The Juliette Society (14 page)

This is how Kubrick found his calling. As a fetishist.

One thing led to another and soon Kubrick had a whole library of the most bizarre beat-off material anyone’s ever seen. A library that to anyone else just looked like the kind of eccentric collection of books you’d find at a flea market or Goodwill. Soon there was no more room in the garage to house the collection, but it meant so much to him that, instead of moving it or paring it down, he decided to sell his car.

One day, Kubrick got to talking with one of his co-workers about his collection and they both realized they had something in common. They both realized they were living a lie. They decided to start a club to pursue their interests.

At first, they would meet in a room deep in the recesses of the building after work hours. There were only a handful of them and they would just sit around with a beer, each discussing their fantasies in turn for the others – like group therapy but for sadists and perverts. It was all very sedate and civilized. Until, one evening, as Kubrick was relating a particularly lurid sex fantasy involving a hosepipe, a sprinkler and a pile of manure, a guy sitting opposite him, who was new to the group, pulled out his penis and started to jerk off in front of everyone else. Instead of stopping to tell him to zip up, Kubrick carried on, incredulous. Now he had a new challenge. He wanted to see if he could get this guy off.

As he continued, the other guys in the room also started to unzip and soon Kubrick found himself in the position of trying to help them all, stimulating them to orgasm solely through the power of his imagination. And, to him, this was like the greatest kick of all. Way better than simply beating off over catalogues of cleaning products and jewelry and power tools.

The next time they met, a few of the guys brought their secretaries and interns. As Kubrick sat in the middle of the circle and told them stories, they started doing a lot more than just jerking off in front of each other. Kubrick’s little gathering very quickly turned into a support group for sex addicts where more sex was encouraged, not less. People started bringing props and dressing up. The scenes they acted out became more elaborate and involved.

As word got out and more and more government employees wanted to join, things started to get out of hand. It was getting harder and harder to keep it a secret. Around the same time, Kubrick decided he’d had enough of cooking the books for the government so they could prosecute dirty wars in far-flung territories across the world, then point at the accountants and claim plausible denial. He decided he wanted to devote his energies to his real passion, helping people to discover and activate their kinks.

I can’t quite believe what I’m hearing so I stop Anna there and say, ‘Are you telling me that’s how the Fuck Factory started? As an after-hours sex club in the Pentagon?’

‘I guess,’ says Anna. She doesn’t say anything after that for a few seconds, as if she’s deep in thought. Then she says, ‘You know, the strangest people work in government.’

Kubrick still has pretty good connections, Anna tells me.

‘You wouldn’t believe the kind of people that come here,’ she says.

I wait for her to tell me who but she doesn’t, and I don’t ask because I’m not sure I want to know. It’s not just the combination of those two statements that unnerves me, but the totality of everything she’s just revealed to me about the executive branch and what really goes on behind closed doors of government.

I’m inside the Fuck Factory and I feel like Al Pacino in
Cruising
. I’m Al Pacino pretending to be gay. And giving off all the wrong signals.

Yellow rag in the left back pocket. You like to piss on.

Yellow rag in the right back pocket. You like to be pissed on.

Without even realizing I’m giving any signals, I clock this guy staring at me from the other end of the bar. Young, blond, bare-chested, muscular, and obscenely good-looking with a page boy haircut that would look ridiculous on anyone else, but on him, with a body like that, seems just perfect – the way male models can pull off the most outrageous look and be so self-possessed they still command your attention. He’s leaning with his back to the bar, his elbows on the counter, legs at a forty-five degree angle in front of him, the better to show off the huge bulge in his leather pants.

He’s really not my type and I’m not even into blonds, but he carries himself with such supreme confidence and poise that I can’t stop looking. And I can see that’s exactly what he wants.

He looks at me coldly, like a lion watching its prey waiting for the time to pounce. He’s hunting me without moving an inch. He wants me to know that he’s there, that he’s affecting me, controlling me with his look.

