The Pleasure of M

by Michel Farnac

  “Dearest friend, ‘tis a beautiful spring day in my neighborhood and I took the opportunity to grab my camera and take a walk at lunchtime. It is the season of tulips and lilacs, flowering trees of all varieties. Mother Nature is so generous after our long winter. Although my camera can capture the visuals, it cannot convey the intoxicating scents which waft through the air. I was inspired to remove my shoes and walk barefoot through the expanse of our east vista. I thought about finding you waiting for me on one of the many benches tucked away amongst the lush vegetation, waiting for me to whisk you off to our rendezvous at the cabin in the woods, envisioning the delights (both sexual and culinary) which I have planned for you and you alone. I’m happy to have been able to corroborate the picture you had in your head with the photos I took of my Caribbean paradise. It would be nice to take such a vacation with a lover and not just with a spouse. Hmmm… mojito in hand, watching me and the waves. (Perhaps I should send you the photo of me napping in a hammock -‐ more fuel for your fire). You and I have, of course, ‘gone there’ now. I especially enjoyed the tale of the beachside location where I leaned into a palm tree and impatiently wiggled my ass before you, beckoning your attention. These images are very vivid still and provided most pleasant material for daydreaming during my vacation.

  But now some words to accompany the photo, a story which I hope will cause your cock to rise to meet me.

  The day has been spent dividing my time between the beach and the pool. I am most pleasantly tired, the kind of tired that comes from being out in the sun and the surf from morning to late afternoon. My skin is very warm to the touch and my hair has been tousled by the wind. Returning to our room, I open the door to the balcony. I shed my bathing suit and hang it on a chair to dry. How luxurious to feel the outside air on my skin…… somewhat lascivious.

  Time now for a shower. I stand before the mirror, taking note of the areas of skin where I missed applying sunscreen -‐ a patch near the side of my left breast, another deep in my cleavage. I step into the warm water and let it wash away the salt of the day. I think of what it would be like to have you join me here. Would your cock already be hard, or would it require a little assistance? My hand perhaps, sliding…. gently at first, and then with slightly more pressure, slippery with soap.

  I rub my body with an oversized white towel and don my pale pink lace and silk robe. I exit the bathroom and approach the king-‐sized bed where my husband lies, naked and erect. He reaches over to untie the knot at my waist and to push the robe from my shoulders. My breasts and torso glow in their whiteness as compared to the color of the rest of my body. I position myself between his legs and lower my head to take his phallus into my mouth. I lavish my best skills on pleasuring him, imagining you in his place. How would you react? Would you lie still? Would sounds of pleasure escape from your mouth? Would you tell me verbally or physically which spots are your most sensitive?

  But I do not wish him to climax before I have had my turn and so I cease my activity and lie down next to him. He is anxious to please me, knowing well the pleasure that will ensue for him. First it is the fingertips along my back, circling around my breasts, as my nipples grow hard. Then his tongue takes over as the fingers work their way lower and lower, teasing me. His fingers play with my public hair and begin their slow journey towards my clit. There is a current of energy that runs between my breasts and my cunt, ebbing and flowing with his movements.

  Finally, he knows I am ready. His head moves between my legs. And as I lie there spread-‐eagled on the bed, it is now you who make love to me. I have been drawn into another world. I am spellbound by the sounds of the tropical birds calling outside the open door, the whirr of the fan overhead, the view of waving palm fronds. I have stepped into one of those fantasies which we have previously created. I am living our story. Your tongue torments me until I am pushed over the edge and you hold tight to me as you feel the waves of pleasure wash over me. I push your hand away and replace it with my own to enhance the last sensations as you watch with a big smile on your face.

  Yours,

  Catherine”

  Their life stories diverged as much as their thoughts converged, and it was his magic that could draw these thoughts out into words, whether from her mouth or his. With him, the smallest thing was worthy of consideration and meaning. Desires, longings, pleasures, choices from long ago. His presence endowed her not only with the freedom to express herself but also the means. Words flowed between them and they breathed them in as if to substitute for the air they could not share. They loved the sound of each other’s voice. For him it was like feeling the effect of the first hit of a good joint, soothing, the feeling of returning to a comfortable place where one always feels welcome. For her it was the echo of a shiver moving slowly down her spine, the slight quickening of her pulse. He had a wonderfully delicate French accent, the lightest hint of a foreign melody with some recurring notes such as his way of pronouncing ‘I.D.’ for ‘idea’ and other amusing and endearing lapses, mainly on diphthongs. She asked him to speak to her in French a couple of times and he did, though it evoked in him images of Cleese and Murray in Wanda and Groundhog which made it difficult. He recited for her Ronsard and Baudelaire, pearls of beauty bestowed upon him in another time when the passions in him flowed freely unhindered by the garb of a life half-‐lived. As much as she adored speaking with him, the messages had a special attraction in that she could read them over and over. She would pick them apart, marvel at his choice of words, read them out loud and hear him speaking. She made lists of words that particularly moved her when she read them and on occasion sit and gather them like a word collector, removing duplicates, making groups by theme, by color, by smell… She sent him a list once:

