“How do you know that?” “Because he told me that, a few years later. Well, we weren’t talking about that day in particular, but he told me that by the time the year was over and we went to summer camp for a year, he had a crush on Laurent and that was the main if not only reason he was still with the cub-‐scout den. So now, I’m realizing what that little event must have meant for him. But what about you, what were your defining moments?”
“That was a defining moment for you?”
“Yes, I think so. Very much.”
“Why? I mean you obviously remember it quite vividly, but then that’s how your memory works. Was it defining because it was with friends?” “No, I don’t think so, no. I think it’s more about the comfort of the moment. There was no taboo, just pleasure, the joy of discovery, of self-‐discovery. And no doubt, no shadow. It was a private moment, one that I don’t think I’ve ever shared before, though it’s a very pleasant memory. It is defining because it defined so much. It would be years before I could rationally think about sex. Until then, so much was based on this initial perception.”
“No taboo.”
“Right, and no shame, either.”
“Yes, not like me.”
“Meaning?”
“Well, I’ll have to think about it a little. I’ll send it to you.”
The email came soon enough, just a few lines, powerfully evocative.
“Dear Michel,
I have finished the little assignment of memory that I gave myself and give you an early story. I remember this very vividly (and have for many years). I am in Study Hall which interestingly enough, is also the room where I have my French class earlier in the day. I am dressed in my blazer, white button-‐down blouse, knee socks and pleated skirt (which even I -‐ valedictorian of my class -‐ have rolled up several times at the waistband to show a better view of my shapely legs). I get up from my desk to ask the teacher a question about my homework (yes, I was the student who actually did homework in study hall). As I walk up the aisle to the front of the room, I feel a slow seeping of hot fluid from my vagina and I am embarrassed by this as well as by the sounds that accompany this wetness. Surely everyone I pass must be able to hear this. My panties are damp against my skin. Why is this happening and what can I do to stop it?
It is years before I finally gain an understanding of this part of my body and an appreciation for its luscious juices. And I look forward to the day when you, my prince, will be able to see and feel and taste these delights.
Yours always,
Catherine”
Michel was very moved by this insight into a young woman’s life. He had always been fond of adolescence and its byproduct: teenagers. He’d been an educator for many years, teaching music to kids of many ages but always drawn to that window of time when children turn to adults. He looked back very fondly upon the mixture of magic and emotional pain (some self-‐inflicted) that his own adolescence had been rife with and could feel a great deal of elation in being part of that moment of growth where all seems possible and passions can arise from thin air with just that slightest nudge from what Dolto had called the ‘adult on the side’, and that had drawn him to some involvement in neighborhood after-‐school programs for a couple of years before he had a son. And through his exchanges with Catherine he was recapturing a bit of the emotions he felt during these male rites of passage. But he had generally hung out with boys and in the end knew very little about girls and their initiation rites. This was the first time that a woman shared with him such intimate memories and the wave of empathy he felt as he read her lines was an eye-‐ opening experience. He realized that for boys, things are not quite as universal as they are for girls, as his own experience and development testified to. Manhood was clearly defined in terms of ejaculation in his corner of the universe growing up, but that could come in many different guises, a lesson that he had clearly learned growing up and one area where his relative precociousness would be of great advantage.
“Dear Catherine, I will skip a couple of years in the narrative of my sexual apprenticeship to when I was eleven. I don’t believe that much happened during those two years. By now I am starting the French equivalent of Junior High and some kids in the bunch are a lot more advanced than others. The awareness level is clearly higher by that point through schoolyard bantering and such. But this happens at home. My parents are not here for a few hours and my brother is not there either, which means that I have the house to myself, and I am going into my parent’s bedroom to snoop around. This is pure ‘innocent’ curiosity on my part. I just wonder what my parents have in their room. I open some drawers, look around in a closet. And then, I open the door to my father’s nightstand… A new world is revealed to me. There are two magazines, there, both British(!). One was called ‘Mayfair’ and the other I forget (‘Club’, was it…?). Three models per issue, full female nudity, in retrospect some reasonably classy pictures of the Playboy variety back when Playboy was reasonably classy (I’m sure that doesn’t sound to your ears quite the way I intend it to…). I have never seen anything like this. I have never seen the female anatomy so clearly and photographically displayed. I am entranced: this is great! And my father has this! And these women are beautiful and…
And it turns out that I have been stroking my erection and suddenly my hand is wet. I have no idea what is going on. I look, I smell, I taste… New, interesting… but potentially embarrassing. I don’t have much time: my parents will be returning soon. I must clean up, put everything back the way it was. I realize with relief that only my underwear is affected. And I also realize how good this was, how amazing it felt. Something beautiful just happened and I have no idea what. But it was beautiful.
