It
had not been love at first sight. That would have been impossible, as they had
met in a place were no one could actually see the other person’s face. Of
course, that party was a very secret one and only people that knew other people
could have been invited. But the point is that both Rémy and Luc had been
invited that night and they had both participated in one of the largest secret
parties to take place in all of France and probably all of Europe too. No one
knew for sure how big the whole thing was, as one of the most powerful people
in the country had organized it.
The party took place in an actual palace,
where other such parties had taken place, maybe three hundred years ago or
more. Of course, in those times people did things like crazy, like animals, and
they had no rules to make everyone feel their best and leave without any
concern. This modern party had many rules and one of the most important ones,
the first one in fact, was that it was forbidden for anyone to remove the mask
they had been provided by the organized via mail. All masks were identical and
there laid one of the key features of the party.
Technically, every single person was the same.
And, according to the rules, they were all the same to the eyes of the
organizer and also each other. Of course, they were women and men but, as large
as the palace was, there were lots of smaller parties within the big one. Some
of those were gender exclusive, some others completely forbid clothes and there
was even one where clothes were actually mandatory. It could be said that there
was something for everyone and the statement would be true because Louis had
made that happen.
Louis was not his real name but it was the
name he liked to be called. He was obsessed by everything that had to do with
the reign of Louis the XIVth, so he had chosen that name as his secret identity
for everyone to know in order to organize those parties. Of course, no one in
the country knew that those gatherings actually existed but there were many
rumors and people all around thought it wasn’t that farfetched as rich people
tend to have things that no one thinks anyone would need. And a lot of
something is always in the mix.
The location of the party changed every year
and after it had happened everything was returned in the most perfect of
conditions, in the case the place was rented which happened a lot. Louis was
smart enough not to use his own estates, although he was always tempted to do
so. He was obsessed with everything being perfect and interior designing was one
of his many obsessions. He had houses and flats all over the place and he loved
to make them look their best. So he did exactly that with the rentals for his
parties, everything had to be perfect.
Luc was not as rich as Louis but one could say
they ran the same circuit. It wasn’t difficult to see him in all “must” parties
in the cities, always showing his face in all kinds of events. Luc’s parents
had died ten years ago and had left him with a very large fortune. Now his
uncle managed the company that his father had built and he let his nephew do
whatever he wanted to do. Having been rich from such an early age, Luc had gone
crazy in all sorts of predictable ways. His uncle had done a lot to avoid the
press trying to destroy him with pictures and other “evidence”.
He had done a lot of drugs when he was around
sixteen years old. He had dated publicly both men and women. He was one of
those jetsetters that travel around the world just showing their money to
anyone who was willing to watch him. But the interesting thing about him was
that he was the most charming young man ever to be found. He never seemed to be
showing off and he even had a very caring heart that made him make big
donations to many charities and institutions that really help people around the
globe.
Luc was a very weird mix and that’s why some
loved him and others loathed him. Of course that happened because of how rich
he was and we all know people love to hate people that are out of their reach.
But even so that was the case, he didn’t care at all about how people perceived
him. He really knew how to live a life where the first thing was to be himself,
his original self. That’s how he met Louis, at a party where Luc was being
exactly the same guy he always was. And that was very interesting to Louis who
loved authentic people.
Right away, having met him only minutes
before, Louis invited Luc to his party and Luc accepted. Of course, he had been
to many other parties like that one before, but never one so exclusive and
lavish. His normal parties were much raunchier and he didn’t even care if it
wasn’t as private as it could be. Of course, that had been a headache for his
uncle for many years but now it was him that knew how to handle the press and
all other people that the only thing they wanted was a big piece of his wealth
or a fragment of his fame.
It was there, in the annual party thrown by
Louis, where Luc met the first person in the world that made him feel something
he had never felt before. He wasn’t ready for it, not at all. He had never
thought that he would actually fall in love one day. But he did. Not at the
party of course, or right away, but it happened in the following months and he
suffered, as he had never felt something like it before. It was almost torture
but bearable and worth the pain.
Rémy was the son of a baker and a housewife.
He had been raised in one of the more modest neighborhoods in all of Paris.
From a very young age, he had realized he liked other men. The day he realized
it was one of the few anecdotes he liked to tell his lovers right after having
sex and he didn’t really know the reason for it. He just liked to tell them how
he looked at all the other boys in his class when he was fourteen years old, in
the classroom, in the yard and in the bathroom. He stared and was very
attentive of everything they did.
Some lovers lasted for a few days, even one
night. Others lasted much more, even as long as two years. That one was the
hardest thing for him because he became numb after that relationship ended. It
had been both toxic and ideal, beautiful and a disaster. He never wanted to go
through that again so that’s why, every single Friday and Saturday after work,
he would go to his small flat, change clothes and then leave for many hours, to
visit his favorite places in the city. Some were sex clubs, some were dancing
clubs, and some were bars.
The choice of the day depended on how his week
had gone for him. He worked two jobs: one in a magazine were he was practically
a delivery boy, even if his parents had sacrificed themselves to give him the
best education ever, including an university degree, and another job working as
a barista in of the many cafés in the city. He left the second job late at
night and he had two hours to prepare for his night out. It was then, in the
dark, when he could finally be himself. In time, he heard about Louis’s parties
and he really wanted in.
However, money was needed to enter one of
those. Not that the actual entry had a fee but that only people with lots of
money could enter one of those meetings. So he did something he had never done
before and that was using his sexuality to convince another man to get him
invited. Of course, the trick work because, as Remy said himself, there’s
nothing easier than convincing a man of doing anything when you have him by the
balls, sometimes literally. So he got to the annual party and was surprised to
see how others lived a life like his own.
There, he met Luc. At first it was all about
sex, which was fun even with those white masks. But then Luc found him in the “real
world” and they began to talk between more sexual encounters. After some time,
they stopped with the sex but kept seeing each other, getting to know one
another in a way none of the two had ever thought possible. Rémy was very
scared of it all as he had never felt like he could be loved, he felt himself
too ugly and awful for that. He didn’t know, but Luc felt exactly the same.