  Enamored, unpredictable, solace, heartbeat, familiar, strong, gently, rhythmic, ancient patterns, warm, impale, caress, island, aftershocks, petal by petal, crescendo, probe, pulsating, envelope, marble, guide, behind, dream, phallus, benediction, trembling, ride, soft, glove, dream, lava, antechamber, stroke, enter, shudder, wave, sanctuary, explode, ecstasy….

  Appended to his next message was his initial reaction to the reading of her lit. “Enamored: Taken by surprise -‐ Sun shining in smiling eyes -‐ And out-‐of-‐breath sighs

  Unpredictable: So hard to see through -‐ Always seeking something new -‐ Yet always so true Solace: Longing made absent -‐ Conquer fear, make doubt relent -‐ Now the soul’s ascent

  Heartbeat: Sacred sound, ocean, -‐ Through the veins, tides of passion -‐ Lust but no caution

  Familiar: Ancient walls echo -‐ So softly, ever so low -‐ Sweet sounds that we know Strong: The body you desire -‐ My desire for your body -‐ Our bond and our lust Gently: I caress your back -‐ Lick your nipples ‘til they ache -‐ Ev
er so gently

  Rhythmic: The sound of our blood -‐ Pounding in each other’s ears -‐ Form effort and lust

  Ancient Patterns: Each day a new life -‐ Each life an old tale retold -‐ Ancient patterns live

  Warm: Warm is your embrace -‐ Warm the sheath for my phallus -‐ Warm is your body Impale: Vanquishing warrior -‐ Like a trophy on a lance -‐ Impaled on my flesh Caress: The slow moving hand -‐ Reverently exploring -‐ The skin you expose Island: A tropical dream -‐ A little piece of heaven -‐ Our own little beach…”

  It would become another motif in their correspondence and over the next few months he would continue the cycle of one haiku for each word in her list. No man had ever written poetry for her. Michel was by far the most eloquent man she had ever met, although sometimes he left her head spinning with his existentialist ideas. She was a 'simple' girl and one who was prone to feeling inadequate save for the fact that she evolved in a world populated with people beside whom she demonstrated superior intelligence, but not so with Michel. Contrasting him with her husband was at once revealing and painful. Her husband was a very good man, overall, with relatively few of the defects that make men unbearable, but while one might still call love what remains after upward of a decade and two children, it is a form of love in flux, far from the dreams and passions of youth yet still distant from the devotion one can see between those who have survived an entire life together. Mistakes and misunderstandings are overcome well before they are forgotten and her lot of daily frustrations now had a focal point, inevitably, even though she and Michel acknowledged openly that hey showed each other only the best of themselves with ease and glee, their prerogative as lovers. “Michel wouldn’t say that” was probably the most common thought to enter her mind before she could stop it and she learned to hate that moment for where it would lead her. It was unfair to her husband, undoubtedly, since the very thought stemmed from her betrayal of him, and yet he was a clear beneficiary of the situation freely clamoring as he was to their friends when he thought her out of earshot that his was a great marriage, something she had never heard before Michel. Though raised a Catholic she was not one to often go to confession and her conflict was not grounded in guilt, being more philosophical and existential in nature than theological. Guilt would have come from any harm she would have done others and there was clearly none. There were now two lives in her existence and though they brought her everything she desired they could not be reconciled, and it was Michel she could not touch. To palliate this, she pursued her quest to understand male pleasure further and sometimes reminded Michel of his promise of a full description of his orgasm.

  The very idea of describing an orgasm might have seemed simple to Michel at first but he was soon presented with certain difficulties intrinsic to the task: to start with, describing the orgasm would require him to actually be there when it happened in order to first observe it, a self-‐awareness that inhibited the very pleasure he was trying to explore. He found that it was quite like trying to transcribe a good improvised solo after having played it, a frustrating exercise resulting at best in an incomplete and unsatisfactory approximation. And just as no two such solos are alike, so too with orgasms. The great infrequency of marital sex complicated things for him further. He was no stranger to masturbation, without which no doubt his marriage would not have survived, but as he explained to Catherine in response to her renewed demands for prose, there is quite a difference between intercourse and sex à one.

