Chapter 6: Shenanigans in Savannah

The Trips make a food break just outside Delaware. I cook scrambled eggs and bacon for Mimi and Livia — I’ve become the designated cook for the Trips, since they are both terrible at it. I long ago learned that cooking for your guest is a great way to charm a woman. If a lady goes a little (or a lot) further on a first date then she meant to — and with me, that usually happens — having her partner fix her breakfast in bed the next morning acts as a wonderful shame antidote; it lets her feel slutty in the good sense without feeling slutty in the bad sense. (It can also tend to lead-in to the most fun kind of cure for morning wood.)

I’m not saying I’m a miracle cook or anything, but I know my way around a kitchen better than anyone else on the Beast — and the girls seem quite happy about it. My cooking does skew to breakfast foods, though, for the reasons given above.

“I’m still processing it.”

“What?”

“Did we seriously take the most popular girl at a major university — a lady with a nigh-angelic, virginal reputation — and hypnotize her, strip her naked before hundreds of her peers, humiliate her, and then have it turn out that not only wasn’t she hurt, she was kinky enough to enjoy it? And then she got so horny I got to bang her? That actually happened? Because that’s like something that leaked out of a Golden Age of Porn script right there. It’s ... not how things normally work in real life.”

“Ooh,” Mimi says. “We’ve always been so careful about moisture and temperature for the long-term storage of VHS tapes — and I know we have a huge porn stash. After the RoRo trip, maybe something actually is leaking?”

Livia ignores Mimi. “We knew Cathy was kinky before we did any of it. And there’s a lot of very pretty, very popular, very superficially innocent girls at a school that size. It was just a matter of doing the background research and picking the right one.”

I nod, trying to be subtle about my pride. “Hey, that’s what you hired me for.”

“Well,” Mimi says, “I guess if you want a more boring explanation...”

“I still want the juicy details tonight,” Livia says, her mouth full of scrambled egg as she talks. This is actually encouraging — she’s no longer the full-time glamour girl around me. I am a member of the household now. She doesn’t care if I see her when she’s shaving her pits or with curlers in her hair. I’m not sure if that increases or decreases her mystique, but it bodes well for my future with the Trips.

“I hear you have some juicy details to spill, too.”

Livia nods. “The hookup crib was put to good use. We didn’t actually take Charlene home. Macy brought up what I did to Blair, and I pointed out that I can do fantasy scenarios. Macy and Karen talked her into a little erotic hypnosis, so the five of us went to the hookup crib together. The four girls with the more, ah... ‘cosmopolitan’ orientations got to watch their straight friend strip down and air-fuck. She got double-teamed by imaginary John Cusack and imaginary Brad Pitt.

“It was incredibly hot, four girls into girls watching a straight girl gyrate against, mime-blow and vigorously pump imaginary dudes. And the level of physiological response I got from Charlene was simply amazing — not just orgasm on command, but nipples getting stiff when licked by imaginary celebs, inflamed pussy lips, goosebumps, writhing, the whole deal. She’s an amazing natural suggestible. Said straight girl didn’t feel too exploited either, I must say. This morning she couldn’t shut up about how awesome it was. She was tossing around offers in the multiple grand range for a repeat session, and the other two might have been willing to lay down cash in similar ranges for some hypno-enhanced sex, too.”

“Hold on,” I say. “We’re currently in debt. Why aren’t we driving back and doing that? Er ... I mean, I’m not implying that you’re a prostitute; I meant the hypnosis.”

“I am totally a proud but selective whore, and am quite happy to fuck any girls or boys that are both as pretty and as enthusiastic as last night’s trio. The only reason I don’t usually take money for sex or hypnosis is that it prevents me from being a selfish bitch in the bedroom. I’d rather marks pay me in sexual services and indulgences of my kinks than bills — but I’m not averse to mixing that up a bit.

“However, we don’t linger in the area after an Escalation if we don’t have anything else big to do there — at least, not until we hit LA. You yourself explained to me the value of being the mysterious stranger in seducing Cathy. Same principle here — we need to maintain the mystique. People need to come into our venues thinking of it as a once in a lifetime opportunity to see — or do — something raunchy, not a thing they can think about for a while and maybe try next time. That means we don’t milk the market, and we don’t wear out a gimmick until it becomes mundane. I’m sure we’ll find a lot of girls and boys willing to pay for exactly what Charlene wanted, as soon as our show gets enough momentum and I show the world what I can really do with erotic hypnosis.”

