The Pleasure of M

by Michel Farnac

  ... there are few people in the theatre and of course none in the second row where we sit. As the plot of the 'chick-‐flick' takes off in earnest, I suddenly plunge into the space between your seat and the back of the seat in front of it. I reach under your skirt and pull down your panties. Pretty soon you understand that the leather glove I handed you earlier is simply something to bite on and stifle the sound, a small courtesy to the other moviegoers. Hugh Grant is being witty on screen, and so am I, between your legs...

  ... late evening, returning to our room in the hotel after a nice dinner, but just before the elevator reaches our floor I hit the 'stop' switch and the cabin halts just before the doors were to open. Below us the nearly empty mezzanine faintly resonates of the music of the lounge piano next to the bar, in the distance the faint lights of other elevators lazily climbing up and down the walls of the indoor courtyard leading to the upper floors. Safely suspended in the air, I push you against the glass, lift your skirt and take you from behind, unbeknownst to the people far below...

  ... ten short contacts with your skin, just strategically placed. The point of the blindfold is to increase the intensity of the sensations by making them unpredictable. The goal is to see how still you stay throughout the exercise...

  ... in a few minutes, it will suddenly get a little cooler as it always does right after sundown, and I will put my jacket on your shoulders as we head back, but for now you seem content with the warmth of my arms as we watch the setting sun over the Ocean...

  ... the trick is timing: getting past the sales clerk when she is busy so that she doesn't notice that you are entering the cabin where I already am. After that, everyone expects you to undress and to twist around in a tight space, so as long as we keep the volume low... and if you let out a yelp, I'll just say something nasty like "I told you to try a size 10!" and wait to hear the other customers chuckle...

  ... it is one of the few spots of shade on the trail, which in this heat is a blessing. We sit in the dirt for a couple of minutes, talking, just holding hands. The scenery is amazing and known of so few of the millions who live so close to it. Silence overtakes us as we stare at a distant pair of hawks gliding their way high above the valley floor and our smiles say more than our words ever could...

  But it is late and I must bring this reverie to a close. I hope that these 'six easy pieces' will be enough to last you for a few days. It is mostly when I take a brake during the day that I find myself thinking of you, and often I feel a sudden pulse in my phallus which must be contained, and I feel good.

  Sweet dreams, milady. I bid you a wonderful vacation. Much will await you upon your return. Yours,

  Michel”

  She brought a printout of the email with her on vacation and secretly reread it every day, wondering what would await her upon return, already beginning to flesh out in her mind some of the places and scenes he had sketched. The only thing she knew to expect was surprise and delight.

  “So we walk over to the main drag in town for a bite to eat (I mean besides that and sex, what is there for us to do, really? Oh yeah, well, sleep and talk) and there are a few of those large clothes stores, the bohemian bourgeois post-‐Gap chain retailers that call themselves outfitters or such. I pull you into one of those stores and as we appear to peruse the meager collection of perfumes (you know, I’m ready to bet that nº5 would be great on you…), I give you a few quick instructions on what to do next. We both go to our proper sections of the store and grab a couple of items, then head to the dressing rooms. As I have explained to you the trick is timing: getting past the sales clerk when she is busy so that she doesn't notice that you are entering the cabin where I already am. After that, everyone expects you to undress and to twist around in a tight space, so as long as we keep the volume low... and if you let out a yelp, I'll just say something nasty like "I told you to try a size 10!" and wait to hear the other customers chuckle. You take off your blouse and quickly go down on me. A few quick motions and I am lubed up enough. You get up, turn around and brace yourself against the cabin wall. I hastily pull up your skirt, lest your saliva dry, and unceremoniously pole my phallus into your quite wet vagina. One hand on your shoulder, I move in you at the same rhythm my heart is racing, my other hand stuck between us to dampen the sound. Soon enough my seed pour into you as I squeeze your breasts in my shaking hands. I clench my teeth to deprive my body of the true glory of my pleasure, thus minimizing the noise and my recovery time. A fleeting moment

  I take you, close to others

  Yet they do not know…

  Yours truly,

  Michel” She told him of her strong response to the sense of place that he instilled in his narratives and it made him blush. He told her that whenever he imagined the two of them together, it simply emerged as a necessity for him to describe where they were because of how palpable it always felt, almost to the point of distraction.

