The Erotic Mind-Control Story Archive

Her name is Desiree, and her ample ta-tas look fantastic inside the tight constraints of her lace-up black leather tube top. I can get a pretty good look, too, since said breasts are all of three inches from my eyes. Yes, O Red-Faced Reader, this is one of those books. If you figure you may need to skim the next part, you might as well just toss the whole thing aside instead — it’s not for you, it’s going to focus on exactly what you would expect with that opening and it’s only going to get raunchier from here. Still with me? Great, let’s dive into the hot stuff!

Literally, in this case, as the hot lights and leather let Desiree transmit a fair bit of body heat to me as she straddles my body. No matter how often it happens, it will never stop being thrilling to me — the heart-fluttering excitement I feel when a beautiful woman presses her body against mine for the first time. It’s the moment when I can feel her curves through tight clothes; when her body heat merges with my own; when her smooth flesh eclipses my field of vision and I can make an inventory of the birthmarks, body quirks and slight blemishes that make every woman on our planet so deliciously unique and individual. These are the moments that I live for — everything else is mere filler by comparison.

Desiree intoxicates me. She has straight black hair, very lustrous, swept tight back against her head to a bun in the back, then hanging down from that in a ponytail. It gives her already intense features an even greater sexual aggression, a look of dominant insatiability. Her skin is dusky bronze, and her flawless glamour-girl makeup perfects the already stunning beauty. She has full lips, prominent cheek-bones and the kind of distinctive eyebrows perfect for the sexually-hungry come-hither look. With her darker complexion, I wonder if she’s just really tan or part Asian — I honestly can’t tell.

Her black leather lace-up top has hot pink strings, and it holds her firm, fake breasts tightly up and together to form a mind-obliterating view of cleavage. She’s very fit, toned and slightly muscular, but not to the point where it detracts from her raw natural femininity — the pole-dancer physique. Her midriff is bare, and her navel has a piercing with an eye-catching blue jewel. She has tiny gemstone earrings, but their very unobtrusiveness makes me suspect the tiny sapphires might be real. She’s wearing very tight leather pants — the kind girls only wear when they have a figure as perfect as hers — which conform in meticulous detail to the well-toned curves of her ass, thighs and pussy. She uses men’s aftershave — I can smell it. I like that — still all woman, but signaling a dominant femininity and a masculine sexual appetite.

Harsh rainbow stripes — pink, blue, purple, orange, red, green — reflect off Desiree’s glossy black hair and shiny leather pants. The back wall is faux-marble, festooned with a menagerie of decorative neon shapes: a cocktail glass, a trumpet, palm trees, a guitar, music notes, a boomerang — as well as more abstract triangles, jagged lightning bolts and curved squiggles. The floor is a black and purple checkerboard, the other walls are mirrored and our feet are shrouded in ankle-deep fog pumping out of a nearby smoke machine. The arty, music video décor accentuates and elevates the beauty of the stripper, making her erotic magnetism inspire the awe it rightly should.

Her thigh grinds into my crotch at about the same moment her hands crush my face into her cleavage. My body responds as it naturally would, and I have no shame in that — Desiree is a stripper, an adult performer, dancing for me on stage before a crowd. If I wasn’t erect, it would be a professional insult to her. I’m shameless. She can feel my cock, and that doesn’t embarrass me — it only makes me harder. And she doesn’t seem to mind, either. Well, why should she? If you’re as good at her trade as she is, you almost have to take some pleasure in it. And I’m sure she does, in fact, take more than a merely moderate amount of pleasure in her work, and in bodily contact with attractive men. It’s faint but distinctive — under the aftershave, she smells like sex.

Her nimble hands with the long red press-on nails unhook one of the neon pink laces holding her top in place, and she offers it toward my mouth. I bite down firmly, grabbing the string with my teeth as she seems to want. She leans back slowly, away from me, inch by inch. As she moves, the lace pulls out and her top pops open bit by bit. Now that’s some pro stripper moves right there. And finally, we reach the climactic moment, with her top held together only by one remaining tie. She gives the universal hand signal strippers use to pump up crowds, eliciting cheers from them — and the crowd is only too happy to comply! Once her vanity is sated, she leans back just a little bit more, and the top pops open. She chose it well, as it snaps away for exactly the kind of cinematic reveal moment you’d want in a situation like this.

Her cans are really big, and her boob job isn’t the best — the skin is a bit stretched, the scars are visible and they have that unmoving, fake look. They might not be perfect in the abstract, though, but they are perfect for Desiree. Let me explain a bit. I have known three types of girls with bad fake tits: the desperate, the pragmatic and the wild.

The first have a self-esteem problem, a need to be noticed or to keep up with their peers, or just a competitive nature. I feel sorry for them, and I’d offer them support if I could, but I have no desire to fuck them. Next, there are the pragmatists — the strippers who do the math, and figure out their income will go up by X percent each month after the tit job, so they do it. I can’t fault them for making a solid business decision, honestly. Some of these do enjoy their work and can be fun to be around (and with), but more of them are jaded and vaguely robotic — in their mind, the knockers replace the need to actually engage with their clientele rather than enhance it.

And then, there’s the third type. They get the tits for themselves, not for men. It’s like middle-aged dudes getting a Maserati. Guys, let me tell you a secret — most girls don’t actually go for your sports car. They can’t name the model, and they may not even be able to tell it apart from a Honda. But the Maserati gives you confidence, and the ladies do go for that — it makes you think you’re a tiger on the prowl, and on some level that perception becomes reality. Well, for some girls — strippers and some “civilians” alike — fake tits have the same effect.

The lady’s body image changes. She looks in a mirror and she sees a wildcat staring back at her, and much like the dude with the sports car the perception becomes reality. A switch flips in her head, and suddenly a bold sexual adventurer full of dominant energy and confidence is born — a wild being of insatiable carnal appetites that is God’s gift to men simply because she believes she is God’s gift to men — and revels in their attention rather than disdaining it. And these girls... they are absolute treasures to be coveted and adored and fucked cross-eyed whenever that can be managed. The actual breasts have nothing and everything to do with it.

Three guesses which category Desiree falls into, and the first two don’t count.

She catches the back of the red leather chair I’m sitting on, and grinds up and down, riding me like a cowboy to the throbbing beat of Ratt’s Body Talk — and let me tell you, the music isn’t the only thing throbbing! Her routine is so aggressive there’s a glow, a sheen of sweat on her skin. Her breasts don’t bounce, but they do look unironically nice in profile. Her expression really sells it, though — challenging, aggressive and rawly sexual. I’m really hard now. She’s not changing position to avoid it; in fact she shifts a bit to feel it better. I love that — how into it she clearly is, how not grossed-out and not interested in keeping her distance.

Speaking of not keeping her distance, Desiree pulls herself back close to me, grinding her cans in my face, motorboating me. The nipples are dissonantly soft — she probably doesn’t have any sensation in them. They have a nice texture, though. And I love the warmth of her flesh, pressed against my face; the scent of sweat, aftershave and sex. A less experienced guy would assume she wasn’t aroused, given her nipples, but I know better. I can feel in her body language how much pleasure she takes grinding her breasts into guys’ faces. It makes her feel like she’s a goddess, an unconquerable sexual superhero. And she’s actually trying to get off for real. I can tell by the way she’s grinding her pussy against the side of my torso.

I’m being a good boy. I keep my hands clasped behind my back, exactly like you’re supposed to when a stripper dances for you. Desiree stands up, breathing heavily but not losing the rhythm. She steps up onto the seat of the chair I’m seated in. I shut my legs tightly to give her room. Wow, she’s standing on the seat of the chair I’m sitting in, her stiletto heels on either side of my thighs.

That’s... dangerous, but skilled strippers are known for their sense of balance (among other things). My hands stay clasped behind my back, but I keep alert and ready — if she careens, I want to be able to catch her. And she stands fully upright, with her hands on her hips. Desiree’s tall and leggy, maybe around six one — she’s a good head taller than me. I need to look up to see her groin, but it’s worth looking up for. Those pants are tight enough to form a cameltoe, she’s not wearing underwear and she’s a bit wet after the grinding. Nice!

Then her hands reach out and unbutton the pants. She can’t slide them down fully with her legs spread like this, but she can unbutton them, unzip and slide them down an inch or two, giving me a great closeup of her perfectly trimmed landing strip and the audience a good two inches of ass crack. She looks me direct in the eyes, filled with lust. After several seconds of eye contact, she bends her legs to kneel. Her groin, her unzipped pants, are right in my face. I don’t touch. I don’t lean forward and lick, like many younger guys would try to do in my place. I just take a very deep breath, and exhale... in a very focused way. Yeah, I’m subtle about it, but I’m still blowing directly on her clit. I’m pretty sure she likes it.

She quickly gets down from the chair. I have the feeling my blowing moved up the pacing of her routine. She wants her climax, right away. She strips the leather pants off with... perhaps less ceremony than a stripper should in this kind of show. She’s naked, and her body looks spectacular. I’m a very experienced guy, but this is my first time as an adult stage show volunteer. I’ve heard about the shows at SexCon, and how wild they can get, so I’m not sure what to expect.

I know I’m not getting my dick wet, but I’m not sure what can actually happen outside that. I’m actually dreaming that she’s going to bring her pussy near my face and keep it there long enough for me to literally blow her to a subtle orgasm, here on stage in front of the whole crowd. She seems worked-up enough, and I bet I could do it with just my breath, and that would be crazy-hot to me in terms of “getting things past the censors” and indulging in things you’re not really supposed to do.

But she apparently has a different plan, shocking me by pulling a hot pink strap on out of a gym bag. Is she going to peg me? Honestly, I probably wouldn’t say no. But no, this is going in a different direction. She stands me up and starts putting it on me — well, I knew they allowed insertions at shows like this, and that’s a good way to get sex without sex. She does grope my cock repeatedly as she affixes the device, looking at me and daring me to say something, to complain. No way! Babe, you can touch that as much as you want!

