Erotic Paradise (4)

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Erotic Paradise (10)

Lisa 16 locked out.

He and I arrived at my room and he didn’t look more subdued, but he didn’t say a word.

Those lamps at the bottom were lit, the beds changed, and the covers were neatly folded and ready for the night.

I guided him to the center of the room and told him to stand quietly. I stood back and looked at him, just quietly watching him. His eyes were blindfolded and he was crying. He was trying so hard to appear that refined male look, holding his breath, that the subtle & soft sounds he was making were actually empowering. His dick was still beautifully hard.

I walked through the double doors, not realizing how sensitive his hearing was. I looked back at his side profile, back at the indeed comforting form he had that look of being shackled in contrast to the civilized décor of the room. He looked even more flushed and his hair even thicker due to the white eye patch.

I sat at the table in silence, feeling a headache, but not actually a pain. It was a very loud, terrible noise. My body ached for him, yet I felt paralyzed and numb. I reached out, picked up his file, and looked at the large, sleek, black-and-white photo of him in a pullover sweater and tinted aviator’s glasses, smiling at the camera. I close the file and put it back.

I leaned my elbows on the underside of the table, my teeth pressed against my knuckles, literally biting them, before I realized what I was doing and stopped. Then I stood up and peeled off my clothes, getting impatient with them and almost tearing them up before finally just letting them fall to the floor.

Naked, I walked back into the bedroom. I stood in front of him and looked at his face again, sliding my fingers up to his face, lifting it diagonally from the outer edge of the white collar so I could see it better in the bright light. Then my thumb went above his lower lip and stroked his cheek.

His skin was like silk, the kind of skin that only men have, not soft like a woman’s skin, but like silk. That intoxicating feeling of feeling that I owned him, of being able to do anything to him was just irresistible, and yet it wasn’t the kind of feeling that it should have been! It wasn’t… I felt locked out of him, and he wasn’t the one who locked me out. All of this locked me out! I could have whipped him again and made him crawl on the ground. He would have crawled on the ground. And I would have been locked out!

He was still agitated and almost seemed frantic. I touch him and it gets worse. I reach back with my hand and undo the belt that holds his arms and hands. Before he can break free on his own, I loosen his collar and toss it aside.

His whole body seemed to sigh as the belt fell to the floor, the words knotting nervously.

Then his hands came back to life. It was as if he was about to mosey his wrists, and then he put his hands up to the blindfold, and his fingers danced in front of the blindfold without touching it. Then he reached out to me.

I jumped up. He grabs my arm and presses his fingers over the whole thing, leading me forward. Then, realizing I was naked, he caressed the sides of my body and my breasts, making faint sounds of surprise.

Before I could stop him, he had pulled me to where his body was and forced me against his chest. His dick thumped against my sex and kissed me in that shocking way. I realized corporately that he had picked me up.

I reached upward and pushed his blindfold away from his eyes, which were like a supernatural part of his body, a lightscape of bright light and blue color, unlike anything else on his body which were two living spheres reflecting bright light. I’m going crazy, I thought. I was very excited indeed.

But I couldn’t see anything anymore. He’s kissing me again, and we’re about to go down on our knees when he tugs at me. It was hot, like I was going to lose consciousness, and the bright lights around me went out and the walls melted. He unfolded my body on the carpet and went in with a quick, intense scraping motion that I was lost and unable to stop. The body blazed up immediately.

I moaned into his mouth and then my breathing stopped, my body was stiff and waves of pleasure erupted, wave after wave, until I almost screamed out, knowing for sure that I couldn’t continue or I would really die. He was ramming against me, right into my core I could see the column of his word against a burst of blackness in the middle of my head I felt my own fluids suddenly spurting out against him slightly, in that impossible state of beatitude, the kind of sensation that is indeed raging. At the same time he met me forward and growled right on top of it, accelerating, ramming deeper and deeper until I was pulverized, screaming “no, no, no” “oh my god” “shit” “Fuck it” “No, stop” and finally giving up. Like something broke, cracked into pieces, unable to make a sound or move.

After a long moment, I push him slightly, push his shoulders, his chest. I loved the way he pressed against me, his head resting on my shoulder, I loved the smell of his hair in the sun. I pushed him slightly, loving the fact that I might not be able to move him. Then I lay perfectly still.

When I opened my eyes, I saw an almost amorphous flash. Gradually I saw again the bed, the lamp, my mask floating on the wall and my own true face.

He sat up and sat next to me, his bent knee resting against my thigh.

He just sat there, his hair disheveled, his face holes still wet and very red, his mouth a little stiff. His eyes were huge, dream-like, filled with whatever sight he saw. He was looking at me. The situation was very much like waking up on the bank of a river somewhere, where you think you are completely alone, only to see this unusual man sitting right next to you, this handsome man looking at you as if he had never seen a woman in his life.

He doesn’t seem very crazy, dangerous, or tricky. But he looks extremely unpredictable, and he always has.

I sat up, backed up very slowly, and then stood up. He watched me, but didn’t move.

I walked over to the dresser, grabbed my casual clothes from the chair and put them on. Thinking : How strange, this dress, this envelope formed by cotton fabric and lace, it should protect me from him, I button call the manager. His face changed.

Flashes of raw fear appear on his face, then a look of despair. We gazed at each other, his eyes secreting moisture slightly. I felt a lump in my throat. It’s all coming to an end, I thought. But what does that mean? I don’t even know what I meant by the words I uttered to myself, but why say them? He looked forward and saw the spot to my left, as if he was considering something and couldn’t make up his mind.

Daniel walked in almost immediately. Daniel often takes care of my room.

His face immediately showed shock as he saw a slave sitting there, unshackled, revealing a very relaxed posture, not paying any attention to the two of us.

Elliot slowly climbed to his feet. He continued to stare, obviously thinking, still only vaguely looking at the fact: we are in that place.

Daniel looked relieved, but still unsure.

“All right,” I said. “Take him in for the night. There’s a bath, a full-body massage, and the use of a therapy lamp.

“I stopped and rubbed the back of my head. His routine. Routine work. Gotta get him off me or I’m gonna go crazy. Must get him to do what he signed up to do here. “Okay. Classes with the other volunteer slaves in the morning. At eight o’clock, help Dana with her exercises, and at nine o’clock serve Emmett food and drink. I’ll call Scott and see if he can bring him to class at ten o’clock for a demonstration.”

No, no, not Scott. He’ll fall in love with Scott. But something has to be done. It has to be… Okay! Scott, let Scott use him to do a demonstration in the class, and that’s doing one thing. Scott wouldn’t let him down.

“Take the afternoon off, then serve at the table or at the bar all afternoon. Everyone can watch, but don’t touch.”

What else is there? Can’t think. He’ll turn on Scooter.

“If there’s any misbehavior, beat the shit out of him. But no one, and I mean no one shall actually touch him, not even Scott, I mean…”

I’m going to drown.

“I want him to rest between four and six o’clock and then be back here at six sharp.”

“Yes ma’am.” Daniel said. A very uncomfortable, worried look.

“What the hell is wrong with you?” I said. “Has everyone here lost their minds?”

“Excuse me!” He quickly responded, taking Elliot’s arm.

“Get him outta here!” I said.

Elliot looked at me. Don’t be like that! I had a terrible feeling that I had let him down completely, that for the first time in my whole “secret life” I had not immediately provided what was needed. It was an agony that flashed through my temples like an electric current. I turned my back.

Lisa 17 is obsessed: 24 hours.

I sat there and just gazed at those two things as if they were living things, not two big dirty canvas suitcases with keys in the locks and hateful little file boxes on top. An impulse came over me to hide them inside the closet, or under the lace cover of the bed.

The time was twelve o’clock. The breakfast tray was cold and untouched. I was still sitting, leaning back on my pillows, in my pajamas, drinking my second pot of coffee. I had gotten less than four hours of sleep all night. Between ten and eleven a.m., I knew he was in the classroom with tall, dark-skinned, handsome Scott. I tried hard to sleep at that hour because I couldn’t bear to think about it. But once the mind is jealous, you can’t fall asleep. You just lie there and stare.

However, I don’t feel bad about it right now. It’s something I’m just about to begin to realize.

In fact, I feel better than I have in years. I can’t remember ever feeling as good as I do now, or can I? It occurred to me that we don’t have enough words in the English language to describe the feeling of euphoria. We need at least twenty words to convey the nuances of the sexual sensation, to convey the excitement, to convey the “tossing and turning away from oneself into a state of ecstasy,” to convey the intense combination of ecstasy and sin. Yes, “enchanted”, that’s the word.

Now, these two suitcases here are not really easy to obtain.

It’s not enough to say, “I’m Lisa, and I want Elliot Slater’s personal stuff. I want Elliot Slater’s personal things. Bring them to my room.” You don’t bring a slave’s clothes and personal effects into the paddock. You don’t send in document boxes. Such things are very confidential; when a slave finally leaves here, he becomes a generalist, and the document case is the personal belongings of such a generalist.

Who makes all these rules? You guessed it.

But I’ve done it by: slightly combining lies with logic. After all, I have my own reasons, I don’t have to explain the situation. The bags have been unpacked, haven’t they? It’s been inventoried, the clothes hung in plastic bags and put in mothballs, right? So what’s the big secret? I have urgent personal reasons for requesting all of Mr. Elliot Slater’s personal belongings. All of Mr. Elliot Slater’s personal effects. I’ll sign for everything in my full name, including his cash and documents. Organize his things and bring them here.

Another wave of desire hit me like a searing wind. I wanted him so badly. Both my arms gripped my waist, bent over, pulled my muscles taut, and waited for the wave to die down. Very suddenly, I remembered my early days in high school. I had experienced waves of the same excruciating sexual hunger then, seemingly purely physical, with no possibility of fulfillment, no promise of love. Some ugly memories that I remember feeling grotesque, as if I had a secret in my heart that made me an exile.

And yet it’s exciting because once again it feels so young and crazy and alarming all at the same time.

This time it’s about another living being, about Elliot Slater. Slater, this hot wind, this physical domination of mind and body. If I stopped to think about it, really think about it, I would be in a terrible state of disappointment.

I slid off the bed and walked quietly across the floor to reach the suitcase. The suitcase was dirty, the corners of the leather showing signs of rubbing and tearing. It was very heavy. I turned the key in the lock of the one on the left and undid the strap.

Everything inside was very different. A faint scent of masculine perfume emanated from the neatly folded clothes. A great brown velvet blouse with leather patches at the elbows. A Norfolk jacket in tweed, two fine Brooks Brothers three-piece suits, a couple of blue work shirts, stiffly sized, ironed, and wrapped in plastic, a couple of army-issue pullover sweaters, and two khaki jungle jackets that were really worn out, with pockets that crunched from airplane and parking ticket stubs. A few pairs of Chilkie loafers and Bally loafers, and a couple pairs of expensive jeans. Mr. Slater was flying first class.

I sit on the carpet, legs crossed. I touch his velvet blouse with my fingers and smell the perfume of tweed. The fibers of the gray-headed sweater reveal the scent of cologne. Lots of gray, brown, and silver.

