Edge Play X (27 page)

“For the capitalist
pig.”

Compton
picked it up and secured it to his head.

X saw that there was still one thing
in the case. It sat alone now, displayed on the satin lining. She knew that
Compton
had brought it because he wanted her to put it on
him, so she didn’t bother to ask him if he wanted to wear it. Instead, X leaned
over to him, undid his pants, and pulled them down to his ankles.
 
Then, she took the plastic implement and slid
it over his hard penis. X pushed it back to the base of his cock and then
connected the ring around the back of his testicles, locking it, using the key
that she picked out of the case.
A male chastity belt.
She attached the key with its tiny key ring to the buckle on her shoe while he
zipped his pants back up.

Next, X opened the box and removed her
own mask. She held it against her face and then turned away from
Compton
. He lifted the black ribbons and tied them
tightly above her chignon, lifting his hand to grasp her privates after he had
finished and then quickly pulling his hand away.

“Oh, the invitations, I forgot the
invitations!” he said, whacking the forehead of his mask.

X let out an irritated groan.

“Just kidding,” he said as he pulled
them from the jacket of the coat that sat crumpled on the seat. X’s father used
to do a similar trick to X’s mother when they were in the checkout line at the
grocery store. He would tell her that he had forgotten his wallet and she would
fall for it every time. “Are you ready?” he asked.

X slipped into her coat.

“Yes, Terry, I am.”

14.

As X walked
across the pebbled drive towards the chateau, shielded from the late winter
chill by the feathered coat she wore and followed by an obsequious man linked
to her by a leather leash, a billionaire wearing a pink pig mask and following
a woman arrayed with feathers, the hilarity of the scene became apparent to
her, this image of the fowl leading the swine.

They made
their way up a set of wide stone steps before they arrived at the door. X
knocked, and a few seconds later the door was opened by a man dressed in a
tuxedo and top hat. He wore a simple white mask on his face which covered his
visage entirely, making him appear doll like, as if he were made out of
porcelain. With a sweep of his arm, he directed X and Compton into the main
hall, a space illuminated by a large crystal chandelier which hung from above.

A few steps
ahead, a man and a woman stood on the black and white checkered marble floor.
The woman, a long-legged and big breasted blond, her nipples erect from the
cool air which entered the room each time the door was opened, was wearing only
stiletto heels, a miniscule black thong, and a small black mask encrusted with
rhinestones which caught the light with her every movement. Her large red pout
of a mouth was taped shut with bright red tape, covered with one large “X” that
crisscrossed over her lips and extended from the edges of her nostrils to the
sides of her chin. In her arms, she held a wide silver tray covered with a
variety of chocolate candies.

The man
next to her was shirtless and wore leather pants similar to
Compton
’s. He was also masked,
as everyone at this soiree would be. His mask, shaped from leather, extended
down towards his goatee, sweeping over the line of his jaw, making it appear
almost as if he were wearing a Roman helmet. The sharp peaks of the mask
coupled with the obvious strength of his body made him appear soldier-like,
threatening.

When the
man asked in French for their invitations,
Compton
handed the man two
rectangles of paper. The man examined them both, needing to compare the unique
numbers that were written in the upper right corners of each card to numbers on
the sheet on his clipboard.
 

As they
waited for the man to find the numbers on his list, X reached over, picked up a
small chocolate candy, and popped it into her mouth. When she went to pick up
another, the man stopped her with a wag of his finger, then drew a large X on
the top of her right hand.

“Only one
for each person,” he said in French.

The man
located the corresponding numbers and crossed them off with his pen. X was
unable to read the invitations that were now in the man’s hands and wished that
she had asked
Compton
to look at them while
they were still in the limo. She did see that they appeared to be hand
calligraphied
,
the invitation written on flower embossed silk paper.

The floor
below them pulsed with the music that was being played in the basement where
partygoers danced. Ahead of them, a curved marble staircase swept up to the
second floor, and to either side, wide doorways led to a dimly-lit salon on
their left and a dining room on their right. From every direction, unable to be
drowned out by the pulsing music or occasional laugh or conversation, were the
sounds of pleasure, some high and others low, some female and others male. X
began to grow aroused upon hearing them, and her pulse quickened as it began to
sink into her that they were at an orgy, an event that she had never before
attended but had always wondered about.

The man who
had opened the door for them took her coat and hung it along with the others on
a long coat rack. X noticed how the eyes off each of those in the room with her
ran up and down her body, measuring her. They were undressing her with their
eyes, she knew, mentally erasing the already scanty material covering her most
private of places.
 

The mask,
however, and the way it obscured her countenance, allowed her to retain a
certain dignity. Their stares could not penetrate the mask, and X was able to
see herself as if looking through their eyes, stripped down bare with only the
mask remaining. She paused for a moment in the awareness before yanking on
Compton
’s leash and leading
him into the petite salon.
 

The same
music from below was pouring out of speakers at the corners of the room, a
digitized percussion with hints of the Indian
mridangam
and
kanjira
, the music hypnotic and trance-inducing.

The room
was full of people, their attention barely interrupted by the entrance of X and
Compton
. Many of the people were either watching the
performance taking place on a white ottoman at the center of the room or
partaking in their own erotic pursuits.

