by Anne Rice
In a half daze, it seemed I remembered things, or rather reinvoked them—the way it had all started. And in the beginning there had been no Martin Halifax for me.
I saw the first hotel room where I had ever made love, if that is what it is called, remembering that steamy and forbidden encounter, the smell of the leather, the lovely feeling of abandoning all control.
Was there any heat like that first heat? How strange it had been, those long hours beforehand of dreaming about it—a ruthless master, a cruel master, a drama of punishment and submission without real hurt—not daring to describe it to another living soul, and then meeting Barry, handsome as the boys in the romance comics, in of all places the University Library in Berkeley, just a few blocks from home for me, and having him ask so casually about the book I was reading, the dreary imaginings of masochists chronicled by their psychiatrists that proved . . . what? That others like me existed, people that wanted to be bound, disciplined, tormented in the name of love.
And then his whisper in my ear on that typical first date that it was what he wanted, that he knew how to do it and well. He worked weekends as a bellhop in a small but elegant San Francisco hotel, we could go there now.
“Only as far as you want to go,” he had said, the blood thudding in my ears when the kisses had done so little.
I’d been so terrified as I climbed the marble steps—we couldn’t use the elevators from the front lobby—criminals together as he unlocked the dark little suite. Yet it was precisely what I wanted, yes. Strange surroundings. And his firmness, his direction, his unerring sense of timing, and limits, and how to push them ever so gently.
It was the blaze at last consuming all the more swiftly because I hardly knew who he was.
I couldn’t remember his face even now. Only that he was good-looking, that he was young, that he looked wholesome, like every other young man in Berkeley, that I knew the house, the street where he lived.
But then the thrill had been the near anonymity, that we were two animals, that we were mad, that we knew absolutely nothing really about each other. A quiet young high school girl too serious for sixteen, and a college boy scarcely two years older who read Baudelaire, made enigmatic statements about sensuality, smoked fancy pastel-colored Sherman cigarettes that you ordered direct from the company, wanted what I wanted, and had a place to do it, a plausible technique.
We would make dissonant but beautiful music. And the danger? Had that been thrilling? No, that had been an ugly undercurrent, dissipated only when the night was finished, when drained and silent I had followed him out of the hotel, slipping through the side door, relieved that nothing “horrible” had happened, that he wasn’t insane. Danger was not a spice, only what I had to pay in those days.
In the womb of The Club there was never that price . . . that was its genius, its contribution, its raison d’être. No one was ever hurt.
Had I seen him two times more before he suggested a meeting with his friend, David, and the afternoon session with the three of us together, when it lost its intimacy, when it seemed suddenly we were not all equal participants, when I became afraid? Sudden attack of inhibition. When he called with yet another friend, another proposal, I felt betrayed.
Long agonizing evenings after that wandering in downtown San Francisco searching faces that passed me, peering into the lobbies of the grand hotels, thinking, yes, somewhere, somewhere a man, an elegant and experienced man, a new beginning, someone infinitely more clever, commanding, more discreet.
Sitting by the phone at home with the personal column from the newspaper before me. Is it a cryptic code for what I think it is? Do I dare to call the number? Drifting through the regular experiences—senior prom, movie dates—murmuring lies now and then to excuse apathy, restlessness, that appalling feeling of being a freak, a secret criminal. Wandering past the counters where the leather gloves lay in the glass case looking faintly sinister for all the white tissue paper in the shallow box.
Yes, I would like these, these long, long tight black gloves . . . And the broad leather belt around my waist cinching me like an exotic girdle, yes, and black silk and the high tight fitted boots as soon as I could afford them. And finally discovering in a bookstore near the Berkeley campus, in silent disbelief and blushing excitement, that shocking French classic which others must have known for years, looking so innocent in its smooth white book jacket, The Story of O.
No, you are not alone.
I felt everyone in that store was looking at me when I paid for it. Yet flushed and glaze-eyed I sat in the Cafe Mediterranee turning page after page, defying someone to see it, comment on it, come up to me, closing it only when I had finished all of it, and staring through the open doors at the students hurrying through the rain on Telegraph Avenue, thinking, I will not live all my life with it being fantasy, not even if. . .
But I had never called Barry again. And it hadn’t been one of the mysterious personal advertisements, nor the blatant communications between sadists and masochists that shocked everyone so in the pages of the underground newspapers. Rather it had been a most innocent-looking little advertisement in a San Francisco neighborhood paper:
Special Announcement. Applications still being taken for the Roissy Academy. At this late date, only those entirely familiar with the training program should apply.
Roissy, the name of the mythical estate to which O had been taken in the French novel. Impossible to misinterpret it.
“But you won’t use a whip, I mean something that can really damage, inflict bad pain . . .” I had whispered into the phone after all the arrangements had been discussed, the interview at a San Francisco restaurant, how we should recognize each other.
“No, my dear,” Jean Paul said. “No one does that, except in books.”
Oh, the pure agony of those long ago moments, the secret hopes and dreams . . .
Jean Paul had looked so European when he stood up from the table at Enrico’s. Velvet jacket, narrow lapels. Like a beautiful dark-eyed French actor I remembered from a Visconti film.
