The Sensual Mirror (4 page)

“What do people do there? Maybe I won’t fit in.”

“Oh, there’s nothing to do. We sit around. Sometimes we sing. Sometimes we are just silent. Then Babba gives a talk and answers questions.”

“Well, all right.”

Just then there was a loud knock at the door of the steam room. A false falsetto voice called out. “Can I turn the steam off, or would you two rather stay all covered up and cozy?”

Freddie, one of the attendants, was an overtly gay man of twenty-four, short and chubby. He generally gave the impression of being asexual, so his homosexual veneer was taken as an artifact of identification to keep himself from facing his essential lack of desire or desirability. He was destined, if he maintained the same manner long enough, to evolve into a classic auntie, possibly complete with frills on his cuffs. His bit, acerbic and fluffy, ranged from the irrelevant to the amusing and was irritating only when one was obsessed with a task or had a headache. He had been at the club a year while he took courses in watch repair. His goal was to own a shop which handled rare and antique clocks.

“Turn it off, Freddie,” Martin called out.

“Can I peek?” Freddie shrilled.

“If watching a conversation turns you on, come right in,” Martin said as he slid the door open. He had padded quickly to the sliding door and pushed it aside precisely to give the attendant a start.

But Freddie was waiting for him, and Martin found himself no more than a foot away from the theatrically leering man. Freddie slid his glance down Martin’s front until it came to rest at his crotch.

“Some conversation,” Freddie said turning gracefully on one heel and sauntering away. “I’ve read all about that body language.”

Martin smiled after the retreating figure. Unable and unwilling to probe the complexity of Freddie’s persona, he took the man totally at face value, which served perfectly as the adjustment which allowed them to work in the same place with a minimum of friction. The chubby man’s style was so consciously outrageous that it never would have occurred to Martin that it was a valid and viable way to speak the truth of one’s plain perceptions. Never having been in contact with any urge to fondle another man’s genitals, Martin could only view the suggestion of such a thing as a baroque form of humor.

At that instant, Robert put his hand on Martin’s shoulder. Martin winced violently, his entire right side evincing a sharp, momentary spasm.

“Oh, sorry,” Robert said, “I didn’t mean to startle you.” He pulled his hand back gently.

“Oooohhh wheeeee!” Freddie trilled as he waddled down the tiled hallway into the locker room. He was by this time projecting his inner states to a vast audience far more sensitive and appreciative than anything one might ever expect at the Palace.

Martin and Robert stepped into the walkway. “Well,” Martin said somewhat briskly. “Shower and then close the place down. The night crew will be here to clean up in a few minutes.”

“I’ll meet you out front in fifteen minutes then?” Robert asked. “What sort of food do you like?”

Martin shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s your show. Why don’t you choose?”

Robert smiled, and the two men went into the shower room, taking a stalls at opposite ends. As Martin lathered his body, and sluiced the perspiration from his skin, he thought of a snake shedding, of that delightful process whereby the accumulations of a year are simply eased off one’s body. If it could only be that easy for people, he thought, and suddenly, unaccountably, a feeling of happiness bubbled from his solar plexus and up into his chest. The water cascaded over his head and down his face and he opened his eyes to find that the shower room seemed five times brighter than it ordinarily did, as though a brilliant new bulb had just gone on.

All the while, Robert, who knew that there wasn’t anything existing which isn’t miraculous, had visions of the cosmic snake swallowing its own tail. He said the name “Babba” to himself, barely whispering, and then smiled.

The conventional world had lost all reality for Gail Goddard. All that mattered was the shimmering aura of color that surrounded her perceptions. The dominant tone was blue, a bright mantle of light which blessed everything she saw the way a summer sky without clouds transforms the earth beneath it. She sat in the back seat of a taxi and felt as though she were being wafted aloft on a glider, skimming mountain peaks on cushiony thermals. Her nipples rubbed against the inside of her blouse and her thighs chafed pleasantly against each other. Her entire body sang with the vitality of youth and well-being.

