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1984

By: MlledeLaPlumeBleu



Not exactly what Orwell had in mind, thought Blaise.

He thought he'd been forced to read it for a literature class at Swarthmore. He'd suspected the professor was some kind of communist intellectual. 

He didn't remember much of the book, but unless it had been about swim-up bars and off-pink stucco, it had missed the mark, at least from where he stood, which was on a small second-floor balcony of Alex Harbrace Hawley's beach house.

The huge house was ultra-pale peach, an ode to geometry and an insult to nature. Every surface was planes- slants, cut-outs, odd jutting decks like the one above him- and here and there the minimalist neo-californian composite was set off by sleektubular rail; powder-coated metal in periwinkle blue. It ran in straight lines around the decks and down the outside staircase, which accessed every floor of the house down to the pool.

Blaise stood at the window arch of a little covered cupola that protruded from the second floor hall, which was open, hacienda-style, to the out of doors. The balmy evening wind didn't fuck with his hair, Paul Mitchell had seen to that. His hair was luxuriant- touchable, but with hold- just enough length to sweep over his brow and back, but not long enough so as to look uncivilized, for Christ's sake. 

 

Since the integrity of his hair was never in question, he was free to think of other things, and he did, sipping his Manhattan and watching Alex's party with nonchalant contempt.

He was gazing down upon a distinctly non-Orwellian tableu, a sort of clean hedonism. A Roman orgy as contrived by Nagel. Big brother had gone to sleep five years ago- probably on Valium, thought Blaise. 

Things had not progressed to full-contact Roman debauchery perhaps for that reason alone. While people of means still indulged their vices as voraciously as ever, they did so in a kind of faux secrecy, seeking out the dubious privacy of a dark stairwell or marble toilet stall for a fuck or a line. It was purely a formal concession- no one was fooling anyone, nor did they intend to.

Afraid of waking the sleeping giant?

If so, then maybe the legacy of Orwell did persist in some capacity.

Fuck him, thought Blaise.

He'd also written that other book, the one the commie prof had made him endure as well during the course of the semester- that one about talking cows or some such bullshit.

He watched Pauline duPries as she swung her well-made ass through the crowd, a champagne flute in her hand. She was wearing a tailored black skirt and off-the shoulder blouse in jade-green. Pauline was his regular fuck, a book editor from L.A who worked for Pritchard-Wachstall. He'd bent her over her desk just last week, during a lunch break.

"I can always tell when you've been fucking," she told him, afterward, pulling down her skirt and smoothing her stockings. "Your eyes get positively celadon."

"Celadon? Christ, what a word." He'd replied, effectively guiding his hair back into place with a few practiced gestures.

"Seafoam, then," she shrugged.

Seafoam or celadon, he rolled them, but she was fixing her lipstick and didn't notice.

She turned.

"The point is, if you fuck someone else, I'll always know."

She was smiling triumphantly.

"Knowledge is power," remarked Blaise, blithely, as he left.

Women often told him he had beautiful eyes, although he didn't think that was actually what they meant.

His eyes were indolent, wide- deceptive in their heavy-lidded gaze; he always looked just ever so slightly sleepless. His expression was blasé, mild in its detachment- and therefore intriguing. 

But there was something else there- something ruthless- a kind of cool intensity that they could not place for what it was. So they called it beautiful, when in fact they meant frightening.

Pauline called them seafoam, which was frightening in itself.

Pauline's eyes were hazel- though doubtless she thought they were 'loden'- and tonight they were swathed in bottle-green Shiseido liquid shadow.

Her blonde hair waved to her shoulders, gelled- the Wet Look.

He detested the Wet Look.

Alex was playing that fucking Ebn Ozyn song again. Alex, the counter-culture lap-dog, always barking up the wrong tree, as far as Blaise was concerned.

Not that Alex was a freak himself.

Alex was like Blaise, like Cary, like Bret, like Aubrey, like Marcus.

Alex was one of them, from his Ferragamo tie down to his Manolo Blahniks- and yet he persisted in this odd fascination with all things odd and edgy- from films to art to music to women.

He had thrown this party, and Blaise had come because Alex's parties were a good enough time- avant-garde wingnuts notwithstanding- and because, for whatever reason, they were considered very hip.

That in itself was enough.

One could tolerate the black-clad writers and Warhol devotees, cruising among them- over them- like an evolved kind of bi-pedal shark, and it made no difference.

He recognized a man by the pool as Maxwell Cox, a Venice-based painter of- crap, to put it mildly- whom Alex had a hard-on for, always telling anyone who would listen what amazing art the guy made. There was no telling how many of the shithead's pieces he'd purchased.

Alex had tried to show Blaise his latest acquisition during his last visit to the beach house, but Blaise was having none of it.

The painting in question was massive, almost six feet long and equally wide. It hung over his mantel in the second floor living room, an unframed canvas of grotesque proportions.

"It's called 'Happening in Green'," Alex whispered.

Blaise narrowed his eyes and stared.

"What's happening? Nothing is happening. This canvas is green."

"Not entirely," said Alex, wounded.

No, not entirely. 

"Is that- a fried egg?"

"If that's what you want it to be."

A small, amorphous, vaguely round blotch of white lay in the lower right hand corner of the painting, and slightly off-center in the middle of that was a smaller, yellow circle.

"Wow, that must have taken, like, minutes."

"It's interpretive. That's the great thing about art."

Alex's genial shrug was imbued with trace amounts of smarm- barely evident to the casual observer, but Blaise noticed, because he often did exactly the same thing; although he did it better, in his opinion.

"Christ on a fucking polo pony, Alex- you've got to stop buying this shit. That's what it is, you know- shit. Utter, total shit. This guy could jack off on a pomegranate and you'd be the first to make an offer."

Alex had laughed.

"You don't understand, and I know why. You don't know what 'art' is, Blaise. You have no…soul. You're a trigger man, Braidon."

He gestured toward "Happening in Green". 

"This- this is brilliant. I don't know why, or how- but it is."

"Fine. I have no taste in art. Glad that's settled. Next. Oh, look- here's something- my friend Alex just paid a small fortune for an portrait of his tennis court."

Alex hadn't reacted, except to scoff at his disparaging words, and remained inordinately proud of his objet d'art. He'd showed it off several times already tonight.

"Oh, Blaise-" he'd say smugly, whenever he happened to be in earshot. "I was just taking these people to see the new Cox."

"Haven't you seen enough Cox?" he'd replied the last time, and the resultant titters from the bottle-red theatre bimbo at Alex's side had been enough to make him rethink the wisdom of that little exercise.

Blaise craned his neck.

Ah, yes. There was Alex now. Dancing. Kind of. Showing Maxwell Cox some kind of move? Maxwell Cox seemed terminally underwhelmed.

It was fortunate indeed for Alex that he could financially afford both the social ineptitude and the paintings. If nothing else, it worked out well for Maxwell Cox, who painstakingly slathered entire canvases green in his Venice loft to finance his artistic lifestyle, which consisted, from what descriptions Blaise had heard, of riding up and down the boardwalk on his bicycle with the front basket full of parrots. 

Rainbow macaws, according to Alex.

Blaise smiled a little in the semi-dark and put the glass to his lips. Below him, in the oasis of light, people milled and postured, posing to effect. The string of lights around the pool swayed in the ocean breeze. 

"Haven't you strayed a little far from the flock?" Said a cool voice at his shoulder.

Blaise turned slowly, in mild surprise, his wide-set eyes gaining a luminous cast in the shadow.

"Pardon?" he said, blinking.

The girl who stood there was definitely one of Alex's art-house specials.

"Your flock," she purred, gazing out at the water. "Or is it a pack?"

Blaise took her in, as he took in all things, skimming her details, making assessments. Her hair was cut in an asymmetrical bob- one side chin-length, the other grazing just above her shoulder. One half was dyed black, and the other, bleached blonde. 

She wore a huge black ball-gown of a skirt, a Balenciaga, thought Blaise, with his eye for labels- topped by a tailored black designer sweatshirt, chicly faded to charcoal, with a slashed neckline that hung down, baring one shoulder. On one wrist she wore a multitude of black rubber bracelets that looked like o-rings.

Overdressed yet underdressed, thought Blaise, the province of the avant-garde.

He took a breath, and prepared to speak. 

"I just stepped away for a little quiet," he said, inclining his head.

She turned to look at him, thoughtful. Almost as if she were assessing him. It almost made him laugh out loud.

"What about you?" he asked, dutifully, as if he cared.

"I was trying to escape your friends."

Blaise paused.

"Alex?"

"All of them. I thought I'd come upstairs and hide until I'm missed."

He studied her face.

Her eyes were big, light- but not like his own- not large, shallow pools of grey-green water that reflected more than they gave. 

Her eyes were almond-shaped and exquisite. Even, thought Blaise, ringed as they were in smoky kohl, smudged outward at the corners, the height of fashion excess. Her mouth was full made pouty by the pale shell colored lipstick that adorned it. Her lashes were long- they looked fake, but he almost thought they weren't. No blush, but contoured cheekbones in a classic heart-shaped face.

Pretty, he thought. Very pretty, even. In a Ralph Lauren blouse…

But her makeup was an impediment to All-American success, let there be no doubt- the dark eyes, the pale lips- it smacked of crash-couture, of eurotrash.

Working the sixties look, he thought. Neo-Twiggy. Very avant-garde.

Her body was not at all Twiggy, however, he noted, with a cursory glance. Her curves were nothing less than modern day.

"I'm sorry," he said, extending his hand, and shaking his head. "What was your name?"

She took his hand, lifting her eyebrows.

"Violetta."

"Violetta?" He sputtered, laughing in spite of himself.

"Like the opera." Was all she said, and seemed to view his reaction with the same kind of transient interest she might reserve for belly-button lint, or late-night alley cat-fights.

"Blaise. Blaise Braidon." 

"Blaise Braidon?" Her lips spread into a smile. Suddenly her amusement seemed much greater- like she'd seen an alligator man, or a five-headed infant.

Unusual, but well worth staring at for an hour or so.

"Yes," he said, exaggerating the word.

Violetta laughed silently.

"How fucking perfect. Really, that's brilliant. Is that really your name?"

"Would you care to see my driver's license?" demanded Blaise, acidly.

She shook her head.

"Only in California."

There was a silence, and she kept laughing, occasionally, as if she couldn't quite bring herself to stop.

"I don't think I've seen the opera "Violetta", " he said, forcing a smile.

"Traviata," she said, quickly.

"What?"

"La Traviata. Not Violetta. She's the woman in the opera."

"Ah," he said. It seemed like he remembered something about that. He'd gone to the opera, of course. He went every year, box season tickets, right above the pit, he thought with a tinge of satisfaction. Certainly he'd gone to La Traviata.

"I was trying to put it in a context you might understand," she said, and raised her drink to her lips. She left a pale impression on the edge, Blaise noticed, a lip-o-graph.

He had an odd and intrusive thought, an impulse, to take the glass and lick it off.

Blaise was used to his impulses, and didn't give it much thought.

Violetta seemed absorbed in the scene below. He saw the downcast fringe of her eyelash in profile, like a docile black butterfly.

"So, what do you do?" Blaise asked, laconic, idling for more time. 

Pursuing this conversation, Christ only knew why.

"I'm an artist."

She seemed to be looking the other way.

"Really," he remarked. "I'd never have guessed that."

She smirked, but didn't seem too pissed off.

"What's your media?" he asked, coolly patient with the kind of dogged relentlessness that had made him a "boardroom terror" and a "force to be reckoned with". Blaise was supremely confident. Time was always on his side.

"I stretch multi-colored rubber bands over nail grids on discarded planks I find in the street," she said, blithely.

Blaise inverted his eyebrows.

"Really?" he asked, incredulous.

"No."

She pursed her lips.

"I spray-paint the mummified corpses of cats that maintenance men find in crawl spaces. I spray anti-Communist propaganda on them, and splatter them Jackson Pollack-style."

"Are you serious?"

She shook her head, wryly.

"I paint," she volunteered, for the first time, smoothing the voluminous taffeta of her ballroom skirt with her free hand. Her hands were many-ringed, gypsy-like.

"Oh," said Blaise, drawing back, somehow given pause.

Violetta watched him, quietly amused, her mouth cloven, her eyes daring.

"What do you…" he said, with a wave of his hand, searching absently for a question, "-paint?"

"Plants and birds and rocks and things." She said, smiling to herself as if she was hugely entertained by her own words, or something about them. "Sand and hills and rain."

Blaise found it annoying. Her vague replies irked him. He was having a conversation with her, after all- using his time to talk to this Euro-trash space creature of a woman- when there were ninety-odd sure young things below. Maybe he wasn't being overly genuine- maybe not- but that, thought Blaise, is hardly the point. 

He disliked the idea of anyone being noncommittal in the face of his non-commitment.

"Portraits?" he demanded, smiling pleasantly.

She turned to look at him, smiled slowly, still very amused.

"Not so much. Some, maybe. If I have a good subject."

"And what, exactly, makes a good subject, my dear?"

"I could do a painting of you," she said. "Narcissus in Gabardine."

"Wow. Did it hurt when you fell from heaven?"

"Did it hurt when Mattel installed your hair?"

He smiled slowly.

"You're smarter than you look." He said, and sipped his drink. "You could do better for yourself."

"Yes," she answered, staring at him. "That's just what I was thinking."

She smiled superciliously.

"If you'll excuse me, Brent."

He laughed

"Don't leave on my account. I had no intention of coming on to you." Blaise watched as Pauline duPrie sidled up to Marcus Stabler, brushing her breast against his arm as she did so.

Subtle, he thought, facetiously. Very subtle.

"My friend Alex would trip over his dick at the sight of you, though. You're just his type- all that- bohemian shit really turns his crank." He offered, amenably. "But you aren't really my type, you know. No offense."

"Alex, huh? Another member of the pack?"

"I guess. Yeah." Blaise ran his fingers over his hair, absently. "Now- see the blonde down there, by the big, square urn with the yucca? That's more my type. Her."

Pauline, yes, every inch his type.

Except for the fucking Wet Look. Could nobody see how shitty that looked?

"She's more my type," he repeated, nodding firmly.

"I can see that," Violetta replied. "And you must be hers, judging from that guy she's with."

"I don't care about him." He shrugged. "I'll be fucking her tonight."

"I didn't mean it like that. I mean he might as well be you."

Blaise paused, appalled, but determined not to show it.

"You must be kidding. Marcus? He's a sycophant."

"You're better looking- but other than that," she shrugged.

Blaise smiled oddly. 

"Am I?" He took a sip of his drink. "Of course I am. It's nice of you to say so, of course."

"I like…your hair," she said slowly. "It's like warm sand. The color, I mean."

He waited, rapt, for her to say more.

But she didn't, having gone back to her kamikaze. The drink glowed in its glass like purple neon.

"You are exactly the kind of chick that Alex would just flip out over," Blaise reaffirmed, after a moment. "No doubt about that. With that hair, the make-up, the Euro-trash debutante look. Just his type." 

"Ah, yes. Your kind always seem to have a fetish for the art chicks- present company excepted of course- "

"You get that a lot?"

"Sure," Her lips curved into a smile, and she turned her eyes elsewhere. 

Blaise looked down at Pauline, who had taken off her spiked heels and was wading in the fountain. She was drunk, shrieking with laughter.