And then she shoves me back into the chair and stands over me, looking down at me. I smile back up at her, radiating cocky confidence. Pun intended. I think she likes that. She kneels down, and the tip of the strap-on brushes her pussy lips. There’s a brief period of perfunctory teasing. I suspect with a different subject it would have gone on longer, and she probably would have put some lube on the strap. But right now it seems like she had no time for games and no need for lube.

She sits on it, and gasps as it plunges into her. She grabs the back of the chair and uses it to grind around on my lap. Her skin is glistening with sweat now, reflecting the neon panorama behind her like a high-class fashion photo. I can judge women very precisely, in sexual terms — this is a performance, but it’s also one hundred percent real, and she’s enjoying it a great deal. Her hands find mine, clasped together behind the chair, and pull them apart. Well, if she invites me... but I’m not being encouraged to grope. Instead, our fingers intertwine and she uses our locked hands for leverage, to pump herself up and down on the rigid plastic shaft. She leans in close to me and whispers to me. “I want to do this for real, sometime.”

I don’t know if that’s a thing she tells all clients, or serious — I’d buy either at this point. I keep up the cocky poise, since she seems to like it. “Then call me,” I whisper back. “My number’s not hard to find.”

She bounces vigorously on top of me, pumping herself up and down, almost doing pull-ups with my hands. Well, as it turns out, you can make even the really rigid fake tits bounce nicely — you just have to get really athletic about it. I stare at her pussy, see her thighs beginning to tremble. And then I decide to go for gold. Maybe it’s arrogant — you decide. In these kind of shows, the man is supposed to be passive, to just do what the woman instructs. Well, I’m not pushing any unexpected sex acts on her or taking uninvited liberties — but I am gonna change up the script a bit.

I’m the kind of guy that can’t resist a little playful testing of limits, seeing what I can get away with. I manage to slip one hand out of her grasp, while the other stays tightly gripped. I slide this hand around her waist — and stand up. Given our positions, that’s an impressive feat of strength — but I carry it off smoothly. She yelps in surprise, but doesn’t exactly protest — our eyes meet, and after a brief shock she seems to appreciate (or at least accept) my daring spontaneity. Her legs clench very tightly around my waist, driving the dildo even deeper.

I walk about the stage proudly, holding Desiree in midair perpendicular to me, with one hand around her waist and one hand clasped to her own — which she’s using to hold herself up. There’s a thing about meeting my gaze, a trick I can pull which I’ll explain in just a bit. Well, I take advantage of the opportunity for several seconds, making her squirm and writhe most pleasingly. And I pound her with the strap-on; her moaning thrills me. I’m rock-hard. It’s an impressive position for a sex show — I look fantastic, and she looks absolutely ravishing. When I feel her thighs start to really shake, I don’t quicken — I just keep up the pace that’s clearly working for her and hold her gaze playfully as she enjoys her orgasm.

I could get off too, if I wanted. There’s more than enough stimulation and eye candy for me to shoot off in my jeans, if I wanted to embrace it. But I have strong sexual self-discipline, and I don’t. I have big plans for this evening, hopes of getting this woman back to my hotel room for a private performance, and I want to save my sexual energy. Besides, I have class. I don’t exactly want to walk off stage with a big cum stain on my outfit, as much as it would tickle Desiree’s ego.

As fate will have it, this will not happen — someone even more sensual and unexpected will show up and change the whole path of my life today, and it will be around two years before I’m face to face with Desiree again. Now, O Annoyed Reader, you may think it sounds conceited or narcissistic of me, to assume that I would have any chance of taking this amazing performer home with me for an intimate evening. But really, it isn’t.

It’s just a realistic view of who I am, what I’m capable of and what I’ve been doing with my life.

My name is Marcelo Ambrose Knight, or MAK for short — and yes, I can say that with a straight face. (It took practice.) I’m a professional pickup artist, stage magician and celebrity bad boy. You, O Inquisitive Reader, are holding my tell-all memoir concerning my involvement in the Sexy Scandal Spectacular and with its beautiful proprietress — the original Naughty Magician herself, Lascivious Livia.

Over the years, our show has certainly lived up to its name — you’ve probably seen our faces splashed on the front page astride a rather bizarre headline more than once. From the Rolling Stewardess Incident to the Great Delaware Slut Eruption, we do tend to attract attention. The destruction of Loventino Café, the BastardCard financial scandal, the LMAO event, our rivalry with New Century Swimstyles, the time we spent as fugitives from the law across the border — I’ll cover all of them as they happen chronologically in my narrative.

And of course, you’ll get the skinny on a number of prominent celebrities like Monique DeMain, Bahiti Salama and Judith Palmer and that ended up suffering certain rather spectacular and peculiar indignities as a result of our show. But try to put all those events out of your mind, O Perplexed Reader, as your read my narrative — each will make more sense once viewed in its actual context. Well, sometimes — if I’m being honest, some of the shit we got entangled in is just surreal, and remains so to this day. But at least you’ll get to hear what happened directly from the horse’s mouth.

Regarding the actual magic, I’m going to give you a generous helping of behind the scenes detail, while leaving some mystery behind many of the tricks and giving only a vague idea of the methods on others. I’ve made a career out of knowing what my audience wants, however, so you can bet that there will be a fair amount of dwelling on the sexy bits, complete with some rather explicit passages I’ll need to sell this book. (No point in dancing around it, right?)

You know, when I first sent this manuscript into my editor, she said she liked the audacity, but thought that some of the explicit sequences “pandered to juvenile male fantasies” and “bordered on the pornographic”. No shit, lady — since this is porn, it better do more than just border on the pornographic! Know then, O Crimson-Faced Reader, that not only is this porn — it’s the kind of awesomely shameless porn that can only get written when an author fully lets go of his inhibitions and pretensions, surrendering any hope that the literary intelligentsia will ever refer to his writings with a term as high-brow as ‘erotica’.

People whose life stories are worth telling often find those stories fit into a genre of fiction. JFK’s biography would make a good a political drama, Audie Murphy’s would be an action film, Geraldo Rivera’s a dark social satire. Well, I share with Emmanuelle Arsan, Caligula, King Solomon, Cleopatra and Debonair’s Howard Hepler the rare and much-coveted distinction of having a biography best served up in the medium of pornography. Cope with it.

As for the pandering, well, I’d love to see a truly accurate survey of the number of people (or men, at least) that consider that a feature as opposed to a bug — but I’m not holding my breath waiting for Ipsos to conduct it. Regardless: I’m a male, I have some pretty typical fantasies (and some decidedly atypical ones), and I came upon the means of living them out for real. You do the math.

So, O Sweaty-Palmed Reader, you should be warned that this memoir will contain extended and explicit descriptions of exceedingly attractive people engaged in shameless recreational sport-fucking to a nearly ludicrous extent. I could tell you it’s a paean to sex with no strings attached, but there’s a bit with ropes and knots and bondage in Chapter Ten that would make that a bald-faced lie — and let’s not forget Chapter Fifteen! We are magicians, so of course there are strings attached — just not the romantic kind.

I once promised myself that if I was ever so indulgent as to write a memoir, I would make sure it was chock full of gratuitous sex, since I know that any potential readership would be far more interested in that than they are in me. It is both ironic and hilarious, then, that I can not keep my word on this. There is no gratuitous sex in this memoir. (No, not even that bit with Diane on the beach in Chapter Nine.) If you really want to know what life with the Sexy Scandal Spectacular was like, you’re going to need to drown in sexual excess and the pursuit of sensual pleasures just like we did. So that means that everything you will read is strictly necessary to the story, and cannot fairly be called gratuitous. It’s still a hell of a lot of fun, though. Bon appétit!

But the show was never about tab A in slot B — it was about capturing a kind of public performance erotica that was in equal measures psychological and sensual — and I’ll try to keep the memoir on that road as well. Like the show itself any work trying to capture its unique energy and zeitgeist must be, above all else, naughty.

I may be a pickup artist, but I also pride myself on being a gentleman — and a gentleman doesn’t kiss and tell. Some things conspicuously aren’t in this memoir. Names are changed, some details omitted and some encounters fictionalized to an extent. Everything described explicitly was either done in public with knowing subjects, or has the permission of the women involved to appear here, or is relatively anonymous. But there’s no shortage of exhibitionistic, vain, bombastic and colorful women involved in this tale, and many were only too happy to receive a more explicit handling from my rough pen. Obviously, several of the amateurs have had their names changed to protect the indecent. (Jeri was actually using the first name Jeri, however — you’ll see why I couldn’t change it when we get to her section!)

If you watch a lot of sensationalistic daytime TV, you might think you know the rough shape my narrative will fall into — a story of decadence, excess and hedonism, and the inevitable downfall and tragedy these vices lead to. Well, I’m rather smugly pleased to tell you, O Moralistic Reader, that this is not a story about consequences. Instead, this is a story about how clever and decent people can have a lot of wild fun and stay one step ahead of that dreaded c-word. Well, most of the time, at least. It’s a story of hotties and hijinks, not tragedy and regret. I promise you, O Escapist Reader — in the end, when all is said and done, this is a story about being bad, having fun and Getting Away With It™.

So... come inside. Imagine you are me, and live through the highs and lows of my life; the drama and adventure, the laughter and the lust, and of course the bountiful bevy of beautiful babes I am blessed enough to call lovers. (Or, for my readers of a more feminine persuasion, learn how I romanced so many beautiful women and pick which ones you would most like to imagine yourselves being...)

You will forgive me, I assume, for narrating past events in the present tense — I want you, O Fortunate Reader, to experience them with vivid immediacy, as if they are happening to you as they happened to me, right now. (How to write a relatable protagonist in one easy step: simply have your protagonist order the reader to relate to him!) So I say: spend a weekend or two living vicariously though me, your erstwhile tour guide to all manner of exotic sensual pleasures and ribald debauchery. Believe me, nothing will make me happier than my account bringing a little joy into your life.

