Chapter 27: Painful Revelations

The Club Infinity had instituted Jazz Night on a Wednesday night in June, and from all the indications the evening was a huge success. Starting at five o’clock some of the local jazz groups were invited to sign up for an hour performance. They’d get to show their stuff, pass out promotional material and even sell CDs. They also got to keep their tips and from the indication of the first night Jim had tried the gimmick, tips were running high. This first night groups weren’t paid, but were in essence auditioning to return for paid gigs if Jazz Night became popular. So far, the scene looked like a win-win for everyone concerned, and Jim had already announced to the audience a night at the start of July.

Dave sat with Owen, Mark, Ty, Alice, Dori, Julie, Christie, and Elsa. They were listening to a female singer with a trio singing a song named Summer Samba. She was good, and much of the dinner din had died off as she caressed each note and made the song uniquely hers.

Jim came by the table. He knelt between a couple of the men. “She’s good, huh?”

Mark commented, “Very good. I’d have her back, plus the instrumental group before her. They understood jazz and improvisation. Their bass player was extraordinary.”

Jim nodded, “I’ll let them know. You like my decision to do this once a week for the foreseeable future?”

Everybody at the small table nodded enthusiastically. Jim grinned and walked off. Dave noted that he gave thumbs up to the female singer indicating that she was well liked by the ‘bosses’. Everyone seemed to know that the circle at the tables consisted of important patrons. They watched as Jim brought the singer a bottle of water between the songs she sang. She looked grateful.

Between groups Alice and Dori started to talk about Joyce. Alice was saying, “Something is still ‘off’ about her. I mean I like her, but there’s something dark in her past that continues to haunt her.”

Dori nodded, “I agree. I tried to get her to open up, but I had the opposite effect. She clammed up and didn’t even want to talk about the weather. I’d asked whether she had reservations or concerns about the group sex the Circle practiced. She rolled her eyes as though I didn’t even understand what I was asking. Me, of all people!”

Owen offered, “You might aim her at Bill Lewis if you think it’s impeding her personal growth or well-being.”

Dave volunteered, “I think she’s already seeing him. She started after the whole incident with the media and her reporter friend that took advantage of her. She’s never talked to him again, and even blocked his calls on her cellphone.”

Owen said to Alice and Dori, “Get Dave to talk to her. She seems to resonate with him better than any of the other men or women in the Circle. I think because he introduced her to Bill and got them going that she believes he has her best interests at heart. Plus, we all know he’s smooth and charismatic with women.”

Turning to blushing Dave, Owen asked, “You don’t know what’s going on inside her head, do you?”

“No, but she’s said enough that I know that whatever it is has to do with her ex-husband. He did her dirt in some way, and it scarred her. At first, I thought it was superficial, but as we touched on it, I think there are some deep wounds there. I’ll talk to her on the weekend if she comes around. She’s only been coming every second or third weekend since the media incident. She’s still apologetic and remorseful over her role in the revelations.”

Julie spoke up, “I think it’s for the best that all that happened. People know now that I belong to the Circle, and they looked at me for a while like I had four eyes and a unicorn horn. Now, they’ve gotten past that.”

Owen laughed, “You do know that a unicorn is an illusive and hard to catch single or available woman that loves sex, even multi-partner sex, and is just about a sure thing?”

“Well, to many of the people that read all that stuff back in March, especially the men I see, I am one. I know I could fuck around with two-dozen of them, too, but instead I just drop double entendres and other ‘come-on’ statements that drive them wild. It’s fun. I’m a cock tease at heart.”

“Nasty woman,” Ty retorted with a large grin.

As it turned out, Joyce made an appearance Saturday afternoon. Dave was sitting reviewing the statistics from the first trial production runs on the LiTl batteries. He chuckled when he noted that if only the successful batteries were to go on the market at cost to that point, they’d be around thirty thousand dollars apiece. There were still many bugs to be worked out of the manufacturing process.

“Come and join me, Joyce,” Dave said as he hailed her and set his papers aside. He got a smile and she walked over. She was wearing some loose shorts and a pretty rainbow-colored top with jeweled flip-flops. She had her shoulder bag that was only slightly smaller than New Zealand.

“How’s everybody doing?” Joyce asked as she sat. She waved at a few of the others on the patio.

Dave filled her in, “Well, the big news is that Amanda’s baby finally slept through the night after his midnight feeding and changing.”

Joyce laughed, “If I ever have my own children, I’ll have to remember some of these milestones. From a parents’ point of view that has to be a big one. By the way, who’s the real daddy for Noah Ki?”

Dave blushed, Amanda is sure that it’s Dale or me. We’ll see who he looks like more as he gets older. She’s living with Aaron and Shelby right now. Linda Jean loves having a new cousin and almost can’t leave him alone. She’s got all the usual curiosity of a two-year-old.”

The two talked about Amanda and Noah for a bit. Dave explained about ‘Ki’ being a term for life force energy or spiritual energy that empowers all things. Amanda liked the term and adopted one of the Oriental spellings for the baby’s middle name.

Dave eventually decided to bluntly ask Joyce about her troubled past. When no one else was moving around the patio that was apt to hear or interrupt them, he posed, “Joyce, I understand that something bad happened in your past – in your marriage, I guess. I’m curious, but more importantly I’m willing to help you get through it if you need help. I hope you’ve brought it up with Bill Lewis if you’re still going through counseling.” He paused and added, “Maybe I’m being too nosy.”

Joyce blushed and nodded. “I am still seeing Bill – twice a week. I like him and I think the visits have helped. He’s actually challenged me to tell you and some of the others about my crazy past because he thinks that having it made public knowledge will help me get past it. The sense of shame I’ve been avoiding will be behind me if the people I care most about know. I’ll then see that it doesn’t really define me except as I allow it to. We talked about that yesterday.”