Blaise grimaced at the sound.

No way am I driving her home. Alex can send his fucking car; Alex can just keep her here.

Pauline splashed Alex, eliciting a yolp and a protective arm across his Armani suit. She dragged herself out of the fountain and called for a drink- and where were her fucking shoes?

Marcus followed like a gigantic, earthbound hummingbird- in hapless pursuit of a great, ditzy flower that reeked of pheromones and favored the liberal use of Dep.

Marcus had the shoes.

He was holding them like they belonged in a time capsule, like reverent objects. Marcus was slavering like an uncut rottweiler.

Sycophant, thought Blaise, with cool contempt.

He could keep the shoes, along with Pauline, as far as Blaise was concerned. Pauline was replaceable. Pauline was not the designer creation that her clothes were. Pauline was strictly off-the-rack.

She staggered over to the low retaining wall and clutched at the trunk of a palm tree, hampered by her drenched and clinging skirt. Marcus hovered just behind her.

"Blaise," she moaned, with drunken petulance. "Where are you?"

God, she was looking for him. She wanted him.

Marcus looked crestfallen, yet ready to keep his hat in the ring, so long as Blaise remained in absentia. He looked around anxiously.

"I don't think he's here," he told her in a low voice that carried up to where Blaise stood, safe, for the moment, in the darkened cupola beside-

Who?

This art nouveau Cinderella. This London underground debutante.

He glanced at Violetta, who took no notice, engrossed, as she was with the scene below.

"Why don't you go to her?" she asked. 

Blaise said nothing.

Pauline, now sporting the Wet Look in total, continued to wail his name, more demanding, now. He remembered New Years' Eve.

Pauline was not his type that night.

"He's here," Aubrey was saying. "I saw him in the hall on the way downstairs. Nursing a Manhattan."

"I'll go find him," said Alex, to Pauline, who snatched her shoes viciously from Marcus.

"I have to leave," Blaise said, suddenly.

Violetta looked surprised, her eyebrows forming quizzical little punctuations that caught his attention strangely.

"Now. I will not be here when Alex comes looking."

"Fine," she replied, after a moment, amused and slightly bewildered. "She obviously wants you."

Blaise set his lips.

"Do you?"

"Do I want you?" 

"Let's go. Let's get the fuck out of here. Put down your drink."


1984 Big Brother Job Julia-Nude Day



With 1984 Big Brother in 2010, Nude Day is now everyday and everywhere.

Testing 1, 2, 3, smile for the camera. Action! 1984 is here in 2010 and Big Brother is watching you.

Now with satellite communication, Nude Day is not just one day a year, it's every day. There's no hiding from the cameras, the cameras are everywhere. Peek-a-boo, they can see you. There's no hiding from Big Brother. With a God like omniscient presence, he's everywhere, too. Even when you think you are alone, he sees you. You're not alone. You're never alone.

The age old question of are we alone, was never meant to have been asked and answered in this way. Wanting to know if there are other life forms in the universe, we addressed the question to aliens. We never intended to ask the question of surveillance cameras. To answer the question, are we alone? No, never, there is always someone watching everything we do. Look up, look down, look all around, there are cameras everywhere and more every day watching your every move. There are even cameras recording you from outer space, cameras you cannot see and don't even know are there.

Don't touch that. Don't do that. Don't say that. Don't even think that because whatever you touch, do, say, and think may be used against you in a court of law. You're screwed. You're fucked. Smile, you're on candid camera, literally.

What if those satellite cameras, the ones that can read a license plate number from outer space were turned, directed, and poised inward at the inhabitants of Earth and at you undressing for bed in your tiny apartment or making love in the backseat of your car at lover's leap? Imagine what and who they could see. Yet, for what purpose?

Well, what if you owned those satellites and were looking for a certain someone, wanting to know what she did 24/7? Do you think the satellite's camera could find her, one person from out of billions of people? What if you found her and now were intent on watching her without her knowing? Imagine the possibilities.

Certainly, it would help if the camera knew where to look to find her and that's where ground surveillance comes into play. Working as a team, they'd identify the subject they wanted to watch first, before sending her coordinates, merely a GPS code, to outer space. It'd be even easier if they could tag her, put a bug, a remote transmitter in her bag, on her person, somewhere inside her house, and on her car, so much as if tracking an endangered species. Something that not even George Orwell imagined when he wrote 1984, are we no longer safe from the watchful, invading, and recording eye of Big Brother? I dare say, no.

When you ponder the power of satellite surveillance and GPS codes, the fact that our government claims it cannot find Osama bin Laden is, in a word, bullshit. I'd be willing to bet that they know what he ate for breakfast today. Our government has lied to us before. Actually, when has our government not lied to us? 

What if those satellite cameras, the ones that can read a license plate number from outer space were turned, redirected, and poised outward to the vast universe. What could they see? Certainly we have that capability already with the Hubel telescope, but what if the Hubel telescope was given new coordinates and, as part of its routine of watching and recording the vast universe, was instructed to send a signal, a beacon, a live television broadcast feed 24/7 of just one reality based program ala The Truman Show, only, instead of a man, this time with a woman on display in all of her splendor? Imagine watching an X-rated exhibitionism and voyeurism show from outer space.

Not intended for us to see, who else would see it? Who would watch it? Would they pay to see it? Would they even know what it was? Who knows? That's what was hoped to discover.

It wouldn't take much to accomplish the mission, lots of money, a dedicated satellite, some new computer codes, a powerful transmitter, and a specific antenna to record whatever was received. What if one man had the resources to create such a satellite, a new, super satellite, named Project Julia, who's only function was to send live images 24/7 of the human form, a naked woman, in the hopes of contacting who knows what? Why? Why not?

We know they're out there. From the times of the pyramids and before, we already have the evidence that we've been visited many times before. Who made the pyramids? Certainly, not man alone. References in every holy book, including the Bible, have references of alien beings. We even found their airport carved from a mountaintop, the Nazca lines in Peru. Vimanas were flying machines, depictions of UFO's, as described by our ancient ancestors. Who created those giant monolithic statues at Easter Island? Puma Punku in Bolivia has stones that a master stone cutter using modern day machinery would not only have a nearly impossible time moving in place but also carving the intricate patterns found on the stones. More recently, we've been receiving radio signals from deep space. 

We know we're not alone and now we have the technology to find out who else or what else is out there. Only, what are they? Where are they? Do we really want to know?

Naked in our human form, from local to national to global and now universal, with the placement of the Project Julia aka Job Julia satellite in orbit, nudity is now part of the vast universe. Nude Day is now every day. With the advent of the latest technology that broadcasts a live reality television feed of a nude woman at the end of a directed and powerful laser beam, our naked transmission is shot from Earth into outer space in the hopes of making contact with alien life forms. Traveling at the speed of light, there's no telling who, what or when they will receive it and who, what, and when they will respond.

It's exciting to think that whoever put up the satellite owns the rights to whatever is received in the transmission. Since no one owns outer space, there are no laws that prohibits a private pioneer from exploring and exploiting alien beings and other life forms. As matter of fact, as a way of replenishing their recent budget cuts, NASA encourages private participation. Imagine the possibilities, a new age market for beer, Viagra, and fast food commercials.

Forget about cable contracts, sports athletes will expect larger payment for interstellar sports specials. The Wide World of Sports will change its name to the Vast Universe of Sports. Baseball's World Series will become the Intergalactic Series. God only knows what kind of athletic competition we'd see in the Olympics, after inviting aliens to participate.

Unlike so many women today looking for fame and fortune and who'd take their shirts and bras off at the first sight of a camera, Julia was the type of woman who'd never remove her clothes in public. She viewed public nudity as immoral and immodest. Not that she was a prude, but she was a good girl and was saving herself for that one special someone, her husband, whoever he may be. A product of the corn fields of the mid west and moving east to Cambridge Massachusetts to attend graduate school at Harvard University, she never celebrated Nude Day. Already on the corporate fast track with her first job interview, she had better things to do with her time than to party naked.

A dream come true, she was so very excited, as well as she should be, interviewing for a position of power, her first job, at that, and for of all people, one of the richest men in the world, Jerick Blankenship, JB. What should she wear? Her navy blue business suit with her matching high heels and her white blouse. Yes, that's conservative enough.

She was so very young and so very naive. Tall and shapely, she was so very beautiful, even with her hair pulled back, especially with her hair pulled back. It really didn't matter how she wore her hair. She could have shaved her head and she'd still be stunning.

A classic American beauty, it was her face, her high cheek bones, her perfect chin, her upturned nose and, especially her big, beautiful, green cat eyes, and not her hair that grabbed your attention and held your interest. Yet, when she wore her hair down is when you truly believed in God because no one else could make someone as beautiful. Indeed, she was a sight to behold and every man who saw her wanted to hold her, marry her, and claim her as his own. 

It should be illegal for someone to look as good. If she were a product, the IRS would tax her for her beauty. If she was a menu selection, you'd make a meal out of her and savor every mouthful. If she were a rare, fine wine, you'd open her only on a very special occasion and appreciate the color and the aroma of her, before taking a sip, finishing off the bottle, and running out to buy a case of Julia. If she were a diamond, you'd horde her by putting her in a velvet lined box in a locked vault somewhere safe. For sure, if she was anything, she was the key to the happiness of the man who won her heart. If she were your woman, you'd want her all to yourself and would never share her with the rest of the universe. Right?

One in a million, so very special, she was every man's dream woman. She was just out of grad school having graduated top of her class, suma cum-laude with a perfect 4.0 average. Everything about her was perfect and she was the perfect candidate for JB to work, as his executive, personal and very private assistant, for his high definition, digital television, worldwide cable company, Monitor, Inc. As if destiny had chosen her name, from out of all the names she could have been named, her name was Julia.

Julia. Her name was Julia. How perfect was that? Julia was Winston's love interest in George Orwell's book 1984, Jerick Blankenship's favorite book.

JB couldn't believe it, when he opened her file supplied to him by his people. He had a stack of more than a thousand women from which to chose, but none of them were anything like her. First he saw her photo and watched the DVD of the camera surveillance of her in all manner of dress and undress, then he saw her name from her resume. Never had he seen a woman as beautiful and her body was as good as her face.

As always, the professional people he hired to do his video surveillance were ex military, Delta Forces preferred, and generally retired CIA and NSA agents. Invisible and adept at leaving no clues or mess behind for the police to stumble over, they had a knack for being in plain view, but somehow disappearing in the background. They knew how to do surveillance that ex-law enforcement would balk at getting involved for fear of tarnishing their reputations, losing their retirement, and being arrested.

Once they found her, once she was targeted as the subject of interest, her apartment was wired for sight and sound. Certainly not his intention or his main focus, but he had a lot of video of her naked. She lived on the top floor of a three story walkup and when she wasn't walking around in her bra and panty, she was walking around naked. With her house the tallest one on the street, he imagined she figured that no one could see her. Shot with telephoto lenses and with shots from his passing satellite peppered in, in addition to the cameras hidden in her apartment, there wasn't any part of her naked body that he hadn't captured on camera. He had enough footage to make a naked video collage of her. 

It didn't matter if she masturbated in the dark, stealthily repelling off the side of her building, his people had night scopes with night vision. For sure, she'd put on a good show, just being herself, just going on about her business. Only, it'd be better if she had a boyfriend. It'd be better, if he could make a sex video of her. It'd be better, if he could show her in action. No problem, he'd take care of that later. It wouldn't be difficult finding her a man. He'd have a thousand volunteers for that job, that's for sure.

Believing in the value and the serendipity of circumstance, putting intrinsic stock in being at the right place at the right time, her beauty and her name is what caught his attention, but not a shallow man nor a perverted man, he wasn't excited by her nudity. It was her qualifications that excited his interest. He only hired the best of the best.

Normally, as he did with everyone he hired, he'd send an aide to interview her, but she was different. He had to meet her in person. He had to know if she was as spectacular in person, as she was on paper and on video, for that matter.

Call it kismet, call it fate, call it more reason to believe that JB's destiny had been preplanned and predetermined, he could not have made a more perfect woman than this woman, his beloved Julia, had he created her himself. The fact that her name was Julia was just further proof that their lives were meant to intertwine. He had waited a long time to meet her, nearly all of his life, really, since the first time he read George Orwell's book, 1984, well before she was even born and now, here she was before him.

You'd think with a master's degree in business with a minor in communications, that she'd be overqualified to work as a mere executive assistant for anyone, even for this man. Yet, the job was hardly a clerical one and was so much more than that and had too much responsibility to define with a single title, as just an executive assistant. Yet, what did her title matter?

Whether she was called his Executive Assistant or his Vice-President in charge of personnel or his Chief of Staff, she'd become his right arm, his eyes, his ears, and his voice. She'd be one of his closest advisors. Serving a dual purpose, the star of his interstellar video, she'd be the one that he'd put in front of the podium and the camera to answer the questions of the public and to respond to the heat of the press. It would be her job to put out his fires. It would be her job to quell the public's uncertainty, so that he could concentrate on more important things. 

She'd be the public's perception of him, his persona, and the woman behind the man. She'd be his face and what a face it was. She'd be the one the public would see and would love to hate or would be so enamored with her beauty, poise, and charm, that they'd want to see more of her on the big screen. Only, who could hate such a face and body as that? 

Much in the way that the great Oz, in the Wizard of Oz, remained behind the closed curtain, much in the way that Erik, the Phantom of the Opera, hid behind his mask, and much in the way that any CEO of a multi-billion dollar corporation is far removed from employees and insulated from the public, JB was okay with giving her and having her have such a starring role with the public. Working with and controlling the press, much in the way of the President's Press Secretary, a very high profile position, indeed, she'd be the person that all questions and all publicly spun comments would funnel through, while he disappeared in the distance to focus on the creation of his new technology. The role better suited her than him. She'd be perfect.

He needed time to invent, design, and control the future. Allowing her the free reign to manipulate the present, before it morphed into the past, he didn't have the time to waste with any of that nonsense. He had devoted enough time to things that were already done, when there was so little time and so much, yet, to do.

After working for him and working closely with him, she'd learn to know his wants and needs intuitively. He needed to have someone like that and like her working for him to allow him what he does best without having to waste his time on bothersome minutia and become mired down in petty details, while answering absurd questions at a press conference. That would be her job.

Closed to the general public, he arranged to meet her for lunch at a restaurant he hired for the day. Busy but not too busy to meet with her, it was his decision to meet her personally. Informally, this was her interview, but as far as he was concern, she already had the job. 

"So, tell me," she said hoping to get him to talk about himself and bide her more time to think of her appropriate responses to his anticipated questions. 

The interview had taken on the aura of a chess match, only, normally a formidable adversary, she was now unsure of her next move. As if walking on piano wire stretched across the Grand Canyon with a tail wind, he was a complex man and one false move on her part would put an end to the interview and her chance at landing her dream job. Literally with whatever she said, showing him that she could control him at her interview in the way that she needed to control the press at a press conference, she needed to land on her feet, so as not to be toss out on her head.

Nonetheless, asking about him was her tactic to gain his friendship and earn his trust. She needed to not only maintain his interest but also make this interview and her memorable and what better way to do that than to have the man talk about himself? There were many candidates applying for this one position, no doubt, and they'd all be talking about their accomplishments and about themselves, rather than about him.