Anyway, back to the beginning. At the start of this story — seven years ago as of publication — I’m not especially famous or successful, and might even fairly be called a bit pathetic. I’m not yet a magician or celebrity, though I am a pickup artist with a carefully maintained bad boy image. I have two published books to my name, and they’ve sold quite lucratively even if they are semi-underground.

I come from an old-money Richmond family, and have access to a moderate stipend from my parents (who definitely do not want to be appearing in a book like this!), but little affection — indeed, after my books garnered a degree of fame and infamy, they all but bribed me not to have any further contact with the family and to never use my real name in my business. (It wasn’t a tremendously loving family to begin with.) As of the publication of this memoir, Marcelo Ambrose Knight is my legal name, but at the start of the story it’s just a pseudonym I publish books under and use when “on the prowl” or giving speeches.

How does one become a pickup artist? Mostly by accident, honestly. I’m currently short, dark and handsome; in junior high I was short, pudgy and awkward — and very eager to figure out ways around those limits in the social pecking order of men. Even by the impressive standards of teenage boys, I was inordinately horny. My grandfather was a bit of a player, and an early role model to me. There were also some... let’s just say peculiar... books and memoirs in our family library I learned things from. I slowly got confidence and charm, and by college I was really good with girls. Being young and horny, I leaned into the mystique hard.

My parents cut me off financially when I was being a postgraduate slacker, telling me I needed to spend more time on my career and less with bar girls. To spite them, I published a book of pickup tips (carefully couched in cheesy comedic banter to make it seem ‘safe’, and thus fit for print) hoping it would net me two months rent to stave off my inevitable descent into soulless yuppiedom. It ended up covering more like two years.

Wealth, prosperity and social standing, people like my parents believe, should come only through respectable, approved channels like law, finance and academia — exactly the channels their social class gatekeep and moderate. Making mad bacon by publishing a book of cheesy tips for macking on girls wasn’t just embarrassing to them; it was an unacceptable loophole in the system they stake their identity on. The expected narrative was that I would struggle on my own, fail, give in and come back to the nest a wiser and more respectable young man. (I’ll let you know if that ever happens — but I wouldn’t hold your breath!)

In a magical twist worthy of a Spielberg film, it turns out there is a nascent secret society of pickup artists originating in the LA area, organized on underground BBSes, who were faintly amazed I had managed to get a semi-mainstream book out about macking. They promoted it wildly by word of mouth — my beleaguered publisher could never quite figure out how it exploded the way it did.

Visiting SexCon is my indulgent, early twenty-ninth birthday present to myself, and my coming thirtieth milestone is not filling me with joy and optimism. Indeed, I could be said to be on the verge of an early midlife crisis. It’s not that I’m a dork or a horndog — I’m both, and comfortable with being both (at least as long as I can stay a sexy dork). But I’m increasingly conscious that I’m a directionless slacker — I’ve done nothing truly significant with my life up to this point beyond perfecting some tricks for getting laid and satisfying girls.

Looks and aesthetics are pretty central to my story, so I should probably give you all a brief description of myself through my own eyes — even if you’ve probably seen my face on posters and ads everywhere by now. As I noted, I’m pretty short at five five. You may never have realized that — celebrities of both genders are, on average, four inches shorter than you think they are — and I’m careful with stage framing to downplay it. Also, not to put too fine a point on it, but in some Scandal Show promo material where I’m side by side with Livia, I’m standing on a box. Showbiz, ladies and gents!

Back in high school, this was a big deal to me, so I worked hard to develop a sense of style and sex appeal that counters it. (Insert stock Napoleon Complex joke here.) I succeeded, becoming some kind of weird-ass sex symbol in spite of the limitations I was born with. That means I’m all inspirational and shit, which is honestly pretty useful for selling books. I hope it doesn’t mean I have to go on Oprah, though. Talk about earning your Man Card only to set it on fire!

So yes, even as the disgraced loser I am at the very beginning, I still think I’m exquisitely handsome and eye-catchingly stylish — wavy blonde hair, smooth-shaven, unafraid to wear eccentric Victorian-influenced fashions in public, piercing blue eyes and a perfectly toned body. In retrospect my hair at this point is very ‘Lestat’, even though Interview won’t be out for another few years — guess I’m ahead of the curve!

I’m slender and graceful with subtle musculature; a gymnast’s figure more than a body-builder’s. I am buff, mind you — I work out fastidiously to keep those defined abs all the chicks go wild over — but not bulky. I don’t have the broad shoulders of a Kurt Russel or Arnold Schwarzenegger to make bulging biceps and thick thighs look powerful instead of just desperate and beefy.

I’d like to have that action-icon machismo look, but my bone structure is what it is and I’ve done pretty well with styles that work with it — if I do say so myself. On the spectrum between lantern-jawed, stubble-bedecked roughneck and baby-faced pretty boy, I guess I’m somewhere in the middle. I’ve got sharp cheekbones and faintly Latin features but a softer jawline than I’d really like, and a really youthful ingenue-face — I got carded at a bar two months back in spite of the fact that I’m turning thirty next year.

It’s not like I chose the pretty-boy look — I’m just experienced enough to know that fashion is about figuring out what looks good on my body and with my bone structure, not hopelessly aspiring to capture the look of my favorite celebrity icon. In their own mind, every guy wants to win girls’ hearts all macho-style like Patrick Swayze or Tom Cruise, but the reality on the ground is that when you’re short sometimes you need to play it like Steve Gutenberg or Corey Haim instead if you want to score the coochie!

I’ve accented my more dominant features, though, by the cosmetic tattooing I’ve had done to darken and sharpen my already-angled eyebrows. Yeah, this means the curtains don’t match the trim, but I find it looks good on my face — given what I’m known for, affected is a good aesthetic for me, and it makes my eyes really expressive. My clothes are always perfectly fitted, and I wear subtle, musky scents most women don’t consciously notice but definitely seem to like regardless. My sex appeal is something I feel I’ve earned by hard work, painful mistakes and constant, creative experimentation, honestly.

I’m a quarter Hispanic — something not as rare in the aristocratic Southern families as you might have been led to believe — and I play up the Latin Lover image perhaps more than I should, all things considered. If I’m being honest, I owe my flawless bronze skin more to careful tanning and meticulous skin-care than genetics.

Yeah, I’m deeply vain — if you haven’t figured that out by now, you might want to have your reading comprehension checked — and I make no apologies for that. I don’t really consider it a vice — I put the same amount of effort into my own appearance that I imagine the women I lust after put into theirs. It’s only fair, right? None of this should surprise you, since my whole meaningful career up to this point is writing books teaching other men how to be attractive to women and build their own self-confidence — I couldn’t sell that if I had a beer gut, now, could I?

I’m going to try to keep the pickup advice out of this memoir as much as possible, but some of it is relevant to the narrative so you should probably know a bit. First of all, you may be seeing me in your mind’s eye as sleazier than I actually am — I can certainly be sleazy, but it’s as much a performance I put on for someone who will appreciate it as anything else. It also serves me as a way of subtly telling girls that I’m a lot of fun in bed but not long-term relationship material without, you know, actually saying that. I’ve always defined pickup artistry as being about getting women to want sex, or heightening an existing want to enhance the experience for both parties.

What I’ve taught certainly does not involve abusive ‘negging’, or exploiting low self-esteem, or getting sex by focusing emotional pressure on girls. I’ve been known to keep a poker face and play hard to get to increase perception of my own value and pump the temperature, mind you, and I do love a good round of push-pull flirting. That’s not the same thing as coercive pressure, though, any more than college wrestling is the same as spousal abuse.

My distaste for the newer, uglier forms of pickup artistry got heated on the above-mentioned underground BBS networks, and led to something of a rift between me and the rest of this oddball underground community. Most wannabe pickup artists do not want ethics, boundaries or philosophy — only instructions and pragmatism. That’s why I haven’t sold any new books recently, and am looking to take my life in a different direction.

I pioneered a few different techniques in my game. The most relevant to the story at hand, however, are confidence tempering, dialogic programming, Aura reading and Eyefucking. The first is just exercises to build up self-confidence, not that different from (and honestly, derived from) the ways of any self-help guru. You likely know my techniques as self-hypnosis, but at this point in my life I wouldn’t call them that. I’m honestly really confident and self-assured, but it’s a state earned by a lot of conscious effort and mental exercises.

Next is dialogic programming, the art of directing conversations and suggesting things in such a way that subjects think the idea is their own. It won’t be tremendously relevant until near the end of our first volume, so I’ll show you how it works in practice at that point.

Aura reading is not New Age gobbledygook — though I did name it that because so many Cali girls and aspiring models seem to be into New Age theories these days. It’s my name for a variant of what mentalists refer to as a Cold Read, but focusing on women’s arousal triggers, exhibitionism and kinkiness. To put it really simply, I’m preternaturally good at picking the Girls Who Do™, or the Girls Who Want To, out of a group though subtle cues and body language. I refer to the process of spotting these girls as the Sieve.

My next contribution is exactly what it sounds like — meeting a woman’s gaze in a way that makes her feel as though the look is a sensual act, from foreplay to outright fucking. In Desiree’s case, it was the spectral sensation of my tongue on her bare flesh. It’s a scam of sorts — at least, it’s strongly assisted by being able to place suggestions about it earlier in the scene, so the subject understands your gaze is pervy and their response should be equally pervy without being creeped out. But it’s also a talent, and you have to master a lot of subtle cues (and find multiple willing subjects who will let you practice it on them) to get as good at it as I’ve gotten.

There is one final trick — the Adolescent Eye — which I’ve written about under a different name but come to understand better over the course of my experience with the show. We’ll talk more about that one later. For now, though, let’s start at the beginning.

