He decided not to knock on the metal door and say, “Pardon,” the way he’d been taught but to barge in like Genghis Khan, some big terrifying conqueror. Unfortunately he had his street clothes in the gym bag, which mitigated his sadistic allure.
He walked in and saw four tall men in chaps, asses exposed, standing together with their backs to him, almost as if they were at a urinoir. He put the bag down and drew closer and they were pissing on the baron, who was crouched on his knees, glorying in the rancid urine. He was wearing a strange leather full-length coat, open to expose his chest, belly, and pitiful little erection. The coat was very Wehrmacht. Guy hoped the liquid wouldn’t cause a short in his hearing aids.
Guy knew not to say hello or greet his host. He pulled up beside the man farthest to the left. They seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of urine and they were painting Édouard’s face and chest and belly with the liquid, which wasn’t so yellow. Guy could see a dozen beer cans lined up on the ledge and he imagined that that was what was being recirculated so abundantly.
He was sure he’d be piss-shy, but he tugged his leather shorts down, and out flopped his tumescent dick. Édouard (he tried to think of him as “it,” the piece-of-shit slave, as Pierre-Georges had taught him) crawled over to Guy; he was dripping and barking like a seal. Guy resorted to the usual French banalizing thought: But it’s completely normal, he said to himself, though there was nothing normal about it. Guy was a good enough actor that he felt challenged by this new role. The other folks were muttering the same stupid words, “Yeah, now you’re getting there, yeah, pig, now you’re sucking that big uncut cock, go for it, piggy, yeah, you want that hot young piss, you know you want it …” Guy didn’t dare say anything, with his accent and his ignorance of the right words; he’d be bound to say something like, “Yes, pig, that’s truly excellent,” and they would all laugh, evaporate, like vampires at dawn. He might say something funny. Pierre-Georges had told him humor was the great enemy of sadism. At the sound of the first laugh the whole dungeon would collapse in a puff and vanish.
The baron reached behind him and turned on a faucet that poured water directly onto the raw concrete floor. It flowed into a drain, an industrial-looking drain. No doubt the baron hoped the sound of water would sympathetically induce Guy to pee, but no such luck. He should have gulped three Diet Cokes before coming.
Guy wondered what the scenario was for tonight. Hadn’t Pierre-Georges said the baron liked his orgies to have narratives? It seemed tonight the baron was a bad dog, who kept racing forward to bite his masters on the leg until they whipped him and drove him back into a kennel. The baron actually was uttering, “Gr-r-r,” in an amateurish way that Guy found attachant; at least, mercifully, he was no longer begging for Guy’s piss.
The other men were all of a type — tall, balding, skinny, pale, tattooed, almost as if they were vagrants who slept rough, smelling of old cigarettes and beer, their asses wrinkled and flat like deflated balloons but their dicks big and bridled with shiny cock rings. They all had nascent beards and one man, who looked as if he were in his forties, had a broken tooth. He was the only one wearing a motorcycle jacket and no shirt. His ribs were countable, his stomach flat as a drumhead, his chest stringy with sparse, long hairs.
The bad dog made a rush for Guy’s calf and bit into it. It was painful and released enough adrenaline to power an angry outburst from Guy, who lashed the cur back into its kennel; a second later Guy wondered if he’d actually hurt Édouard and broken the skin, but there was no way to ask.
The dog bite hurt; he could see he was bleeding and he tried to remember if he had any runway dates this week where he had to wear shorts. (He didn’t think so.)
Now that the dog had been sufficiently subdued, all the masters drew a tighter and tighter circle around it and forced it to suck them one after another as dogs will. Then the man with the broken tooth made the dog lie paws-out, faceup on the cement floor. He squatted over it and strained and shit in its mouth. Its mouth was a black hole and it was weeping and chewing. Guy knelt down to Édouard and Guy whispered with concern, “Ça va, Monsieur le Baron?”
2
“‘Monsieur le Baron’?” Pierre-Georges said angrily.
“How did you know I said that last night?”
“Édouard phoned me. He was very irritated and disabused.”
“I felt sorry for him. I was worried about him.”
“So he said,” Pierre-Georges said acidly. “The scales fell from his eyes and he no longer thinks you’re a real man but some sort of mama’s boy.”
“I knew it was a blunder but I felt genuine compassion for my friend—”
“A blunder? I’ll say. That’s what he wanted; he’d paid two hundred dollars to each of those types. Since his childhood, he told me he’s dreamed of being disciplined as a bad dog and then forced to eat a turd—un étron.”
“No one has that fantasy. Little boys want to be cowboys or fireman — no one wants to be a bad dog forced to eat shit. Not even a Belgian baron.”
“Chacun à son goût,” Pierre-Georges said philosophically.
“What should I do when I see him the next time?” Guy asked. “How should I act?”
“It’s finished. He won’t bother you again. No more intimate or name-day parties. No more amazing gifts. You might be invited as an extra on a crowded stage if you’re lucky.”
“But we’re friends!” Guy objected.
“Oh, sure. Do you think he invites you because he likes your scintillating conversation about the ups and downs of the rag trade? Do you think he has a burning interest in the rag trade?”
“We have other subjects, serious subjects.”
“I forgot: Your sad childhood. Your Buddhist chants. No, it’s finished.”
Guy thought for a while. “He talked about his sad childhood, too.”
Pierre-Georges snapped, “The only thing sad about his childhood was that he couldn’t convince any of the footmen to shit in his mouth.” Pierre-Georges was warming up to his role as the disabuser. He’d come over to Guy’s for the emergency. He smiled for the first time today. He opened a white paper bag and pulled out a croissant, found a plate in the cupboard, and ate it. As Guy’s manager he of course didn’t offer him anything to eat; Guy’s breakfast was always a cup of black coffee, which he was sipping now while looking sheepish.
After a solitary lunch (a third of a chicken salad at the Front Porch, a neighborhood restaurant where he liked the campy waiter), Guy felt absolved and talked himself into a storm of irritation. He was tired of feeling foolish for a simple act of human kindness. He’d been brought up by a sainted mother. Was it his fault that he couldn’t despise a kind old man, even someone as deeply perverted and depraved as Édouard? Guy imagined most aristocrats were decadent. He was proud of his humble origins. His instincts were still unimpaired. A decade in fashion hadn’t spoiled him. He was still a good person, a simple boy of the people from Clermont-Ferrand and, thank god, not a shit-eating Belgian. He tried to feel sorry for Édouard, for making a mess out of his life.
He decided he’d invite Édouard to dinner. He knew how to cook eel in green sauce, which Édouard loved. And Guy would wear his leather harness and shorts and have menottes, cuff links — no, handcuffs! — dangling on his left side. After a bottle of Gewürztraminer, the baron would end up on his knees begging for it. He’d always been fond of Édouard, who’d been so kind to him, who’d bought him this house, who’d celebrated his name day. He was strange, but then they’d had some good conversations.