He was the man in the spotlight and not them. They were nothing without him and she needed to massage his ego a bit to get him oiled up enough for where she needed him to be, impressed, to get this job. Besides, put on the spot by his unexpected appearance, she needed more time to formulate her appropriate responses. Only, unbeknownst to her, she was already hired. Already more than impressed with her, he was smitten by her. He was a man accustomed to making on the spot decisions, albeit informed ones, and as soon as he saw her, she had the job.

"Tell you what? What else can I possibly tell you that isn't already out there on the Internet," he said with a wave of his hand and cutting her off in mid thought. "I'm an open book," he said with a laugh, while looking at her, as if reading her and knowing her without even having to ask her who she was.

"Yes," she said. "That's true," suddenly feeling uncomfortable by his invasive stare. "There is much information about you, but I suspect there is a lot of false information and purposely leaked information that you've released, as a way to manipulate the press, and as a deflection to throw them off track."

"Yes. Very good, indeed, but," he said. "Haven't you read my latest unauthorized biography? It's full of supposition. Whenever they cannot find the truth about me, they make it up hoping that I'll contest what they've written to give them a bestseller. What does it matter?" With a chuckle, he waved a nonchalant hand, before giving her a measured look and, with a toss of his head, as if exhaling a puff of smoke from a cigarette, he said, "It's all quite the work of fiction and best to leave it alone for the public to formulate their own opinions about me, which is where you come in to improve my public image."

"You have the money, the power, and the influence, why don't you sue them?"

"That's what they want," he said with self-assuredness. "They want me to give their insults life, longevity, and credibility with a long, court proceeding that titillates readers and onscreen viewers. I've watched them long enough to know what they have done to others before vowing they'd never do that to me."

"You're right, I'm sure," she said already thinking of ways to insulate him and to protect him from such nonsense, should she get the job.

"It's all a game they play with the hopes of separating me from some of my money, hoping I'll settle out of court to make them rich before going away to retry the same tactic later. Once you acknowledge them and give in to them, once you give what they say and write about you credibility and believability, they'll never leave you alone. Even if I didn't settle out of court and won the court case, in the meantime, they'd make a lot of money off of my legal embroilments, maybe even turn their unauthorized bestseller into a movie. I don't want any more fame and infamous attention to what I do than what I already have now. If anything, I need secrecy to continue my work."




1984 Big Brother Job Julia-Nude Day



"I see," she said, while wondering what could she really do for this man, when he already had all the answers.

Then, she realized that he was looking for someone to take that role. Perhaps, he was tired of having all the answers. Perhaps, he didn't have time to handle all of this so unimportant stuff and needed more time to do what he does best, create, invent, and produce the things that people need in global communication.

"Unless you come up with a better idea, trust me, it's better that I just ignore them. My best defense is to pretend they don't exist," he looked at her, as if he could see right through her.

Looking at him, as if he was a gigantic bird of prey, even though she was 5'9" tall and an inch taller than him, he made her feel so small and so insignificant. Suddenly, she felt a bit like Alice In Wonderland, shrinking from his mere stare. She didn't like feeling so small. She didn't like feeling so insignificant, yet, she liked feeling his powerful influence and feeling so protected under his strong wing. 

"Unfortunately, you're a target with a huge dollar sign on your back and you've been even more of a target because you've been out there in the forefront with no one you've trusted enough to run interference for you. I can do that for you. I can handle whatever they have to give," she said hoping to say all the things she needed to say to make him believe that she could do the job, while hoping it was all the things that he wanted to hear.

"It's better that the public stays in the dark about who I am and what I do, you understand. I have enough people trying to steal my ideas without having me inspire all of humanity at the detriment of what I need to accomplish. I don't need anyone meddling in my business affairs. I already have fortune, more money than even I can spend in ten lifetimes. I don't want or need fame. That's your job," he said with a satisfied smile, as if he was the king handling her his robe, his crown, and his scepter, while he disappeared in the background and vanished to become Merlin the Magician.

"I understand, of course," she said with a smile of total acknowledgement, while assuring herself that they were definitely on the same page about what her responsibilities would be.

"That's what I'll be paying you to do, to become famous or infamous, as the case may be," he said with a laugh, "as my way of deflecting interest from me to you." He paused to give her an appreciative look. "By your appearance alone, the public will more love you than hate you, I dare say. Perhaps, some of the women will hate you, but the men will never remove their eyes from the screen, whenever you appear on camera and if they hear anything you say, no matter what you said, even if you said the sky was falling, they'll believe every word of it."

"I can't lie for you, if that's what you need me to do. Lies are always discovered and I'd forever lose my credibility. I'd be of no use to you then, not to mention, I'd ruin my career. There's a lot of sense in the old adage that the truth will set you free," she said with a small satisfied smile.

"There's no reason for you to lie for me or to lie about my business affairs, but spinning the truth is always better than be so forthcoming. Our government does it all the time," he said giving her a look of admiration that she had become accustomed to and never comfortable with, especially when on an interview for a job. "I can hire anyone to stand up there to talk to the reporters, but I need a special someone, you, to handle the press. There's a vast difference. It's those savvy editors and rich and powerful publishers that hide behind their sometimes gullible reporting messengers; they are the ones you must learn to respect, trust, and despise."

"Surely, it will take me time for me to get up to speed. I'll need time to learn your business and to intuitively know what to say and what to do, when--"

"Get up to speed? You're already miles ahead of your competition. Look at you, educated and smart, you are the most beautiful creature I've ever seen, more beautiful than the most beautiful bird. Fame more suits you than it does me. The public, I dare say, would rather hear my message coming from your beautiful mouth, than from my ugly puss."

As if she were a TX9000, the latest satellite invented by the Japanese and copied by the Chinese for half the money, he was satisfied with his latest acquisition. He summed her up with happy contentment, as if hoping to make a fortune by buying a million shares of her stock on the open market for a short sale. There was, suddenly, an uncomfortable silence between them that they'd never again experience. Trying to get a read on him, she contemplated him. It was her move and he waited for her to speak, only one never at a loss for words, she was unsure of what to say.

Preceded by his reputation and with his boyish good looks and flashy white smile, he reminded her of the image she had of how F. Scott Fitzgerald's character, Jay Gatsby, would look and act, if he was here in the flesh, today. In the way he moved and in the way he talked, with his confident manner and self-assured charm, all of it fortified by the weighted control and the political influence of enormous reserves of wealth and power, JB was a man, who had so much on his plate at any given time, that the mere presence of him, as well as the thought of working for him, overwhelmed her. The reality of him never occurred to her, until he was sitting across from her.

Normally confident, poised, and self-assured, he made her doubt her abilities making her wonder, if she was even right for the job. Yet, he must already know she was the one for the job, otherwise he wouldn't be sitting here wasting his precious time with her. He must really want her for him to take the time to meet her in person, she thought.

His easy demeanor was contagious. He made her relax, no doubt, his way of disarming his adversaries. Cool and calm, good at verbally jousting, he cut off the heads of his dragons in his boardroom, where he did all his battles and where few gained admission. He never fought his fights in public. 

Disarming and disabling his competition in the process and enabling everyone who challenged him defenseless, JB had a carefree attitude about him that lulled those into misunderstanding him and underestimating him, even so much as thinking him tame and even so much as lame. His father had started this business, after all, and for those who thought he was anything like his father were sadly mistaken and rudely awakened in a boardroom fight with him. He was driven and thinking him tame was their folly and underestimating him as lame was their undoing.

Definitely, not wild, he was assuredly not tame nor lame. Calculating and logical, in the way of the Vulcan Spock, he wasn't as emotionally charged and driven, as was Captain Kirk. Those who thought they'd get the better of him, never saw him coming, until it was too late.

She was unprepared and ill equipped to combat him for the job during this impromptu interview and she feared, she may be losing the contest to another better armed adversary. The worst thing she could do was to relax. The worst thing she could do was to look weak, confused, and unconfident. She couldn't allow him to rattle her.

If she couldn't handle the pressure of him, one man, now, even such a man as him, how would she handle the heat of a hundred reporters later? Yet, if she could handle such as man as him now, well, no one ever has, she'd gain his confidence. She needed to stay focused and keep her wits about her and not be taken in by his charisma and by the omniscient reputation that preceded him.

It was easy, too easy to surrender to him and she knew enough about him that he needed someone who'd put up a fight, before being overpowered and taken by him. She knew enough about him that he didn't want a yes man or a defenseless woman; he didn't want another rooster in the henhouse or another bitch in his kitchen. She knew that he liked things just the way they were, only he needed someone to care for the garden he had already planted to make sure that nothing he put in place be changed, while the new crop he was growing had the time to flourish in the dark and in secret.

If she was to work for him as his public persona, if she was to handle the press on a daily basis, then every response she made now needed to be thoughtful and measured to show him she could do the job. She needed to adopt a strategic plan of defense, so as not to be put on the offense by a question he'd surely ask that surprised her. Just as he was good at making people feel comfortable, before going for the jugular, she needed to be more like him. For sure, she didn't want to be one of his victims, not now, and not yet, anyway. She needed to make him believe in her ability to do the job, just as much as she believed that she could do the job. Without doubt, it would be very challenging working for such a man.

Having learned all she could about the company and about him, she figured he'd be all business with numbers, facts, and statistics and she was ready for all of that. Yet, he surprised her. Leaving that information for his battery of accountants and entourage of personal assistants, he was so much more approachable and easy to talk to than she thought he'd be.

Already, making her feel at ease, doing to her what she had wanted to do to him, he had reversed the table on her. This was his test of her. Nonetheless, she already liked and trusted him. Yet, he had an aloofness about him, an impenetrable armor that protected his secrets. If she imagined that he had many skeletons hidden in his closet, she'd be right.

"How did you, one man, ala Ted Turner," she said laughing away her nervousness, while knowing that Ted Turner was his inspiration, as much as his adversary, "start a worldwide cable communication company so vast, when there was so much competition in such a growing, changing, and redefining market?" 

"That's easy," he said. She watched him, learning from his posture and, instead of leaning back to savor his success, he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, as if ready to whisper her a secret of what was next on his agenda. "I was ready for it. I always knew I'd do something like this. This was my destiny, after all," he said with a smug and confident smile. 

"You were?" She sat enthralled buying into what he wanted to tell her, sell her, and what she needed to hear to learn. "How so?

"Rather than creating television programs, theatre, and shows I hoped the world would embrace and watch, rather than being at the mere hat in hand mercy of sponsors, prima donna actors, actresses, directors, and producers, rather than giving away all my profits to network syndication and to talent that have suddenly found the eye of the public and the pomposity of star power, how better to control what people watch on television than to be the behind the scenes service provider?" With a God like wave of his hand, as if painting a priceless Picasso, before putting it on display at a museum, he said, "I merely provide a much needed and necessary service, the same as any utility company." He gave a smug little laugh, as if he was enjoying a private joke and he was, but the joke was on her.

"You have it all figured out," she said, "don't you?"

"I do, but I didn't have to figure anything out. As if it was scripted, it was fated to be this way. Only," he said, "as a mere service provider, not dependent upon fossil fuels and burdened by costly labor, my costs are much lower and my profits much higher. People love their high definition, cable television so much so that they can't spend an hour away from the television due to lost power. They wouldn't know what to do with themselves, should they suddenly have no cell phone, TV, and Internet. Why, I dare say, they'd be suicidal after a day of not having global communication," he said with a mad scientist like laugh.

"Control?" Carefully listening to and analyzing his every word, thinking first before speaking and not being as impulsive with her words, as she usually is, she felt pressured to not make a false step or a bad impression. Still she persevered. "Service and control are at odds with one another, are they not?"

"Don't be so naive, Julia," he said with the appropriate pause in honor of her name. It was obvious that he was a man who had an answer for everything and she waited with baited breath to hear it. "Much in the way that a public servant controls every aspect of your little uninspired life, of course, I don't mean you specifically, I control what every household watches, that is, for the matter of a bloated monthly service fee."

"I see," she said. "That's one way to explain something in a way I've never considered."

She was in awe of him. It was then that she realized that she could learn so much from this man. Only, just as she thought it, he said it.

"Not everything can be found in a book, Julia," he said her name, as if he was saying it for the first time and savoring it, while in bed with her naked. "You can learn a lot from me and I'm willing to take the time to teach you."

"Why take the time to teach me anything, when you can hire anyone, someone who is more experienced for the position."

"You mean hire someone who already has experience of not succeeding, someone who's already failed, which is why he or she is looking for a new job," he said looking at her, as if she was a car he was considering taking for a test drive, before buying. "With you, I can mold. With you, I can instruct you in everything you need to watch my back," he said, while studying her.

"You make a good argument, one that is contrary to what other employers deem important, experience over enthusiasm and malleability."

"It's funny, after reaching a position of such power, wealth, and influence, the basic human traits are the things that I regard the most, honesty, loyalty, and dedication. I see all of those qualities in you, something that is missing from those who have already worked for another, grown weary and disillusioned, before being flushed out of the system. One day, no doubt, after you are done with me, after I have taken all that I can use of you and you of me, you will be the same, but for now, you are my diamond in the rough."

"What if I'm the rare exception and work for you for the next thirty years," she said smiling her confidence through her glass, as she made solid eye contact with him, while taking a sip of her wine.

"Ah, then, you'd be the rare commodity, a beautiful flower that would blossom and grow as powerful as I needed you to grow. I'd want nothing more for you than to have you succeed in this position. It would ease my mind of these responsibilities allow me to continue my work elsewhere, Julia." 

No one had ever said her name in quite that way before and she liked how he enunciated each syllable of her name. He pronounced it, as if he was chewing it. He was the first man she had ever met, who undressed her with his mind, instead of with his eyes and she felt naked and exposed in his presence. Astutely, she realized that there was nothing she could hide from him without him knowing that she wasn't forthcoming. As if he had seen her naked and vulnerable before, if only she knew he had, it was as if he could see who she really was. He made her feel defenseless and now, he volunteered to be her teacher, and, yet, to what end?

"If nothing else, Mr. Blankenship--"

"Please, call me JB."

"Alright," she said with a smile, as if she had just scored a point in his favor. "If nothing else, JB, my education has given me the foundation that I need to prepare for the job as your Executive Personal Assistant," she said wishing she hadn't said that, as soon as she said it, and in the way she had said it.

Her pitch for the position sounded as unprofessional as it was desperate. Had she been interviewing with human resources for a lower level position, what she had said about being prepared for the position would have been perfectly fine, but this was Jerick Blankenship, JB, the President and CEO or Monitor, Inc, one of the richest men in charge of one of the biggest corporations in the world. Yet, notwithstanding, she wanted him to know that she wanted the job and she was glad when he ignored what she had said by not dignifying it with a response.

Immediately, she knew he'd be a man who'd challenge her, and just as it would be some time, before she was capable enough to meet his challenge, it would be some time, before she became bored working for him. The thought of working for him excited her and she never wanted anything in the way that she wanted this job now.

"Your accomplishments precede you, Julia. You mustn't waste your time selling me on you. I'm already interested, I'm already sold, otherwise I wouldn't have come here in person. This is an important job and based upon this rare personal interview that I've granted you, it's your job to lose. I don't have to tell you that. Being in the heart of my innermost circle of my trusted advisers, you'll be an integral part of my operation."

