Page 15 of Watch Me

“That,” says David, taking a sip of his beer and not even turning to look at me, “is fucked.”

His eyes are glued to the couple performing in front of us, just like everyone else here—men and women in various states of undress gathered around three sides of a windowed room that David calls “the foreman’s office.”

When he first leased the space, it had been previously used as a factory. At the very back of the large, open back room are two former offices wedged in a corner, both with windows. The smaller one, currently empty, is against the wall and only has one window. The larger one, the foreman’s office, has windows on two sides. Recently, David cleared out both rooms, added beds, and had the windows replaced so that they could act as peep show booths. And tonight is the club’s inaugural sex show.

Every spectator here, David included, is spellbound by the show taking place in front of us, and I, a card-carrying voyeur, am the only person who isn’t watching. I’m alternately looking between my friend and my drink, my mind still going in circles after this morning’s revelation that the girl I’ve been mildly obsessed with is sleeping with my son.

Not even the woman’s escalating cries and gasps as the man behind her starts thrusting harder can distract me from my thoughts, and I sigh, wishing David had some advice or anything reassuring to say. But he’s miles away, watching the couple with a look of rapture on his face.

The live show is a success, and it’s a good night for his business, based on the looks of the crowd around the room, but that’s not what’s behind my friend’s smile. I’ve seen this look before. This is the look David gets right before something fun happens—before the drinks arrive, or just as the vacation starts, or, in this case, when he’s about to fuck someone. This is David getting off on the sexual energy in the room, and he’s definitely got his eye on the pale, dark-haired girl currently getting railed by the big man in the rubber bull mask.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the aesthetics of the show. The girl is full-figured and curvy, with an alluring femininity that contrasts with the masked man’s raw, bestial power. It’s a fun scene to watch, but this kind of voyeurism isn’t to my taste. It’s too staged, too public, too performative. I need something deeper. Something real. And something else that’s hard to define, an elusive quality. An ability to give oneself over to the experience, to completely lose oneself in pleasure.

For all that her arousal seems genuine, the girl in the room isn’t transported like that. When she looks up to the crowd—making eye contact with David, I notice—there’s an awareness of her performance that, while it might be a turn-on for others, does the opposite for me. It’s too calculated.

Even though Zoë is a performer by profession, she never seems like she’s acting. She has stage presence because of her authenticity. That’s why I can’t stop thinking about how she grabbed my hand in the VIP booth and how impulsively she seemed to crave my touch. She wasn’t doing it for the performance. It wasn’t for my sake. It was pure, unfiltered lust, and thinking about it has me tied in painful knots even now, when I need to get her out of my head more than ever.

How could she possibly be my son’s girlfriend? In what world do coincidences like this exist?

I can remember so clearly the silky texture of her skin. How the side of her waist felt, where my son touched her as he kissed her, where I held her as I pushed my cock up against her ass, wishing the barrier of my clothing hadn’t been between us.

Thanking God now that it had been.

“Tell me it’s not that bad,” I say to David.

Behind the window, the bull is coming, pulling the girl’s head back by her hair as he roars out his pleasure and then deflates, shoulders slumping in exhaustion, back heaving.

“It’s bad,” says David, without missing a beat. He puts his empty beer bottle down on a table beside us and then lifts his eyes heavenward in a theatrical manner before finally looking at me. “I’m trying to think if I’ve ever done anything worse, and yeah—nope. Even I haven’t tried to fuck my kid’s girl. You’re a very bad boy, Nicky.”

I roll my eyes. “You don’t have a kid,” I point out unnecessarily.

He claps a hand on my back. “C’mon. Let’s get your mind off of her and onto someone else.”

His eyes trail back to the foreman’s office and the dark-haired girl now exiting it. He wants to talk to her, and I’m cock-blocking him, keeping him here listening to me when he wants to go have fun.

But fuck that. David’s whole life is fun. And mine just got turned upside down.

“I feel like the worst fucking person,” I say.

His eyes snap back to me and he gives me his full attention. “You can’t do that, Nick. You’ve got to put it behind you. It was an honest mistake—you didn’t know, and for fuck’s sake, she’s a stripper. Shit like that is bound to happen to her. So she gave you a lap dance one time. This girl could be in your life forever. Who knows? What if they end up getting married? You need to get your head on straight fast. Move past this.”

An uncomfortable thought occurs to me.

“Should I talk to her? Make sure we’re on the same page?”

David’s face is a mime of horror. “Jesus Christ, are you kidding? You pretend like you don’t even recognize her, okay? Like you get so many lap dances she could be anyone. Trust me, she’ll be relieved to think you forgot.”

“Yeah,” I mutter, thinking about the spasm that rippled through her as she came.

I’ll just act like fingering a stripper is perfectly normal for me.

David arches an eyebrow at me.

“I’m fine,” I say louder, waving him away with my hand. “Go sow your wild oats. Don’t worry about me.”

I know I’m not imagining the look of barely-disguised glee on his face. He’s like a kid at Christmas. How does he live every day of his life like this?

“Come watch,” he suggests. “You can be my pervy sidekick. We can do some cuckold role-play.”

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