No real color except for the blue work shirt. Everything was clean except for the dirty hunting jacket. A small plastic box with a nice Rolex watch in it. It should have been in the document box. In one pocket there was an address , a plain blue general ledger and a piece of underwear tucked in, which was a… yes, a diary. No, cover it up. That’s enough. But please note: the lettering is legible. He wrote in black ink. Not a ballpoint pen, but black ink.

My hand jerked back as if it had touched something hot. There’s an uncomfortable feeling in my stomach at the sight of what he’s written. My hand reaches for the document case and turns the key.

One year old passport, great photo, smiling Mr. Slater. Why not smile. He has traveled to Iran, Lebanon, Morocco, and half of Europe, as well as Egypt, South Africa, El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Brazil, all within twelve months.

Ten credit cards that will expire before he leaves here except for the American Express Gold Card. And five thousand dollars. Five thousand dollars. I counted it twice as cash.

A California driver’s license, another handsome face with an irresistible smile, pretty much the best driver’s license picture I’ve ever seen. A wallet check , a Berkeley Hills (North Campus) address book. About five blocks away from the house where I grew up and where my father still lives. I know those blocks there.

There were no student apartments that high up, only weathered modern mahogany houses, old stone cottages with pointed roofs and diamond-shaped windows. Everywhere there was a building, like a giant rock clinging to a cliff, all half-hidden by a thick forest that swallowed up the winding sidewalks and curving streets. So he was living in that place.

I raised my knees up and scratched my hair with my hands. I felt guilty in my mind, as if he would suddenly appear in the doorway behind me and say, “Leave those things. My body is yours, but these things are not.”

But there’s nothing personal here except for that diary. After all, why would he bring a book he wrote himself? Maybe to remind himself at the end of two years what kind of man he turned out to be? Maybe because he always did.

I turned the other suitcase over, unlocked it, and undid the ring clasp.

More fashionable male clothing was seen. A beautiful black tuxedo, wrapped in plastic; five men’s shirts, a couple of pairs of first-rate cowboy boots, perhaps made of snakeskin, perhaps made to order; a Burberry raincoat, a couple of Kashmir wool sweatshirts, a couple of tartan scarves, all of them very English, a pair of woolen driving mittens; and a real camel’s hair sport coat, which was really nice.

Now for the “money” and “success” part, so to speak. There are two cracked, creased receipts for automobile service charges in a guidebook to the world’s ski resorts, which is stained from constant perusal. Mr. Slater drives or used to drive a fifteen-year-old Porsche. It’s an old, upside-down tub-shaped Porsche, the kind no one would mistake for a Porsche. And two folded Dover paperbacks of Sir Richard Burton’s travels in Arabia. Sir Richard Burton’s Travels in Arabia, which really contains a lot of personal scribbles.

And, yes, there is a brand new copy of Beirut: Twenty-Four Hours at the end, still sealed in its plastic sleeve, added by the publisher, with a sticker on the front proclaiming that the book has won such-and-such an award. Gee, I hope there’s no plastic sleeve over the whole book.

I turned the book over. Saw the photographs, the incomparable Elliot, hair blown about by the wind, wearing a pullover & jungle jacket, looking forlorn but proper ladies and gentlemen, this man has lived through disaster and risked his life to take these photographs that inescapable smile looks melancholic and wise. I had that uncomfortable feeling again, as if my high school sweetheart had just walked through the door of my family room.

Well, I’ve carried it this far, what’s a little plastic cover? I mean, I’m not going to damage the book. Feeling like a thief, I ripped the book away, stood up, and walked back to the coffee and the bed.

Beirut, a city battered to pieces by years of ethnic war. It’s brilliant subject matter, the most powerful kind of photojournalism body, in which there’s a little bit of everything, and yet the architecture of each photo, ancient and modern, death and technology, chaos and deliberation, is so skillful that you develop a shuddering thrill, the kind of thrill that only art can provide.

I think the vision of the shot is accurate, the faces are very expressive and the forms are moving. Using light and shadow like paint, the darkroom technique is perfect. He probably washed his own black and white photographs. In color, the dirt and blood are able to embrace each other, like the texture revealed in modern sculptures on the theme of war.

I started reading the comments section where he also writes comments. These comments are more than just the caption part of the photo. The content is subtle, clean, almost a parallel story. In it, the personal part is subordinate to the power of the part witnessed and documented.

I put the book down. Drink more coffee. Well, Eliot is a good photographer and Eliot can write.

But what does he think of himself? Why did he come here? For two whole years of imprisonment? What motivated him to do such a thing?

Why am I snooping through his stuff like this? Doing things like that?

I took another sip of my coffee and got out of bed, walking around the room.

It wasn’t actually a very nice thrill, it was an uncomfortable unease. Twice I reminded myself that : I could call him in any time I wanted, but that would be wrong, it would be wrong for him, and it would be wrong for me. I could hardly bear it.

I walked over to the table next to the bed and picked up the phone. “If you can find Scott, find him for me okay, I’ll wait.” I said.

Twelve forty-five. Scott is now drinking the only after-lunch whiskey available.

“Lisa, I was going to call you.”

“What is it?”

“Thank you for your little gift this morning. I loved every minute of it. But I wouldn’t have expected to acquire him so soon. What did you expect? That look of giving him up? I wouldn’t believe you if you told me that he let you down. Are you okay with that?”

“One question at a time, Scott. Let me ask the first question. How’s it going?”

“Eh, I showed him in a trainer’s class, you know, lessons on how to understand a slave’s reactions, how to spot his weaknesses. The whole thing drove him crazy. I would have thought that he would have been very excited when the class began to examine him, but he was in complete control. Nine times out of ten I’d say he’s a moral fifteen. Why did you let me have him so soon?”

“Did you teach him anything new?”

“Well… I taught him to say that he can tolerate more than he thinks he can tolerate. You know, the trainers examined him, and he heard people talking about him as if he were a specimen. He was unprepared for it all, and it was funny.”

“Do you know anything about him? Anything in particular?”

“There is. He doesn’t indulge in fantasies, he’s fully awake.”

For a moment, I didn’t say anything.

“You know what I’m talking about,” he said. “He’s too worldly to imagine that he ‘deserves’ it all, that he’s ‘born a slave,’ that he’s lost in a world that’s ‘nobler and more moral’ than the real one ‘nobler and more moral’, that is to say, he couldn’t imagine himself lost in all those lovely romances that slaves liked to fabricate for themselves. He knew where he was and what he was doing to himself. He’s as open as any slave I’ve ever dealt with, the kind of slave you’d think would fall apart but doesn’t. Why did you let me have him? Why didn’t you talk to me first?”

“Okay, fine.” I said. “Okay, good.”

I hung up.

I stared at the mess of suitcases. And the copy of Beirut: Twenty-Four Hours lying on the bed.

. He’s not indulging in fantasies. He’s fully awake. You’re right.

I went back to my suitcase and picked up the two tattered, dirty paperbacks by Burton, Almadena and the Autobiography of a Pilgrimage to Mecca. I had already read this one when I was in college at Berkeley a few years ago. Burton the wanderer disguised himself as an Arab in order to enter the forbidden city of Mecca. Bolton, the sexual pioneer. He indulged in the sexual practices of peoples who were so strongly different from the decent English class to which he himself belonged. What does this matter mean for Eliot? I don’t want to read Eliot’s notes. It would be like reading his diary.

But I could see that he had studied them thoroughly. Some passages were underlined, circled, and double-marked with red and black pens, and the butterfly pages were covered with marks. I carefully put the book back, and also put Beirut: Twenty-Four Hours back.

I had to call him in, and yet I couldn’t. I must suppress this desire.

I walked around the room again, straining to feel a something that wasn’t desire. Scott’s tongue shook out the details, and a faint pang of jealousy rose in me, striving to feel something, anything slightly more at home than this enchanted mood.

Again: why would a man who could write a work like Beirut: Twenty-Four Hours come to the “club” as a slave? Does he have to run away from something as ugly as Beirut?

Of course, slaves came here for thousands of reasons. In the early days of the “club” they were mostly marginalized, poorly educated, pretending to be artistic, but highly imaginative, and their careers did not deplete them of their singular energies. “Sadomasochism” was a cultural world for them, totally unrelated to their horrible jobs, and totally unrelated to their repeated inability to get into music, theater, some kind of artistic career.

Now they are generally better educated, usually approaching thirty, enjoy the freedom of extended adolescence, and are ready (and willing) to utilize and explore their desires in the “clubs,” just as they might go to Sobon College for two or three years, engage in Freudian psychoanalysis, and go to California to live in a Buddhist temple, all in the midst of the “clubs” of the world. in California to live in a Buddhist temple.

But they are generally speaking lost in what they are carrying on, because they have not yet become what they are. Eliot Slater’s life is in full swing. Slater’s life is in full swing.

What was his reasoning? He was seduced by our fun and games and slowly became addicted to them, and so alienated himself from all that awaited him there, including the books he could write, the photographs he could take, and the mission to travel around the world, is that it?

The conflict between our tiny universe and the raw reality of Beirut frustrates me. I was physically shaking.

However, this book is not raw. This book is art. This place is art. It occurs to me that Eliot’s reason for being here has nothing to do with “escape” or “denial of the natural”. His reason may have been more to do with Burton’s pilgrimage, and Burton’s obsession and pursuit.

If you arrived in Beirut when the war was in full swing and you could have been killed there by a bullet or by a terrorist bomb, what about coming here? You know you won’t get hurt here on the contrary, you will be taught, taken care of, coddled however, all these things are going to happen to you, these raw insults and exposures that most human beings probably can’t stand.

What did Martin write in the file? “The slave said he wanted to explore his worst fears.”

Yes, the matter had to be for Eliot a one-time adventure, a willful violence against himself, a plunging into something, into those things, those things he feared in a place where he would not be harmed.

The strange thought arose in my mind that he had indeed disguised himself as a slave, just as Burton had disguised himself as an Arab to penetrate the forbidden city. This disguise was “nudity”. And I had discovered his identity in what he owned, in his clothes.

Weird thought, because as far as I know, he’s the perfect slave. He’s been cooperating with us while I’ve been glitching on and off. I’m making up all this boring stuff about him. I shouldn’t be interfering with him!

I poured a fresh cup of coffee and strolled around the room.

Why are we not quite so abominable to Beirut compared to his suffering? Why is our sexual paradise not the worst kind of decadent invention? How can he be taken seriously on any level when he is so skilled at taking all kinds of pictures?

I put down the cup of coffee and touch my temples with both hands. It’s as if these thoughts are stabbing me in the head.

The situation has come up again, as it did on the vacation in California and on the plane ride home is that something is wrong, something is going on inside of me, an accumulation of momentum that I don’t understand and don’t want to lose control of.

“Club: twenty-four hours.” Was that exactly equal weight in his mind? But those pictures couldn’t tell the truth.

For the first time in all these years since the beginning, it occurred to me that I hated the Club for at least a little while. I hated it. I had an irrational desire to push out the walls that surrounded me, to push up the ceiling and get out of here. Something was brewing and had been for a long time.

The phone was ringing. For a long time, I just stared at the phone across the room, thinking: someone should answer it, not realizing that the “someone” was me.

