Watch Me

Zoë

ZO?

SIX MONTHS LATER

“Amazing show tonight, sweetie.”

Andre clasps my shoulders, and we quickly air-kiss before he heads off to the showers. I stay backstage, slowly stretching out my Achilles tendon and rotating my ankle, making sure I do everything my physiotherapist prescribed to avoid straining the tendon again.

I’m performing three nights a week, and I definitely don’t want to take any time off while my show is still new.

By the time I’m done my stretches, Rachel and Tomas have also grabbed their things and headed out, and I’m alone backstage. I pick up my bag and head to the shower, too. But unlike Andre, who uses the public showers in the club, I head down the corridor to the boss’s office to use his private washroom. I’m quote-unquote “not allowed in the club,” although I’m of legal age, and there’s nothing David can do to prevent me from going. But I observe his wishes out of respect.

At least, I always have until tonight.

David has been an amazing friend to me, and I owe him everything. Respect is the least of it. But I’m twenty-three years old now, and he knows how curious I am to explore the club. Hell, I work here. Expecting me to head directly home after the show every night is unrealistic.

I’m permanently at the periphery of a world of sex and indulgence, and I just want to open the door and cross over the threshold already.

Everything about my life changed six months ago, starting when the love of my life left me, sneaking out like a thief in the night.

“I’ve decided to take a contract in Dubai,” he texted me, “and I’ll be gone for at least a year. I know it’s sudden, but I think it’s what’s best. I hope in time we can talk everything through. Please stay in the house as long as you need to. xx”

Two weeks later, I blew my audition for the Regency Ballet Company, an audition I’d hinged my entire future on.

When David came into the Paradise Lounge a week after that, my whole world was turned upside down. He had come to check in on me, to see how I was doing after Nick’s departure, and we sat down and had a drink and ended up talking about everything. How I was weirdly living in Nick’s house all alone, and how I was coming to realize that maybe ballet wasn’t even what I wanted to do, after all.

We stayed in touch, and eventually, I accepted his offer to crash at his place for a little while. It was better than the strange desolation of living alone in the Rivera household. A little while turned into months, and now David’s basement TV room has almost completely morphed from an orderly man cave to a messy girl’s room—his oversized sectional now a full-time bed, makeup overflowing in the basement bathroom, and my clothes everywhere .

And then we started talking about what I really wanted to do, and last month, we finally launched the stage show at the Ball he says it’s a matter of zoning. Personally, I don’t believe that’s the only reason.

Despite the fact that we were once pretty intimate, David sees his role in my life as a kind of father figure. Not only would he never lay a hand on me himself, but he actively protects me from sex as if I have a virtue to save.

But I haven’t wanted to be with anyone anyway. The chunk torn out of my heart by Nick is still bleeding.

I let myself into David’s office with my key and take a quick shower in the washroom at the back. It’s only used by the two of us, and the counter is cluttered with our toiletries. After I get out of the shower and towel off, I push David’s aftershave and hair gel out of the way and set my bag down, pulling out the costume I’ve tucked away, deep in the bottom of my bag: a black bikini and a full, black vinyl hood that zips up at the back and will cover my entire face except for my mouth.

Once a year, the Ball & Chain hosts a gala event called Locked & Loaded . It’s a fetish-themed masquerade ball that draws hundreds of people to the club, including many people who wouldn’t normally frequent a sex club. It’s so popular that it’s always listed on the events pages of the major local papers, despite the need to include the caveat that This event is for adults only at a location that permits on-premise sex.

It’s so notorious that I’ve known about Locked & Loaded since long before I moved to the city, and there is no way I am going to miss the opportunity to check it out.

No way. Even if I can’t tell Daddy David about it.

David’s convinced that I’m not ready for the sex club. He doesn’t want me going alone, yet there is no one he would trust enough to go with me. He doesn’t want to take me himself because he thinks it would be inappropriate . Meanwhile, I can hear the man having sex in his room more nights than I can count… not to mention that I know what his cum tastes like.

