The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (23 page)

In the same way that I don’t take exception to flirting with abjection, that it nourishes my fantasies, that I have never been put off from titillating the folds of an anus with my tongue (“Hmm! It smells of shit,” I hear my- self saying, “but it’s good”) and that I have willingly cast myself as a “bitch in heat,” neither am I disgusted—far from it—if I can feast my eyes on a body that may be in some

way damaged. Yes, I like it when the whole body in my arms is as firm as a well-polished dick, but yes, I am as happy to edge beneath the drooping gut of a man waiting on his back like a woman for me to suck him off. Yes, I value the abilities of a man who spreads the lips of the vulva with careful sur- geon’s fingers, and who takes the time to ad- mire what he finds with a connoisseur’s rel- ish, before he rubs the clitoris with a preci- sion that soon becomes unbearable. But the man who grabs your hips with about as much ceremony as if he were snatching hold of the rail on a listing boat is just as welcome, and the one who mounts you with the vacant distant expression of a mating animal! The one who lies virtually full-length on your back, gripping the fat of your buttocks so hard that you find bruises on them the next day, and who doesn’t give a shit that you can keep your balance only thanks to the excruci- ating cramp in your thighs, which are

supporting two bodies. After that you let yourself go, reduced to little more than a lump of flesh plonked onto the bed and turned over with no more response of its own than a ball of bread dough. Being the amorphous support of someone else’s frenet- ic activity, forgetting that your own flesh can have a specific form, and watching your breasts spreading and flowing with the movement, rocked like the water in the bot- tom of a boat, or seeing the cellulite on your buttocks squeezed in a big pair of hands: at times like these, as my eyes float over the surface of my molten body, I have to catch the eye of this workman dazed by his obstin- ate laboring. That face does not do beatific ecstasy. It would frighten me if the dena- tured bird that I am did not fall in love with the scarecrow. One eye is half closed because of a tensing effect that affects only half the face—I have already seen this feature in people who have had strokes—and the

corresponding corner of the mouth twists to expose the gums. If I am not afraid of this snarling grimace, that is because it doesn’t express pain but rather a supreme effort, a prodigious tenacity, and I am proud to sub- mit myself to this force.

For much of my life I fucked naïvely. What I mean by that was that sleeping with men was a natural activity that didn’t bother me un- duly. Obviously, from time to time I would come across some of the attendant psycholo- gical problems (lies, wounded pride, jeal- ousy), but they could be written off as losses. I wasn’t very sentimental. I needed affection and I found it, but without feeling any need to go and build love stories out of sexual re- lationships. When I did fall for someone, I think I was still conscious of succumbing to some charm, a physical seduction, even to

the geometry of relations (for example, hav- ing affairs with a much older man and a younger man, and having fun shifting from playing the role of a little girl to that of a pro- tector) without ever being fuly engaged. When I complained to a good friend how dif- ficult it was managing four or five longer- term relationships at once, he would tell me that it wasn’t the number of men that was difficult but finding a balance between them, and he would recommend that I take a sixth. So I just left everything up to chance. I paid no more attention to the quality of sexual re- lationships. In cases where the man didn’t give me much pleasure, or even bothered me in some way, or when he made me do things that weren’t really to my liking, that alone wasn’t reason to call him into question. In most cases, it was the friendship in the rela- tionship that was most important. It could obviously lead to a sexual relationship, and I even found that reassuring; I needed to

sense that all of me was appreciated. Wheth- er or not I found immediate sensory satisfac- tion was less important. That, too, was writ- ten off in profits and losses. I wouldn’t be ex- aggerating if I said that until I was about thirty-five, I had not imagined that my own pleasure could be the aim of a sexual en- counter. I had never understood that.

My hardly romantic attitude never stopped me from handing out “I love yous” to my heart’s content, only at the precise moment when the little motor situated in my part- ner’s groin revved up. Or I would keep saying his name out loud. I don’t know what made me think that this would encourage him to pursue and achieve his pleasure. I was all the more prodigal with these purely opportune declarations of love because they remained on the surface, uttered neither under the ef- fects of any emotion nor because I was car- ried away in my ecstasy. I clearheadedly ap- plied what I believed to be a technical knack.