I had a sudden feeling of dread: it was going to be news about Elliot, who had “broken down”.

I picked up the phone grudgingly.

Richard’s voice: “Lisa, did you forget our date?”

“Our what?”

“A date with a pony trainer from Switzerland, Lisa. You know our friend who owns the elegant human stable…”

“Oh, shit.”

“Lisa, this man does have two skills, a wonderful two skills, if you could…”

“You handled it, Richard.” I said. I started to put the phone down.

“Lisa, I talked to Mr. Cross. I told him that you are not very well and need to rest. Mr. Cross said it was up to you to approve this. You should see the slave ponies and review the whole…”

“Richard, tell Mr. Cross that I have a fever of one hundred and two degrees. You maneuver the ponies. That sounds great.”

I hung up the phone, turned off the ringer, pulled up the plug, got on my knees, and hid the unwound phone under the bed.

I went back to my suitcase and picked up the silver pullover sweater I had opened earlier and held it close to my face, sniffing the strong odor of cologne. I hastily removed my civilian clothes and pajamas and pulled the pullover sweater on. It was like putting his skin on, feeling it on my own arms and breasts, and sniffing the perfume.

Eliot 18 Lisa on my mind.

After several visits to the “Bath Heaven” and the little “Bath Angels” choir, I knew that no one would tell me much about her: who she really was.

I did find out one fact from Mr. Iron Finger Masseur: there was a wonderful slave girl involved, named Diana. She was in tears somewhere, because “Mr. Perfectionist” hadn’t called her in for two whole days.

“But where did she come from? What kinds of jokes does she laugh at? You must know something about her, something that is unclassified, speak!”

I kept thinking in detail about all her belongings, the carvings, the shelves of books.

“The paintings, the masks, how did she get those?”

“Elliot, it’s like a record of sticking,” the masseuse said, pinching my skin as if it were clay. “Don’t think about her! None of the male slaves go near her. Go think of all those beautiful ladies and men! She trained you just for them.”

“What do you mean? She doesn’t like men, that’s what you said, and she and this slave named Diana…”

“You’re poor and nervous. She doesn’t like anyone. She just knows how to handle everyone better than anyone else, you know?”

But there was one thing they weren’t afraid to make sure of, and that was: she was a “club”.

The true founder of the

Almost every mini-game was invented by her, the sports passages were entirely her idea, and now she’s planning some other nifty ideas.

I continued to think of her appearance last night, when she stood in the center of the breezeway and said, in that strangely sarcastic voice, “Are we not geniuses at symbolizing strange ‘sex’?” She was indeed a genius. But my skepticism about her was building up. How did she feel about her accomplishments? Was she one-tenth as impressed with her accomplishments as I was? I didn’t think so. I wished I could grab her and kiss her, like Rudy Lentino in “Pretty Boy.” Lentino.

But this is crazy. I mean, I was fantasizing about her, imagining that she could love, could feel, imagining that I could influence something in her mind. I mean, that’s… like the song that goes to it… almost like falling in love.

What Martin is saying is that the “sadomasochistic” mania may be a search, a search for something. You might be looking for a person, Eliot, not for a system, but at the Club, what you get is the system.

I don’t need Martin to tell me: don’t fall deeper into this trap.

Listen to what Mr. Iron Finger Masseur is saying to you! You should have wanted the system. You should prove Martin wrong.

But I’ve been playing this maddening little game all day: watch for her presence. Watch for her in Scott’s class. I felt a little relieved that she wasn’t there, so as not to exacerbate that little torture-room nightmare. And a little disappointed that she wasn’t there. I saw her in the crowd around me as I was bartending, serving, and putting drinks down, trying to maneuver through the squeezes, compliments, and smiles in a decent way.

But those mesmerizing final moments last night, when she stood there naked, clad only in that open plain dress, her body wet and lovely, a pink. That manager turned to her with his mouth open, stuttering out those instructions as if the building was on fire. Fuck her. I wanted to grab her, just grab her. I wanted to say: just let me stay here, let’s talk for a while, let’s… I wish I could talk to Martin and ask him how to deal with this. Emergency. Help. A dangerous thing was going on in my head. I think I was able to make her love me, make her really love me. Ah, pride invites failure, as we all know.

Every now and then I think of getting a ghost, making her feel disgusted, and leaving her to be sent back down the stairs.

But it was indeed too late.

In the trainer’s class, when I almost broke away from the hands that scrutinized me, I was terrified of being sent down there again, separated from her. There was a spark in my head as the dark, grim-faced trainer, Scott, whispered in my ear: “Think of her? Elliot. Dream of her? What would she do if I provided an unfavorable report on you? Elliot.”

O Martin, I am in trouble. And the predicament is this: it is too late to turn back.

Erotic Paradise (11)

Elliot19 puts on his clothes.

It’s six o’clock and there are no clocks anywhere on the island. Just a thumping in my chest. The manager looks at his own watch and tells me to go inside and wait by the door.

I wanted more than anything to savor seeing her for the first time, and I wanted more than anything to slow things down so that, in that moment, I would be able to really see her and hear the thoughts in my head.

I do have this opinion: you find out what you really think and feel about another person in that first glimpse after a period of absence. You learn things about yourself that you wouldn’t have known before.

Perhaps I wouldn’t be so blatantly crazy about her; she would seem slightly less dangerous and less beautiful. I’d start thinking of others more, like who knows maybe I’d start thinking of Scooter.

The door closed behind me. The manager is gone. The room looked warm in the soft light, and the sky outside the lace window  was a leaden brightness. A dream-like place, like a chamber of the heart.

I heard a sound, so unobtrusive I wasn’t even sure it was there. I turned my head toward the open door to the living room.

She was standing there all right. And I was in love with her. The first sight was so significant that the truly wonderful thought came into my head: she was deliberately trying to drive me crazy.

She wore a man’s suit, a tight little three-piece, only the texture was a slightly darker lilac velvet, so dark that the creases were off-white in places. A light red silk tie was knotted very loosely under the white collar of the shirt. Her hair was tied back in a bun and she wore an equally thin and dark purple Fedora hat with a silk dark gray hatband. It was almost like the look from a 1940s gangster movie: the shape of the hat, the way it was slung over one eye, the way the cheekbones stood out in the shadow of the hat’s rim, the way the mouth looked like a prominent red highlight.

I was feeling so horny for her as a whole that it was almost impossible to stay still. I wanted to bury my face in her triangle and pull her above my body. Love her, love her, the words choked with lust.

I was able to see her eyes now, very clearly, to feel that power firing from her, to see the hair gathered from her bare neck, her bare ears. She was wearing a suit, and she looked fragile, very breakable looking.

“Get closer,” she said. “Turn around slowly. I’m going to look at you. Slowly.”

The pants she wore were well-fitting, thought they must have been custom made for her, and her breasts rested against those covered buttons on her tank top.

I did as she said. I wondered if they had told her the details: about the trainer’s class, about the circumstances surrounding that little adventure.

I could feel her moving closer, as if stirring the air around me; before I could smell the perfume. The rest of my eyes saw her lean shadow and felt that power again.

I deliberately tilted my head to one side and looked down on her, surveying her appearance before looking straight ahead. Glowing little tiny toes peeped out of her pants, her heels, and the triangle of her pants fit snugly enough for her to feel the seam between the two.

I saw her hand move and thought I couldn’t take it anymore. She had to touch me. I had to touch her. Rudy Lentino. Rudy Lentino, this beautiful man, was going to abduct her and take her to the desert tent. But neither of us moved.

“Follow me.” She said, snapping her fingers lazily, the bright light flashing on her nails for a moment as she turned and walked through the pair of double doors.

That was the living room I saw last night. I saw her tiny hips change their posture freely and I wanted to touch the back of her bare neck. She was wearing a suit and looked like a tiny mannequin. I mean like a doll’s man, a supernatural creature, not like a woman, yet just as small, lovely, and soft.

There was a big table in one corner with huge African carvings, and a great Haitian painting in six scenes, from the French colonial era, which I could look at later when she hadn’t blindfolded me, when I had stayed in these rooms for thousands of hours, kissing the backs of her bare feet, her bare calves, and her bare deltas. Her deltas should be exempt from those tight little pants and breathe in front of me. There was nothing truly female in this room, except for the fact that she was sweating in her purple velvet dress, her back turned toward me, and then gazing very cautiously to her left.

I looked in the same direction and for a moment couldn’t remember anything. “That’s my suitcase.”

I said.

Martin had said that your clothes were locked up. This was the safest measure, because if you couldn’t get to your clothes and documents, then it was impossible to escape from the “club”. He said “they” weren’t even on the island, the clothes, they were stored in a special place. I remember thinking of a bank vault.

What was in front of me, however, was my suitcase, unlocked and open, and I could see my passport and wallet on top of my clothes. It was embarrassing to look at these personal things like they belonged in the afterlife.

“I want to see what you look like,” she said, “what you look like in your clothes.”

I looked at her, trying to figure out what that meant. In my amazement, I thought: it would be humiliating to get dressed in front of her. But it was something odd, something very odd. I could feel her shivering even though she didn’t appear to be shivering at all.

“I’d like to see you in this,” she said, leaning over to the suitcase and removing a gray pullover shirt. “You like gray, don’t you? You don’t like color. If you belonged to me in the outside world and were completely my slave, then I would let you wear color. But put this one on for me now!”

I took the shirt and a very strange feeling came over me. I quickly pulled the shirt over my head as if I hadn’t done this before, it was incredible. The fabric touched the skin all over my body and the feeling was vivid. My lower half of my body felt absurdly naked in the slightest. My dick looked like it wasn’t legal. I felt like a half-man, half-horse monster in an erotic sketch.

But before I could push the sleeves up slightly; she handed me a pair of brown pants; I put them on and felt the rougher fabric rubbing against my hips and pressing uncomfortably against my dick and balls. I don’t think I could pull on the zipper. So I put my hand in and tried to get rid of the painful erection, all the while smiling at her and feeling her watching me.

“Pull on the stretcher,” she said. “Don’t cum.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I said. “I was wondering if Adam and Eve felt this way when they first got dressed in the Garden of Eden?”

I took the belt from her, and that was an unusual experience: for once, holding the belt myself and putting it through the loop. I shouldn’t have talked to her like that. Getting dressed was already done that way.

But this whole thing is even crazier than the Campaign Passageway, Going to its Flagstaff Columns, and everything else in history.

“You’re being shy again,” she said. “Your hair always looks great when you’re shy, really blonde.”

I made a little gesture of modesty, like, “Oh, my God,” and I couldn’t help it.

She handed me a pair of socks and the brown BALLY penny loafers that I didn’t like very much. I had to stop staring at her and put the shoes and socks on.

It was really weird, even the slightest difference in height was weird, the leather against the soles of the feet, the smoothness, as if it were a sort of outer covering, as if it wasn’t a natural part of all the clothing, as if it was shackled and harnessed, just because it was dressed.

She pulled out the brown wool jacket.

“No, not that one…”

Indecision. She suddenly looked a bewildered, lost look.

“I mean it’s too much of a statement, the jacket with the pants & shoes. I don’t ever wear this jacket.”

