Chapter 14
Dazed by my orgasm and the blinding revelation, I pulled my cock out of Connie's tight, sticky cunt. She offered no resistance, and barely noticed my departure. She had turned herself around in her orgasm, and she was holding her husband with her arms wrapped around his shoulders. He was kissing her, softly, on her passion-stained cheek.
My knees were weak, and I stumbled back, almost falling. I had to sit somewhere and relax and sort through all the new fragments of my discovery. My head was spinning and I was drunk with excitement.
I found a sofa and sat down. There was a great deal of sperm on the cushion, and it felt cold and slimy under my naked ass. But I was only marginally aware of it, just as I was only vaguely concerned about the couple at the other end of the sofa. A man and a woman were fucking, she facing him, with her legs around his hips, sitting on his cock. His bouncing thrusts into her made the sofa move up and down, as if it were a partner in their sexual act, and I were along for the ride. I could hear their voices, and her moans and cries of excitement.
"Jab me, baby!" she groaned. "Jab me, Reuben."
His answer was a grunt.
Again I pushed them out of my mind, and returned to my problem. Slowly, like pieces of a puzzle, everything fell into place.
I knew suddenly, as if I'd always known, what was wrong with my life; I knew why I'd felt depressed and been so dissatisfied with all I'd accomplished. Because I'd accomplished nothing, and my life was empty and meaningless! My sex life here at Xanadu-no, more than just my sex-life, my whole life, in fact!-had been a sterile one: without any contact with real, emotionally giving people; people willing to make any emotional commitment to my life.
I saw that now as clearly and as vividly as if I could reach out and touch it. Before Heather, all the women in my harem were like Diane Miller and Patti Marshall. They were never people to me, human beings with flesh and blood and feelings and problems-no, not ever. They were things to me. Sex objects! Unfeeling, uncaring sexual machines that dispensed orgasms like sticks of gum: after the money had been deposited in the slot.
In all that fucking, there never was a single ounce of real passion or feeling. They all wanted to be models or actresses, but in reality they were all manikin-cold players, acting out a sexual commercial, with me as their sponsor. They were actresses every one of them, and poor ones at that. Never had one of them conveyed feeling, as Connie had for Arthur in that strange pantomime a moment ago. And as for passion-not one of them could come close to the real excitement of sharing passion with another person. I listened to the couple next to me on the sofa:
"Oh, Reuben!" she screamed. "Fuck me!"
Her legs were straight up, on either side of the sitting man, pressed against the back of the sofa. She was leaning back, away from him with the top part of her body, and her long black hair was hanging almost straight down. Her fingers were locked behind his neck, and his hands were on her thighs, pulling her up and down. I could see the thick base of his cock, sliding in and out of her cunt, as she moved up and down around it. His legs were straight out in front of him, stiff with excitement.
"Fuck me, baby! Fuck me! Fuck me! Fuck me good, baby!" she chanted, closed-eyes and tits flapping. "Fuck me!"
This was real passion, I saw. These were real people.
I had to come to my own orgy to see the difference between truth and illusion; just as I had to leave the fantasy-world of Xanadu and live in a real world, with Heather and Sara and Lenny. The world I built wasn't even a good imitation: it rung hollow from top to bottom. No wonder Spring seemed so striking: it was the first time in all these years that the real world could worm its way down Xanadu's long twisting corridors and mirrored bedrooms. It was the first breath of fresh air in all this decay and corruption.
"Soon, baby!" the fucking man grunted, pumping his cock into her. "Soon, baby!"
like Heather, like Sara, Connie and Arthur had wanted me for their lovemaking! Me, Steven Brooks, or whomever they thought I was. They weren't sucking up to Brian Caldwell for what they could get out of him. I wasn't an employer to them, or a John or a sex symbol or a rich and powerful man. I was just a man-accepted for the first time as a human being, for whatever worth or value I had as a person.
Connie and Arthur had used me! Me-the user. Certainly that had to be the ultimate irony in my whole sordid life. Use the user.
"Oh, Jesus, Reuben!" she screamed. Her nipples were stiff and swollen and pointing at heaven. "Soon, baby! Soon! Keep fucking!"
It was me-the real me!-that Sara and Heather had made love to. They didn't care what they could get if they pleased me; they didn't know they could get anything. And when we made love, they gave me their sexuality and passion. They didn't use it or sell it to me. We shared it together, just as Heather had shared it and Sara and Lenny had shared it, and even Arthur and Connie had shared it in their own strange way.
This was how sex should be-this was how life should be-with human contact; with warm, giving, honest men and women. This was how life had to be for it to be worth living.
I knew what I had to do.
I pushed myself up from the sofa and gave the couple at the other end a last long look. Their bodies were wet with sweat and they were straining together towards some very real goal. I didn't have to wait any longer. I didn't have to watch them and hear their orgasm. I knew they would get what they wanted.
I had to find Heather.
I looked across the room, and I saw her. She was on the other side of the room, near the sofa where it all began. Slowly, through the press of the crowd, I made my way back to her. It was as it should be: I was returning. Heather was the fixed point.
