The Juliette Society (7 page)

Then something changed. You could say I had a revelation, whether through the call of love, or lust, or maybe a combination of both. But I remember it vividly, as if it happened this morning.

It was the eighth time Jack and I had sex. And it felt so special. Jack was really the first guy who even made me feel comfortable being naked around him. I was on top, riding him, we kissed passionately, and just as he was about to come, he looked me right in the eyes and asked… he actually asked me if he could come in my mouth.

I panicked at just the thought of it, but was so overwhelmed with this new love-lust that all I could do, all I wanted to do, was smile and nod my approval and give my permission. He asked. I was in control. He cared to ask, and that alone made me want it.

From that time on, I lost all fear of the sticky substance associated with that dirty word. I was no longer even afraid of what it might taste like. I just wanted it. It turned me on. I loved it. I was fascinated by it. I craved it, just as I craved Jack’s tender arms wrapping themselves around me, his lips giving me soft, sweet kisses. Sex was just one big disappointment before I met Jack. I guess it was all down to finding the right person, the one who would open me up, show me the way and teach me how to find pleasure in sex.

You know that line by William Blake about ‘the world in a grain of sand’? Well, I can see the universe in a grain of Jack’s come. When I think of Jack’s come, I think of how it got there, how great the sex was and how I never wanted it to end. When I think of Jack’s come, he’s always with me and it’s like we’re never apart.

I like to feel his come. I like to feel it shoot into my mouth. I like when he shoots it into my hair and makes it thick and sticky and matted, the way you feel when you walk into a cobweb.

I like to tell him to come on my tits so I can smear it around in messy circles, the way a painter mixes paint on his palette. He is the paint. I am the painter and the canvas too. I like to paint with his come on my body so I can feel it dry, harden and contract, pinching the skin as it does. I like the way it flakes away in scales as I brush it. I like to hold a flake of his dried come on my finger and look at it the way you look at a snowflake, trying to discern the crystalline pattern of nature within.

I like to look down and see come gush from the head of his cock. First spurting in long, gloopy arcs of ever-decreasing reach and volume. Then pouring slowly, inexorably, like foam from a can of beer that was shaken too much just before it was opened.

I like when it pools in my belly, drowning my belly button and spilling across my waist like cream soup spilling from a plate. When it rains down on the small of my back in big, thick drops, like hot rain, like hot milk, like hot lava. When he pulls out and shoots it all over my pussy and into my bush, where it hangs in thin strands like cotton caught on hedgerows.

I like when he shoots inside me and I feel full and satisfied and calm, as if I’ve just eaten a good, hearty meal. And then feel it slide out of my pussy, leaving a thick pearly trail that gathers in the bud of my asshole. Sometimes it will ooze out, hours later, when I’d long forgotten it was even there. When I’m walking around campus or sitting in class, or sitting on the bus, or standing in line at the checkout and, all of a sudden, the crotch of my panties is wet with slime and I remember the moment he thrust inside me, letting out that cute pained little groan a split second before he let out his load. And I relive it, as if he’s fucking me, ejaculating inside me, right then and there, on campus, in class, on the bus, in the supermarket.

I like when he comes on my face and it feels like I’m completely at his mercy, like he’s humiliating me with his come. When I close my eyes and feel it splash onto my face. When he shoots come onto come onto come and it feels heavy and slides down my face. Filling my pores, dripping down my cheek, my forehead, hanging off my chin. And it feels like my face isn’t big enough to take all his come. His endless semen.

I like to wipe it off my lips and cheek and stretch it between my finger and thumb like snot, then slurp it back into my mouth, roll it around and mix it with my saliva, into a cocktail of my fluids and his, and slurp that down like an oyster. Then I open my mouth, wide, and stick out my tongue to show him it’s all gone. That I’ve been a good girl and taken my medicine.

I like to guess what he’s had for breakfast, lunch, dinner and in-between from the way it tastes and the way it smells. Salty, bitter, sweet, sour and smoky. Beer, coffee, asparagus, banana, pineapple, chocolate. From the texture and consistency. Sometimes it’s runny like half-cooked egg whites, sometimes thick and lumpy like semolina, sometimes both of those at the same time. And sometimes it’s smooth like cough syrup, which is how I like it best, because it goes down so easy.

I like to lick his cock after he’s come inside me, when he pulls out and his penis is slick and shiny with his come and mine. I want to savor the flavor of him and me together, our sweat and passion. I want that taste to linger in my mouth until it starts to turn rank on my breath. I love the smell of his come when it starts to ferment on my body.

And then I like to wash his dried come off my body in the shower and feel it reconstitute itself as the water hits it, almost as if it’s come back to life from the dead. I like to watch that water, his come, swirl down the plughole, and think about the journey it’s about to embark on.

The places it has been and the place it will end up. From inside Jack’s body onto mine. From my body all the way to the sea.

Born from nature and returned to nature. The way of all things.

The way it’s meant to be.

7

Marcus is leaning against his desk, dissecting
Belle de Jour
scene by scene. He is talking about Séverine’s need to submit to her desires, completely and absolutely, until her fantasy and her reality are merged and she is unable to distinguish one from other. And I am on my knees in front of Marcus, licking his outstretched hand.

I am on my knees. I have a collar around my neck with my owner’s name on it. It tells me:

I am the teacher’s pet.

I am Marcus’ dog.

He is my master.

I’m balanced on my hind legs with my paws resting on his torso and my head buried in his crotch. I am a bitch on heat and I can smell my master’s sex. I am rubbing my nose in the crotch of his pants, snuffling his aroma, drawing it into me. The secret musk that tells me I belong to him and only to him. It fills my nostrils, fills my head. I am in a cloud of love and there is nowhere I would rather be. I pant and bark to show my delight.

