Paris, Adrift

by Vanda Writer

“You’ve been drinking,” Juliana said. “I’d say you’ve been drinking a lot. Don’t say anything more right now because it could get you into trouble.”

  “But you two . . . while I’m out there all by myself.”

  “Armand had you under his wing. I didn’t know I had to hire you a babysitter.”

  “It’s okay, Julie,” Andy said, getting up. “I’ll go.”

  “You’re sure?” Juliana asked.

  “Yeah. And Al, pal, I’m sorry I got you upset and I’m extra sorry about what I’m going to do now, but I’m going to do it anyway.” She bent down and kissed Juliana full on the mouth.

  “Hey! Stop that!” I squawked and slid back onto the floor. I sat there watching Andy give Juliana this long passionate kiss and Juliana loving it, her arms around Andy’s neck. It seemed to go on and on. Finally, Andy straightened up and pulled on the edge of her suit jacket. “Thanks, Julie. And thank you, Al.” She picked up her fedora from the table and left the room.

  I scrambled to my feet and leaned heavily on the kitchen table so I didn’t fall over. “How can you do that when I’m right here? We came to this place together to do, well, you know. How can you insult me like that? If you want to be with her, then—”

  “Don’t say anything more or I’m going to get angry. You’ve been drinking, so I’m giving you a little room. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow.”

  I flopped into the chair Andy had vacated. “Tell me what?”

  “Not here. Later.”

  “Julien, Al,” Armand said, bursting into the kitchen. “Everyone has gone down. Come. We go to sing.” He sprinted from the room.

  “We’re going to sing?” I asked Juliana.

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  She led me down a staircase into a room lit only with candles and kerosene lanterns. A 33 rpm Glenn Miller album played on the record player and women danced with each other.

  “Juliana,” I said, as we entered the room, “why do the people here call you Julien? Margarite sometimes calls you that, too. Isn’t that the male version of your name?”

  “I often take a male role in these games.”

  “But you’re so feminine.”

  She merely smiled.

  I watched Armando lock the door to the room. My throat tightened. No way out. None of the men circulated with drinks—they weren’t in this room—but there was plenty to drink. Bottles upon bottles of wine and gin and vodka were stacked high on tables as the women helped themselves. Juliana went to get us a drink.

  Armando threw an arm around me. “You love her. I see it in your eyes. She is not easy to love. Oui?”

  “Oui.”

  “I love her too. In a different way, of course. In a way that is easier for her to accept. Your love is harder for her, but that does not mean she does not feel it.”

  I looked up at him through a haze of drunkenness. “Do you think that maybe she . . .?”

  “Remember what I have said tonight. I know her.”

  He gave me a squeeze and pushed through the women to get his own drink.

  “But . . .” I called, wanting him to tell me more about what he knew. I scurried after him. “Armand!” I stopped when I saw he stood near a naked woman on all fours, barking. She wore a dog collar around her neck and nuzzled another woman’s tuxedo pants leg while that woman patted her rear. “Wag your tail for me, Lucy. Wag your tail.” Lucy did. “That’s a good girl.” She patted Lucy again.

  “Ginger ale,” Juliana said, handing me a glass. “I think you’ve had enough alcohol.”

  Ordinarily I would have been insulted, but I was too sloshed to argue. I took the Ginger ale.

  “Jule, there’s, there’s a woman over there with a leash on and . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You won’t do that to me, will you?”

  “It never occurred to me. Do you want to observe first?”

  “Uh, well, maybe that would be . . .”

  We moved past a woman who was tied spread-eagled in a hammock. She still had her dress on, but the whole front of it was open and her underwear had been removed. A woman in pants with a loosened tie, her jacket gone, smoked a cigarette while she ran a big ostrich feather up and down the length of the woman’s body and between her legs. The woman tied to the hammock wiggled and moaned. Others stood around watching. One lady stood near the hammock, dressed in what I was sure must’ve been a Schiaparelli original, not that I’m any kind of expert. She was fingering herself from outside her dress with no apparent concern that she could ruin that beautiful dress. It must’ve cost a fortune.

  We passed another woman bent over a chair, her hands tied. She still wore what I was sure was an expensive dress, except a big hole had been cut out of the back of it so that her naked rear stuck out. Another woman, also in a fancy dress, was spanking her with a paddle. Glen Miller didn’t seem to go with this scene.

  “Uh, so, Julien.” I was trying to get with it, but it was a struggle. “You and Margarite, you, uh . . .”

  “You look cute tonight,” Juliana said. “I love the suspenders.” She ran her hand up and down them. “I wonder how they’d look hooked to your underpants if you weren’t wearing anything else.”

  “Uh, well, I don’t know, uh . . .”

  She kissed me while undoing my bow tie and sliding it from my neck. “Let’s take your jacket off.”

  “Okay,” I said, starting to shuck it off.

  “Let me do it.” She slid my jacket off and pulled my shirttails out of my pants.

  “I want to get this shirt off you, so I can bind you up,” she whispered. “And do whatever I want with you.”