But with this mask on, I think, carefully tucking up my hair and pulling the zipper down the back of my head, he’ll never recognize me.

The mask is slightly claustrophobic, but the effect, when I look at myself in the mirror, is surprisingly erotic. Tiny holes in the vinyl create a mesh across my eyes and below my nose, allowing me to see and breathe, so that only my mouth is uncovered. Dressed in my bikini, and black heels to complete the look, the hood reduces me to an object—nothing but a body and a mouth.

I check myself out in the full-length mirror, and I like what I see. I’ve gained a bit of weight since I stopped dancing six days a week but I’m not mad about it. The extra weight has rounded out my curves and made me a little softer—and my boobs bigger. I think I look more feminine than I did before. I take one last look and then swipe a tinted lip gloss over my exposed lips before stashing my bag under the counter. I push it right back against the wall to hide it, although I doubt David will be anywhere near his office tonight.

I lock the office door and tuck the key into my shoe, under the ball of my foot—a little stripper trick—and then use the staff door to head out onto the main floor.

A former factory, the club is very large, and divided into two separate and distinct areas: the main bar, and the on-premise sex space. The main bar is kind of a warm-up area for guests. On weekend nights, there’s a live DJ, and on afternoons and evenings, David runs a variety of different shows on the main stage—like mine. A lot of people don’t go any further than this room. They come for the novelty of checking out the Ball & Chain without daring to push their sexual boundaries. They come to stare and gawk and forever wonder what happens beyond the back door—the on-premise sex space, the forbidden zone that is my destination tonight.

I cannot believe that people actually have sex just out in the open in front of everyone, no matter how many times David has wholeheartedly assured me that that is precisely the case. The idea itself turns me on. To actually be in such a room… I can’t imagine how I’d feel.

So I shoulder my way through the crowd of masked patrons that’s already forming, even though it’s only ten-thirty, and head directly for the back door. I have no interest in lingering in this room, which I’ve seen a thousand times from the stage, and I especially don’t want to get caught by David before I ever make it to the on-premise area.

The guests around me are elaborately dressed for a change. On a typical night, the men wear jeans and a lot of black. The women wear short skirts and maybe go so far as to strip down to their bras. But tonight, great care has been taken. Leather and latex dominate. Men wear straps across their chests instead of shirts, and the women wear stripper heels. Faces are half-covered by feathered and sequined masks—some affixed around the hair, others held up on a stick. I don’t see anyone else in a full hood, and heads turn to eye me with interest as I pass—mostly the men.

Next to the door to the on-premise area, two women stand at a desk collecting cover fees.

“Couple or single?” asks one, and I blink for a moment, not understanding the question.

“Oh! Single,” I answer.

“Good,” she says with a wink. She wraps a fluorescent paper bracelet around my wrist. “Single women get in free.”

She gestures at a chubby bouncer in a black shirt beside her, and he nods, holding the door open for me.

“Have fun,” he says as I pass over the threshold, and then I’m there, in David’s dark underworld at last.

* * *

The first sense I have is of spaciousness. The back room must be twice as big as the main room. From where I’m standing, I can’t even see the back wall. The room seems to go on forever. To my left is a large bar, backlit in purple and pink, where a man with a towel wrapped around his waist talks to two women in lingerie. White, vinyl-covered beds and couches are arranged in small groups around the open center space and separated by drapes of sheer fabric hung with fairy lights. Fake palm trees scattered throughout give the impression of a chic, bohemian encampment. A naked woman with wet hair walks past me, leaving a waft of chlorine in her wake.

I head to the bar first to fortify myself, aware of the man’s appraising glance as I approach, and the way the two women turn to follow his gaze and eye me up and down.

“Shot of vodka,” I say to the bartender. I usually don’t drink much, but I’m suddenly feeling very nervous. There aren’t as many people in here as I expected and I’m grateful for the mask, even as I notice that no one else in here is hiding their face.

“First time?” says the man to me, as I lift the shot to my mouth and down it.

