindy. He kept his arms down by his sides, clearly not q
uite sure what to do with his hands. His eyes kept landing on her legs.
He was nervous, which Lindy thought was adorable considering she’d spent most of the night in between social anxiety and terror.
“I’m Ms. Burgundy.”
“Good, good. Hi, I’m… look, this is dumb. The mask is supposed to be mocha, but Mr. Mocha sounds really stupid. I sound like a brand of coffee-maker.”
Lindy laughed. “It’s nice to meet you, Mr. Mocha. From one beverage to another.”
“Sure, but you get to be a cool one. I met Mr. Burgundy earlier.”
“Did you really!”
“You two didn’t arrive together, right? I was looking for Ms. Mocha but she must be hiding or something.”
“I think everyone came stag.”
“I also met Mr. Beige and Mr. Cream. I was going to try using one of those instead of Mocha, but no.”
“Mr. Tan?”
“I think that’s the name of my dry cleaner.”
She laughed again, but couldn’t think of anything witty to say in response, which led to a brief, achingly uncomfortable silence.
Small talk was even harder when nobody was using real names. She had no idea how everyone else was doing it so well. Possibly they were only talking about sex.
“This is my first time,” Mocha said.
“Mine too!” she said.
“Oh thank God. I was hoping I wasn’t the only one.”
“I think there are a lot of first-timers here.”
“Do you think so? It seems like everybody knows exactly what to do.”
“I know that feeling,” she said. “Like everyone else is a whole lot more comfortable with this than you are?”
“Exactly!”
“That’s been my whole night.”
“Mine too. Like ten people have told me to just relax, but I can’t turn off my brain long enough. I keep trying to work out the mechanics of how a club like this could even function, and then I start asking questions I’m not supposed to ask.”
He spoke with his hands a lot, and as they talked his posture changed to a more relaxed one. His shoulders were turned to face her, and he became more animated. She wondered if he had tried conversations with other people already and found them to be less hospitable. All she knew was she already liked talking to him, and they had just started.
“Oh God,” she said. “What kind of questions have you been asking?”
“Oh you know, what do people do, are they single… I’ve nearly used my real name about five times I’m awful at this. But I want to know! For instance, okay, so I’m going to guess there are minimum requirements for getting an invitation.”
“Do you mean, how attractive everyone appears to be?”
This was an unspoken but self-evident feature of basically all the attendees. If Mr. Mocha wanted to canvas the room to find out what people had in common in order to determine how the invite list was built, he might start by asking where everyone worked out.
Mocha laughed. “I would say that’s fair. And this is an awkward segue, and I acknowledge it freely, but if you don’t mind my saying, your legs are fantastic.”
“Thank you. Your… you look very healthy.”
She didn’t know exactly what to compliment him on. Sitting, it was hard to say how tall he was, and he wasn’t showing off any specific assets in the same way she was with her legs, which her entire outfit was designed to emphasize. But he filled out that white shirt in the right kind of way, with a triangular upper torso. And he had a strong chin.
He laughed again. “Thanks. But anyway the attractiveness thing isn’t what I was talking about. Or not just that. I figure there’s an age range. Post-college, pre-family twenties.”
“All singles,” she offered.
“Right, nobody married or in a relationship.”
She remembered Ms. Olive admitting she was engaged and couldn’t remember if she’d said the engagement had happened before or after her first invitation to club Himeros.
“I wonder how they know?” she asked.
“That’s a good question too, but there are even better ones,” he said.
“Like what?”
He slid closer to her on the couch, sitting with his left knee up so he could face her comfortably, with the knee touching her thigh lightly and his left arm on the back of the couch. Unlike when Ms. Olive had adopted a similar pose, Lindy didn’t automatically reposition herself so they weren’t touching.
He leaned forward to whisper, as if this were a conspiratorial observation, and as if there was someone nearby to overhear. “I don’t know if you you’ve noticed this, Burgundy, but I think there’s a lot of sex going on around here.”
She gasped.
“It’s true!” he said. “I’ve seen it everywhere!”
“So the better question, in your thinking, would be: how do they know who the right kind of people are for this kind of party?”
“Yes, exactly.”