  “I am reminded of an old Greek legend that I always liked. There once was this fellow named Tiresias. He would become famous for telling Œdipus he was bedding his mother. As a young man he saw two snakes copulating and did a very stupid thing by separating them with a stick during the act. It turns out that one did not do such things back then without severe consequences and he was instantly turned into a woman. Seven years later and surely after much searching, he found another reptilian spectacle and quickly separated them and was turned back into a man. Fast forward to Zeus and Hera having their usual explosive disagreements about just about anything that remotely reminded her what unbearable swine Zeus was. This time they are arguing about who of the male or the female has more pleasure during sex, Zeus pointing out that none of it would add up if the female did not receive a far larger portion of the joys of orgasm than the man, and I would tend to agree since that is the only explanation for the fact that you can even endure the presence of men in your beds. So they decide to ask Tiresias, since he has been both. I suppose that during his tenure as a woman, he had not been adverse to being with another man. Anyway, they go to see him and ask him. He thinks about it a little and then says ‘If the pleasure of sex were to be divided into ten parts, the male would get one and the female nine’ upon which Hera instantly removes his eyesight. Feeling a little bit sheepish before the now blind hermaphrodite, Zeus gives him second sight to compensate.”

  “Lovely story, Michel, but I don’t see why this prevents you from using masturbation as the basis for your exposé on orgasms.” “Well, you see, if the pleasure of the male in sex were divided into ten parts, man’s hand would get one part and his woman would get nine. There is really no common measure between the two. This might in fact explain why the manufacturers of inflatable dolls and other gadgets do brisk business. But ultimately, what I want to describe for you just does not happen with self-‐induced orgasm.”

  This left Catherine a bit melancholy. She had had her modicum of orgasms and in fact considered herself lucky that some of them had been brought on by men, unlike a large number of women, but never had the presence of a man in her brought her to climax. When Michel finally fulfilled his commitment it was, as always, nothing like what she had expected though in this case she would have been hard put to describe what she was expecting.

  “My Catherine, I have finally completed the long awaited description. It wasn't easy, but I am fairly happy with it. Maybe not quite as good as I had hoped at first, but a really hard topic, you will concur. Anyway, I am just piling on the excuses. You will be the judge.

  I guess part of the problem is how much there is to talk about, and wanting to put too much into one piece. But that is a pleasant aspect of our affair, that we will never run out of things to talk about! So here goes…

  If we define a sense as a vehicle of physical sensation, then there are indeed more than five senses, and the sixth is called proprioception. Akin to the sense of balance, it gives us the perception of our body with respect to itself. If you know where your arm is when your eyes are closed, it is because of proprioception. It is proprioception that informs a man that his phallus is not inside his body yet somehow part of it. This physical paradox is essential to the sensations engendered by an orgasm. My member hangs from me and I have no contr
ol over it directly. When it is in repose, I have no way to move it other than by exerting great force on my belly, thighs and groin in hopes that it will respond. It is a limp appendage dissociated perceptually from the rest of the body. The normal feelings that emanate from it are always vague, never precise: discomfort, warmth, even pain is somehow always diffuse when it comes from there, however intense.

  Unless, that is, the member is erect. Then, things are a little different. Now mind you, it’s not as if there were only two states to the penis: flaccid or erect. It’s more like three states: rest, en route, there, but the there part is hard to define or rather hard to feel. As I said, inner sensations are only indirect, and so you know you’re hard only when you feel the hardness against something else: a hand, stretched clothing… But once the hardness is established, it is as if the member were fully part of the body, as if it could be controlled. This is partially an illusion, since it possesses no muscles of its own, but now it feels connected to the main, a part of the whole. The tip of the phallus reacts to warmth, to humidity and to touch. The shaft reacts mainly to touch, and at that mainly to friction against its skin: the more taut the skin (the harder the phallus) the more sensitive.

  Fast forward to a moment following a period of stimulation. Without specific warning I enter a ‘zone’, a plane of perception: the orgasm is close at hand. Nothing is decided yet but soon will be. It is as if a reversal, a subtle shift has occurred and now sensations emanating from the tip of the cock shoot back into my groin, and over the next few seconds, as these lance of warmth fire into me, they begin to trigger responses from my groin, small contractions that start out vey subtle and quickly grow in intensity. The rhythm of the pulses starts out every three seconds or so, and once the interval shrinks to roughly one second, the die are cast. The true moment is signified when a deluge of warmth flows from the tip into the shaft and the testicles start to glow with pleasure: as it turns out, their temperature is… decreasing. At this point, only a painful physical maneuver of near garroting could prevent the semen from exiting.