Page 1 of Voyeur

CHAPTER 1

“The newest art exhibit in town is also the most provocative,” Honor read out loud as she stared at the ad on her social feed.

It was a photo of a half-naked woman with a hand on her flat stomach, and Honor wasn’t sure why she was staring at it. She also wasn’t sure what had her clicking on the ad and giving this social media platform money, but she did, and she read a few of the comments under the photo and description. The ad was for a new art installation, if it could be called that, and it, apparently, involved people having sex together in front of an audience. Honor was surprised that the ad had been allowed, but she was also even more surprised that the exhibit had been allowed to happen in the first place. She pushed it out of her mind when it was time for her first meeting of the day. Or so she thought.

“We need to focus on getting a younger crowd to donate,” her junior fundraising officer said.

“The younger crowd? You mean, the people who have no money because the economy is awful and who are saddled with whatever student loan debt that didn’t get forgiven, so they’ll probably never be able to buy a house and definitely can’t donate money to our little charity that could?” one of the directors replied.

“It’s a cause they care about,” the junior fundraising officer argued as she tapped her pen on the yellow legal pad on the conference room table.

“Maybe so. But we have a limited budget, so we have to be careful where we use it,” the director replied. “Right, Honor?”

“Huh?” she asked, realizing that she hadn’t been paying attention at all.

“She wants to go after the younger crowd. I think it’s a waste of our budget,” he explained.

“Oh. Yeah, maybe. But we can get creative with the money. Get something out of it, at least, even if it’s just awareness,” she replied.

“See? It’s a good idea. Can I get working on it?” the woman asked Honor.

“Sure. And I do want plans before you take action. I know how excited you get sometimes, but we don’t have much to spend this year, and we need it to last.”

“I know. I’ll come up with something that only uses twenty percent of the quarterly budget and let you know.”

“Ten percent, and we’ll talk,” Honor corrected.

“Fine,” she replied, sounding a little deflated.

With the meeting over, Honor should’ve returned her thoughts to her overflowing inbox, but instead, her brain took her back to the ad she’d seen and that photo. She swallowed, feeling herself grow wet, and knew she’d need to clean herself up if it got much worse. Honor felt ridiculous. It was just a photo of a woman’s stomach and a hand, but the image was in grayscale, and the skin had beads of water – or maybe that was meant to be sweat – indicating there had been some activities that had made that woman hot. It made Honor hot just thinking about that. She crossed her legs under her desk and squeezed her thighs tightly together.

Honor had never been like this before. She supposed finally acknowledging that women were what she wanted and not men probably had something to do with it. So, when her workday finished, she hurried home and planned to get herself off in bed while watching one of the few porn films she’d recently acquired before she took a long, hot bath and fell asleep. She pulled the actual DVD that she didn’t know companies still sold out of its case and shoved it into the DVD-player she’d bought for just this purpose. Honor used her personal laptop for work a lot, since they didn’t have much of a supply budget, and she couldn’t risk people seeing her search history or finding some file with an obvious title in her downloads, so DVDs in the privacy of her own apartment would have to do.

Since the movie started off a little slow, as the two women were introduced at a party before they started having sex, Honor went to her kitchen to pour herself a glass of red wine. Back in bed, she found her favorite vibrator and kicked off her work clothes, leaving herself in only her white cotton bikinis, which she preferred to always keep on in the beginning before she’d practically tear them off her body at or around her third orgasm. Watching the women on the screen start to get to it had her turning on the vibrator and letting it run slowly over her panties. Her clit was hard, and she knew why. It wasn’t because of the women on the screen.

“Fuck. Stop being such a wuss and just go,” she said to no one, turned the vibrator off, and tossed it on the bed.

An hour later, Honor was dressed in a pair of tight jeans – which might have been a mistake because her clit was still hard and unsated, so the jeans felt even tighter than they were – a pair of ballet flats, a black sweater, and a hat. Yes, she would wear a hat tonight. This was a big city, and it was unlikely that she’d see someone she knew there, but Honor wanted to be careful, so she found an old fedora that she’d bought for a Halloween costume one year and put that on over her long dark hair, tilting it just slightly as if that would make her look better, wearing a fedora when she wasn’t a 1940s private eye.

Then, Honor took an Uber to the warehouse district and had it let her out a block away from the address of the exhibit that had so captured her thoughts. She’d read a little more about it on her phone as the driver had taken her across the city. It was the first of its kind in the area and was supposed to run through this weekend. Just three shows; that was it. Today was Friday, which meant if she liked what she saw, she could come back two more times. Odds were, she’d be shy and uncomfortable, like she was anywhere but work where she felt confident and in charge, even though she was only thirty years old and half the people that worked there were at least twenty years older than her.

Her shyness had been getting in the way a lot since coming out. She hadn’t been able to talk to a single woman, and scrolling through apps hadn’t yielded positive results, either. Even when a woman swiped on her, Honor couldn’t connect right back. The messages she’d received had mostly been polite and introductory, so she should’ve been able to message them back and just say hello, but even that had proven too hard for her. The very few photos of bare breasts and the one that had been full frontal had been shocking, and although not altogether unwelcome, it also didn’t exactly make her want to reach back out.

There was a woman with a nose ring and a lip ring standing outside the closed doors of the warehouse when Honor approached cautiously, and she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do.

“Ticket?” the woman asked.

“Uh… no. Can I buy one here?”

“Yeah, sure,” the woman replied.

She gave Honor the price, which was more than her grocery bill budget for the week, and Honor was now both embarrassed to pay it and too embarrassed to leave at the same time. After deciding to proceed with the purchase after all, Honor was instructed on the rules.

“The performers in the exhibit are just that, performers. They are not to be recorded or photographed in any way. They are not to be touched or interrupted in any way. If you are caught doing anything you shouldn’t be doing in there, you will be removed by security. Your photo will be taken, and you will not be permitted to return. That includes touching or taunting the performers but also touching yourself or any of the guests or employees of the venue. Do you understand?”

“Uh… yeah.”

“When the show is over, it’s over. You’re not permitted to speak with any of the performers or otherwise attempt to engage with them in any way. Do you understand?”

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