But we’re in the red right now, I think — though I don’t press the point. There are more expenses coming up as well — Livia and I both had costumes wrecked by chocolate, and Livia’s custom bustier is actually quite expensive.

“Anyway,” Livia says, “you probably want a complete retelling. I’ll spill when you spill later tonight, but for now, let me just say this. We all had a great time ogling Charlene as she had a great time, and then I put her into a deep sleep with hypnosis, and then Mimi and I took on Karen and Macy. Mimi took Karen first; they’re peas in a pod, though Karen’s actually a bimbo all the way down. So much giggling and playful fondling and faux-vacuous innuendo. It was amazing to watch. Macy, conversely, is a great big ball of lust. Most gay and bi girls are slow, tender lovers with long buildup times, but Macy ... oh boy, what a firecracker.

“There were like three minutes of foreplay before we got into the rough, almost competitive tribadism. And Karen got a bit jealous of us — Karen and Macy are lovers, by the way, though before yesterday Karen had kept trying to pretend it was a ‘just those few nights’ thing and wasn’t going to keep happening — and Karen and I ended up double teaming Macy. I taught Karen how to use a strap-on. Then Macy had her turn with Mimi, and from there, well ... let’s just say all those chains and appliances you see above my waterbed were put to very good use for some creative, sweaty, multi-orgasmic group sex. I think it was five AM when we finally drove the nympho trio home.”

Mimi leans over to Livia, obviously turned on even by her abbreviated retelling of last night’s adventures. “I want the juicy details, too!” she says plaintively.

“You were there, Mimi!” Livia points out.

“Oh,” Mimi replies, disappointed.

We laugh. Mimi is fun. Even being a cute girl inaccessible to me, she still raises my spirits. I think she does that for everyone.

“I’ll tell you whatever Marc shares with me about Cathy,” Livia promises the downcast bimbo, which cheers her up instantly. “And I’ll leave out any bits with too much cock.”

“That might be a challenge,” I joke.

Everyone laughs.

Later that night, I have time alone with Livia. I first made sure anything I tell her about Cathy is for Trips ears only. She agrees quickly, and I trust her — this becomes a general company policy for all our marks and conquests. Fellow Trips get all the juicy details, but we’re not out to ruin girls’ reputations. The exceptions, of course, are the girls that are only too happy to have us spread stories about them — and this will eventually include Cathy herself, after some life changes, which is why her real name’s in my memoir at all.

Then I broach a different topic. “How much did this custom motorhome really cost, Livia? Where did you get that, and why can’t you get more now?”

She looks at my face, making a decision. Then she shuts the door and makes me promise not to tell Mimi. She’s already had this conversation with Mimi, and Mimi doesn’t want to know. But I do. I will give a very limited version of the story here.

Livia can do what she did for Charlene for others. There was an older man, a very rich banker. He wanted fantasies from Livia — the most repulsive kind of fantasies. As a child, he had been the victim of pederasty. As this crime does with many victims, it shaped this one’s sexuality. He was a pedophile. He was absolutely not, however, a child molester. He scrupulously kept children away from himself, eschewing all contact with them. He actually had a reputation for hating children, which he nurtured specifically as a kind of shield against temptation.

I will not disclose how he and Livia met, as that could risk his identity. “He was, in the end, a good man — one of the minority of responsible bankers in Canary Wharf. And he was a lifelong celibate, who knew the only sex he would ever want would be an atrocity. And then he heard about this hypnotist, who made clients’ fantasies real in their minds — for a price. I did nine sessions with him. The first time I got him in trance, I probed him, made sure he had never actually violated children. But I knew he hadn’t.

“And then, I ... I gave him his fantasies, just like with Charlene. In the beginning I was hideously uncomfortable narrating this. But by the end, I came to have a deep respect for the guy. We all have these formative experiences, after all. A sleazy amateur magician’s Baffling Bra set the whole course of my life. For him, it was an incestuous child rapist. I was actually happy, in the end, that this man was able to find some true sexual pleasure in his life, even if his desires were so viscerally repugnant. We all have taboo fantasies, and there’s usually some way to indulge them without hurting people. He taught me that.”