“So which one is it going to be?”

“Give me that Norfolk jacket, the tweed one. I mean, if you don’t mind, if I can express myself.”

“Of course,” she said, apologizing. She put the brown jacket back on the hanger and took out the Norfolk jacket. I loved jackets with belts. I did want a dirty, old hunting jacket, but I didn’t think she’d like it.

“Are you happy now?” She asked. Again, the tone was relentless, a little mocking.

“Unless I comb my hair. That sort of thing is irresistible, you know, I always brush my hair after I put on my jacket.” My hips burned beneath the fabric of my pants. I thought the dick would fall off. I was literally stuck in a rut. She reached into her back pants pocket, as a man would do, and drew out a black plastic comb, at which point her wonderful little curves rose and fell in a maddening way. I couldn’t help changing the weight of my body, trying to be more restrained and not cum. “Thanks.”

“There’s a mirror there.” She said, pointing to a small, narrow mirror between the two doors leading into the hallway.

Elliot appears in the middle of the mirror. Slater, combing his hair, looking as if he had rushed to a movie in San Francisco two million years ago, on his penultimate third night as a free man.

When I’m done, I look down, then slowly raise my head again, hand the comb back to her, let my fingers hover over hers for a moment, then stare at her. She stepped backward, almost jumping. But she recognized her movement corporately, and stiffened as if she must regain her commanding strength, denying that she had ever shown this faint look of fear.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

“Shhhh, you walk over and over so I can watch you.” She said.

I walked away from her very slowly, my back to her, feeling everything pulling, rubbing, burning, clamping down on me, and then I turned toward her again, getting closer and closer, until she held up her hand and said pointedly, “Stop!”

“I’m going to kiss you.” I whispered as if the room was filled with people.

“Shut up.” She said, but she took two more small anxious steps backward.

“Are you afraid of me? Just because I’m dressed?” I asked.

“Your voice has changed, you say a lot of things, act differently!” She said.

“What would you have expected to happen?”

“You must be able to play both roles for me,” she said, raising a finger and pointing it threateningly at me. “Dress or no dress, behave. One little display of insolence and I’ll press one of about ten different knobs in the room and you’ll have to race through the exercise passages all night.”

“Yes, ma’am!” I say, unable to suppress another smile. I shrugged, but I looked down again, trying to show that I wanted to please her. If she pressed one of the buttons, um… she turned her back to me, and I felt like a young and inexperienced matador turning his back to a bull for the first time.

She walked in a small circle, and when she looked at me again, I put my right hand to my lips very stiffly and gave her a little flying kiss. She stood there, staring at me.

“I did something,” she said suddenly, her left hand on her hip, showing an uncomfortable look of great discomfort. “I found this book in your luggage, unpack it and see what it’s about.”

“Very well,” I said. Don’t try to figure this out, I thought. She won’t really feel interested. “I’d like you to have the book if you want it.”

She didn’t answer. She just scrutinized me for a moment, with all kinds of brightness and heat glowing in her face. She went over to the table and picked up the book.

I saw the book and was mildly shockedPhotographer Elliott, Journalist Elliott but not as bad as I thought. She had a ballpoint pen in her hand and she said, “Want an autograph?”

I took the pen from her hand, being careful to only touch her hand, which I did not do. I went over to the couch and sat down; I could not sign standing up.

Suddenly, I was operating on complete automaticity, as if I had no idea what text was coming when I started writing. I wrote.

To Lisa.

I think I’m in love with you.

Elliott

I gazed at the texts and handed her the book, feeling as if I had done something very foolish indeed and would not regret it until I was ninety.

She opened the book and read the texts with a very wonderful frightened look. It was beautiful!

I remained seated on the couch, raising my left arm along the back of the couch, trying to act as if nothing had happened, but my dick was twitching, like a being with a mind of its own, trying to run out.

Everything was mixed together: this crazy lust for her, this love, this love for her, and this absolute excitement because she had read the book and she was blushing and she was afraid.

I don’t think I would have heard a brass band playing if there had been one in the room at that moment, I would have just heard my pulse throbbing in my head.

She had closed the book, her eyes looking blank, almost like a person in a trance. For a second, I didn’t recognize her. I mean, it was a moment of “absurdity”: people not only looked like strangers, but also like strange beasts. I saw all the details about her as if she had just been created, and I didn’t know what she was, whether she was a man, a woman, or what.

I tried to shake out of it, but what shook me out of it was a sudden feeling of fear: it felt like she was going to cry out. I almost stood up, grabbed her, said something, did something, but I couldn’t really move. The spell came and went. She was a woman again, dressed in men’s pants and jackets, looking gentle for no apparent reason. She knew things about me that no one else knew, no other woman knew, and I felt myself melting into her. I sat there on the reclining couch, looking as if nothing was wrong, maybe it was me who was going to cry out.

I sensed that I would be able to get to know a gem if I asked a little further. Then she went to the table and picked up the phone.

I started to get up. It’s crazy. She can’t send me away like this, I’m going to rip the phone out of that fuck it. But before I could get up, she had already said something unconscionable into the phone.

“Ready to take off in five minutes. Tell them that the rest of the luggage is ready to be shipped.” She put the phone down and looked at me, her mouth moving but silent for a second. Then she said, “Put your wallet and passport in your pockets and take whatever you want to take with you from inside the bag.”

“You’re kidding.” I said. It was something so wonderful, as if someone had said, “We’re going to take off to the moon.”

The door opened and two young uniformed valets white, but without leather pieces walked in and started packing.

I put on my watch, put my wallet in my pants pocket, and my passport in my jacket pocket. I saw my diary at the bottom of the suitcase, then glanced at her and removed it. That meant : I needed that shoulder bag, one of those squashed canvas bags I always carry. So I took the bag out from underneath all the luggage, put the diary in it, and slung the bag over my shoulder.

“But what the hell is that for?” I asked her.

“Come on!” She said.

Two uniformed manservants were about to take the suitcase out.

She started walking after them, still holding the book in her left hand.

When I caught up with her, she was striding up the corridor in a decisive manner.

“Where are we going?” I asked. “I don’t understand.”

“Quiet,” she whispered, “until we get outside.”

She crossed straight across the grass and through the flower beds, her shoulders looking sturdy and her pace brisk, almost strutting. Two uniformed valets were about to load the bags into a small tram on the path in front of them. The two of them took seats in the front while she gestured for me to sit in the back.

“Can you tell me what we’re doing, please?” I said, squeezing up next to her.

My legs rested against her; the tram started a little too quickly and she flopped down on top of me, her hands gripping my thighs, and I felt how petite she was. She nestled against me like a bird, and I couldn’t see her face hidden under the brim of her hat. “Lisa, answer me, what’s going on?”

“Okay, listen to me,” she said. But she stopped, her face flashing as if she were angry, the book clutched to her breast. The tram was now moving at twenty miles an hour around the edge of the crowded pleasure gardens and through the swimming pool.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” she finally said. Her voice was unsteady. “That’s a heavy responsibility, going in and coming out, undressing and dressing all at once. If you’re not ready for that, I can understand. So, if you want, you can just go back to my room. Undress again. Squeeze the knob on my desk, call the manager, and they’ll take you to Scott or Dina or one of the others right away. I’ll call from where the front door is. You want Scott, you can have him. Scott is the best. He’s impressed with you. He wants you. He would have picked you when you first came here, but I got you first. But if you’re coming with me, come with me. We’ll be in New Orleans in an hour and a half. There’s no big secret. We’re just doing what I want to do. When I say come back, we’ll come back.”

“Mmm, shrimp cooked in hot sauce and coffee with chicory,” I whispered. All the way to the moon, then onward to Venus & Mars.

“Self-confessed smartass,” she muttered. “How about choke-cooked lobster with a Southern beer?”

I started laughing, I couldn’t help it. The more serious she acted, the more I laughed.

“Eh, make up your mind that go it!” She said.

The car stopped by a pair of gates next to a small room lit with a light. We are between the electronic scanners on either side. I could see another higher fence in the distance.

“The best part is that time to contemplate important decisions.” I said, still smiling.

“You can walk back,” she said. She was literally shivering, her eyes glowing in the shadow of the brim of her hat. “No one will think you attempted to escape, or stole the clothes. I’ll call from the little room there.”

“Are you crazy? I’m going with you.” I said. I walked over to her and kissed her.

“Keep driving!” She said to the driver, giving me a hard shove in the area of my chest.

The airplane was a turbojet monster, and the engine roared as our car drove past. Before the car could stop she jumped out and walked up the metal steps. I had to run again to catch up with her I think she ran faster than any woman I’ve ever seen the two stupid manservants followed us with their bags.

The inside of the plane was all brown and gold velvet and very luxurious, about as big as eight club chairs lined up in a semi-circle in the hall.

There is a bedroom open to the back and a standard size pool room. There is a large TV monitor in the front.

There were two older men, dressed in unattractive black suits, but decent. They were drinking and talking to each other in Spanish in lowered voices. The two men started to stand up, but Lisa gestured for them to sit down.

I couldn’t say or do anything yet, Lisa quickly took the single seat between these two and the window, I had no choice but to sit four feet across from her, it was pathetic.

A voice thundered above the loudspeaker. “Prepare for takeoff. There’s a call from Lisa on line one.”

I can see the phone light blinking silently next to her. A light touch of her hand turns on the tiny intercom.

“Take off, we’re ready,” she said. “Fasten your seat belt, Mr. Slater.” She turned to the murky thick glass.

Over the whine of the engine came another human voice. “They say it’s urgent, Lisa. Would you please pick up the first line?”

“Can I get you a drink? Sir.” The air hostess bends close to my ear.

The two Latinos who I knew for sure were Latinos had faced each other slightly more alertly, talking with their voices raised to exclude all sound.

“Yes,” I said in disgust, glaring angrily at the two short, fat men, and Lisa, who was sitting next to them. “Whiskey, if you have a single, two fingers deep, with a little ice.”

“I’ll call them later,” Lisa said into the intercom. “Forward.” She turned her head toward the window and pulled her hat down above her eyes.

Elliott 20 Free and Easy

When we landed, I was tempted to murder someone. I was also a little drunk. She didn’t want to get out of that window seat, didn’t want to get away from the two obnoxious guys from Argentina next to her, and I was playing eight pool with myself, almost ripping the flannel off the pool table. Meanwhile the air hostess looked good enough to rape, and she kept pouring me drinks.

On the screen was the movie “Playthings”, a French hyper-realistic film that I love, featuring the late Czech actor, also a favorite of mine. Now the movie is just showing silently and no one is watching it.

But once we stepped outside into the New Orleans airport (it was raining, of course; it always rains in New Orleans), the two Argentines were gone. We were alone in the back seat of an impossibly large silver sedan.

She sits with her butt in the center of the gray velvet seat, gazing at the empty little television set in front of her, leaning in close on both knees, hugging my book as if it were a teddy bear; I put my arms around her and take off her hat.

“We’ll be at the hotel in twenty minutes, stop.” She said. She looked terrible and beautiful. I mean like a person at a funeral, looking terrible and beautiful.

