Chapter 3: Sex List
The sun through the park’s canopy was a dappled, lying thing. It promised warmth but delivered only a pale, indifferent light. Bethany sat on her usual bench, the one farthest from the playground, its slats digging into her thighs through her thin coat. In her lap, the physical notebook felt like a relic, a heresy in a paperless world. The pages were a mix of faded ink and fresh, frantic ballpoint.
She flipped past the recent entries. HollowPoint. 04/17/37. Rating: 2/5. Acts: rough penetration, hair-pulling, degradation. Notes: Condom. Left marks on upper arms. Felt nothing after. Less than nothing.
Her finger traced backwards, over years, decades. Names blurred into descriptors. The Bassist. The Barrister. The one with the scar. The ratings slowly declined, a sinking stock graph of diminishing returns. But the notes… the notes were the real story.
Then she found it. The entry was in bright blue ink, the handwriting looser, buoyant with a ghost of forgotten energy. Festival. Midsummer. The Three Kings.
She closed her eyes, and the park sounds dissolved into the past.
The bass was a physical weight in her chest, a second heartbeat thudding through the mud and the crowd. She was twenty-one, skin gleaming with sweat and glitter, a cheap plastic cup of warm vodka-lemonade in her hand. The line for the portaloos snaked forever, a parade of urgent, dancing impatience.
“I’m gonna piss in the woods,” she announced to no one in particular, her voice loud and bright.
“You and everyone else, love,” laughed a guy next to her. He was with two friends. They had the look of mates on a lads’ weekend—easy smiles, flushed faces.
She looked at them, a spark igniting in her blood. “I’m serious. I’ll do it right now. You can watch if you want.”
Their laughter changed, shifting from camaraderie to a low, interested chuckle. “You’re mad,” one said, his eyes drinking her in—the crop top, the shorts, the fearless grin.
“Come on, then,” she said, and turned, leading them away from the lights and the queue, into the dense, shadowy tree line. The music became muffled, replaced by the crunch of undergrowth and their own heavy breathing.
It was dark, smelled of damp earth and weed. She turned to face them, their three silhouettes blocking the distant glow. “Well? A girl needs an audience.”
She hitched her shorts down, not bothering to take them off, and squatted. The sound of her stream was loud in the quiet. She looked up, meeting their eyes, seeing the mix of shock and raw arousal. It was a power surge, pure and electric. When she finished, she stood, pulling her shorts up, the fabric damp. “Your turn.”
It happened quickly, a blur of hands and zippers. They formed a loose half-circle around her. They were hard, all three of them, cocks jutting out in the gloom.
“Go on,” she whispered.
The first arc hit her shoulder, warm and shocking. A gasp escaped her, but she held her ground. Then the second, splashing across her chest, soaking the thin fabric of her top. The third aimed for her face; she opened her mouth, tasting the bitter, salty tang, feeling it hit her tongue, her cheeks, her eyelids. It was in her hair, dripping down her neck, soaking her. She reached out, her hands finding their lengths, jerking them as they pissed on her, their groans merging with the distant thump of the bass.
When the streams died, she didn’t wipe her face. She sank to her knees in the wet leaves. She took the first one into her mouth, the taste of him and his piss overwhelming. She sucked, hard, using her hand on his shaft. He came quickly, with a choked shout, his release adding to the mess in her mouth. She swallowed, moved to the next. He grabbed her piss-soaked hair, fucking her face with rough, eager thrusts. The third watched, stroking himself, and when it was his turn, he came across her tongue, over her lips, mixing with everything else.
She stood up, dripping. She was a walking obscenity, reeking, utterly debased. One of the guys, the one who came first, just zipped up and melted back towards the festival, unable to look at her. But the one who’d fucked her face, Dan, he laughed. A wild, unhinged sound. “You’re fucking incredible.”
He took her hand. They walked back into the crowd.
The game was simple. How many people would kiss the piss-girl? She’d sidle up to strangers, boys and girls, her body a secret under the strobe lights. “I dare you,” she’d slur, grinning. Some recoiled, catching the scent. But others, drunk and game, would lean in. A few kissed her deeply, tasting the night on her. Dan would whoop, slapping his thigh. She was the queen of the filth, a chaotic goddess, wanted precisely because she was ruined. It was the most fun she could remember.
A child’s shriek of laughter jerked her back. The sun was lower. Her cheeks were wet. She hadn’t realized she was crying.
She looked down at the notebook, at the young woman’s triumphant scrawl. Notes: Best night. Felt like a god. Or a demon. Didn’t care.
The hollow in her chest yawned wide. She could never explain to Aris, not really, that it wasn’t about the piss or the come or the degradation. It was about the absolute, terrifying freedom of consequence. It was about being so powerfully, magnetically alive in her own ruin that she could make it a game others wanted to play.
Now, the consequences were the only point. The marks, the emptiness afterward, the way each encounter was a quiet surgery removing another piece of her. The game was over. Now it was just a slow, solitary decay.
A woman walking a dog gave her a wide berth, a flicker of distaste on her face. Bethany saw it. She wasn’t a chaotic goddess anymore. She was a fat, crying woman on a park bench, a potential problem to be avoided.
She ripped the festival page from the notebook. She tore it into tiny, confetti-like pieces. She let them fall from her fingers, a little heap of blue snow on the gravel path. The past was a country she could no longer visit.
She stood, her body aching, the memory of HollowPoint’s grip a dull throb in her arms. She walked home, the ghost of piss and festival bass replaced by the mundane scent of cut grass and exhaust. The notebook felt heavy, a catalog of ghosts. She knew, with a cold certainty, that next week she would tell Aris about the festival. She would wield the memory like a blunt instrument, watching his face for a crack, for a sign of the revulsion or—please—the fascination she could no longer inspire in anyone else.
She needed to see if he could still see the goddess in the ruin, or if, like everyone else, he only saw the mess.