As time goes by, we do away with this sort of artifice.

Romain was very gentle, almost indolent beneath a virile outward appearance, with his biker jacket slung over a bachelor’s rumpled T-shirt, yet another who lived in a studio on Saint-Germain-des-Prés, the least cluttered one I knew. We fucked on a mat- tress on the carpet, in the middle of the room, as the overhead light hit me full in the face. The first time I just kept on looking at the lightbulb and didn’t realize that he’d ejaculated. Weightless, his chest lay over mine, his head turned away. The only living thing that I could feel was the odd strand of his long hair brushing over my mouth and chin. I had hardly felt him penetrate, he had scarcely executed a few weak thrusts. I, too, lay motionless, embarrassed. I didn’t want to disturb him if he hadn’t finished, but if that was the case, wasn’t it my job to make my presence known and get him going again?

But if I started moving and he was all done, wasn’t I going to look stupid? Eventually, I felt something running right at the top of my thigh, a bit of sperm spat out by my vagina.

Romain’s cock was a good size, it got off quite happily but was completely passive. If I had wanted to personify his cock, I could have compared it to a novice who doesn’t move from his chair when all the parti- cipants in a ceremony rise to their feet: you felt no more urge to rebuke him than you would the inept novice. As I spread my legs under this boy, I had almost a sense of com- fort from feeling nothing, nothing nice, but nothing nasty, either.

In some situations, I can display a rare pa- tience. I have in me sufficient resources to remain silent and give my mind a free rein, accepting the fact that others are living their lives alongside me. I can cope uncomplain- ingly with the manias, petty tyrannies or even outright attacks of others, and I can

turn inwards when necessary. I let them get on with it, and do my thing. Looking back on it, I now realize just how patient I was in sexual relationships. Feeling nothing, not minding and accomplishing were the whole ritual to its conclusion. Not getting hung up about having the same tastes as my partner, getting on with it, etc. I was indifferent be- cause mentally I was so well tucked away in my very core that I could control my body as a puppeteer does a puppet. So I went on see- ing Romain. Thanks to the impression he gave of being a charming bastard, he had quite a lot of success with women, and I en- joyed imagining the surprise or the disap- pointment of those who thought they were taking on a real man. I saw the astonished eyes of one of these women, probing mine for the comfort afforded by sharing a disap- pointing experience: “But Romain…he doesn’t move a muscle!” I listened to the

devastated creature’s confidences as placidly as a sage.

I have spoken of the boredom that some- times gripped me when meeting up with friends, and of the escape route I discovered by going off with one of them for a fuck. But even fucking can be boring! Still, I prefer that particular boredom. I can take in stride a cunnilingus that turns me neither on nor off; decide against redirecting a finger that is toiling away not at my clitoris but just to the side, where it hurts a bit; and finally, I can be perfectly happy when my partner ejaculates even if I myself don’t get much out of it be- cause, in the long run, being not quite “there” gets tiresome; I can tolerate all that so long as either before or afterward the con- versation is stimulating, my dinner compan- ions are fascinating, or I can wander around in an apartment I really like, pretending to have a different life…My train of thought is so detached from contingencies that it won’t

be hampered by a mere body, even if that body is wrapped in the arms of another body. Better still, thought is all the freer if whomever you are talking to is concentrating on the body; surely it isn’t then going to re- sent him for using it as an erotic accessory!

It is not necessarily womanizers who best satisfy women. It may even be that some of them—although not all—go from one woman to the next only to experience the beginnings and to spare themselves the stage when some sort of fulfillment is required. (No doubt you could say the same of some man- eating women.) One of the first I met, an artist, was also much older than I, and one of my friends had warned me: “When men are a bit older, it’s fantastic, they’re so experienced that you don’t have to do anything, just open up your legs!” I had to make quite an effort not to contradict her. In one of the rooms in his art studio, the one in which he received visitors, there was a big table laden with

