He had noticed her hesitation and was just about to open his mouth to coax her when she saw the Café Charbon up on their right and was happy to have the opportunity to deflect any further questioning, at least for the moment.
“A drink?” she said. “This is the best bar in the neighbourhood, so they say.”
He looked at the facade, then down it past the street. “How about a dance?” he said, gesturing with his chin towards a different venue.
She looked. It was the Nouveau Casino, a famous club and live music venue. She’d never been.
She must have pulled a face, for he said, “We don’t have to.” Then he linked his arm through hers. “But it might be quite fun if we do.”
She didn’t want any more to drink, was dehydrated from the cheap red wine at the bal. But on the dance floor with Louis, resting her head against his shoulder and feeling his pelvis grinding into her, feeling the coil of his dick straining at his trousers, seeking, of its own accord, what nested between her own legs, she felt lightheaded, drunk with desire and longing. Around them people swayed in time to the electro tunes, sometimes moving other body parts too – arms, hands, fingers, shoulders, head or hips. Some of them whooped and bounced, showing off to the rest of their crowd. Others, falling into tune with the music, with the intensification of the beats and melody that the DJ was engineering at his turntables, looked to be falling into some kind of trance state.
She didn’t know if she were imagining it, but the DJ seemed to be trying to work the room up to some sort of climactic highpoint, lifting the dancers, perhaps without them realizing, to some higher plane of consciousness. It was a question, she sensed, of letting go, of submitting, and she had never been very good at that. But what had happened as Louis had played his accordion back there in the fire station had shown her that she was capable of it, that she could allow herself to lose control. It was all a matter of trust.
She lifted her head, looked Louis fiercely in the eyes, then let her head loll back away from him, closed her own eyes. The strobes sent multicoloured waves of light racing over the insides of her lids. The music pounded away inside her brain, up through her body, like some kind of powerful narcotic. Her cunt ached, ached for this man whose delicate but sure hands were the only thing between her and the floor. It was all she could do not to reach down and start rubbing at her palpitating clit.
She must have been about to pass out, or to look like she might, for before long Louis scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the club. The July night was cooling now. He set her down on her feet, gently.
“Told you it would be fun,” she heard him say, “in a weird kind of way. Not that I’m a big fan of modern music. Give me Piaf any day. Or John Coltrane. Or Gershwin.”
Not eliciting any response from her, he began to hum, and then to sing “Fascinating Rhythm”.
As they began to walk back up towards the fire station, he stopped singing, turned his head to her. “You’ve gone awfully quiet,” he said. When she didn’t reply, he took her hand and they continued in silence.
As they approached the fire station, raucous cries could be heard through the windows open onto the night. Louis turned to smile at Mona.
“La surprise,” he said, and mischief flickered in his eyes like wild fire. He made for the door, beckoning her to follow him.
When they stepped inside, the room was even more packed than before, and the temperature had risen perceptibly. But the dance floor was still, all bodies turned towards the stage, backs to the door where Louis and Mona had entered.
Mona raised her eyes to the stage and let out a low moan. On it, five or six firemen were gyrating to the music emanating from the loudspeakers on either side of it. Slowly, tantalizingly, they were stripping off their tight navy uniforms. Mona swallowed, almost painfully, as she watched taut limbs being unveiled, as bronzed biceps and well-defined six-packs were revealed, and honed buttocks signalled their firm presence through crisp white boxer shorts.
The men danced on, obviously enjoying the eyes on them, revelling in the power of their manliness, savouring the thrill of performing this act normally forbidden to them, alien to their daily lives and vocation. Running their powerful hands over skin that looked, in its sheen, to have been lightly oiled but may just have been slick with perspiration, they let their eyes roam the audience, occasionally winking at someone who caught their eye, giving them a cheeky grin and a come-hither look.
