Message-ID: <13286eli$9807221222@qz.little-neck.ny.us> X-Archived-At: From: Gwydion McCarthy Subject: Story: Masks of Masks - 1 of 2 (m/f, multiple personality disorder) Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d Reply-To: gwydion@writeme.com MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Path: qz!not-for-mail Organization: The Committee To Thwart Spam Approved: X-Moderator-Contact: Eli the Bearded X-Story-Submission: X-Original-Message-ID: <19980722133733.26484.rocketmail@web4.rocketmail.com> "Masks of Masks" It wasn't much of a place, just a façade really, but carefully constructed, and it was John's own office. He had promised himself that once he graduated he would have a desk in Manhattan with a great view, and he had fulfilled that promise in a way. His desk was particleboard, his shoes bought at a sample sale in the Empire State Building, his business card said, "Advertising Executive," and he had a great view. Just not of Manhattan. When he had interviewed for the job, he thought he was getting in on the ground floor of a new "Silicon Alley" multimedia start-up. That the President of the company who interviewed him was a luscious blonde whose appearance said, "This cleavage has a price tag" didn't exactly clue him in to the real nature of the company. And the name of the company "X-Height," he thought had to do with some strange old typeface-geeking term. It really wasn't until his first day of work that he realized what business he was getting into. He was excited about the fact that his new job had to do with selling ad space on the Web, and that the company was getting into Web-based electronic media. When he came into work and saw half-naked models wondering from suite to suite, however, he realized that the name "X-Height" was actually pronounced, "Excite." It was an adult porn web site. And he was responsible for selling ad space on it. The whole company was based in an office/warehouse combo. He wasn't given an office with an outside view, however the office he did receive was a "Foreman's" office - it looked out into the warehouse, which in this case was being used as a photography studio. It was amazing to him what this fly-by-night company could get away with: the girls were paid only $100 a night, no tips or anything. No bonuses to speak of. They were expected to dance on camera and have their images beamed to hundreds of horny netizens pounding their meat and trying to avoid spewing semen on their keyboards. The place was hardly sanitary and very uncomfortable. The girls were expected to buy dildos at the New York adult toystores and bring them in to fuck themselves - but not all the girls wanted to do that. In fact, most of them hated it - nine times out of time they got absolutely no enjoyment from it as well. Still, for John, it was a job. And in Manhattan, you took what work you could get. He was ideologically opposed to the way Stan, the supervisor, treated the models, but for the most part there was absolutely nothing he could do about it. He was told to keep his pen out of the company well, too - that meant no dating the women he saw nude and partially-nude for 8 hours a day. Except for the stringers. The stringers would get sent in by modeling agencies to fill short term vacancies - whenever a girl came down with a disease, or got pregnant by accident, or started her period early, or any other of the myriad of excuses (that Stan had begun tabulating with a graph on his wall in black magic marker) that would make a model unable to work. Since the stringers were extremely temporary employees, they were fair game *once they were no longer working there.* John spent most of the time with the blinds to the warehouse down, calling around, sending off email like mad and carrying his laptop to other porn houses in Manhattan, making proposals and presentations, trying to get the valuable ad revenue that would in turn pay his salary. He didn't feel any different from the women, really - he was a commodity, a body that Dominique (the busty blonde who ran the place) built her trade on. He knew he had gotten the job in part on looks, too. His blond hair was nearly unheard of in the city, his cool steel eyes pierced through your heart and made you want to trust him. He was tall, broad-shouldered, trim and hard but not from the gym. The city made you hard if you let it - it walked you hard and the stress you ate for breakfast would consume anything else you ate. Dominique had indicated via some vicious double entendre at their first meeting that she might put him to the sexual test at some point, but she was mindful of his need to stay focused. She thought it very amusing that he was clearly hungry and horny all the time - she liked it that way. "The hornier you are, John, the more you go out and work. Because you know you're not getting any high-class Manhattan pussy on base salary. You'll need a nice fat commission to take out the premium