Saying Stay Ch. 02

Julia mouthed "perfect" and made a jerking motion with her hand.

"What, you want me to jerk off after that?"

She nodded fervently. I grabbed my soft cock between my legs and started pumping. In its diminished size it could still fit entirely in my fist, although soon it would bloom into a much larger beast. As usual I ran my other hand around my body, rubbing my nipples and then my balls. I wondered if that would make me look effeminate on camera.

My usual fantasies cropped up. A threesome, then a foursome, then a full on orgy full of bouncing nubile girls. Old crushes, actresses, impossible biological freaks with tits bigger than their heads. The first porn video I had ever watched, more vivid and erotic in my head than it had ever been on my computer screen. The hazy memories of conquests passed. A nubile girl chained to the bed and at my mercy.

By this point I would usually have been squirting, but I was only half-erect in my hands, and getting softer. I tried to focus on all of the familiar stimuli, and yet...

The camera with its blank black stare. The memory of poor Cindy and her squeaks of pain. Julia and the wry look on her face, like I was some kind of vaguely entertaining viral video.

I stroked my cock faster and faster, trying to put the circumstances out of my mind. I closed my eyes and more recent images popped into my head. Dawn, quivering from her secret orgasm on the first day, and then bouncing up and down on my cock. Simon demurely jacking me off. Julia fucking me with all the anger she could muster. But nothing worked.

"I can't do this."

I expected Julia to yell at me, or make some snide joke about my impotency. But instead she just turned off the camera and set it aside. "Okay."

"You're not mad at me?"

"Mike, I have plenty of reasons to dislike you. Most recently I've discovered I dislike you because you own the Goo Goo Dolls' greatest hits CD and three Tom Clancy novels."

"Hey, the books were presents from my right-wing uncle."

A faint smile crossed Julia's face. "Sure they are. But I will never dislike you because you don't want to do something sexual. We're all about consent around here."

I seemed to remember a lot of pressure, although maybe from another perspective that was seduction. Still, I was glad to hear the promise. Maybe Julia wasn't such a monster after all.

"Thanks. You aren't going to put this video online or anything now, right?"

Her grin grew wicked. "Not unless I get really mad at you."

I gulped.

--

It was a quiet Saturday morning. Most of the others had gone out pub-hopping the night before, but I had opted out, feeling a little sick. It was a quiet morning, with that soft morning-after haze occupying the whole building. It was actually quite enjoyable.

I ventured upstairs for breakfast. I passed by the living room, where Dawn, Josh, Julia, Simon, Padma and a few people I didn't know were all asleep in a nude tangle of limbs. The room reeked of sex. I wasn't sure whether to regret or be glad I hadn't gone out with them.

In the kitchen Ellie was sitting over a cup of coffee. She was wearing sweatpants and an old university T-shirt -- the first time I had seen her out of a business suit. I cautiously waved hello as I headed for the cupboards.

"Hey Mike."

I started pouring myself some cereal. "Looks like a wild night."

She shrugged. "Standard weekend, really. Tonight the heap of bodies will probably be about twice as big."

"I swear, you guys are like rock stars."

Ellie giggled. "I thought that at first too. But in the end, they're just normal people who get laid a lot." There was a peaceful silence as I chewed on my cereal and Ellie sipped her coffee. "So," she said. "I heard you and Julia were trying to make a movie."

"Oh, god." I winced hard. "Is that all around the house now."

"There aren't really any secrets here," said Ellie. It was funny, because just about everything about her was a secret to me. She was a pinstripe wall, a bastion of professionalism that I just couldn't reconcile with the gang of libertines. The line about her being the mom wasn't enough for me. Still, I didn't want to pry.

What had we been talking about? The movie. "Well," I said. "I just couldn't do it. Physically and mentally."

"I know what you mean," said Ellie. "Julia keeps trying to drag me in front of the camera, but I won't do it. I imagine these long comment threads on the Internet about how old and ugly I am." She shivered. "And I guess for guys there's performance anxiety too. You can't fake it."

I felt like defending myself and my performance for some reason. "Well, you know, I read somewhere that there are only like a dozen male porn stars working, because so few guys can handle it."

"Have you seen Julia's video yet?"

"Which one?"

"The one she did of herself." My ears practically twitched with interest. "It was the first one of her Confessions videos. She said she thought it was only fair that she know what it was like on the other end of the camera -- put her money where her mouth is, so to speak. You should watch it. If you want to understand her, I mean."