“No,” I answer quickly. “I work here.” I pull my credit card from my bra and hand it to the bartender, asking to start a tab, then move quickly away from the man with the too-eager eyes and his less eager companions.

I meander into the center of the room, walking past empty beds until I hear the unmistakable sound of moaning. To my right, a couple is locked in a missionary embrace, the woman curvy and dark, breathing heavily as the skinnier, paler man thrusts into her. I stumble to a halt, shocked and pruriently interested, but when the man lifts his eyes to me with a slow smile, I become embarrassed and resume walking, grateful that my face is hidden.

In the back right-hand corner of the room, I follow the scent of chlorine through an arched doorway and discover a hot tub with four naked people in it, all smiles, and then, further down, a tiled hallway leading to an open shower room, like in a high school gym. One shower is running, and there’s Andre underneath it, leaning back against the wall. The shower billows steamy water over the back of a man kneeling in front of him, taking his cock in his mouth while Andre rolls his eyes up towards the ceiling in pleasure.

I shouldn’t look, it feels like a violation… but I can’t look away. Hidden in the shadow of the hallway where I’m standing, I don’t think Andre can see me—he’s not looking, anyway—and I’m frozen at the sight of his lean, muscular torso, the way his hand cups the head of the man sucking him off, driving him down harder and faster as Andre squeezes his eyes shut and huffs through an open mouth. I’m getting wet watching my friend get off, and when he grits out, “Oh, fuck,” and lets out a choked breath, my insides contract. His companion moans and sucks Andre down slowly, right to the base of his cock, and then pulls back with a smile, licking his lips. I retreat back into the hallway, careful to walk on the balls of my feet so my heels don’t tap, past the hot tubbers again, and back out into the main space.

Already there are more people circulating around the room, many of them in masks and fetish wear now, and I feel less conspicuous in my full hood. I trace my steps back to the front of the room, noting how many more naked bodies are sprawled on the beds, moving and kissing and stroking, and by the time I get to the bar, I’m feeling quite hot. It’s exactly what I thought, just what David said it was, and my blood is pumping with a mixture of excitement and shame.

“Shot of vodka,” I say to the bartender again, and then down it. I lean back against the bar, feeling the vodka burn off in my belly and turn into a loose heat that travels outwards to my fingertips and toes, and survey the room with more courage.

In front of me, three women in birdlike masks kiss and fondle each other’s breasts, while three men sit across from them and watch, one of them with his hand on the cock of the man beside him—jerking him off while he watches his wife making out with his friends’ wives, or so I suppose. On the other side of the bar, near the entrance, an old man is inviting a tall, stunning blonde to stretch out on a massage table. She does, and he squirts oil into his hands from a bottle and then rubs his fleshy fingers together with glee.

When I first notice the man in the bull mask, I wonder if he’s here alone, like me. He’s sitting at the bar, long legs kicked out in front of him, his head turned to the side. The molded rubber mask covers almost all of his face except a strong, dark chin with a shadow of stubble. He’s dressed in fitted leather pants and boots with no shirt on. I notice the round boulders of his shoulders and the impossibly flat plane of his stomach with a painful longing. It reminds me of Nick. Beautiful bodies always remind me of Nick.

I push those sad thoughts away as soon as they rise up. Tonight isn’t about moping over the past. Tonight is about moving on from it. And in this den of iniquity, there’s no room for the past anyway. This place is all about the now.

I’m pleased when the bull’s head swivels in my direction and seems to stare. It’s hard to know for sure if he’s looking at me as his mask, like mine, conceals his eyes. But the rush of energy and heat I feel tells me he is. I stare back, emboldened by vodka, and hope he’ll approach. But he turns his head away again after a moment and looks towards the massage table, where the old man has begun massaging the blonde girl’s naked body. It occurs to me that the bull is probably waiting for somebody—that, most likely, I’m the only person here alone. Suddenly feeling shy, I push off the bar and head up the side of the room to continue exploring.

