Passion Play

by Jerzy Kosiński

  Then, the two of them in towels, Fabian would guide her through the club. From the first, she would witness sexual play at its most unhampered and extravagant: men and women, singly, paired or in groups, investing their intimacies with the ease they would bring to social gatherings in their own living rooms.

  Soon the woman would be lulled by the climate of mundane assumption, her need for privacy ratified by the sense of enclosure. She would risk permitting herself the exploration of touch with a stranger, often a woman, who seemed less threatening than a man. Sometimes her discovery of her own nature would proceed in the anonymity of a nest of bodies, female and male, sequestered in one of the club’s more isolated rooms. Fabian might watch these stages in her revelation, or she might signal that she wished him to leave and wait for her, reserving to herself the scenario of her abandonment.

  Then, the fluent persuasion of circumstance having enforced its own code, the woman made herself accessible to Fabian, her response natural now, an expectation fulfilled, an inevitable compliance with the mood of the time and the place. What the two of them shared was a covert knowledge of each other seldom if ever conceded to a possessive lover or the complacent partner in marriage, the knowledge of sensation alone, conveyed by sexual acts perhaps never to be repeated, never even alluded to outside that sexual arena.

  Music still throbbed as Fabian guided Vanessa down a long channel of stairs, the passage narrowing, the darkness deepening, to yet another floor of DREAM EXCHANG.

  “Would you ever want the two of us to make love among other people here, strangers?” Vanessa asked abruptly. “To share me with other women?” She hesitated. “Other men?”

  “Only if you and I would want to share and be shared. Would you?” he asked gently.

  “One can share only what one possesses,” Vanessa said distantly, looking at him, a thin smile flickering about her mouth, teasing the scar.

  Silent at her side, careful not to brush against her with his body, every touch a signal, Fabian pondered the realm into which Vanessa was guiding him, unsure still whether he should reveal to her a truth he had felt ever since those afternoons in his VanHome, his face next to hers, one hand buried in her hair, his mouth at her ear and neck, breathing in the scent of her body: that as long as they were lovers, she must be free to want and to experience life without his mediation, that her need for another lover, a man or a woman she had already known as a lover or would want to know in love, could never alter her place in his life. He wanted to tell her that he would never be jealous of her freedom or desire to experience herself in lovemaking with others, privately or with him as a witness or partner, because the two of them would not be relinquishing their essence to others, but, rather, absorbing others into it.

  The others would be merely transient evidence of an extraneous world, a gift belonging neither to him nor to her, yet open at any moment to possession by either or by both in concert, a gift of vision, a glimpse at fragments of oneself with others, shafts of light thrown on that outer world, reflecting back on one’s own.

  Fabian gently pushed Vanessa forward, and they moved through corridors opening onto saunas and steam rooms. They passed a couch on which a girl lay, staring at the ceiling, her eyes glazed, her body bare. A crew of men, runtish and sweaty, their towels on the floor, took turns probing her limp frame, determined with sullen resentment to invade her entire being. With each of their thrusts the back of the couch struck the wall, rhythmically marking their progress.

  Nearby, in the ruddy glow of overhead lamps, a naked couple reclined on lounges. The man, short and stocky, his scant hair receding from a mottled forehead, closed his eyes, his mouth half open. The woman, tall, her hair a gray mat, her thighs veined and wasted, cuddled against him, stroking his flesh, while she watched a couple pushing fiercely against each other on the floor. The woman saw Vanessa and smiled at her.

  “You’re so pretty!” she called out. “Why don’t you undress?”

  One eye now opened, the man glanced at Vanessa. “Why don’t you?” he chimed in. Then he noticed Fabian. “Come and join us, you two,” he mumbled, his eyes closed again.

  Fabian and Vanessa arrived at a large area housing pool tables and rippling with the light and jangle of pinball machines. Vanessa slipped off her shoes and dropped onto one of the floor pillows. She gently pulled Fabian down beside her and laid her head on his thighs.

  Uncertain of what she might expect from him, he wanted to bring his mouth to her hair, to undress her, to stroke her, to caress her breasts, to turn his gaze on her body with the same ease he had had when assessing the bodies of so many others that evening. Her warmth was on him, but he could not see her eyes. She might have drifted into sleep.

