“I think they were both full of shit,” Liz said.
All heads turned to her.
“They were supposed to be willing to do whatever we wanted. But they couldn’t. Not with all of us.”
“It’s awful for you to say that,” Anne said.
“Why is it awful?” I asked. “Tell Liz why what she said bothers you, describe how it makes you feel. Don’t judge her.”
“You don’t understand,” Ellen said to me in a strident voice. “She’s jealous of us. She thinks that since she’s older than most of us, the men aren’t interested in her. But it’s not that. It’s her attitude. The way she demeans them.”
“I do not demean them.” Liz’s mouth had disappeared into a thin, angry line.
“Of course you do. To you it’s not just about power and control. You ask them to be your slaves. You want them to cower at your feet. You want them to be afraid of you and some of the things you ask them to do are disgusting.”
“How do you know what I ask them to do?”
Ellen smiled. Wickedly. It occurred to me that she had been waiting to say this for a long time.
“Mark told me. He said that you asked him to go into the bathroom with you and to-”
“Shut the fuck up!” Liz shouted.
Anne started to cry. Martha got up and took Anne in her arms. Ginny was saying something to Liz, but over the rest of the commotion I couldn’t hear it.
“Everyone, please sit down. Shelby, Ginny, sit down. Let’s wait till everyone can hear you-”
Liz stood, her bag slung over her shoulder, her briefcase under her arm. “Are you leaving?” I asked her. “We still have forty-five minutes left to the session.”
“I don’t know why I came in the first place. I’m an outsider here. They all play at this game. They don’t take it for real. They think they are being powerful, but it’s like little girls playing at growing up.”
“Liz, it would benefit everyone if you sat back down and stayed. You all are going through this together and leaving isn’t going to be helpful, not for you or the group.”
She continued to stand, hovering above the rest of them. The light cast shadows on her face and the furrows in her brows seemed deeper. She certainly wasn’t pretty. Her hard features were jagged and too large. But her eyes, which were deep green with long lashes, were catlike and mysterious. Her hair was blond, thick and curly, but for some reason didn’t seem to fit her personality or the rest of her looks.
“These men debased themselves for us,” she said. “They came to us because they wanted us to abuse them. Order them around. Treat them worse than they had ever or could ever treat any women. We like to pretend that what we do is fine. It isn’t. It’s perversion. I’m not happy about it, but it’s the way I want my sex. I don’t want to be grabbed-I want to do the grabbing. I want to tell a man to walk to me holding his cock in his hands and begging me to let him get closer. So what if I wanted to see what it would be like to have them as slaves? Isn’t that what men have had women doing for them for years? Love them? Admire them? Eulogize them? None of us can do that. We used their hard cocks and versatile tongues. We didn’t love them. We didn’t get to know them. We made them do our bidding. They liked being surrounded by hot women wanting hot sex. They liked looking at tight asses and high tits. You don’t know what it’s like when you look at them and they look away.” Liz focused on Ellen, then Anne, Ginny and finally Shelby. “You don’t know what it’s like when you see them hoping that you don’t pick them because they aren’t so sure that they can perform for you.” She was choking back tears, not the way a woman does, but the way a man will refuse to allow himself the luxury of weeping.
The others watched, some with compassion on their faces, others with contempt. Only Shelby, who was closer in age to Liz, got up and went to her. She took her by the hand and, without saying a word, led her back to her seat.
“It doesn’t matter. You belong here. With us. We have to hold on. Especially now. All of us.”
Liz sat back down, but her glance remained focused on the briefcase she held in her lap like protective armor.
“There is going to be a memorial prayer service for Philip on Friday,” Ellen said to me once everyone had settled down. “And some of us want to go.”
“But we can’t,” Shelby said before I had a chance to respond. She seemed suddenly exhausted. “We have an honor-bound agreement. Showing up anywhere in public together-even two of us-would threaten the society.” She turned to me. “This is part of our problem. We simply don’t know what to do. How to handle our grief. How to deal with the fact that we can’t do something as simple as go to a memorial service. And it’s not like we have months to spend to figure this stuff out. Is there some kind of intervention therapy you can do with us?”
“Let’s use the rest of our time tonight to talk out those issues and focus on the memorial.” I looked around the room. “Are any of you having a hard time accepting that you can’t go to the service?”
“I am,” Anne whispered. “We knew this man. We were an important part of his life. No one seems to think that matters, but I do. I think it matters a lot. I know how he smells.” Her voice cracked as she corrected herself. “How he smelled. How the inside of his mouth tasted. I know how his bare arms felt around my back.” She started to cry and stopped speaking.
“No. You’re not the only one,” Martha said. “I think it matters.”
Anne looked surprised.
“How does that make you feel-that you can’t go?”
“It makes her feel like shit. What kind of stupid question is that?” Ellen said.
“Ellen, it would be better to let Martha herself tell us all how she feels.”
Ellen glared at me. I wasn’t surprised by the level of aggression she exhibited. It was one of the more interesting things about this group that so many of them shared specific personality traits. While they weren’t all beautiful, they were comfortable with their bodies. That in itself was unusual for a group of this many women, except when you considered the interest that they all shared. By the very nature of belonging to the society, they could not be shy or intimidated. Every one of these women was-at least sexually-aggressive. Even when I put together a group of sex addicts, I worked hard to ensure that each member of the group had different issues and handled their needs in unlike ways: that some were aggressors and others were passive.
“Martha?” I looked at her.
“What is confusing about this is that, while I know we have rules that dictate we only deal with the men at the society in a sexual manner, they are people, too. And two of them are dead. And they knew us. And we knew them. And one of them is having a memorial service and I want to be there.”
“Oh, isn’t that sweet,” Cara spat out. She hadn’t spoken at all before, neither in the last session or the present one. She had dark olive skin and flashing black eyes and wore an elaborate Hérmes scarf tied over her hair.
“Comments like that are not really helpful,” I said. “Tell us how you feel.”
“This is ridiculous. We use these guys. They are hard bodies, willing hands, they are a way for us to finally get what we want with no strings. We work damn hard at making sure the men we let in want to be treated the way we want to treat them. This is not about feelings.”
“You know, that is such a stereotype that it’s almost laughable,” Davina said. “Just because we use them doesn’t mean we can’t have feelings for them.”
“Whether I should have feelings or not-the point is I do,” Anne said to Cara. “And I am not embarrassed to say I do. And I want to go to the service being held for Philip and pray along with everyone else that his body is found and that he can be put to rest. I think it’s horrible what’s happened to him. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him laid out somewhere, dead. How was he killed? Why was he killed?”