I whipped him for a long time, symmetrically, over his whole body, over his balls, his tiny hard dick that I held in my hand, with little lashes, smack, smack, smack, smack, I went up, I went down, on his stomach, on his chest, on his mask, it was good because I could make it last awhile without getting tired. I had to keep going for another two and a half hours, until midnight. I unhooked him. I brought him to the bathroom. Threw him in the tub. I showered him, hot water, cold water. I concentrated especially on his package. I pissed on him. He said he had never felt so good in a bathtub. I told him I was sure of that. I felt sorry for him, ugly and alone as he was. In a certain sense I could have even said that I loved him.
I ended up blowing him. I had tried to fuck him with the dildo. Strictly impossible since he was nervously clenching his ass. Then my little plug that only went in halfway. That annoyed me. I whipped him again, fairly mechanically, that made him seriously hard, so I leaned over and started to suck his tiny dick again, It tasted pretty bad, not dirty, just old. But for 1500 francs, I thought that this was the least I could do. After two minutes I stopped. I played with his nipples. He came. I pulled off the mask. He told me I was beautiful.
He told me that he wouldn't call right away, that he was OK for a while, let's say two weeks from now. Two days later he was hitting me up. I told him So, eating makes you hungrier, huh? But he wasn't calling to make an appointment, he was calling just to talk. That annoyed me. He told me he couldn't stop jerking off thinking about what had happened. He said Usually what gets me excited is in my head but with you it was also my body, it seemed like the mind served the body. I told him Yeah that sounds right. Then he asked me if I thought he was slutty enough. I told him that there was still a lot of work to do. He called the following week. This time it was serious.
It didn't go so well. I positioned the mattress against the wall to form a Saint Andrew's cross with straps. He couldn't handle the position. Clearly, it must have been twenty years since he had last exercised. I got frustrated with his ass, it was impossible to get my index finger in, after three whiskeys, two joints, and two hours of fucking around. He asked me again if he was a real slut yet. I said, Yeah, it was encouraging, thinking about the 2000 francs I'd be making this time. He never stopped talking, spinning his stupid scenario, soccer, the team, blah, blah, blah, and I saw you in the locker room showers, blah, blah, blah. I answered, I had to answer. After a while I got too grossed out, I shoved his underwear in his mouth for some peace and quiet.
In the end I didn't have a clue how I was going to be able to get him to come. I remembered he liked getting smacked. I did that, I pulled on his hair, I bitch-slapped him. That invigorated him a bit. I untied one of his hands so he could jerk off. He still wasn't coming. Then an idea came to me: I grabbed him by the hand he wasn't using and I lifted him up in the air, my arms outstretched, so that he could feel my strength. He jerked off in a frenzy. He ended up coming like that. Then he left. I felt really tired.
I found him on the Minitel two days later. He asked me what I thought. I told him what I thought, that it was a start. but you had me hung 4 hrs!, he protested. I told him that to realize his dreams he had to start by going to the gym three times a week for a while. He never contacted me again.
32
(1995)
The choice was clear: I needed to buy a sling and suspend it permanently over my bed (like Patrice Collivot, who had a photo of his cock by Mapplethorpe, and who was dead. When I met him, years earlier, he teased me with the promise of an orgy, I'd get fucked by a group of his friends: an Asian who would open up my ass, a hairy macho lumberjack who would fuck me, another well-hung guy who would fuck me with dildos, and him. It never happened. I jerked off for years thinking about it). Or stop everything. Leave. Leave Quentin. Leave my father. Leave Paris.
I was offered a job in the tropics, on the other side of the world. I was going to write my book there, the result of the few sessions I had with a shrink. Dying under the palm trees was out of the question. I told myself that I still had three years, the length of my contract. Here my journey was over. My journey to the end of sex. Now I knew everything. Everything except the impossible. Torturing kids, sperm orgies. I had reached the impossible.
33
(1995)
And then one night there was a mouth to be filled just a tenminute walk away, on Paradise Street. I went. The guy was really young, twenty-four or twenty-five years old. Pretty shy. I was surprised by the apartment, white with only a few objects, not stuck-up, souvenirs from Africa where he was an aid worker.