  The intensity of his emotions bewildered him. In his years away from her, he had registered Vanessa’s reality only hazily; now, close to her, he was sharply aware of every shade of his feeling that she evoked. Now, as in his past with her, he took in her every expression, every gesture, every move. But the pattern of what he felt came in fragments; he could not determine what absorbed him most—her presence or his own need.

  Before them, a man, shedding his towel, dropped onto a floor mat, tumbling with him a woman wearing only white stockings with garters around them, and white high-heeled shoes. They were both in their twenties, the man dark and compact, the woman blonde and well-shaped. Giggling, they lay back, the woman reaching out for the man, throwing open her legs. The man moved between her thighs and rammed into her again and again, his hands squeezing her breasts, his torso pinning her down. She twisted, her hands pushing against his shoulders. The man slid down, his face between the woman’s thighs, his tongue inside her, her legs a vise about his head.

  Nearby, in shadow, a little bald man watched the couple. Darting quick glances around, he crawled closer to the couple, a howl stifled in his toothless mouth, his naked body blotched, his face bruised, his eyes bulging with lust. A dim, wily smirk came over his face as he saw Vanessa and Fabian. Quickly, as if loosening a too-tight collar, the little man turned back to the couple on the floor. There, the woman moaned as her lover slipped his hands under her buttocks, bringing her flesh closer to his mouth. She wriggled, her breath in gasps, a shudder coiling through her body.

  The little man jerked his shoulders and neck, swiveling his head sideways; his forehead wrinkled in concentration as he began to milk his flesh, squatting, his knees apart. Absorbed in each other, the couple had not noticed him, and he inched forward until his flesh was above the woman’s face. As if bracing for a heroic act, smirking, sucking his lips, the little man touched the woman’s chin with his flesh. Involuntarily, avid for fulfillment, she opened her mouth and wrapped her lips around his outthrust organ. Shaking, shivering, muttering to himself, lifting his shoulders, breathing swiftly, he strained, ejaculating. Her body quaking under her lover’s touch, her eyes closed, the woman swallowed, licking her lips, collecting each drop. Like a boy delighted by his own mischief, snickering, his eyes now vacant, the little man scuttled away.

  “Everyone here seems so eager, greedy,” said Vanessa.

  “They’re consumers of passion in search of bargains,” Fabian said, scanning the room. “Here, at the dime-a-dance ballroom of sex, bargains are often damaged goods in disguise. Some of these women are really escorts or prostitutes that men hire to pose as their wives or girlfriends, to be swapped for the girlfriends and wives of other men. And a lot of the men are pimps or rough trade in search of new business. Others are tourists who might have been in a whorehouse in Tijuana or Hong Kong yesterday; tonight, fresh off the jet, they dump at DREAM EXCHANGE germs they didn’t check through customs! Then there are the clean and innocent Ivy League first-timers, lured by the promise of free sex—and sex for free.”

  “Don’t these people ever worry about infection or disease?”

  “They probably do. Most of them wouldn’t share their toothbrushes. But here. . . .”

  He broke off as another couple brushed by them, the man g
uiding the woman toward the nearest mattress. He was slender, with a lean, alert face; she was frail, her beauty touched with that blend of innocence and carnality Fabian had often observed in fashion models. Her manner and expression were demure; she stiffened with reluctance as, sitting down next to her, her partner undid her towel, leaving her naked. In an instant, he was on her, kissing her mouth and neck, licking her nipples, her underarms; aroused already, he was determined to arouse her.

  Unquiet, Vanessa stirred on Fabian’s thighs. She sat up and put her shoes on again, a gesture Fabian read as a signal that she wanted to move on. He took her past another area—where clusters of men in towels huddled like schoolboys before lighted squares of electronic games—and into the bar.

  Among naked people and those in towels were several men wearing dark suits; a few women gathered the long sweeps of their dresses about them. One couple seemed to have come fresh from a society dance, the woman’s gold lamé gown winking against the starchy white tie and tails of her escort. At one end of the bar, next to platters of cold cuts, stood a group of Oriental men, all in towels, the gold rims of their eyeglasses glinting in the light. Vanessa remarked that they seemed to go into conference. Fabian smiled, then pointed out the presence of their American call-girl companions, bare-breasted above jeans or shorts.