As I came closer to her, I saw that Heather was being made love to by a man. I didn't recognize the man at first, but after a moment, I saw who he was. It was the same man the heavy blonde woman with the wild, frizzy hair had made love to. The man with the enormous cock. The man with the nine inches.
Heather was underneath him, and he was between her legs. I could see the thick battering-ram of his cock punching at her cunt. His thrusts were furious, but her cunt absorbed them, and swallowed the full-length of his angry throbbing cock.
"Heather!" I called to her. "Heather!"
But she didn't hear me. She could hear nothing but the straining grunts of her new lover, and the swift stinging slap of his thighs against her cunt. Her eyes were closed and her ankles were locked, just above his ass. With each downward thrust his hips made, Heather gave an equally desperate upward push of her hips, and after a moment, her whole ass was lifted off the rug, and Heather was suspended on the end of his cock.
"I must tell you something!" I shouted, but I knew it was useless. I would have to wait to tell her; wait until her pleasure was finished, and she had that orgasm that she was obviously building towards.
I will tell her, I thought, watching her cunt sheath that mighty cock. I will tell her who I really am. I can accept being Brian Caldwell again. I no longer need to hide behind the mask of Steven Brooks. I will tell Heather who I really am, and why I lied to her. And, if she can accept me, and not hate me, I will ask her to come and live with me in Xanadu. And if she says yes to all of this, then maybe someday I will ask her an even more important question.
But that is in the future, and it was good to have a future again. The past is a very lonely place to live.
I moved closer to Heather and the man fucking her, and for a moment I wanted to lay down next to her, and hold her hand as Arthur had for his wife. But I decided not to. I had to find my own way. I was tired of doing what others did and wanted me to do. I had to do it my way.
So I stood there, next to Heather, listening and watching her excitement. I could see the man's cock now as his strokes grew longer and deeper, and he pulled his organ almost out of her cunt with each backpull of his hips. The organ was thick and swollen, slippery red, coated completely with the wet excitement of Heather's cunt. I could even see a pale dribble or two of sperm trickling from the overstuffed hole of her cunt, and for a moment I thought he had come already. But then I realized that it wasn't his sperm, it was mine, left from earlier, when I had fucked Heather the first time. He was moving in and out of my orgasm.
"Yes!" Heather cried, answering her pleasure, but answering me in another way. "Yes!"
All of them will have to go, I vowed. Every one of my Xanadu women: Diane, Patti, Violet, even Denise-all of them, my whole harem of paid-for-lovers will have to go. And in their place, I will substitute real women; women like Heather and Sara and Connie or even that nameless woman I watched fucking on the sofa. I will replace the false with the real, the plastic with the warm, the illusion with the reality.
"Oh!" Heather moaned. "Oh, oh!"
Sweat was pouring down her face, oozing out from under her armpits, dripping over the fleshy ridges of her heaving cunt. I could smell her excitement, and the musky, heady animal-like odor of the man on top of her.
I will get rid of all the phoniness, all the sham, all the twisted columns and gilded mirrors. And first, first of all, I would get rid of my business manager, Harvey Curtis.
"Yes!" Heather groaned, answering again my thoughts. "Yes! Now!" She began to come.
As I watched Heather, I thought of Harvey. Harvey, with all his mercenary greed for money and power, had become a symbol of all that was sick and corrupt in my life. Well, the time for sickness was over; Spring had come again. It was time to begin anew.
I watched Heather coming, and I felt my own passion rekindling. My balls stirred, and I felt my cock grow long and hard. After coming so soon, I was ready to come again. like the phoenix, my needs were rising up from the ashes of my life.
As if in answer, a woman stepped up to me and touched my arm. "Sir."
I turned and looked at her. It was the woman who had been directly across from me when the orgy had begun. The slender, boy-like woman with the short black hair and the tiny bumps for breasts.
"Yes?" I asked.
"I remember you," she said. "I saw you before. You were watching me. Why? Why did you do that?"
I studied her eyes before I answered. They were deep and black, like an ocean. I said: "You reminded me of someone."
"Oh."
Up close, I could see she was much older than I first thought. I guessed that she was over forty, and the lines of her pretty face showed it. Her makeup was smeared, as if she had been crying.
"Would you make love to me?" she asked suddenly.
Her breasts were small, like the first buds of adolescence, with tiny little brown nipples all stiff and at attention. She was painfully skinny, and I could see her ribs under her gaunt flesh. She had no hips, and thighs as straight as a ruler. Even her cunt hair was sparse and patchy, like immature fuzz. She was a far, far cry from the perfection of one of my Xanadu women.
I said, "Yes."
She smiled, and I saw that her face was pitted with the scars of an acne long gone. She laid down on the rug and opened her legs. I entered her, and we began to make love.
Her body was hot and eager and real under me, and I began to come almost immediately. It was a deep and powerful orgasm, and better than any I have ever known. And as I opened myself to this strange, mystical orgasm, opening myself the way a flower opens to the sunlight, I had a sudden vision:
I saw a city that I would build one day-a city peopled with men and women who were real and honest, and appreciated and enjoyed their human sexuality. A city called Xanadu.
I could hardly wait to tell Heather.