It was not the purpose of the masqued ball to engage anonymously. Many of the guests had known each other from childhood and most would be instantly recognized by the rest of the company.
The point of the masquerade was not to be anonymous but to be given license to behave as if one was anonymous, as if the social order was entirely dissolved. At the masquerade, king and commoner became commoner and king, and this provided the opportunity for one of the most devastating put downs of the 18th century.
Elizabeth Chudleigh's costume was shocking enough, as "Iphigenia ready for the sacrifice" another guest described her as being "so naked ye high Priest might easily inspect ye Entrails of ye Victim". Her breasts were bare and the rest of the costume was made of a thin gossamer that left nothing to the imagination. While Iphigenia was being prepared to give up her life, Chudleigh's costume was designed to imply the surrender of something else entirely. King George II was delighted by the costume and asked if he might touch one of her exposed breasts. "Your Majesty, I can put it on a far softer place," came the reply and when he eagerly consented, she put his hand on his head.
In an age before the train, the telegraph or what we would now consider journalism, the upper classes were free to indulge in the sexual pleasures of their choice in the privacy of their private estates. The masquerade provided a form of implausible deniability for guests and host alike.
At gatherings intended for more carnal pursuits, prostitutes would often be engaged so as to provide the high-born ladies with an alibi. According to a (convenient) medical theory of the day, the sight of persons engaged in copulation could provide a cure for infertility energizing the reproductive organs of sire and dam alike.
"Did it work?" I asked the screen facetiously.
The video narrator ignored me of course but a male voice from the back of the theatre answered me, "about half the time".
A slender youth dressed in chainmail carrying a shield had entered the tent while I was watching. Evidently one of the medieval 'reenactors'.
I should have apologized for the interruption or introduced myself or something. Instead I asked how they could know it worked half the time. Did they keep records?
The reenactor slumped into a chair, "please don't tell 'em I'm here miss, this stuff isn't real but it weighs the same and the longer you wear it the 'eavier it gets."
I nodded conspiratorially.
"Just five minutes to catch my breath." the reenactor continued, his accent had shifted from cockney to his earlier clipped, received tone.
For no apparent reason, the narrator on the screen was no longer in the library talking about masqued balls and was in the dairy demonstrating how butter was made. He had also lost twenty pounds and his receding hairline was suddenly fully thatched.
"I was just getting interested!" I complained.
"It's a matter of logical deduction." the youth continued.
"Balls to butter is logical?" I asked, confused.
"No, the success rate. In those days infertility was invariably blamed on the woman, which was perhaps no bad thing when at least half the time it was the male equipment that was faulty, so to speak."
The youth paused as if his argument was complete, but my blank stare told him he had lost his audience.
"If they attended enough parties, the fertile women with infertile husbands could get pregnant by the other men. The infertile women didn't get pregnant but at least they had a good time. Hence the treatment succeeded in its stated objectives half the time and provided satisfied customers every time."
Just as I was praising him for his unexpectedly logical explanation and trying to work out how to ask him for an email address without appearing too forward, a call on the Public-Address system suddenly brought him to his feet.
"I'm curious to see the rest of the video, do they sell it in the gift shop perhaps?" I asked hastily. Good grief girl, why didn't you ask for his name?
The youth shook his head with a wry smile and pulled a card from his pocket and wrote something on the back. "If you are really interested, come as my guest. But now you must excuse me fair maiden as I have tarried too long". The cockney patois had returned, if sounding even less authentic than before.
With that he kissed me on the cheek, donned his helmet and turned to leave.
"What if the women didn't want to get pregnant?", I asked as he reached the door.
"In the manner of the Bulgars", the youth exclaimed and was gone.
The card carried a Web address of an elegant but uninformative Website. The greeting page consisted of an artfully photographed Venetian masquerade mask on a black background. The youth had invited me to a real-life masquerade ball! But obviously a rather secretive one as there was no other information at all, not even a box to enter the activation code printed on the card.
After puzzling at the blank screen for some time, I suddenly remembered a summer camp class on Web design. Saving the page to a file and viewing it in the HTML editor revealed a hidden form with black ink on a black background and a black border! Was it meant to be some sort of test or would the good-looking youth have explained this to me if there had been more time?
If it was a test, passing it had not provided any more information. Not even the date or location of the event. No more information would be provided until the organizers had received at least two recent photographs, one of which must be nude and a signed NDA
For me, this was a red rag to a bull. The closer they held their secrets, the more I wanted to know what they were. Though it didn't take much imagination to realize what sort of an event it was from the clues I had been given.
