The Juliette Society(7)

Jack is sensitive, caring, thoughtful and kind – everything that makes for a great lover – and before Jack, no man had ever come near to satisfying me in bed. But somehow it still never seems like enough, because I’m wild about him.

I look at Jack and think of Montgomery Clift in A Place in the Sun; intensely beautiful, square-jawed, the all-American boy. At least, that’s how he looks to me. But it’s not just about the way he looks. Whenever you see Montgomery Clift on screen, he can be doing little else but staring into the middle distance, lost in contemplation, and you can see his mind churning. That’s Jack. And it really turns me on.

When he’s not around, I masturbate like crazy, fantasizing about Jack. Me fucking Jack. Somewhere mundane, somewhere we’re not meant to. At the office, in the canteen at college, in the library, on the train. Jack fucking me. With passion, vigor and resolve.

He doesn’t have any idea about these fantasies of mine, because I do it when he’s not around and we never discuss them. But it’s getting to the point where my fantasy sex life far outstrips my reality.



We live in a tiny apartment. When things are good, it feels like we’re living in a space capsule, locked together away from the world. Our intimacy seems to make the place seem much larger than it is. When things are bad – not really bad, just the little hiccups that happen between any long-term couple living in close quarters – it can feel stifling and claustrophobic.

On nights like tonight, when Jack comes home from class or working at the campaign office and goes straight in the bedroom to catch up on his reading, and stays there pretty much till he falls asleep, it feels like he’s locking himself away from me on purpose, and I don’t know why. I find myself coming up with reasons to walk around the apartment in my underwear or naked even more often than usual. I make excuses to flaunt myself in front of him, anything to attract his attention, arouse his desire and make him show he wants me.

I’ll decide, on a whim, that I’m going to take a shower before dinner and start peeling my clothes off in front of him. But it doesn’t make any difference because he doesn’t even look up and I think he must be blind – blind to my love for him.

I take the shower as quickly as I can, because I didn’t want or need one anyway, and it wasn’t the purpose of this little exercise. I dry myself off and cream and oil my body so it glistens and shines. And I come out naked, smelling of jasmine. And then the games begin.

When we haven’t had sex for a while, I smell sweet. Like a ripe apple or peach, dripping and ready to be eaten. Ready for someone to get to my core. I know that Jack smells me, but I always wonder if other people can smell me too. And if they can’t, how is that possible? If they just think it’s lotion or perfume. They don’t know that I’m ready and ripe and willing. And left wanting.





4




I’m sitting in class, waiting for Anna to show up. But she’s late.

The one thing Marcus won’t tolerate is tardy students. If ever someone arrives late to class, he goes through this whole elaborate routine intended to intimidate them into never doing it again. He’ll stop talking the second he hears the door to the lecture hall crack open. Not at the end of his sentence, in the middle of a syllable, turn his head, stare at the door, just waiting for someone to step through it.

As they scurry inside and find a seat, Marcus’ stony gaze follows their every step and he’s so pissed you can almost see the steam coming out of his ears. But he still looks cute because he has these dimples – dark hair and dimples – and it always looks like he’s smiling, even when he’s really mad. But even once they’ve found their seat and settled in, with their legal pad in front of them and their pen at the ready, it doesn’t end there. Oh, no.

Marcus will stand there in silence, bent over his desk, with his hands splayed out in front of him, staring down at his notes for a really uncomfortable amount of time. Almost as if he’s willing someone to make a sound, willing someone to give him an excuse to explode. But everyone knows better than that.

We sit in respectful silence and when he feels he’s tortured the class enough, and only then, however long that is, he’ll continue the lecture, starting up again from exactly the same syllable he left off from.

Anna is always late to class. I’ve never known her to miss a class but she’ll never arrive at the same time. It could be just as Marcus has started his lecture, or right in the middle, or sometimes five minutes from the end. But whenever it is, she’ll waltz in without a care in the world. Marcus will look up, see her, and then continue right on as if nothing had happened.