“A truly sensuous American woman, what a treasure,” he had whispered as I finished the coffee. “But why do we waste time in this place? Come with me.”
Yes, agony, that was the word for it, being that young, that compelled, that frightened . . . Some pagan angel had been watching over me in those days, surely.
But my mental clock had sounded its silent alarm. Richard was waiting, and now we were the pagan angels. And we had less than half an hour before the new slaves came into the receiving hall.
ELLIOTT
Chapter 5
A Walk on the Wild Side
I guess I figured those terraces facing the sea were the whole club, and once we were inside the garden, we’d be sheltered from adoring eyes by the sprawling branches of the trees. No such luck.
I bowed my head, trying to catch my breath, only half believing what I saw. The garden stretched out endlessly, linen-draped luncheon tables everywhere crowded with elegantly dressed men and women, and waiting on the crowd quite nonchalantly were hundreds of naked slaves with trays of food and wine.
Scores of guests moved back and forth from the buffet tables, under the lacy foliage of California peppers, laughing, talking in small clusters, and of course there was still the throng on the terraces of the main building gazing down as before.
But it wasn’t just the size of the gardens, or their crowds that shocked me again.
It was the odd way that the crowd resembled any other, except for the dazzling spectacle of the naked slaves.
There was the flash of gold jewelry on tanned arms and throats, the sun exploding in mirrored glasses, the clink of silver on china—men and women in dark tans and Beverly Hills chic lunching as if it were perfectly normal for a horde of scrumptious nude men and women to be waiting on them—and of course there was the usual gathering of some fifty abject and trembling newcomers with their hearts in their mouths at the gates.
It was as devastating to see ba
cks turned, faces in earnest conversation, as it was to see bold stares and smiles.
But again, everything happened very fast.
The mass of new slaves was huddling together, and a new flock of handlers was closing in. They waited just long enough for us to catch our breath, then we were ordered to run along a garden path.
A strong, red-haired male slave broke into the lead when ordered, and another followed, whipped on by the handlers, who seemed a little more sophisticated than the bunch on the yacht.
They were powerfully built like the blond sailor, but they were decked out all in white leather, including tight pants, vests, and the straps with which they drove us along.
They seemed made to go with the pastel tablecloths, the huge flowered hats worn by the women, the white or khaki shorts and seersucker jackets of the men.
I braced myself for the sight of a woman handler but there was none, though there were plenty of knockout women scattered all through the garden, and everywhere I looked I saw short skirts, exquisitely shaped legs, bright sandal high heels.
The grass, soft as it was, scratched at my feet. And I was dazed by the lush growth on all sides, the fragrant jasmine and roses everywhere, and the birds I glimpsed in gold cages, giant blue and green macaw parrots, pink and white cockatoos. In one enormous gingerbread cage there were dozens of chattering capuchin monkeys. And the final spice were the free-wheeling peacocks picking their way here and there through the flowers and the grass.
It’s paradise all right, I thought, and we’re pleasure slaves in it, just like something out of an ancient Egyptian tomb painting, where all the slaves had been naked and the lords and ladies exquisitely dressed. We were here to be used and enjoyed like the food being eaten, the wine being poured. We’d slipped into an unexpurgated history of decadence, and found ourselves being driven right through the garden of the quintessential lord.
I felt my breath give out, but it wasn’t the running. It was the flood of sensation, the desire reaching a new pitch.
The slaves waiting the tables were incredibly poised. I got glimpses over and over of well-oiled bodies adorned only with a bit of silver or a collar of white leather, pubic hair and nipples startling me wherever I glanced. And I’m one of these characters, I thought. This is my role and there’s no getting away from the script.
We were driven faster, the handlers smacking us pretty hard with the straps. And the blows were beginning to sting.
There was that creeping, swelling warmth that excites and weakens at the same time. And while the other slaves pressed to the middle of the path to escape the straps, I didn’t bother. I got stubborn and just let the blows fall.
The path twisted and turned a thousand times. I realized we were going around the garden. We were being shown off. A tiny psychic explosion went off in my brain. There wasn’t any escape from this. I couldn’t give some code word and check out for a bath and massage.
In fact, everything was out of my hands. Maybe for the first time in my life.
We passed very close to a flagstone terrace of tables. Heads turned, members, guests—whatever they were—pointing, commenting. And a young dark-haired handler started really putting on a show with his strap.
On some level, my reason said: “It’s his job to whip the hell out of us, so why resist it? We’re here to be reduced to nothing, to surrender our will.” But I couldn’t keep this in my head. I was already losing some vital perspective, “getting lost”—which was just what I’d told Martin I wanted to do.
But the scene around us was looking familiar. We were passing the swimming pools again and the high mesh fence of the tennis courts.
In fact, we’d come around almost to where we started, and now we were driven towards the center of the garden, where the tables fanned out from a large white stage. It was a kind of pavilion you see in small town parks where the band plays on Sundays, but there was a catwalk jutting out from it like the kind they use in fashion shows.
My blood went cold, or hot, depending on how you see it, when I saw the stage.