Me standing up, him on the sofa, I quickly realized that he was really enjoying it. So I took my time. A long time. When I was ready I asked him if he wanted to swallow it. He said he really liked it in the face. So I pulled out and I jerked off two seconds while talking to him. I exploded. He squirted three feet in the air.
34
(1995)
I still did some dumb shit before disappearing. I hooked up on the Minitel with a young guy, twenty-three years old. We had an orgy without condoms with a third, a pale blond guy around my age. The younger kid was getting fucked doggy-style by the blond. I stood on top of the bed, the blond was blowing me. I turned around so he could eat my ass while he screwed. I watched all of it in the mirror in front of me. And then I got down and I shoved my dick inside the little boy's ass alongside the blond's. It was an amazing sensation, my dick smashed up against his inside this guys ass, in only ten seconds I was about to bust, I had to pull out fast to keep myself from coming.
We went on for hours, we didn't stop fucking, using dildos. We didn't even go soft when we stopped to drink or smoke. The blond guy left, I think he was a little overwhelmed. I kept fucking the little one. He wanted me to finish inside him. I started driving harder and harder, I would pull on the belt I threw around his waist so I could hold on tighter, I was getting closer and closer. Go for it! Fill me up! He said. At the last moment I stopped.
I finished inside another guy, an old ugly guy. He had asked me to do it but it still freaked me out. I saw the nurse again. He showed up carrying a Balzac novel, Pléiade edition. That surprised me. I wondered why he bothered reading if all he really liked was getting guys to cum inside him. Me, I hadn't read anything in the past seven years, except for Less Than Zero and Sandra Bernhard's book that some guy had given to Quentin. There were also some books on zen right before leaving Quentin. And now The Tibetan Book of the Dead that a friend had given me for my trip.
35
(1995)
Sitting on the plane I already knew that by leaving I had made the best decision of my life. What was going to happen could be average, super, or even a catastrophe, it didn't matter. I had left. I had done something for myself.
I didn't know anyone at the start of my stay. I went grocery shopping almost every day just to put my mind at ease. But I hadn't made a mistake. Between the birds chirping, the trees growing green, the flowers in bloom, the hens, the black roosters, the cats, the dogs, the mountain, the lagoon, the fish, the slow-moving people, the heat, reality was having an impact on me. The Parisian despondency dissipated. I forgot about death. Nothing was rushed. I would go get my mail once a week from the post office. I would swim. I thought about Stéphane. Why didn't he ever hold me in his arms? Maybe he was scared I would leave. But why did he think I wouldn't be interested in his day? “Oh I'm not good at telling stories.” Or even, “You're such a good cook.” I couldn't help but lament that attitude.
I looked for a house. I had already seen a few with my real estate agent Ginette who had seven cats because she wanted one in each color. The last one, the farthest from the city, was white, big and open, bordering a lagoon with a big garden that opened up on the beach, the sea, the sky. It was available in three weeks, and only for six months. Take it, even for only six months, Ginette said. Then you'll have lived six months by the sea.
My HIV status. That was another reason why I left Stéphane. The results of the test he never wanted
to take came back negative. That was the last straw for me. With Quentin it was different, I was already with him before. I thought that I could only love someone who was positive. Unless I fell in love with a foreigner. I thought about all the sources of love in my life, about Catherine C., about M., about Terrier, about…
* * *
After a month, I decided to start having sex. I waited until eleven thirty to go out. Drove into town. I went into the club where all the local trannies went. I ordered a gin-get. Dolly, the beautiful barmaid, threw back her long hair. She asked me my first name. I said Guillaume. She asked Are you military? I replied Not exactly. She let it go, discreet. I went to dance. A remix of Sweet Dreams was playing. I went back to the bar. Dolly said I want you to meet someone. She introduced me to Richard, a tall blond guy, a little stooped, a little soft. I had sex with Richard. It wasn't that great, but it relaxed me.