She was twenty-seven years old, as thin as a model, with just a touch of plumpness about the buttocks, a soft swelling that lifted men off balance when they looked at her but which caused her no little grief in trying somehow to remove it. Her yellow-green eyes sparkled in a face that would have driven Botticelli to his canvas to capture the high cheekbones and androgynous mouth, the upper lip firm and precise, the lower lip suggestive of a pout.

She inhabited a mood of total euphoria, one which her day at school hadn’t been able to faze. She taught fourth grade in a public school in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, a Hassidic neighborhood lately inhabited by Puerto Ricans. The sidewalks resembled a divorce court, with the two ethnic groups arguing why they should be allowed to live separately even though they shared the same block. The ultra-orthodox Jews sent their children to their own schools, so among Gail’s charges, thirty-two eleven-year-olds, many barely spoke English. Her job often involved a good deal of screaming and threatening, for she had not yet reached that level of maturity which elicits spontaneous respect from children. Also, she felt she had to uphold the official educational dogma, and so dutifully taught the uncomprehending urchins all about the French and Indian War, the formal structure of the United States government, and other bits of esoterica.

Were it left to her, she would ground them firmly in the scope of the English language and mathematics, and devote the rest of the time to music and dance and games. Yet she was too unsure of herself to be so daring, and in any case, such radicalism would have cost her her job. So, like all her colleagues, she acquiesced in the stupidity.

After classes, she’d returned home and spent the afternoon literally fluttering about, bathing, getting a bit high, staring out the window, playing with her cat. She was going to see Julia at eight, and until then had nothing to do but think about the extraordinary event of the night before, Eliot’s proposal of marriage.

It had been a year since she’d met him in Julia’s office. She’d been somewhat put off by the short, squat man with his blunt fingers and vulgar staring at her breasts. But at the same time, something in her had tingled. Perhaps it was the wealth he controlled, or some unworked-out fantasy about being whisked about the world in a private jet. The speculation about prostitution, which visits most people who are honest with themselves, had struck her sharply, given that fact that it could become a reality, and it carried more clout than she’d expected. She was old and knowledgeable enough to understand that her probable destiny, given the way her life was moving, held nothing more fascinating than becoming a spinster schoolteacher, or the wife of a high school principal. Unless she were rescued by some utopian adventure or a pleasant bit of wickedness, she had many dull years to look forward to.

When Eliot came on to her, directly, strongly, holding out a promise of promises, she found herself responding to the potential behind the invitation. He took her number, called her two days later, and that night she was lying on his bed, looking at herself in the mirror fastened to his ceiling, as he reamed her wildly and piled into her like a fullback blasting into a line. That much she was prepared for, but what took her totally by surprise was the tenderness that followed. Her orgasm had been hard and fierce, a grinding affair which had her tucking her cunt down between her thighs, contracting her buttocks until they were rock hard, and offering Eliot nothing but a simple hot hole to fuck. Her pelvic resistance was offset by the wealth of expressiveness showing on her face. He had to fuck her for more than an hour to get past all the obvious defenses she threw up around letting go. It was a game he enjoyed more than any other. It was always a bit strange for him when beautiful women went to bed with him. He knew that they were usually mesmerized by his wealth, but he didn’t understand how that translated into the odd forms of abandon they manifested once they were both naked. He did not have the capacity for abstract thought which would have uncovered the connecting factor: the same force which drove Eliot to power and money revealed itself in his love-making, a kind of sensitive brutality almost irresistible to vulnerable women.

Gail’s attitude had been, “Let the son of a bitch work!” She found herself curious about what he would be like, what it would feel like to have all that energy exploding inside her. But she wasn’t going to give anything away. Ironically, by holding back, she gave everything away. For Eliot knew how to go after a woman, how to punish and how to caress, how to thrust and how to hold back, how to tease and how to satisfy. And he was tireless. And a true enjoyer. He moved into her from a score of different angles, moving until he could feel the juices flowing in her and then, before she could reposition herself, would shift direction and speed, catching her off guard, probing yet another stretch of her secret cunt. All the while his hands and eyes glutted themselves on the feast beneath him, the naked breasts, so bold and defenseless, and her priceless ass, lean and lush.

