I started with the simplest question, the first one, which was easy enough—One. I have had one lover. Scott. One. And only one. As for my physical type, I thought of all the movie stars and musicians that I found attractive and surprised myself by filling the entire space with names and ideals. Then I moved on to the next question: vaginal orgasms? I skipped it. I had no idea. The one about erogenous zones almost had me scanning the bookshelf for a dictionary. I couldn’t answer that. Nor the next one, nor the one about being with women. I answered the rest as best I could. Finally I turned to the last page in the booklet, where there was a blank space for me to add any other thoughts.
I am trying hard to answer these questions, but I have only had sex with my husband. We mostly did it missionary style. Maybe two times a week when we first got married. After that, maybe once a month. The light was often off. Sometimes I had an orgasm … I think. I’m not sure; maybe I was faking. Scott never went down on me. I have … touched myself now and again. It’s been a long time since I’ve done that, though. Scott always wanted me to put him in my mouth. I did it, for a while, but I couldn’t do that again after he hit me. I couldn’t do anything with him after he hit me. He died almost four years ago. It has been longer than that since I last had sex. I am sorry, but I can’t finish this test, even though I’m trying my best.
I put down my pen and closed the booklet. Even writing what I had made me feel a little unburdened.
I didn’t hear Matilda slip back into the room.
“How did you do?” she asked as she returned to her desk and sat down.
“Not very well, I’m afraid.”
She picked up the booklet. I had the strongest urge to rip it from her hands and hold it to my chest.
“You know, it’s not the kind of test you can fail,” she said, a sad smile crossing her face as she quickly scanned my answers. “All right, then. Cassie, come with me. Time to meet the Committee.”
I felt welded to my big comfortable chair. I knew that if I crossed the threshold of this room, another chapter of my life would unfold. Was I ready?
Strangely, I was. With each gesture, it felt more doable. Maybe that’s what the ten steps would feel like. I kept reminding myself that nothing bad was happening to me. Quite the opposite. I felt like layers of ice were falling away.
We left the room together and crossed the reception area, where Danica hit another button beneath her desk. The giant white doors at the end parted to reveal a large oval table made of glass, around which about a dozen women sat chatting loudly. The room was windowless, and also white, with a few colorful paintings similar to the ones in the lobby. There was a portrait at the far end, above a wide mahogany console, of a beautiful dark-skinned woman with a long braid falling forward over her shoulder. We entered the room and the women fell silent.
“Everybody, this is Cassie Robichaud.”
“Hi, Cassie,” they sang.
“Cassie, this is the Committee.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing came out.
“Sit here next to me, my dear,” said a small Indian woman, easily in her sixties, wearing a vivid sari and a very kind smile. She pulled out a chair and patted it.
“Thank you,” I said, and sank into the seat. I wanted to look everyone in the face, and at the same time to look at no one. I alternated between clasping my hands tightly in my lap and firmly sitting on them, trying hard to keep myself from fidgeting like a teenage girl. You are thirty-five, Cassie, grow up.
As Matilda introduced each woman, her voice sounded far away and underwater. My eyes floated from face to face, lingering, as I tried to memorize their names. I noted how each was a different kind of beautiful.
There was Bernice, a red-headed black woman, round, short and busty. She was young. Maybe thirty. There were a couple of blondes, one tall named Daphne, with straight long hair, and the other named Jules, with short perky curls. There was a curvy brunette woman named Michelle, with an angelic face, who clasped her hands over her mouth like I had done something adorable at a dance recital. She leaned over and whispered to a woman sitting across from me named Brenda, who had a toned, athletic body and was dressed in gym clothes. Roslyn with the long auburn hair was next to her. She had the biggest brown eyes I’d ever seen. There were also two Hispanic women sitting side by side, identical twins. Maria had a look in her eyes that was determined; Marta seemed more serene and open. It was then that I noticed each of the women at the table wore a familiar gold charm bracelet.
“And finally, next to you is Amani Lakshmi, who has been on the Committee the longest. In fact, she was my guide, as I will be yours,” said Matilda.
“So very nice to meet you, Cassie,” she said with a slight accent, lifting her slender arm to shake my hand. I saw that she was the only one in the room wearing two bracelets, one on each wrist. “Before we start, do you have any questions?”
“Who’s the woman in the painting?” I heard myself say.
“Carolina Mendoza, the woman who made all of this possible,” Matilda said.
“Who still does,” added Amani.
“Yes, that’s true. As long as we have her paintings, we have the means to continue S.E.C.R.E.T. in New Orleans.”
Matilda explained how she met Carolina more than thirty-five years earlier, back when she was an arts administrator for the city. Carolina was an artist, originally from Argentina. She fled in the ’70s, just before the military crackdown made it impossible for artists and feminists to create and speak freely. They met at an art auction. She was just beginning to show her work, large vivid canvases and murals that weren’t typical of the paintings women were doing at the time.
“Are these her paintings? And the ones in the lobby?” I asked.
“Yes. Which is why security is so tight here. Each is worth millions. We have a few more in storage in the Mansion.”