And I want him to know that I’m not easy, that I’m not alone and have back-up, so I turn around to talk to Anna. But she’s not there any more. I scan the room frantically, but I can’t see her anywhere. I look back. He’s still staring at me and now he knows that I’m defenseless and have nowhere to hide. Before he makes his move, I decide to seek refuge in the bathroom, hoping I might find Anna there too.

Now, ordinarily, this would be a great move because a ladies’ room is like a convent, a sanctuary offering protection for the fairer sex, where confessions can be made, secrets can be aired, and men are definitely not allowed.

There’s only one problem. This bathroom is unisex. And it’s not so much a bathroom, as an excuse for water sports and anonymous sex. In the center there’s a trough tailor-made for people to either piss in or bathe in or both – and that’s exactly what’s happening. Bathroom stalls line each side of the room, something like twenty or thirty of them, and they all have holes in the doors – like the holes in Marcus’ closet – and body parts either sticking through or pressed against them. It takes me a split second to look around, take this all in and realize this isn’t the kind of refuge I was seeking.

I step out of the bathroom, into the dimly lit corridor that leads back into the main room of the club, and he’s there, waiting for me, in a recess shrouded in semi-darkness.

I don’t see him at first but as I pass, his hand shoots out and grabs my forearm.

He pulls me into him. I don’t resist. I let him take me.

And he whirls me around so I’m up against the wall.

His hands are on my waist, holding me, his lower body pressed against mine.

He kisses me on the lips, while his hand glides over my body, around my back and up to my shoulder.

He leans in to nuzzle me and somehow finds this magic spot, right on the ridge of my neck, almost midway between the collarbone and the ear, an erogenous zone that opens me up like a puzzle box. And it feels so good that just before the dopamine hits my brain, I catch myself thinking, how did he do that?

He buries his nose behind my ear, drawing in my scent. His lips, soft and moist, fix themselves to my neck, the tongue circling, searching, then slowly tracing the curve up to my ear, and curling down inside the rim, leaving a thin sheen of saliva in its wake. Teasing beneath the lobe, then flicking it and biting down just enough for me to feel the sharpness of his teeth.

I let out a moan. He’s in my ear, whispering, ‘you like that.’ But it’s more of an observation than an inquiry, because he already knows what he’s doing, where he’s taking me, and how to lower my defenses, one by one.

He plunges his tongue deep inside the crevice, thrusting, probing, making it wet. And I moan again, now dizzy with pleasure and abandon, my body trembling with anticipation for the next touch.

Instead, he makes me wait as he maneuvers me further back into the alcove. Back where it’s dark and private and we can’t be seen. And he lifts me up so I’m perched on a thin shelf that runs along the back wall at waist height.

My feet are barely touching the ground. My heels scrabble to find a hold and I have to brace myself and lean against the wall to stop from falling forward.

The wall is wet with sweat. As if all the heat and humidity has become trapped in this one little pocket of the club. But it’s also cold and clammy and I stick to it and it feels so good because I’m burning up inside.

And now he has me in a place where he knows I’m vulnerable and my resistance is down, I can sense his ardor increasing. He’s becoming bolder, less decorous.

His lust is off the leash.

His mouth is on mine again and his kisses are more forceful now. Using lips and tongue and teeth.

His hands are all over me. One running up through my hair, the other up inside my shirt, reaching for my bra. Kneading and squeezing one breast through the cup. Fingers brushing and pinching the nipple.

I can feel the blood rush in. Tightening and hardening it. Making the nipple so sensitive that I have to stop myself from crying out as the cotton grazes against it.

I can feel my breath getting shorter. Hear my fervor as I moan. And it makes me even more excited.

He kicks my feet apart, parts my legs with his knee and slides his thigh up against my crotch. His groin is up against my thigh. And I can feel his hardness pressing into me. I raise my leg and slide my pelvis forward so he can move deeper between my legs.

I’m right on the edge and the shelf is cutting deep into my ass, and it hurts so much, but I don’t care because he’s riding me with his thigh now, pressing it hard against me.

I put my hands flat on his chest and brace myself so I can grind down harder. And it feels so good that I think I’m going to lose my mind and I know I’ve lost control.