  “Dearest Catherine,

  it's funny the way the mind works (well mine at least...). I find myself right now, as has happened before, struggling to figure out where something happens. We are next to each other, holding hands, fingers interlocked. The only indications I have of place are that we are next to a lake, perhaps overlooking it from a bluff (Switzerland?). We are leaning forward against a railing, a wooden balustrade maybe (Spain?). It is dusk and the air is cooling off but still quite warm, a summer evening no doubt. I slide behind you, hands crossing on your belly, chin on your shoulder holding you tight for a minute. You realize suddenly that the touch of my fingers feels so immediate because it is actually against you skin: my hand has made its way inside your shirt. My fingers barely brush against your skin in unpredictable motions like ancient patterns on your skin, gliding their way between fabric and skin, covering the relief and curves of the entire surface of your left side. My hand is warm and its touch so familiar to you. In a final motion, my had settles on your belly for a minute, flat above your navel. The hand leaves, gently refastening what buttons it undid to come there, and resumes its conversation with your hand and fingers. But... where is this place?

  Yours,

  Michel”

  She soon realized that the same went when they spoke and she soon found herself often yielding to the pleasure of asking him in mid-‐conversation where they were. “How rude of me! We are in Florence. We arrived from Rome yesterday. I wanted to show you the cathedral. We are walking down one of the side streets that leads to its rear. You see, I approach my Cathedral like I approach my Catherine. There, look at this beauty! The stripes are actually alternating green and white marble. How brilliant is that? But let’s get a drink. It’s like France here: there’s always a café next to the church. They make the most wonderful fruit drink, so refreshing…” and on it would go, and every time she
was transported. When later she would look up pictures of these places, they would feel pleasingly familiar. France, Italy, Spain, England, Japan.

  “All these places I’ve been, and it was all a waste until I met you” he told her. “And I can share it all with you and it doesn’t scare you away, it doesn’t overwhelm you. I do that to people, you know?”

  “Not to me” she replied, “how could it, since I trust you? You’re so sincere, so open… I’m always the one who’s prying, because you’re so open, though half the time you answer my questions before I even ask. I’ve never met a man who could so easily say what he feels, though I’ll have to admit I don’t always understand what you mean.”

  “Really, how so?... Well, I guess I can be obscure at times, but you should tell me!” “No, it’s not obscure, it’s just that there are things you say that I… well it’s ‘guy’ stuff I guess and I don’t always know what it means.”

  He was intrigued. “Do you have an example?”

  She hesitated. “Yes.” Her voice had gotten softer, more hesitant. “Like the one time you said something about ‘endowing the extra inch’. What does that mean?” She knew that she was in for a ride just by asking such a question. Michel was a whirlwind who blew wide any door opened ajar.

  “Oh, that?! Well, it has to do with how an erection comes about. Hmm, yes of course, there are a couple of prerequisites to this conversation. You see, you and I have something that your husband does not, namely a prepuce.” She could not contain her laughter. “That’s right, thanks to that whacko American version of the protestant ethos and some freakish obsession for a warped version of hygiene, he is circumcised. I am not. So even though what I am about to describe applies to him, not in equal measure. As you know, as our organ grows, the skin is pulled taught, but an erection will not reach its full potential without some assistance. Now when you are not circumcised, the tip of the phallus will not be fully revealed until the sheath of skin is manually pulled back, or by some other form of friction. When this does not happen, intense frustration can result. Mind you, wiggling in your jeans will do the trick, but loose clothing is of no assistance. This is of less consequence for those who are circumcised but remains true. The touch of a woman’s hand will do the trick every time which is why so many of us react so strongly to the initial touch.”

  Such insights were as potent for her as the astral projection that took her around the world. Part of it she knew stemmed from the fact that she could not detect in Michel a single ounce of jealousy. She spoke freely of having sex with her husband, just as she might to an intimate girlfriend, and he engaged with as much pleasure as he would on any other topic which left her facing yet another seeming paradox: the more she got to know Michel the better she understood her husband.

  “What else have I said that puzzles you about men?” he asked with the obvious glee of a child who’s just realized he knows more about something than an adult does. “Well, there was this one comment about ‘recovery time’ that left me wondering.” He looked at her with those smiling eyes and that look on his face of when he knew he had found yet another soft spot, one more door to have her push open. In the short pause that followed, she thought of asking him where they were, but it came to her that this must be a café in Paris.