As the pace quickened, Mona became aware that she was moving in time to the music, swaying her hips then her torso and shoulders, almost aping the firemen’s moves. Half-closing her eyes, she imagined for a moment she was up there with them, stepping up to one of them, running her hand down over his bare, smooth chest, insinuating a finger into the top of his boxers, starting to inch them down, by infinitesimal little tugs, until she could feel the soft hair of his groin lap at her fingertips.
She must have staggered again, almost fallen, for suddenly she was in Louis’s arms for the second time, and his face was in hers, half anxious, half lustful, shining with a film of sweat. He too, she sensed, was not unmoved by the sight of the muscular bodies on the stage.
“Time to go home,” breathed Louis, and she nodded.
He carried her back down the Ménilmontant hill, paying no heed to the passers-by who stared at them. Then, where she pointed, he turned right off Oberkampf onto Rue Saint-Maur. After a few moments, he prompted gently, “Where do you live?”
“Opposite the church,” she uttered with effort, weakly waving a hand towards her apartment block.
He moved towards it. She felt in her pocket, produced the key and handed it to him.
As if bringing his bride over the threshold, he carried her in and began to ascend the staircase, looking down at her.
Mona smiled at him. She felt like a child in his arms. She felt safe.
In her studio, walking over to her big old lit bateau, Louis threw her down. The rough action woke Mona from her dream-like state and she jumped up, encircled his slim wrists with her hands.
“Come here,” she half-snarled, pulling him towards her, twisting him round as she did so, so that he fell backwards onto the bed and it was her on top. The somnolent effects of the alcohol and the repetitive music had worn off now, and she felt incredibly clearheaded, lucid. She knew what she wanted, for the first time in a long while. Perhaps for the first time in her life.
Leaning over him, hair pouring down onto him like water, she ripped his shirt off, too impatient to fiddle with the buttons. Then she pulled the T-shirt beneath it up over his head, at the same time bringing her face down and fastening her front teeth on first one nipple, then the other. As he moaned and wriggled beneath her, she chewed at them in turn, varying the intensity. With her hands she reached down to where her cunt was drizzling his groin with her nectar, took hold of the hard baton of his penis. With her thumb she massaged the head, paying special attention to the ridge of the corona. Then she grasped the shaft firmly in her fist and set in motion a series of regular strokes, listening to his joyful gasps at the up- and downbeats. When his breaths and groans seemed to be rising to a crescendo, she kneeled up above him, presented him with her cunt.
He cupped the succulent mound with one hand, levered himself down and through her legs until his face was directly underneath her. His tongue peeked out from between his lips, tauntingly. She lowered herself, mashed herself against his jaw, his mouth. He opened wide, took a big mouthful of her pussy, his tongue at the centre stabbing at her clit. She juddered, rising towards her climax. When it seemed inevitable, she lifted her haunches and backed up, lowering herself onto his cock. Taking him into the far reaches of herself, she held on as he galloped beneath her, squeezing and releasing him with her walls until both of them were being battered by their orgasms.
She collapsed down on top of him, and as she began to let herself succumb to sleep, clutching her still-throbbing pussy, she was certain that, although the Nouveau Casino was a good few minut
es’ walk from her house, she could feel the music from the club pulsing up through her floor.
In the morning she found him frying eggs in the kitchenette, as coffee brewed in the pot, richly scenting the room. Music was playing on the radio – some vapid pop hit – and he was wiggling his fine arse around in time to the beat, clad only in his striped boxer shorts.
She sat down, smiled uncertainly. Memories of the firemen in their underwear flitted through her mind, like the uncertain traces of a dying dream. She was astonished by what she had done the night before, by what the music and the firemen’s striptease had loosed in her, as if she were a dam stopped up for too long. How much had she needed this release?
“So how long have you been writing erotica?” he said casually, jerking his head towards a pile of papers that she had left on the corner of the kitchen table.
She didn’t return his gaze, rubbed at an invisible stain on the tabletop. “Oh, a couple of years. I’m – I’m just writing an encyclopaedia.”
