As He Takes Her Away

The drug they have given me has made me compliant. The man, his name is Viktor, is introducing himself. He speaks calmly, in a matter-of-fact tone. He has joined us at the table of a restaurant Alia has chosen that evening. I do not respond outwardly to what he says as a result of the drug, but I am totally aware of everything. Alia is resting her hand on the back of his, and she is smiling at me. Alia, I’ve noticed all evening, is posturing to take full advantage of her provocative outfit. Her silk skirt rides up over her stockings, showing bare white flesh. All evening Viktor’s fingers have been lingering there, clearly teasing her. I have not touched my dinner. I always tell the husband, Viktor is saying plainly. Once I know I have found a sexual playmate with whom all things are possible, I want the husband to know. I don’t do this for any other reason except one: it enhances my own pleasure. The waiter takes the plates away. Viktor pays the check with his credit card.

After dinner, they go out to a club notorious for their live-sex shows. I am sent home with serveral videotapes that are explicitly labeled. From their titles it is clear they are sex tapes. Once home, I put a tape into the VCR as I’ve been instructed to do. They are all of Alia, of course, in various sexual encounters with Viktor, and with other men that presumably Viktor has chosen. Without even thinking, I masturbate to the action on these tapes.

In the ultra-modern lounge of an exclusive hotel, Viktor sits across from me. He has purposely gotten me very drunk, insisting that I drink Manhattans. Upstairs, in room 715, he informs me Alia is waiting for him, lying on the king-sized bed, fingering herself to prepare for his entry. He asks me to describe my feelings upon hearing this news. I cry, softly. Viktor comforts me, telling me it’s of no account. He seems satisfied. He changes the subject. After a while, he suddenly tells me he must go upstairs to my wife. He orders me, drunk as I am, to go outside immediately, find a prostitute and have intercourse with her. He gives me cash to do this. Later, I will admit to him that although I followed his intructions, I was entirely impotent with the prostitute.

On another occasion, in the same upscale lounge, Viktor asks me if I’ve been watching the sex tapes I’ve been ordered to view of Alia and him. I admit I have. Once again, I am quite drunk. He goes further. He wants to know which act I found most exciting. I tell him, in slurred speech, it was when he entered Alia from behind, clearly fcuking her asshole. He asks, Did you come as you watched that? I admit I did.

Days pass, boundaries dissolve. There is nothing at all hidden about Viktor and Alia’s affair. Alia comes and goes as she pleases. She seems happier than I’ve ever seen her. She is very much in love. She explains nothing; I accept everything. I pass through the apartment, hot and erect, like a ghost that cannot touch. I wonder how I am being poisoned, by food or injection. I hardly eat and there are no suspicious marks that I can see on my body, which I explore frequently and with great care, touching myself without inhibition and without the ability to orgasm. Sometimes, only by chance, Alia passes through the room where I lie pleasuring myself. I implore her, quietly, with my eyes alone, wide and surrendered to anything, but she ignores me, or pretends not to see me, reapplying her lipstick, or re-doing the dark makeup of her eyes.

There are times at work, for instance, that I stare off into space for what might be an hour or more. I imagine that I’m with them, or that they’ve somehow stolen my consciousness away. When I return to myself, messages from clients have collected on my voice-mail by the dozen, as well as in my e-mail box. I feel flushed and spent. The front of my underwear is not wet, but damp.

They have sex in front of me now, often, and without note. Alia casually refers to Viktor as her lover, or otherwise indicates their intimacy openly, and unmistaekably. Our friends laugh, comment on how much younger, how much more alive she seems. Nothing is hidden. There is, at first, some curiosity about my role. The curiosity, however, is not what my reaction is to the new situation. That seems, to everyone, irrelevant from the very start. Instead what our friends find curious is what need did Alia still has for my presence at all. She answers, Viktor is closer to me when Stephen is around.

I watch hours of video of my wife making love with another man. From these videos, I come to know her body more intimatley than I ever knew it before. I know it more intimately than I will ever know it again. I am both sad and grateful to understand this simple fact. The quality of the video itself is startlingly high. The variety of the angles and zoom, the smoothness of the transition between the shots, suggest a third person behind the camera. There are times when Alia and Viktor leave for extended periods. There are trips they take to foreign cities that I have never visited. While I wait for them to return I have these videos. And when they return, I have yet more videos.

One day, very recently, Viktor has me expose myself in front of him. To satisfy him, I manipulate myself to an erection Alia is seated in a wing-backed chair across the room. She has one leg thrown casually over the arm of the richly upholstered chair, and she is flipping through a glossy entertainment magazine. Viktor points to my scrotum, his trimmed fingernail barely scratching the ridge of pink flesh that separates my tightened balls. He says, There will come a day, I think soon, when I will have these removed. I know a man in the East Village who will do this. We will watch, darling, you and I. From her armchair, Alia looks up and smiles, absently. She says, Yes dear.