Rug Burn

It started with a proposition from a lover to help him manage an event space he had on one of his properties. He told me that he really didn’t like to mix business and pleasure, but this time he thought it could be different.

We met like I met a lot of them, through a dating app. I was getting ready to leave to go on a two week tour for work down to New Orleans and back when we matched. He was older than me, almost forty and I was twenty-four. But that was a window I’d been flirting with a lot those days. He was attractive in a non-conventional kind of way. He had black hair shaved into a short, curly mohawk and hazel eyes, like mine but more piercing. Tattoos scrawled across his skin—his photos depicted a life of travel. He worked hard and he played hard. Guys my age didn’t seem to know what they wanted and couldn’t articulate even that. So when I would meet them,  maybe we’d hit it off and maybe we’d have mediocre sex, but if I suggested that perhaps we have a go again, they either wanted me to be their girlfriend or couldn’t make eye contact. Yeah, I was confused too. Men in their thirties seemed to be settling down, running their businesses and marrying their girlfriends. The men I’d been finding right around forty years of age seemed to just want to let loose and have fun—already having attempted and failed a serious monogamous relationship, never committing to one in the first place, or finally having their lives up and running to a point that they had the time to fuck off with some cute chick in her mid-twenties that was DTF all the time—because I was. 

We sat down for coffee one day to discuss the potential business venture. He wanted me to take over the space, manage it. He didn’t have the time and it was sort of just sitting unused. I thought about it. But when we met that day, what I proposed was something a bit different than what he had had in mind. It was a party, a soiree, a story to be told over the course of an evening, on the night of the full moon.

The invitations had been sent, the RSVPs had been received, the bar had been stocked, and the local celebrity drag phenomenon awaited the bar patrons. The event was formal, dress to impress. Your ticket included a craft cocktail, a cocktail hour for guest-mingling complete with live jazz musicians and hors d'oeuvres prepared and hand served by a local chef. Then the main attraction of the evening, a sultry burlesque performance by some of Buffalo’s best, including full nude, and a steamy dance party to follow. I sampled the cocktails and put the final touches on the Pillow Room when the knocks started coming at the door. The guests were arriving. 

You entered the space via the front door, greeted by the doorman who marked your name—to your right was a small stage, and on your left was the window to the bar; this room also served as a recording studio, another use that the space afforded. Narrow counter bars lined both sides of the room from front to back. The walls from the counters, up were covered in wheat-pasted magazine tear-outs, the windows were covered. The room had an urban, industrial vibe. The exposed pipes on the ceiling were now candle lit and decorated with live jazz notes. At the back of the room there were three doors. To the right, a door that led outside to a large patio space. In the center, a bathroom. And the door all the way on the left: The Pillow Room. Or the Bettie Page Room, as it was also called. A small red-lit room with pillows strewn across the floor and stacked in piles. In it, a projector was set up playing silent black & white BDSM Bettie Page films on the opposite wall. Small bowls with condoms and lubes sat about. “Sexyyy,” the guests giggled as I gave them tours of the space. I watched whispers pass from curled lips into ears. Anticipation was filling the room as quickly as the guests were.

The night was off to a quick start. Knock after knock after knock at the door. Beautiful person followed by another followed by three more. Everyone was excited and anxious for whatever the night had in store. The music and the drinks were flowing, laughter filling the room—I watched as fingertips grazed the arms of new connections made. A hand on a waist, a pair of eyes tracing a new woman’s silhouette across the room. 

Before we knew it, the time had come for the dancers to take their turns at the stage. Article after article of clothing was thrown to the crowd. A long, silky glove pulled off between ass cheeks, the sound of the slap still ringing through ears—hoots and hollers thrown back at the dancers. Crumpled bills covered the stage and the ground in front of it. I was nervous I might have to be the person to kick off the evening, but the girls had hardly finished gathering their garments when ass after ass after ass hit the counter top on the far wall of the room—three women with their legs spread wide. All that could be seen from across the room was the backs of the heads of three men. I laughed out loud in surprise, my laughter blended with the moans and laughter coming from the women on the bar. I stepped outside for a cigarette, pleased with the eager happenings. By the time I was finished with my smoke, I peeked back inside to see that the counter couples had moved their activities into the Pillow Room and had been joined by others. I threw my filter and headed in to join the lustrous mass of limbs and body parts. As I entered the room, I could not tell who’s arm, from who’s mouth, to whose moan was being seen touched or heard. I took off my hat and threw it down only to accidentally shut the laptop playing the film. I struggled to get it up and running again when a man stood to help me. When neither of us could get it working again quickly, we gave up—impatience pulled my dress overhead in one motion. Various body parts reached up from the mass like arms from graves. They pulled at this and that and my panties were gone before I could look down. A cluster of limbs grouped at my legs and pulled me into the center of it where I disappeared, completely consumed by lips and tongues and caresses. A finger, a whisper, a word telling me to cum, “cum for me.” 

From the mass, a burly male voice called out, “someone put a finger in my butt!” We all laughed. The voice spoke out again, “I’m serious, y’all are laughing, but there still isn’t anything in there.” 

Bodies rubbed on bodies that rubbed on bodies against the carpet. 

A man walked around wearing only an open button down, naked from the waist down—we started calling him Winnie Pooh. And Winnie Pooh loved having his cock at the back of someone’s throat and he loved telling everyone how much he loved it. “Yeahh baby, suck that cock.” 

A young woman’s knees rubbed raw in the commotion.

A couple shared a moment alone in the corner. Two naked bodies embraced in intimacy, alone in a room full of people—her body on top of his, her hair draped over him like a summer shower.

A woman writhed at the center of the mass, moaning and screaming with ecstasy, a thousand hands all over her body; it's not often you get to experience someone else’s pleasure in such a way. 

From across the pile, I felt a hand grab the back of my neck. I heard a whisper in my ear, “Hey.” I looked up to lock eyes with my lover. There he was. 

“Someone is sucking my cock right now,” he whispered. I looked down and giggled. There was. “I think it’s a man,” he continued in a hush. I giggled and looked down again—it was. We gazed back into each other’s eyes, everything slowed down, nearly disappeared, just blurry, slow-motion red-lit bodies, grasping some of their deepest desires, perhaps for the first time. “I love you,” he said with sincere and calm eyes. “I love you too,” I responded and we stretched to share a hot, wet kiss; his tongue filled my mouth. A moment that could have perhaps lasted forever then ripped through time, away back into reality, life fast-forwarding like a mix-tape back to the writhing pace of the pile. Sweat and saliva dripped and glistened across moving bodies until the sun’s rays broke through the cracks of the windows.

The new day brought an end to the night, and I watched while old friends embraced new lovers. And as they showed each other their little patches of rug burn. The guests climbed into taxis and my lover and I drew the curtains closed as we climbed into bed upstairs, away from the madness of the evening.  “I love you,” he said. “I love you too,” I told him, a smile drawn across my sleepy face.