Being Eloise (An Erotic Romance Collection, Books 1-3) (36 page)

“Sixty-nine.”

The naughtiest number. I felt most of my back go exposed. I could just touch one nipple with my other hand now.

“Seventy.”

I reached in further, I was wet, and I brought that wetness back up a tad to my clit as I imagined young Mr. Tailor behind me, watching me.

“Seventy-one.”

The floor shook just perceptively. “Jump!” I heard shouted from afar, then the shake. “Jump!” Shake. Rather than be distracted, I absorbed the words and the perceptible sway of the floor: I imagined there were people outside the locked door, wanting to get in to where Mr. Tailor and I were, otherwise, engaged. His parents or guardians. The headmaster of the women’s school for tutors. Constables. A mob. I could almost smell the burning pitch.

I imagined it was his hands (the young Mr. Tailor’s hands) down on me now, quickening my heart rate, making the room’s cold suddenly leave me.

“Seventy-nine.”

Seventy-nine? How had that happened?! Wasn’t he on seventy-one?
My eyes were closed, my tightened hand rubbing from the taunt bottom of the underwear and back to my clit again and again. I wanted to come, but this was a numbers game.

“Seventy-nine.”

Hadn’t he already said that?
I remember thinking. Was he playing with me or had I misheard before? I let up on the rubbing so these last buttons could come first. I was not in a state to even subtract seventy-nine from one hundred. My hand went back to my breasts and I first cupped them, just as Terrance had, and with that name springing to my mind, out went the first fantasy, supplemented instead by the idea of Terrance. My fingers, stumbling under the brassiere and rolling my nipples, were his fingers. Mr. Tailor’s mint breath was Terrance’s breath. I wanted that man, Terrance, like nothing else. I was just there, at the cusp, fueled more by my head than my hand. I let go, of everything, and stayed perfectly still, backing away from the edge. I’d almost come, and only at…

“Eighty.”

We’d agreed I wouldn’t “come” until after he’d unbuttoned all one-hundred buttons and been permitted, by me, to plant a single kiss upon my thigh. I tried to focus my thoughts on something else, which is to say I tried to bring the wordy portion of my brain back into operation. I thought of buttons and clasps, laces and ties, and how the world must appear to Mr. Tailor’s eyes. Was he turned on by the buttons in women’s clothing? Or, wait—the world had turned against a man like him—surely he didn’t have a fetish for the modern day equivalents: zippers and velcro, those loud, ugly, sexless solutions. And more importantly,
was I developing a fetish for buttons?
Is this how fetishes are born—exposure to objects when we’re at our most heightened sexual states?

“Ninety.”

I’d never felt so exposed in my life. At the close of our first session, my feet had felt nothing but self-conscious embarrassment from being removed from those unlaced boots. But this, this was something else entirely. I was nearly completely unclothed. Mr. Tailor and I breathed in unison, quickly. I lifted my arm as his fingers went in for the last few buttons, tightest there at the base of my armpit. The lacy underwear was slightly rough but not unpleasant against me, and I moved my hips slightly to allow myself the benefits of a rub. But I stopped when I felt myself, once again at the near-beginning of an orgasm.

“Ninety-five.”

Close now. So close. I ran my free hand back over my breasts as I held onto the arm of the couch with the other.

“Ninety-six.”

I closed my eyes and my hands felt what it was like to be Terrance—no, that wasn’t completely true. Terrance could feel my body, could run those fingers of his around my nipples, but he didn’t feel what
I
felt. Maybe this is why we all love self-love so much. We’re the doer and the receiver, the union of senses, the touch and the response, the perfect lover. But it’s lonely when you know everything. “Terra…” I began, feeling it coming. I caught myself. “Terrible,” I whispered.

“Ninety-seven.”

I tightened my legs together and arched my back.

“Terrible,” I said again.

“Ninety-eight.”

The dress fell nearly free of my body. I was a present. Unwrapped. Fresh skin emerging from the old. New.

“Ninety-nine.”

A little wanton moan escaped my lips. Terrance, Tailor, what did it matter? Free. Almost free. This wouldn’t be an orgasm spent alone, on a futon or in the shower.

“One-hundred.”

