The Pleasure of M

by Michel Farnac

  Michel”

  A caster of spells he was indeed, his magic ancient and powerful, redolent of forgotten ages and timeless tomorrows. Even to her, for whom the supernatural had always been confined to a single book whose soul allowed interpretation was reinforced every seventh day, there came an élan to share the thought that maybe there was more to them than mere chance: if two people have the same dream, is it a dream?

  “Dear Michel,

  How you make me smile! Can you hear it in my voice?

  We have barely scratched the surface. I am always learning new things from you. For example, how your foreskin acts as a natural condom (fascinating!) Your mention of French filmmakers. Weltanschauung. And your childhood stories of sexual discovery which are so ‘foreign’ to me. In browsing through some of my earlier writing efforts, I found the following story which I had composed a few weeks before we met. I think you will find it interesting:

  I am staying at a friend’s house on the beach along with others whom I do not know. I awaken in the morning and go down to the kitchen to make some tea. I am wearing an oversized shirt and panties. A much younger man begins to enter the room but then stops in the doorway. I look in that direction and feeling slightly exposed, I return to my position in front of the sink without exchanging any words. The stranger approaches and rather than passing me, stops when he is directly immediately behind me. I am startled and slightly uncomfortable as I feel an unmistakable hardness close to my buttocks. Before I can react, he moves on through the room and out the back door.

  Later I am seated alone in one of the local restaurants where I am about to order a drink. The mystery man slips into the seat opposite me and asks if he can join me. He begins his conversation by commenting on my long legs which he had noticed earlier today. He falls silent as he slowly watches for my reaction. I squirm under his gaze but am very intrigued. We sip our cocktails and from time to time, he drops some hints as to how he might like to spend the afternoon. -‐

  Michel, have I always been searching for you?

  Your,

  Catherine”

  By weaving this new thread into the tapestry of their affair, she was tapping into a well of feelings bordering on mystical beliefs that few people around Michel knew of. Perhaps the fairest way to phrase it would be to say that he believed in patterns. He had long struggled as a youth to decide whether to embrace science or the arts and had in fact attempted to study physics and mathematics with paltry results which landed him eventually in the Paris conservatory instead of the Grandes Écoles he (and his family) had once aspired to. He’d learned enough about science to know that what fascinated him were things such as chaos theory, fluid dynamics and information theory, and that the common denominator to his fascination was patterns: their emergence, recognition and taxonomy. His approach to music and his eclectic influences were not dissimilar in origin. He gave great importance to wisdom of the ages and its dictums such as the notion that ignorance of the past leads to needles repetition of mistakes. He believed that there are tales that must be told at every generation lest they be forgotten and relived in full tragedy, for it is the tales that are the pattern of history and every generation brings to the tale those who will play its parts. Every age has its kings and its priests, its poets and its lovers.

  “Dear Catherine, For years I had been groomed for your arrival, and in dream you had been told of my coming. Being who I am, of course, the question of 'why' has no meaning and therefore I am not burdened. For an existentialist, there is no intrinsic meaning to such coincidences other than the one we assign to them. That leaves me with the sole obligation of making you a happier person as a just payment for making me a better human being. While I am content to not create an external 'why' for our relationship, there are two things that I do believe in: first, that if we had not wanted and subsequently crafted our bond, it would not exist, and second that there are patterns in human history that we are not exempt from, archetypes of humanity that we fall into, and that you and I are not the first to share this bond, nor the last. We are reenacting, and by doing so being, a piece of human history. There are songs about us, books about us, and among those who read and listen are many who envy us. I used to envy us. Of course, we are not those who came before us and we have enveloped the old tale in our own little twists and flourishes. We do, after all, have free will (interesting to find yet another point on which we agree for very different reasons…) and the internet.

  I realize that I have not been very good at articulating what you have given me through this relationship. Your recent messages got me to wondering why, and because that wasn't too successful, got me to wanting to articulate it and see where it would go from there. You mention often how important it is for you to please. Your application of this to me is of course the first thing that I have derived from knowing you: much pleasure. But it also leads to another part. You are indeed a Pleaser, and in this categorization of humanity into archetypes, I find four: the Pleaser, the Giver, the Taker and the Transient. I am a Giver. One of the things I cherish most about our relationship is you telling me how much I have given you. I hope this does not sound petty. Telling me that I have gifted you with Weltanschauung is like giving a puppy a belly rub: I almost peed all over the place. Beyond that, you brought a lantern into the cave in which I dwelt, you gave me my anima by showing me a woman's true form, in all its glory. You have freed me from many demons, mended me in many places. The list is long. You've allowed me to think of myself as a man again. That's a great gift.

  Yours,

  Michel”

  Of how many times her spine had been nearly paralyzed by shivers upon reading his words she had lost count, knowing only that this was one more. These words were high praise indeed, coming from his heart as she knew they did: she would cherish them forever. As a child, she had briefly know a great-‐uncle who was a priest and grown quite fond of him before he passed away. One afternoon, she was sitting on his lap as he showed her the art of gothic calligraphy with quill and ink, and when he was done and she looked up at him, she saw something and asked him about it: “You have two smiles and the second one is bigger than the other. Why is that?” His answer had stuck with her all these years: “The first is from the pleasure of being with you, and the second comes from knowing I’ve got the first.” She thought of this when her smile broadened between her third and fourth reading of Michel’s words. As often, the e-‐mail was so dense with meaning that a single reading would have served it ill, but clearly the last reading’s purpose was to wallow in the pleasure of his praise, no longer to further her understanding of his words but to revel in the pleasure of the pleasure that his words gave her. She knew that he understood such things in ways perhaps more intricate than she but did not care, for he did not either.