Matilda explained how she and Carolina began to spend time together, something that surprised Matilda because she hadn’t made a new friend in a long time.
“It wasn’t a sexual relationship, but we talked an awful lot about sex. After a while she trusted me enough to share her world with me, a secret world where women gathered to talk about their deepest desires, their most hidden fantasies. Remember, it wasn’t common back then to talk about sex. Let alone how much you liked it.”
At first Carolina’s group was informal, Matilda said, a gathering of artist friends, and local offbeat characters, which have always been aplenty in New Orleans. Most were single, some were widows, a few were long married, some of them happily so, she said. Most were successful and over thirty. But there was something missing from their marriages, their lives.
Matilda became her exclusive art broker and Carolina’s paintings began selling for sky-high prices. Eventually she sold several to the American wife of a Middle-Eastern oil sheik for tens of millions of dollars. She bought the Mansion next door, then put the rest of her fortune into a trust that funded their burgeoning sexual collective.
“Ultimately we realized we wanted to experience our sexual fantasies—all of them. And these scenarios cost money. Finding men, and sometimes women, the right men and women, to fulfill these fantasies, required recruiting. And … training. That’s how S.E.C.R.E.T. began.
“After we all helped one another experience our sexual fantasies, we began recruiting one person every year upon whom we would bestow this gift—the gift of complete sexual emancipation. As current chair of the Committee, it was my duty to choose this year’s recruit. According to our mandate, she must, in turn, choose us.”
“That’s your cue, Cassie,” said Brenda.
“Me? Why?”
“For several reasons. We have been watching you for a while now. Pauline made the suggestion after seeing you at the restaurant. She didn’t leave her notebook on purpose, but we couldn’t have planned it better. We had already discussed you a couple of times. It all worked out rather well.”
This stunned me for a moment, that I’d be
en watched, checked out … for what? Signs of abject loneliness? I felt a flash of anger.
“What are you saying exactly? That you saw I was some pathetic, lonely waitress?” I looked accusingly around the room.
Amani reached out and held my arm, while some of the women murmured reassurances: “No” and “It’s not like that” and “Oh, honey, that’s not what we meant.”
“Cassie, it’s not an insult. We operate from a spirit of love and support. When someone shuts down their sexual self prematurely, it’s often not noticeable to them. But other people pick up on it. It’s like you’re operating with one less sense. Only you don’t know it. Sometimes people in that kind of retreat need an intervention of sorts. That’s all. That’s what I meant. We found you. We picked you for this. And now we’re offering you a chance at a new beginning. An awakening. If you want it. Do you want to join us and begin your journey?”
I was stuck on how they had been monitoring me. How? I had always thought I camouflaged my loneliness, my accidental celibacy. Then I remembered my brown clothing, my messy ponytail, my awful shoes, my slouch, my cat, my trudge home at dusk to my empty apartment. Anyone with a set of eyes could have seen that a brown-colored aura had settled over me, like a dusting of defeat. It was time. Time to make a leap.
“Yes,” I said, shaking the remaining doubt out of my head. “I’m in. I want to do this.”
The room erupted in applause. Amani nodded encouragingly.
“Consider the women in this circle your sisters. We can guide you back to your true self,” Matilda said, standing up.
My chest tightened with emotion. I was feeling so much at the same time—joy, fear, confusion and gratitude. Was this really happening? To me?
“Why are you doing this for me?” I asked, tears pooling in the corners of my eyes.
“Because we can,” said Bernice.
Matilda reached under the table and pulled a zippered folder. She placed it in front of me. It looked like real alligator skin and it was embossed with my initials, CR. They knew, on some fundamental level, that this was not something I could turn down. I opened it, exposing the two sides of the folder, each filled with ornately embossed papers. On the left was a linen envelope with my name on it in calligraphy. Even my wedding invitations weren’t this beautiful.
“Go ahead,” said Matilda. “Open it.”
I carefully ripped the seal. Inside was a card.
On this day, Cassie Robichaud is invited by the Committee to take the Steps.
________________________ Cassie Robichaud
Beneath that was another line:
____________________ Matilda Greene, Guide
Tucked into the right side of the folder was a small journal, exactly like Pauline’s, also with my initials.
“Cassie, would you read the Steps aloud for us?”
“Now?” I looked around the table and couldn’t see a single face that frightened me, and I knew that I could walk out the door at any time—but I didn’t want to. I stood up, but my legs felt frozen. “I’m scared.”
“Every one of the women around this table has felt the same thing you’re feeling right now,” Matilda said, and the women nodded. “Cassie, we are our sexual lives.”
The tears were flowing now. It felt, at long last, as though all the grief I’d stored up in me was finally finding its way out.
Amani leaned closer to me and said, “The ability to heal ourselves has made it possible for us to help others. That’s why we’re here. That’s the only reason we’re here.”
I stared down at the diary. I gathered every ounce of strength and courage I could muster. I wanted to come alive like these women. I wanted to feel pleasure, and to live in my body again. I wanted all of it. I wanted everything. I opened to the Steps and read all ten, the same words I had read in Pauline’s diary. When I finished, I sat down and a great sense of relief moved from my feet, through my body, and out my arms.