  One of the girls, a stunning redhead with cropped hair, high cheekbones and wide-set eyes, glanced at Vanessa, then at Fabian, and walked over to them.

  “I’m Cheyenne,” she said, assured and at ease. Then, appraising Vanessa as an escort hired by Fabian for the evening, she turned to her. “Why don’t you let me know when you’re free,” she said. “Jackie”—she pointed out one of the girls—“doesn’t feel too hot and would like to go home, and you could take her place for the rest of the night. Since this club requires members to leave in couples, she could leave with your gentleman.”

  “How do you know we’re not married?” Vanessa asked, taking Fabian by the hand.

  The girl gave Fabian a long, seductive look before answering Vanessa. “If he pays you to say that the two of you are married it’s fine with me. At his age men pay for all kinds of tricks. But these guys—” Gesturing with her head at the Oriental men, she lowered her voice. “They’ll pay you better than anybody, because paying is all they do better.” She grinned. “They’re little Toyotas, you know. You’d be surprised what kinds of stiffeners, extension rings and battery-operated gadgets they keep under their towels. It’s like screwing a hardware store.” Chuckling, she went back to join her group.

  Aware of the glances of a few drinkers standing nearby, Vanessa grew uneasy. Her hand tugged at Fabian, and he took her away.

  They passed a sales counter, its glass shelves outlined in rhine stones and heaped with fluorescent plastic replicas of the male and female sexual organs, batteries to make them vibrate, sexual toys and whimsies, pendants and rings, playing cards, curiosities of leather and chrome and brass. A special shelf held vials and pellets of a chemical, the inhalation of which, their labels claimed, caused the blood vessels to dilate and the heartbeat to accelerate, deranging the perception of time and inducing an illusion of prolonged orgasm. Behind the counter a tall platinum blonde, in a garter belt and net stockings, teetered on high-heeled shoes, the tight lacing of a Victorian corset pushing up her breasts, their skin coarse and mottled, slick with sweat.

  Near the counter, on a stained mattress, two bodies, white on black, interlocked. A black girl in pigtails, her blouse crumpled round her naked buttocks, socks drooping over her low-heeled shoes, lay pinned underneath an old white man with a gray crew cut. Over the man’s bony shoulder, the girl caught Vanessa’s stare.

  “This is the only place we’ve got to be alone,” she explained, with the freshness of a school-girl on her first date.

  A tall, handsome man hit Vanessa with his elbow in passing and smiled an apology; she turned to him, only to start in confusion: the man’s stiffened organ served as a hanger for his towel. Just then, a woman, her hair tied back, her expression coquettish, approached him. Without warning, she lifted the towel and tenderly kissed the tip of the flesh. Then, smiling, she paraded on.

  At the whirlpool, a man crawled out of the mist toward a woman and gripped her buttocks tight against him. As he rocked her back and forth, another man dug sharply into her from the front, his large belly slapping against her jutting hipbones.

  Attracted by the scene, a woman slid out of the pool and came at the trio. Two other bodies that had been paddling in the water joined the tableau, as did a frail-looking boy with freckled shoulders. The bathers and those idling at the whirlpool watched the more active group with casual interest.

  A young man, naked, his towel in hand, his hair slicked down, eyes magnified by glasses, fixed his stare on Vanessa. Next to him, two naked women, his companions, their copper skin sheened by the vapor from the pool, balanced uneasily on spike-heeled shoes. The man turned sharply to Fabian as if resuming an interrupted conversation.

  “Pelvic constrictors,” he announced jauntily, pointing at the golden two. “Illegal entries from way down south. Good for anything except speaking English.”

  The women smiled, sensing that they were being spoken of.

  “Swap one, swap all,” the man went on.

  “I’d rather not,” Fabian said.

  The man was not deterred. “Or let the señoritas chip her.” He eyed Vanessa, but he spoke only to Fabian. “Or, better yet, how about chipping into her with me?”

