When you are naked, stripped of every affectation, you can start again, dress in clothes that are truly you, that show who you are, not what this year's designer wants you to be. I knew from my studies that an artist's portrait reveals character, a great portrait more revealing than any photograph. By painting a nude, artists get down to fundamentals. In the model's bare flesh, lit by the eyes staring back at the painter, you discover their nature, temperament, disposition, their soul. A photograph tells. A portrait shows. I remembered a little poem from an art history book I was fond of:
The Duchess of Alba once said to Goya:
Remember I am you employer
So he painted her dressed to please her
And he painted her nude to annoy her
My mind had filled with a million fragmented thoughts like the million reflected images on the glass ball spinning above the chambers at Pink and in the glass balls I held in the palm of my hand.
I nodded. I couldn't speak and understood the purpose of the ball-gag. Everyone talks too much. We are walled in like hostages behind words that come at us like rifle fire, an endless barrage from the net, the news, in texts and tweets, from the mouths of friends, in people's overheard conversations on mobile phones, in announcements on the bus and Tube. We are not living life, we are listening to it, interpreting life through what everyone else has to say and through our automatic responses. We are echoes.
I watched as she reached for a tube of KY jelly and squeezed a smear on to her fingers. She took the two glass balls and greased them in the jelly. When she looked up into my eyes, I suddenly knew where they were going.
'Open you legs,' she said.
She rubbed the remainder of the jelly over the entrance of my vagina, pausing for a second on my clitoris, then inserted one of the balls through my open labia. As it vanished inside me, the second ball swung back and forth on the gold chain like a pendulum between my thighs.
'Geisha balls,' she said. 'Or Venus balls, or Ben Wa balls. They'll build up the muscles up there, in your crack. Now, hold still,' she instructed, and I spread my legs as she inserted the second ball. 'At first, you're just going to give yourself loads of orgasms, a lot of fun, but that's not their purpose.'
I squeezed my thighs together. I could feel the balls, they felt huge inside me. My legs were trembling.
'Take them for a test drive,' she said, and stood back to give me more room.
As I walked, the balls moved, arousing the sense nodes of my clitoris, nursing the walls of my vagina and sending tremors up through my body. The second ball seemed to be slipping out, sucked down by gravity, and I had to use all my powers of control to draw it back up again. I was using muscles I didn't know I had and my entire nervous system was fully alert, fully awake, mindful of the slightest movement. I watched myself in the big mirror, my footsteps small and dainty, like a geisha.
I paused to study myself: my eyes contained an intense expression like the eyes of a watching stranger. The leather strap at my throat emphasized the line of my neck and the cavities below my collar bones were delicate, pale blue lagoons. My breasts were full, firm, buoyed by that inexplicable joy breasts sense when they are being observed naked on the beach, in bars, pressed against bus windows, in a boy's mouth, a girl's mouth. Inside my rib cage my heart fluttered like a trapped bird in a cage. My hipbones pressed through my flesh in two well-defined bows and my waist was flat from missing meals. The straps dividing my limbs at the wrists and ankles were focus points that made my arms and legs more interesting. I wondered what the metal rings were for. The patch of my pubic hair was a Bermuda Triangle made more mysterious by the invisible presence of the geisha balls. I was a chameleon in a new suit of colors, a shape shifter, that person we can be if the circumstances let us. It is luck as much as design that makes us what we are, and luck comes when you close your eyes, stop doing and start being.
Slowly, with growing confidence, I circled the small space. Scarlet's eyes behind the red mask watched me and watched my reflection as if they were different beings, myself and my doppelganger, the me outside and the me I was becoming inside.
'Those Orientals know what they're doing, I mean, I love my Lexus,' she said. 'When your muscles are developed, it will give you and everyone who enters you more pleasure.'
I reached for the buckle at the back of the ball-gag and she undid it for me.
'How's it feel, the gag?'
I didn't respond instantly. The first words that pressed into my brain were amazing, incredible, weird, all those obvious things that jump out of our mouths like popcorn from a pot. I looked back into her eyes behind the red mask and let her question settle like a leaf patiently falling from a tree.