She actually sounds maudlin. She had clearly come to respect this man. There’s a moment before she continues on in a more detached tone.

“Anyway, he was obviously a big sugar daddy. In concrete money, I only got about half a million pounds out of him. This was pocket change to him. The actual cost of the Jumbocruiser, with all its gear, is about two million — but I didn’t pay for it. The rest is just ... gone. I spent it preparing the half-time show ... and, I’ll admit, on a rather high lifestyle and overly expensive prop materials and other toys for wealthy madwomen.

“But he did more intangible things for us, as well. He got an amateur magician an appearance on a Super Bowl half-time show. That ... costs more than a few million; let’s just leave it at that. We have a lifelong, ‘shadow’ contract with some of the best lawyers in the world. We’re never going to be charged with indecency, obscenity or sexual harassment for what we do. Public prosecutors will get a late-night phone call and just decide not to pursue the case. We are effectively earmarked there. We have impunity. He hooked me up with a few very pervy, very influential men. They get videos of the shows right after we do them. Sometimes they get voyeur videos of my sexual encounters where they think the other lady doesn’t know she’s on film, too.

“These are men whose kinks are like our own — who see me as an artist, as the next Benny Hill. They love my work, and they’ll make sure we don’t get slapped down by the FCC, Ofcom, the Concerned Parents’ League, NOW or the family values crusaders. Oh, all those people will rant, but it will never go anywhere. We can provoke them as much as we like, and flaunt it — that will only amuse our shadowy patrons. They love a little un-PC humor. But they’re also not going to drop huge sums of money into the show. That was not the original agreement, and said agreement is very specific. Our main benefactor deliberately set it up that way. It may be possible to re-negotiate, if we were truly desperate — but I don’t want to go there. The impunity and the props are more valuable than immediate liquid cash, in the long run.

“Anyway, you’ve probably figured out that my pedo sugar daddy is no longer with us. He passed away two months after my half-time debut. He never got to see even the Capricorn Escalation. That makes me very sad, honestly — I think he would have followed it raptly, despite being categorically incapable of sexual attraction toward adults. He was kind of a mentor near the end. Nobody expected it. Just a -”

Livia names a form of death, which I am omitting to help obscure said benefactor’s identity. She mentions the age he died at — an older man, but not infirm or elderly. It was unexpected. “He was kind of a mentor to me, near the end. He had told his most terrible secret to me. I was the only one. How could we not bond? He cared about my dreams and my ambitions, and wanted to see me succeed. He also wanted sessions, though, which is why he never gave me more actual concrete money than he thought I could blow through in a reasonable period. He gave me favors worth far more than the money, but he never gave me enough money at any one time that I wouldn’t need to come back. I can admire that as a player myself, but you’ve seen the halftime show and the Capricorn Escalation. You can see the radical dip in financing between them.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I remember. At the time, I put it down to the scandal from your syrup-coated tits on CBS live broadcast wrecking your finances.”

Livia grins in spite of herself. “God, tits on TV are cool, especially when presented with a little showmanship. But no, the impunity protected me from fallout. I just thought I had a money faucet going forward, so I blew the finances. And then our main sponsor died, leaving no precautions to ensure continued funding, and I got the same harsh life lesson about the reality of money everyone eventually gets — just on a bit of a different scale than most. I’m lucky the Beast was never repossessed — if we were to lose it, that would be the end of the Trips for sure. But we’ve been getting out of debts gradually ever since then.”

Now, O Anticipatory Reader, you are no doubt expecting certain names you have heard a great deal about in the news recently to be mentioned here — the Libertine Network, Adam Lowenthal, the Margrave Decision, Corrine Bletchford and so forth. None of that comes up. I can truthfully say that at the time I did not see any of what this conversation is hinting at, and had never in my life heard the phrase Libertine Network. Few had — it will not become a household name for another two years. At least, if I did it would be a passing mention I attributed no importance to. That sort of thing all comes much, much later in my tale.