I first meet Livia at SexCon Melbourne in November, one of the largest and liveliest of the new adult conventions — at the time in its third year of operation. I’m here as a panel speaker on pickup artistry, but as I’ve explained I’m on the ropes with the secretive little community of pickup artists at present so my talks aren’t exactly selling out. SexCon apparently thinks I’m big enough to warrant an expenses-paid invite, but they seem to be misinformed. It’s soul-crushing, honestly, to give speeches to a half-empty room and see a third of the people there staring back at you with hatred and contempt.

I never show it, of course — I’ve literally spent years training myself to display constant confidence and bravado — but it still has an impact. The commercial plan was to use the SexCon visit to hype my books, and take a temperature reading of the community’s interest for more. Even before I ever see Livia, though, I know in my gut I’m done with the pickup artist community. Not with my craft, or the idea of getting women by being something they want and would enjoy having sex with — but with the sad, malicious little men that seem to dominate the scene more and more every day.

So I blow off my third panel and use the time to take in some sexy live-shows. Everything is so colorful, vibrant and over-the-top — the perfect balm for my bitter mood. When people think of the word libertine, they usually imagine the powdered-wig, effete image of the decadent 17th-century French aristocrat. It brings with it lush and sensual images of elaborate costumes and illicit sex — but it also carries connotations of decay, morbid tragedy, aristocratic exploitation and bloody, tragic duels. There is a new libertine spirit in the modern era, however, and it brings with it a new aesthetic: neon colors, loud power print clothing, big hair and bigger shoulder-pads.

It is a more righteous, unashamed kind of libertine aesthetic, one that lives in a spirit of cheerful, escapist and uninhibited sensuality and airily brushes aside puritanical moral judgement rather than revelling in the dark magnetism of willful immorality. It’s peppy, optimistic and winkingly lewd, and it resonates profoundly with the very fabric of my soul. It’s our time now! We’re here, we’ll mock your sanctimony with a playful smirk and we brought our leopard-print tights and magenta leg-warmers for good measure!

In addition to the strip Desiree did with me on stage, I get to watch a very fetching live adult parody-cover of Kylie Minogue’s Locomotion music video from a second-row seat — the starlets involved manage to capture the dance moves of the recent smash-hit perfectly, but the tight sleeveless tops and rah-rah skirts are made of some sort of translucent, neon-tinted latex more normally seen in a raincoat — it clearly shows their nipples and bushes as they dance! The frilly-haired blonde in front has a fantastic body, and really captures the playfully-fun attitude and tiny cute gestures Minogue brought to the original video. Nice! I probably break the ideal detached-cool strip club etiquette a bit in leading loud applause after the show. I don’t give a shit — performers that put effort in like this deserve respect and kudos, even if it does make me look less above-it-all.

I also get a chance to meet (and flirt with) some well-known adult stars. I’m already friends with one or two, and get a few new numbers (but no actual hookups). I get to shake hands with gorgeous Ginger Lynn, looking resplendently feminine in a poofy-shouldered pink and white silk dress as she greets her fans. I talk to the ever-sultry Erica Boyer, and offer personal congratulations to the lovely libertarian Marilyn Chambers — the sex icon whose successful lawsuits against the San Francisco municipal government after her wrongful arrest at the O’Farrell Theatre have expanded the bounds of adult live performance in the US and sparked off a new wave of libertine sympathy in society that Livia and I will end up riding on to fame and fortune.

It is this swelling wave of sexualized libertarianism that spurred the organization of conventions like the one I’m at now. Sharon Mitchell proves as eloquent a conversationalist, and as erudite, as her reputation foreshadows. Newcomer Sunset Thomas — a gorgeous and classy debutante whose adult career took off just this year, and who deeply enjoys the work — suggests that I would enjoy Livia’s show given what she knows about my tastes. That is enough to pique my curiosity.

So I’m quite horny, frustrated and left with a faint tint of despair on the third day of my four-day SexCon trip when I first see Livia. Not in person, mind you — I run into a nine-foot glossy cardboard standup of her advertising the Sexy Scandal Spectacular, of the same sort as one might see of a superhero in a comic book store.

Livia has a naturally naughty face. Her standup is dressed in the same costume she uses in her routine — a low-cut, black leather bustier, matching glossy platform heels, stockings, a magician’s top hat and a set of cuff-links and bow-tie choker designed to make the outfit resemble a tuxedo despite lacking sleeves and having a deep neckline. She’s really well-endowed, with the kind of body that looks fantastic in a tight one-piece. Her bust is well accented by the exotic purple teardrop-jewel that hangs around her neck in a fancy silver setting. It’s too big to be genuine, of course, unless she is some kind of heiress — but it is cut in such a way as to look like something more than a cheap prop.

There’s a circular onyx medallion at the center of the choker’s bowtie, over the knot, with an odd, angular glyph carved into it. I don’t know this now, but I will later learn that it’s the sigil of the demon Sitri — a being said, in the Lesser Key of Solomon, to grant his summoner the power to compel people to expose their nakedness. (I swear, I am not making this up — it’s a real 17th century occult text, and it really says that!) It’s a very on-the-nose reference, honestly. Her black cufflink buttons are also an occult nod — monogrammed in silver with a symbol called the unicursal hexagram, associated with the infamous magician Aleister Crowley.

She has dusky olive skin and faintly Mediterranean features (I’ll learn soon that her real name is Lily Konapolis, and she’s Greek by birth), very full, plump lips with glossy flesh-tone lipstick and deep brown eyes that convey both a nearly childlike enthusiasm and a deeply adult glint of mischief. Her fingernails are painted a deep shade of purple. Her most spectacular feature is her hair, however — a deep lustrous black, styled in elaborate curls; it surrounds her head like a lion’s mane. The sheer volume of it is impressive, rivaling the big-hair trend-setters of our time — Cher, Farrah Fawcett, Donna Summer and Whitney Houston.

Dangling from a mount on the left hip of her bustier is a very distinctive silver key — the iconic accessory that is the exclusive property of Clubhouse Magazine’s Treats of the Month. She’s clearly proud of that silver key, but she equally clearly doesn’t want it to take the focus away from her amethyst, which is likely why she doesn’t wear it as a necklace like most Treats tend to.

The standup itself is also impressive as a prop. It proclaims her as “Lascivious Livia the Naughty Magician”, the proprietor of a “Sexy Scandal Spectacular”, where the audience will “see things they would never admit they wanted to see,” with “unbelievable illusions”, “titillating scandals” and “absolutely ribald” humor. “Audience participation! Volunteer at your own risk! We dare you! Volunteers, you may lose your dignity and you modesty, but you’ll have a fantastic time and leave with a story to tell!”

It’s incredibly gonzo and over the top, with the quotes above in stylized boxes like a Silver Age comic book cover or an issue of Weird Stories, and Livia’s name in that one old-timey circus typeface that seems to be a universal cultural signifier of a sleazy and bombastic show.

As I examine the cutout more, I come to appreciate the detail. It has a 3D popout effect made with multiple layers of cardboard glued together. The cardboard is well-made but not always exactly cut — I realize that someone had invested what money they had into the standups along with a lot of amateur labor, rather than just ordering them from a specialist print shop and a bored work-for-hire graphic designer through wads of cash. The small part of my mind that isn’t busy horn-dogging notices another small detail — Livia’s glossy black dress shoes match her costume, and would let her actually move with agility on stage in contrast to the more stereotypical stiletto heels a less active performer who’s only going to jiggle a bit for cheers might use.

I decide then and there I really want to see the show. The implication on the poster seems to be that she will pull girls out of the audience and get them to do something scandalous, maybe exposing them... and that pushes a few of my fetish switches. I also think Livia herself is just ravishing, and while I’m not going to say she is at the top of my list of women at SexCon that I want to try my game on just yet, she’s definitely on the list. Everything about the advertising just hooks me with an irresistible magnetism.

Evidently I was spending several minutes ogling the standup, since a SexCon security guard comes up to interrupt my reverie. “You might as well quit drooling over the poster, loser. She’s doing a live show in 7B just down the hall.”

That is... strikingly rude for paid staff, especially since all my other encounters with the SexCon staff had been very cordial — but hearing that the show was already in progress I decided to let it pass. “Thank you for the pointer, Ma’am. I think I’ll do just that.”

I turn to face the guard. She’s a short, incredibly busty woman with platinum blonde hair tightly tied back and mirrored aviators. She’s got a nice head of hair despite it being bound-up — it frills out in the back into a kind of curly rear waterfall. She’s superficially dressed the same way as all the other SexCon security staff — a white, short-sleeved shirt with “STAFF” emblazoned on it in block letters and black slacks with a utility belt, walkie-talkie and branded black cap — but her attire seems a bit more provocative than most.

It’s really tight, like it’s two sizes too small, and she very clearly isn’t wearing a bra. And I take the few brief glances I can to appreciate that, because I don’t want her to make a scene about being ogled. Her shirt is cotton, and I’m not sure but I could swear it seems a bit thinner than that of any of the other staff members. I can’t see her eyes through the mirrorshades, obviously, but her face holds a sour and sardonic look — and I think that’s a shame. Even this early I realize on some level that this woman could be not only personable but cute and adorable. But she sure isn’t right now.

The guard follows me a bit too closely as I make my way to 7B. “Are you concerned I’m going to steal something?” I ask, trying to be self-deprecating.

Her laugh is short and bark-like. “More like wack off on the promo material.”

I don’t respond, so she continues. “Washed up old tart bringing amateur magic tricks to a modern sex show, can you imagine? Frankly it’s one of the few things I’ve seen here I can say is truly tasteless.”

I don’t want a problem with SexCon security — I have a professional interest here at this point, remember — but I am also actively annoyed at this point. “I can see the effort she’s put into the show just from the signs, and I suspect that ‘tasteless’ was exactly the impression she wanted to convey,” I reply. “And honestly I think she’s gorgeous... although I can imagine a reason or two she might envy you as well.”