"Tell me more about you being the service provider. I find that part of this interview fascinating," she said liking more what she just said.

This was how to get him to talk more about himself and about his company. This was what she needs to do to land this job. She could tell by his facial expression, eager to tell her about his company, that she was on the right track.

"Much in the way as Bill Gates and Windows is in the background, as the operating system for the computer, I'm the technical uplink between the creative energy and financial minds for televised networks," he said with a satisfied laugh. "The writers, producers, directors, and actors do all the work for me by making the shows, be it a movie, a situation comedy, a documentary, or world news. It's of no consequence to me if they win an award or flop. Innocuously remaining in the background, I just broadcast what they've generously created and so professionally stated."

"You're much like a utility company in that regard," she said with a smile, repeating back his own words.

"I am," he said returning her smile with a satisfied one. "For me, as it does for them, it all starts with a signal and that signal, transmitted by my satellites, are mine. I own them. Without me and my company and all the companies like mine, there is no TV, no Internet, no telephone, and no worldwide communication. Without my satellites, everything will be quiet and everyone will be bored. Think of me as the sun of their universe. Think of me as the one who always get paid, no matter what crap and reality based show they put on television. Yet, that's all old news."

"Old news, what do you mean?"

"Now that my communications company is established and set in place, now that I have the money that I need, I'm working on a new project and you, my dear, are my final puzzle piece, my centerpiece, if you will, to help guarantee my project's success."

The genius in him was showing and with the sudden change in his facial expression, when talking about his new project, she wondered if he wasn't a little crazy. Yet, just as what is normal, what is crazy? Besides, what did it matter? She'd be working for one of the greatest men the world has ever known. Ted Turner, Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, Howard Hughes, even Oprah Winfrey are all a little crazy.

You'd have to be crazy to be so driven or maybe they were the rational ones. Maybe they were the ones who saw how all things worked and how all things should be. Without doubt, knowing all the secrets, whether it was the stock markets, the media, human nature, and/or the human condition, they were the manipulators. They were the marionettes pulling all the strings, while raking in all the money, and the rest of us were just their puppets.




1984 Big Brother Job Julia-Nude Day



"Tell me more."

"I can't," he said. "All that I can tell you is that they'll be an upcoming announcement that you'll make, should you get the job, along with a public unveiling on July 14th, Nude Day, of all days," he said smiling with what he was about to say next, no doubt. 

"Nude Day? Why that particular day?"

"Appropriately, it's the day that we all must stand naked to embrace whatever or whoever is out there in the vast universe."

"I see, so now you're getting into space exploration?"

"Why not? I've already conquered the world," he said almost bragging, "why not continue. Besides, it's my means to my end. It's always something that I wanted to do, even as a young boy. Coincidentally," he said beaming with a broad smile. "The project is named Julia."

"Julia?" She looked at him and smiled, before taking a nervous sip of her wine. Did he just name it that? She wasn't sure if he was serious or having a bit of fun with her. "Why that name?"

"You'll find out soon enough. You'll just have to trust me with the information for now," he said. "Yet, don't be so flattered. Much like the computer Hal, in the 2001 Space Odyssey, I chose the name Julia long before I met you."

She studied him, as if cramming for an exam. A new project named Julia? She wondered what it was. All this time she thought this interview had been a serendipitous stroke of good luck and now she realized that this interview had been prearranged and was by no accident. With all that he had at his disposal, he had searched for her, she now assumed. Now that he found her, he didn't have to tell her because it was then that she realized she was hired for the job.

She wished she had read his unauthorized biography, but she didn't know she was going to meet him in person. She never expected him to conduct the interview. Had she known he'd be here, she would have better prepared her responses.

She knew the worst thing she could do in an interview is to seem disinterested by not asking him questions. She racked her brain for the questions appropriate for such a man. Only, bigger than life, he intimated her and made her nervous. She couldn't think. She was having trouble focusing on anything but him. She was having a difficult time trying to read him, while trying to think of what to ask him and he was already a dozen moves ahead of her.

Her attention drifted, along with her inability to focus. She couldn't help but notice his watch. She'd never seen a watch so intricate in detail. It was more than a mere watch. It was beautiful. It was art.

Mesmerized by the splendor of it, she imagined it cost a bundle, more money than she'd earn in a year without doubt. She wondered what it was. She wondered what it cost. Definitely, by the look of it, it was platinum and she was right about that. Only, she'd fall off her chair if she knew that it was a one of a kind, custom created, handmade, Patek Philippe's Platinum World Time piece that cost a cool 4 million dollars and monitors 24 time zones. Figuring there were only six time zones, she didn't even know there were 24 time zones to monitor. As her employer, as he mentor, he could teach her so much.

"Interesting," she said, already in a quandary how to maintain the interest of such a successful and busy man, who could get anyone to work for him, at any time.

Wanting to instantly find the perfect balance to compliment his karma, she didn't want to come off as being too smart or too dumb. She needed to find a balance. She needed for him to like her. She needed to show him that she was compatible and amenable to whatever he needed her to do, short of having sex with him.

Only, she didn't know that he had already chosen her. She already had the job and this interview was merely a formality. He only needed to learn the one piece of information that he couldn't read and that didn't translate on paper. He needed to know what she was like in person and he needed to meet her for that.

With all the resources available to him, she should have known that he was the one who had reached out and found her, and not, as she had thought, was the other way around. Too naive and too trusting, she had a lot to learn. Only, quick on her feet, she was a quick study and a perfect match for the job.

Conversely, he was the one now being interviewed. Teetering on the fact that she could reject him by his aloofness and his myopic obsessive compulsion to micromanage and control everything, no doubt, he was the one being judged, now, not her. Yet, no one could ever tell that from his calm confidence and self-assured demeanor that, he admitted later, he feared losing her by her rejection. After reading the biography of her presented to him by his security people, it was obvious to him from the information presented to him, before they even met, that they'd make for a good team.

On paper, he found her remarkable. Watching the video taken by his people without her knowledge, he found her exciting. In person, she was everything he had hoped she'd be. And her name was Julia. Unbelievable. Her name was Julia. Call it kismet, call it fate, call it his occasion to celebrate the next chapter of his success, but the stars were aligned for Julia to take the helm on his multi-billion dollar corporation, one day soon.

He was already chomping at the bit to take the next step from fiber optics to what he named as Intuitive Communications. Something the Air Force has been toying with and perfecting in fighter planes, the power of controlling communications and inanimate machinery by human thought, he'd be the first to have it available to the general public, but at such a high price it'd be only for the very rich. Eventually, everyone could afford intuitive communications, but not for another decade, after his patent expired and after it was mass marketed and mass produced.

In the meantime, he'd own the patent rights to it. Only, he needed to be free from Monitor, Inc. The same with his new company. After Intuitive Communications was up and running, Julia, his pet project, is what he really wanted to spend the rest of his days developing. Julia was his destiny, what he was meant to create and do, and his way to connect Earth with the rest of the universe. It had been 62 years since George Orwell wrote his 1984 book in 1948, and now thanks to Monitor, Intuitive Communications, and his new project Julia, 1984 was finally a reality in 2010.

One step at a time, baby steps, instead of giant leaps, he was still Chairman of the Board of Monitor, Inc. He needed someone else to handle the every day-to-day details and time consuming minutia, while he worked on bigger things. Intuitive TV, Intuitive telephone, Intuitive Internet, and Intuitive Worldwide Communications, the name of his newly created corporation, is what he developed now to eventually replace the aging technology of Monitor, Inc. All of this, Monitor, Inc. and now Intuitive Worldwide Communications, was so that he could earn enough revenue to work on his beloved project, Julia.

Although, he was a billionaire many times over, after Monitor, Inc. made him so rich, it was Intuitive Worldwide Communications that would give him the vast reserves of cash that he'd need to explore outer space. The pet project that he so longed to start, but was unable to develop, until he had the money and now he did. Even though, intuitive communications was the next technological in his worldwide communication company, his means to an end, Julia was the one thing that raced his pulse. Julia was his way to not only explore the vast universe but also to communicate with alien beings.

He knew other life forms were out there. They had visited here before. We have documented proof of their numerous visitations. If they had visited here before, hopefully, he can entice them to visit us again. Just as they helped Earthlings then, with their advanced technologies, maybe they could help him now in his quest to create new technology. 

Only, what if he was chasing himself, his own ancestors? What if there are no aliens, just Earthlings. What if those who had been here before were Earthlings, humans, returning here from our future to their past? A difficult hypothesis, it's a concept that took Albert Einstein to theorize and explain.

A thousand years from now, just as we can travel to space, who knows what we will accomplish by then. Maybe the aliens he is looking for aren't there, yet, because, unless he can travel faster than the speed of light to the future, he'd never see them. Theoretically, if he could travel faster than the speed of light, if he had the technology to go back in time, then he could travel back far enough in time to meet his ancestors. Perhaps, that is what those future visitors did, traveled back in time to help the Egyptians build the pyramids.

Perhaps, they were here trying to change the outcome or fix something that would have adverse consequences in the future or even destroy the future of the planet. Who knows? Yet, he needed to find out and to discover the mysteries of the universe, it would take money, even more money than he had right now. Unfortunately, even more important than money was time.

Julia was in its infancy and he feared not living long enough to see it come to its final conclusion. He already had readied his satellite, his high powered transmission beam, his sensitive receiver antenna, and his state of the art science lab. Of course, he had a support team of scientists and astronomers in place to monitor and analyze any transmissions received, but Julia, still in its infancy, was more than a lifetime project, many lifetimes away.

With the closest star 4 light years away and with the speed of light traveling at only 186,000 miles an hour, well, you do the math. For his beam to reach the stars, even at the speed of light, it would take more than a thousand years. Until he was somehow able to make his beam travel faster than the speed of light he was stuck with old technology looking to the stars for new. He was hoping for quicksilver, a lightning strike, and communicating with an alien space craft that was much closer than the nearest star. 

Looking up to the Heavens, instead of looking at all that he's accomplished in the past on Earth, not taking a rest to enjoy life, he had so much more, yet, to do and so little time left to do it. Julia, literally and figuratively, was his way to do all that he needed, wanted, and yearned to do. He hadn't amassed his wealth to spend it foolishly on big houses, luxurious yachts, fancy cars, and fast women. Living a modest lifestyle, living life unpretentiously, as if a millionaire, instead of a billionaire, he accumulated his wealth to buy the information he needed to answer all the questions he had.

Much in the way that Jerry Lewis devoted his time, his talent, and his energy to save children by finding a cure to Muscular Dystrophy, Jerick Blankenship, used his power, influence, and money to find those puzzle pieces he needed to know. He still had the same questions that went unanswered by his teachers, when he was a boy. Why are we here and are we alone?

No one could give him the answers that satisfied his curiosity and it was only recently that scientists have come up with plausible answers to the Big Bang theory. Now they believe that space is actually expanding and not shrinking. Further, to travel in space further and faster, they now believe that space is bendable, much like paper and there are inherent shortcuts, wormholes that we can go from one place in space to another, without having to take a longer and less direct route. Finally, by the evidence that has always been there in plain sight, they believe that not only are we not alone but also that we have been visited.

Yet, not to diminish what he had already done and all that he was yet to develop, it was Julia that would put his name in the history books, right next to the famed physicists, Galileo, Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, and Stephen Hawkings. Not a scientist himself, but a creative and insightful businessman, Intuitive Worldwide Communications was something that even George Orwell couldn't have imagined. Project Julia was his shining star to the future to finally find out what had happened in the past. Instead of looking back to learn what would happen in the future, he looked ahead to discover what happened in the past.

Assuredly intuitive communication was the next step, the future, in telecommunications and he'd own it. His competition would have to ask his permission for him to license them and for them to access what he developed. He'd be the new Ma Bell with every communication device manufactured by all companies worldwide, from cell phones to television transmissions to the Internet, flowing through him.

The hub of the telecommunications universe, that is, until his patent rights expired in seven years, they'd all be at his whimsy and mercy. A giant step ahead of the competition, by then, he'd be off doing something else, inventing something new, and developing the future with Project Julia. If it didn't make him look so crazy, he'd stand on the table and laugh with glee. The giants of the communication industry all wished they were him, do doubt.

She had never met a billionaire before and JB was one of the richest of the rich. For him to take more than a passing interest in her, for him to take the time to interview her was something she never thought would happen. To be honest, even if she got the job, she never thought she'd meet him. She figured he'd be too insulated and too busy to take the time to meet her. Now, admittedly, if hired, she discerned that they'd have a close working, as well as, an intimate personal relationship, but she figured he'd have sent one of his flunkies to conduct her interview and then report back to him. 

Decidedly easier for her to win his approval by having him conduct the interview personally, she was glad that she wouldn't have to prolong the interviewing process by winning over an intermediary, first. Even though she was pressured now to win his approval, she wouldn't have the stress of wondering if she'd get a chance at a second interview with him later; that interview was happening now. Without doubt, it was decidedly more nerve wracking for her to sit before the supreme judge, the one making the decision, the great Jerick Blankenship, of whether or not she was right for the job. Yet, if that's what it takes to work for the man, then she was up for the challenge.

It would have been much worse, had she had the first interview with a subordinate of his company, while waiting for the phone to ring telling her she won a second interview with him. Now, she just has to wait to hear if she got the job, even though she was sure she had. Nonetheless, she was glad for a face to face chance to sell herself, while knowing that, when she left here, she'd, no doubt, know if he liked her on not. Maybe, before leaving the restaurant, she'd even know if she got the job or not.

She was surprised, when he entered the restaurant with his entourage of personal secretaries, aids, and security force, wired and packing as much heat as the secret service. Immediately, she recognized him, in his ten thousand dollar, no doubt, handmade blue, silk suit, as if there was a spotlight on him. Too nervous to notice, she hadn't realized the restaurant had been hired for the night and closed off to the public.

Certainly, if working for him, that would have to change. She'd have to have eyes behind her head. Just like him with having an inherent element of surprise, she'd have to work on never being flustered. Never allowing anyone to see her coming, she'd have to be two steps ahead of everyone else with her next chess move. 

Except for his staff and the few restaurant personnel, they sat alone. She watched as his small army of people descended upon the restaurant and did their job inconspicuously, while staying in the background and doting on him without interrupting his private conversation and ruining his train of thought. Well orchestrated with everyone trained to do their job, they disappeared in the background, as if they were invisible.

Curious, as to know how his employer/employee interrelationships worked, she watched how his people treated him, treated one another, and more importantly, how he treated them. If given the job, she'd be in charge of all these people, no doubt. She'd be his right arm person, his executive, personal and private assistant. Privy to everything, she'd know him, as well as he knows himself.

"A critical moment and my defining time, it all started percolating, when I was a young boy and read, what was to be, my favorite book, 1984, by George Orwell," he said appearing, as if he had related this story many times before. Only, in fact, she'd be surprised to learn later, that he had never told anyone this revealing bit of personal information, but her. "Feeling as if the writer was writing about me and writing my story, I loved the main character, Winston Smith. That book formulated my destiny. I imagined that I was him then," he said.

"Yes, that was a great book," she said fluffing off what he told her and not realizing what he said was the foundation for Project Julia. "I remember reading Animal Farm, by him, also," she said remembering the premise of the book, but not really remembering if she read 1984 or not.