Within seconds we’d been crowded under the mimosa trees behind the pavilion, in the shade. The handlers pushed us roughly together, then told us not to touch one another, and over the loud speaker system there came one of those smooth, liquid radio announcer voices saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, the postulants are now at the pavilion to be viewed.”
For a second the sound of my heart pounded over everything else. Then I heard a roar of clapping rising from the tables. It seemed to echo off the banks of terraces, and then to lose itself in the empty blue sky.
I could feel the trembling and anxiety around me as if we were all connected to the same live wire.
A tall female slave with a lot of sleek golden hair pushed her lovely breasts against me.
“They aren’t going to make us walk down that ramp one by one?” she asked under her breath.
“Yes, ma’am, I think they are,” I found myself whispering back, red-faced at the realization we were two naked slaves trying to talk to each other, scared as hell the handlers would hear.
“And this is just the start,” the red-haired male slave said to my right.
“Why the hell can’t we just serve drinks or something?” the blond said without moving her lips.
One of the handlers turned around, smacked her with the belt.
“Beast!” she hissed. I pushed between her and the handler, as soon as he looked the other way. When he turned back he didn’t seem to notice, just smacked somebody else.
The blond sort of snuggled against me. And it occurred to me for the first time that the women had it a little easier because you couldn’t tell what they were feeling. There wasn’t a single male who wasn’t fully and humiliatingly erect.
Whatever the case, this was going to be hell. Being tied up, that was one thing, being made to run with the gang, that was bad enough. But forcing myself down that ramp on my own steam? If I wasn’t ready for it, Martin, they wouldn’t take me, right?
The crowd seemed to be growing by cell division, as there was a movement everywhere towards the pavilion with a lot of empty tables being instantly filled.
I wanted to run. I don’t mean I really thought to do it. I couldn’t have gotten two feet away, but I was really panicky that if they put me up alone on that stage, I’d back off or bolt. My chest was heaving and it was like somebody had given me another shot of aphrodisiac at the same time. And the blond was pressing against me with her sweet soft silky little arms and thighs. I can’t go bonkers like that, I was thinking, I can’t fail the very first test.
A white-haired young man with ice-blue eyes was carrying his hand mike back and forth across the pavilion as he told the audience the new postulants were a stunning crop. He had on the same white leather pants and vest as the handlers, shirt open at the throat, but he was wearing a well-tailored cotton jacket that gave him an even more tropical look.
Members were crowding up to sit on the grass right by the catwalk. There were clusters of people standing back under the trees.
Immediately an absolutely delectable tidbit of dark female flesh was forced up into the middle of the pavilion, a handler holding her wrists together over her head. It was better than an out-and-out slave auction, the nude merchandise wriggling in the handler’s grip.
“Alicia from West Germany,” the man with the mike announced to a round of applause. And the handler turned Alicia in a circle before pushing her forward to make the long walk down the ramp.
No, I was thinking, maybe even whistling through my teeth. Just not ready for this. And I ought to feel sorry for her, damn it, instead of staring at her plump little bottom and the blush on her face. I’m in the same fix.
In a kind of delicious agony, she turned at the end of the walk, and rushed back to the master of ceremonies, obviously straining not to break into a run.
The crowd was getting louder. Even some of the women had folded themselves up nicely to sit close on the grass.
; Nope, impossible. They can do anything to me where I’m passive, but I can’t make myself do that. Yet how many times had I said that at Martin’s, and always I managed to do what I was told, right?
These are small places, Elliott. The Club is enormous . . . Yes, but I am ready for it, Martin. Even you said that.
The next one up was a young man named Marco with a hard tight little backside and an extremely beautiful face. He was blushing as badly as Alicia, and he was stiff as a battering ram. He made the walk awkwardly, but I don’t think anybody cared much about that, and it seemed the crowd got rougher, as if a male slave released something in it that the girl had not.
When I felt the handler gripping my shoulder I couldn’t move. I mean, my God, there are fifty other slaves here, give me a break.
“You gotta do it!” the little blond whispered.
“You gotta be kidding!” I whispered back.
“Silence. And move it, Elliott!” The handler went to shove me forward, and was obviously startled that I didn’t budge. I couldn’t make myself budge. The master of ceremonies turned around to check out the delay. And another handler grabbed hold of my wrists immediately while a third pushed me forward towards the steps.
I’d always heard the expression “dig in your heels” but I’d never done it till this moment, and I knew then I was totally out of control.
And now they were hauling me by force onto the pavilion, just like this was a Roman marketplace, two other handsome strong-arm types helping the first three so that I didn’t have a chance.
“I can’t do it!” I said, struggling.
“Oh, yes, you can,” said one of them ironically, “and you will and right now.” And abruptly they let me go, pushing me forward in front of the master of ceremonies as if they knew I’d be too ashamed to turn and bolt.
Thunderous applause came from all around. It was just the kind of racket they make at a horse show when a thrown rider gets back on a balky horse. For a second, I couldn’t see anything in front of me but light. But I wasn’t moving. Just standing helpless on the Roman auction block like all the other imports. I’d scored at least that much.