He looked over his shoulder, behind their couch. A man and a woman had coupled up nearby, in a love seat. She was on his lap. They were kissing, and lightly touching one another, but not actively engaging in sexual congress just yet. Their behavior would have been wildly inappropriate in any other public setting, but after everything Lindy had seen so far, what they were doing seemed the equivalent of a handshake.
“Those two,” Mocha said. “I’m pretty sure they met like ten minutes ago, and look at them.” He returned his attention to Lindy. “Have you…?”
“Only a little. Enough to conclude I’m not a lesbian.”
“That happened to me earlier!”
“You aren’t a lesbian either?”
“There was a Mr. Lemon who seemed convinced given the right stimulus and the appropriate degree of anonymity, I would enjoy the experience of homosexual sex.”
She laughed. “Why Mr. Mocha, I do believe that was the most roundabout way you could have possibly uttered that sentence.”
“Thank you, I practiced.”
“And was Mr. Lemon correct?”
“Mr. Lemon was not correct, but I can now say I know without reservation that it was not the thing for me.”
“That was very open-minded of you,” she said.
She was trying to imagine Michael trying something like that, and decided it never would have happened. Then she tried imagining Michael wearing one of these masks and decided that too never would have happened. But on this she could have been wrong. If the people running club Himeros knew Lindy was no longer in a relationship they knew he was also no longer in one. Possibly, he’d received his own hand-delivered mask and was now wandering around the club.
“I guess it was. But it happened a couple of hours ago; I was younger then. That’s what I mean, though. It’s not enough to be young and pretty. This scene isn’t for everyone. Finding the kind of person who meets the apparent demographic requirement who can also turn up having followed the mandated clothing and secrecy orders and who will also not utterly freak out at what’s going on in this club… that is an extremely specific type.”
“Except,” Lindy said, “that I am not at all the type that fits this party.”
“That depends on what you mean. Do you mean, the type that spends the evening humping masked strangers?”
“I suppose I do, but I’d prefer a rephrasing.”
“The type that engages in public intercourse with new people.”
“Better.”
“I don’t think I am either. But there are a number of people here who are just enjoying the conversation. They’re all talking about sex, but talking about it and performing it are two very different things. And you and I, we can talk about sex without doing it as well.”
As they were speaking that they were getting closer to one another. There were minor changes in positioning, so where his knee was touching her thigh, her hand was on his knee, and then his arm was closer, and nearly touching her across the back of the couch. They were still pretending they had to be
this close so as to speak without disturbing anyone around them, but just wasn’t really anyone in earshot one way or another.
“Is that the next subject?” she asked.
She wondered what he looked like under the mask. His hair was brown and the kind of short that one used to only see on military people. Then she wondered if he actually was in the military. His eyes were mostly black spots because of the mask and the lighting, but she imagined they were blue.
He said, “Sex? Once we’ve run out of observations regarding our surroundings, I expect we will find ourselves talking about sex, yes.”
“You don’t think you’re the type?”
“The public sex type? I don’t know if I am or not. Same answer I gave to Mr. Lemon. I can guess I’m not, but until I’ve tried it…”
“And what you did with Mr. Lemon didn’t qualify?”
“We never got that far.”
“Let me offer an alternative to your right kind of person theory,” she said, patting his knee.
“Go on.”
“If you put together a bunch of attractive people, all of whom are between relationships, insist they remain anonymous strangers both before and after the party, and then provide them with provocative clothing to wear and a hyper-sexualized environment, perhaps they will all turn out to be the right kind of people.”
“That’s an interesting theory, Ms. Burgundy. Although it seems to me the hyper-sexualized environment you’re speaking of is largely the creation of the club-goers and not the club. Notwithstanding the bowls of condoms and lubricant.”
“Those are the people who aren’t here for the first time.”
“Or, when the ego and self is taken away—or hidden behind a mask—this is how we behave, as human beings.”
“That seems one assumption too many,” she said.
“All right. But what does naturally follow from this chain of reasoning is that you and I are the right kind of people, only we haven’t figured this out about ourselves yet.”
The two behind them had graduated from heavy petting to something much more serious. Her blouse was open and she was no longer on his lap; he had her on her back on the couch, her legs open and around him. He was undoing his pants.