For the next few weeks, I will try to reproduce this in vain. I don’t know what I did, so trying to do it again is not simple. The only way I know to get an erection is to think about the magazines, and that works well, but after, I don’t have a clue. It took me about two months to figure it out. It was during the Christmas break, in the country estate where we always spent two weeks that time of year. My brother, for the first time, is not with us, and I have been granted the permission to sleep in the main living room where the evening fire dies down over the wee hours and the tree was decked out. There, on a cot, late one December evening, I reinvented masturbation.
From there it became a cherished periodic ritual for many years. But at this point, I should mention that my own experience does become a little atypical though it occurs in a fairly common narrative. By that time I am with an American boy scout troop stationed in Paris, at the embassy. We go on camping trips one weekend a month, in the famed Bellau Woods, east of Paris. And very soon after I have joined the troop together with a couple other new recruits, the pecking order must be redrawn: the younglings must be separated from the real me
n, as it were. Conversations turn to the topic of ejaculation but without explicit mention of certain things, a charade of sorts where each participant is invited to add a level of detail to the description of a mystery activity, and it quickly becomes apparent which participants are completely befuddled. When done right, there is no way to sneak your way into this big boys club. And I got in with flying colors. It made me very proud, to say the least, and earned me quite a bit of respect from my peers.
The club had four members, all older than me by at least a year, and its main purpose was one of scientific research. We exchanged notes. Needless to say that within a couple of months, all notes of relevance had been exchanged and out interests shifted, but I did at that point learn that for some ejaculation did not enter life provoked, and this is where I would in the end differ most from my brother scouts: I’ve never had a wet dream. I suspect that I masturbated enough those first few years that my body never felt the need to express itself outside of business hours. I can’t say that I have any regrets!
Yours truly,
Michel”
Unbeknownst to each other, Catherine and Michel both held a passionate aesthetic
love for the glimmering plays of light with water, and yet the difference in their preference in the midst of such a strong affinity between them mirrored an important emotional difference which typically expressed itself in her reaction to his story of discovery as waves of competing congruent and contradictory thoughts layering into a minuet of feelings washing over her in succession. She loved the glimmering reflection of moonlight on the silky surface of a lake at night, the gentle dance of shimmering sunlight on the smooth ocean surface at dawn. He was hypnotized by the twirls of dancing light that define for our eyes the many sheets of water in the sheath that is a stream, the fantastic fury of sparkling diamonds on the chaotic yet geometric patterns in converging waves breaking on the sand. Upon reading his intimate memories of childhood she felt closer to him still, moved to be glimpsing at the child that would one day become her lover. The thought then came to her that she knew no such stories from her husband’s childhood, and wondering why took her to barren places she knew all to well, where some things are not talked about, some questions never asked, not because they would cause harm but because they are in essence taboo, even between man and wife. A prim and proper catholic mother of two does not ask her husband about the first time he masturbated or had a wet dream, and of course the nice husband of a prim and proper catholic mother of two would never think of offering up such information unbidden. That would be wrong, though admittedly not as wrong as having your lover tell you about such things. Yet, try as she might, she did not feel that her affair with Michel was wrong. She knew it was in the canon that had been passed on to her, but she just couldn’t feel it. As she reread his last message, the simplicity of it struck her. That of the setting, that of the story, and how simple it seemed for him to tell the story, with its cute masturbating boy scouts with no bible-‐thumping nuns to beat some sense into them, no born-‐again scoutmaster to instill fear in their hearts. Was it so for all boys, she wondered, and as often reread several of his latest messages to find that he had in essence already answered her question. If she was any indication, things were much more complicated for girls indeed. Girls do not become women by orgasm. The deck is stacked against you when coming of age is shedding of blood. She knew there was a tinge of anger there which surely should not be directed at Michel. He was free to share these tales with her because he too repudiated the cultural chains that we are made to wear and the