“I don’t want to stop.” I said, and started kissing her, getting her mouth open, moving my hands all over her, stroking her through the velvet, through the thick seams of her pants, through the heavy sleeves of her jacket, and then slipping my hands in and opening her tank top.

She turns to me, her breasts pressing into me, firing that deadly current, that devastating heat. My body is rising, pulling her upward so that she’s leaning on me, and then, our whole bodies are lying together on the seat. I’m tugging at her clothes, or just pushing on them, trying not to really damage them, just pulling them away. I’m really experiencing a taste of what it’s like: how hard it is to pull a woman’s shirt off, or to really feel a woman through a man’s shirt.

“Stop.” She said. She had turned her mouth away and moved her body to the side, her eyes closed, gasping for air as if she had stumbled in a run. I struggle to move upward slightly so that the weight of my body doesn’t hurt her. I kiss her cheekbones, her hair, and her eyes.

“Kiss me, turn around and kiss me.” I said and pressed her head towards me and that electricity started again. I’m going to cum inside my pants.

I sat up and turned her slightly; she crawled into the corner, her hair spread out.

“Look what you’ve done.” She whispered, but the words meant nothing.

“It’s like high school girls, go for it.” I said.

I looked out at the sinking, deserted Louisiana landscape, grapevines covering phone lines, ruined motels mired in sprawl, and raw  fast food stands. Every sign of modern America looked here like a kind of missionary outpost, like a kind of trash, a remnant from repeated failed attempts at colonization.

But we’re almost into the city itself, and I love the city itself. Lisa took the comb out of the overnight bag and brushed her hair hard, her face reddening; bobby pins splattered as she brushed it out of the way. I loved to see her hair cascading down, like a shadow surrounding her.

I grabbed her and started kissing her again, this time moving her body back and pulling me as if we were going around the whole car for a couple minutes long while I kissed her. Kissing her and just sucking on the inside of her mouth.

She didn’t kiss like any woman I’ve ever kissed. I can’t describe exactly what it was like. She kissed as if she had just discovered kissing or something, as if she had fallen from another planet where they never did this. When she closed her eyes and let me kiss her neck, I had to stop again.

“I’d love to rip you to pieces,” I said, gritting my teeth, “I’d love to rip you to pieces, I’d love to get inside.”

“Yes!” She said. But she struggled to button her shirt and undershirt.

We move down Toulon Street in the same silent, surreal way that a limousine moves, as if it were passing invisibly through the outside world. At this place, Jeff DeWeese, we turned left, probably to the left of the car. At Jeff DeWeese’s place, we turned left, probably toward the French Quarter. I grabbed her again and savored, thought, at least twelve more wonderful kisses.

This time when she broke free, we were already in one of those claustrophobia-inducing narrow side streets built with connecting houses, heading towards the center of the old town.

Elliott 21 Crossing the Threshold

She looked lovely as we entered the office of the hotel, her hair all pushed back above her shoulders, her hat tilted back, her shirt collar undone, but her body shaking so much that she could barely hold her pen.

She scribbled the name “Lisa Cree”. She scribbled the name “Lisa Clear” as an old woman would do. I argued about whose American Express card to use, and she looked flustered and silent, as if she wasn’t sure what to do. I won the argument and they took my American Express card.

The place she chose was perfect, a renovated Spanish city mansion about two blocks from Jaxon Square, and we had the servants’ cottage behind us. The purple paving stones were uneven, as they always are in these old New Orleans courtyards. And the garden was a thicket of bushes, all huge, damp, glowing green banana trees, and pale red oleander and jasmine climbing above the brick walls, with electric lights everywhere, like lanterns.

The fountain goddess was covered in rim moss and the water was crowded with irises, but I loved it. A jukebox thumps, and from somewhere down the block comes “Rush,” by Michael Jackson, bringing back the reality of the life I left behind in California a little more vividly than anything else here. “Rush,” by Michael Jackson, brings back the reality of my stay in California, slightly more vivid than anything else here. The noise of pots and pans from a nearby restaurant and the smell of coffee.

Her body shakes even more as we walk to the door, and I hold her for a moment. The drizzle beat down on us, and the small yard resembled a symphony of water sounds as raindrops fell on banana tree leaves, the roof, and the field objects. Meanwhile, two of the most beautiful mulatto children I’ve ever seen in the entire world put the bags in the room.

I didn’t know if these children were girls or boys, and I still don’t. They wore khaki shorts and white T-shirts, their skin oily and waxy, their eyes dark and watery, like Indian princesses in Indian paintings. They slipped almost drowsily into the large white-painted room, bags in their hands, one after another, until they had piled them in a heap.

Lisa’s luggage was of the type used when traveling by private jet, all matching caramel-colored leather pieces with gold initials. She had about as much luggage as people carried on the Great European Journey of 1888.

I gave the two boys five dollars, and they said something in a certain voice, the kind you can only hear in New Orleans, very soft indeed, like French, very lyrical, almost as if they were exhausted.

They smiled back at me as they left and for a second looked like old people.

Lisa stared at the room as if it were a hole in the ground, full of bats.

“Do you want me to carry you over the threshold?” I asked.

She looked at me as if I had frightened her. Some kind of look came over her for a moment, a wild look that I couldn’t explain. I felt that heat again. Without waiting for her to answer, I picked her up and walked in.

She blushed visibly and started to laugh, and tried to hide it, as if she wasn’t supposed to laugh, or something.

“Then laugh!” I said this as I set her down. I smiled at her and winked at her, just as I smiled and winked at all the women in the island’s garden pavilion trees. Only this time it was from the bottom of my heart.

Then for a while I stopped looking at her and browsed the scene around me.

Even in the midst of these very old servants’ quarters the ceilings were fourteen feet high. The mahogany four-poster bed was huge, with an old silk canopy for weddings above it, and it was covered with everything from angels and Western roses to old stains as if rain had seeped in along the lines. You couldn’t move a bed like that into most of the houses I’ve lived in.

There was a mirror running from the marble fireplace to the ceiling, and two or three high-backed walnut rocking-chairs, placed on the edge of a worn Persian rug. There were several large, wide, uneven slabs of cypress, the floor was flush with the paving outside, and French doors occupied the whole length of the room, just as they had in her room in the “Club.”

The bathroom breaks the spell slightly with the kitchen, the same white tile and chrome fixtures with a microwave and an electric coffee maker, things you’d find in any luxury motel. I close the door behind me.

It wasn’t hot enough to actually turn on the cold air, and the rain smelled good, so I turned the cold air off, went outside, and pulled up all the big green windows  above the French doors to keep anyone from seeing us if they wanted to. Then I went inside and opened all the glass doors; no one opened them again because of the cold air. I bolted up the window  and opened the slender boards, and the room immediately became warmer, more alive, and lovelier. The noise made by the raindrops was really loud. I lock the front door.

Lisa stood there, her back to the light, just staring at me.

She was very wet and her clothes were all crepe. Her lipstick was a little stained, her shirt was showing all the way down to where her tank top was, and she had taken off her shoes, so she looked a little vulnerable.

I walked toward her, my arm around one of the bedposts, just examining her, letting the lust rise, doubling, tripling, until the lust became lysergic again.

So, here we are, without any trainers, without any managers, without buttons to push to recruit help, just the two of us in this room. I know she’s thinking about it, just like I’m thinking about it.

But what does she want? What do I want? Did I want to rip her clothes off? Want to rape her? Want to play a little revenge scene for all the things she’s done to me? They say a man can’t “think” when he’s really aroused. I thought about every moment with her, about the exercise corridor, the restraints, and the way she felt when she put the blindfold over my eyes, and the belt, and her bare breasts, and how hot they were, and what I’d said to her in the limo about wanting to pry her open and get inside her. Except that just because I said that didn’t mean rape. Would I disappoint her?

I wanted to say something, but there was nothing to say. It was the same embarrassing desire I had had in her room at the “club” that wanted to reveal something to her. I thought I was going to invade her body, but not in a mean way, not in a ruthless way, not in a brutal way, not in a powerful way, but in something else, something more vital, more important, more revealingly personal than that.

She shifted a small, unspecified step against the bed. I could feel her heat again, see it dancing beneath her skin, and her pupils danced in the same way as she looked at me.

I walked towards her, cradling her head in both hands and just kissed her, the same kind of wet, slow, open-mouthed kisses we’d been doing over and over again; her body leaning softly against mine, moaning loudly. I knew everything was going to be perfect.

I pulled off her blouse, opened her tank top and began to rip off her shirt. As she bent over to unbuckle her belt, her hair fell over her bare breasts, revealing something in the movement. Head hanging low, hands unbuckling her waist, undoing her pants there was something revealed in all of this that pounded right into my brain. I pulled her pants down and held her out of them, my fingers pressing against her bare ass.

I knelt down in front of her, my head exploring her sex, then her face, then licking her and kissing her.

“I can’t, I can’t stand it.” She whispers, grabbing my head and pressing me against her before pushing me back. “It’s too strong, stop. Get inside me!” She said, “Too, too…”

I leaned over and took off my own clothes and pushed her upward on the bed so that she was sitting at the foot of it, spreading her legs and looking at her bare sex, at the way it breathed and shifted, the pubic hair glistening, the labia pink, very hidden, twitching.

“I want you to come inside me.” She said, and I looked up at her face, which for a second seemed to look too delicate to be human, just as her sex organs were too crude and animalistic, vaguely different from the rest of her, to be human. We moved backward on the bed together, sort of rolling and kissing, just rubbing our naked bodies against each other.

I swooped down on her again, stretching her out dramatically, and this time she didn’t resist.

But she couldn’t keep quiet, and she started thrashing around underneath me. I was licking her, kissing her, sticking my tongue in, dipping into that salty and charcoal flavor of her purity, licking the silky pubic hair, and she was about to go into a complete frenzy. She grabbed me again and asked me to climb on top of her. But I couldn’t let go. I had to do this for a while longer, to taste her, to have her like that, to be inside her.

I turned and formed a 69 position with her, felt her mouth on my dick, and then she was okay with it. I sucked her, licked her. She was locked in, sucking powerfully and passionately, like a man, as if she enjoyed doing it. She sucked harder and harder, her hand on the base of my dick, her mouth really wet and steady. I probed into her sex, caressing its depths with my tongue, and it did get wet with her, soaking with her, while her fingers pinched the whip marks on my hips, stroking and scratching.

I moved back to let her know I was coming out, but her arms locked around me even tighter. As I came out inside her, I felt her sweet little hole clenching, her hips thrusting against me, her little mouth quivering under mine, her whole body burning. The situation continued and continued again, and I could hear her moaning, making the same grunts into my dick. She came out, like a chain reaction of explosions. I came out, unable to stand it any longer.

I lay back and thought: I’ve never done this with a woman. Maybe with at least five or eight men, but not with a woman. And I had always done that. But mostly I was thinking: I love her, I really love her.

The second time, things were much slower. We didn’t start right away.

I think I slept maybe half an hour, I don’t know how long, under the covers, with the dull lamp still on, while the rain fell a little slower, sounding like the same two-drop symphony over a hundred surfaces, while the water flowed through the pipes and gutters.

