The Gorgeous Girls (3 page)

This wasn't just plain terrible, this was fancy terrible.
This was terrible with raisins in it.

—Dorothy Parker

Movie night at my
place. Wanda pops the popcorn, I mix the drinks and Rose chooses the flick. Last night it was
Sylvia
, a movie about Sylvia Plath, or, more accurately, about her relationship with Ted Hughes. Ted, of course, was a rake, and the movie is peppered with scenes of Sylvia confronting him. Nasty scenes, similar to ones I've acted out in real life. I'm talking about primal jealousy, that sick feeling in your gut. The green-eyed monster raising its lousy head. Call it adultery radar.

I learned from a therapist friend that people who were abandoned by a parent in childhood tend to pick partners who leave them in one way or another.

Sylvia Plath's father died when she was nine.

By the time I was nine, my mother had been unfaithful to my father many times over. Eventually, it blew up in her face and got all over us kids.

By some twisted alchemy, I've thus far been doomed to repeat that scenario. Not by following in my mother's footsteps—no, I made a special note as a child not to become the perpetrator of such pain—but, rather, by always picking men who were destined to bring this same sort of heartache to their loved ones. (I ended this pattern with Tyler, my baby's dad, but that's another story.)

Gwyneth Paltrow as Plath, near out of her mind with grief over her husband leaving her for another woman, intones through tears, “I conjured her.”

Poor Sylvia, blaming herself. If anything, it was Ted Hughes she conjured.

Okay, remember what's-his-name, whom I got over by taking up with the young-stud construction-worker blonde-pussy virgin? Well, here's the story of how that breakup went down. I'd been in a LAT (living apart together) relationship with what's-his-name for three years when suddenly he took a woman (and her child) into his home after she convinced him she had nowhere else to go. He said she could stay until she found a place. Her story turned out to be a lie, but before he knew it she was making his place her place, and before I knew it she was making my man her man.

Unexpectedly walking in on this strange arrangement one day, I quickly confirmed his infidelity by finding a used condom in the bathroom. Stricken, broken and in a rage, I picked up a tube of the interloper's body cream and squirted it all over the bathroom mirror.

To this day I boycott that brand of cream.

Later I learned there had been other women (at least three), but I more or less absolved them. I assume it was because of this that one of those adulteresses (a friend of mine, no less) told me, “You're a class act.”

I tried to let those words heal my broken heart, but one night I dreamed I grabbed the two-timing broad by the scruff of her neck and shoved her onto a couch. “Still think I'm a class act now, bitch?” I screamed.

And so I wound up confronting her in waking life. Eschewing the fury of my dream, I went with a more cerebral approach and called her a few cheap names. But when I realized barbs like “strumpet” and “harlot” and even “whore” are nowadays often construed as compliments, I let it go.

Would that I'd been as cool and collected and on the mark as Trinity in
The Matrix Reloaded
, a movie we screened two weeks ago (which, coincidentally, came out the same year as
Sylvia
).

The character played by the luscious Monica Bellucci wants Neo to kiss her the way he does Trinity, in front of Trinity. If he refuses, Bellucci won't give him what he needs to save the world. It looks like a classic catch-22 for Neo, but he handles it beautifully. Not before Trinity sticks her gun in the other woman's face, however, and all but says, “Why don't you suck this instead?”

Neo then proceeds to calm Trinity, kiss the woman and get on with business.

As I watched the film, I couldn't help but think the writers would develop this plotline later on in the story, revealing Neo to have a raging hard-on for the bitch ever after. Of course, it never happens. Because Neo is “the one”!

Which reminds me of what a former boyfriend told me after he'd cheated on me the first time. While he was down on his knees trying to win me back, I asked him why he wanted me. His eyes swimming in tears, he replied, “Because you're the one.” How did I fall for that?

If it happens to you, dig yourself out of the betrayal muck and go forward. For a while it seems endless, like swimming through sludge—thick, brown, horrible stuff. But one day you emerge, clean and pure and gorgeous again. Wiser, you can go forth and seek your Neo. Hopefully you find him or her within.