babes." Her gravelly laugh punctuated his dreams. Most of them were erotic - even if they were nightmares. John dealt with the situation by closing down and focusing hard on the job at hand. Still, he couldn't totally sublimate a perfectly normal sex drive. The company shared a suite with a phone sex company next door and he heard women panting and crying out all day long. He saw women of every description, all of them nearly perfect to look at, wondering through the hallway half-naked, mostly naked, or downright nude. They would tease him because they knew his position and knew Domi would fire him if he fucked any of them. They talked about his cute ass openly to each other in front of him, treating him like a piece of meat. Like they were regularly treated, each night. John would relieve his pent-up sexual tension by a trip to the place around the corner which had no name other than LIVE FUCK SEX SHOW CUM SEE in neon, flashing continuously over and over. There were video porn booths that he frequented here, and occasionally visited the peep booths where women awaited behind plastic barriers that would lower when money was fed into the machine. That was an expensive proposition for John because they demanded 5 and 10 dollars to show anything, but the video porn booths gave him discreet amounts of time and he could change "video channels" as often as he wanted to find the stuff he really wanted to see. One particular afternoon he rushed into a booth, his cock stiffening in his pants, excited like a dog that knows you are going out to hunt with him. He started feeding it dollar bills until he had built up about 15 minutes worth of time. Then he saw that it was one of the "Buddy booths" in the place - a video booth set up with a glass partition between the two booths. The partition has a curtain inside of it that raises or lowers depending on if both parties in both booths agree that they should. John didn't notice it but as soon as he got into the booth, the red light on the side of the booth came on, indicating that the booth occupant next to him wanted him to agree to lower the blind. Curiosity overcame his homophobia and he hit the button, to see a young Hispanic guy jacking off - a very thick but not too long cock he was threading through his closed fingers, rolling back the foreskin with each stroke and watching some Asian woman getting fucked by fourteen guys on a soundstage. His eyes drifted from the guy's cock to the screen he was watching, and he switched his screen over to the same channel. He leaned back and let the man see his own penis, which was circumcised, thinner, but with a bulbous head that was angry red. For a moment he looked into the man's eyes. There was nothing directly alluring there - in fact it was more the kind of look men gave each other while pissing in public restrooms - but there was a kind of acceptance in his eyes that somehow magnified the experience to John. Clearly this guy understood what it was like to be unrelentingly horny, and have no place to go. He found his normally jaded libido totally overcome with the sight of another man like this - he watched out of the corner of his eye as the man turned toward the glass and began to send spurts of white ejaculate splattering against it. Call it a purely sympathetic response: but immediately after John felt the glands in the base of his cock boiling, churning, and then made his own mess in the booth, depositing his DNA on the floor. Then it was over - the stranger vanished into the rainy night, and John found himself in the Penn Station subway headed for home. Thinking about it on the train ride, John decided that there was definitely something to the buddy-booth concept, but the deeper implications worried him. Still, each time after that he visited the porno palace, he would make a beeline straight for the booths with the glass partition. Weeks churned by. In New York, you can look up and five minutes later the seasons will have changed. That's how it seemed to John. He came into work one November morning, printed a spreadsheet report and realized that he had managed to make a fairly decent commission. Doing the numbers reassured him instead of frightened him: he realized that his efforts had started to pay off, and that the little porn start-up just might well survive due in small part to his marketing talents and Dominique's technique of handling the "girls." He stopped arguing with her about how much they should be paid: Domi knew the going rate in the Manhattan porn industry, knew how to sell the concept to girls who were tired of being fingered in peep booths or who were through with the drugs and mismanagement that a model dealt with in the strip clubs. Domi knew that getting girls to strip for a camera was ten times easier in many ways than getting them to strip in public. Relaxing a little after his initial success, John decided one day that he could handle keeping the window blinds