Both of my hands were now gripping the couch. I couldn’t bring myself to run my hand back to the underwear now that Mr. Tailor’s focus was no longer on those buttons, but on me. I couldn’t do it. God, I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I waited.

Then his lips touched my thigh, a large kiss, and then I felt his hot tongue against my skin and I came then. I really did. Just a little one.

“Thank you,” Mr. Tailor said, but I couldn’t look at him. “I’ll collect the dress next week,” he said.

I heard him strain as he got up off his knees and to his feet, each limb giving off a series of little skeletal clicks. When I heard the door open, then close, my hands flew below and there,
there
was what Mr. Tailor (and my imagination) had been building to during this half-hour session. First one, then two small waves. I dove two fingers within myself and the release had me twisting on the couch, then rigid, my breathing stopped, my lips touching velvet and a second later I was there, accompanied by that unmistakable wetness as I messed the couch in three gushes of pure pure pure…

“Ah,” said a voice.

My head whipped back so quickly that it took a week to get rid of the kink. There was Mr. Tailor, at the door, coat in hand, face nodding slightly, his lips wearing a wet shade of contentment.

“Thank you,” he said, and this time he really did leave. I watched him the whole time, my face no doubt as wide-eyed and pale as you might be imagining it, my fingers still frozen within me.

It cost me one-hundred and seventy-five dollars to have the couch steam-cleaned. With a coupon.

And so ended one of my first explorations of
A Collection Of Sins
.

After Mr. Tailor, the second cold call I made from
A Collection Of Sins
was to a number with notes that read:
Easy peasy. Walk-in wank.
With this entry, and later with others, I often felt I was either stymied by my inability to unpack Carla’s notes, or that she really wasn’t all that specific to begin with.
A Collection Of Sins
was more like
A Collection Of Scribbles
.

The recipient of my second call was Hank–I’ve called him that for that name’s rhyme with what he liked to do to his
pièce de résistance
. I wanted to call Carla to get her to fill in some details, but her number was disconnected—apparently not an unusual thing: my colleagues told me they’d swap out numbers if clients called too often. No one had an updated number for Carla, or even an address (Carla used a P.O. at a shipping company on—appropriately enough—Post Street). So I left a message for Hank in the second floor’s typical style:

“This message is for Hank. Please call us if you’re interested in refinancing your home mortgage. Come see our rates.”

I was told to never leave a number with a client. Clients knew the number for the main desk on the second floor. I got a call back within the hour. The following week a total of three packages arrived. The first was a tight brown wig—unsexy as hell, then a used Polaroid camera, and finally, apparently from eBay, a 1973 July issue of
Playboy
, one whose cover framed a woman’s breasts emerging from a zipped-down top. My first thought on seeing it was to wonder what Mr. Tailor thought of the zipper in place of buttons.

When I arrived to work a few days later—passing Stanley at the entrance who was so engrossed in his
National Geographic
that he just raised his hand up to his forehead in a little salute—a colleague, Zee, handed me a letter. “The one with the bathroom,” she said, pointing to the end of the hall as I began to read. “He’s already in there. Here,” she said, pressing the auburn wig into my hands. “Better hurry.”

I checked the wig in a mirror. I looked about fifty. Bookish. Old-fashioned. Given that Hank was in the bathroom with a 1973
Playboy
, I guess old-fashioned made sense. Hank’s letter called for me to barge in on him during his act of masturbation and to humiliate him. To that end I got the Polaroid camera from my locker. If you’re expecting a masturbatory theme to run through most of my clients’ fantasies, well, that’s less a product of those fantasies and more a factor of the house rules. Since clients are not allowed to touch us in any way—(I except/accept a quick kiss on the lower cheeks), their only outlet is some form of masturbation or, like Mr. Tailor, a deeper pleasure that doesn’t need a sexual release, or at least not one while they’re still on the second floor.

I waited outside the door where Hank was, ready to lock eyes wherever he was wanking off to that
Playboy
. Hank was an exception to the rule that the source of clients’ fantasies are unknowable. At some point in the early ‘70s, and having gotten his hands on someone’s
Playboy
, Hank had been walked-in on. That much was obvious. Over the years, his embarrassment and guilt had matured and coalesced and transformed itself into pleasure, pleasure Hank would pay for, would take time away for, would purchase accoutrements for. The male psyche never ceases to amaze and alarm me.