Dave said, “I understand. After I understand, perhaps we can plot a course of action to make you feel better about all this. I sense you have a low estimation of yourself.”

“Part of that was because of what I did with my reporter friend, but that is small change to what went on for years earlier in my life – what I allowed myself to become and do. I didn’t challenge what was happening to me. I guess you could say I was brainwashed in some ways. Bill Lewis used that terminology.

“What happened started before I even married Miles; he’d already started a campaign to basically wear me down and make me his ... slave, for lack of a better term. I initially sought help and advice from my parents, but they thought Miles walked on water; interesting since Waters was his last name.” She chuckled. “It turned out that Miles was Satan in disguise.”

“Well Miles built himself up as he tore me down. He made me think that the only identity I had was through him. He made me feel guilty about every thought I had and everything I did unless he approved ahead of time. He’d come home at the end of the workday and I was expected to confess all my thoughts to him, especially the erotic ones. At first, I didn’t have any; I didn’t think that way. But then, after he’d browbeat me, I realized that to make him happy I had to have a few erotic and sexual thoughts every day, but he almost forced me to make it seem like I had many of them all day long every day. I had to be able to talk for hours about what I’d thought.

“If I said nothing, he’d come after me in so many ways. I would end up feeling bad and depressed about myself, so I made sure I always ad something to tell him – some sexy thoughts or ideas. Everything got sexually dirtier and dirtier and things escalated.

“Miles eventually told me that to atone for those ‘nasty’ thoughts I should have sex with him, and that did make me feel better. I thought I loved him, but he was playing me, as it turned out. He’d tell me how I was a better person because of both my thoughts and that I’d paid for them through the sex with him. I gave myself over to him completely. Joyce Myers became nobody. I was only Mrs. Miles Waters and only on the planet to do his bidding, most of which was sexual in some way.”

Dave nodded, “How long did this go on?”

Joyce shook her head in disbelief, “From when we started dating. I already felt this way by the time we married. He married me, but really he wanted more control over me. I was in my mid-twenties and had come off a bad romance that also ended in disaster. He knew of it and tutored me that it was because I didn’t have him to guide me to be a success. I believed him and lost more of my own identity to him.”

Dave said, “So, over time you got married and had sex a lot with your husband.”

Joyce shuddered. “It was more than that. My small sins of erotic thoughts became roaring fantasies at Mile’s direction. I had to beef them up so I had something more significant to confess to him. I finally was thinking them up on my own, but I’d search the Internet during the day looking for stories or films or ideas I could tell him about when he came home and would dominate me again.”

“Were you a submissive?”

“We never used that vocabulary, but in many ways I was. I only existed to serve Miles.”

“So, after five years you pulled the plug?”

“Not quite. After we’d been married a little over a year, he had really broken me down and was rebuilding me to his own model. He brought his best friend over one night and orchestrated a threesome where I was the main attraction. Miles loved it, and so did his friend. Later, he made me confess about how much I liked it every day for the next month. Again, I had to elaborate and give lots of details about how joyful I was about having two cocks servicing me. I got so I believed everything I said to him, so long as he gave me his approval.

“Well, the small indiscretion of the threesome became a large series of reckless encounters over the next year. His friend came back repeatedly, and we fucked like rabbits, and then we’d fuck even when Miles wasn’t even there, but I still told him every lurid detail, and if I didn’t have the details, I’d have to make them up. And then his friend Andy brought Jake, and then King, and then Luther, and then more men around, and sometimes Miles was there and sometimes not. And then the once every couple of weeks became weekly and then daily until I was consumed with sex and indiscriminate fucking. I was a whore but I wasn’t getting paid. I became a huge slut and I loved it – at least according to Miles.”

“And Miles liked all this?”

“Oh, yes. A lot. He’d found himself some bimbos and would bring them by the house, too. I started to do the women as well. It was all just mindless sex. Miles would have me kneel and confess how I loved all the sex with everybody that’d be at the house. I got sluttier and sluttier. He had me begging for more partners and for kinkier sex. I’d have to beg in front of whoever was visiting.”

“And this went on for how long?”

Joyce sighed, “About three years once the multi-partner stuff started happening. I bet I fucked a hundred guys in that time. Miles would bring his bosses by the house for me to fuck, so that he’d get a promotion or pay raise. Sometimes, I’d put on a strip show for the men or a sex show with one of his bimbos or a couple of the men. He had me redecorate the living room in our apartment to be more conducive to having sex. I had this lewd wallpaper with couples fucking in every conceivable way on it. In one way, it was kind of neat. In most ways, it was gross. Miles took pictures of me fucking the men and women, and had some of them blown up and framed to hang around the living room and our bedroom. Some of them were just plain gross. The idea was to give our visitors some ideas of things to try with me. By then, I was fucking morning, noon, and night.”

Dave reached out and held Joyce’s hand, squeezing to show his sympathy.

Joyce sighed loudly. “And then one day after I’d had another gangbang the night before that Miles had orchestrated, I woke up feeling really funny – funny peculiar, that is. I was suddenly cogent, almost like I forget to take some important medicine that had been making me think one way, but now I could think rationally. I felt like I’d been in a cloud or fog, and suddenly it was gone and I could see the way things really were. I took stock of myself. I had no sense of self-worth, no self-respect, and no self-confidence. I felt lower than whale shit. I could only live my life through Miles, and I realized what a shit he’d become as he farmed me out to everyone that he knew in order to gain their friendship or favors using my willingness to fuck them.