I move the conversation elsewhere. I have the answers I want at this point, and feel I’m on the edge of a big life decision. Livia and I eventually end up on the waterbed. I retell to her in explicit detail everything that happened with Cathy, and she praises me for my eloquence. She does in turn spill some very explicit details about her recent lesbian foursome, but the truth is that for all her great lines, ringleader showmanship and solar-fire charisma, Livia is not great at narrative storytelling. Suffice it to say, there’s a reason she didn’t write her own memoir. Our mutual gossip session actually inspires the major content of our next Escalation, but I’ll get into that later.

We actually get each other really worked up whispering naughty stories and including some especially lurid details. I’m good at talking smoothly, confidently and explicitly about sex, and it really turns her on. She really wants to bang hard right now, but I rebuff her. As I’ve said before, I have a pretty good idea what she wants for her first time with me — and this isn’t big enough. Besides, as much as I adore Cathy, I don’t want to play second fiddle to her in Livia’s sexual imagination. Desperate horny Livia sure is fun, though, and I get a dominance-thrill out of holding off. I even make her beg. She enjoys begging. When I don’t give in, though, she pulls something completely out of left field.

We’re lying on the waterbed, spooning fully clothed. I’ve been subtly feeling her up; she loves it and wants it to get less subtle. “You know,” she tells me out of the blue, “when you finally do get around to taking me, you can go in raw. It’s safe, I’m sterile.”

She says it like a come-on, in a really sultry voice — almost a growl. It hits home with my libido — I’m fairly meticulous about safe sex, and it’s been years since I’ve been inside a woman without a condom. Only two total over the course of my insanely promiscuous life, too — neither of which hold a candle to Livia. My cock gets hard, digging into her bum; she grinds back.

At the same time, though, I’m shocked and unsettled. It’s just ... fertility is such a complex issue, so often shameful to women. I never in my life imagined I’d hear a woman brag about her barrenness. It staggers me. “Tell me more,” I say, carefully keeping my voice perfectly level. “Is that safe?”

Livia describes herself proudly as an avowed, lifelong sexual libertine. There’s an unsettling level of zeal there. (I’m less pretentious, at this point, just thinking of myself as a pervert and horndog.) She hates the Pill — she tells me it messes with a woman’s ovarian cycles and diminishes her enjoyment of sex, like condoms do for men. So, apparently, she had her tubes tied sometime after her halftime debut but before the Capricorn Escalation, when she was busy blowing her patron’s money on weird props and what she whimsically calls the “true essentials of life” — hookers, gigolos, designer shoes and other pleasures best enjoyed to extreme excess.

One can’t just walk into a hospital and get that done, mind you — the medical establishment looks askance at permanent harm to the reproductive system in single young adults in service to blatant sexual profligacy — but I understand that a combination of charm, contacts, medical tourism and sexual favors to an attractive MD got the job done for Livia.

She even offers to set something similar up for me, if I’m ever interested — but while Livia hates children (perhaps due to the ... unpleasant scenarios she’s imagined concerning them), I’m not truly certain yet that my wild hookup lifestyle will be life-long. I’ve always thought there would be a family in my future, that one day I would finally settle down. Honestly, I find it faintly unsettling at this point that someone would just cut off their chance at lineage for sensual gratification alone — but I know how hypocritical that would sound coming from me, so I keep my mouth shut.

She’s also really well-versed with antibacterials and has a solid grasp of layered safe-sex methods. Her personal risk tolerance means she uses rubbers with the vast majority of her partners just like I do, but not with a few longer-term lovers. I’m not going to engage with this emotionally right now, though. It’s just too big, too weird and too disquieting. Instead, Livia’s horny, so I tease her with my hands and we soon forget the odd talk about sterility as we get more heated. She never realizes I was disturbed as well as turned on, I think.

I do compromise a bit so we can have some more kinetic fun without true consummation. Livia cues up raw footage of Cathy’s various humiliations, and we grind our fully-clothed bodies together until we both reach sweaty orgasms just from playful, rough dry-humping and watching the deliciously evil things happen to the now-quite-thoroughly-tasted Forbidden Fruit of the Big Noodle. Afterward, we chat softly and incoherently for a bit and finally fall asleep in each other’s arms (and definitely regret skipping the normal post-coital showers the next morning). That’s just how life goes in the Great Beast.