My Google-fu has always been good. I used to say that finding information online was easier than study until someone pointed out that these days, that is precisely what studying is. Using the site name and other clues on the site turned up a handful of mentions which were positive but uninformative.
I set the matter aside, it was purely idle curiosity after all. I had no interest in attending an orgy of any sort, even as a spectator. I had a boyfriend, we had been together almost three years and were talking about marriage and what would the neighbors, friends in church think if they knew.
And then all of a sudden, I didn't, and we weren't.
It was not the fact of but the manner of the breakup that was so insulting. He had been a manipulative rat-bastard weasel from the start. It was the pre-emptive show: He preemptively accused me of cheating knowing I was about to discover he was cheating himself.
At some point during an alcohol and rage filled weekend, a series of very explicit nude photographs were taken and sent to the site. I was drunk when I took them sure, but I was stone cold bloody minded sober when I sent them in.
I received the NDA a few hours later. It was not a long document, but it was clearly drafted by a lawyer who knew what they were doing. I was a junior solicitor working for a firm that specialized in international trade at the time. One of the major problems in that field is how to bind a group of companies to a common set of contract terms that are enforceable without every company having to negotiate and agree a contract with every other.
The solution that is usually adopted is for a mutual society to be set up. The society then publishes a rule book which sets out the rights and obligations of the members which each member signs. This in turn allows each member to enforce transactions without the society becoming a party in the dispute.
The NDA was an agreement to keep the name of the society and the contents of the rule book confidential. With an opener like that, how could a twenty-something law nerd resist? I signed the NDA and returned it immediately.
Having finally made it to the site, a dose of cold water: A single ticket (female) cost a hundred pounds and couples cost three times the price.
A few years earlier, I would have spent the money without a second thought, an inconsequential sum in the light of my student debts. But I was at that point in life where my income had only recently come into rough balance with my expenses. A hundred pounds meant the difference between relative financial security and watching every penny to avoid falling behind on the rent. And it was not just the cost of the ticket, I would need to get there and back and to buy something to wear.
It was impossible, I just couldn't afford it.
There is nothing so irritating as an itch that cannot be scratched. Had I had the money to spend, my interest might have quickly waned as my curiosity was already satisfied: Yes there are indeed people who still do that sort of thing but it was certainly not my sort of thing. I was no vestal virgin, but I had never fucked a man I didn't love, I had always been faithful to one man at a time and I had never slept with a man till the third date. And where had all that fidelity and faithfulness got me? A series of shitty relationships with shitty men who manipulated and used me.
I began filling my Kindle with classic French erotica written in the demi-monde between the end of the Renaissance and the revolution that would soon sweep away the ancien regime. Very little of the material involved masqued balls but quite a lot became my waking dreams. These usually occurred during office meetings. One moment, my mind would be focused on the requirements for drafting a client's letter of credit, the next I would be imagining the customer stretched out naked on the conference table with myself riding his cock, our identities concealed by our diminutive velvet masks.
My reading confirmed the meaning of the youth's parting shot: The manner of the Bulgars was that of the Greeks. I had never tried anal and had no plans to start.
Another, less cerebral indulgence I developed was a series of one-night stands though that I will blame on the fact of spending the entire day after my breakup at a company training day being taught how to be a better, more effective employee by giving myself permission to succeed.
Having trained myself to say no until I could resist the urge no longer and end up in bed with a complete shit who I felt obliged to continue a 'meaningful relationship' with, I gave myself permission to fuck who I liked, when I liked and not feel guilty afterwards. You should give it a try: It is life changing. Unless of course you are a man in which case you have been doing exactly that since the first time you got your hands in a girl's knickers.
It was not very long before the waking dreams and one-night stands merged and I began to imagine myself completely naked being fucked in front of a group of strangers while I was completely naked being fucked by a stranger.
I visited the masquerade every night as I stroked myself to orgasm before going to sleep. But as the date of the real thing drew nearer, my precarious finances put it even further out of reach. An unexpected repair bill for the car, fees for a course that the firm would repay but only eventually. A hundred pounds was not a lot of money compared to my income but having abandoned chastity, I was loathe to abandon the financial discipline that was restoring my bank balance as well.
The card remained fastened to my computer monitor with a post it note. In a fit of frustration, I ripped it off and threw it on the floor. It landed with the youth's hurriedly scrawled message face up, mocking me, Bee my guest! Can't even spell it right, I thought.