open, so he could see the studio. After a while, the sight of naked women continuously parading past his office window, performing various sex acts with themselves and others, didn't even catch his attention. It wasn't until he looked up one day and saw Sarah that he actually found himself interested again. He thought Sarah was some kind of techie at first, one of the HTML programmers the company hired. She was dressed in plain everyday clothes, kind of loose and baggy, and she didn't seem to hold herself like a model. But that was what made her that much more attractive. She had fiery red hair that was held by a simple hairband in a ponytail, and medium skin. There was this very French-looking nose and face, eyebrows that were thumb-tip caresses from the eyebrow artist. She was tiny, as delicate-looking as a doll. Then the supervisor waved for her to come over, and she paused, shrugged, and stripped off her t-shirt. John was actually surprised for a change. He saw her standing in the studio light and thought he saw some kind of halo coming off her hair. She had a tough-looking, scrappy, well-shaped body that was toned like a gymnast or a dancer. Walking with her was a matter of all the parts of her body working in concert without effort, but beautifully choreographed. Her hair was lovely, red, her eyes were glowing green in the light. Her skin was perfectly pale, with a scattering of freckles she didn't bother to hide. John didn't know whether he wanted to take her right there on the floor of the warehouse (not even caring about the flood lights, or the thousands of net-heads who were watching) or if he wanted to simply take her into his arms, hold her, and savor her sweet form for the rest of his natural life. If given the choice, John would choose both. On camera, her face actually morphed into that of a sexy, slutty woman, taking on the guise just like a mask, looking at the camera like a streetwalker on a Friday night looks at a Lexus' tail-lights. John had never seen a woman do that before. He instantly accessed the web-site, learning her name as soon as the camera screen came up. "Precious" was her screen name. He checked the roster and saw her real name was Sarah. He watched her set. He was masturbating under his desk, with his door locked, not caring that he was possibly sullying his thinking about her already. It wasn't something he thought consciously about. He just knew he wanted her. As soon as she stepped off camera, John saw her change again. No longer slutty, she moved with a quiet, almost studied humility. She was very aware of her surroundings. So aware, in fact, that she saw him watching - her eyes lingering for the split second which told John that he had been spotted. There was no choice as far as John was concerned - he didn't care - employee or no, he would talk to this woman. Domi owed him at least a conversation with this woman who seemed to be able to chameleon-like change from Virgin to Whore in only a moment. He kept at his phone calls, his spreadsheets, his checking the Web stats, until the day shift of girls got off work, calling in favors and working his contact database like a man driven. Deals would start blossoming in several days, deals that he would bring to fruition and land, accounts that he would close and make more money on. This was becoming rote-work to him, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Finally it was 6:00 p.m., and the day shift all trolloped out of the warehouse, scooping themselves into whatever clothes were handy just to get the hell out of there. John stood at the door, waiting Sarah to leave the "studio." But she had taken the back route out, and John had to embarrass himself by moving through the studio, asking for her, wondering where he had went. He opened the fire escape door to see her turning the corner in the alleyway, gone, just the tip of her ponytail visible. He pulled up the master schedule back on his PC, saw she would be dancing again tomorrow but not listed at all for the rest of the future. "Hey, Stan - what's the story about this Precious chick? She a new hire?" John asked, trying to sound nonchalant. Stan grinned at him. "You just want to know if you can nail her." "Something like that...." John said. Stan patted John on the cheek. "You want me to tell her you gotta big dick?" "Fuck you Stan - and how would you know?" John said, though he was grinning. Stan shrugged. "People talk, word gets around. Look, John - she's cool. She's clear. Clean. She's a stringer. Got sent over by the Pink Pony agency." John grinned. "Thanks ya bum. I owe you one." "You owe me several!" Stan called after him. But the next day was one of those Manhattan mornings where your life is made or broken by the first 15 minutes of the day. It didn't take long before John absolutely forgot about his dick, and anything related to sex or romance. He was fighting for his life: several accounts wanted to pull out, he had by