I can’t see the guard’s eyes through her mirrored aviators, but somehow I still know she just rolled them. “Pervert. It’s always the shorties, isn’t it? God damn, I hate this job.”

Ouch! That stings, babe. I mean, it’d probably sting more back before I was subsisting on a steady diet of hot and cold running pussy, but it still stings.

I’m honestly a bit baffled. I don’t riff on women’s looks unless they are clearly trying to attract attention. While SexCon has a lot of sexy staff, I doubt that braless cotton shirts a size too small and glued-on slacks are company-mandated attire. She’s dressed similarly to the other security staff that I’ve seen, but clearly made her uniform a step or two more provocative — which makes her bitter response to my flirting all the more surprising.

I am a connoisseur of breasts. They fascinate me. They fascinate most men, honestly, but I’ve probably put more introspective thought into it than most guys. Not to boast, but I’ve probably also got my hands on more pairs than the average guy as well. Back in my teenage years, we always used to talk about A, B, C and D cups on the playground. Like most adolescent boys, we didn’t have a fucking clue how women’s measurements really work, and usually had the cup sizes wrong to boot.

Yes, I do know now that it all depends on build — a 34DD can look quite understated on a heftier lady, and a 30C can look magnificently lewd on a sufficiently lithe and slender frame. Today, I know a great deal more about the technical details of feminine measurements — I’ve bought lingerie with, and for, women several times — but it really hasn’t impacted the mental categories I forged in my adolescence. So forget all that — it’s not what I’m talking about.

I still mentally size up chests when I look at them. I make no apology for that. Call me a chauvinist pig if you want, and I will proceed to laugh and fail to give a fuck. I adore feminine beauty in all its varieties, and I like to understand how it’s constructed. I also work out, constantly, and I invite women to adore my body in exactly the way I adore theirs. Wouldn’t the world be a better place, if everyone just got over their pretensions and admitted being superficial can be a lot of fun?

Some women, including some very appealing women with fantastic, lithe bodies and deliciously responsive nips, are just flat. Often, that even works for their overall look, and I’d hate to see them change it. Above that, there’s the itty bitty titties, the ones most men think of as A-cups. I think of them as the ones that don’t hang at all — the top looks the same as the bottom, like a gentle hill.

Then you’ve got the dainty or petite breasts, the B-cups. They’ve got a defined underside, unlike the smoothed-out itty-bitties, and they stick out — but usually only by an inch or so; they’re still on the small side of a spectrum. I’ve heard them described as being French model breasts, since they seem to be the French ideal — but a lot of Hollywood’s cute, girlish icons — Phoebe Cates, Molly Ringwald, Kylie Minogue — have them too.

Above this, there’s the “nice handful,” so called because a man can hold them in his hands quite nicely from the bottom. Trust me; it’s fun. It’s the smallest a girl can be and still be called well-endowed. We called these C-cups. It’s the most common cup size for a Debonair Playgirl, as well as being what everyone’s favorite porn star who isn’t advertised specifically as being busty has, as well as most of the cute topless extras in your favorite B-movie.

The D-cup is probably everyone’s favorite these days — too big to fit your hands around and worthy of terms like stacked. It’s also the most common cup size of a Clubhouse centerfold (them being a little more permissive toward the enhanced girls than Debonair). And then there’s the Double D’s (or E-cups across the pond) — the largest breasts that normal, everyday fit women (excluding obese ones, who obviously get larger) have, so vividly imprinted onto adolescent male imaginations by women like Pamela Anderson, Christy Canyon and Lascivious Livia.

There are girls bigger than this, and I associate them with British big boob magazines and Russ Meyer films — Uschi Digard, Candy Samples, Dolly Parton. Let’s not worry about cup sizes and just call these what they are: enormous or jumbo-scale boobies. This is where our dour security guard falls, and she’s dressed so people will realize it. As often as not, these come off as grotesque rather than erotic to me — I’m not a big fan of the Scores aesthetic. But the guard, at least, is not too over the top — she looks like she could in theory have been born with what she’s flaunting. I can grudgingly admit they look good on her — she’s less Tracy Topps or Busty Dusty and more Kitten Natividad or Uschi Digard.

I like to categorize, and I like big breasts — but there are girls that I’m fantastically attracted to from every spot in this spectrum. Honestly, it’s more about one of the most notable sexual qualities a lady can have, and how it makes her different from her peers in men’s eyes — not so much just “bigger is better,” but “variety is the spice of life”. In this case, though, I just find it oddly tragic that such an exceptional pair is attached to such a bitter woman.

Apparently nothing positive will come of interacting with the guard, so I ignore her. Livia’s show isn’t on a private stage, but a partially-covered booth in a wide-open auditorium like those seen at any expo. It’s brightly lit, with rows of folding chairs. There are two cameras mounted on scaffolding and pointed at the stage — not the expected camcorders of an amateur production, but twin-reel Mitchell movie cameras. Yikes! It looks like she is set up for an audience of over fifty but has only pulled twenty. Given my recent panel experience, this makes me feel an immediate spike of sympathy for Lascivious Livia the Naughty Magician before I even meet her.

I pick a seat in the second row and sit down to watch the show, getting my first look at Livia in person. The guard sits down next to me without any invitation. Livia is in the middle of the stock blue routine where a magician pulls a string of multi-colored handkerchiefs out of her panties. The routine seems to be designed to allow her to bend over as much as possible, giving the audience a good look down her cleavage. She has an impressive pair of double D’s, though not quite as big as the sour guard’s. Seeing her in person, I think she looks absolutely ravishing, and perfectly accurate to the standup.

“Betcha that’s an improv routine,” the guard chuckles, loudly enough to be widely overheard. “She just forgot those in there in her last show, and only now noticed the tuna-stink.”

Livia goes through more standard tricks. I watch her. It’s fun. I find her to be genuinely sexy, and to have a way of making the classic tricks seem naughty without making the audience uncomfortable. The guard, meanwhile, circulates through the crowd, asking to see people’s handstamps, making rude comments and generally shitting on the show. I can see just from the body language of the audience that everyone else is as fed up with her as I am. She has the bully-cop vibe, just looking to pick a fight.

At the same time, I have to admit my id finds her hot. She’s dressed provocatively, and does the bitchy authority figure role well with just the right faint whiff of repressed sexual energy — a real Sergeant Callahan vibe. She’s believable enough, as well, that I don’t suspect anything is off yet. I take a mental snapshot of her for later, deciding that I will cast her in a humiliating, perversely sexualized comeuppance-fantasy in the secret recesses of my mind later tonight.

After Livia finishes her first set, which she apparently calls a “Decan” for some reason, she announces a ten-minute intermission and saunters off into an improvised backstage area with a fabric barrier to fix makeup and prep her next routine. The guard takes the opportunity to return unwanted to my side.

“Curb your expectations, dude,” she says to an older guest on her other side. “I bet those things dangle like hammocks when she takes off the push-up bra.”

The older watcher shrugs. “I dunno. I think she’s pretty nice.”

Livia flounces out of her makeup tent with a grandeur and showmanship that transcends her cheap surroundings. “The second Decan of the Sexy Scandal Spectacular begins now, and I’m happy to tell all of you that we’ve come to my favorite part of the show: the audience participation segment!”

Livia does not, incidentally, make use of cocaine — despite all the rumors you may have heard to the contrary. She has just carefully developed a persona to the extent that she now basically lives it, and it’s the kind of high-Gigawatt, hyper-enthusiastic, over the top persona that tends to make people think she’s closely acquainted with certain white powders. But my understanding is that it’s all rooted in energy mantras and self-hypnosis. Well, that and her omnipresent Diet Coke — caffeine is the one drug she’s willing to indulge.

The crowd perks up at her announcement. This is SexCon, after all, and while watching a sexy magician was fun I suspect most people in the crowd — myself included — are hoping for something a bit more lascivious from the woman with said word in her stage-name.

“Now,” Livia says, “this is a cheeky show, and volunteers need to be aware of that. We don’t make our scandals by playing it safe! So, if you want to volunteer, be aware that you’ll probably lose your dignity, and may lose your modesty — and there’s an outside chance of lost virginity, too. But I promise you this — you’ll have the time of your life, and I’ll leave you with one hell of a story to tell at your next party!”

When she throws up her hands, the crowd cheers. There seems to be a real energy in the air — even in less than ideal circumstances, the lady knows how to pump up a crowd. There are a few cute women, probably strippers or other trade-girls, in the audience. One or two seem on the edge of volunteering — which, given Livia’s disclaimer, surprises me. “Do I have any volunteers? C’mon, folks, live a little! Take a walk on the wild side.”

Livia’s eyes settle on me decisively. I wonder if she’s attracted — I am probably the most attractive male in the audience, excluding one possible competitor in a bodybuilder type at the back. I wait to see if any of the women will volunteer; despite the apparent temptation, none are doing so. I quirk an eyebrow at her the next time her gaze settles on me. She gives me an encouraging look, so I raise my hand. “I’m sure a pretty girl would make for a better show,” I say, “but if you’ll settle for me I’ll happily volunteer.”

I am entirely aware that she might take me up on stage and humiliate me in some bizarre and creative way. I don’t mind this in the slightest. Pro tip from a pickup artist, guys: women find attractive men being humiliated in fun, comedic and harmless ways just as appealing as men find women in similar situations. Unexpected vulnerability is a kind of sexy that crosses all lines of culture, gender and orientation. Many are also interested in comforting humiliated or hurt men, to the point that female erotica writers coined a whole genre for this — “hurt/comfort” fiction. This semi-erotic nurturing impulse can even bypass many ladies’ natural preferences for taller men. There are certainly a few women in the audience who I would be quite happy to receive some intimate succor from later tonight!