The part he liked best was pressing his lips against her mouth and catching her moans in his throat. After a long time, she began to break up inside. Her legs parted and rose into the air, her arms circled his shoulders, her tongue flooded his mouth, her eyes flew back inside her head, and she pumped her hips steadily and wantonly into his pistoning cock. When she began to come he felt the beginnings of his own orgasm. They held on to one another tightly and then let go, forgetting who was tall and who was short, who was beautiful and who was ugly, who was rich and who was poor, who was man and who was woman.

Later he was solicitous, kind, even making them both a midnight snack, and over coffee they talked about their lives, openly, simply. The magic of sex had worked its wonders once more and two people who had been anonymous creatures now saw one another as intimates.

When Gail woke up the following morning, she suffered an emotional hangover. There were several minutes when she might have pushed herself out of bed, dressed, and left without a backward glance, glad to have had the experience and even happier to be finished with it. Eliot lay on his side, his face darkened by a one-day growth of beard, showing his age in the texture of his skin. She slid over to the far side of the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress. Something caused her to hesitate. She felt his eyes on her back and knew he had awakened also. He rolled over toward her. She half turned. It was a very naked moment. They did not have the excuse of nighttime intoxication; of the wine, of the adventure of exploration . . . the almighty first time. They knew each other’s smells and blemishes and evidences of mortality. They had heard each other’s stories. They had served as handles for each other’s fantasies. They were even, and could quit clean, without blame, without bad feeling, without any imbalance.

But something drew her back, some shifting heaviness in her chest which had her sagging back, falling by degrees onto the sheet, her face coming to rest on his thigh. She shuddered, closed her eyes, and took his cock into her mouth. As she went down on him, he ran his fingers through her hair. She blew him until he came and she swallowed his sperm, the first man with whom she’d done that in nearly a year.

They saw each other heavily for two or three months after that. She wasn’t taken for a ride in his jet, but she ate at restaurants she hadn’t known existed, places which had no sign out front and no prices on the menu. She got to know what it felt like to drive to East Hampton in a Bently. Expensive trinkets collected on her dressing table. When he gave her a brooch worth eight thousand dollars she knew she had crossed a definite line. And it took nothing for him to slip a folded packet of hundred-dollar bills into her hand and say, “Why don’t you treat yourself to something beautiful, Beautiful?”

One morning she could no longer hide from herself the fact that she was hooked. She liked the sensation of floating about on a magic carpet of money. She liked the flow which surrounded powerful people. She liked the way he fucked her.

“All right,” she said to herself, “I’m a kept woman. I’ve had fantasies about it, and it’s happened. Now what?”

Then the game began to get really interesting. For while he had her, she also had him. He had developed an addiction for the taste of her, and he followed that through with the same practical ruthlessness which marked his business dealings. One night he slid beneath her, his mouth sucking at her cunt, and asked her to pee on him. She had grown faint and for the first and only time in their relationship, made a mistake. She was thrown into a scene for which she had only a hearsay scenario, and so she told him to beg for it, which she guessed might be what he expected. He had pushed her off him so hard she landed on the floor, flying five feet from the middle of the bed. The fall knocked the wind out of her and when she opened her eyes he was standing over her. His face was a frightening mask.

“You get to me,” he said, his fists clenched. “And I’m a little crazy about you. So much so that I want to drink your piss. Which is as weird for me as it must be for you. But don’t you ever lose your respect for me. Even if I’m licking your asshole, don’t you lose your respect for me. And I’ll return the favor.”

An illumination filled her then, and she felt something which she had forgotten could exist, that sudden direct perception which brings another human being into powerful focus. She could see him with total clarity, down to the lines of his thought. To have called it love would not have been accurate, but in terms of the complete emotional awakening she experienced, the effect was the same.