  I giggled nervously. The alcohol swam through my head. She took off my shirt in front of all those strangers, but the alcohol kept me from caring. It all seemed terribly silly, and I laughed and laughed.

  She kissed me while she backed me up against the wall and pulled down a set of pulleys with black metal cuffs on the end. She put my wrists into the cuffs and tugged on a rope that stretched my arms above my head so that I had to stand on tiptoe. I laughed. It was ridiculous. She ran her hand over my bra to the snap in back. She unsnapped my bra and pulled it away from my breasts. She lightly ran her hand over my breasts and kissed my face. Despite my vision being blurry, I thought I saw people pulling up chairs to watch like—like they were at the pictures.

  She left my suspenders on me and ran a finger down the fly of my pants, which almost knocked me out, and I think I may have moaned some.

  “I want to take everything off you,” she whispered.

  “You want to, uh, uh . . . sure, uh . . .”

  As she unhooked my suspenders from my pants, a woman in the front row wearing large glasses with wings on them and smoking a long thin cigarette had her dress bunched up in her lap and her hand in her underpants, masturbating.

  My pants suddenly fell around my ankles and I felt like I should cover myself with my arms, but since my hands were still tied up over my head, I couldn’t. I laughed instead. I laughed harder as Juliana hooked my suspenders to my underpants. People in the circle of chairs watching joined me in laughing, and my laughing became more raucous, more out of control.

  The crowd around us—I heard Armand’s deep voice among them—shouted. “Take them off. Take them off her.”

  I too repeated rhythmically, “Take them off her. Take them off.”

  Jule put a blindfold over my eyes and unhooked one suspender. She slid her hand down past the waistband of my underpants, and I panted, and my panting became more desperate as she continued to touch me there. She had a finger on that place, and I was desperate for her to stop, desperate for her to go on, desperate to be rid of these weird people, desperate to go home, desperate to please her. I panted and laughed and panted and laughed.

 
She reached for the other suspender and I laughed harder and harder, and tears poured down my face and I was shouting, “No, Jule! Don’t. No!”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Get me out of here!” Tears flooded my mouth and my neck as she pulled up my pants and rehooked my suspenders to them. Voices rose in what sounded like protest.

  She lifted the blindfold from my eyes and unhooked my hands. My unsnapped bra slipped off and I ran up the stairs without anything on top. Jule reached me on the stairs and helped me get into my shirt. I held my shirt closed, running the rest of the way up the stairs, not stopping to button it, and slammed right into the locked door.

  “Is something wrong?” Armand asked among a chorus of French sounds.

  Juliana wrapped me in her body, so I couldn’t be seen by the others. “She’s fine. Could you unlock the door, Armand? We need to go home. Too much to drink. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

  “Certainement, ma cherie.” He unlocked the door, and I flew out of that place with Juliana close behind. She collected our coats from the maid as we dashed into the night air. My tears flowed as we hurried to the car, Juliana’s body still wrapped around mine again.

  “I’m sorry, Jule, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” Tears poured in a steady stream as I got into the car. “I let you down. I let you down.”

  “No, you didn’t, silly,” she laughed. “Let me button your shirt. This is nothing to cry about. You’ve had too much to drink. I’ll get you home and you’ll sleep. Stop crying. It’s nothing. A game. That’s all.”

  “Margarite is better.”

  “Oh, stop. This wasn’t a contest.”

  “I embarrassed you in front of your friends.”

  “They’re too drunk to remember. Put your coat on. There’s a chill.” She helped me into my coat. “And stop crying. None of this matters.”

  I remember the sound of the ignition turning over and I remember my tears. I think I cried nonstop—at times almost hysterical—all the way back to the hotel. I remembered the sun’s early rays peering into the window of my hotel room, but I didn’t remember the drive through the streets or the walk through the lobby or even Juliana putting me into my nightgown and into bed.

  Chapter Eighteen

  All was black. I couldn’t see. I tried to raise myself up, but my arms were tied above my head. My nightgown was pushed to my neck. My breasts were lightly touched.

  “Jule?” I called out. “Is that you?”

  Slowly my underpants were slid down my legs, over my feet, and off. I pulled and thrashed at my bindings, unable to free myself. My legs were yanked apart, bindings placed on each ankle and tied to the bedposts. I struggled to move, but . . .

  “Jule? Jule?”

  A finger touched my clit and I felt mad with desire and yanked at my binding. The finger pressed deep inside me and then—something thicker going up and down, up and down, the weight of a body on top of me going up and down, up and down, waves of feeling rippling through me moving toward a crescendo. I was helpless to break away from it.

  “My legs,” I choked out. “Release them. I want to put them around you.”

  The bindings were slipped from my ankles and my knees caressed the gyrating ass on top of me.

  “My arms. I want to hold you.”

  My hands were freed, and I held her as waves rippled through me, going higher and higher. Her mouth was on me and I was yelling, “More, more. Please, God, more.” Then the quiet as I rested in her arms.

  “Oh, gosh, Jule, that was, was . . . Wow.”