  Vanessa pointed a finger at herself. “Why don’t you ask her? Her speak English,” she said evenly.

  The man changed his tactics, but continued to focus on Fabian. “Have you had any experience with men?” he asked him emphatically.

  “Yes,” Fabian said, “we were in the army together.”

  Discouraged, the man wandered off, his companions trotting obediently behind.

  A couple, both in their late sixties, their bodies pendulous over spindly legs, stumbled out of the whirlpool, a trail of wet footprints their signatures.

  Fabian and Vanessa picked their way through a labyrinth of small lounges, then approached a large room, its walls clear Plexiglas. They saw dozens of men and women, all bare, lying and squatting, kneeling, crouching, standing, tumbling, toppled, massed, on mattresses and pillows. All bonds slipped; the men and women copulated, couples alone, or in nests and knots of three and five and more, hands straying over bodies and breasts, heavy, pliant, fragrant, withered, fingers making their way into inner recesses, yielding or rigid, lax, furrowed, the invasion obliterating, a choreography of touch, the withdrawal, rising, converging, the shift of partners, the run of positions, thrust and pull and strain, an army, voracious, remorseless in its advance over a terrain of flesh.

  From the huddle, a couple got up. The man was in his late fifties, his gray hair disordered, a medallion resting on the damp hair on his chest. The woman was young and shapely. The man guided her toward the exit, along a path between the bodies, her walk the practiced confident strut of a seasoned nightclub stripper. Outside the room, they slumped into a double lounge chair. Proud of her looks, the woman spread her thighs. Fabian was about to turn away when a flicker in her movement detained him: from the shape of her well-defined inner lips, he recognized that the woman had once been a man.

  Silent, Vanessa followed Fabian through a zone of cubicles, some shut, some with their doors ajar. From behind the thin walls came whispers, chuckling, the slap of flesh on flesh, a body thudding against the floor, the moan of a woman, a man whimpering, broken words and phrases stillborn. Vanessa turned sharply, almost colliding with a door barring entry to another section of the club. Uncertain, she pushed open the door and, clutching Fabian’s hand, went in.

  They were alone in a room containing a large swimming pool enclosed on all sides by a ledge of polished tile, and a sauna at the far end. A diaphanous film of steam hung suspended over the water, the play of green lights skimming its surface, revealing the contours of t
he pool’s floor. Its quiet unbroken, the room might have been in a private home.

  “It’s all yours,” Fabian said with a smile as Vanessa released his hand in happy astonishment. “Just what you wanted. Cool water, and lots of it.” He lay down on an ornate bench at the side of the pool.

  Vanessa took off her shoes and, lifting her skirt, sat down, on the tile ledge, her legs playfully disturbing the water, her back toward Fabian.

  Suddenly, without a word, she pulled off her sweater and tossed it to him. She stood up, removed her skirt and panties, and came toward the bench, dropping them beside him. Her belly passed near his head. He was not yet aroused; his mouth felt dry.

  Fabian looked up at her, catching sight of her groin. She opened herself to his exploration, moving one foot ahead of the other, her gaze fixed on him. Aroused, he was silent and motionless.

  Vanessa returned to the pool and plunged in, her clean strokes those of a trained swimmer cutting easily through the water, scarcely rippling its calm. After a few laps, she climbed out of the pool, her hair slicked back.

  Fabian threw her a towel. She sat down at the pool’s edge, and as she swathed herself, shielding her breasts and hips, he was tempted to go to her but he remained seated.

  The door opened, and a tumble of laughter and strong, loud voices spilled into the room as four men and two women, all black, in their mid-thirties, burst in. Glancing at Vanessa and Fabian, they shed their towels; one after another, they dived into the pool. The women, short, with high breasts, their hips broad on stocky thighs, dabbled in the shallows, squatting, gently plying the water; the men, thick and massive through the shoulders and middle, struck off powerfully for the far end of the pool, dashing spurts of foam at one another, clowning for their women.

  One of the men surfaced in front of Vanessa, careful not to splash her. He looked up, smiling, and then ducked mischievously, making no secret of his curiosity about what her towel concealed. Vanessa smiled back, and the man swam closer; his fingers brushed her toes.