For someone so smart, so educated, and so logical, she should have known what she was getting into, when JB confessed to her, while sharing his thoughts over lunch, that his favorite book was George Orwell's 1984 and confided in her that his favorite character was Winston Smith. Only, as does everyone else, who meets Julia, someone so alluringly beautiful, even though she has a master's degree from Harvard in business, they underestimate her. Surely, someone so beautiful in face and body, cannot have the intelligence to match. No one has the whole package, do they?

She must have a weak link something. Surely, there's something wrong with her. She must be limited somewhere, flawed someway, and failing somehow. How can anyone so gifted, be so perfect? Yet, she was. Only, JB didn't underestimate her.

The fact that others would underestimate her was one of the traits that he loved about her. For sure, they'd never see her coming. A shining star before them, they'd be too blinded by her bright light, her physical beauty, to consider her sharp mind.

"Did you know that Julia was the name of Winston Smith's love interest?"

He looked at her with unblinking eyes, while reaching for his wine glass. Never taking his eyes off of her, he lifted the glass to his lips and took a slow sip of wine, as if taking a slow sip of her.

She knew the wine was expensive. Only, it would be too rude to ask the price. Yet, never having had a glass of wine, such as the one she was having now, if someone was to ask her if she wanted to finish the bottle of this fine wine or have hot sex with a handsome and generous lover, she'd chose the wine. With all the aged fruity flavors exploding in her mouth, fighting the desire to chew it, the wine went down like a full course meal, before going straight to her head.

"No, I didn't know that," she said suddenly feeling uncomfortable by his leering stare and feeling, as if she was playing a part and was a character in the modern day movie that they were making for television of 1984, aptly named 2010. She half expected the director to yell, "Cut."

Was he hitting on her? Was this more about her outside appearance than it was about her abilities and about the job that she could do for him? It was then that she wished she wasn't so beautiful. Her looks interfered with her getting work, as much as it did helping her to get the interview. Why else would he make the connection and mention that his favorite character, a character he felt the writer wrote about him, had a love interest named Julia, if he wasn't hitting on her?




1984 Big Brother Job Julia-Nude Day



Yet, too professional in his conduct and treatment of her, such a man would never mix business with pleasure. She imagined he had a stable of available women and didn't need one more, especially one who may be his employee. That was when she realized that he wasn't hitting on her, but was just taken by her and especially by her name that drew the parallel to his favorite book, 1984, and now continuing in the closed end loop, fini complet, of his secret project named Julia.

Yet, maybe it was the wine that suddenly made her question him, but she couldn't help but wonder, was he Winston Smith and was she his beloved Julia? Instead of giving her what she wanted, a job, instead of giving her what she needed, a career, instead of giving her the opportunity that she should have to prove herself to him, was he just trying to bed her? She was already so weary of every man she met trying to get her in bed. Still, intrigued by him, she gave him the chance to redeem himself and prove her wrong, and he did.

"Even though the movie had John Hurt and Richard Burton in it, the movie is never as good as the book," he said. "I finished the book in a day and over the years, read it twice more."

"1984? I never would have guess that'd be your favorite book," she said now curious about the connection.

"Appropriately, written in 1948, they released the movie in December of 1984."

"Really. That's so interesting."

This was her time. This was her chance. Interfering with her opportunity of a lifetime, she felt that the interview was slipping away with George Orwell's imagined premonition of Big Brother. Bored to tears with his misdirection in conversation, talking about, at length, of all things, his favorite book, instead of talking about her favorite subject, her, she feigned listening and exaggerated her interest, while thinking of her next question and what she'd say to his answer.

She wanted this job. She needed this job. Without doubt, she had the confidence that she could do this job. She wondered how much it paid.

She should have suspected and been suspicious, just by the name of the company, Monitor, Inc. Such an odd name for a cable TV company, Monitor. Why did he pick that particular name from out of all the names he could have chosen? As soon as she wondered why he named his company Monitor, she dismissed the mere notion of a name.

Had she stayed focused on the name Monitor, it may have given her a clue why he named his company that. Had she read the book, 1984, that may have given her a bit of insight why he chose such a name. Had she read his unauthorized biography, she may have connected the dots and put the puzzle pieces together to give her the clear picture of him that she needed to have the upper hand. Who and more importantly, why was he checking, watching, observing, keeping an eye on, supervising, scrutinizing, and examining the world through his satellite telecommunication company for him to name his corporation Monitor? Or was he? Or was she just being paranoid?

What was he monitoring and why was he monitoring it? Only, what did it matter? So long as she found employment, a good paying job with benefits that she could use as a ground floor opportunity, a stepping stone to climb her personal ladder of success, she didn't care if the company was named Beelzebub. Yet, this job would feather her resume like no other job would. She'd be golden, after working for Jerick Blankenship. After working for him, she could name her price anywhere else. 

In this era of personal invasion and lack of privacy, too nervous about the interview, wanting to make a good impression, she was overly preoccupied with getting the job and missed the obvious parallel that he so freely confessed between his unauthorized biography, his favorite book, 1984, and him owning a cable television company named Monitor. Maybe after another glass of this wonderful wine, she'd make the connection later, no doubt, but for now, it was well over her head. Who names their cable company Monitor, anyway?

So enamored by the presence of him, she didn't even wonder why he had chosen that name or why from out of all the applicants, he picked her, for that matter. Then, of course, there was his pet project, Julia. What was that all about? That project seemed contrary to his other businesses. Was he just hunting for aliens or was it more than that? Was outer space and extraterrestrial communication with alien life forms the way of the future? What did he know that he wasn't telling her? Did he already have proof that aliens exist? Has he already been contacted?

Between the Internet and cell phones, airport body scans, take off your shoes and your belt, empty your pockets and check your purse, employee badges, retina scans, fingerprint identification, background checks, identity theft, computer hackers, credit reports when applying for a job, surveillance cameras everywhere, car computers that monitor how far and how fast you drive, how many times you accelerate, turn, and brake, DNA, and the worst innocuous offenders of all, fiber optic communication cable TV, cell phones, and the Internet, you'd think she'd question why, of all the books in the world, including the prerequisite Catcher In The Rye for any testosterone filled teenager, was his favorite book of all, 1984. It made no sense. Actually, in fact, it made real sense. Once she discovered his secret, it made all the sense in the world. Until then, it and he was all just a mystery.

Stop. Just stop. Enough. She was getting a headache either from the potent wine or from over thinking this interview, perhaps a little of both. Have another sip of this unbelievable wine, she told herself. Relax. Take a breath and just relax. 

Whether she got it or not, it's just a job. It's not a pivotal turning point in her life. It isn't as if this one job will make or break her career. If only she knew that it was a pivotal turning point, the turning point, in her life, if only she knew this job would make or break her career, she would have ran from that restaurant screaming.

Perhaps, she hadn't read that particular book, 1984. Perhaps, she read it, but forgot it. Perhaps, it didn't make the impression on her that it, certainly, made on him for him to start a cable communications company named Monitor, then an intuitive communication company named, Intuitive Worldwide Communications, all for the purpose of making enough money to fund Project Julia. Perhaps, that one line was lost in their conversation and put off like so much background noise, as unimportant, because she was so nervous about wanting, needing, and getting this job.

Yet, having to work for such an all consuming man, in the capacity of a job that required her to be at his beck and call and whimsy, 24/7, you'd think a book that made such an impression on him and for him to list it as his favorite book from all the books he read in his lifetime, she'd have committed the book to memory or, at the very least, read the book again, after she got the job. Yet, she should have but, unfortunately for her, she didn't.

Certainly, such a book would have given her a clue and a bit of insight into the controlling character of Jerick Blankenship, JB. Perhaps, had she looked up his surname, Jerick, she would have noticed that his name meant that he was a strong and gifted ruler. Ruler? What is that all about? She knows he's gifted for him to be a billionaire, one of the richest men in the world, but she'd never work for a ruler, a demigod.

Was his name a clue to what he was deemed to do, rule the world? Was he rewriting his own version of 1984? Is that why he thinks all of his is his destiny? Was she to be his reluctant queen? Befittingly, it made sense that JB would have chosen that book as his favorite. Only a man so rich, so powerful, so influential, and so all consuming would pick such a book. How dare he?

For someone so beautiful and with a body to match, as if she was sculpted from a Heavenly piece of alabaster, she should have known something was amiss when, as an incentive bonus to join his company, JB gave her the keys to a swanky two story apartment on ritzy High Society Avenue. Blinded by the seven figure starting salary, she didn't put two and two together that every room, including the bathroom, had a plasma TV. Then, when the job included a leased BMW 335i red convertible for her personal use and a chauffeured Rolls Royce for business, whenever hobnobbing with the rich and famous, there was just too many perks not to accept his offer of employment. Monitored 24/7, everything he gave her was wired for sight and sound. 

He seduced her in the way that the Devil has a reputation of stealing souls. Only, with the hours that he kept and the motivation and determination he had to complete everything he started, even Project Julia, especially Project Julia, she'd soon discover that working for him and with him bordered on indentured servitude. No longer did she have a life. Attached at the hip, her life was his life.

Wanting to be married one day, wanting to have children, having to put all of that on hold, this job was all consuming. She knew, as long as she worked for JB, she didn't have a life outside of this job. Her only diversion was having sex with available and handsome men and, unbeknownst to her, JB was happy to keep her serendipitously supplied.

The cameras in her swanky apartment watched and recorded her every move. As if she was a player on the reality television program, Big Brother, she was given no privacy, not even when in the bathroom; there was a television there, too. If she had a lover and sometimes she did, the camera caught that action, too. Even those times of the month, when she thought she was alone in her bedroom or in the bath and felt the need to pleasure herself, whether the television was on or off, the camera was always recording her and sending a live feed up into the universe 24/7.

When Neil Armstrong said on July 20, 1969, "One small step for man and one giant leap for mankind," he had no idea that on July 14, 2010, there'd be the beginning of a live video broadcast 24/7 into outer space. Now, when JB pushed the button to start sending his live feed to his satellite and from there into deep space, he could have been quoted as saying, "One live feed from woman and one giant leap for humankind."

Yeah, sure, we've shot radio beams up in space before. We've even sent a satellite that broadcast messages in different languages, but there's never been anything like this Project Julia. Except for his scientists working on the project, no one but Jerick knew that the information being broadcasted was the life of Julia, including nude footage of her.

He needed for her to monitor news broadcasts daily, he told her, which was the reason for a television in every room. It was easy to hide such a small camera in such a big TV. With today's technology, she'd never know. Too focused on doing her job, she'd never suspect.

Given an army of assistants, her job was to answer every newspaper, magazine, news item, and computer blog that mentioned him or his company by name. She'd personally review all statements for public consumption, before the press notifications were released. It was her job to respond to any bad press. It was her job to dose any fires. It was her job to make the man she worked for beloved and respected in the public's eye because when the public discovered what he did, violated Julia's privacy in such a despicable way by sending a live video feed of her life for 5 years into outer space, he'd be hated. He'd be tried, found guilty, and incarcerated. Only, by the time anyone discovered what was being broadcast in outer space, he was already dead. 

For five, long years JB ran the live video feed of Julia. Then, when she stopped working for him, when she met a man, fell in love, married, and left his employment to have children, he continued his video feed, not as a live feed, but as a prerecorded one. He had enough footage of her to have it loop over and again endlessly at five year intervals.

Finally, after 30 years of broadcasting the video, a mathematic message was received and encrypted. A Russian astronaut maintaining a space station picked up the errant feed being broadcasted, after it bounced off a passing asteroid and reflected close enough for the space station to pick up the broadcast signal. Shocked and surprised, at first the cosmonaut thought it was a joke, but then he remembered reading about JB Blankenship and his signal searching for extraterrestrial life. He told no one about the video he had intercepted and laughed at what he was about to do, his joke to play on the foolish Americans. He worked on an answer to the feed.

Not wanting anyone to know that his transmission emitted from the space station, he taped a transmitter to a rock he had found that had hit the space station and became stuck. He dislodged the rock and brought it inside the craft to examine it and kept it as a souvenir. Now with his prerecorded message attached to his pet rock, the next time he was outside the space station, he allowed the piece of carbon to float away in space. Eventually, months later, locked in a gravitational pull, it orbited close enough to Earth for those monitoring the signal to receive his return broadcast. With the rock being so small, it was invisible from radar detection and the source of the return broadcast could not be pinpointed. Mistakenly, because the signal was so faint, the scientists and astronomers assumed it was from very far away, when it was nearly close enough to burn up in the Earth's atmosphere.

"What else do you have, besides this Nude Day video? We're all tired of watching the same program over and again. How about some football? And how much for the woman?"

After 30 years without receiving a return signal, finally, there was that message, "What else do you have, besides this Nude Day video? We're all tired of watching the same program over and again. How about some football? And how much for the woman?"

At first they thought it a hoax, a hacker had hacked into their satellite, only the signal came from space and not from Earth, meaning that, who could answer their signal but an alien? Once the press got a hold of it, Project Julia headlined every newspaper the world over. Assured that it wasn't a hoax, assure we weren't alone, now with proof that there is alien life, scientists and astronomers converged on Project Julia's science lab, before going about the business of soliciting grants and funds to send their own signal. Soon the skies were filled with signals looking for aliens and hoping to receive their own messages.

Creating a worldwide panic, this Russian joke eclipsed the hoax created by Orson Welles' War of the World radio broadcast of 1938. When the cosmonaut realized what he had done, instead of accepting responsibility for it and apologizing, fearing repercussions from his own government and being called back to Earth to face criminal charges, he remained silent, allowing it all to play out across the planet.

Suddenly, there were books about aliens and alien worlds. Feeding the flames, movies about aliens and life on other planets gave more realism to the hoax and certainty to the fact that we weren't alone. Television had more shows, such as remakes of My Favorite Martian, Alf, Outer Limits, and Lost in Space. Star Trek was revitalized.

Car manufacturers produced cars that looked more like the Jetson cartoon spacecrafts than they did cars. Food manufacturers developed out of this world foods and Tang experienced a resurgence. There were space conventions, much like Star Trek conventions with attendees dressed in spacesuits. The people of the planet were lost in the stars hoping one day to be abducted.

It was only a matter of time before the tabloid press uncovered what was on the original signal and when it was learned that it was a 24/7 live feedback of the life of Julia for 5 years, she became an instant star, a worldwide celebrity. With her prerecorded video running on pay for view cable TV 24/7, her photos now and before were in every newspaper, magazine, and television show. Everyone wanted to know who she was.

Now 2040, Julia was in her late fifties. Since the live feed emanated on Nude Day, July 14th, 2010, she was nicknamed the Nude Day woman. With her out of this world looks, still very beautiful thirty years later, her beauty had even enticed an alien to respond. She wrote a book and from that, they made a movie. She made millions with public appearances and autographing her nude photos. What a world and to think it all started with Nude Day.



1984



He took her hand, and felt her rings edging into his palm. 

"Leave with you?" she clarified,

"Now."

"All right," she said, mildly. "Why?"

Blaise didn't have an answer for her.

He led her away from the cupola, through the hacienda/hallway, into the upstairs lounge past "Happening in Green". 

"That's a piece of shit," he informed her, as they went by.

They hurried down the stairs, a freestanding black metal spiral, little more than a glorified fire escape in design but wonderfully minimalist, n'est ce pas? - and Blaise was vaguely surprised at how little she was hampered by the Balenciaga. Pauline could barely manage to perambulate in wet rayon. 