Privately I doubted whether Julia would ever become comprehensible to me, and I severely doubted that watching her masturbate would help much. And it wasn't some magic key that opened up her mind for me and explained who she was and why in a neat schematic diagram. But it was a piece of a puzzle, a puzzle that probably had no defined sides or end point.

--

The video, as I watched it while clutching the arm of my chair and sporting a nervous erection:

Julia is laying nude on the bed in her room, albeit a sparser version of her room than the one I was used to. Her hair is dark red and hangs down to the nape of her neck. Her tattoos are absent, obviously not yet inscribed. The video is dated a couple years ago on her website, but despite all the changes its still clearly her. The camera shakes a little, but mostly stays still, at the same distance and angle. I feel like I'm in the room there with her.

"I grew up in a small religious community," Julia said into the camera. There was something different about her voice -- it was softer and meeker than I was used to. "We were like Mennonites, only douchier. I grew up in long prairie dresses from the 1800s, learning that girls were for sewing and cooking and that if you were good enough at those, a lucky man would marry you and do you the privilege of letting you wait on him for the rest of his life.

"I knew this girl. Let's call her Stacy. Stacy was the one who was always causing trouble. She would always wince whenever she sat down, because her ass was always sore from spanking. I was a demure little girl who followed the rules, but I liked Stacy. She had a sort of allure.

"When I was sixteen, they caught Stacy and I kissing out behind my family's barn. I got beaten so bad I could hardly see. That's where I got this."

Julia turned over to present her back to the camera. There was a long scar stretching along her lower back, an angry red line. When we had fucked, I had never noticed it -- she had been on her back the whole time.

"That night, as I lay on my front wondering if the pain was ever going to go away, I started thinking. I asked myself why it was that, if god thought kissing a girl was so sinful and wrong, he made it so enjoyable. And then I started wondering why we always had to suffer and deprive ourselves of things to be holy. And you know, once you start questioning what you've grown up with, it's hard to stop.

"Stacy and I ran away a few months later. We were together for a while as a couple, but we broke up. Too many memories and too much weight."

Another pause, as if Julia was trying to bring herself to a conclusion. "I still believe in God, and I'll tell you why. That feeling of orgasm... it's so perfect, and it's something that's so completely free. You don't need money to have sex -- you don't need anything, not even another person. There's no tyrant in the world that can take the pleasure of masturbation away from you. You just achieve bliss by yourself, so easily. You get something out of nothing. And that's the equation which capitalism can't deal with, which all of the terrified rulers over the course of time haven't been able to deal with. It's a miracle."

She licked her fingers and touched them to her protruding pussy lips. "These videos are my way of preaching, then. And this one is my communion." Julia began to caress her cunt, ever so slowly, two fingers rubbing back and forth against her lips. Her other hand roamed across her body, taking gentle care to caress her from thigh to hip to shoulder, making only a momentary stop at her breasts. She experimentally clenched one tit in her hand, and then released it. The hand left a red mark on her pale skin. It was almost glacially slow, moving to a rhythm that only Julia knew, but I couldn't look away from it. I didn't even want to masturbate, I just wanted to watch. Her fingers seemed to have picked up speed from the beginning, but it was so gradual that I hadn't noticed at the time. Her eyes were shut and her expression neutral. She slid the tip of her middle finger inside herself, the two fingers around it caressing the lips like palace guards. Her left hand had lost its earlier subtlety and was grabbing at her breasts like a teenage boy, handling them roughly and forcefully but sending shivers through the flesh around them. And then, at last, almost reluctantly, a low moan of pleasure escaped her lips. From there on it was less meditative and more frantic. Julia slid another finger into her pussy and began fucking herself with more and more force. With her spare hand she rubbed her clit fiercely. Her little breasts were red and hard, nipples pointed straight up toward the ceiling, and her skinny body was shaking with each thrust of her fingers. Her moans travelled the scale, getting more and more high pitch and transitioning into grunts and curses. The orgasm came upon her like awakening from a dream. She sat straight up and yelled "SHIT!" with a tone of amazement in her voice. Her face was scrunched up as pure feeling shot through her, ugly yet beautiful. Julia fell back and let out a long, heavy breath, as if trying to expel all that violent passion from within her body. She rolled onto her side and looked at the camera, which at last finally moved in to study her red, blissed out face. She wore a rare genuine smile. "So remember," she said, still breathing heavily. "The next time you feel lonely or lost or afraid... just get on your back and pray." And so I did.