Three, two, one,
I counted silently, then thrust open the door, a loud admonishing
Hank!
about to leap from my lips.

Instead, my eyes met a fully dressed Hank pacing the room with a phone to his ear. He held up a finger and turned away, lots of
uh-huhs,
and
yups
coming from his half of the phone conversation. Hank was in his late forties, wore a Hawaiian shirt, and was overweight. When he hung up, his serious face went jolly.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“No no,” I said. I felt foolish. I put the Polaroid behind my back. I felt the weight of the wig upon my head. Here I’d meant to walk in on him; instead
I
felt caught in the act of make believe.

“My dentist,” Hank explained. “I have four cavities, can you believe that? Go in for a cap, they find four holes. Expensive. They’re like mechanics. Can you trust them? I don’t know.” He stared at his phone, then put it back into his pocket. “So,” he said, slapping his hands together like someone ready to start something.

“Should we try this again?” I asked. “I’ll come in again.”

“Hold that thought,” he said, taking his phone back out from his pocket. He answered it. “What’s up. Shit. Okay, okay, calm down. I dropped off the papers. They’ve got them.” He laughed. “No, they’ve
got
them.”

Again I felt out of place. “I’ll come back in a bit,” I said.

“Give me a minute,” Hank whispered. “I’ll just step in here.”

I took a seat as Hank went into the bathroom and closed the door and continued talking. There was a mirror in this room so I took the opportunity to check the wig. I looked like my high school librarian. I looked like someone’s childless aunt. And as much as I didn’t care for the wig’s style, it was intriguing how easily I could look like a completely different person with just a change in hair color and style. I could probably wear this wig and sit in the back of one of Terrance’s lectures, unobserved. The idea, I admit, intrigued me. I still hadn’t agreed to see him, but the thought of doing so without reciprocity was delicious.

And then I noticed a clank in the bathroom and then a long sigh. Is there anything more distasteful than carrying on a conversation while relieving yourself? I sat playing with the mechanics of the large Polaroid camera when I heard a louder sigh. I suddenly realized that, well, Hank wasn’t really listening to someone’s very long telephone rant after all. I stood up, as did my mirror image which looked back at me in surprise. Hank was wanking off.

I stepped quietly to the bathroom’s door and pressed my ear against the paint. I could hear a dry rubbing from within and hear Hank breathing. Jeez Louise. I felt snookered and taken. Hank impressed the hell out of me. For a wanker. Here I’d thought I’d mis-timed my entrance when all along he’d been…
dentist?
Right, just part of the ruse. Maybe he’d wanted to get a look at me first, see if I could live up to Carla’s personification of Hank’s
coitus interruptus
. Well, I vowed I’d outdo Carla now, just as I’d surely outdone her with Mr. Tailor.

I slowly wrapped one hand around the door knob and waited. And in that act of putting my fingers around the metal I suddenly was flooded with deja vú, or it felt like that until the real memory coalesced.

It was a year into my marriage with my now ex. I’d come home from a yoga class because it had been cancelled or something. That part I don’t remember. What I do remember was that I’d gone searching for Sam, thinking of surprising him with a quick tumble. He’d been in the bedroom when I’d left, still asleep. And, just as now, I’d paused with my hand on the bathroom door when I’d heard my then-husband inside, panting. I’d been filled first with disbelief, then anger, and back then I flung the door open filled with certainty that I’d catch my husband fucking that upstairs neighbor of ours he’d nick-named Ms. Top-heavy. Instead, I found Sam jacking off from his seat at the edge of the tub—or at least that was what I saw for the briefest split second. He quickly fell backwards in surprise and grasped at the shower curtain sending it crashing down. At the time, I didn’t know whether to be relieved that he wasn’t cheating on me, or be upset that I wasn’t fulfilling his sexual needs, or just laugh at this glimpse of (what I thought then was) teenage behavior in a grown man. Unfortunately, what I ended up choosing then was laughter. I felt terrible about it afterwards—that inadvertent guffaw and snort—but here I was, years later, hands clasped on a door, and it was just this ability to turn surprise into mockery in one breath that was earning me money. One man’s mortification was another’s paid pleasure.