The Juliette Society (11 page)

And Bundy pulls out his cock. Leaves it hanging there out of his pants for this pretty-geeky-dumb-wannabe-black-metal-but-failing-miserably-hipster girl to work out exactly what it is that she’s looking at.

The head of Bundy’s penis.

With EAT tattooed across the top.

And ME inscribed on the underside.

Like the mushroom in
Alice in Wonderland
, except it doesn’t make any difference which side you take a bite of.

And I don’t know who I feel more sorry for.

The tattooist who put it there.

The girl who’s about to put it in her mouth.

Bundy.

Or his parents.

His poor parents.

Bundy’s parents were yuppies.

You hate him even more.

Don’t. Let me finish.

Bundy’s parents were yuppies who made their money in a banking boom, back in the days when yuppies, AIDS, Madonna and crack were the biggest things going. But ‘were’ in the operative sense. Shortly after Bundy was born they lost everything. In crack-fueled shopping sprees, acquiring crap they couldn’t possibly need and certainly didn’t want. Crap they later sold at rock-bottom prices for rocks of crack that, as inflation goes, cost more than a large uncut diamond smuggled out of Sierra Leone. So yeah, growing up, Bundy had something of a hard luck life. This is what he tells me, in one final ploy, to play the sympathy card.

All this happened sometime in the eighties, but if you were to ask Bundy, he’d be a little vague on dates, not so hot on those important little details, like when he was born. The most I can get out of him is this.

‘It was after eight-track tape and before CDs,’ he says. ‘When The Police were still cool and before they sucked. Somewhere between blockbuster albums, possibly after
Thriller
and before
Purple Rain
. Or maybe the other way round.’

Bundy says he can’t remember because he was just a baby. MTV was on all the time and he was planted in front of it in his bouncy inflatable crib while his parents were doing lines of coke the size of Cuban cigars off a stained glass coffee table through monogrammed silver coke straws.

But MTV at that time was just a blur of big hair and eyeliner, of Linn drums and Roland synths, and it was hard to distinguish Duran Duran from Kajagoogoo or Mötley Crüe.

Bundy says, ‘It was after Martha Quinn and before Downtown Julie Brown. No, wait… between Adam Curry and Kurt Loder.’

He’s trying to make me think he’s got Asperger’s and a savant-like recall of all the VJs on MTV in the order they first appeared. But I’ve got no idea who he’s even talking about because when I was born, VJs on MTV were all but a thing of the past and MC Hammer was making his ill-advised comeback as a born-again gangsta rapper.

From everything he’s told me, I can deduce three things. Bundy is much older than he looks. Too old to look like he does. And definitely old enough to know better.

Bundy’s parents also gifted him with a middle name, Royale – with a superfluous ‘e’ – thinking it would confer kingly status on their first-born: Bundy Royale Tremayne.

And there you pretty much have the root of all Bundy’s problems. Charles Foster Kane had his mommy fixation. Bundy Royale Tremayne has his name. Given to him on a whim the night after the morning before his parents went on a massive bender. And feeling terribly sorry for herself, that’s when his mom decided to kick drugs.

This was sometime into her second trimester. This was her big idea. That maybe a steady diet of crack cocaine, Hostess Twinkies, cheese whips and Beaujolais Nouveau wasn’t so good for her unborn baby’s future health.

For Bundy’s folks, this was such a momentous decision they decided to commit the night to memory by naming their firstborn. Crack cocaine not being that conducive to long-term thinking, they named him after whatever was on TV that night. They named him during an ad break in a true crime documentary, after a particularly odious serial killer and some cheap marketing gimmick dreamt up to sell junk food to junkies.

And the Tremayne, even though it sounds like the name of a doctor on
General Hospital
, that was just part of the deal.

As if all that isn’t going to lead to a massive personality crisis somewhere down the line once their sweet baby boy starts to walk and talk and shit and think for itself.