things. It was like a house of curiosities with a jumble of ornaments, lamps, vases, exotic- shaped bottles and kitsch ashtrays, as well as unusual tools and plans and sketches for his own work. We often didn’t bother to go as far as the bedroom; I would go and mingle with this bric-a-brac. He would push me up against the table. Was it because he was slightly shorter that I can remember his half- closed eyelids so clearly, the bags under his eyes like a reflection of his eyelids, and his childish, begging expression? Our pelvises were more or less on a level, and as soon as I felt the swelling under his trousers, I would set my “little motor,” as he called it, going. That is, I would jerk my hips rhythmically as I always did. And he would respond to these movements so that we rubbed our pubic re- gions against each other. What ramblings did my mind go off on once my excitement started to fade? Would I notice a new picture pinned to the wall? Would I think about the

article I had to write? Or did I empty my mind and stare at the excrescences of brown skin on the surface of his eyelids? Did I think about the fact that we would have time to do this again later and that then his organ would go so far as to penetrate mine? He would throw his head back, push me a bit harder against the table, which dug into my buttocks, and let out a couple of whinnies. We could leave it at that.

And yet he was an attentive man, and while I took him and his friends as they came, he would examine me—as he ex- amined everyone—with piercing scrutiny. I have never known a man to be less compli- mentary in the comments he made about your body, and these comments would be uttered without ulterior motive but with the exactitude of someone exercising his profes- sional eye, and whatever flaws you might have would anyway not detract from the fact that you were a turn-on for him. On top of

this, his visual acuity was coupled with great dexterity, from which I benefited when he touched me. But others—if I can put it like this—don’t bother with the body you offer them if you have already rendered them a satisfactory service. Like, for example, the man who took me to an attic room on the avenue Paul-Doumer that served as his of- fice. There he was pawing me—that wasn’t what I came for, but I didn’t mind. The nor- mal procedure would see him taking me to the couch and lying me down on it. Well, no, he is the one who lies down on it, full-length on his back, swooning and, with what is al- ways a rather pathetic gesture, holds out his prick without looking at it. So I take the lat- ter in my mouth, and quite soon I hear him say: “Oh, I’m going to come! I know you don’t mind, I’ll fuck you later.” As far as I am concerned, I can cope with this, but my mind is sufficiently alert to realize that he is behav- ing badly. He doesn’t fuck me later.

I am docile not because I like submis- sion—I have never tried to put myself in a masochistic situation—but out of an indiffer- ence to the uses we assign our bodies. Of course I never would have given myself to extreme practices such as inflicting or suffer- ing pain, but apart from that, given the enormous scope of individual prefer- ences—sexual eccentricities, even—I always had an open mind and was invariably up for it in mind and body. At the most I could have been reproached for a lack of motivation if someone’s practices didn’t find much reson- ance in my own fantasies. For a long time I saw a man who now and then felt the need to pee on me. I knew what to expect when he made me get out of bed to suck him off. When his cock was good and hard, he would take it out and hold it with one hand not far from me. I kept my mouth open. Kneeling there in front of him like that, I must have looked like someone about to take

communion. There was always a brief pause during which he seemed to be mentally guid- ing the urine on its way. With this effort of concentration, he managed not to come. And the jet streamed onto me, full, firm and hot. Bitter. So bitter I have never tasted its equal, strong enough to make you retract your tongue all the way to the back of your throat. He manipulated his penis the way he would have a hose, and the flow was so abundant and lasted such a long time that I sometimes really had to duck and dive the way you would if someone were trying to spray you with water. Once when I lay down under the stream, he came and lay down on the floor with me when he had finished. Using both hands, he daubed me all over with his piss and covered me with kisses. I hate the feeling of wet hair on my neck, but there was noth- ing I could do to stop it trickling. I burst out laughing. This made him angry and brought his affections to an abrupt end. Years later he

still held it against me! “There’s one thing you’re not good at, and that’s being pissed on.” I admit it. In my defense, I would like to make clear that I didn’t laugh as a way, for example, of shrugging off my embarrassment (it wasn’t the first time I had been drenched in that way!), even less to make fun of him or of us (every reasonably original sexual ex- ploit, far from debasing me, was in fact a source of pride, like another milestone in my quest for the sexual grail). I laughed because, unable to draw any masochistic satisfaction from the situation, which I did not find hu- miliating, at least I did feel a sense of jubila- tion rolling in a disgusting liquid.