  “Should I be led to understand from your last remark that no man has ever told you what he feels during an orgasm?” He instantly knew he was on to something big. “No” she murmured in reply, a sigh barely audible over the din of traffic and the heated conversations all around about whatever it is the French seem to be so passionate about all the time. When he teased her as he was about to, it was mostly for her pleasure, not his: a part of the game that he felt was still acceptable. “Good catholic girls don’t talk about such things” she said to which he quickly replied “Nor do they smooch with boys in the back of cars, nor have affairs once they are married, both of which you talk about on occasion.” She would have said “touché” had they not been in France but instead waited for him to launch into his explanation.

  “Well, recovery is not the best word, but it does convey a part of what is involved. Here, they call it ‘la petite mort’ which would translate to the little death, and I find it to be a very apt name. As soon as the explosion of the orgasm is over, there is a contraction, a drawing inward of the senses. To some, any intrusion from the outside at this point is unwelcome, be it the touch of a loving hand. The brain is rejecting external stimulation after the intensity of the internal stimulation it just underwent. It is as if one were seeking a form of sensory depravation to allow the immense feeling of well-‐being that follows the orgasm to pervade the body unhindered. The body is at once suffused with comfort and completely raw and defenseless. Every sound, touch, smell, if not blocked, is amplified to the point of overwhelming. We are blind, deaf, trembling, defenseless, at the mercy of everything, floating in an ether of pleasure where gentle waves that are the echoes of the orgasm wash over you in a slowly receding tide which as it wanes takes you back ever so gently to the reality you left when the orgasm started.” He felt that they had moved and paused briefly to listen to her breathing in his ear. “Of course, this is only the way things can progress naturally if uninhibited. Needless to say that there are a lot of men who could not allow this to happen. It is a loss of control that is nearly total and which we all learn early on to harness, one way or the other.”

  “So you can stop it?”

  “In essence, yes. You can regain mastery of yourself.” He wondered where they were.

  “How do you do that? You seemed to describe something very powerful.” “Powerful it is, especially once it has begun, but a spell that can be broken nonetheless. You see, it proceeds from a removal. The orgasm takes you away from where and even who-‐with you are for a few instants, but you can pretty much beam yourself back at any time, it is just a question of will. With a sometimes tremendous effort you can grasp on to outside stimulus with a conscious effort and use it to stay in the room, so to speak. Did you ever read that Matheson book, ‘Somewhere in Time’?” And of course they were in a hotel room.

  “Is that the one where he falls in love with a singer or an actress that died a century before?” she asked. “Precisely. Well the character is in that place at the end, everything is going his way, the dream is flesh, and he sticks his hand in his pocket and finds there something that inexorably draws him back to his own place in time. It is a penny of his era, if I recall right. Well, when I read that, I thought about this point in the orgasm cycle, and how some guys actually grab onto things to avoid leaving, to be brought back to the reality they are being kicked out of by their pleasure. Grab a bedpost, grab your partner. These are ways to thrust out of yourself these echoes and regain contact with the surrounding. Some guys just go rigid for a sec
ond and then start moving, or talking and it can have that almost manic feel to it. Talking is a good one because it brings you back, but not in too harsh a way.”

  “This is amazing,” she said dreamily, “I had no idea.”

  “Had you never observed anything? I mean don’t we tend to look a little weird right after the act?”

  “Well, sure! But how was I supposed to know?”

  “Oh, of course, Catherine. That’s not what I meant to imply. Clearly we men do not speak about such things.”

  “Well, you do!” “True, but that’s because I find it amusing. It’s very iconoclastic of me, really, and that is undoubtedly a big part of the appeal. I think you’ll agree once we are done that the notion of a man divulging to a woman the secrets of a man’s pleasure could be perceived by other males as an unforgivable act of betrayal.”

  “It’s not betrayal. I’m just starting to understand something I have been a witness to for years and always kind of bothered me. I mean, do you have any idea what goes through a woman’s head when she has just given her husband an orgasm and he just lays there as if you didn’t even exist, doesn’t want to talk to you. Either that, or he just gets up and starts talking like nothing even happened.”

  “When in truth, it’s still happening. It’s quite a conundrum, you know. To fully revel in the pleasure you have given, we must be absent from you. To not do so means squashing the pleasure mid-‐course. It’s like a built-‐in misunderstanding, a cruel irony: it’s not that a man is self-‐centered in his pleasure but that a man’s pleasure is self-‐centered.”