Beneath the Mask
Another Mardi Gras romp with some misbehaving characters
This is another entry in my ongoing “My Filthy Hobby” series, in which I offer some thoughts on the stories I’ve published. This week, a look at Beneath the Mask, which is currently on sale as part of the book birthday celebration for its companion story, Matin, Midi, Minuit — but hurry, the 99 cent deal ends tomorrow!
I knew soon after I finished Matin, Midi, Minuit that I wanted to do a followup to that story, and that it should have two protagonists on their own erotic journeys who meet at the end. While traveling down one of those internet rabbit holes, I ran across Claude Cahun and the epigraph that opens Beneath the Mask:
Sous ce masque un autre masque. Je n’en finerai pas de soulever tous ces visages.
(Beneath this mask, another mask. I shall never finish lifting all these faces.)
Cahun is a fascinating figure in art history, working in the media of photography and sculpture at the height of the Surrealist movement. They were genderqueer and non-binary avant la lettre, and intentionally provocative in the face of the rising anti-Semitism and anti-gay tide of late 1920s western Europe. Their work is stark and strange, but strangely sensuous, a perfect tone for the weird New Orleans where this story is set.
Once I had that mask image, the story practically wrote itself: each of the unhappy characters finds the mysterious voodoo shop and are gifted magical masks that hide their identifies but also reveal secrets; they encounter mysterious erotic situations against the backdrop of Mardi Gras; and they find themselves in the cemetery bacchanal that figured in “Matin, Midi, Minuit.” Très simple!
At least, that is, until the characters started to misbehave again.
I’ve noted before that I have a problem sometimes with my characters acting up. The most notable was in Casey’s Story, in which the titular character started divulging absolutely filthy secrets about her past that threw my carefully plotted story into a tailspin. Ben’s rebellion in this story wasn’t quite to that extent, but he did have some surprises for me.
The first was that he’s a French teacher. My French is passable at best — my high school French courses were more art history than conversation, so while I can express my regard for Manet en français, I’m hard pressed to ask directions on the streets of Paris or Montreal. There’s not a lot of French in this story — his conversation with Madame Diseur-de-Vérité slips into translation pretty quickly — but there’s a sexy French lesson scene that had me digging into some French Subreddits in search of the right vocabulary. If I completely mess up my French dirty talk, please forgive me!
The second revelation was in the gloryhole scene. There was always going to be a paired gloryhole scene, one for Ben and one for Olivia — that seemed to work well for the story I wanted to tell. And I’d never written a gloryhole before, so I thought it would be fun. But I didn’t expect Ben to reveal that he had some past experience with gloryholes, and I certainly didn’t expect him to take matters into hand (and mouth) when there was a knock one the wall and a cock in the hole.
The revelation of Ben’s bisexuality didn’t derail the story, but it did complicate it. And I feel like there’s more to his story that I didn’t get to tell, so expect some future chapters to fill it out. My plan was to make this story available in time for Mardi Gras, which came early this year, so I had to make a deal with Ben to get him to agree to a somewhat more conventional conclusion to this chapter of his sexual odyssey.
Olivia’s story isn’t nearly as complex; I feel like she’s a lot like Jenny from “Matin, Midi, Minuit”: a little uptight, suffused with longings that frighten her, and accepting a magical item gives her permission to act out in ways that she would never dare without the cover of her mask. But in a tale of erotic discovery, that’s exactly the sort of character you would expect; I don’t think I’m pushing boundaries with this part of the story, but I do think the story delivers on audience expectations.
I enjoyed going back to my strange version of Carnival — writing of New Orleans in the depths of a northwoods winter is nice! — so I’ll probably cook up another pot of gumbo next year. It arrives a bit later in 2025 — I have until March! — so expect something spicy …
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