I look at his crotch and cock my head as I trace a crease in his brown suit pants with my eyes. I lap at his crotch, tracing the crease with my tongue, and feel it swell and bulge against the fabric.

I am staining the crotch of Marcus’ trousers with my tongue and he pushes me off him, roughly, without warning. He pushes me away so violently that I fall hard on my side and sprawl across the floor. He barks his displeasure at me, admonishing me.

Bad dog.

I look up at him and cry out, pathetically. And it just makes him more angry. My master hates my guts and I feel sad. I feel like I want to curl up and hide in a corner and chew on a nice, tasty bone.

Marcus is talking about the secrets we keep in dreams, about the secrets we keep that threaten to consume us.

I am on all fours on top of the desk with my head resting on my front paws and my ass stuck up in the air as high as it will go. Marcus has two fingers deep in my pussy and his thumb lodged in my asshole, like he’s standing on the highway trying to hitch a ride. I’m wagging my behind and whimpering with pleasure. And all is forgiven.

I am my master’s bitch.

Anna is late to class. Anna walks in and all the men stand to attention. Marcus stands to attention. And Anna is on her knees in front of him. She has her head buried in his crotch. She is sucking in the secret scent that was known only to me. She is lapping at the place where I once was. But I’m not jealous. I’m not worried that I’ve lost his affections to another. I’m happy to share my obsession. Happy to share my master with my best friend.

Marcus is talking about Séverine’s need to annihilate herself through sex. And I am my master’s slave. I will do anything he demands. I will submit to his desires and make them mine. I want to annihilate myself on his sex.

But my master has other ideas. He wants to save Anna for himself. He wants me for all the others.

Marcus is directing all the men in class to form a line. One by one. Two by two. Like the animals in the ark. He directs me to turn around, to face away from class, away from the men who wait in line, standing at attention. He tells me to face the board.

On the board, Marcus has written HEGEMONY.

He tells me to say it out aloud, over and over and over, until the word means nothing, until the word just is. As I do so, he instructs the men to take me. One by one. Two by two. And I’m happy to share myself for my master. If that’s what he wants.

Marcus is talking about the unknowable limits of female desire and I think I understand what he means.

I’m sitting in class and I don’t know who I am, what’s come over me or why.

I’m sitting in the front row, as always.

Dressed for Marcus, as always.

But everything else has changed.

I’ve changed.

Marcus is leaning against his desk talking about erotic hallucinations and the capacity of the human mind to process fervent emotional states into phantasmagoric experiences that feel completely and utterly real, indistinguishable from reality itself.

I’m convinced Marcus is talking about me.

He’s talking to me. And only to me.

How does he know?

Marcus is talking about how film can act as a direct portal to the subconscious. How art can stir our unconscious thoughts and desires, often in ways that seem as fantastic and unreal as art itself. How, in extreme cases, our reactions to art can stimulate physical symptoms. Like the way teenage girls used to lose control of their bowels in the presence of the Beatles. Or how in the thirties they used to say that at the end of a Valentino movie there wasn’t a dry seat left in the house.

He’s talking about Stendhal Syndrome, an actual documented phenomenon whereby people experience high anxiety, fainting and even mild psychosis in the presence of great works of art.

Stendhal Syndrome. Sounds like the kind of thing a chronic hypochondriac would come up with if they were to look up ‘art’ and ‘psychosis’. The way chronic hypochondriacs always look up their symptoms, intentionally fuzzy on the details, in the hope of diagnosing some atrocious, incurable malady – the worse it is, the better to calm their anxiety. Stendhal Syndrome almost sounds as bad as it gets.

And here was I thinking it was just the name of a movie. A horror movie by Dario Argento that I once saw and never forgot –
The Stendhal Syndrome
– about a young female cop, played by Dario’s daughter, Asia, who while investigating a series of brutal murders, chases her prey into an art gallery and is stopped dead in her tracks by the majesty of the works she finds herself confronted by. Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus
, Caravaggio’s
Medusa
; one work of divine beauty, another of sheer terror.

And she is transfixed. Her field of vision telescopes in, towards the painting, until she can see nothing else. Until she finds herself, not looking in from the outside, but inside the painting looking out.

Like Alice through the looking glass.

I wonder if this movie holds the key to what I’m experiencing. And I realize how silly that sounds, as if anyone looks for answers in a horror movie. Or any movie at all, if it comes to that. As if art is capable of doing anything except raising more questions.

I have so many questions and I don’t know which way to turn. But I do know who to ask.

I corner Anna after class and we go to the cafeteria. Lunch is over and it’s almost empty. We sit at a table that’s far away from everyone else. I want to tell her everything, but I know if I do, it’ll sound insane, like the ravings of a lunatic.

Instead, I tell her I’ve been having these really intense dreams.

‘About Marcus,’ she says.

Not a question, a statement. How could she know?

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘About Marcus.’

Anna claps her hands together and giggles, giddy as a child at Christmas.

‘I want to hear all the juicy details,’ she says. ‘Don’t leave anything out.’

‘Have you ever felt so turned on that you thought you were going insane? That you were losing your grip on reality and might never get it back?’

‘In my dreams?’ Anna asks.

‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Or any time.’

‘In reality,’ she says.

I nod.

Without saying a word, she draws up a large hinged silver bangle decorated with ornate swirls that hangs down on her left wrist. Underneath it, there is a ring of deep patterned livid bruises, like a fossilized imprint woven into her skin, almost as if the pattern on the bangle has been branded onto her wrist.