Loud rock music blared in the background. The harsh, driving beat of the Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” was antithetical to the genteel decorations of the grand room.
The camera held steady until the French doors opened and a crowd flowed in.
It’s funny how you see what you expect to see. I knew right away that I was looking at a tape of a costume ball- everyone was wearing elaborate masks that covered the upper parts of their faces. The women were ornately dressed, well coiffed and draped with brilliant jewelry-real or not, it didn’t matter. Rubies and emeralds and diamonds glittered on ears and necks, fingers and wrists.
I was conscious that there was something different about what I was looking at, but it took a few seconds for me to realize that the women’s gowns were not just cut low but designed to bare their breasts. Nipples were rouged, skin was powdered and often sprinkled with sparkles.
As the women continued making their way into the room, the camera moved in on them. Many of the gowns had slits up the front, revealing that they weren’t wearing underwear.
The mood at the party was joyful. They greeted one another with air kisses, often whispering and then laughing.
The music segued into a Beatles song, “Love, Love Me Do,” as tuxedoed male waiters furrowed through the crowd offering canapés and flutes of champagne.
Two women-one wearing a cat mask, the other wearing one decorated with peacock feathers-took drinks and then walked off together, arm in arm. While the waiter was wearing a tuxedo coat, white shirt, cummerbund and bow tie on top, I now saw that he was naked from the waist down and sported a semierection.
All the waiters were pantless. The camera focused on one in his thirties, trim, medium height, dark-haired, with a strong but ordinary face. A woman wearing a silver mask, with sapphires outlining the holes for her eyes, took a glass of champagne from him and then reached down and cupped his testicles, giving them a little squeeze.
I reached for my wine without looking away.
What was I watching?
In a hushed tone, almost as if she had been anticipating my question, a woman’s voice started the narration and a title appeared over the scene:
The Scarlet Society’s 40th Annual Gala
February 10, 2002
“Since 1962, the Scarlet Society has had a yearly gala to raise money. Both active and inactive members from all chapters are invited to attend, as are all of the men that the society has invited to play with us over the years.
“For some of us, who have moved away or for some other reason stopped attending the regular soirées, this is a chance for us to see old friends and slip into our dreams for one more night.
“At the 2002 gala, more than 130 members and 150 male guests were in attendance. We raised close to two million dollars, which will go far in helping us keep the society an active and vital organization. All of this money was given anonymously.
“This tape is a small thank-you for your contribution and a memento of the evening we shared. As we all know, it’s not often that a camera is allowed into a society event, but since we were all so well disguised, the board thought it would be a wonderful record of our night of utter delight.”
The narration faded, the music returned to its previous level and I realized what I’d missed up until then: the voice-over had said there were 150 men present, but other than the dozen half-naked waiters, I hadn’t seen any men mingling with the female guests.
After thirty seconds more of the same footage, the camera zeroed in on a group of women and followed them through an open passage into a large ballroom.
I took ballroom dancing lessons when I was twelve. Krista, my father’s second wife, insisted. Even though she was an iconoclastic sculptor who showed at a SoHo gallery, she thought the lessons were a rite of passage.
“If you don’t learn, what will you do when some fabulous guy asks you to dance and a waltz is playing?”
Since I trusted and liked her-partly because she was smart enough not to try to replace my mother-I agreed to the once-a-week classes at the posh Pierre hotel on Fifth Avenue, just across from Central Park.
The girls were required to wear dresses and the boys to wear jackets and ties. The beginning of each session was the same: we stood on one side of the room and the boys stood on the other and we waited for them to walk across the parquet floor and ask us to dance. We learned more than the fox trot that year-the lesson of male power and female submission was reinforced for all of us every Thursday at five-thirty.
At the Scarlet Society’s gala, the same paradigm was now playing out on the video: women were on one side, and men were on the other. But it was the women who were the aggressors here, gliding across the floor and choosing their partners from among the men in evening dress-none of whom stayed dressed for long.
The camera stopped on a tall blond woman. With her mask on, it was impossible to tell her age, but she was dressed in a stunning, low-cut lavender gown that was slit up the front to show off her long legs. She walked away from the group, champagne glass in one hand, smiling to herself and moving seductively to the music. When she arrived at the swarm of men, she stopped and looked them over.
Walking back and forth, sipping her champagne, assessing, examining, she looked for something about one of the men that spoke to her.
Finally, she stopped.
He was taller than she was, with wavy hair almost as blond as hers. He was fully and immaculately dressed in a black tux. As she looked, he lowered his head. Then she stepped forward until she was only inches from him, reached out, cupped his chin with her hand and lifted his face up to hers. Like her, he was wearing a mask, but a simple black one. Although his eyes, nose and cheekbones were obscured, his jawline was strong and his neck was muscular.
The woman nodded once at him and he began to strip for her.
I’d never seen a man undress so slowly, so seductively. There was something almost feminine in the way he took off his tie and his jacket and let them fall to the ground. His shirt, socks and shoes followed.
He interrupted the show for a moment once his chest was bare, and almost as if he was challenging her, he looked right at her, watching to see how she was reacting. Reaching out, she unbuckled his belt, pulled at the button on the waistband of his pants, undid it roughly, yanked down his zipper, and then took a step away from him. At that point, he continued undressing, until all of his clothes were in a puddle on the floor.
Naked, he waited and watched her from under partially lowered eyes, behaving like an obedient subordinate.
Ignoring his erection, the woman traced the muscles on his arms with one of her fingernails, delineating the sinews slowly. Dropping her hand to her side, she turned and abruptly walked away.
She must have said something to him that was inaudible over the music, or there must have been some sign from her that I didn’t recognize, or there were rules in place for the proper behavior, because the man followed after her, like a loyal dog, out to the middle of the dance floor and then, making his second aggressive move, took her in his arms and danced with her.
I shut off the tape and sat in the den, staring at the screen, hugging my torso. We’ve all seen pornography. This was not that. Many people have videotaped themselves making love and then used the images to get turned on. Thousands have even released those X-rated home movies on the Internet. As a sex therapist, I often enter into the dark and secret places inside my patients’ heads where I explore their imaginations and fetishes with them. What one man finds arousing troubles the next. What one woman craves disgusts another. Rarely can anyone articulate why one scenario stimulates and another disturbs. Nothing is normal or abnormal. In the folds of your brain, where your sexual fantasies form while you lie half awake, symbols, actions and activities come to you from a nether place that has no name and where there are no rules. I know those places.