Part of me is still waiting for the hammer of consequences to fall from what we did at the Noodle. To my ongoing surprise, it never really does.

The worst thing that happens is that we cost Roni, one of the sorority girls, a significant modeling contract. She was apparently lined up to be a model for New Century Swimstyles, an agency with a strict no-nudity clause in their contracts. I’m not sure why she volunteered, given what we did in the First Decan — not a wise life choice. Mimi strikes up a conversation with her using CompuServe mail, and while she’s bummed, she doesn’t hold any rancor toward us. She had apparently not considered how widespread the gossip about the show would become, and thought it would be like flashing at a more low-key party.

We keep her number, and agree to keep an eye out for any contacts with modeling agencies that might be interested in her — a little compensatory cross-promotion. I have a feeling we’ll be dealing with models and starlets a lot in the future, so we’ll probably be making contacts in the future even if we don’t have them right now.

Cathy does get in contact with Livia, asking for glossies of the photos we took of her. We have the rights, and she apparently has no problem with that — she just wants copies. Sure thing, babe! I never get to talk to her, though, and the exchange is apparently fairly formal. Livia assures her the nudes won’t go public until after she graduates, so as not to make problems for her.

We follow Cathy’s social presence at the Noodle, though, both by talking to some BROs and through more illicit means. Her role in our show is at the center of all the hot gossip on the campus student BBS, which Mimi can get into. She gets a lot of the expected jokes and scorn, but people say she’s weathering it with good humor and hardly seems beaten down. Indeed, given her kinks and love of attention, she may well be having the time of her life.

She’s really adept in how she frames things. She does blame us, but not to a level that demonizes the show — just to the point that we are her excuse, which was exactly what we want to be. She seems incredibly socially adroit, for all her shyness and inability to express kinks directly. I guess it makes sense — the most popular girls in school are going to have the skills needed to keep that position — but her aplomb still surprises me.

It’s a month after the Noodle show that we get an amazing gift from a BRO — a copy of the latest Overview, the Noodle student newspaper. Like at a fair number of party schools, it’s not unheard of for them to publish some racy photos of willing student bodies from time to time — nothing explicit, but carefully-covered hidden nudity fundraisers and such. You know, like the kind of charity calendar where cute girls do something naked, but there’s always some object in the way of their nips in the photo to keep it all PG-13?

I’ve honestly tracked down a few of those kinds of issues from my old Alma Mater in my time. Even though they don’t show anything, it’s profoundly exciting to me as a voyeur to see everyday girls I know and met flaunting their bodies in a risqué photo — stimulating in a very different way than a glossy but impersonal magazine centerfold.

Well, Cathy gets an actual interview in the Overview about her role in the Virgo Escalation. It’s all very bubbly — she laughs it off and talks about how it was all in good fun, and felt so very liberating. The word ‘liberating’ gets used an inordinate amount of times, honestly. Whatever else I have to say about feminists, they sure did give the world’s cute college girls a great excuse-word there!

She even drops in a few innuendos. But most amazing of all is the photo of her with a scandalized expression, covered in chocolate. It’s cropped not to show her nipples, of course (barely!), but it still shows a mouth-watering portion of her upper chest and chocolate-plastered body. Of course, students might imagine the photo was taken by someone else — only we know Cathy is the one who actually supplied it. God, I adore Cathy.

I wish I could talk to her, ask her what it’s like for reasons both pervy and genuinely supportive — but she has our computer mail address, and in respect of her wishes I’m not going to contact her unless she contacts us first. Beyond asking for the photo to begin with, she doesn’t.

There is some other fallout, too. Some East Coast feminists insist there must have been a “rape spike” the night of the big party at the Noodle. It’s a thing they just think intuitively must be true, despite lacking any evidence. The faculty looks at it, and responds that no reports bear that out. There was certainly a hookup spike, but not a lot of reported violence — sexual or otherwise.