simplicity was in part a façade, a gift to her in the form of a rebellion against stereotypes that perhaps she too harbored, for no gift comes for free. She was grateful for his honesty, despite his arrogant sincerity. “Mirrors don’t lie yet we love them.” The thought made her smile. Being in love was obviously out of bounds and would have been completely inappropriate, and while she couldn’t quite remember how it had occurred, it had clearly been established early in their relationship that their affair would be an addition to their lives, lives which would in all other ways remain unaffected by said affair except perhaps for an elevated mood. They were consenting adults with productive lives in need of added depth, not idiots in a midlife crisis. They were both married with children and intended it to stay that way. As a result, they had never used the word love with each other as if it had been excised form their common vocabulary as a useless appendix: nothing intangible exists unless it has a name. She felt that she had found in Michel a soulmate, and the word now held a full meaning for her as she realized it had not before because she had always assumed that such things could not happen to people such as herself: sinners. She took to calling him that in her messages, “Dear Soulmate,” and he responded in kind. She found no other way to evoke the connection that she felt between them, though what she would have preferred would have conveyed the sense she had that she had found a brother without the incestuous implications, a sense of kinship of spirit that had the right and privilege to carry a passionate desire for this mirror image of herself, a complete opposite of her in what they knew and yet completely like her in what they loved and craved. She had a thought and decided to ask, and in a seemingly carefree way inserted this into a long email: “(and by the way, what are the French words that approximate 'soulmate'?).”
Michel’s next message was entirely devoted to that question and it startled her: did he know her so well? “Dearest Catherine, my soulmate,
The canonical term in French for soulmate is "âme soeur" which translates as "sister soul". I prefer it slightly to the English version in that it evokes its cousin "kindred soul" with stronger implications. In "âme soeur" is the lingering notion of two sibling souls separated that have found each other. I find that very fitting for us. Not that I would reject soulmate, by any means! But this idea of a separation that has ended is closer to what I feel. Your love of language is but another indication that I was made to please you. It seems that every part of me I thought wasted or useless was dormant waiting for you to be awakened...
Your âme soeur,
Michel”
In his mind, they were perhaps more like cousins, come together for a summer vacation in the country, for a season of discovery that neither expected full of the freedom and immediacy of a youth he had somehow forgotten he still possessed. They were each other’s Rosebud the mere thought of which projected them into a distant place where the daydreams are fragrantly vivid and the air is always warm and soft. Together they entered a distinct liminal state whose flux was soothing in mysterious ways and from which they emerged more balanced.
Of the two of them, he was clearly the one with the more esoteric imagination, but this very much appealed to her. She knew that her Catholic upbringing was in part responsible for perhaps stifling in her that creative
streak but her remaining tastes were a testimony to her true leanings. Some of his writing resonated with her weeks after she had read them.
“Dearest Michel, I sit here still, daydreaming of you. I allowed myself a few moments for another treat and went back and read a little of the ‘Easy Pieces’ series. Just marvelous. Thank you again for all the words you have shared with me. They never fail to lift my spirits.
Is it not amazing, that out of all the people in this world, we have found each other? Your soul-‐mate,
Catherine”
“Dear Catherine,
It is your gaze that turns me into a magus, a caster of ancient spells. If I were not in a state of stupor following each of our conversations, I might be a tad amused at the stupor that overcomes you in reading my prose. There is no way you could know the effect you have on me. And yet you must. Sometimes I think I see you. Could it be? I am not sure. I dare not dream of this. Or dare I, and seize a moment of bliss? And so we are back in that sunlit room. I am still behind you, holding you tight, one hand on your belly, the other firmly pressed against your breast. You have pleasured me, and now I you, but this was just the antechamber, and the inner hall beckons. I wait patiently for the tremors to subside and for your breathing to steady. At last I feel you are ready and I slowly release my embrace. You position yourself to receive me as my hands move to your hips. You reach between your legs and find me. I am hard as rock. Your hand guides me, but I know not yet where....
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