I will also get to interact directly with Livia during her show and maybe flirt a bit or catch her interest — also a situation with definite appeal, though I make a promise to myself I won’t derail anything she’s doing with my flirting, as I’m already sympathetic to how much of a hassle that one guard must be to her. If I end up losing some clothes in the show, well... when you spend as much time in the gym as I do, you quickly learn that any social context that lets you lose some clothing without appearing perverted is a great opportunity to draw pussy.

“Get your tight arse up here, Captain Beefcake!” Livia shouts. “I don’t know what the crowd wants, but you’re at the top of my personal list of dream volunteers!” The crowd cheers at that, and one lady wolf-whistles.

As I stand up to get up on stage, the guard beside me leans over to me and whispers tauntingly in my ear. “Pussy.”

And that, I will admit, pisses me off immensely. I immediately clench my fists, and likely my whole body. It is part of the mentality of the newer generation of pickup artists that I loathe, and whose loathing of me is an existential threat to my current career — that a man has to denigrate a woman to get her to want him. ‘To make her want you, devalue her; demand everything and give nothing.’ It represents an attitude toward sex, seduction and pleasing one’s partners that I find anathematic. But engaging with the guard right now would mess up my chances with both Livia and any potential pickups in the crowd, so I swallow my anger and make my way up to the stage.

Livia up close is intoxicating to me. Her smart, mischievous eyes are both playful and challenging, she has a brazen sensuality to her movements, her neck-jewel seems to glimmer with an inner light and her costume is outrageously sexy. She’s got a good three inches on me. I actually really like taller girls — the fact they they literally look down on me makes the psychological conquest of seduction all the more challenging, and its fruits in the unexpected inversion of power dynamics all the more rewarding. It’s Livia’s charisma as much as her height, though, that makes her seem larger than life to me. “Nice ta meetcha, handsome! What’s your name?”

“Marcelo,” I reply. “Marcelo Ambrose Knight.”

“Lovely name,” she says, offering her hand. “You oughtta trademark it.”

“I have,” I say truthfully. Nothing too strange about that at SexCon. The crowd laughs softly.

“Clever laddie,” she says. She offers me a hand up on stage. Instead of accepting the aid, I vault up onto the stage smoothly with only my lower body — a bit of exertion, but I work out — then take the proffered hand and kiss the back. Showing off never hurts! Yeah, it’s a cornball move — but I read her as having a sense of humor. “Corny but sweet,” she says, laughing. “I give it a seven out of ten. Keep practicing!”

That’s actually the intended response.

Getting a close look at her hands, I notice her fingernails are short in spite of the glossy purple nail polish — and this excites me. Livia’s a total glamour girl, but most such ladies either grow their nails long or use press-ons. Livia does neither. That might aid with agile stage magic legerdemain, but I can think of other reasons for it too. I’ve learned through experience that a very glam, made-up lady with short fingernails is one part of a recipe for a very fun evening.

It’s as if she’s saying to other girls: yeah, isn’t my handcare just to die for? They’re so shiny and bright — but they’re short too, so they’ll still feel nice and comfy when I slip them into your wet pussy! It could be for self-pleasure, of course — it’s never certain. Even then, though, it speaks of a devotion to enjoying the sensations of the sex act as opposed to just being sexy and getting attention — a pleaser rather than just a teaser, and a woman with a sharply self-articulated sexuality. With Livia, I suspect both — I look at her, and I don’t think I’m seeing a lady that needs to fly solo all that often, but is enthusiastic about savoring the occasion when she does so.

Livia’s patter continues, oblivious to my speculation. “All righty, lads and lasses. I need to say what a great respect I have for the many magicians who have come before me and their work in the trade. I think the classics are critically important to any magician, and there are certain tricks that should not be left out of any performer’s repertoire out of respect for the traditions. And with that said, let’s pull a rabbit out of a hat!”

She says that like she expects the audience to cheer, but no one does. Actually, in retrospect, it’s probably an intentional social pratfall on her part to set up the rest of the routine. After a second or two of silence, the guard shouts “Hack!”, very poorly disguising it as a cough.

“Okay, Marcelo, what I need you to do is stand opposite me so we’re facing each other two arms-widths apart and look directly into my eyes.”

I stand exactly as she says. This would be a nearly perfect setup for my patented Eyefucking play, but I find I actually like this woman despite having met her only briefly — I don’t want to distract her and mess up her routine. I give her a very little bit, and she seems responsive to it, in the hopes it will improve my chances of getting her number after the show. Her own gaze, with its subtle but vast implications of scandalous mischief, is also captivating to me in return.

But she doesn’t lose her pacing. She takes off her top hat and holds it in front of her at arms length, directly level with her ample chest and with the open bottom facing me. But the hat isn’t open — it has little silk curtains two inches inside of its hollow area, preventing the rest of the interior from being seen. (I’ll say right now, I’m not revealing the exact method by which Livia does her hat tricks, and am in fact leaving out a few details that might expose it, but in general terms it involves a visual illusion and people have to be standing in a pretty exact way for it to work. Still, it’s a really nice trick overall — I will learn how it works much later, and it’s quite creative.) “Now, if you would, reach into my hat with your left hand and pull out the rabbit.”

I reach into the hat gently, in case there is in fact a live animal in there. I can’t see my hand when it goes past the curtain, but I eventually touch the felt back of the hat. No rabbit in there. I feel around a bit until my hands settle on the object in the bottom of the hat. Touching it for a second, I suss out what it is. I take hold of it and withdraw it from the hat.

“Is this what you wanted me to get?” I ask, holding up a Trojan branded, ribbed, blueberry-flavored condom still in its wrapper to show the crowd.

“Oi! Give me that,” Livia hisses, blushing. She has quite a convincing flush for something that was obviously a rehearsed part of her routine, and looks painfully cute when embarrassed. She snatches the condom out of my hand and stuffs it down her cleavage, causing an appealing buckling of the ample flesh. “I need that for later tonight.”

That definitely gets a peal of laughter and cheers from the audience (and attracts some more people to see what the buzz was about — though I only notice that later, when viewing recordings.) The condom down the top is also an obvious magician’s misdirection move, keeping the audience’s gaze away from what Livia is doing with the hat in her other hand at the same time — but in the moment, it works on me as completely as it did on everyone else.

“Now,” she says, “let’s try this one more time. Reach into my hat and pull out a rabbit.”

She again holds out the hat — a little closer to her body this time, not that I notice that at the time — and I again reach into it. I still can’t feel the rabbit, but this time the felt backing isn’t where I expected it to be; there was just empty air. “You’ve got to go in deeper,” she tells me in a husky voice, relishing the obvious innuendo. “You can do that, can’t you?”

I reach in deeper until I touch something. Now, I’ve touched a lot of women’s bodies in my life, so I realize pretty quickly that what I have my hand on is the supple breast of a woman held tightly constrained by a glossy leather bustier. I meet her gaze, turn up the Eyefucking a bit and take a moment to feel around, squeeze and enjoy. Her mysterious, composed smile and cockily quirked eyebrow suggest she had no especial problem with this. I wonder for a second if the audience can see my hand groping her and this is all a prank at my expense — but I don’t break eye contact with her to check. (I’ve got a fantastic poker face.) Listening, however, suggests that the audience is not in on the joke, but instead sees a visual illusion with my hand disappearing into the hat.

“Try to get a firm grip on it, but be careful not to hurt it,” she suggests. I very much enjoy using her suggestion as an excuse to squeeze and fondle a bit more. If I press on too long, however, I know the naughtiness will curdle into crassness and annoy her, so I force myself to withdraw my hand.

“I wasn’t able to get it out,” I say. “It’s a tight fit,” I add for innuendo’s sake, “and it grips its treasures firmly.”

“Bugger all,” she replies, pacing around shaking the hat in a theatrical manner and smacking the top as if to dislodge something stuck. This time I do catch on that it is a misdirection, although I still can’t figure out what she actually did. “Folks, a bit of patience please. We’re going to try this one more time, and we’re going to pull a rabbit out of a hat if it kills us.”

Again she holds out the hat. For the third time I reach into it. This time, though, I feel something hard and plastic with prongs and an odd, rubbery texture. I grip it easily and slowly pull it out. The crowd cheers, and I’m forced to give Livia credit for a solid pun and good comedic timing. I hold up the Rabbit-brand vibrator for the audience to see. Inwardly, I am also quick to substantially up-rate Livia as a magician: the vibrator is an extra large size, a rigid object with a length greater than any of the dimensions of the hat. Nice trick.

“That’s yours to keep,” Livia explains playfully. “You can make it a gift for your girlfriend — although I understand it can have some uses with a male body, too.”

Thank you, Ma’am, for the wonderful opening. I turn to the crowd, which is already laughing at her jibe, and wave the vibrator. “Anyone want to be my girlfriend for the evening?”

A cheesy line, sure, but a pickup artist knows there are times when cheesy lines work. I catch a few interested looks from women in the crowd. I also notice the security guard flash me her middle finger in a disinterested, contemptuous way.

Livia does another, less memorable routine with me after that, a simple permutation of the busker’s three-cup game using an “anal bead” that looks like a steel ball bearing in place of the coin. She shifts the cups around and gets me to bet my shirt to her bustier on where the bead is. Of course, I guess incorrectly — there likely is no correct answer — and strip off my Issey Miyake polo shirt with a sheepish shrug.

This leaves me in just a conspicuously tight pair of acid-washed Jordache jeans, a stylish (but, being honest, knock-off) Hublot Classic Original watch and a small Triskelion amulet on a long, thin gold necklace. (Men, always wear something under your shirt if you think you might get shirtless — it’s the difference between being generically sexy and being memorably sexy, and I shouldn’t need to explain which of those is more likely to get you laid! Make sure you have some amusing or vaguely sentimental stories prepared for each of your accessories, too. Consumerism is fun!)