accident faxed them the numbers for the month of June rather than July. It was hell. In fact, he had forgotten about anything but saving his butt when there was a silk-covered sound in his ear (the ear that was not to the phone) and a woman was standing in his office, looking at the Mardi Gras masks which were the only decoration on his wall - he had got them in New Orleans on a college trip. "Your masks are perfect." She said. He looked up - and then looked again. It was Sarah. She was lovely, truly lovely even in a t-shirt for the MOMA and a pair of tight, old jeans that looked like they had to have been bought in the Junior Misses department. She had obviously done her hair for the camera -it was a riot of red curls, falling down her back and making ringlets that framed her pretty, valentine-shaped face. At this distance, John noticed that her front teeth had a little part in it, which was just that much sexier to him. Then he realized the phone was talking to him. "Hey Frank, you got the new figures? Look, let me call you back...OK? Talk to you..." John said. He hung up the phone. "They were bought at a street vendor. You like them?" John said. Sarah nodded. "Masks are very telling things. We all wear them, don't we? Even when we don't think about it." John nodded. "At Halloween." "Not just then. Me, I am always wearing masks. That's what Abutu says." Sarah said. "Abutu?" John raised his eyebrows. "He's my acting coach. I'm learning the tribal shamanic acting method." John didn't know what to say about that - it was a little spooky. "What sort of things do you do in the class?" "So far nothing. We arrive, we dance like maniacs for hours, then we leave. I think he wants to fuck me." Sarah shrugged. "What makes you say that?" "He asks me when I'm going to go back to his apartment with him." "Oh." John said, not liking the idea. She smiled at him. "You're not exactly with it, are you?" John grinned. "Not exactly. Not this morning. My brain has drained out my ears." Sarah looked on the floor. "No gray matter. But I guess I should get used to that around you." John looked up at her. "What do you mean?" Sarah grinned. "We caught you looking, John..." John felt his face burning. He was actually blushing. Sarah smiled at his blush. "I want to eat. Are you hungry?" He looked at his watch. "I guess I am - it's noon." Sarah nodded. John looked up at her again, realization dawning finally. "Um, would you go to lunch with me? Um, can you?" Sarah nodded again. "Yes, I'm fired as of now. They did my set already this morning." John stood and said, "Let's go to the Manhattan Chili Company - they have great fajitas." Their conversation over lunch improved as Sarah realized that underneath the muddle that John was under, was an intellect and softness that she found attractive. She let her fingertips graze his arm for a moment while they talked. She felt her nipples spontaneously stiffen under her t-shirt - something that only happened when she knew she wanted someone. His eyes were doing things to her. "There's a...project that we're supposed to do. And I'm dreading it." Sarah said. "What's that?" John asked. "We have to do something adventurous. That's the quick explanation. He keeps talking about shamanic thresholds and stuff, but basically what we have to do is to confront our inner fears. Like I've been doing on this job. But Abutu says it's not adventurous enough - no risk." "You were afraid to strip for hundreds of unseen men?" John asked incredulously. Not after what she had done - how she had slid into her role perfectly. "I guess I was. Now I'm not." Sarah said, shrugging. John thought for a moment. "What if I could offer something a little more risky than that?" Sarah narrowed her thin eyebrows. "Does it involve something illegal?" John shook his head 'no.' "Meet me after work at Penn Station?" Sarah grinned. "Geez. OK." John looked at his watch. "I gotta run back to work, probably got a full voice mailbox by now.." Outside, on the street, Sarah said, "John. Thanks for taking me to lunch. I really appreciate it. They don't call us starving actresses for nothing." Sarah said softly, looking at him, with a slight smile on her face that belied the deeper sexual tension between them. John bent forward and kissed her with passion - but with just a soft brushing of her lips. She smiled at his innocent kiss, and they wordlessly turned away from each other and let the city carry them off. It was not until about three hours later that John saw her again. He was descending the escalator into Penn Station, in the Amtrak section, and saw her watching the destinations spinning, clicking. "I love the names...'The Liberty Express,' 'The Daytimer' - they're beautiful." Sarah said, pointing at them. John saw she had changed from before - was wearing a way-too-short soft cotton mini-dress with yellow flowers all over it that seemed to cling to her like a lover. Her legs were bare and she was wearing