They cleared the foyer without incident, and then they were through the front door onto the smooth, flawless concrete of Alex's circular driveway.

"Corvette," she said, with a knowing smile. "You drive a new Corvette."

"Yes, I do," he answered succinctly. "Is that too uptown for your sensibilities?"

"Not at all. The convertible is very happening, Brady."

"Whatever," he said. "Get in."

Blaise opened the door for her, and she sat down, sweeping her stiff skirt with her in an attempt to fit it all in the car. 

He picked up the trailing edge and wrapped it carefully over her lap.

Once he had the car started he relaxed a little. He lowered the window and the sounds of the party met his ears once more- the laughing, the low buzz of conversation, the jangling, giddy bounce of the opening chords to "The Safety Dance".

Christ on a cracker, Alex- he thought, dimly. Why?

Violetta leaned over the stick shift and put her hand on his arm.

"Drive," she whispered.

She leaned back in the deep leather seat as he peeled out of the drive and headed for the freeway. Her arms were raised above her head, resting, relaxed.

How could she relax? Didn't she know how narrowly he'd escaped?

"Why did you come with me?" he asked, after a moment. 

The streetlights blurred into a running neon line that reflected blue from a hundred unknown sources.

Violetta paused, smiling diminutively.

"Because," she purred, "I want to fuck you all over your sterile yet tastefully decorated apartment."

Blaise stared at the road ahead, feeling himself surge at her words.

His cock was checking in.

He wanted her, he realized- and not just because she was there.

He wanted to-

"Hey Brad? Could you turn on the radio?"

He complied.

"Human Nature," she said with a sigh. "This is a good song. The best songs are always B-sides."

"Yes," he answered, evenly, feeling a rush of surrealism. "Thriller is a great album. Great video. That guy has talent."

"Where are we going?" she asked, abruptly, turning to look at him with one eye. The other was covered by the sweep of her hair, the black side.

"To my place," he said, automatically.

She laughed.

"Of course."

His apartment was near the top- not the penthouse, but just short of it. 

The ride up was excruciating in uncounted tiny ways. 

He kept marking the curve of her shoulder, the swell of her breasts beneath the stylishly worn top. But the presence of the elevator man precluded any pre-emptive strikes on his part, so he stood beside her in tightly wound silence, replying to the elevator man's polite inquiries with vague monosyllables.

Each floor was coded for security and private access, and the elevator opened right into his apartment. It was a nice touch, one of the reasons he'd chosen this building. That and the sauna.

"Thank you," he told the operator, tersely, as the doors closed behind them, and there they were, suddenly, alone.

Violetta was looking around, appraising her surroundings.

Low, sculpted furniture, open space. Immaculate white carpet. Above the black marble fireplace hung a Liechtenstein. Exposed brick on the interior wall, superficial walls all matte white, like a photographer's backdrop.

"The whole floor is mine," Blaise said, sliding his arms beneath hers.

She broke away from him gently and went into the living room, her tulle skirt trailing with a tantalizing rustle.

He didn't follow right away. He watched her, coolly exhilarated.

This was incredible, unthinkable.

And yet he was thinking of it. Thinking in detail.

She was like a strange, exotic bird.

A macaw? he thought, smirking, briefly, as his thoughts touched on Maxwell Cox.

No, he decided, as his thoughts resettled, fully intent upon the girl who now leaned against window, looking down at the street far below.

A bird of paradise…but that was a flower.

Blaise stopped trying to figure it out.

He went toward her, running his fingertips gently down the center of her back.

"It's amazing," she murmured. "This whole wall is a window."

"Floor to ceiling," he whispered. "But don't worry, it's tempered."

It was dark outside, and the lights seemed far away and surreal, as if they were high above the earth.

"It's like fucking Cloud City," he said, softly. "Isn't it?"

Violetta nodded.

"Do you like it?"

"Yes," she said, turning to face him. He admired her eyes at this new, captive vantage. They were pale as opal.

He slowly moved forward, trapping her back against the glass, an arm on either side.

"Do you like this?"

She smiled.

"Don't you?"

"Very much," he said thickly.

"Is that a Brooks Brothers suit?" she asked, dreamily, her black-smudged eyes closing slightly. Her mouth was parted and his loins lurched at the sight of it.

"Yes," he breathed.

She laughed lightly.

"Of course it is. You're a yuppie, aren't you, Andrew…" 

"Blaise," he said firmly, squeezing her cheeks between the fingers of one hand. "My name is Blaise."

"Blaise," she agreed, her eyes glowing in the electric blue half-light.

"I could fuck you like this," he said, touching her on the upper chest where her skin was bared. "Against the glass."

Violetta gazed at him for a moment, then boldly, without taking her eyes from him, pulled up the huge, stiffly billowing skirt.

"Fuck me," she whispered. "Yes."

Blaise couldn't believe her sexual energy. It was inborn to her pores, somehow. She wore Chanel, he noticed, dimly. Coco.

Pauline wore No. 19, which had always seemed like an old lady's fragrance to him. Not like this. It smelled exotic, compelling. It smelled like pussy- or at least as good, as it left him feeling the same.

Ready to fuck. Oh, so ready.

He realized that this Violetta wasn't wearing anything beneath her billowing Balenciaga but a red garter belt and stockings. Her pussy was exposed to him, vulnerable. She favored the landing strip, which was nice- short, sweet.

Who wants to be like fucking Ponce de Leon, after all, thought Blaise absently.

He hooked his fingers beneath the garters themselves and ran them slowly down the length of the straps. As the back of his hands grazed her thighs she moved, reflexively, throwing back her head.

She eyed him, willing him on, silently, a tiny smile playing about her pale lips.

Nice, he thought, trying to maintain his calm. Very nice.

He'd thought he was well jaded. No one had made him this hot in a long time. Not Pauline, not Nancy, not Traci, not Courtlynn, not Francesca, not Cynthia. What was it with this chick?

It isn't her, he thought. It's the taboo aspect of our converse social/sexual association. That's just basic sociology.

God, she was kissing his neck. He closed his eyes.

"Now," she hissed. "I want it now."

He was hard, already, just at the suggestion. 

She was pulling at his zipper, and Blaise looked down at her hands. Her nail polish was mica-red and chipped. 

It turned him on, though he couldn't for the life of him say why. 

For once, he didn't care. He freed his cock with quick inattention, and there it was, Mister Trouble- upthrust and insistent, demanding action. 

"Oh, fuck," she whispered, running her hands over her breasts, caressing them through the weathered fabric. "You're huge. You're fucking huge."

Blaise saw a blur of lights and smelled her- not just her, but her- perfume, hair, pussy- all of it. She wanted him. It was in the air. Thick with her need.

His cock felt hot to the flesh of his palm. He released it and grasped the backs of her thighs with his hands, raising her up, back against the glass, high above the city, until she was right where he wanted her.

He regarded the demure perfection of her shell-pink pussy, glistening like a new kind of diamond. It seemed too precious to assail without first breaking the ice with gentler endeavors- but its owner was of a different opinion, taking his head in her hands, shuddering, moaning, begging.

Blaise went in for the kill.

Violetta spread her thighs, breathing out, and he pushed into her like an earthbound rocket, heat-seeking, unstoppable.

He exhaled in silent relief. Being inside her was sweet and sour, tart with the bliss of stayed fulfillment, but delectable somehow.

She was tight, responsive; she fucked him back, her body reflexive and serpentine in the face of his steady pumping. Her wetness diffused over his thighs like hot mist, slicking him with her essence.

The warm smell of her musk- god, it drove him insane. 

Blaise felt her hands on his biceps, clutching. His skin felt electric, skimming her body with each stroke. 

He looked down at her face, her open mouth. He took his finger and touched her bottom lip, her jaw, lingeringly. He smeared her black eyeshadow downward, deconstructing her, aware of her beauty and surprised at himself.

Blaise rarely surprised himself anymore.

But this was not Pauline. God, no. This was nothing like Pauline.

Her eyes opened, hectically bright in the semi-dark, against the shadowy stain of passion-smudged kohl.

"Fuck me, you bastard. Fuck me like you mean it."

"I do mean it," he murmured, menacingly.

She smiled, salacious.

"Fuck me like I'm your type," she purred.

Blaise drove into her, slower, more forceful. Deliberate.

Her mouth fell open as if she had seen something wonderful. Speechless.

"Am I yours?" He demanded, thickly.

Violetta gave a little shiver at something, something her body was doing.

"Yes," she said.

"Yes, what?"

She let her head fall back, ecstatic, reverent.

He took her by the hair, gentle but firm, as sensation coursed through his loins in bullet-like pulses.

"My name."

Violetta eyed him with a cool solemnity that her body betrayed.

"Your name?" she said, softly, tilting her head.

"Yes, I want to hear you say it-"

"Blaise," she whispered, and her eyes shone, with lust, with amusement- he didn't fucking care. "Your name is Blaise."

"Yes," he said. "It is." 

He stroked her hair as he fucked her, his mouth by her ear. 

"Blaise Benjamin Braidon." He whispered, darkly. "I want to hear it from your lips while I'm inside you."

"Is this some kind of trigger for you? Some fetish?"

"You could call it that. It's my fetish with you."

"Blaise," she said, deliberately. "Benjamin. Braidon."

"Violetta."

"Yes?"

"I'm going to do something else now."

He pulled slowly out of her, and she moaned at the loss of him, sinking down against the glass in half-satiated stasis.

"Lie down," he said.

She stretched out languid beside the window, looking up and outward at the starless sky. Her reflection lay beside her in the glass, hovering over the city streets. 

Blaise pulled off his shirt and moved toward her.

She gazed at his torso, reaching out to touch his stomach as he neared her, almost as if she were entranced. 

Why not, he thought. She's used to fucking art-nouveau shitheads who slather themselves with cream cheese and honey and act as the buffet centerpiece at their own parties- whose primary exercise consists of running to the bathroom to purge.

Too late, it vaguely dawned on Blaise that he was also describing Pauline's most cherished daily regimen.

"Accustomed to wan ennui?" he asked, his lip curling slightly in something that was not quite a smile.

"You aren't the first yuppie I've fucked," she said, but her eyes continued to roam his contours in an endless circuit.

Her eyes held a kind of odd wonder- and for a fleeting moment he wondered if his own eyes had ever looked like that- even as a child- or if they'd always been like the ones he saw in the mirror; flat shields of cool predatory guile- dead, sexy.

Blaise put his mouth on her skin, at the knee, watching her indolently with his silver dollar eyes as he kissed his way down the inside of her thigh. Her knees eased open, outward, even further, like the wings of a butterfly, and he aided this with an affirming hand on the other thigh, as he began to kiss it too, slowly following the curve of her leg to the delta of her loins. 

Her black lashes crushed violently together as she sighed, and then her eyes opened once more, staring upward, past the vaulted ceilings of his apartment. 

Blaise pushed aside his own desire with practiced detachment, and leaned forward, curving his arms under, around her thighs, pulling them apart, crucifying her pussy before him.

Now she was at the mercy of his mouth, and he was pleased by that, the idea of it. He lowered his head and kissed the smooth, shaven skin there, feeling a tremor overtake her at the presence of his lips.

Violetta's eyes swept shut as her head turned to the side, and her fingers rolled and clenched in the lush white carpet, which was more like fur than fiber.

Blaise touched down on her warmth, and she first tensed, then melted against his mouth. He traced meaningless figures over the lips of her pussy with the tip of his tongue, pausing, taunting, before bisecting them, and as he did she moaned- and he ran up the length of her, the slit, with light, priming strokes.

As her body shuddered under the trespasses of his mouth, he let himself delve more fully into her, yet kept a slow, languid rhythm, dragging his tongue caressingly upward, over her clit, time after time. 

She was responding to him now, her hips revolving against his attentions, his studied licking.

Blaise regarded her, his gaze intense, his manner absorbed. If she had opened her eyes at that moment, she might have been afraid of him. 

Violetta shuddered and sobbed, as her fingers found his hair and slid slowly into it, grasping thick handfuls and pulling his face to her.

An appreciative purr rolled from his throat.

She looked both sultry and sullen in the heat of her desire, her arched eyebrows contracted into ardent gull-wings, her lips pushed forward, ever so slightly, into a cloven pout.

At the sight of it Blaise nearly gave in, nearly gave her what she wanted. He let his hand stray, and his fingers crept over her pussy, seeking, pulsing, then pushing, gliding up into her. 

What he wanted, for the barest second, was not crystal clear to him.

For a moment it seemed as if he wanted nothing more than to finish her off, then and there- and he began to push and withdraw his fingers with merciless intent, eating her, wanting to feel her come, knowing she would-

Soon.

He felt her writhe, gasp- and withdrew.

"Not yet," he said, quietly.

Violetta lay, silent, breathing, than gave him an unexpected smile.

"You're surprising," she said.

She rose slowly up to sit before him, the crumpled Balenciaga settling around her lap like a crisp black pool of tumultuous frozen water.

"Am I?" Blaise replied, with a lift of his eyebrows, running a hand smoothly over his forehead.

"Yes." 

She reached out and held his jaw in her hand, still chasing her breath.

Blaise turned his head and bit lightly at her fingers.

Then he took hold of her and pulled her upward, back against the glass once more, causing her to cry out, startled, but oh, her eyes were alive when she looked at him- alive and willing.

Blaise leaned in, bent his head and kissed her, for the first time.

She wrapped her arms around his neck, and he felt her arching into him, pressing his hand to the small of her back.

It was heady like scotch and cigars, kissing her- this strange chick- an experience he would never have imagined, let alone contemplated. Blaise let himself descend deeper into the kiss, winding his hands into her hair at the temples, immersing himself in the heady melange of Coco and Paul Mitchell, of sweet carnality.

It was almost sweet, for a moment. Too sweet.

Tout suite.

His hands found her fashionable jersey, seizing the slashed neck and ripping it open, so that her breasts were revealed, heaving, cradled alluringly by their red demi-bra. A rhinestone pendant lay between them, at the end of a long thin chain that dripped down the front of her chest. It sparkled mockingly in the half-light.

Blaise whirled her around so that she faced the window, pressed up against it, her palms against the glass. He caught a glimpse of her open-mouthed smile as he did.

"How's the view?" he whispered in her ear.

He smoothed her two-toned hair back from her face with his hand, feeling the rise and fall of her respiration against his chest.

A wicked, transient smile grazed his lips and faded.

"You're not afraid of heights, are you?" 

He paused.

"Don't answer that."

Violetta gazed through the glass. The street below was only a dark glimmering suggestion; the sky above was an endless field of night. Lights from the city poured and filtered narrowly through the space between, blue-amber neon just below them and sodium from above.

The buildings loomed like Gotham, and her perspective seemed limitless from every side, as if she could step out onto the night itself and veer, like her eyes, among the jagged monoliths- a high-rise neo-Stonehenge of infinite magnitude.

Robotic dusk, liquid sky, a mechanical sunset horizon. She lay pressed up against the electric night- only this one, invisible barrier between her and the sky.

Glass?

Tangible yes, but hard to believe in.

Easier to believe in was Blaise's hard cock, pressing into her back.