Where's the man could ease a heart / Like a satin gown?

—Dorothy Parker

Gorgeous Girl exposes her
soft, inviting thighs to the mirror in the shoe store window. She adjusts her seamed black stockings, smooths her skirt and continues on her way. As she strides along the busy city sidewalk in satiny purple pumps, her newly hennaed hair blows in the October breeze. She receives the warm air on her face like a blessing from Heaven.

Heaven! Gorgeous Girl is in Heaven! She slows her pace as she passes a fish store window. Superimposed over squishy squid and silvery mackerel, Gorgeous Girl's earrings flash like rainbow trout scales in the glass. She takes her own breath away on this sun-kissed autumn day. And why not? It has been exactly five months and twenty-three days since Jag Silvertree turned her into a sad, sorry cuckold.

“The writing was on the wall,” Con had said back then.

“The writing was all over the walls,” Wanda had sniffed. “But did I see it?
No
. I didn't even see the walls. I didn't believe in walls.”

They'd been on their fourth round of mimosas at the Four Seasons Hotel—the old Four Seasons, with the fabulous Sunday brunch and the wise and seasoned waitresses.

“And if I did believe in walls,” Wanda had continued, “I would have said that the writing on them was all initials inside hearts, with ‘True Love' scribbled beneath.”

But that was then, almost a half a year ago.

Yesterday morning Wanda awoke with a few lines from a Leonard Cohen poem running through her head: “I repeat: the important thing was to cuckold Leonard Cohen. / I like that line because it's got my name in it.”

That's when she became Gorgeous Girl. Right then, right there. Considering what fine company she was in, she must be gorgeous! And she was. She could be heard singing Cohen songs wherever she went that day: in the lingerie shop amid the Lycra and the lace, while eating oranges on her stoop, while sipping tea in a café.

Today, following champagne cocktails at Toca with Con and Rose—Gorgeous Girls and cuckolds all—Wanda went shopping for clothes and lingerie and accessories (everything but lace gloves), and finally felt that her mourning had come to an end.

Pushing open the door of Secrets From Your Sister, Wanda flounced in to purchase two saffron bras with matching knickers, a ruby camisole and a marshmallow-pink satin gown.

If you wear a short enough skirt, the party will come to you.

—Dorothy Parker

Constance is lying naked
on her bed—naked except for five bracelets, two necklaces and an anklet (she never wears rings if sex is in the air). One lithe arm is curled around her purple halo of hair while the other lies dormant on her taut belly (it will be three years before it blooms with baby). Scents of verbena and lemons rise from her warm pink skin. She rolls over, revealing her voluptuous posterior to a man who is watching her from a window across the way, and reaches for a book under her bed.

She purchased the book a few months earlier because it had two of her favourite things in the title: sex and magic. It's called
The Magic in Sex and the Sex in Magic
. What a great idea, she'd thought at the time, to combine the two. Of course, she is certain she has been in the embrace of both at once, but only by accident. The book promises that she can practice both at the same time intentionally.

Laid out in two parts, the first chapters deal with getting over inhibitions and healing sexual wounds. Here Con finds the chapter that tells her to name her sex organ. At this she balks. As if one's pussy were a pet! Fifi, Cashew or Spot. It seems silly and not terribly sexy, but she wants the magic so she tries to think of a pussy moniker.

The man in the apartment across the way has been watching her for weeks. He can see that his beautiful object of passion has a book in her hands, a book with a blue cover, but he couldn't care less about it. He has books of his own he has been trying to read for some time now. And for some time now the enchantress across the way has distracted him from his reading. It is her glowing skin he is interested in, not dry pages of type. He wants to touch her, to run his hands along the length of her curvaceous body, to kiss her sweet lips, to lick and linger on the pink.