'It makes your senses more keen, more alert. I imagine pain would be more intense and pleasure more, more passionate, more complete,' I replied.
'That's a start,' she said, and her voice darkened. 'But only the start…'
I didn't know what she meant and didn't feel inclined to ask. I had a feeling it would be more interesting waiting to find out.
I removed the leather straps and fished around inside my pussy to disinter the geisha balls. I dressed quickly.
'How much do I owe you?' I asked, and she waved her hand.
'All paid for. Enjoy,' she said, and I had to hurry. I was going to be late for work.
That night, and every night, I went home, stripped off and fastened the black leather straps. I inserted the geisha balls with a drop of oil, not that it was necessary, just the act of doing it was enough to open the floodgates. I wandered about the room in small steps and long steps, stimulating my muscles. I loved being naked and left the curtains open just in case the neighbors were watching. Every day it became more pleasurable and every day the exercise ended in a long rippling orgasm that bowled me over and I rolled around on the carpet pumping out oily fluids that I licked from my palm like ambrosia, the food of the Gods.
Something else happened. The monkey in my mind, we all have one, that jumpy little creature that makes you flit from one thing to another…he took a vacation. I became more concentrated, more focused. I showered, went to bed early and read, the words coming off the pages of my art books and arranging themselves in my memory in such a way that I knew I would be able to find them again. Colors were brighter. The faces of strangers more interesting. I drank mint tea and could visualize women in the fields in Morocco picking the leaves. On the bus I could smell the perfume of every girl, isolating the aromas, and when I listened music I could hear the heart beats and breath of the musicians as they played.
Then Saturday came. If I kept a diary, it would be one of those days marked with a secret symbol.
First, the mail came and I found a buff-colored envelope with the words HM Treasury. The day I was born, and every year on my birthday, my Gran had given me £50 in Premium Bonds. Every month there is a draw with £1 million in prizes. I had won £10 several times, and once £25, which I spent buying more Bonds. Add it up and I had £600 in a nest egg tempting fate.
I decided to leave the surprise for when I got home and went to work on the bus happy that I would be making the same journey to Pink later in the day. The store was packed, it being Saturday, and every girl and group of girls I served purchased everything I showed them. It doesn't happen often, but it happened that day.
At lunchtime, Kate and Karen joined me and we rushed down Oxford Street to the shoe department at Selfridges. The leather restraints straps I would be wearing above my ankles that night would be unsuitable with my boots and, anyway, they belonged to that girl in the red leather jacket and kilt. Not the one who had stood on Monday in the erotic basement with geisha balls rolling around her vagina.
I bought a pair of plain, classic black high heels. They cost £145 and the little mouths of my two companions dropped open as I gave the assistant my Visa card.
'You must have found a new job,' Kate said, and I wasn't sure what she meant.
'As a secretary,' Karen screamed, and I thought it
brilliant they were so in tune.
'It depends on what else I'm going to wear,' I suggested.
Karen was slumped down over three chairs stroking the spike through her bottom lip. She sat up.
'Are you going to wear them tonight?'
I nodded. 'Yep.'
'What with?'
'It will be a surprise – even to myself,' I replied.
'You've really changed this summer, Soph,' Kate then said, and I said the obvious.
'Have I?'
'Yeah, you're more…I don't more, more…'
'Of a bitch,' Karen said, and we all burst out laughing.
We left the shoe department and scooted through the rails of clothes waiting to be bought and taken home, hopes and promises that lives and luck would change when the girls wore them. We made our way back down to the ground floor and, as we were passing the sushi restaurant, I grabbed my two friends, one in each arm, and led them in.
'Now she has lost it,' Kate said.
'My treat.'
'What, you just won the lottery?'
'You have to play the lottery to win it,' I replied. 'Come on, let's do it.'
'You know how much it costs?' Karen remarked.
'I don't care.'
Kate counted on her fingers. 'Shoes for 145 quid, sushi in Selfridges. She’ll be walking down the street naked next.'
Maybe, I thought.
'But I thought you were saving for uni,' Karen said, being practical for the first time in her life.
