3 December 2001
4:30 AM

promotion

y sixteenth birthday....I entered the narrow room. Tacked to the walls were hundreds of photos of nude models, pages from porno magazines, sexy Japanese posters, and positions from the kama sutra. Predictably, a red flag with Che's face was unfurled on the ceiling.
   "Where have I ended up?" I thought. "Some sort of sex museum. Who in the world owns this house?"
   Roberto arrived with some black cloth in his hand. He turned me around and blindfolded me with the scarf. As he turned me back to face him, he exclaimed with a laugh, "You look like the goddess Fortune."
   I heard the click of the light switch and could no longer see anything.
   I discerned steps and whispers. Then two hands pulled down my jeans and removed my turtleneck sweater and my bra. I remained in a G-string, thigh-highs, and stiletto-heeled boots. I saw myself blindfolded and naked, saw on my face only my red lips, which would soon get a taste of them.
   Suddenly the hands multiplied, becoming four. It was easy to distinguish them, since two were above, fondling my breasts, and two were below, rubbing my sex through the string and caressing my bottom. I couldn't get a whiff of Pino's alcohol; perhaps he had brushed his teeth in the bathroom. While I imagined myself at the mercy of their hands and began to get excited, I felt the touch of an ice-cold object from behind, a glass. The hands continued to feel me up, but the glass pressed harder against my skin. Frightened, I asked, "Who the hell is that?"
   Muffled laughter in the background, then an unfamiliar voice: "Your barman, precious. Don't worry: I've only brought you a drink."
   He drew the glass to my mouth, and I slowly sipped some cream liqueur. I licked my lips, and another mouth kissed me passionately while the hands continued to caress me, and the barman gave me another sip. A fourth man was kissing me.
   "What a beautiful ass you have," said an unfamiliar voice, "soft, spotless, firm. May I give you a bite?"
   I smiled at the comical request and replied, "Just do it, don’t ask. But there's one thing I want to know: how many are you?"
   "Relax, amore," said another voice at my shoulder. And I felt a tongue lick the vertebrae in my back. The image I now had of myself was more seductive: blindfolded, half naked, five men licking me, caressing me, lusting brazenly for my body. I was the center of attention, and they did with me what one is permitted to do in the cell of desires. I didn't hear a word, only sighs and caresses.
   When a finger slowly slipped inside my Secret, I felt a sudden warmth and realized that reason was abandoning me. I surrendered to the touch of their hands, yet I was keen to know who and what they were. What if the pleasure I experienced was the work of a slobbering, hideously ugly man? At that moment it meant nothing to me. Now I feel ashamed, Diary, but I know regretting things after you've done them is pointless.
   "Perfect," Roberto said finally. "Only the last component is missing."
   "What?" I asked.
   "Don't worry. You can remove the blindfold. We'll play another game now."
   I hesitated a moment to remove the blindfold, but then I slowly slipped it off my head and saw that Roberto and I were alone in the room.
   "Where have they gone?" I asked, surprised.
   "They're waiting for us in the other room."
   "What is that one called?" I asked, amused.

"Touch yourself," he commanded me.

"Mmmm…the smoking room. We'll roll a joint."
   I wanted with all my might to take off and leave them there. The pause in the action had dampened my excitement, and reality appeared in all its crudeness. But I couldn't leave: I had already started and had to finish at any cost. I had to do it for them.
   I glimpsed the silhouettes etched in the darkness, illuminated only by three candles placed on the floor. From what little I could make out, the guys present in the room didn't appear ugly, and this consoled me.
   There was a round table surrounded by chairs. The arrogant angel was seated.
   "Do you smoke?" Pino asked me.
   "No, thanks, I never smoke."
   "But tonight you will," said the barman. I could perceive that he was well-built, slender and shapely. His skin was dark, and his curly hair shoulder-length.
   "No, I'm sorry to disappoint you. When I say no, it's no. I've never smoked, I won't smoke now, and I don’t know if I'll smoke in the future. I find it unnecessary, so I'll leave it to you."
   "But at least you won't deprive us of a beautiful sight," said Roberto, clapping his hand on the wooden table. "Sit here."
   I sat at the table with my legs spread, the heels of my boots nailed to the floor and my sex visible to all. Roberto approached the chair and pointed the lit candle towards my pubic area to illuminate it. As he rolled the joint, he glanced back and forth from the fragrant grass to my Secret. His eyes were glistening.
   "Touch yourself," he commanded me. I slowly slipped a finger in my wound, and he stopped working on the joint, yielding to the sight of my sex.
   Someone approached from behind. He kissed my shoulders, took me in his arms, and jammed me against his body, trying to enter me with his lance. I was disarmed. My eyes downcast and lifeless. I didn't want to look.
   "Hey hey, no," said Pino. "We talked about this before. Nobody penetrates her tonight."
   The barman went into the next room to find the black cloth that had covered my eyes. They blindfolded me again, and a hand forced me to kneel down.
   "Now, Melissa, we shall pass the joint." I heard Roberto's voice. "Whoever is holding it, will snap his fingers and touch your head, so you will know that it has arrived. You must draw near, when we tell you, and take it in your mouth until it comes. Five times, Melissa, five. Henceforth we shall no longer speak. Perform your task well."
   Five different tastes clashed on my palate, the five flavors of five men. Every flavor told its story, every potion bespoke my shame. During those moments I had the illusory sensation that pleasure was not only physical, that it might be beauty, joy, freedom. And kneeling naked in their midst I sensed that I belonged to another, unknown world. But then, after I exited that room, my heart was in shreds, and I experienced an unspeakable shame.
   They then abandoned me on the bed, and my body felt numb. On the desk in the narrow room my phone started flashing, and I knew the call was coming from home. It was already two thirty in the morning. But then someone else entered, stretched out on top of me, and screwed me. Another followed him and pointed his penis towards my mouth. As soon as one had finished, another would unload his whitish liquid on me. One after another. Sighs, moans, grunts. And quiet tears.
   I returned home full of sperm, my make-up smeared. My mother was waiting for me, asleep on the couch.
   She was too sleepy to upbraid me about the hour, so she just nodded and headed towards her bedroom.
   I entered the bathroom, looked at myself in the mirror, and no longer saw the image of that girl who took such delight in examining herself a few years ago. I saw sad eyes, rendered even more pitiful by the black liner that streamed down my cheeks. I saw a mouth that had been violated so many times tonight and had lost its freshness. I felt invaded, fouled by foreign bodies.
   Then I brushed my hair a hundred times, as princesses do, my mother always says, with my vagina even now, as I write in the dead of night, still smelling of sex.  n°

Read the interview with Melissa P. here.

This excerpt was taken from 100 Strokes of the Brush Before Bed © 2003 by Fazi Editore and reprinted with the permission of the publisher, Black Cat, an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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