Con persists with the book, although she finds it to be something of a disappointment, full of pale pencil drawings of men with droopy moustaches, shaggy hair and bodies like limp noodles. Some illustrator's idea of the “sensitive” man, she thinks, but these chaps look like van-dwelling losers from the seventies.

Better to imagine a horse, Con thinks, than such sad specimens. Horses, with their strong beautiful stride, their uninhibited sexuality. She dreams of riding a mighty stallion, its hot back beneath her legs, her cunt growing wetter as she gallops free. These thoughts take her away from the book and into her sexuality. Her fingers plunge deep and bring sweet juices to her clit.

The man is hard and has been so for the half hour he has been watching her. Sitting in the dark, he has watched her undress, her miniskirt falling to the floor, her silk blouse coming off and then her hot pink lace bra, revealing soft pink breasts and nipples so dark and erect he licked his lips as if to taste them. As she wiggles out of her absinthe-green G-string, he revels in his hard desire.

*

“The idea is that while you're engaged in sexual congress you can tap into the energy of the astral world. This force is so powerful that it can transport your desires across the cosmos and into the hands of those who can make all your dreams come true, all your wishes manifest.”

—
The Magic in Sex and the Sex in Magic

*

Sex itself is so powerful that Con hasn't been able to get to the actual spell 'n' potion part yet. The sheer sex of it all is magic enough for her. Still she persists in her practice, as she is captivated by the idea that her orgasms can send messages into the astral network, her life's desire vibrating on the crazy wavelength of her climax.

Stroking her clit as the man across the way goes insane with desire, Con brings herself back to her magic practice with incantations. She tries to imagine her special symbol, the one the book has suggested she create.

She intends to practice on her own until she once again takes a lover. Her last amour, the young, tattooed blonde-pussy virgin, was just too filled with unbridled lust to take up the practice. “Hold on, darling, while I put on my magician's robe,” she would implore, but he was tearing it off before she could get the thing on. And before she'd had a chance to cast a spell for future abundance, she'd cast a spell on him—he'd certainly cast one on her with his magic wand. But one day he left for a job in Edmonton, and she took up her sex-magic practice as a single woman.

The man's hand is moving fast now, so fast. Then he slows, to savour the feeling of verging on climax with the vision of her before his eyes, letting the waves of delirium roll through him, from the tips of his toes to the top of his head, till he feels as if he will explode.

He runs his hand up the length of his hard, oiled cock. “Oh, you gorgeous girl,” he murmurs, watching her writhe on the bed, bringing herself ever closer to climax, and imagining his creamy cum all over her belly. Her fingers move faster, in and out of her juicy pussy, juicy as a ripe peach and just as delicious.

“I want a lover!” she yells, her desire blasting into the ether as her orgasm pulses through her body and sends her consciousness flying to the far ends of the universe.

His window receives creamy gems that run down the glass as Con's request for a lover wafts out into the dark night like a wisp of perfume in search of a nose.

Part Three

“‘Ducking for apples—change one
letter and it's the story of my life.'” Con reads this DP quote from notes she has jotted in her copy of
The Portable Dorothy Parker
, the bible of Dot disciples everywhere. It's October, and with the enchanted scent of sorcery and witchcraft in the air, the girls have repaired to big leather chairs in front of a fireplace at The Keg Mansion.

“There's a ghost in this old house,” says Wanda, crossing her aubergine-stockinged legs.

“Maybe it's Raymond Massey,” offers Rose. “As a child he frolicked in this mansion. It was his grandparents' pad.”

“Do you think he knew Dot in Hollywood?” asks Con, after ordering a Shirley Temple.

“I'm sure he did,” Rose says. “Or on Broadway. And Dottie was probably a fan of his highly publicized divorce, too, which, incidentally, became the basis of the movie
Adam's Rib
.”

“With Kate Hepburn,” Con adds.

“About whom Dot once said she ran the gamut of emotions from A to B.” Rose savours the nutmeg-and-cream fragrance of her Brandy Alexander, a cocktail invented by one of Mrs. Parker's fellow wits.