An array of BDSM contraptions line the north wall: a giant wooden X, stocks, benches with straps, and whips and chains hanging on hooks. To my right are more beds and couches, almost all full of people now. There’s more moaning and more thrusting... I’m not sure where to look or even whether I should look at all. It seems like on every bed there are backs rounding, feet lifting, and mouths gasping.

At the back of the room, a small crowd is gathering, and I walk over to see what they’re looking at. There are two small rooms against the back wall with big windows at the front.

The first room looks like a doctor’s office, replete with an examination bed and what looks like medically-related props on a counter—beakers, stethoscopes, and speculums. Beside the bed, a woman in a plastic suit and holding a riding crop has her high-heeled foot planted on the back of a naked man lying on the floor. I slowly walk past, looking over the heads of the onlookers as she digs her heel in.

The next room has a bigger crowd in front of it, too many people for me to see over their heads, but this room has windows on two sides. When I round the corner, where there is only one couple watching, I have a clear view into the room.

What I see there makes me audibly gasp.

The room is a copy of the one beside it, but in this one, a woman is on all fours atop the examination bed, her vinyl dress hiked up to her waist so that her pussy is displayed to the front window. And standing beside her and running his hand over her bare ass… is David.

I take a step back, skirting the light that spills out from the window for fear that David might see me. Even knowing my face is hidden, seeing him like this, in flagrante delicto, is shocking enough to spike my anxiety.

While at the same time heating my blood.

He’s essentially naked, dressed in nothing from the waist down except a leather codpiece, and his face is only partially obscured in a mask that covers his forehead, cheekbones and hair. In fact, his mask is what inspired my own costume. When he showed it to me last week, he unknowingly gave me the idea of how I could sneak into the club. Unlike mine, his mask barely disguises him, but David isn’t hiding from anyone. He’s the king of the castle tonight, proudly playing among his loyal subjects, reveling in his element.

I remember vividly the dinner I had with David and Nick all those months ago. Mostly, it’s Nick I remember—the intensity that burned in his dark eyes as he watched me, the shocking moment I broke the rules and put my mouth on him. But with a sudden jolt, I remember now how David’s hands felt on my body, his long cock that tapers at the end, and the feel of it on my tongue.

In all the months we’ve been living together, I’ve never exactly thought of him in that way , although I’m not blind to his charms. He’s attractive and fun… and a little too confident, as I like to remind him. But we’ve fallen into this dynamic that’s so much like father and child that what I’m feeling right now seems decidedly twisted.

The air goes out of me as I watch his long fingers trail down the woman’s bare backside and between her legs. He strokes her pussy softly with one finger while he spanks her with his other hand. Her face, which I can see in profile, contorts, her lips moving with prayers I can’t hear, and her pleading expression makes my breath come faster as I imagine what it must be like to be her. To be bent over like that, on display for all of these people, while David’s fingers edge her closer to orgasm.

After a little while, the couple beside me moves away, and for a moment, I’m alone, standing in the dark, free to watch David unseen as he strokes and rubs the woman on the bed. My heightened yearning to feel what she feels is ratcheting up in time with her arousal, so much so that when I suddenly feel a hot breath on my neck it gives me shivers all over my body.

“It’s hot how she shows herself to us, isn’t it?” asks a low, deep voice. I turn my chin and look over my shoulder to see the thick, muscular arm of someone behind me and the rubber horn of a bull mask tilted down towards my ear.

It’s him.

The bull.

“Yes,” I answer, somewhat breathlessly, and then turn my head back toward the window.

The heat from his body is warming my back, and, as if electricity is bouncing between us, it’s giving me goosebumps.

He exhales, such an intimate sound that my heart flips.

“Would you ever want to do something like that? Show your pussy to a crowd of people? Let them watch you as you get wet? Let them see you come?”

Holy shit. In the state I’m in, I could come just from a stranger whispering dirty questions in my ear.

“Yes,” I say honestly.