'I know but, but I wanted to say thank you.'
They looked at each other, then back at me.
'What for?'
I shrugged. 'I don't know, really.'
'She's lost it,' Kate said.
'And I could eat a horse. I'm starving,' added Karen.
We found places on stools, me in the middle, and I was happy to be there, the three of us. In this race into the unknown they were vaguely aware they were lagging behind. Not that it is a race. Or that there's only one direction to pursue. It was like we were climbing a mountain. They had got me to base camp, the first level, and I was ready to set out for the peak.
Small dishes with endless selections of sushi were gliding by on a conveyor belt.
'Dig in,' I said, and we all fumbled with our chopsticks.
I plucked up a rice ball wrapped in seaweed, called onigiri, dipped my prize in the teriyaki sauce and it ignited bonfires on my taste buds. I tried slices of salmon and lobster, raw fish called sashimi, delicious coated in wasabi sauce; domburi, chazuke, kare raisu. Just the names sound sensual in your mouth. I watched the Japanese girls placing fresh dishes on the belt. They moved in delicate steps and I was certain by their inscrutable smiles that it wasn't only geisha costumes they were wearing.
We returned to work. The hours stretched. The sun beat like a hammer against the plate glass windows. The sky was very blue and I went home wearing my new shoes to wear them in. I set them out with my costume and returned to the buff-colored envelope with HM Treasury stamped along the top. I read my name again Sophie M. Price. Yes, that's me. I slit it open and stared down at the check inside.
£100,000.
I counted the zeroes. For a moment, I thought it was £1,000, the last two zeroes being the pennies. But it was spelled out and I read the words aloud.
'One Hundred Thousand Pounds.'
I stood and looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn't smiling. On the contrary, I looked puzzled. There were frown lines on my brow.
'One Hundred Thousand Pounds.'
The words had the rhythm of a poem.
I would be able to pay off my university fees in one delicious swoop. But, more than that, I would be free to study without having to get a part-time job. I'd be able to take trips to see the Louvre in Paris, the Prado in Madrid, Rome and Athens, all the places I'd dreamed of going and had never been. Of course, it wasn't enough money to make you rich. I knew that. But it was enough to make you feel rich, and I sensed that it is the feeling that attracts wealth. Before, I had always felt poor and trapped, and always was poor and trapped. When you feel free, you are free. When you stop worrying about money, it slips like a breath of air under your door.
Now I smiled and the lines vanished from my brow
'One Hundred Thousand Pounds.'
Shower time. I used the last of the Paul Smith Rose. I shaved under my arms. I shaved my legs and something strange happened. Now that my fingers had been touched by that check for £100,000, they were doing my thinking for me. They reached for the nail scissors, snipped away my pubes and I used the lady razor on the stubble. And not once. Three times. My Venus dome was shiny white like a new toy and it was hard not to succumb to the distraction of playing with myself. I wasn't thinking. I was floating.
I walked dripping to the kitchen to collect the big scissors and chopped off my long brown hair in great chunks that filled the basket. I shaved my scalp using a new razor, showered again, and emerged before the long mirror stripped of all hair, fresh as a newly laid egg. Once I had buckled up the five straps, at my ankles, wrists and throat, I oiled and inserted the geisha balls and went walkabout in my new shoes. The combination of the heels, and the effort it required to keep the balls in place without it being an effort, made each step a movement in a graceful ballet.
I paused before the mirror and, as I looked at this new person, my new self, Jake flitted briefly through my mind. I remembered that last time we were together, his head locked between my thighs, his tongue lapping away, ardent for a future that was not to be. I liked his boy-smell; his taste of aniseed and almonds. But I didn't miss watching football matches in pubs and I didn't miss Jake at all. He'd called again and again, and I texted the same reply: Goodbye, Jake. Goodbye, Jake. Good bye, Jake.
