“Not yet.”
We finished our chops and I pushed off the bar. We made our way over to the third doorway. We went in and were immediately part of an audience, surrounded by couches, all occupied, and all pointing toward a small stage. Upon which was a lot of leather. Whips, horse crops, chaps. Some items I had never seen in real life before. As if they didn’t actually exist outside of this house. In the center was a middle-aged woman wearing a full bridle, and nothing else, who seemed a bit (God, no pun intended) uncomfortable in the paraphernalia as she was whipped around the stage by different people jockeying (pun very much intended) for position, vying to take up her reins.
While all this was happening on stage, the couches had their own activities.
I watched.
I watched it all.
At some point, Alessandro leaned over. “Well?”
“See, this is where I thought spanking might lead. A gateway drug.”
He grinned at me. Nodded at the couch, where three people had their mouths filled with each other. “Care to join?”
For some reason, my instinct was to glance down at his crotch. I wanted to know if this excited him. If he cared to join. But it was dark and his pants were dark and the cape was in the way and, besides, I reminded myself: it was about what I wanted.
I assessed how I felt. I didn’t feel embarrassment. I didn’t feel judgmental. I liked how much everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves. It was a roomful of unencumbered pleasure. A raw kind of joy.
But it also seemed…sad. Not that they were sad, but the motivation was. It felt a bit desperate. As though they wanted to escape something. Themselves?
Believe me, I understood. That’s why I’d agreed to come here—to Venice, to be with Alessandro—after all. It’s why I’d thought I wanted to come here, to this ball. As if escaping myself was the same as freeing myself.
I looked to my left. Another couch. A woman sitting, slumped, slouched. Pleasure had rendered her liquid and she was spilling off the cushion. Her legs were wide and there was another woman between them, one hand playing with the breasts above her head.
The woman’s wig was askew, her mask uneven, her eyes closed and mouth open.
Had she escaped herself? Did she feel free?
I couldn’t answer for her.
I had to answer for myself. To hear my voice above the others in my head.
And it was saying that I didn’t want to escape myself; I wanted to be myself.
A man stepped up to fill the woman’s open mouth and she greedily took him. He threw back his head and his eye caught mine.
He extended an inviting hand.
Did I imagine Alessandro tensing beside me?
He needn’t have.
I reached out and took the man’s hand. I held it for a moment. Squeezed it once. I shook my head softly, and then let it go. He smiled at me and closed his eyes as the woman took him deeper into her mouth.
There.
I’d been to an orgy.
I led Alessandro into the final room. The ballroom, as it turned out.
This was where the soft lounge music was coming from. Two nude acrobats twirled from silks suspended from the ceiling, human chandeliers. People danced beneath them.
I finished my champagne and wordlessly Alessandro did the same. We set the glasses on a tray and I walked to the dance floor. The song playing was slow and sultry. He effortlessly put us into a loose waltz position. But we didn’t waltz. We just sort of hovered, moving only slightly back and forth. If everyone else in the room looked like extras from Dirty Dancing, we were parochial middle schoolers saving room for Jesus.
He broke the silence first. “You walked through those rooms like you walked through the museum earlier.”
“Wrong. I was much more engaged at the museum.” We peered at each other through the dim lighting, through the haze of drifting incense, through our masks. “Do you do this often?”