Everything about tonight is like a strange dream. This bar with its hot tub and public showers and beds everywhere. The growing crowd of people with their faces hidden but their bodies exposed. There’s a current in the air itself that grows thicker as the hours tick on, snapping and sparking until you can almost taste it—an alchemical mix of pheromones, sweat, and desire. Add to that my identity is completely hidden, and I’m two shots of vodka in, and I suddenly have the most overwhelming sense of disinhibition.

I can say anything to this stranger in his bull mask, and he won’t judge me. I’m single, and I’m in a sex club, and I can do anything— anything— I want.

“I fantasize about exposing myself like that,” I say, turning my head to speak in the direction of my left shoulder but not turning around to face him. He’s standing so close to my back that I can still only see glimpses of his arm and chest, but I have the impression he’s quite a bit taller than I am. “I’m an exhibitionist.”

“Oh?” He sounds interested. “And what does being an exhibitionist mean to you?”

“It means… I get a rush from showing my pussy, my tits, everything private. Knowing I’m not supposed to, but that it turns people on. I love the idea of strangers watching me, getting hot seeing my body and seeing how turned on I am. Coming in front of other people.”

“And have you ever done anything like that?”

“No. But I want to.”

“You could go in that room.”

“No.” I shake my head, searching for an excuse. “I… I wouldn’t want to intrude. They have a scene going on.”

“Their scene is ending,” he murmurs, leaning down closer to my ear so that his baritone voice slips over my neck like a velvet scarf. “Look. She’s going to come.”

I snap my eyes back to the window to see David spreading the woman’s pussy with his fingers, showing her off to the spectators, before bending his head and spitting on it, rubbing his saliva into her slit and making her eyes roll up into her head. A second later, she bites her lip and her hips buck as she comes. I sense more than hear a collective exhale from the group around the corner.

Every part of me is gripped tight with longing, and I have half a mind to reach behind me and find the zipper to the bull’s leather pants, to pull his cock out right here and beg him to fuck me. I need it. I need something. I turn around to speak to him, to say… something… to plead, but as I do so, he takes a step away and beckons me to follow him. He walks around the corner and, unthinkably, opens the office door. He looks back, waiting for me to join him. He’s inviting me into David’s room and I don’t know how to get out of this. Tentatively, I approach, my mind running through scenarios.

Inside, the woman is off the table already, her skirt lowered, and she’s kissing David on the cheek. She turns to leave, sidling past me through the door and giving me a smile, and David looks at the bull expectantly, and then at me.

My heart is in my throat, waiting for him to recognize me, anticipating the excuses I will have to make to him, how disappointed he will be. But recognition doesn’t register. He smiles.

“I brought you something,” the bull says to David.

The look on David’s face as he sizes me up is sheer lust—he would be horrified if he knew who he was looking at like that. “Well, well, well. Hello, sweetheart.” He grins. “I’m David. Can I offer you a drink?”

I nod, mouth dry, noticing more about the room now that I’m actually in it. There’s a sink built into the counter with the medical instruments on it, and beside it are a small stack of red Solo cups and a bottle of aged rum—David’s favorite. Next to the counter, there’s a wooden chair against the wall.

David pours a healthy slug into the cup and hands it to me. “Take a seat on the bed, love, and relax.”

The bull walks over to the wooden chair and sits down, crossing one ankle over his knee and dwarfing the small chair, and I climb onto the bed via a small footstool. The vinyl-covered bed sticks to the back of my legs, and I look down at my bare thighs with a sense of disorientation. Everything is surreal in here. There’s a false sense of privacy, as though I’m alone in a small room with David and the masked man, except that dozens of strangers are gathered at the window, hoping to see the most intimate of interactions. Meanwhile, David, a close friend and someone I spend most of my time with, doesn’t know who I am. I’m hiding in plain sight, just a thin layer of material masking me from him, which makes all the difference.

I take a long sip of the rum and try not to make a face as it goes down. But I must purse my lips, because David laughs, and I catch his blue eyes twinkling at me with a heat and intention I’ve never seen before.