Then I stood up and turned the light out. We snuggled up again, only now I was fully awake.

I could see the raindrops like tiny silver glints on the thin wooden boards of the green wooden windows; I could hear all the other rough noises that make up the “French Quarter,” and I could hear “Bourbon Street” only a block away.

The faint sound of the wind from the club, and the high roar of the cars in the narrow streets, that jukebox sending out a certain old, deeper-throated rhythm, and blues songs. It almost recalled a memory, the smell of New Orleans, the smell of the land and the flowers.

We finally started again, it was very tender. We kiss all over each other’s bodies. We kissed each other’s armpits, and nipples, and stomachs. Kiss the inside of the thighs, and behind the knees.

I went inside her and she loosened up, her head kept going back and she screamed as she had before. When I came out inside her she screamed, oh god, oh god, oh god!

When it was over, I knew I was going to sleep for a million years. I stood up with my elbows supporting my body, looked down at her, took her in my arms and said, “I love you.”

Her eyes closed, and for a moment her eyebrows drew together as she reached for me and pulled me down on top of her. She said “Elliot” as if she was scared and just lay underneath me and held me.

After a while, I thought in a dreamy way that I would tell her that I had never said “I love you” to anyone before, but it seemed so condescending to do so. I mean, why was this so special? All it meant was that I was a roughneck, so to speak. I hated being sleepy, and she was beside me, her body curled up against mine, and I was silent. She hadn’t answered me yet, really, but why should she? Or maybe she had already answered me. Think about it in that way!

Now she was like soft petals, lovely, and her aroma mixed with her juices in this intense fragrance that kept bringing back waves of pleasure to me.

I woke up suddenly two hours later. No matter how tired I was, I didn’t want to be sleepy and sleepy anymore.

I stood up, opened my suitcase, and began to pack some clothes; my eyes were well used to the darkness, and the bright light that shone in through the thin wooden panels of the shutters was enough for me to see everything. But I didn’t know how long I was going to be here. I couldn’t think of going back to the “club” now. What did she say? It’s a fluctuating “heavy responsibility.”

She sat up and sat there quietly, arms around her knees, watching me.

I put on a white pullover shirt, a pair of khaki pants, and the only clean hunting jacket in my suitcase. It was actually one of the best pieces of clothing, I mean the military khaki jacket purchased from the military outflow material vending store, it didn’t crease very much. I love this garment and whenever I wear it, I always think of some place in the world I’ve been to, like El Salvador. Thinking about that place isn’t very nice. But what about Cairo, nice. What about Haiti, really nice. Beirut, of course it’s nice. And Tehran, Istanbul, and dozens of other bizarre memories.

She got out of bed, and I saw her unpacking and removing every item inside, and a tight thread snapped in my brain and I felt comfortable. There were no leather skirts or boots. She hung up her luxurious little velvet suit, and her tight pajamas, and dropped dozens of pairs of high heels on the floor of the closet.

Then she put on a small, dark blue, polka-dot patterned gown that softly and wonderfully emphasized her angles and curves, with long cuffs where her wrists were, her hands looking longer, except for the full sleeves, and small frills where her shoulders were. She had tied the cloth belt around her waist, making the seam edges raise wonderfully above her knees, and her breasts formed two dark, pointed points under the silk dress. She wasn’t wearing pantyhose, thank God, only a pair of navy blue leather shoes with heels like ice hoes.

“No, don’t do that,” I said. “The thing about this city is: it’s awesome to walk around in. We can go for a little walk after we eat. The place is very flat and we can walk anywhere. Wear lower shoes to be able to walk.”

All right, she said! She puts on a pair of natural brown leather sandals with a lower heel. She loosens her hair, puts her sunglasses on the top of her head to hold some of the hair back from her face, and switches her personal carry-on from a black leather pouch to a brown leather pouch. We were ready.

“Where are we going?” She asked.

The question took me by surprise. Wasn’t she going to tell me?

“Um, to the ‘Mannar on Napoleon,'” I said. “It’s nine o’clock, and we may have to wait for a table, but we can have some oysters in the bar.”

She nodded slightly in agreement, giving an uncertain smile. It looked beautiful when the smile lasted.

“You didn’t keep the sedan, did you?” I asked, walking toward the phone. “I came to call a cab.”

Erotic Paradise (12)

Elliott 22 First Level

In the taxi, we didn’t say a word to each other. I didn’t know what to say to her. I just felt a thumping excitement at being with her, and it was fun. Because back in New Orleans, driving down “St. Charles Street” to “Napoleon” under the oaks, thinking of all the things we could do if she’d let us stay here. Let us, let us, let us. I almost ask her if she does this from time to time, but I don’t want to ask yet. Or maybe I wouldn’t want to.

A few years ago, when I discovered Mannar’s, I didn’t have to wait for a table, but now everyone in the world knows this place. The oyster bar was so crowded that you could barely hear each other, but we started enjoying two dozen oysters on the half shell and two beers.

“How did you first come to New Orleans?” She asked, quickly sipping her beer, just like I was, and wolfing down her oysters. She sounded natural, like we were a couple on a date. “I found this place on my first vacation from the ‘club,'” she says. “Fell in love with it. After that, every time I had to leave the ‘club’ to come here for a couple days.”

“I’m here on vacation with Mom and Dad,” I said. “Mostly for Maddie B. Glass.” Beer and oysters are too good to be human food. “They take me out of school every year to come here for that week.”

I told her we were staying at the “St. Charles Street” Suites Inn which she knew and she said was a wonderful place and then there was an oyster dinner and an okra bisque dinner in the Cayenne countryside.

“Yeah, I want to do that too,” she said. “Think of the Karun countryside. I’ve almost gone to this countryside a couple times. But I love the town…”

“Yes, I know what you mean.” I say, kissing her cheek.

“I’ve been writing picture stories about New Orleans just to get here.” I said. That kiss was a cold kiss. Every time I kissed her, it was a cold kiss. “It’s a bad deal,” I said. “Usually more is lost, than gained. But I can’t resist. I’ve written ten articles in the last five years.”

“So, you’re glad… we… we’re here?”

“Are you kidding?” I try to kiss her again, but she turns her body away as if she doesn’t see me, but actually does. She takes a deep sip of her beer.

She said she once spent six weeks alone here, in a “Garden District” apartment not far from Washington Street, just reading books and taking afternoon walks. Yes, it’s great to walk around the city.

I was right.

She was all limp and her mold was changing. She’s smiling, and there’s a little redness in her cheeks.

I think at the “club” she was always aware of people watching her, perhaps more so than a slave would be. Now, she was just lost in the words she was saying, and she was eating her oysters and drinking her beer like I thought she would behave, very carnal, enjoying every bite and drop.

Around ten o’clock I felt euphoric, reaching a state of ecstasy, the kind of euphoria that only comes from drinking beer, and the kind of euphoria that comes from not having anything to drink for a while, and then drinking beer.

We were in the middle of a crowded dining room, under a blinding bright light. Everyone was talking loudly. She buttered her bread and quickly and easily blurted out that one of her marvelous side trips was a visit to a big farm house in the country. She rented a car and drove alone to St. Jax Parish and didn’t know how.

She just wanted to see the run-down house, but there was no one to go with her, so she went by herself. She talked about how she often felt this sense of powerlessness, even in California where she grew up, and how she couldn’t do anything unless someone was with her. In the city of New Orleans, for some reason, she says, she doesn’t have this feeling of powerlessness. She handled things alone. I’m not sure the noise of the dining room helped either of us. She showed wonderful vigor, her neck and hands looked elegant, and her dress cast shadows in the right places in the harsh bright light.

Then came the sizzling shrimp, also delicious, which she ate immediately.

I don’t think I could possibly love a woman who wouldn’t eat this grilled shrimp. First of all, this food isn’t broiled, it’s a plate of whole jumbo shrimp, with the heads unpeeled, placed in a deep dish with a peppery marinade and baked in the oven. They then bring it to the table as is, you remove the heads, peel the shrimp, and use your fingers to bring the shrimp to your mouth. You become a gourmet, then a gourmand, then a savage. You can accompany it with white or red wine, very peppery, but the best way is with beer, she agreed with me. We had three more Heineken beers each and dipped the French bread in the marinade. When we were done eating, we cleaned both plates. I wanted more.

“I’m really hungry,” I said. “Since I’ve been in prison, I’ve only eaten scraps of soup. I’ve seen what the members eat. Why must you make slaves eat that kind of scraps of soup?”

She laughed out loud.

“Keep your minds focused on the sexual aspect,” she said. “Sex must be the only pleasure you have. You know, when you’re going to have sex with a new member in ‘Bungalow One,’ you can’t expect to have to eat a big meal. And don’t call it a prison, it’s paradise.”

“Or hell anyway,” I said with a smile. “I’ve always wondered: how are we masochists who manage to stay alive going to make it clear to the angels: that we’d rather be tortured by two or three demons. You know, I mean, if this place was heaven and there were no devils, then it really would be hell.”

The words did make her laugh. The next best thing to making a woman “come out” is to make her laugh.

I ordered another plate of shrimp and we both chowed down. At this point, the dining room was getting pretty empty. In fact, we were the last customers at Mannar’s, and I was talking about photographing New Orleans and how it should be done and how it shouldn’t be done. Then she started asking me how I got into photography, when I got my PhD in English, and how both PhDs relate to each other.

Nothing, I said. I just stayed in school as long as I could and really got a gentleman’s education and read all the great books three times. The thing I worked on was photography, which I did very well, and I loved it.

We had two cups of coffee and left. We went outside and started walking down “Napoleon Street” towards “St. Charles Street”. It was a wonderful night in New Orleans, not hot at all, no wind, just air that almost tempted you to breathe.

I will say it again, there is no other city in the world as good for walking as this one. When you try to walk in “Port-au-Prince” you get stuck in the mud, the sidewalks are bad, the kids pester you and you have to give one of them some money to get the others to leave you alone. In Cairo, you get sand in your hair and eyes. In New York, it’s usually either too hot or too cold, or someone will attack you from behind. In Rome, you’ll get run over by cars at almost every intersection. San Francisco is too hilly to walk anywhere but “Market Street”. That flat area of Berkeley is too ugly. London is too cold. No matter what anyone says, I’ve always thought of Paris as an inhospitable place to walk, gray, all concrete, too crowded. But New Orleans? The pavements are warm, the air is like silk, and everywhere you look there are big, sleepy, breathless trees, sticking out their branches in the right height places for you to walk under, as if they knew you were coming.

On the way to “St. Charles Street” we will see beautiful houses.

“But how about Venice?” She asked. “What other place does a walk beat Venice?” One of her arms went around me and her body leaned into mine. I turned to kiss her, and she whispered that maybe we’d go to Venice in a few days, but why think of that when we were in New Orleans now?

“Are you serious?” I asked. “Can we be away that long?” I kiss her again, my arms around her.

“When I say we go back, we go back, unless you want to go back now.”

I took her face in both hands and kissed her. That was my answer, I thought. Just thinking about who we were and where we came from turned me on again. Anywhere on earth where she wasn’t, I didn’t want to go.

But the one place on earth I’d rather be with her is here.