To say that Bundy was born with a handicap is a massive, massive understatement. But I have to say, he’s coped with it admirably. He’s achieved a lot, given the circumstances.

He’s almost famous. Certainly notorious.

The world is at his feet.

And slutty girls with low self-esteem are on their knees before him.

Bundy’s on to victim number three in less than an hour. And he’s warming up now, so it doesn’t take long, maybe ninety seconds, before his cock is already hanging out of his zipper, tattoo ready for inspection.

From what I can see, from where Anna and I are sitting, at the bar, Bundy’s cock looks like one of those boiled German sausages, the ones made of a very pale sweet meat spiced with herbs and stuffed into a thick rubbery skin, like a pigskin condom. You don’t eat the skin and you wouldn’t want to. To cook it, you leave the sausage in a pan of hot water that’s been taken off the boil, then you lance the skin and peel it off.

Or else you hold the hot sausage ever so gingerly between the thumb and forefingers of both hands, put your lips to the tiny hole at the top, and suck and suck and suck, until the skin slips back and the meat pops into your mouth.

Bundy’s cock looks like one of those sausages. Short, fat, stubby and pale, with a head that’s flat and wide, like an oyster mushroom, or a paper hat at a party that somebody sat on. And it has EAT ME carved around it in thick, black gothic script.

If that sounds pretty unappetizing, if it sounds like the kind of thing you wouldn’t want to put in your mouth, then that’s about right.

It’s not the kind of thing I would want to put in my mouth. But it didn’t stop any of these girls.

It didn’t stop them snorting cocaine off it either. Maybe they figured that was an easy compromise to make. So they wouldn’t have to find out if it tastes as unappetizing as it looks.

And I feel sorry for them. Not because they’ve compromised themselves. But because they did it for so little reward.

Not really even a line.

More like a bump.

What is it about guys with small dicks anyway?

They always have something to prove, always want to show you what they’re made of. They always have to tell you how big their cock is. How women always tell them how big it is. And they get away with it, for one reason and one reason only.

Because ‘big’ is such a relative term.

When you finally get to see it, after all that hype, it couldn’t fail to be a disappointment and you try not to show it on your face. Because, in actual fact, ‘big’ is no bigger than a cocktail sausage with one of those tiny bows of skin at the end.

And the ones who don’t want to tell you how big it is, the ones who think they’re smarter than that, they’ll try and show you instead.

They’ll pull out a bunch of badly composed, self-shot polaroids of them fucking a girlfriend and pretend it’s an art project.

Big guy. Tiny cock. Something to prove.

Because they’ve only just worked out what everyone in Hollywood, everyone in the porn industry, has known for years and years and years.

Everything looks bigger on film.

Everything but everything.

Because, despite what you may have heard, the camera always lies.

Or else they might try and show you photos taken on their phone of some random lonely girl they and their best bud picked up in a bar one night and plied with drinks using their dad’s credit card until she was almost totally shit-faced. Then they dragged her back to their apartment, virtually unconscious, propped her up on the couch and both face-fucked her. First in turn. Then at the same time.

They face fuck her until they both come. Simultaneously. Both telling themselves it’s not because they were rubbing up against their best bud’s cock in the same girl’s mouth.

But because she gave such good head.

Or else they face fuck her until she wakes up, realizes what’s happening to her, and vomits.

Whichever comes first.

Bundy has a website for that too: What Girls Want.

No irony intended.

Devoted entirely to Bundy’s personal archive of girls, in various stages of undress and inebriation, chowing down on his penis.

Even though I can’t imagine it has much of an audience, other than Bundy. And the women who appear on it, who only check it out as a memo to self:

Never accept free drinks from strangers in bars.

The bar is starting to get pretty full now. Bundy’s hardcore army of fans have already worked out where he is from the GPS data on the photos he posted not thirty minutes ago. He’s starting to draw a crowd. Things are getting out of control.