sandals that made her feet look tiny, which they were. Her hair had calmed down considerably, pulled back with a black scrunchie. He, on the other hand, still looked like a rumpled version of his lunch attire, but Sarah thought his eyes were beautiful enough on their own. They held hands silently as they stepped through the busy rush-hour streets, walking down the block to 8th Ave, where waves of neon porn signs greeted them in amongst cheap consumer electronics marquees. Sarah felt a wave of darkness wash over her like a palpable force, and she looked up at John, who was questioning her with those piercing eyes. Was she ready to pass over this threshold? She nodded and took his hand again, and they walked to a place, standing around outside of it. John leaned closer to her. "Here is what is going to happen. You are going inside with me, to the very back. I will get in one booth, you will get in the booth next to mine, there should be another booth on the others side, empty." She nodded, her eyes fixing on his, drawing strength from his comforting voice. "When you're in the booth, put some money in the slot, here - here's $5. Turn it to whatever video interests you. Then you're going to lower the blind between you and me, and you're going to expose yourself to me." Sarah nodded. "But you've seen me naked before." John grinned. "The guy in the other booth, on the other side - he hasn't." "Hmmm....do you know him?" "Not from Adam." "I see." John nodded. "Still brave?" Sarah looked inside, a chill ran up her spine. John was already holding her in his arms, kissing her, nearly lifting her off the ground. The kiss spread warm magic throughout her body. Sarah grinned at him. "We'd do anything if you keep kissing me like that." John smiled, and just turned, and led her back into the back of the porn palace. It smelled like diluted bleach, for that is what they used to kill the germs in the sperm left behind by men who would've rather put it someplace else. She felt alone in the booth at first, but then John showed her how to lower the partition between the two booths, and suddenly he was there, incongruous in his business suit and his cock, now purple-headed and thick, poking out of his grey flannel pants and silk boxers. John saw the strangeness wash over her face, and then suddenly that mask she had worn back in the studio was there, a bright smile across her face that implied years of sexual experience and incredible prowess. He didn't have to ask her to lower the other partition - the red light was already on from the guy in the other booth wanting her to lower it, and she just pushed the button to let it go down. He was an older man, old enough probably to be her father, with a wilting penis that suddenly sprang to life when he saw John's cock as well as Sarah stripping off the one-piece dress and carefully hanging it on a hook on the door. She was perfectly naked underneath, and this was as close as John had ever seen her. He shuddered in pure delight. She had shaved her pussy the night before (something he hadn't expected) and she was fingering herself while the old man's eyes got bigger and bigger. The old man groaned like an elephant dying and spewed his semen all over the window, to beat a hasty retreat. By then other men had caught on to what was going on in the booth and they started to line up outside. A young black man came into the booth, having brashly unzipped his pants outside of it, taking his cock into his hands almost immediately. She posed for him, looking him in the eye, backing up against the far wall and spreading her labia for him. She knew he wouldn't last long. She slid a finger into herself and licked it. Then she turned and saw John shooting his sperm against the glass. She almost could feel the heat from it. He looked at her, and back at the black guy, who threw back his head and spilled out a stream of semen that conformed to his cockhead and dripped off the end of it and onto the floor. But the partitions were already dropping - the money had run out - and John told Sarah to come out with him. He got dressed quickly, wiping his fingers on his shirt-tail and was the first one out of the booth. He looked fiercely at the other men standing there, letting them know that they shouldn't bother trying to come on to Sarah. Then he knocked on the door, and lead Sarah out. She had a far-away look in her eye - her mask of lust and desire still in place. "You didn't let me cum." She said, pouting. "There were other guys waiting." John grinned at her, shaking his head. "Let's see what we can do about that. Get a hotel room with me?" She looked at him, the mask washed away. "And have sex?" John nodded. "Um, I dunno. I have to think about it. Um." She said softly. John looked at her softly, his eyes piercing her heart. She looked up at him. "Oh John, I'm so scared, I...." He held her in the street, drawing around them both the cloak of privacy that you had to