There was a faint smile on my lips. My eyes were shiny like green stars. My skin seemed unusually white. To cover my costume was absurd, philistine, unaesthetic. But I had to meet Kate and Karen and could hardly take the 14 bus wearing nothing but the ball-gag. It was sad and I was glad I had that check from HM Treasury to keep a tear from my eyes. In the cupboard, I found a black sleeveless woolen dress with a round neck. I pulled it on and placed the ball-gag, my bus pass and keys in a small clutch back with black sequins. I didn't bother to look for my iPhone. I threw back my head to toss my hair, forgetting for a moment that I didn't have any.
Of course, I got a lot of funny looks. A girl with a bald head and restraint straps around her wrists and ankles is still a rare sight on the 14 bus. I glided among the theater crowds in tiny controlled steps up Shaftesbury Avenue and wound through the backstreets to the Coach and Horses. Karen and Kate were waiting, eager to see my attire, suitably awed by my new hair style, intrigued by the arrangement of straps.
'Weird,' said K1.
'Weird,' echoed K2.
We drank rum and cokes. I was really thirsty for some reason and bought another round; doubles. I could afford it. We talked, but I can't recall what we talked about, the past or the future, that's where all conversations go, and I was only interested in the here and now, in this one moment, in this odd feeling that had started to rise from my groin to my lips. I leaned forward.
'Kate, will you do something for me?' I said.
'Suppose so. Depends what?'
'Will you carry something for me?'
She looked at my bag on the table and shrugged. 'If you like.'
'Thank you.'
I opened the bag, removed the ball-gag and gave it to Karen. 'Would you do something?' I asked and she nodded.
'If you like.'
'Do it up tight.'
It was time to go. Saturday night. The bar was full. I slipped the black sphere in my mouth and leaned back in my seat for Karen to attach the gag. I couldn't say thank you. I couldn't smile. But I did flutter my eye-lashes as I stood. I wriggled my arms, pulled at the wool dress and lifted it over my shaved head.
The look the girls gave me that moment was a mixture of awe and wonder, surprise and a little envy.
/>
Kate took my dress, grabbed my bag and they followed me out of the bar.
As I stepped into the street I was overcome by a wave of contentment. The night air on my skin made every sense and nerve ending tingle. People stopped and stared. Others, as if I were leading a parade, walked along the sidewalk, following my progress as I made my way slowly up Old Compton Street. On the corner of Dean Street, a group of football fans in London for the day broke spontaneously into applause, which I heard more than saw. I was floating, free as a bird, nude and naked, gloriously stripped, shorn of hair, disrobed and uncovered. I was Lady Godiva, Eve in Paradise, unveiled, exposed and shameless. My breasts were full, my nipples red and hard, pointing the way. My heels drummed a measured tattoo, a death knell for my old self, the birth of the new. The geisha balls rolled around and I felt a stickiness seep from the lips of my vagina.
We arrived at Pink and the girls waiting behind the red velvet rope stood aside to let me pass. Kate and Karen followed, consorts carrying my clothes, and the black and red bouncers slapped palms and punched the air.
As I entered the large tunnel, I saw Lacy standing across the room. She was naked except for the ball-gag sealing her mouth and leather restrains at her wrists, ankles and throat. As she approached me and I approached her, it felt as if I were walking towards a mirror. We were identical, the same green eyes, same height, same posture and bearing. Lacy had ordered the straps and geisha balls, but was it coincidence that I, too, had shaved my head and pubic hair? I don't think so. Like ghosts and fairies, coincidence is an invention to explain the inexplicable. There are forces at work we can't understand or confine by words. Lacy had said to me, 'Whatever you visualize in your mind, you will see with your eyes.' I had visualized walking naked down Old Compton Street. Lacy had tuned into my vision.
We passed through the crowds, from level one to level two, to level three, where we paused to watch the swimmers. We entered the orgy room at level four, circled the round dais where the women acted out scenes from the Kama Sutra and exited through a door that led to a narrow passage lined with mirrors. I had been reading that week about the work of the French concept artist Marcel Duchamp. When we reached the end of the passage and made our way down the spiral staircase, our two moving figures created in countless reflections Duchamp's masterpiece Nude Descending A Staircase. Life is a continuum. Everything is connected.
Sophie’s Secret: Forbidden Fruit in the Garden of Pleasure Page 4