It seems like living out an exploitative fantasy vicariously served as a release valve for tensions more than some kind of gateway drug, and sexual violence reports actually go down at the Noodle. Then some feminist activists get caught trying to cook numbers — pressuring girls to report groping with language that implies it was rape — and the whole activism angle dies a slow heat death from media disinterest.

We apparently injured people. Three frat boys tore their vocal cords at the Virgo Escalation. Not even joking. I feel bad for them, but my id is dancing. Saying you got the audience so hyped-up that they tore their vocal cords ... well, that’s actually a pretty big deal for a spectacle performer. Two of them are fine in a day or two. The third spends a week in a hospital before he can talk again. I do send him a personalized “get well” card with some prints of party pictures (no, not those pictures, but a few hypnotized cheerleader cleavage shots and an especially expressive shot of Blair “enjoying” a frat boy’s handshake).

He sends us back electronic mail right away, and we read his enthusiastic, barely-literate bro-speak in Lotus Notes about how absolutely worth it the night was. (Richer members of the younger generation are apparently big into this computer mail thing, and Livia tells me I need to get up on it to stay in touch with college babes. Makes sense, I guess. Honestly, I still need Mimi’s help to log in to CompuServe.) Apparently the Beta Rho Omegas are bestowing upon me the honorary title of Lifetime Mega-BRO, and are even happy to send the Trips a formal certificate attesting to that.

Focus on the Family sends paid protesters to picket outside the campus, protesting the cultural degeneracy of the Greek lifestyle. Nobody takes them too seriously, though — liberals never did, and conservatives have been decidedly cool since their antics cost Reagan his second term. The new group, the Christian Socialist League, is there too — the fundies going over to the Democratic isle after the Steinmeyer-Turing Realignment. The two puritan groups coexist and cooperate so calmly you wouldn’t see them as opposed — which, in reality, I doubt they are. The most media love this gets, though, is when a cute sorority sister manages to pull a topless photobomb of one of Pat Buchanan’s speeches just outside the campus. That’s pretty cool.

So ... no real consequences. Can one do that? Can we just hypnotize the class valedictorian, strip her naked in public, flash a view of her intimates from an overhead projector and dip her in chocolate — all with no lasting consequences for anyone involved? Apparently, for us at least, the answer is a resounding “sure, as long as you’re careful.”

The potentials of what deliciously naughty stunt we would get away with next boggle my imagination.

Like many enterprises, we have strategy and direction meetings. Ours just tend to be a lot more interesting than a typical corporation’s. You might expect, O Dismissive Reader, that I would zone out during these meetings, or flirt incessantly, or just use them as an excuse to ogle Livia and Mimi’s pronounced upper attributes. Actually, however, I’m very attentive and disciplined during them.

I was a slacker and a semi-legit self-help guru. I rarely did anything honestly meaningful with my life beyond shallow hedonism. At the Noodle, though, we captured the imaginations of a huge crowd, made them laugh and gave them an erotic thrill. I’m no longer a slacker — I’m an entertainer and an entrepreneur. I feel pride, and while immense success may be visible on the horizon I’m not naïve enough to doubt that reaching it will take a lot of talent, hard work and good decision making. I want to be a part of that, to give it my all. The first step of doing that is to learn.

“We’re halfway on track to mega-success,” Livia announces. “The frat show hooked the masculine id, dragging them right by their hairy, dangling Freudian fantasies, and they’re going to be our core paying audience and source of funding in the future. We just fulfilled a primal, abiding male fantasy about the unattainable girl for an audience large enough to get us really strong word of mouth. But we can’t just keep leaning into that. We’ve made the pitch and closed the deal with the guys. But we can’t do it with guys alone. If there isn’t a constant stream of enthusiastic, fresh-faced female volunteers the show will wither.

“Cathy was special. She was at a very specific turning point in her life, and we were her catalyst. We can’t just expect to find a few dozen more Cathy’s, and I don’t think the Virgo show did the best possible job of selling to girls the reasons they’d really want to be in Cathy’s shoes. You know who, from a female viewer’s perspective, really had some fun that night? Blair. I mean, obviously. Even when girls have sex, they don’t always get to come. But Blair ... I liked her, I even admire her for her courage, but most girls won’t. Let’s not mince words here; she was pretty slutty, and that means most everyday girls won’t want to be her.