He pushed clouds of skirt up over her hips, pausing to run his hand over her ass, which he more than approved of. The arch of her back rendered it up-thrust and inviting, the straps of her garter skimming either side, accentuating the roundness of it.

Blaise slid his hand around the curve of her waist, down to her pussy, stroking it firmly as he readied his cock, bracing his other hand on her hip.

Then he was inside her, before she expected him, ramming into her from behind, driving her against the glass. She reached upward, forearms resting on the window above her head, spreading her thighs and lifting her ass, wanting him to penetrate her more, and more deeply.

Her gasps were choked, muffled, snarling, breathless- and he fucked her with relentless abandon, burying himself deep with each thrust. 

Violetta felt his cock working savagely inside her, as his fingers slapped and massaged her clit, and she bared her teeth, feeling the ravaging onset of orgasm brewing within her loins.

"What was that noise?" he intoned, his breathing softly jagged. "Are you close?"

She nodded.

"Yes?" he asked. "How close?"

Violetta turned her head to look over her shoulder and he saw her narrowed, smoldering eyes, the barest sheen to her face.

She began to push against him, furious, slamming back onto his cock.

Blaise caught his breath, taken aback by the unbearable rush of pleasure that struck him.

No- he thought, ruthlessly. You first. I insist.

He leaned forward, covering her with his body, pinning her wrists to the glass with his free hand. Her hips rolled and bucked beneath him as he fucked her harder- battering her between his cock and his merciless fingers, working her pussy viciously as he thrust, the muscles of his forearm stiff and corded with exertion. 

Suddenly he felt it- as Violetta threw her head back, over his shoulder, a cry escaping her. He pummeled her, pushing away his climax, hardly able to stand her screams, her moans- her eyes closed tight- crushing silk fans, crushing black butterflies, her pink-painted mouth open in a scream.




1984



Fuck, Blaise thought, blinded by his raging lust. Listen to her- Christ-

Then it hit him.

With a sensuous clench of her pussy, he felt himself coming, his body wracked with shuddering, slamming pleasure that came like white lightning flashing relentless through his loins.

A deep, growling cry tore from his throat, and she moaned, feeling him, feeling it, even as she came- his cock jerking inside her, along with his fevered pounding, fusing their sensations, molten like steel.

Blaise let his head fall forward, inhaling through parted lips. His breath felt hot, heavy. 

Violetta lay sensuously languid between the cold glass and the warm wall of his body, slick with sweat. He ran his hand up her stomach slowly, across her ruined blouse, feeling her breasts through the ripped fabric, his touch idle, lingering, leisurely.

"Did you come?" she asked, after a moment, rolling her head back.

He laughed quietly.

"No, but it was nice just being close."

He felt, rather than saw, her smile.

"So," he said, coolly, "what do you think about me now?"

"You should be dragged off and put to work building houses with President Carter," she said. "All of you."

Blaise's eyebrows skewed into little peaks of vague reaction.

"Carter," he informed her, "is not our President anymore."

"Yes, I know," she drawled. "The proof is in my pussy."

"I think you like it," Blaise murmured against her neck. "I think you want me to prove it again."

Violetta stifled a smile.

"I need a drink," he whispered. "Do you want a glass of wine?"

"I don't like Chardonnay."

"Actually, I drink red."

"Really? How does the pack feel about that?"

"Fine, so long as it it's expensive."

He pushed himself back from the window with a sigh.

The Balenciaga slid slowly back over her hips, falling down around her once more, rumpled and ravished. She made her way to the couch and sat down, as he fastened his zipper and walked to the kitchen.

Blaise glanced at her.

"Your shirt is ruined. Why don't you take it off?"

Violetta watched him indolently from the low black sofa as he filled two balloon glasses.

"It isn't ruined," she said. 

He laughed.

"Don't be silly- that thing is shredded."

She smiled.

"It's deconstructionist."

Blaise smirked.

"Yes, I deconstructed it, all right. Don't be ridiculous. I'll buy you a new one. Leave me your address."

Violetta laughed, leaning back.

"If you're modest, here. Take my shirt."

"Modest…" she seemed amused. She pulled off the ripped garment, held it out for his inspection, then let it fall demonstratively on the floor.

Then she did the same with her bra.

"Yes, I'm so very modest. How very modest of me to spread my legs and let you fuck me up against plate glass."

He admired her breasts, calmly, as he handed her a glass.

"Overdressed the entire time, however."

He took a seat across from her and took a sip from his own glass, eyeing her with casual indulgence.

"You managed well enough."

"You're overdressed as we speak."

"Really?"

Blaise nodded, lifting his eyebrows.

"That skirt is black-tie. The dress code for my bedroom is strictly casual."

"What, like chaps and a penis?"

His lip curled in a vague smile.

"Funny- I heard that was your last still-life."

"Yes," she cooed dryly, widening her eyes. "Chaps and a Penis- a watercolor. I think you'd like it- very 'Ralph Lauren' cum 'Tom of Finland.' "

"What about the skirt?"

"No penis under there."

"Excellent," he drawled. "You have nothing to lose but the skirt itself."

Violetta sighed and finessed open the clasp one-handed, wriggling out of the Balenciaga in a flurry of rustling and undulating that did not require her to stand. It slipped over the edge of the couch onto the floor like an amorphous black Slinky, piling on top of itself.

"Satisfied?" she asked, lifting her wineglass and putting it to her lips.

Blaise shook his head as a slow, dark smile flitted over his face.

"Hardly."

"What time is it?" she asked, glancing outside.

"Almost midnight," he replied, leaning back. "Why? Are you going to turn into a princess?"

"Like your Pauline duPries?" She smiled coolly. "I doubt it."

He raised his eyebrows.

"Oh, you know her."

"We're acquainted, yes…" Violetta shrugged. "I don't think it's possible to know the nature of chronic vacancy…"

"So you do know her."

She smiled, at last.

"Yes."

"Are you cold?" Blaise asked suddenly, regarding her naked form- naked, that was, save for the garter belt. 

Garter belts were not exactly thermal.

"I was much warmer before."

He picked up his Yves St. Laurent shirt and handed it to her.

She put it on, but left it open, her eyes on his.

"That isn't what I meant," she said, slyly.

Blaise sat back, his lips resting against his hand, a thoughtful expression on his face.

"Do you know," he said, facetiously. "I almost thought you meant- me- for a moment…that you were warmer when you were fucking- me. Isn't that ridiculous?"

"Ridiculous," she agreed, her eyes twitching at the ends.

Blaise rose and went to her, pulling the shirt closed and buttoning it, slowly, as she watched his hands.

"I think- you'll be warmer," he intoned, "in my bedroom."

He pointed down the hall.

She paused, as if she would say something, but the phone rang.

"I'll join you in a moment."

Violetta rose, wordlessly and made her way down the hall, giving him a slight smile as she went.

Blaise watched the phone, lighting up with each ring, and poured himself another glass of wine.

Pauline, no doubt. It was nearing Pauline Freak-out Hour.

The machine picked up.

"Blaise? It's Alex. Is...this is fucking stupid, but he's making me ask- is Violetta there?" A pause. "He wouldn't even know her, Maxwell." Alex said, muffled, speaking to someone behind him.

"Listen, Blaise- I know you're there, you're probably just screening- I don't fucking care about that, but I wanted you to know that Marcus took Pauline home tonight." A sigh. "Not that I guess you'd care too much, but- FYI, buddy."

Blaise found himself smiling.

"-Anyway, Maxwell's girlfriend is missing, and he's just having a hissy fit. Thought maybe she left with you- I guess Aubrey saw you talking- wouldn't leave me alone 'til I called you. Kept threatening to- what? Oh, right- immolate himself. So long as he doesn't do it in front of any kids, right, guy?" 

Alex laughed, and Blaise recognized the sound- exhausted but amped. Artificial awareness, the interesting after-effects of some upscale Peruvian flake.

"I tried to tell him you hate that whole scene, hate modern art- that the only Cubist you recognize is Rubik-" Alex giggled. "But he wouldn't believe me, so here I am, making him happy- there! Are you happy? Happy! Happy!"

Violetta was Maxwell Cox's girlfriend?

Blaise turned that revelation over in his mind, examining all it's facets.

"I'm an awesome fucking host, man," moaned Alex, through his machine. "Ask Maxwell. No!" he said, aside. "You can't talk to him. He isn't home." A laugh. "Right, Blaise?"

Right, Alex.

"Ok…she's not there, Max, ok? She went bye-bye. All-gone Violetta. Maybe she went home- did you call her place? I mean- Blaise-" Alex burst out laughing. "Blaise likes 'em square, not cubist…"

The boy was cracking himself up.

"The Obsessionists," he gasped. "are people who wear…Calvin Klein-"

He dissolved into spasmodic titters, then-

"-and the Post-Obsessionists, they're people who think it's p-passe," he shrieked, and through his laughter Blaise heard the phone drop, the ensuing scramble, and he suspected Alex was wrestling with Maxwell Cox for custody of the receiver, judging from garbled cries of "No" and "It's mine".

Then the line went dead and the machine clicked off. The red light began to flash. He had a message.

Blaise gathered his glass from the counter and walked away.

Interesting, he thought.

"What was that?" Violetta asked, incredulous, as he entered.

Blaise looked at her, reclined against the padded headboard of his California king, her legs bent like a pin-up model, swaying them lightly from side to side.

"Your boyfriend," he said, mildly, as her mouth opened slowly and then closed again.

"Really," she said. A nice recovery, he thought.

"Yes."

Blaise unfastened his pants and let them fall, gathered them up and draped them over the armoire.

He sat down on the bed, running his hand over her leg.

"Well, actually- it was Alex, on behalf of Mr. Cox- but he was well-represented in the background."

She seemed amused.

"And what did he want?"

Blaise let his hand drift upwards, over her thigh.

"He thinks I'm fucking you."

His hand slipped over her pussy.

"Oh," breathed Violetta. "But he's wrong."

Blaise put down his wineglass and moved over her, as she opened her legs, eyeing him boldly. He pushed his cock into her, slowly, up to the hilt.

"Not anymore," he said, coolly.

Violetta's eyes laughed, but her mouth was occupied with silent moans as she savored his incremental invasion.

He began to fuck her like he knew she needed it- like he needed it, after that first carnal brawl- slowly, with weight behind it, intent.

Blaise was very patient with second comings. He moved in languid circles, filling her, moving, never far outside her cunt, letting the subtler sensations strike him as they came, reveling in the warm grip of her depths.

His passion-wrecked hair fell in attractively disheveled sections.

Paul Mitchell?

Violetta reached up and touched one of these, pulling it through her fingers. Her other hand roamed recklessly over his body- his ass, his back, his chest- and she looked up at him, her eyes unreadable save for the obvious, that his actions pleased her.

"What is this, anyway?" he asked. "Why did you leave him at the party and come here- with me- why am I doing this to you now?"

"And not Pauline?" she moaned, distracted, but it was a point well made, and Blaise considered it briefly.

Then he was listening, not thinking- relishing the sweet little sounds that escaped her open lips. Violetta whispered something that he didn't catch, but he understood her body's request. He increased his force but not his speed, grinding her down, deep into sweet ruin.

The phone rang beside the bed, but he kept going, as he reached for the receiver, riding her pussy with rhythmic devotion.

Her eyes fluttered and threatened to open, but he smoothed them closed with his palm.

"Shhh, no." He said. "This is nothing."

He took a deep breath and lifted the phone, cradling the receiver between his cheek and shoulder.

"Yes?" he said, sounding tired.

A pause.

"Blaise?"

Marcus.

"Yes- what is it?"

"Oh, hey- glad I caught you." 

Marcus didn't sound at all glad, but Blaise didn't care all too much in the moment. He gazed down at Violetta's face, completely oblivious to anything but her own pleasure, and waited for Marcus to say something relevant, or even meaningful. Christ.

"Wow, what a night…" Marcus was saying, sounding vaguely uptight. "Great party, huh? Alex always puts on the dog, fucking great, huh?"

"Fucking. Great," echoed Blaise, with a lift of his brows, and smiled as Violetta responded to his words, lifting her hips, breathing softly out.

"Yeah, great party- hey, anyway, where'd you get off to so early?" Marcus said, unsuavely bridging the transition between the faux and real subjects.

"I had something urgent come up," he said wryly. 

Marcus was clueless.

"Gotcha. Gotcha." He paused. "Because, well, Pauline was…less than favorable and…since you were gone- I took her back to my place."

A silence, as Blaise leaned over Violetta, kneading her breasts sensuously against his palms. She writhed, cooing, growling.

"Is that ok?" asked Marcus, after a moment. "It's no big deal, I know that- I mean, I wouldn't have bothered you, but Pauline-" he spit out the hated words, trying to sound amiable. "Pauline wanted me to call."

Blaise made a decision.

"Hey, Marcus. Buddy. I need you to help me out." He said, in a low voice.

"Oh…really?" Marcus paused, relieved, then eager. "Yeah. Yeah, definitely, buddy. What do you need?"

"Well- I have a little…situation…on my hands, Marcus. It seems."

He bent forward and flicked his tongue over Violetta's nipple, causing her to buck and clench around him.

"Yes?" Marcus' voice, distant, on the line, drew his attention once more.

"I can't talk to Pauline right now. You know how it is."

"No," said Marcus, sounding irritated. "I don't. Blaise-"

"Listen," Blaise said, and was silent, holding the phone over Violetta, whose eyes swept open, saw him, and closed again. Her moans were growing by the moment. It was a matter of time. It always was, with women.

"What- Blaise, is that- what are you doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing, Marcus?" Blaise said, annoyed. "I'm doing what you've been hoping to do all night."

"I don't know what you mean-" began Marcus in a small voice, but just then Blaise felt Violetta draw up tightly, rippling, her muscles exploding with motion.

"Yes," he whispered, leaning into her, bringing it on with every inch of his concentration. "Yes."

Her head thrashed on the pillows as she burst into climax, her body almost fighting the acute pleasure, struggling to suppress it- cries rose from her lips, purring wails, and Blaise smiled against the receiver, even as he watched her, rapt with her reaction.

Marcus spoke in his ear.

"…Blaise…oh my god. Was that- that was- are you? Oh my god."

"That-" Blaise said, "was fucking, Marcus." 

"You're fucking-" he lowered his voice to a hush, "-you're fucking someone?"

"Yes, and I'm not done yet- so you can see my problem."

"Pauline-"

"Exactly. So, Marcus- what do you say? Can you entertain her for me, buddy?"

Marcus swallowed.

"Yeah, sure- I mean, I won't do anything…"

Blaise laughed.

"Right, Marcus. Of course you won't." He shook his head. "Do you think I care?"

"I don't know…"

"Well, I don't. You can slam her, poke her, do her, hump her, bone her, screw her, pork her, pound her- whatever you like to call it. You can stuff her with crudité, it's all the same to me."

"Blaise?"

"You can fuck her, Marcus. If she wants you, then, by all means, go to town."

A pause.

"You're not serious."

"Serious as a heart attack," said Blaise, coolly.

He heard Pauline then, in the background.

"Blaise? Is that him?" 

Slurring, accusatory- oh, yes, the Sea Breezes had clearly blown all her sheets to the wind.

He heard Marcus' voice then, soft, unintelligible, as he tried to convince her that she didn't want to talk to him, after all.