“Thank you, Cassie,” Matilda said. “Now I have three important questions for you. One, do you want what we have?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Two, within the boundaries of complete safety and security and the guidance we offer you, are you willing to take these Steps?”
I looked back down at the Steps. I wanted this. I really did. “Yes. I think so.”
“And three, Cassie Robichaud, do you accept me as your guide?”
“Yes. I do,” I said.
The room burst into more applause.
Matilda squeezed my hands in hers. “Cassie, I promise you that you’ll be safe, you’ll be cared for, you’ll be cherished. You have total autonomy over your body and what you want to do with it. You can decide how to proceed at all times. You will never be coerced. That’s not to say you won’t be afraid, but that’s what we’re here for. What I’m here for. Now I have one more thing to give you.”
She walked over to the console, above which hung the portrait of Carolina. She opened the slender top drawer and carefully removed a small purple box. She carried it to me like it was the most fragile thing on earth. But when she placed it in my hands, the box felt surprisingly heavy.
“Open it. It’s for you.”
I lifted the velvet top, and under a downy bit of fluff lay a pale gold chain nestled in silk. It was identical to the one everyone else in the room was wearing. But this was only a bare chain—no charms were attached.
“It’s mine?”
Matilda lifted it out of the box and fastened it around my trembling wrist.
“For every Step you complete, Cassie, you will receive a gold charm from me commemorating its completion. This will continue until you have received all nine charms. The tenth charm comes after you make your choice to stay in S.E.C.R.E.T. or to leave. Are you ready to begin your adventure?”
The bracelet made it all feel real, its very weight grounding me, making me conscious of the magnitude of what had just occurred, and what was about to.
“I’m ready.”
I was vibrating from head to toe on my way home, thinking about the task ahead of me. Matilda had sent me away with the folder and told me it included nine pages, one page per fantasy. I was supposed to fill these out right away and call Danica as soon as I was done, presumably so she could send a courier to fetch the papers. The last thing Matilda said to me was, “As soon as we get those papers, it will all begin. You and I will speak after every fantasy. But don’t hesitate to call me, for anything, in between, okay?”
In my apartment I scooped up Dixie and gave her kisses all over her belly. Then I lit a lot of candles, undressed and soaked in a sweet-smelling bath. All of this was supposed to help me conjure the best possible fantasy list. I found my favorite pen and whipped out the first page from my alligator folder. I felt a stirring in me that I hadn’t felt in years. Matilda had instructed me to lay it bare, to lay out all my sexual longings. Everything I’d ever wanted to do or try. She told me not to judge, not to question.
“Don’t get too descriptive, don’t think too much. Just write.” There weren’t rules for the fantasies, she explained, but the letters in S.E.C.R.E.T. represented their criteria, which they took great pains to adhere to. Matilda said each fantasy must feel:
S afe, in that the participant feels no danger.
E rotic, in that the fantasy is sexual in nature, not just imaginary.
C ompelling, in that the participant truly wants to complete the fantasy.
R omantic, in that the participant feels wanted and desired.
E cstatic, in that the participant experiences joy in the act.
T ransformative, in that something in the participant changes in a fundamental way.
I looked at the acronym again and absently wrote a word beneath each of the first few letters, something so apt that it made me laugh out loud: Sexual Emancipation of Cassie Robichaud. For the final E and T all I could think to write was Exciting Times. This really was happening. To me!
With Dixie circling my ankles and candles flickeri
ng on the table, I began by ticking off the box next to the sentence: I want to be serviced. I wasn’t sure what it meant, but I ticked it anyhow. Could it be something about oral sex? I suggested it once to Scott and he crinkled his nose in a way that shut down the request forever. I had put away that longing in a high drawer, never to be seen again. Or so I thought. There were many other kinds of sex I’d never had too. I had a college friend who raved about doing it “the other way,” and it always left me curious. I could never have asked Scott to try something like that. And I wasn’t even sure if it was something I wanted.
I want to have secret sex, in public. Another check.
I want to be taken by surprise. This thrilled me a little, even though, again, I wasn’t sure what it meant. I had been assured I’d be safe, that I could stop anything whenever I wanted. I ticked the box.
I want to be with someone famous. What? How could they pull that off? This seemed impossible, interesting. Tick.
I want to be rescued. Rescued from what? I put a checkmark in the box.
I want to be picked to be the princess. Oh God, what woman didn’t want that? I was always considered the nice one, the smart one, maybe even the funny one. But I had never been the pretty one, the princess, never in my whole life. So yes to this. Sure. Even though it sounded childish. I wanted to feel that. Just once.
I want to be blindfolded. I imagined being in the dark might be liberating, so I checked the box.
I want to have sex in an exotic place with an exotic stranger. Technically weren’t they all strangers, these men I’d be with, who I’d never see again? With no talking, no speaking, just bodies brushing past each other, and then … maybe he’d grasp my wrist … Keep writing.
S.E.C.R.E.T.: An Erotic Novel Page 5