  She lifted the blindfold from my eyes and placed a kiss on each eyelid. “So, I see that you do like a bit of bondage. But the private kind, not public.”

  She slid off me, pulling out the dildo. We lay side by side.

  “It was so—I mean with my eyes covered. I felt like everything was so focused. And I couldn’t move my hands and my arms, and I couldn’t see. It was kind of a helpless feeling and yet . . .”

  She ran a nail down the center of my chest, past my breasts, to my stomach. “I was in complete control of you.”

  “It was a little scary, but a lot exciting. Part of me didn’t like you being in control, but the other part—the other part of me did like it. At first I wasn’t even sure it was you.”

  “Oh? And how many women do you usually have coming into your boudoir to tie you up and make love to you?”

  “Not as many as you.”

  “I don’t have women coming into my room.”

  “Margarite?”

  “She’s never been up here.” She ran a finger around the nipple of one of my breasts. “I shouldn’t have brought you to that party. It wasn’t right for you. But you kept asking me about Margarite, so I thought . . . No, I knew I shouldn’t have done it before I did it. It wasn’t something you had to know about.”

  “But it’s something you’re able to do with Margarite.”

  “I wish you’d forget about what I might or might not do with Margarite. I’ve known her a long time.”

  “She’s become a habit?”

  “Sort of. You’re so much smarter and more interesting than she is.”

  “And Andy? Is she a habit too?”

  She turned onto her back and the dildo popped straight up.

  “Oh, gees, Jule, will ya take that thing off?”

  “I think it looks cute on me.”

  “I don’t. I like what it does, but I think it looks better on me. You’re too femme.”

  “And are you the butch? I don’t like that low-class bar language.”

  “Well, whatever you call it, that thing doesn’t suit you. I like your pussy the way it is.”

  She laughed and sat up, throwing her legs over the side of the bed. She unhitched the buckles of the belt. Together we pulled the belt down and off. She tossed it out of the bed onto the floor and lay on her side facing me.

  “What’s happened to my France?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This is my home. I know this place as least as well as New York and yet . . . Well, I haven’t been back for a long time. Those people. The anger in their faces. Did you see the sign that said ’Communists’?”

  “Yeah, and ‘Yankie Go Home.’”

  “Scary. Paris was never like this. How did you know what to do to get us out of that?”

  “Jule, I didn’t do much of anything. There was that guy who showed up . . .”

  “Yes, he helped a little, but . . .”

  “A little?”

  “You were so calm.”

  “I don’t think I’ve ever heard you scream before.”

  “I don’t think I ever have screamed before. How did you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Stay so calm.”

  “Believe me, Jule, I was not calm; I just knew I had to get you out of there.”

  “You had to get me out of there. All these years and I still don’t understand you.”

  “There’s nothing to understand. I love you. That’s pretty simple.”

  “Yes, well . . . Everything seems strange now.”

  I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her body against mine, breast-to-breast, pussy-to-pussy. “Tell me. What seems so strange?”

  “Changed. Everything seems changed.”

  She slipped from my arms and lay on her back. “I miss the Paris I once knew. When I was a child, there was no anger or poverty. I knew there were slums, but they were far from me. They never touched me. But this . . . Those people. Something seems so changed.”

  “Maybe it was always this way, but you were a child and didn’t see it.”

  “No. Something is terribly different. Some deep wound has struck at the heart of us.”

  “How can I help you?�
� I ran my tongue over her nipple.

  “Make love to me.”

  “With pleasure.” And I did just that with the late morning sun streaming in through the open curtain and warming the bed. It was wonderful. It was exactly the way you’d plan it if you were dreaming of making love in a hotel room in Paris.

  “Tell me about Andy,” I said after we’d recovered. “She’s in love with you, isn’t she?”

  “Yes.”

  “I knew it.” I turned onto my back. “So, what does it mean for us?”

  “Nothing. Get back here.” She pulled me close. “It bothered you that Andy kissed me, didn’t it?”

  “You knew it would, but still you didn’t stop. You made me stand there and watch.”

  “You could’ve left.”

  “Jule!”

  “All right. I kind of enjoyed you watching and your jealousy, but there’s nothing to be jealous about.”

  “A kiss like that?”

  “It was a good-bye kiss. You’re right; Andy says she’s in love with me. You already know my view about two women loving each other in that way. Well, with Andy it’s even more complicated. Andy loves me the way a man loves a woman.”

  “Well, isn’t that sort of what we all—”

  “Not in my view. Andy was telling me last night about an important decision she made. She gave me permission to tell you, but you can’t speak to anyone else about it.”

  “What is it?”

  “Andy’s seriously considering—I don’t know what you call it—you know Christine Jorgensen and what she did?”

  “You don’t mean... ?” I sat up. “Christine Jorgenson was a guy and Andy’s a girl. Isn’t she?”

  “Yes, but Andy says she’s always felt that inside she was a man. I don’t know how any of this works. She said something about beginning to take male hormones next month.”

  “You can do that? You can take some pills and turn into another sex?”

  “Apparently. She’ll be under a doctor’s supervision, of course.”

  “She’s going to grow a beard?”