“I can’t say I’m surprised,” he replied.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, a woman with appetites like yours. The way you . . . the way you went for me last night. Like something possessed.” He looked towards her, trying to gauge her reaction, hoping he hadn’t overstepped the mark.
She smiled inwardly. If only you knew, she thought.
“What about fiction?” he went on, flipping the eggs in the pan.
She shrugged. “I’ve tried, but . . .” Her words tailed off.
“But what?”
“I don’t know. It’s the characters. They never really come alive. Which means the sex doesn’t either.”
“Perhaps you need a muse?”
“Maybe,” she said, thinking again of how the music from Louis’ accordion, the previous evening, had stirred in her some animal longing that she hadn’t even known existed. She stood up, letting her kimono fall open.
He rose too, eyes riveted to the strip of ivory skin that had been revealed. “I’ve been thinking of leaving the band for a while. I’m sick of the wandering life,” he said. His voice had a sudden edge to it – desire, certainly, but desire tinged with fear, or awe.
Her kimono fell to the floor. Pushing him down onto the chair, she yanked his boxers down.
“Inspire me,” she growled, but she didn’t hear his reply. Her head was filled with the wildest, murkiest and most euphoric cacophony, one that she knew no words could ever translate.
Aqua Subculture
Lee Ee Leen
I sold beautiful curiosities in my shop so it was only fitting that one walked in. However, it was not an antiques shop: my merchandise was a living example of years of human manipulation in enhancing specific genetic traits in fish. I stocked common goldfish, black goldfish supposed to guard the family home from bad chi, calicos, neon tetras, comets, and bubble-eyed imported specimens. I rented a corner lot squeezed next to a dim sum restaurant in a neighbourhood shopping mall. Contrary to what you may have overheard in the management office, my fish did not end up as fillings in the wontons served up for the lunchtime crowd. A week after I expanded the size of the shop to include marine fish, Andie sauntered through the door.
I tried not to stare at her. Beautiful women are often defensive and accompanied by protective items such as boyfriends and husbands. She was alone, a towering, slim beauty whose physique almost blended in with the narrow shelves that overlooked the reef tank. With a Harley-Davidson biker’s cap tilted over her face, she lured me out from behind the counter.
“How much are they?” She tapped the glass of the tank to indicate the black-and-white cleaner wrasse, darting around the bigger fish in the tank like harried waiters. For a natural tank janitor and a collector’s item I recommended a cleaner shrimp, a miniature automaton coloured like a barbershop pole and equipped with six jointed legs.
“I am not a beginner,” she stated in a lilting accent that was definitely not local. Her green contact lenses flashed in the fluorescent light. I was naive to think she was referring to her fish-keeping experience.
“Come back in three days. Those wrasse are reserved,” I lied.
Three days later when I arrived at my shop, she was standing outside the shutter at quarter to eleven. With those narrow hips wrapped in tight snakeskin jeans, she looked like a boy when viewed from behind. When she turned at the sound of my jangling keys, I saw her breasts constricted under a Boy London T-shirt. “Please wait outside, miss.”
I learnt her name after I had bagged a cleaner wrasse. The fish flailed as I handed her the plastic bag. “It only has one hour before it suffocates.”
“Kinky,” she muttered as she took the bag. She was not wearing the green contact lenses this morning. I preferred her eyes naturally tawny. She told me her name because she was fed up with my calling her “miss”, as if I were giving inept instructions to an artillery unit.
“Andie,” she said. “Like the actress, Andie MacDowell.” She paused and waited for my response, as if I had flubbed a line of dialogue.
“I wasn’t named after someone famous,” I told her after some hesitation. I wished I was called “Jacques” as an alternative to my pedestrian moniker, Jack. When I was young, I saw a documentary on TV about Jacques Cousteau, the French underwater explorer. Local mispronunciation would flub the Gallic inflection of Jacques, and make it sound more like “Jock”.
Andie laughed and removed her biker cap. Her black hair fell to the waistband of her jeans. She looked like a mermaid, the black tresses and their green iridescence shimmering above the scaly faux snakeskin.