She keeps us both moving, pulling me along, her right hand on my chest, her weight resting slightly on me. We are now on “St. Charles Street,” and the streetcars swing by, a series of empty windows with lights on. The dome is wet, reminding me that it is raining. It’s probably still raining downtown. So what? Rain is like everything else here, because it doesn’t stop you from walking.

“Okay, so you were starting to take portrait photographs, photographing the faces of San Francisco,” she said, “but how did you come to work for ‘Time,’ ‘Life’ magazine?”

I told her that it wasn’t as difficult as she might think, that you could learn quickly if you had a good eye, and that I had the added advantage that I didn’t need the money. I covered local news for two years, rock shows for People magazine, and even a few movie stars and writers.

That was really boring stuff because I was learning my technique at the same time, familiarizing myself with each camera, and doing a lot of my own work in the darkroom. But you don’t do darkroom work exclusively for the big magazines, you just send the film in. They pick out the parts they want and then, if you want, you can sell the rest of it wherever you want. It’s not that interesting.

When we arrived at Louisiana Street, I got her talking again. She told me very disturbing and upsetting things, such as the fact that she didn’t actually have a life outside of the “club”. Also, that she had spent four years in Berkeley, sort of in a dream, mainly working secretly as a “sadist masochist” for the Martin family in San Francisco.

What college means to her is kind of like what college means to me discovering hidden places to read.

I was ridiculously embarrassed because she knew about the “Mansion” in San Francisco, where I had first indulged in the game of “Sadomasochism”, and she also knew Martin. But not only did she know Martin, she was friends with him and worked with him. She knew the rooms in his house. We talked about it for a while, but I kept asking her personal things, like where she lived in Berkeley and how her family got there. When she talked about Martin, her voice revealed respect.

“I was completely inept at living a normal life,” she says. “Being a child was really crappy.”

“I’ve never heard anyone say that before.” I smiled, hugged her and kissed her.

“I can’t think of what childhood should be like. I had hidden, bizarre sexual feelings at a very young age. I wanted people to touch me and create fantasies. I think childhood was totally broken tiles if you want to know the truth.”

“Even at Berkeley, when you enjoy the liberalism, the free expression, and the reasoning process of every step taken?”

“It wasn’t like that for me at the time,” she says. “Martin’s house was the place that revealed a free intellectual atmosphere.” She strides beside me in a wonderful, self-effacing way. We had an excitingly good time on Main Street, above the lace-like shadows of leaves and street lamps; we passed great white front porches with tiny iron fences, and garden gates.

Her father was an old-fashioned Irish Catholic who finished college halfway through St. Louis and taught at the Jesuit College in San Francisco, and her mother was an old-fashioned woman who just stayed home until her four children were grown and then went to work in a public library downtown. They moved to the Berkeley Hills when Lisa was a little girl because they loved the heat of the East Bay and thought the mountains were beautiful. But they loathed the rest of Berkeley.

I knew the street she lived on, even her house, which was a big rickety mansion with brown shingles on Mariposa Hill. Many times as I drove by, I even saw a light on in the large study in the converted garage.

Her father used to read Derzhin, Maritain, G.K. Chesterton, and all the Catholic philosophers in this large library in the converted garage. He read to people rather than speak to them, and his rudeness and aloofness became legendary in the family. Sexually, he took the views of Augustine and Paul (which she has described). He thought chastity was ideal, but he couldn’t practise it physically, or he might have become a priest. Sex is nasty when you strip away all the language. Homosexuals are supposed to restrain themselves, and even kissing is a mortal sin.

Her mother did not suggest otherwise; she belonged to all the church organizations, devoted herself to fund-raising, and prepared a big meal every Sunday, with or without the children. It was a family tragedy that Lisa’s sister became almost a “Playmate of the Month” for “Playboy”. If either daughter had an abortion or was photographed for a magazine, the father said he would never speak to that daughter again.

Her father didn’t know anything about “the club”. He thought Lisa worked at a private membership resort somewhere in the Caribbean, where people went to get treated for all sorts of things. We both laughed out loud at this.

He wants Lisa to quit her job and come home. Her sister married a boring real estate millionaire. They all went to Catholic school all their lives except Lisa. Lisa made up her own code: go to UC or no college at all. Her family mocked the books she read and the papers she wrote. At sixteen, Lisa played “sadomasochism” with a student at Berkeley. She had her first orgasm at age eight and considered herself a freak.

“We are what the French in the nineteenth century called Catholics,” she said, “‘spiritual immigrants’

, If you think that devout Catholics are simple, stupid people, some peasants praying the Rosary in front of a statue in the back of a city cathedral, then you don’t know my dad. Everything he said had an awesome intellectual weight, a legitimate Puritan mindset, and a longing implication for death.”

But he was a talented man who loved the arts and was going to teach his daughters a lot about painting and music. They had a grand piano in the parlor and real paintings on the walls, bronzes by Picasso and copper plates by Chagall. Her father had purchased paintings by Mulroney and Miró many years before. They traveled to Europe every summer after Lisa’s sister turned six. They lived in Rome for a year. Her father was fluent in Latin and kept a diary in Latin. Her father would have been furious if he had found out about the “club” or her secret life. It would be almost unthinkable for him to find out.

“Yet I can say one thing for him, and you may understand if anyone does, that he was a spiritual man, indeed a spiritual man. I haven’t met too many people who live by faith as he does. And here’s the funny thing: I live by my own faith, I live entirely by my own faith. The ‘club’ is the pure expression of my faith. I have a philosophy of sex.

Sometimes I wish I could tell him about this philosophy of sex. He had some aunts and sisters who were nuns. One was a Trappist Sister and the other was a Carmelite Sister. They were cloistered nuns.

I wanted to tell him that I was also a kind of nun because I was steeped in my faith. You must know what I am talking about. In one respect what I am talking about is a kind of joke, if you think about it, because, when Hamlet says to Ophelia I know for a certainty that you do know that when he says, ‘Go to the convent,’ what he really means is a brothel, not a convent at all.”

I nodded, feeling a little disoriented.

But her story scared me, causing me to cling to her as she spoke. It was wonderful, the vividness and intensity of her look, and the simplicity and honesty revealed in her face. I loved the details she described, her first spiritual intercourse, listening to the opera with her father in his study, sneaking off to Martin’s house in San Francisco, feeling truly alive then and only then.

We’ll talk like this forever. She said at least sixteen things in one breath, and I want her to clarify them. It will take us about a year to get to know each other. Now it’s just peeling off the first layer.

She hadn’t actually finished before we started exchanging facts and I started telling her all about my father. My father was an atheist who believed completely in sexual freedom and took me to Las Vegas when I was only a teenager and lost my virginity there. He drove my mother crazy because he wanted her to go to the nude beach with him, and she finally divorced him, and not one of us has forgotten that little disaster. My mother taught piano in Los Angeles as an accompanist for a certain voice teacher and often fought with my father over the paltry $500 a month alimony because she could barely support herself. My father was rich, and so were his children, because his father left us money. But my mother had nothing.

I got angry when I said that, so I stopped. I gave my mother a check for $10,000 before I left for The Club. I bought her a house there. She’s got a bunch of gay boyfriends that I can’t stand, hairdressers and friends, and she’s still stuck in a pretty lowly state. She has no confidence in herself.

My father had the community property belonging to my mother frozen forever in the courts. My father was a strong advocate for the preservation of the ecosystem in Northern California, and worked to preserve the redwoods when they were logged. He owned a large hotel in Sauzalito, two or three inns serving bed and breakfasts in Mendocino & Elk, and several acres of Marin County land that is almost impossible to realistically value. He has always worked for nuclear disarmament. He  has the largest collection of pornography outside of Vatican City. But he believes that “sadomasochism masochism” is pathological We started laughing again.

He considers “sadomasochism” to be repugnant, perverse, childish and destructive, and gives speeches on the “God of Love” and the “God of Death”, as well as the “Death Wish”. “Death Wish.” I told him about the Club and I told him that the Club was located in the Middle East (Lisa laughed out loud) and he threatened to send me to the state mental hospital in Naha. But he didn’t have time for that.

Just before I left, my dad married a twenty-one year old girl who was an idiot.

“But why did you tell him about the ‘club’!” She couldn’t help but laugh. “You told him the details, told him what you did!”

“Why don’t you tell him? He was standing outside the door of my hotel room when I slept with that whore in Vegas. I told him everything if you want to know.”

She was still smiling. “If our father had abandoned us when we were children,” she said finally, “I don’t know what would have happened to you and me.”

We had come to Washington Street and crossed Pisanier Street to see if the bar at Commander’s Square was open. The bar was open, and we drank two more beers and kept talking about our parents and what they had said to us about sex and a lot of other things that had nothing to do with sex. We had the same teachers at Berkeley, we read the same books, we watched the same movies.

If it weren’t for the Club, she has no idea what she would have become, a question that makes her anxious. Maybe she would have become a writer, but that’s just a dream. She had never created anything except a script for a “sadomasochist” movie.

Her favorite books kind of amused me, but I loved her for it, very much so. These books were very masculine, such as Hemingway’s The Rising Sun, and Hubert B. Last Exit to Brooklyn by Hubert Selby, and City of Night by Leitch. But she also loved Carson B. McQuarrie’s The Heart Is Lonely. McCurley’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, and Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire. Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.

“In other words,” I said, “it’s books about sex offenders, books about lost people.”

She nodded, but the truth was more than that. It’s a matter of energy and style. When she’s in a bad mood, she picks up “Last Exit to Brooklyn” and whispers the story “Tela-La” or “The Queen is Dead. She was so good at rhythm that she could actually recite it. It was poetry about the dark side, and she loved it.

“I’ll tell you,” she said, “what made me feel like a weirdo for most of my life, and it wasn’t having an orgasm at age eight, or listening to other kids describing spankings in a sneaky and mortified mood, or sneaking off to San Francisco and San Francisco to be whipped in a candlelit room. It was because no one could convince me that any sexual behavior between consenting individuals was wrong. I mean, it was like a part of my mind was missing. There was nothing that disgusted me.

Everything seems naive and involves the deep senses; when people tell me that something offends them, I just don’t know what they mean.”

I was mesmerized. In the bright light of the bar, she looked singular, with a face like an angel and a voice so low and natural that listening to her was like drinking water.

Before we left New Orleans, she said, we had to go to Bourbon Street to see the Gender Reversal Shows, very lewd shows indeed, all of them men who mimic women, who are actually injected with hormones and undergo surgery to become women. She loved those shows.

“You must be joking,” I said, “I don’t want to get involved in those nasty places.”

“What are you talking about?” She said, angry. “These people sacrifice their sexual principles to act out their fantasies. They’re willing to be weird.”

“Yes, but those places are inferior bars, nasty places for sightseers. How far away from the elegance of the ‘club’ can you get?”

“It won’t matter,” she said. “Elegance is just a form of control. I like those nasty places, and I’d love to be a man who imitates women, and I like to look at them.” Her whole look changed when she said this, and she began to tremble slightly, so I said, Si, of course, if she wanted to look at them.