"What the fuck!" Blaise heard her scream. "What do you mean he went home early? An emergency? I just fucking bet- you prick!" 

She shrieked this last word so that even Violetta heard it and rolled her eyes upward out of the land of post-orgasmic bliss to look suitably curious.

Marcus again, soft, soothing. Blaise wondered if he was holding a chair, just in case. He pictured Marcus in a top hat. No. That was no good.

After a moment he heard her yelling subside and then her voice, subdued but dripping with bitterness.

"Ask him one thing for me, Marcus. There's just one fucking thing I want to know. What color are his eyes, Marcus? Right now? Ask him." 

A silence, then she screamed. 

"Ask him!"

"Did you hear that?" Marcus asked him, bewildered. "Christ, Pauline, what the fuck difference does it make-?"

Blaise felt his own anger rising, but it was a cold anger.

"Marcus," he said, mildly. "Marcus."

"Wait-! Yes?" 

"Tell her they're a vibrant celadon, Marcus. Can you do that?"

"Celadon?"

"Celadon," he said, and hung up the phone before Pauline could scream.

He looked down at Violetta, who still breathed heavily.

His cock was hard, still, inside her. Aching.

He reached for his wineglass.

The darkness outside had descended into sullen midnight. The lights were fewer, the earth more distant.

"Sorry," Blaise said, lightly, after a moment. "I had to take that."

She laughed very softly, and opened her eyes.

"Does she know the code?"

"To my floor? Christ, no." 

He took a drink, smiling wryly.

"Do you think they'll- fuck?" she asked, lifting her eyebrows, emphasizing the last word in a way that made his loins creep toward a low boil.

"Undoubtedly." Blaise shrugged. "And braid each other's hair and talk about boys. Make popcorn. Watch 'Manimal'. Give each other facials. All that shit."

Violetta laughed, again.

"You don't care."

"No," he said, calmly. "I don't." 

She tilted her head.

"Such are the mating habits of the male WASP," she said, sitting up, so that they were face to face. "It's like watching Wild America."

Blaise was silent, his eyes on her face.

With a smooth motion of his hips, he pulled his cock from inside her.

His lips hovered near hers.

"I'm going to get another glass of wine," he said, softly, and he stood up.

He made his way to the kitchen, setting his glass on the black granite countertop and reaching for the bottle.

His cock throbbed petulantly, and he acknowledged it with absent strokes of his free hand. He could feel his pulse.

When he returned to his bedroom, Violetta was standing at the mirror, examining her face, her smeared make-up. Blaise admired her ass coolly, thinking of how he'd fucked her from behind, not twenty minutes ago.

He felt a small chill over his shoulders. All the heat in his body had apparently migrated south, to the tropic of cock.

Kneeling briefly, Blaise switched on the fireplace, which sprung to instant life- or a reasonable facsimile of life, because it was gas, and therefore convenient- but not organic. Not alive.

Real fire was alive, he thought, and his thoughts flickered around the edges as he watched the flames, attuned to their brightness and the burning need in his loins.

Fire crackled, it burned. The gas fire was strangely silent, like watching TV with the sound all the way down. Its ceramic logs were more aesthetic than the real thing- a puritanical pyramid of idealized wood, carefully designed to emulate the perfect tinder, impervious to the hottest flame. It was top of the line. 

Real fires had to be built and fed and tended, so Blaise had not even considered it as an option. A gas fire would thrive in the rarified air of his high-rise apartment. No ashes, no effort- no hassle of wood. It was a self-contained unit, to be used at his pleasure and convenience. 

And it still fulfilled the basic duties of fire- it was warm, there was heat.

Heat, thought Blaise, closing his eyes briefly, in the face of the soundless flames.

Violetta laughed, and he opened them again.

"I look like a fucking Hollywood zombie," she said, tracing the line of her eye makeup, down her cheeks, beneath the line of her eye. She still faced the mirror.

He rose, got to his feet and walked across the room, sitting down in the huge black leather armchair that faced his bed. It was from Domus, sleek and sublime, suspended artfully on a graphite frame. 

Violetta turned, saw him.

"Come here," he said, quietly.

The fire cast shadows over her breasts, her curves, accentuating them, highlighting them, like chrome made flesh, over-realized, like the bold primary strokes of the Liechtenstein.

The bold primal strokes of his cock.

"I should wash my face," she murmured, kneeling down on the carpet before him like a languid house-pet. 

"No," Blaise said, abruptly. "Don't."

His hand reached out to cradle the back of her head, and she inclined it against his hand, smiling slyly.

"Did you want something?" she asked, her hand alighting on his thigh.




1984



Blaise cocked his head, smiling faintly.

"I always want something."

The need in his loins had dulled to a low drone, like underground wires, just beneath the surface- 

Ready to be unearthed. All the warning signs were there.

"You don't really think I would leave it at that, without getting mine."

Violetta slid her arms around his waist.

She kissed his stomach.

Blaise sighed.

His cock ebbed with slow pulses of blood, tingling with renewed arousal.

"I want to suck your cock," Violetta whispered.

He lowered his eyes to look at her.

"Do you?" he said, coolly.

He was somewhat surprised, although he did not betray this. Pauline and Cynthia and Lindley and Ashley and Patricia and Melanie- they would all go down without a fight- but he would never go so far as to say they wanted to. 

Violetta said nothing, deliberately taking him in her hand, as if to prove her point. He lurched to life in her grasp.

Blaise smiled.

"Then suck it," he said, calmly, setting his wineglass aside.

He watched her with indolent eyes as she ran her fingers up the shaft, lightly, causing little tremors. 

Blaise let his eyes trace her lips, already flushed from the brief but ardent abuses of his mouth, flushed from arousal. It gave a deeper undertone to her shell-pink lipstick, the vestiges of which still clung brightly to her lips. He had not kissed her hard, or enough, to vanquish it.

Her mouth parted and he breathed in, ever so slightly, at the sight of her little pink tongue, its sweetly pointed tip.

She descended, her tongue flicking over his cock, outlining it, from head to shaft and back again, circling the head in a taunting swirl.

Both cruel and kind- he liked her approach.

Not unlike his own.

Blaise leaned back, holding her languidly under the cool graces of his sleepless eyes.

Rapt, Violetta leaned forward and took the head of his cock between her lips, pressing the flat of her tongue against the hot, fevered skin.

He caught at his breath. 

Her eyes grazed upward, over his body, until she met his gaze. 

She paused there for a mere instant, before plunging down and taking in the length of his shaft, swathing it in her mouth, and deeper.

Buried softly in her throat, Blaise could only exhale and work his fingers gently against her head, encouraging her.

She smiled diminutively, feeding on his reactions like a latter-day succubus, moaning as his body clutched, watching the revolutions of his breath for clues, determined to unravel his desire.

Blaise was unraveling, there was no doubt about that- shedding his skin like a snake, his strings breaking one by one, ripping open, slowly, like her shirt had- deconstructed.

Was that it?

Yes, that was the word she'd used.

He was beginning to understand it, now.

She had found a rhythm that pleased her- circling the head with her mouth and tongue, then driving down- up, circling, driving down- and he let his head fall back, imprisoned by the circuit of motion, the reliable jolts of sensation that assaulted him with each scalding strike of her mouth.

The flesh of his loins felt hot and liquid like melted wax, dissolving under the intense heat of pleasure- everything, all of it- all but his cock, which struck up, solid as stone from the midst, like an obelisk to channel the sun.

An iron fist in a velvet glove.

Violetta purred around him, around his flesh, indulgent.

He exhaled, gripping the arm of the chair in his hand, creasing the supple leather. 

"I'll devour you," she whispered, slowly releasing his cock. "Do you want it?"

"Are you fucking kidding?" he demanded, his eyes bright and lustrous.

She laughed.

He stroked her jaw, ran his hand back over her head, seizing her hair, gentle but firm.

"Swallow it."

Blaise guided her back to his cock, pushing her down, slow, insistent.

Her mouth slowly covered him, like warm honey, yielding to the force of his hand, his arm- the inevitable re-entry of his cock.

She looked at him, and he saw the smile in her eyes, a bare trace.

Christ, she made him hot.

Violetta was through fucking around.

She began to slam his cock, fiercely, thrusting her mouth down. 

He watched her, breathing through his teeth.

Her hand found his balls and curled around them, stroking, pulling. She had a way of undulating her neck, massaging with her tongue as she sucked him off- that and her hands, all centered on his cock, veered dangerously close to ecstasy.

Blaise liked ecstasy, but on his terms.

This was entirely something else, a territory unknown to his nature.

Violetta was dragging him, slowly, inexorably, toward the brink.

Breathing in, Blaise looked down at her.

Calm settled over him. 

"I'm going to come," he intoned, shuddering, running his hands through her hair, stroking it. "I'd like to come in your mouth. Can I do that?"

Violetta was, of course, unable to answer, absorbed in pleasuring him.

Instead she renewed her onslaught, fiercely working his cock- deeper, faster, closing around him, a velvet Venus flytrap, spurring him towards his release.

It came on a down-stroke- he came, as her mouth descended- and he felt all the heat gather and flare, all the molten sensation in his loins drawn up, into his cock, through it, imploding, exploding, shattering-

Through his cock.

Through his cock, liquid mercury-

Both burning and freezing, shooting through him- shot from the head of his cock in bursts of fluid cannon-fire.

And she- her lips caressing, taking him at that moment, as he shuddered and breathed, feeling himself deconstruct, rupturing against the back of her throat.

Blaise threw back his head. 

"Fucking…Christ…" he hissed, overwhelmed.

He felt her swallowing.

Another twinge. 

Violetta pulled back, as if she meant to give him space, but he recaptured her hands and held them to his chest. 

He gazed at her through half-lidded eyes.

Her hair fell around her face in cataclysmic disarray, very new wave, looking almost orchestrated in its imperfection.

Blaise kissed her, suddenly, hungrily. Violetta opened her lips and he ravaged them, without thinking- it was beyond him at that moment. 

His hands ran down her back, up to her hair, over her arms.

At last he released her, blinking, breathing.

He could only think of one thing.

"Fuck," he said, "you do that to him?"

"Maxwell? Christ, no."

Blaise smiled, vaguely.

"No?" 

He rubbed his thumbs slowly beneath her eyes, smoothing the black circles of her make-up.

"He curls up into the fetal position if I so much as touch him."

Blaise could picture that, and he immediately did, enjoying it immensely.

She sighed, wiping her lip with a stroke of her finger. 

Then she smiled, slowly, as if she were discussing something slightly more or less important than what she ate three weeks ago on Thursday.

"Maxwell. What the fuck ever." 

She shrugged, yawning. 

"We share a nice, big loft on the beach. It's largely an image thing with him- not sex- and for Christ's sake, not love."

"You live with him?"

"On and off. I also have my own place. A roommate, Marina."

She rose slowly and pushed back her hair.

Blaise raised his head and watched her hourglass shape unfurl.

"She's a glass-blower. Schooled in Venice," she added. "The real Venice. Anyway, I'm going to head there tonight, so Max can be alone with his tantrums."

"Immolation." 

"What?"

"Alex said he was threatening self-immolation."

"Oh, yeah," she said, vaguely. "That's a popular one."

Blaise ran his fingers through his hair, and wondered if Paul Mitchell had forsaken him at last.

"Sleep here," he said. 

Violetta paused.

"What about Pauline?"

Blaise laughed, wearily.

"I would be hard pressed to explain exactly how little I give a fuck."

He closed his eyes.

"Stay if you want to stay."

Blaise had never been a contact sleeper; Pauline had even accused him of being "cold", of coveting, and jealously guarding his personal space.

Yet Violetta was something else- wasn't she? 

He'd just fucked her like a wild animal- cliched, but Christ, what else was there to say about it? 

It wasn't so odd, wanting to touch her body, to fall asleep enveloped in the olfactory fusion of sex and sweat and Coco Chanel. Kind of primal, really.

Blaise thought about Maxwell Cox.

About fucking Happening in Green and rainbow macaws.

"Let's have dinner sometime," he said.

Violetta laughed quietly.

"Is that upper-crust semaphore for 'let's fuck'?

He smiled in the dark, drifting.

"With the acceptance of a dinner invitation, the ensuing sex is implicit."

"Aren't you protozoan."

"If by that you mean streamlined, wide-spread and efficient, then, yes."

"Your over-developed cock is less of a mystery, when viewed beside your atrophied heart and withered humanity, Blaise."

"You said my name," he remarked, mildly. He leaned on his elbow.

Violetta's hand was stroking his hair.

"Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Isn't that a gold standard of the pack?" she whispered.

True, all true, thought Blaise, until he was no longer thinking. He couldn't place exactly where he ceased to think and started to sleep, but his sleep was deep and dreamless.

He was awakened by a call from Alex.

"Hey- sorry about that fucking message I left last night."

"No problem." Blaise said, rubbing his hair and sitting up.

"Maxwell was just having kittens. I had to make him shut up, you know?"

"Mmm-hmm."

"He's all tweaked out about some gallery showing on Friday."

Alex paused.

"Anyway, at least you got a laugh out of it."

"Yeah," said Blaise slowly, glancing around the room. "That I did."

Violetta was gone, had left, probably hours ago.

He wanted coffee.

"Wanna meet for breakfast?" asked Alex. "At the club?"

Blaise lifted his eyebrows, trying to rouse his face.

"Yeah. That sounds good. Can we make it an hour?"

Alex's voice was cheerful.

"Sure thing, buddy- I'll see you there."

"Alex?"

"Yes?"

"Did you sleep last night?"

Alex laughed.

"Not that I recall."

"Christ."

"I'll see you in an hour. We'll play racquetball."

"Breakfast."

"Right."

Blaise hung up and climbed out of bed.

He showered, shaved, blow-dried his hair, which was almost blond, but didn't quite make it that far.

What the French called aussi blond.

In France, you didn't get to have anything but "blond" or "brunet", and brunet didn't mean brown, god no- not in France. Brunet was dark brown, and blond was blond.

Everything else was "aussi blond", or- also blond.

However, as usual all bets were off at the designer level.

Yves St. Laurent would doubtless call it fawn.

Pauline would probably call it "serval" or "crème brulee".

Actually, Pauline probably had several choice adjectives for him at this moment. 

He doubted they involved color.

He took his keys from the armoire, and his eyes fell on the bed. It was a jumble of down and hundred dollar throw pillows. 

The pillows were his Waterloo. Even had he wanted to, he couldn't have reassembled them to their original battle formation.

Not that it mattered. The maid would be here at ten, to wrangle the innumerable pillows, take his laundry, change the sheets.

Blaise frowned, and looked closer.

On one side of the bed, the white silk Gautier pillowcase was stained with feathery black smudges. 

"Holy fucking Christ on a catamaran," he sighed.

The pillowcases alone had cost two hundred dollars. 

He picked it up, catching the faint hint of Chanel.

Blaise sighed, pulling the case off the pillow. He eyed it, from one angle, then another. The dry cleaners had gotten out worse.

His finger traced the stains, slowly.

He should leave this pillowcase, with a note for Melinda about dry cleaning.

He wondered about Alex, and whether they were actually having breakfast.

Slowly, Blaise folded the pillowcase into a silken square, absently matching the corners. He put it in the bedside table drawer.

It probably wouldn't come out anyway, he thought.

Running a hand over his hair.

Taking his racquet before he left.