36
(1995)
I had a few local contacts through people I knew in Paris. I ended up calling them. I grabbed a drink with Rosine L. in town. I don't know how we got started talking about Buddhism. We agreed to meet up a couple of days later to hear a Tibetan monk who had come to give some teachings. I picked her up. I remember my arrival perfectly. I rang the buzzer outside the gate. No one answered. Yet I could hear voices farther away in the garden. I slid the latch, pushed the wood door open. A dog came up, quickly, barking. Someone yelled for him to be quiet.
We're back here! Rosine called out. I followed the stone path back to the patio overlooking the ocean, the dog at my feet. Rosine was back there with four young people. She introduced me to her daughter Tina, a cute twenty-something blond in shorts and a t-shirt. Another small blond, Delphine. Finally, two guys who seemed a little older, sitting at the table: André, Marcelo. Their boyfriends, I thought. Maybe even their husbands, people tend to get married young over here. André, a very handsome-looking, surfer type, said Hi without getting up, but with a big smile. The other guy, dark-haired, brooding, intense, looked at me without saying a word. I felt vulnerable. Later he told me that as soon as he saw me he wanted to fuck me because of the way I was petting the dog, as if my life depended on it.
I found myself immersed in a Tibetan session surrounded by banana trees. It was good but I knew all about it already. When we got back, Rosine invited me to have a drink. Tina had left a note on the counter in the kitchen. She was inviting us to a barbecue at her father's. Rosine asked me if I wanted to go. I said Yes, of course. Night had already fallen. I went back home to change.
I met up with Rosine near the path, as we had agreed. I drove her car, ill at ease with the abrupt rise towards the interior. Another dog welcomed us. There were only about five or six other guests. After dinner the girls went for a swim, topless, giggling with the brooding guy. I didn't really hesitate joining them. It was really hot. I thought L.A., but smaller. Tina was hitting on me. Then I felt a little drunk. The brooding guy was walking back with a cigarette in the corner of his mouth. I found him handsome. Virile. Since I was drunk, I let myself ask him which one was his girlfriend. None of them, he said, I don't like girls. Oh? Me neither, I added. Silence.
Rosine went back home. The girls wanted to go out to the club. I followed along. Tina drove us in her car, an emerald-green Polo, speeding down the hill. I put my hand on her thigh. I decided I wanted to be straight now. It was too hard being a fag. I felt that Delphine and the brooding guy in the back noticed what I was doing. After a while I pulled my hand away.
At the nightclub, my three new friends went crazy on the lame dance music. The brooding guy moved well, I thought. It was very hot. I was a little drunk again. He sat down next to me. I asked him, Would you want to have sex with me one of these days? Not one of these days, he said. Tonight. Tonight or never? I said. He replied Yes. I was a little annoyed. I said OK.
We caught up with the girls as we were exiting the club. They had gone nearby to Paradise for a while, where there were fewer sailors and whores and more preppy locals. I told Tina, I'm gonna go do Marcelo. Oh really, you like him?, she said, completely drunk. I told her You don't get it, I don't want to do him, I am going to do him now. We're going to his place. No problem, I'll drop you off, she said. I thought she was really cool. On the way back I was in the back seat, my hand on Marcelo's thigh, Marcelo's hand on mine. The girls were screaming and laughing in the front seat, the music, better than at the club, was blaring loud.
Marcelo lived in a room in a former police barracks that was converted into student lodging. He wanted me to put on a condom when we blew each other. That surprised me. Then I sat on him. He fucked me. He started off too fast, like some macho man. Slowly, slowly, I said. My sweat dripping onto his skin. Then the bedroom filled with our cigarette smoke. The rest is another story. I will tell it later.8
Epilogue
(1998)
I was finishing up the latest revisions, in the country. I changed the order of certain chapters to clarify the development of the story. I tightened some sentences. I had finally decided not to put quotes at the start of every chapter, I would keep only one as an epigraph, one that I had gotten from a Soviet writer whom I had discovered by chance but whose work I became familiar with (I ended up adding another, from a great track by Trannies with Attitude that I had wanted to use in I'm Going Out Tonight, but didn't fit).