“I’m so overwhelmed,” I said. My tongue was becoming very weak. We enter the bar and I’ve already had two Heineken beers. “You’re tantamount to writing a license. Why don’t you just say where we’re going?”

“Because I just said so. And you said ‘you must be joking’, and besides, I wasn’t just trying to tell you what to do; I wasn’t writing a theater script!”

“Let’s get outta here!” I said.

We went back out and wandered around the gate to the “Lafayette Cemetery” across the street for about twenty minutes, talking about whether we should climb over the wall and walk through the graves. I love these graves above the ground, with their Greek triangular walls and stone pillars, their crumbling gates and  coffins. I kind of want to climb the fence. But then we’d be arrested.

We think it’s a good time to keep going through the “garden area” and not climb the fence.

So we went back and forth from “St. Charles Street” to the “Ammunition Depot,” looking around at the special pre-war houses, the white stone pillars in the moonlight, the cast-iron railings, the old oaks too big for our arms.

There is perhaps no place in the world like this place, where these huge houses in sleep, these relics of the past, look very sprightly and peaceful behind clean gardens. Everywhere in the deep, thick, leafy darkness there was the camping sound of automatic sprinklers, and the splashes of water glistened with a faint, bright light. The sidewalks themselves were beautiful, made up of vast herringbone bricks and purple pavers, with flakes of concrete forming tiny mounds above the roots of giant trees.

She had houses that she loved. At the time she lived here in her apartment, she did nothing but read and walk, and often came to see these houses, which we now visited. We found two houses with “For Sale” signs on the fences, one of which particularly fascinated us, a tall, narrow Greek Renaissance house with a door on the left and two floor-to-ceiling windows on the front porch. The paint is a deep rose block color with white trim, which is now gently peeling everywhere except where the vines cover it. The house has Corinthian columns and long front steps, and a bunch of ancient magnolia trees growing inside the fence.

Behind a brick wall we couldn’t see was a side garden.

We stayed a long time, leaning against the front door, kissing each other, without saying a word, until I said: we should buy this house. We would live there happily ever after, traveling the world together and then coming back to our home. The house was big enough for wild parties, for overnight visitors, and for a dark room where our two families from California could eat.

“When we get tired of New Orleans,” I said, “we take a plane to New York for two or three weeks, or to the ‘club’.”

She looked irresistible, smiling up at me in the semi-darkness, her arms wrapped around my neck.

“Remember, this is our house,” I said. “Of course, we can’t live in it for as long as two years, unless my contract at the ‘Club’ expires. But I don’t see why we shouldn’t make the down payment now.”

“You’re not like anyone else I know.” She said.

We start walking again, kissing in a soft, dreamy, drunken way, not very urgently. We take a few steps and start kissing, leaning against a tree. I stir her hair and can’t get it back in place. She no longer has lipstick on her lips. She can’t stop me in time, and I’m able to quickly get my hand under her shirt, feeling the smooth cotton material of her shorts between her legs, wet and hot, and I’m eager to be where we are Her.

Finally, we crossed Jaxon Street and wandered into the Punchachun Inn, where the bar was still open and we had a few more drinks. When we came out, we decided that everything from that point on seemed ugly and cheap, so we took a cab back downtown. I felt manic again, as if this night mattered, and every time I felt that way, I’d grab her again and kiss her.

The horribly nasty places on Bourbon Street are closed, thank goodness.

It was three o’clock, and we walked into a cozy place with two or three kerosene lamps and a couple of four-square wooden tables, and we had our first argument. I knew I was drunk and I should have kept my mouth shut, but the argument was about a movie called “Pretty Baby,” about the old Stoliville Green Lantern District in New Orleans, directed by Louis Malleau. Louis Malleau. I hated it, and she said it was a great movie. In the movie, Brooke Cedars plays a prostitute. Brooke Shields plays a child prostitute, and Keith Carradine plays a photographer named Bello. Keith Carradine as Belloc, the photographer, and Susan Sarandon as Brooke. Sarandon plays Brooke’s mother and I think this movie is worse than a flop.

“Don’t call me an idiot just because I liked a movie you know nothing about.” She said. I stammered, trying to make it clear to her that I hadn’t called her an idiot. She said that I had said that anyone who likes that kind of bad movie is an idiot.

I had another glass of whiskey with water, and I knew what I was saying was insightful: that movie was a load of crap and had no substance. But when she started talking, she brought up sex crimes and said that the movie was about these prostitutes and how they continue to live, love, and experience life on a daily basis, despite their alienation.

This movie is all about flowers opening up in the gaps, it’s about life’s inability to crush life. I began to understand what she was talking about. She understands the feelings of the photographer, Belloc, who is in love with the prostitute (played by Keith Carradine), who is in love with Brooke B. Baker, who is in love with him. The character played by Keith Carradine is in love with the character played by Brooke Cedars. (Keith Carradine’s character is in love with Brooke Shields’ character), and in the end, everyone leaves Belloc. But the best scene of all: Susan Sarandon’s whore, who is a very good actress. But the best scene is the one where Susan Sarandon, as the prostitute, takes care of the baby in the brothel’s kitchen.

She says that you can’t tell people to shut up and die because they are sex offenders; you wouldn’t know it now: that’s what the ‘clubs’ are looking for, because all you see is rich people at the pool, you have to be rich to go there, you have to be young, you have to be pretty, but there’s this idea that everyone can come here and express his or her sexual fantasies, and you can still do that, you can still do that. But there’s this idea that everyone can come here and act out his or her sexual fantasies, and you can still do that, you can still do that, you can still do that.

A slave does not have to be rich; if you are not beautiful enough to be a slave, you can be a manager or a trainer; you just have to really believe in the idea of the “club” and you have to have fantasies. There is more going on in the “club” than meets the eye, because many of the members admit in private that they want to be dominated and punished by slaves. So many slaves know how to play the dominant role when they need it. The situation was much freer than appearances would suggest. Her eyes did now appear dark, her face distorted, and talking rapidly as if in crisp repetitive singing. However, when I said the following passage, she began to cry. I said, “Well, fuck it, yes, that’s what I do in the ‘club’, act out my fantasies, but what does that have to do with the whores in ‘Pretty Baby’? It’s not their fantasies they’re acting out, it’s someone else’s.”

“No, but it was their lives. They continue to show hopes and dreams, and the movie captures everyday life. The cinematographer in the movie sees the imagery of freedom among them and that’s why he wants to be with them.”

“But that’s stupid. All Susan Sarandon’s character wants to do is get married and leave the whorehouse. All Sarandon’s character wants to do is get married, leave the whorehouse, ‘Pretty Baby’ is just a child, and…”

“Don’t say I’m stupid. Why must a man argue with a woman to say she’s stupid?

”

“I didn’t say you were stupid, I said that thing was stupid.”

The bartender suddenly leaned into my face and said, “Yes, it’s an all-night bar, and he’d hate to ask us to leave, but it’s between 4 and 5 a.m. and they have to clean up. Can we please go around the corner to the “Michael’s” bar?

“Michael’s” is a really low-class place. No sawdust, no paintings, no gas lamps. Just a rectangular room with wooden tables. They didn’t have a black label for “John Walker.” Lisa wasn’t really crying. “You’re wrong!” There’s a funny thing going on at the Michael’s Bar.

The people who came in were just waking up or something. They don’t drink all night like we do. But what kind of people wake up at five in the morning when it’s still dark and start drinking at Michael’s? There were two very tall gay men dressed as women, wearing wigs and face powder, talking to a thin young man. This young man drinks a lot, smokes a lot, and looks like he’s a hundred years old. His face was scrunched up against his skull and his eyes were completely bloodshot. I wish I had a camera. If we’re going to Venice, I want a camera.

Everyone who came in knew everyone else. But they don’t mind us being there.

“What do you mean you’re not writing a theater script?” I asked. “When are you going to tell me what you’re doing? Do you mean that people leave the ‘club’ like this and go back? If you have a slave, can you take the slave out like that and then take him back in? But what are the rules? What if I just wiped my feet right here and now? You know, slip away? I’ve brought all my personal things…”

“Are you going to do this?” She was rubbing the backs of her hands together, revealing to me an Italian splendor, her black hair a real mess now, her eyes growing wide in her drunkenness, her words a little slurred.

“No, I don’t want to.”

“So why do you say that?”

We’re outside again. The rain has stopped. I can’t remember when it started. We were at the Café du Monde by the river, across the street from Jackson Square; we were bathed in bright white light, and there were already delivery trucks roaring across Decatur Road, making a lot of noise.

The milk coffee was great, hot, sweet, so good. I ate a dozen tiny hot pies coated in sugar and told Lisa about the camera, photographing faces, and asking for each other’s cooperation.

“You know, I’m able to stay here forever,” I said. “It’s a lowly place, but it’s a real place. California is not real. Did you ever think it was real?”

“Not ever.” She said.

I asked for more whiskey, or a couple cans of beer. I stood up, walked over to her, pulled up a chair, and sat right next to her, arms around her, kissing her, hugging her, holding her off the chair. We stopped at the corner and realized that neither of us knew where the hotel was.

When we arrived at the hotel, the phone was ringing off the hook. She was pissed.

“Do you call me at every hotel in New Orleans that goes to it?” She spoke into the phone. “You call me at six o’clock in the morning of the go it?” She walked around barefoot with the telephone receiver in her hand. “What are you going to do? Arrest me?” She hung up the phone and tore up the phone message hanging on the door.

“It’s them, isn’t it?” I think I asked her.

She held up her hands and rubbed her temples, her voice sounding as if she might burst into tears.

“Why are they so nervous?” I asked her.

She leaned on my shoulder and I hummed something low, low in my voice, “I can’t give you anything but love, baby.” We had a long moment like we were dancing, just not moving our feet.

It’s daytime. I’m giving a speech.

The garden was wet and more verdant and fragrant than when it was dark, and all the windows of the servants’ little room were open.

She was sitting on a high four-poster bed, wearing white cotton underwear. The scent of flowers could be smelled everywhere. California flowers were never as fragrant as those in Louisiana, it was intoxicating. Pink oleanders, jasmine, and scattered wild roses. I called her “pretty baby,” told her I loved her, and asked long, complicated questions about what that love was and why it was different from anything that had ever happened to me before. We had already peeled off the skin at the “club”, and she knew things about me, my secret desires, that women never really knew, and that women who knew me never knew. And I love her. I love her.

I love her for what she is; she is petite, dark-haired, dark-eyed, passionate person who believes very strongly in what she is doing. She wasn’t a mystery to me like other women; I knew what she was, I knew everything about her, what she hadn’t told me; her heart was a locked place that no one could enter, but I was going to get there. It’s not even a problem that she thinks “Pretty Baby” is a good movie, because she’s projecting all her innocence and challenges onto it.

She was very upset. But, she kept drinking and I was too drunk to stop.

She’s undressing me and we’re lying on the bed together, the phone is ringing, my hand reaches over and almost falls off the bed, then pulls the phone socket out of the wall. We were making out again. I told her that even if she hurt me, really hurt me, it didn’t matter, that I was counting on this, looking forward to this.

It’s worth it to love someone this way. I said, “I’m really drunk. I won’t remember this.”

(to be continued)