learn how to create for yourself in Manhattan. Nobody watched or cared what happened between them. He just held her. Soon, she was sobbing into his chest, and it was only then that he noticed that she'd put her dress back on the wrong way, the tag in the front. He helped her find her way home, paying for a cab the whole way and back. He felt like he had crossed onto some very shaky ground with her. He held her in the back seat the entire time, trying to ignore the cabbie who was looking at her rather lustfully the entire time - perhaps hoping she'd give him a blowjob. He didn't ask to come in, he didn't press his luck. He just held her softly in the cab - paying for the time (you always had to pay for time in Manhattan) until she finally told him she'd be OK, and that she would call him later. He left his business card with her and kissed her once, very chastely, good night. She held on to him like a little girl who didn't want her daddy to leave. "John - I ...." "What?" He asked softly. "I think I love you." She said, guilelessly, her eyes certain and steady. John nodded, he just looked back at her. Words couldn't come out of his mouth. It seemed so incongruent - her love, what they had done. He didn't understand her. But he knew that inside, he had already loved her, had already felt this beautiful feeling for her. "I think I love you too, Sarah." Sarah nodded, then looked down. "What?" He touched her chin. "You love my mask." "No - not just that. The woman behind it." She nodded and put her finger to his lips. "Shush." She said quietly, and smiled, but he saw a tear forming in her eye. She quietly went inside her apartment and closed the door. On the ride home, he thought about her. Her eyes melting into sadness had also melted his ardor, but he couldn't help but think later about the pure eroticism of the booth - of how she had done what he had asked, trusted him so completely, implicitly. How she had been very sexy to the strangers there, how she had seemed to just know what her body was capable of bringing out in men. They were unearthly, those memories. He wished he had had a camera and the skill to use it. That night he fell asleep still thinking about her, after one last desperate ejaculation into a white t-shirt that he wadded up and threw across the room into his dirty clothes hamper. The next day was nothing - Friday in New York was rarely busy - especially now that the weather was getting better. He was surprised to see email from a person named "Charly" in his inbox in the early morning. It went like this: Dear John, You don't know me. I'm a friend of Sarah's. We have to talk about her, and we have to do it today. I won't take 'no' for an answer. I expect you to beep me as soon as you get this and I will call you. If you ever want to have anything to do with Sarah again, you'll do as I ask. It's for her own good. I'm waiting. Charly For some reason, she had attached her picture file to the email. She was a beautiful, tan, blonde woman, with bright silver eyes that seemed to hold depth. Shrugging, and figuring he would find out what this was all about, John dialed the beeper number and punched in his own extension, his direct line. It wasn't long before the phone rang. A voice, soft and silky and kittenish, asked if it were him. "Yeah, this is John." Her voice was now insistent, urgent. "Look, John - we have to meet today. I've got to tell you a few things about Sarah. We have to talk about her. Things have gone farther than I thought they would." "Who are you - Sarah's fairy godmother?" "Look - you can laugh at me if you want. I just think there are some things you need to know. If you don't want to know them, then fine, I won't bother. I am a very good friend of Sarah's. I love her deeply. I would hate to see her hurt by a clueless person such as yourself, running roughshod over her feelings." "Are you her lover?" John said quizzically. "What? No. No, John - geez. I figured you would assume that. No. I'm not. She's not a lesbian, nor is she bisexual. I am just a good friend. That's all. Sarah just needs some explaining, that's all." "You sound like her therapist." John said defensively. "Hell, no. Her therapist would kill me for trying to explain her. But I love her, I want this to work for her. You've shown me you're not an asshole, John. Don't prove me wrong." "Fuck. OK. Fine, fuck it. Where do you want to meet?" "I thought you would agree - let's meet behind the Met at the Needle." "OK. Should I come alone and unarmed?" He sounded insolent and didn't care. "Come however you want. Just bring your brain, okay?" Her voice turned harsh for a moment, like she had had too many cigarettes, and she coughed. "OK." John said, hanging up the phone. _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com -- +----------------' Story submission `-+-' Moderator contact `--------------+ | | | | Archive site +----------------------+--------------------+ Newsgroup FAQ | ----