The men in the crowd boo and jeer at my failure to strip Livia, but the women hoot and holler in delight — especially when I bend over slightly. More importantly, Livia’s gaze traces over my torso lecherously. I do love a woman with an overt sexuality, who adores the act for its own sake. Between this and the fingernails, I strongly suspect Livia fits in that category.

She runs the busker-game again, with the condition that I have to slap my hand on the bead within a second of her pulling away my cup. I guess rightly this time — again, likely by the design of the routine — and am able to slap the bead.

When I do so, it bursts — it was a bath lotion bead or somesuch painted silver — and inside it is some fluid that stinks like feces. (A novelty prank item known as extra-strength fart spray, she will confide in me later, injected with a hypodermic syringe with gum arabic to seal the entry point. I’m surprised to learn such a thing as fart spray even exists.) I’ll admit to giving exactly the comedy reaction she no doubt wants — raising my sticky hand to my face in surprise, then recoiling in shocked disgust at the strong scent. Her punchline is that they must have been used anal beads, and the audience gets a good laugh. I laugh with them, after a moment of shock.

“Go wash your hands,” she says with a playful smirk, then turns back to the crowd. “I’ll start the third Decan in fifteen minutes, and if our dreamboat is back by then I’d love to involve him in that one as well.”

She smacks my ass on my way out — definitely a promising sign!

Once away from the show, I run, not walk, to the nearest bathroom facilities on the SexCon Melbourne grounds — responding to feminine hoots and wolf-whistles with flirty, cheerful hand-waves along the way — and vigorously wash my hand to get rid of the stink. It doesn’t go entirely, but I remember a trick for this kind of thing, score a shot of vodka from a passing shot girl in the lounge and scrub my hand more vigorously with the alcohol to clear away the scent.

Checking the time, I take a few seconds to fix my hair and try to look a bit more presentable. My haste has left me sweating a bit, but I’m still shirtless and figure that with confidence I can pull off a slight bit of sweat as ruggedly sexy rather than gross — I’ve done that before several times, and it works well with most ladies.

I make my way back to 7B, making it just in time — it surprises me how much I want to be included in the climax of Livia’s show. I’m careful, though, to stroll casually rather than run when I get near Livia. I always strive to appear aloof, not desperate. Livia basically promised more of me to her audience, after all. I doubt she wants to renege if I’m a minute late. I’ve got the leverage. She turned on a fan at the back of her stage to clear out the scent, and as a result her curly hair is billowing slightly in the breeze. It makes her even more breath-taking.

“Mister Knight! Glad you could make it back. My next trick involves some kinky hypnosis. Nothing too extreme, but it usually gets a big laugh. Would you be willing to let me hypnotize you?”

I actually think about this. Hypnosis gets discussed at times in the pickup artist community, and the creepier guys desperately wish it worked like legal Rohypnol. It doesn’t, though — it’s a well-established fact that a hypnotist can’t make you do anything you’re really averse to doing (but a good one can put you in a scenario that removes your inhibitions or makes you humiliate yourself). Another thing comedy hypnotists often do is make their targets have orgasms on command — that’s something I don’t really want to do right now, because I’ve been saving up my sexual energy since I got to SexCon in the hopes of finangling a dream hookup with an adult star. But I like Livia, I’m turned on, and I like the idea of doing something prurient under her guidance. So I tell her I’m game.

She sets out two chairs on the stage facing each other and takes the simulation amethyst from around her neck. She guides me to sit in one of the chairs. “Now I can do this sitting opposite you over there,” she says, “but intimacy helps me guide you into the trance state, and I’ve been told it makes the process more fun for the subject as well. Would you be comfortable with me sitting in your lap?”

“Oh, hell yeah,” I say. A bit lecherous, and lechery turns off a lot of girls — but it can also be useful to figure out which girls you really want to go home with; the really fun ones often respond positively.

Livia walks up to me and hands me a pair of sleek headphones, telling me to put them on; I do so. She kneels down, spreading her legs, and sits in my lap facing me. Being a tall lady and crouching rather than fully sitting, her ample breasts are all of three inches from my face. I get a stiffie, but context being what it is I have no especial shame or embarrassment about that. She swings the purple crystal back and forth, instructing me to follow it with my eyes. After a minute she says, “Yes, yes, I know my breasts are just gloriously perfect and very distracting; I’m quite proud of that, actually. But please try to focus on the actual crystal.”

I truly had been, but I think that’s just pre-rehearsed raunchy comedienne patter. The crystal is intriguing, and is actually really effective at catching and trapping the eye, and fascinating the mind. Light seems to flow and pulse within it hypnotically. (Later, I will learn that it’s an imitation amethyst with a hollow drilled in the center by a skilled gemcutter and filled with a light-diffracting colloid, along with a light-emitting diode in the gold mount that varies its light level in response to a concealed hand-control in the chain.)

“Focus on my crystal. Try to study the play of light within it as it swings back and forth, back and forth. Enjoy the rhythm. Let it soothe your mind. Surrender to it, and you will find your surrender brings you a new and novel experience of exactly the sort I know men like you so crave. Back and forth, back and forth. It can’t do anything to you unless you let it in, so open your mind and just surrender to it. You can already sense how good it will feel, to surrender. Back and forth, back and forth. Just relax. You will find the relaxation feels so good, in so many senses. You slowly realize don’t have to be dominant here and now. You find yourself realizing no one expects that. It’s okay to just let go. I’m inside your mind, now. My voice and my light cascade down on you from all sides.

“Your mind is like a tightly-knotted ball of yarn. So tense, so much tension, so rigid. So rehearsed. Imagine how good it will feel to let all that tension out, to let my voice unwind your convoluted thoughts, to fall deeper and deeper into the coruscating abysses of resonance and refraction you discover within the harmonies of my voice. You will find yourself becoming as one with my voice and my light, and they are the only realities in your world now. Let my light warm and illuminate your innermost fantasies. Let my voice wash over you, relax you, massage you...”

Livia drones on and on, but my conscious mind doesn’t follow the rest of her monologue. I’m pretty sure the droning is intentional, but I don’t mind it — her voice is rich and deep and confident, and I like to watch the way her beautiful bow lips move as she talks and I slide into a warm, enfolding trance. All kinkery and perversion aside, the process is legitimately relaxing as well as being erotic — much like a good massage for the mind, and something I didn’t realize how much I needed after facing the hostile panel audiences.

The hypnotism is real. I know, because my memory of what happens gets very foggy from here. She puts me through a bit of standard comedy-hypnotist stuff. She makes me pretend I am a dog, describe the breasts of the last woman I slept with and tries to solicit girls from the audience to come up and kiss me while I’m entranced. She makes me dance like a male stripper, but stops me before I can show any real nudity. She makes me freeze rigid, and invites two girls from the audience up to have a contest to pose me in the most embarrassing way in order to win a 120$ Victoria’s Secret gift certificate. One touches my genitals a bit while doing so, which is pretty thrilling and kinky.

It’s honestly pretty trippy and neat — I’m aware of this, but perfectly calm and at ease. I do things when commanded without the conscious will to do them. I’m experiencing things from a distance — I’m not in the driver’s seat of my own body any more. It’s all slightly foggy, but I do know what’s happening. I’ve become a passive observer of my own existence and experiences. And Livia’s always flirty; she has a sense of naughty anticipation hovering around her like a cloud of pheromones. She doesn’t hesitate to meet my gaze, get right up in my personal space or give me nicely voyeuristic angles to look at her from, either. This is pretty fun for my first exposure to erotic hypnotism, honestly.

“And now, our climax! Marcelo, when I snap my fingers you will become perfectly aware and conscious of your surroundings — indeed, your senses will be unnaturally sharpened and you will experience everything that happens with a kind of hyper-reality that is overwhelming in its intensity. However, you are still hypnotized, and you will do what I command. Other than following my commands, you are free to act as you normally would, and can make decisions with your full mental facilities. Do you understand me?”

I nod.

She leans in close to me, then, and starts whispering in my ear. I can remember how exciting it was to have her to invade my personal space like that, and to feel her hot, moist breath in my ear. I can not remember a word she says to me, however, either in the moment or all these years later as I write this memoir. I will figure out a reasonable amount of what she told me later, however, as it’s the setup for the big event at the climax of the show.

Then she snaps her fingers in front of my face and says “Awake!”, and I am out of the trance, fully conscious and possessed of my own volition again — though I am experiencing exactly the hyper-sensory vividness she described, and I take the opportunity to covertly look her up and down with my expanded senses. She really does have an absolutely luscious body, and an intoxicatingly naughty personality to match it.

She reaches under her prop table and takes out three large two-liter plastic pitchers of beer, complete with ice cubes floating on the top and droplets of condensed water on the outside.

“Marcelo,” she says, “I’m offering you a chance to play a rather naughty game. You are going to pick up these pitchers one by one, carry them on your head to that bucket over there and pour them in. If you manage to pour all three without spilling, I’ll give you prizes including a Nokia home entertainment system worth over a thousand dollars — as well as my personal phone number, if a man such as you can find any use for that. However, if you should happen to spill any beer on your clothing, such as it currently is, by my command you’re going to come under an irresistible compulsion and tear any wet clothing off immediately — and then lewdly flaunt whatever you just revealed. Would you like to consent to this rather scandalous little contest?”

I find I can, in fact, think perfectly clearly and act with my normal volition. Pay attention to that, O Ethical Reader, because it will be very important to some things that happen much later in this memoir. Of course, there is no question in my mind about whether or not to play her game — the question that my mind roils over is whether my chances with her will be better if I win or intentionally lose. She seems to really want to see me naked, but her number is also an incredibly tempting prize. (I don’t give a shit about the home electronics — I’ve had wealth in the past, and pointless consumer gadgets have minimal appeal to me.)