This poor girl is pumping Bundy’s cock with her pretty little mouth, and there’s a crowd of jocks standing around them. A bunch of jocks in a hipster bar looking terribly out of place. They’re slamming shots of Jäger and Jack Daniels and pumping their fists in the air, chanting:

BUN-DEE.

BUN-DEE.

BUN-DEE.

And it cramps his style. As it would.

So Bundy gets a few shots off, because that’s all he needs, uploads and pulls out.

He slings his camera around his neck, dashes over to Anna and me at the bar and says, ‘Let’s go.’

And we split.

11

It’s early when I crawl to bed. Three, at least, maybe close to four. I didn’t expect to be out this long. The room is dark and still. I think Jack’s asleep.

I’ve barely laid my head on the pillow when he says, ‘Where were you?’

‘I’m sorry,’ I say.

He says it again. ‘Where were you?’

I can’t tell him.

‘With Anna,’ I say.

Only half a lie.

I wait for the conversation to continue. It doesn’t. He’s not happy. I know he’s not happy.

‘Jack,’ I say.

No reply.

‘Jack?’

I reach over and touch his arm. He recoils and turns away from me sharply, rolling onto his side and out of reach.

‘Jack, I’m sorry,’ I say.

What else can I say?

Still no response. The silence is deafening. I want to scream just so I can drown it out, just so he’ll have to react.

The room is dark and still. For the longest time.

Then he says, coldly, ‘We’ll talk about it in the morning, Catherine.’

We don’t talk about it in the morning. I oversleep and Jack’s already gone. I hate waking up and he’s not there. Some people are afraid to go to sleep alone. I’m afraid of waking up, never knowing whether the new day is going to greet me with an empty bed, and no one there to hold me.

‘Jack?’ I call.

No answer.

I know he’s not happy. I feel rotten, laden with the dread of a whole day of not knowing if his anger will have eased off by the time he comes home. And what will happen if it hasn’t.

Jack’s anger is like the raging ocean; it whips itself up, with no concern for the destruction it wreaks, no remorse for whatever gets caught in its path, and there’s no way to avoid it, no way to placate it. It’s not a violent anger, but a quiet rage; a misalignment of the passion that drives everything he does. And so the only thing to do is to wait it out, until the wind dies down, until it abates and subsides. Until calm prevails. But that doesn’t make it any easier to bear.

I do what I usually do to quell the anxiety, to quiet the voice in my head that won’t stop talking. I masturbate.

I close my eyes, slide my fingers between my thighs and think of Jack, still sleeping, as if none of this had happened. As if he had never woken when I came to bed. As if he was completely oblivious to the time. Whether it was four or three or two or one.

I wake him with a kiss on the forehead, my sweet prince, and watch him slowly rouse from slumber. He looks up at me, still woozy, and says, ‘I waited up, but I was so exhausted.’

He doesn’t say, ‘Where were you?’ Cold and accusatory.

But, ‘When did you get back?’

And I lie. A full lie this time, but a white lie, so he’s none the wiser.

And he smiles, ‘I missed you.’

He starts to kiss me, softly, sweetly, tugging at my lips with his.

He cups my breast, brushes the nipple with his thumb.

I reach down and stroke myself where all the sweat gathers, where the smell of my sex is strongest. I stroke it and then lick my fingers and stroke it some more.

He gently bites my top lip, sucks it. Tugs at my nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger.

I feel it harden.

I feel him harden.

I feel myself getting wet.

I wet my finger, run it up the lips of my pussy and imagine it’s his tongue, wetting the wings of my labia, feeling them flutter and spread, circling my clit and flicking it. Blood rushes to my head, to my clit. I feel dizzy.

I feel the head of his cock bouncing against my thigh as he crawls over me, positioning himself above me, poised to enter. And I turn on my side to accommodate him, bending the top leg at the knee, like a dancer doing the Can-Can, to give him a clear view of the runway as his craft comes into land.