We met under the fibreglass model of a whale shark in the aquaria in Kuala Lumpur City Centre. I suggested the trip as a natural progression of shared interests. The aquaria were divided into biotopes: coral reef, Amazon River, Malaysian rainforest and mangrove swamp. A tunnel lit by neon-blue track lights connected each biotope.
“Arapaimas mate for life,” I pointed out to Andie at the Amazon River tank. Two behemoths drifted past us in the green water, their bony heads etched with curlicues and ridged scars.
“Fools.” She set her lips together in a compressed line.
“Sea-slugs are hermaphrodites – but can’t self-fertilize. They still need a partner,” Andie informed me as she pressed her palm on the reinforced glass of the cylinder tank for invertebrates. A specimen unfurled its fuchsia plumes as it clambered over a Venus’ Flower Basket, a glassy hollow sponge that imprisons a pair of male and female shrimp for life.
We followed yellow arrows plastered to the wall of the tunnel to the special aquaria exhibit of the month – Australian sea snakes. A large open tank was covered with mesh wire, flanked by signs that unnecessarily warned visitors not to put their hands inside the tank. I peered through the wire and saw two banded sea snakes entwined in a tight double helix, their bodies rippling together in gentle languor. Inspired by this demonstration, Andie slipped her arms around my waist and squeezed until I jerked in pain.
I guided Andie to the shark tank, expecting a little more tenderness from her. A nurse shark burrowed its snout into the sand, scavenging for leftovers. The PA crackled and a voice announced feeding time. Kids rushed to the glass as a diver descended into the tank clutching a wire mesh bag of frozen fish. The diver dealt out the fish like an underwater Jesus feeding the five thousand; the food in the bag did not run out.
Aware of his audience, the diver let his hand linger in the maw of a black-tip reef shark to shrieks of alarm from the children. Andie smiled at this spectacle, her lips stretched back, revealing teeth that overcrowded her mouth. She was all torpedo sleekness in a grey, sleeveless dress.
We exited the aquaria and flowed into the lunchtime crowd.
Andie stayed in a serviced apartment opposite KLCC. A small basket of fruit on the coffee table enhanced the sparseness of the living room. I noted the absence of an aquarium.
“What did you do with the wrasse?”
“I bought it as a gift.” She waved her
hand around as if the question were lingering cigarette smoke and changed the subject. “Are you hungry?”
We phoned for sushi from a Japanese restaurant near KLCC that provided delivery. Our food would arrive in thirty minutes. Andie selected a pomegranate from the fruit basket. As she started peeling away the skin of the fruit, she told me a story.
A beautiful girl was born to a Thai mother and Swiss father. Her father left not long after she was born. When the girl came of age, she found out that she was different from her friends. She looked like a girl, but was not one on the inside.
“How so?” I asked Andie.
“She can’t have children. She has no womb,” Andie replied, and with the sudden shift to present tense, I realized she was talking about herself. Andie had Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome; her body had resisted the development into a male by remaining stubbornly feminine. She was not a transsexual and she hated the term “intersex”.
“I’m not a freak!” Andie ranted, “I’m not caught between the two sexes. Males and females are the ones who are strange, because they are incomplete. Women are always searching for their other halves and all that magazine bullshit.”
Andie took a deep breath, piled the pomegranate seeds into a glass bowl and joined me on the sofa. She put her head in my lap and asked me to drop the seeds into her mouth. I asked her what I had done to earn this pleasure.
“I just spent a whole morning with you,” she smiled up at me. “And you’re the first guy I’ve met around here who doesn’t ask dumb questions about me. You live in the ‘now’. Suppose it comes from watching fish all the time.”
The seeds burst with a tart pop. As the juice spilled, it stained my fingertips scarlet. Like the diver with the shark, I let my fingers remain between her lips for a second too long. She sucked and nipped the pads of my finger, not quite playful. If she drew any of my blood, it mingled with the juice.
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