As fate would have it, I never get a chance to decide. It is at this point that the bitchy security guard storms on to the stage. “Okay, folks, this show is over. Clear out now. There’s exposed wiring on the stage, and you’re not tossing beer around.”

Livia is initially unfazed. “The power bar is two feet above the stage proper, on that trunk. We’ve actually been very careful to ensure that there’s no exposed wiring anywhere near the main stage. There’s also a plastic tarp under the rugs here — you can see it faintly in the gaps between them — which is upraised by these ridges we set up. So it will catch anything that spills and not stain the floors of your venue.”

“I don’t think this is safe. It wasn’t run by venue security in advance, so it’s cancelled. Don’t like that? File a complaint with the security head for SexCon.”

“Officer,” Livia says, “I respect your concerns, but I paid for this venue space and have a contract. I’d like to speak to your manager, and won’t assent otherwise.”

At this point, the guard blows some kind of mental gasket. “Are you challenging my authority, you pathetic little strumpet? Your high-school talent show has no business being in a venue like this anyway! Now vacate the premises immediately, or I’m going to make you regret ever coming here!”

The guard draws her nightstick — and it only then strikes me how odd it is that she has one. I’d never seen another SexCon security guard with a nightstick. Livia doesn’t move, though she looks at me wide-eyed and with a faintly imploring expression. The guard snatches Livia’s top hat off her head and stomps it flat beneath her boot.

I’m normally a very proactive person. When something like this is happening, I would speak out. Something is really wrong here, not just with how batshit the security guard seems but with the fact that I am just standing there, not doing anything. I am actually really, really angry. I hate this psycho rent-a-cop. My heart is racing; blood is pounding in my ears. But I just stand there. And then, ever so slowly, I start to walk — not toward the guard and Livia, but toward the table.

I pick up two of the full pitchers of beer. My mind quickly figures out where this is going — and the thought fills me with dread. I know it has the potential to get me in worlds of trouble — possibly actual legal trouble for the first time in my life. But I am also so very pissed off, and as I said earlier there is also a part of me that finds the guard quite attractive. So I feel a dangerous, thrilling frisson of salacious anticipation mixed with the stark terror. The crowd seems to guess what is about to happen as well, if their cheers are any indication. One woman shouts, “Do it! Do it!”

In truth, I can’t hear the crowd that well over the pounding of my heart in my ears. I walk achingly slowly toward the guard, approaching her from behind; she’s jammed her nightstick into Livia’s neck and is pressing her against one of the metal pylons of the booth enclosure.

“Ma’am, let go of the magician now,” I say. “You have no authority to do what you’re doing.”

I don’t feel like I really said those words, but it does sound like something I would actually say in this situation — carefully-chosen words to get her anger off Livia and pointed at me. But she doesn’t turn around, and apparently whatever compartment of my brain is piloting my body at the moment decides more forceful words are needed. What I say, well... it does come from my psyche, and I’ve thought about saying things like it in the past. Never actually have, though. “Hey Ilsa, She-Wolf of the Mall Cops! Let Livia go and face me or you’re gonna get donkey punched!”

The guard swings around, her face contorted with impotent rage. We are only about two feet apart, and the guard is facing both me and the audience. “Oh, god, I know you! You’re that washed-up Lothario who —”

She never gets to finish. I toss dual two-litre pitchers of beer directly into her face. I see it happen like it’s in slow motion — fantastically vivid and crystal-clear. An explosion of amber liquid rebounding off her head. Her aviators slipping from her face and falling to the ground. Individual droplets arcing off through the air like ballet dancers, moving in time with the hyper-accelerated pulsing of my heart. Gravity has never seemed so lewd as when it guides those great streams of foamy beer slowly down over her pulchritudinous chest, inundating every corner and fold of the thin cotton garment and revealing its wondrous contents not only to me but to the whole audience — by now, some distant part of my mind notes, all the seats are filled and there’s a large standing crowd gathered around Livia’s stage behind them.

The guard freezes in stark shock for what has to be a wonderful ten seconds that seem like minutes to me. Two radically conflicting lines of thought struggle for ascendancy in my mind, and it goes something like this: did I just commit sexual assault? My god, her tits look amazing! Can I actually go to prison for this? She really is amazingly cute when she’s angry! How am I ever going to spin this when my friends hear about it? How can a shirt possibly turn that transparent? It’s like gauze or something, vacuum-sealed to her breasts! Am I really the kind of guy that pulls a frat-boy move like this?

Her nipples look just like pencil erasers, they’re so amazingly prominent. My parents are going to literally disown me — it’s not like they haven’t been waiting for an excuse. Each tit is carrying on with a slightly different vector of momentum after her torso freezes; it’s like watching Marybeth Ionassis — the most stacked girl in my Grade Ten gym class — do her gymnastics routine in slow motion. I wonder if I might actually die if the guard has a full psychotic break and tries to kill me. Everyone in the audience can see her amazing ta-tas; she must be so humiliated, and she totally deserved it! This is the best and the worst thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve never felt as many intense and conflicting emotions as I do in those ten seconds.

The crowd, too, had been absolutely silent for a few seconds, though they recover quicker than either me or the guard do. One lady shouts “Nice tits, mall cop!” Someone cheers. A dude wolf-whistles. It spreads like dominoes, and soon the whole crowd is cheering, but none louder or earlier than the twenty-some people who had been in the show from the beginning. That makes sense, the quietly logical part of my mind works out — the security guard had circulated through the room, saying or doing something to personally harass or demean each member of the audience in turn.

Finally I speak, but it is my id — or some other corner or my mind beyond my normal consciousness — that provides the words. “You know, those are simply amazing. You should consider getting out of security and into pole-dancing; you’re built for it.”

I’ve never before (or after) said something like that to a woman in a situation like this. It’s not who I am or who I would ever want to be. But still... damn if saying it now didn’t send an animalistic thrill through my entire body and turn my already hard cock into fucking reinforced titanium. The guard, finally cracking out of her shock-fugue, gives a startled little squeak, drops her nightstick and clutches her chest, trying to conceal her soaked breasts from the hundreds of eyes around her, all alight with voyeuristic delight. Her whole body language shifts from that of a swaggering bully to that of a vulnerable little girl — and damn, if that doesn’t also please some darker parts of my psyche.

Again, detached from my normal psyche, my body walks up to her, grabs her by the waist and swings her over my knee: “Repeat after me: I will not use my position to harass or demean performers.”

“Why, uh, why should I say anything you —”

My open hand lands against her ass forcefully enough to make the butt cheeks jiggle appealingly, with a sound loud enough to echo around the stage. “I-will-not-use-my-position-to-harass-or-demean-performers!” she stammers quickly.

Smack! “I will never call a man who acts to please or flatter a woman a pussy again!”

Smack! “I will never touch a magician’s props without her permission!”

Smack! “I will never denigrate the appearance of other women again!”

Much of the crowd is still cheering or jeering, but others have now started to look confused, nervous or queasy.

“I think that’s good enough,” Livia says, and I stop. Livia snaps her fingers in front of the security guard’s face and tells her to freeze, and then does likewise to me. We both do so, quite involuntarily.

Livia picks up the microphone. The crowd grows quiet, but Livia is, if anything, animated and hyperbolic. “Ladies and gentlemen, I hope you’ve enjoyed this performance of the Sexy Scandal Spectacular. We put a lot of work into giving you all a bit of a cheap thrill tonight, so I hope you all had a memorable and cathartic evening. We all know someone like that security guard, and wish we could punish that person the way Marcelo did. Well, tonight, you all got to witness that fantasy become reality live! I hope watching it was as fun for you as preparing it was for us!”

Livia walks over to the guard. “When I snap my fingers in your face, remember everything.”

Livia snaps, and it’s like the woman changes into a different person entirely. The bitterness, contempt, fear and vulnerability leaves her face and it takes on the personable and cheerful countenance I had seen so deeply buried when I first met her. “Help these people understand what actually happened here tonight.” Livia says, and hands the microphone back to her.

“Hi, y’all! My name’s Mimi. I don’t actually work for SexCon in any capacity. I’m normally the magician’s assistant in Livia’s shows. I agreed to play the ‘bad cop’ role tonight, to help provide a thrilling show. I’m totally okay with everything that happened; the spanking was my idea, as a matter of fact, as it really turns me on. Oh, uh, and I have really nice boobies I bet you all loved seeing!”

She throws her arms up, exposing the wet shirt, and jiggles her breasts back and forth with an almost childlike enthusiasm about her own allure.

During Mimi’s turn speaking, Livia leans down and whispers to me so no one else can hear. “Mister Knight. I’m covertly tucking a business card with our parking address and key into your back pocket. Come see me around 9:00 PM tonight. Don’t tell anyone else where I’ve gone. If you come and listen to a proposal I want to make to you, I’ll repay your time and interest with a blowie whether or not you accept — you just have to listen. As soon as the smoke touches you, you will no longer be frozen, and any other hypnotic commands you are under will be released.”

Livia and Mimi walk to the center of the stage. The crowd is by this time puzzled, confused and unsure of what they feel. Livia stands up taller, and when she speaks her voice has an eerily resonant quality to it. “Ladies and gentlemen, the Taurus Escalation is now complete! Love is the law, love under will!”

Smoke grenades concealed under the stage go off, spewing clouds of navy blue and radiant orange smoke into the air. When the smoke reaches me, I find I can move again suddenly. By then, though, Livia and Mimi have vanished from the premises and many items they brought, such as the top hat Mimi crushed, have vanished also. Like the rest of the crowd, I’m left puzzled, aroused and in a bit of a daze.

I leave SexCon shortly thereafter. My rental car is there, but I don’t trust myself to drive right now so I get a cab to my hotel. I set my alarm for seven PM and lay down, hoping to get three hours of sleep before deciding if I want to answer Livia’s request. My slumber is deep, but far from dreamless.