X could
see, at the edges of the room, every combination of pairings. Man rubbed
against man, woman against woman, man against woman (or women), the bodies
pressing against each other over plush furniture or Chippendale chairs, the
people whispering to one another, the whole scene reflected from a large mirror
that sat above a wide fireplace. X caught her reflection in the mirror, and for
a brief moment, she did not recognize the person staring back at her. Instead,
she thought that she was looking at another partygoer, a different woman, until
finally her mind made the connection that it was her own reflection that she
was seeing and that indeed, it was her in this strange place.

The thick
smell of sex was in the air. The musk of it mixed with sweat and cologne and
the sweet scents of fruity drinks and made its way into every corner and
crevice, up every nostril as if it were a crude, vulgar incense, the scent of
debauchery.

Next to a
17
^th
century oil painting, a woman was pressed up against the wall,
her cheek next to the plaster and her skirt hiked up, a muscular man fucking
her ferociously from behind. An auburn-haired woman was stretched out on a
chaise lounge, naked on the red Jacobean fabric, another woman kneeling on the
floor, head between the other’s legs. A man stood next to them, watching,
grasping his dick in his hand, jerking it now and then. Tucked in a corner, a
woman poured white wine over her bare breasts and giggled as a Mediterranean
man lapped it off, the gentleman following the stream down to her crotch.

And there
on the ottoman, a slim young woman kneeled, her pink nipples pointing toward
the snowy
matelasse
upholstery. X and Compton watched
as she was entered from the back and front, her ponytail bouncing with each
man’s thrust, her body lean and flawless in the dim light.

X and
Compton stood still for a few minutes as the middle-aged man connected to the
woman’s rear finished with her, pounding his hips onto her rosy ass and
throwing his head back as his orgasm arrived. When he finished, almost
instantly, another man was ready to enter her, picking out a condom from a bowl
on the floor and sliding it on before starting his turn. And a few minutes
later when the man being fellated shot his load down her throat, it was not a
man, but a woman, who took his place, the brunette opening her legs wide and
leaning back in delight as she was licked and fingered.

X thought
about the woman on the ottoman. How many men would she be with tonight as the
guests ran a train on her? How many partners in the course of her life? She was
a pretty woman, porcelain-skinned. What did she think about when she was in the
supermarket? Would she feel normal when she made herself breakfast the next
morning?

X
appreciated that the woman was wearing a mask. The anonymity allowed X to view
the woman on the ottoman as an idea, a merciful depersonalization, a ritual
vessel. Once, X had been with two men in the span of 24 hours. She and a lover
had broken up in the morning and that night she had called an old boyfriend and
had ended up in his bed. The experience had made her feel shame mixed with a
particular and peculiar sweetness. She hadn’t even showered in between.

The woman
on the ottoman seemed to have no self-consciousness, no shame. Surely she was
aware that she was being watched. The voyeurism improved the experience for
everyone. A thousand paths to enlightenment, and this was one of them, the
ecstatic rapture of the body. There must be a certain freedom in that, X
imagined, a certain euphoria and enlightenment in letting go of expectations,
the ideals that society held of what a good woman should be, the superimposed
person that others saw when they looked at you walking down the street.

Compton
and X shifted their attention. In a corner, a
woman in a large powdered wig and billowing gown was kneeling before two men
seated closely together, her attention alternating between them every few
minutes, her head bouncing above each man’s crouch when their turn had arrived.

Compton
said to X, “They’re getting off with her head,”
and X let out a loud laugh.

X looked at
Compton
and assumed that his penis was hard and pressing
against the chastity belt that he wore under his pants. She reached toward him
and flicked his nipple rings. She reached up and tugged at his collar. She was
aroused.

It wasn’t
an S and M party; X could see that much. It was an orgy and as simple as that.
People either fucked or paused to talk, dance, smoke, eat or drink between
fucks. Creamy white asses, (and even a few mocha ones) were spread open,
revealing pink moist flesh, smooth and glistening like flowers covered with
dew.
 

S and M. X
thought about the letters of the abbreviation, the curves of the S and the
sharp lines and angles of the M. She liked the pronunciation of the letters,
the way the
esss
and the
emmm
sounds rolled out of her mouth, the shapes that it made in their creation, her
tongue nearly touching the area behind her teeth to make the ‘s’ sound, it
escaping like the air out of the mouth of a balloon, and then, her lips pursing
together to sound the ‘m,’ puckering as if to give a kiss. She liked the
origins of the terms, even, the history of sadism and masochism linking them to
the French Marquis de
Sade
and then to the Austrian
Leopold von
Sacher-Masoch
.
X appreciated that a whole subset of sexual gratification, what had once been
considered a perversion and aberration, had been named for writers, a sad sorry
bunch most of them were, prone to melancholy and delusions of grandeur, but
artists nonetheless, artists of the arrangement of words.

They continued through the room and
entered the grand salon. A bar had been set up in the corner and people waited
patiently in line to be served. X surveyed the room. It was similar to the one
that they had just left but larger. The wood floor, bearing the patina of age,
was covered in the center with a thick woven carpet. The walls, paneled at the
bottom and wallpapered at the top, were connected to the high ceiling with an
ornate molding. The tall windows in the room were covered with thick drapes.

Men and women cast glances or slick
smiles towards X and
Compton
. Determinations were made from the length of
returned glances or whether or not a smile was echoed. Seduction was a delicate
thing. It could be as easy as a come-hither smile or as forthright as a hand
wrapped around an exposed penis. Invitations were sent and either accepted or
denied.