Instead, I think I must have blacked out from the heat and the pleasure and the pain. Because suddenly, I can see myself. I can see him on top of me. And I am outside my body.

The knot of my denim shirt is undone and hanging open.

My bra is unclasped at the front and hangs loose from my shoulders.

My breasts are exposed and slick with sweat. The nipples pink and swollen.

My shorts are hanging off one leg. The other is curled around his back.

His hand is in my panties. I’m wet and squirming to his touch.

And then it feels like I’ve just woken up because everything is fuzzy and indistinct, and the music sounds so distant.

But I clearly hear him say, ‘Not such a good girl after all.’

He’s telling me something I don’t want to know about myself. And I think he’s mocking me.

The laugh that comes in its wake sounds smug and leering, a slap in the face, and I come crashing back to earth again. I’m fully in my body. I’m naked and ashamed and I don’t want it anymore, not here, not now, not like this.

I raise my head to look past him, over his shoulder, and that’s when I realize that we’re not alone any more.

There are eight or nine leather boys; and when I say leather boys, I mean leather boys – the kind you’d see in a seventies gay porn film. Inordinately beautiful men, slim and toned. They are crowded into the entrance of the alcove, two or three deep. The ones at the back are craning their necks, pushing and shoving to get a better view.

The three at the front are leaning back into them to hold their ground, to hold the distance between us and them. They are all stripped to the waist with their pants hanging open at the crotch, their balls hanging obscenely over the fly of their pants, below thick, black, bushy curls of pubic hair, and their big rough, sweaty hands defiantly stroking hard, indelicate cocks.

I’m totally thrown and really freaked out because I can’t work out if they’re jerking off over me or over him.

‘I can’t do this,’ I say, and push him off weakly. ‘Really, I have to go.’ I can hear my voice crack with emotion, ‘I have to find my friend.’

And it’s like when a director yells ‘Cut’ and the scene breaks. I’ve killed the mood, they all start to peel away in search of another scene, one that will be more satisfying, and I quickly dress and right myself and push past them, wordlessly.

I hurry down a passageway, shaking and exhausted and excited all at the same time, trying to make sense of what the hell just happened. Part of me wanted to go all the way but I just couldn’t let myself go and I got scared, like when you get on a white knuckle ride at an amusement park and you suddenly realize where you are and tense up, and the thrill turns to fear.

And now I’m searching for Anna.

I think I’m heading back to the main room, back to the bar, when I’m going in the opposite direction entirely. And I realize Anna was right, this place is like a labyrinth. All the passages look the same. Two, three turns and I’m utterly lost. I keep on the same direction, thinking that I’m going to recognize some feature or other, then realize that I don’t. And then just as I think I’m never going to find my way back, I turn another corner and I see Anna. I could hardly miss her. I’ve walked into a large cavernous room teeming with people, all moving as one, all thinking as one, acting on instinct as they cruise and watch and fuck.

And there’s a film projected on the entire back wall of the room, maybe thirty foot high and forty foot wide, of Anna. One of her clips from the SODOM website. At least, I assume it’s from the website because it’s not one I’ve seen before. She’s topless and blindfolded with a black T-shirt tied around her head. But it’s still unmistakably Anna. I recognize the same shoulder-length blonde hair, I recognize her body.

She’s sitting on a bench that’s little more than several planks of splintered, unvarnished timber nailed into each other with no concern for comfort or stability. Her arms are extended along the back, in a crucifixion pose, tied along its length by loops of thick rope, and more tied tightly around her body; one above her breasts and one around her waist.

I don’t know what happened in the video before this, but Anna’s torso is flushed red, as if she’s been whipped. Her head is slumped forward, her jaw is hanging open and she’s drooling. A long, thick gob of spit hangs lazily from the corner of her mouth and hangs down between her breasts, where the lashes look red and raw and really painful, and her chest is heaving up and down like she’s just run a marathon.

I’m looking at Anna on the screen and I see Séverine, blindfolded and tied to that tree, and I realize that they’re one and the same – two fatal blondes chained to their desires.