“Hey, speaking of marriage,” Wanda says, “are you and Tyler going to tie the knot now that there's a baby on the way?”

“Tie the knot indeed.” Con sneers. “That's just what marriage is, you know—a bunch of confused and fraying threads bound up in an inescapable knot. Knots may be useful in prawn traps or decorative in macramé or even sexy in bondage, but—”

“Bondage?” Wanda interrupts. She looks into Con's eyes with that tell-me-all look.

“Yeah, as in S/M, Wanda,” Con says, cooling down from her marriage rant and warming to the new subject.

“Are you into that?” Wanda asks.

“Once there was this man. He was nine years older than me,” Con replies.

“Do tell,” Rose prods.

“It was one of those brief but intense affairs,” Con explains, munching on a maraschino cherry.

Wanda arranges the folds of her chartreuse dirndl and asks, “And so you were into the S/M thing with him?”

“Me, I liked the clothes,” Con states matter-of-factly. “Shiny rubber things made my ass look like something not quite real. But humiliation and pain weren't really big turn-ons for me, so I played dress up and didn't take it too seriously.

“Then one day I found ‘mummification' in the search history of his computer. He wasn't into ancient Egypt, so I confronted him. I sensed dark secrets. ‘You haven't been telling me everything,' I said. ‘What are you talking about?' was his response. ‘Even a bottom has to speak up and say what he wants,' I demanded while I wagged his butt plug in his face. ‘I was hoping you'd find your inner dominatrix,' he replied, passing the buck. And that infuriated me, like everything was my responsibility. ‘Clearly, the anus was on you,' I yelled, meaning onus, of course.

“We both looked at the plug and burst out laughing. But I realized then that my playing at it wasn't enough for him. He'd come to understand that, too, and so he broke it off with me. I was heartbroken.”

“What did you do?” Wanda asks, scooping red-hot salsa with a nacho chip.

“I wrote him a letter and lied that I had begun my training as a dominant in earnest. ‘Lucky Earnest,' I wrote. And that I'd be happy to practice on him sometime. ‘No strings attached—just rope.' That was a lie, too. I was casting out all kinds of webs and umbilical cords and fishnets for him. I drew little stylized whips and handcuffs on the corners of the page and signed it ‘Mistress Wrapture.' I never sent it.”

“Why not?” asks Rose.

“Suddenly, in my dark torment, a light went on and I thought I understood the whole meaning of the breakup. It was all part of the S/M thing. There was a reason for the pain he was causing me: he still loved me.

“I phoned him up and said, ‘Quick, what's the safe word? This is hurting too much.' ‘Honey,' he said, ‘the safe word is only for sex. There is no safety when it comes to emotions.' I never saw him again.”

“What did you do with the clothes?” Wanda asks.

“I still have them.” Con tosses her multicoloured dreads over her shoulder. “I eventually did get my degree in the Dark Sexual Arts. Tyler and I take ours light, though: Dark Sexual Arts Lite.”

“They have that?” Wanda asks, open-mouthed.

“
We
have that,” Con says. “Order what you like, Wanda. Dark Sexual Arts with extra cream. Dark Sexual Arts with cinnamon on top. Dark Sexual Arts with a twist.”

“What's your ‘lite' all about?” Rose inquires before downing the last of her drink and hailing the waitress to bring another.

“Whipping without welts, insults without injury, fur-lined handcuffs, no diapers.” The girls are silent, so Con continues, “No asphyxiation, no blood, no . . .”

“No edge play,” Rose interrupts, and Wanda and Con level her with a stare.

“Mistress Rose, methinks you have walked a mile or two in my spiked heels,” says Con, arching an eyebrow.

“Indeed,” Rose replies. “Long ago . . .”

“What's edge play?” Wanda asks.

“Treading the line between life and death,” Rose answers.

“Which is what I wasn't into,” Con says.

“So . . . is what you're into now with Tyler still considered S/M?” Wanda asks.

“Sure. Small
s
, small
m
, accent on sensuality,” Con concludes.