I went to sleep without any joints or Lexomil. It was nice to just drift off from fatigue. When I got up to pee, it was cold, I decided to go back to sleep for a little while. I started to dream. In my dream, at first I had some problems on the métro, I had to change lines, stations. It's actually something that happens a lot to me. Then I went back up into the fresh air and I studied a map to go somewhere, a map where Belleville was above Neuilly. There weren't a lot of métro stations where I could get off. I had to go to the Left Bank, it seemed like I was living at rue Duméril, where I used to live when I was at Sciences-Po, between 1986 and 1988. I got off in the 16th arrondissement. I wanted to cross over the Seine. I walked along the streets. Very soon I was at the intersection of the Champ de Mars gardens. It wasn't the right way, so I turned left. Here the avenue Richepin started, where, I remember, Séverine L. used to live, an old acquaintance.
At the spot where the avenue split in two stood a luxurious building, a sort of department store, pierced with bay windows, through which you could see a colossal bronze statue rising, with a red backdrop, under sparkling ceiling lights. The front steps that led up to the building were engraved, Girls on one side, Boys on the other, like in primary school. On the other side of the building was a street lined with houses with protruding bow windows and overhanging second floors. The architecture of wealthy neighborhoods. I often dream of cities these days. I thought that I should have brought Marcelo to visit that place, he's such a fan of the Poste du Louvre.
In front of me was this building with an exterior that looked like a church or a Spanish palace, intimidating, nearly free of any openings. I pushed open the door, and entered into a large, bare room, where a miniscule sign told of an exhibition. I decided to leave. When I went to pull on the door, a door that was covered in leather like church doors, it flew open. I just barely avoided it, letting pass a biker in a full body suit, followed by his wife, also in a motorcycle jumpsuit. The biker, instead of an apology, muttered “Huh.” Sorry would be better than Huh, I said. He kept going without answering. I left. I looked at the map in a bus shelter. The maps designated uncrossable marshlands, no bridge. It was apparently impossible to cross the Seine. A little boy who was there with his class knocked into my legs. He seemed like an adult in miniature, I wanted to fight with him but he was so little that I just told him to watch where he was going.
Then I noticed that the entrance to the métro was there, only several meters away, on the other side of the avenue. I took a few steps but then changed my mind, I felt like going to see what was at the end of this other street on my right, a paved road at the end of which was another building, like a palace fr
om the seventeenth century with ornamentation repeated in the same pattern.
I walked up close to it to study the faded stone. Palm trees lined the street that ran across in front of it. There was this kind of giant cloakroom that looked like a construction shed down the alley and from far away I could see that it contained the coats of the postal workers who worked there. Soon it was the end of the work day. As I got closer to the palace, I realized that the awning that surrounded it was completely occupied by animals. Dozens and dozens of animals with pinky beige fur, whom at first I couldn't distinguish from each other, started moving. There were monkeys, as big as bears, who were sleeping on top of each other. A crocodile, its mouth open, was perched not far from them at the top of a slide, but he was tethered with a chain around his neck and couldn't do them any harm.
The monkeys started to wake up. I decided to retrace my steps before they pestered me, but one of them sat up on its bottom, stretched out, yawned and jumped down to the bottom of the awning. I heard it behind me: Hey! My name is Junior Wood-chuck. Give me something. I turned around. He was right there, almost as big as I was, his fur was all black now. I looked for something to give him. I didn't have anything on me, just a couple of coins. I was scared he would be offended if I gave him money, but I told myself I would give him the prettiest coin I had. I picked out a two-franc coin for the hexagonal border around it. I placed the coin in his hand. He smiled and told me that he was actually collecting coins. So I thought that for the trouble I could touch him. I placed two fingers on his back. His coat was soft and thick, the flesh muscular underneath. I pulled out my coins to give him something even better. I chose a very small Dutch coin, ten centimes. He was going to be happy with something so rare. He was. He told me I was kind. Not like the other guys who came to fuck him at night in his cage. He liked sex, but the men who came around hurt him, they went too fast, too hard. And why couldn't they wear condoms, isn't there some kind of disease going around?
The Works of Guillaume Dustan, Volume 1 Page 26