  Sh
e accorded great value to his presence in her dreams, a common occurrence which had caused some confusion in her when the image had become more precise. She had not requested it per se but had clearly intimated to him over the course of many conversations that she had a burning desire to know what he looked like. The request would have been out of place, perhaps, and a rupture of one of the limits that had inherently defined their affair, and she had not wanted to arouse in him feelings of caution towards her motives, but much more deeply she had been afraid that such a request could then lead to a symmetric one from him, one she was not ready to accede to. Yet one day, in her inbox was an email from Michel with as only body his: a picture of him in a strange backlit chiaroscuro, unclothed but for a robe loosely draped on his shoulders, his nakedness revealed for her pleasure. Since then the dreams had gotten much more realistic as her visions of him had the feel of reality engendered by familiarity. The receipt of the image had caused some trepidation on her part as she fully expected that this was the prelude to a demand for a reciprocation that she did not feel she would be able to deliver on, but as it happened Michel never asked for anything nor in fact ever made mention of the photo until she one day asked him who had taken it, to which he replied ‘myself, with a remote control’. In fact, it had not taken long to understand that his invitation had been declined and he felt no need to ask her since he knew well it would only make her uncomfortable. He was quite happy to know that she had the image and he was content, as it were. He had a very different relationship to his dreams indeed. For years mostly he’d made every effort to not remember them, knowing full well that this was not the norm. On the whole his dreams were unpleasant and there had been times in his life when his dreaming had been made up mainly (or so it seemed) of recurring mild nightmares which went on for weeks and more. Later as a young musician in Europe he had discovered that the use of certain narcotics could suppress any memory of his dreams, something that had nearly ruined the budding musical career he was having but also seemed to have permanently diminished the intensity of his dream memories upon waking, which essentially meant that if he made no effort to remember his dreams in the morning, he never remembered any of them at all, and that suited him just fine until his affair with Catherine had really taken off. Now he had developed a new ritual in the morning, where he tried to probe his mood and residual sensations as he awoke to figure out if he had dreamt of Catherine and if so to immediately try to focus his memory on the dream at hand, and this seemed to work well. Of course, her shape had no face. This did not bother him. In his dreams she was first and foremost a presence whose appearance tended to differ depending on the setting and the situation, changing from blonde to brunette, long hair to short hair, light eyes to dark (for while faceless to him she did have eyes always). There was no glamour or amazing beauty in his onyric representations of her but always a soothing serenity bathed in the glow of familiarity, however fleeting her features. More often than not it was an erection that indicated without the shadow of a doubt that he had dreamt of her. He shared as much with Catherine who quickly became enthralled with the images that Michel was conjuring in her mind.

  “Dear Michel, OK, so now I will be ahead of you by one as I sneak in a quick message. I have just showered and sit here naked in my robe -‐ fragrant and warm. We are going out for breakfast and then to the public market to buy plants, as it is finally the growing season in New York. I am hoping for a sexual encounter when we return and turn to you for inspiration.

  The question of the day is: What do you do when you feel stirrings in your cock? Do you ignore them and play the role of monk? Or do you take it into your hands and bring yourself to a further state of satisfaction? Seeing your cock in real life is still on my to-‐do list, but I would leave it up to you as to whether you give me permission to touch.

  Teasingly yours,

  Catherine”

  “Dear Catherine,

  As often, your first paragraph and its description of your day of rest was enthralling. I will try to answer your concerns if partially only, then at least unequivocally. This morning was a good example, as I awoke with a hard-‐on and decided to take matters into my own hands. My wife was up and already upstairs (the bedrooms are below in our apartment). There is something very soothing about having an orgasm when one wakes up, very relaxing. While the intensity of the orgasm is quite diminished with self-‐satisfaction, the physical effort is much less, of course, which has its good side. I find the concept of prolonged periods without orgasms distasteful and have never done so (not counting the first eleven years of my life). One may easily conclude that upwards of 99% of my sexual pleasure has been self-‐induced. I pity those who have taboos around such things: I have none.

  Yours always,

  Michel”

  “Good morning, dearest.

  Thank you for affirming that my stories continue to have my desired effect. And just as you are turned on by those sexual situations, I too am very aroused by thoughts of you taking your cock into your hand and bringing yourself to orgasm. I might like to have further details. For instance, are you standing, sitting, reclining? Where are you when you take your cock out of your pants to reveal your hot erection? What specifically did you think about the other morning when you sought to ease the hardness of your phallus? Was it thoughts of my fingers probing my cunt... or was it the vision of how you would plunge your erect member into the warm and wet chamber which awaits you?

  Yours in lust,

  Catherine”

  When they next spoke, Michel tried once again to assuage Catherine’s curiosity.

  “I generally masturbate while sitting, and will only do so lying down if I am already in bed before the need takes over”

  “Do you think of it as a need?” she asked a tad hesitantly. “Actually no, not at all. I try very hard not to confuse desire and need. One needs only shelter and food, to a large extent. The rest is creature comforts that I feel are so important that I tend to think of them as required, but truly it is a luxury to think in such a way. I believe that men who speak of ‘need’ in the sexual realm are liars, though there are admittedly a couple of medical conditions that can have some strange symptoms, but they are extremely rare.”

  “That was a mouthful!” “It’s just that I feel nauseated when I hear a guy say that ‘a man has needs’. A man has desires and it would be foolish not to understand that. But a man’s desires should never trump a woman’s welfare. But back to the topic at hand: masturbation.”

  “Yes! So where do you do it?”

  “Most often at my desk, at home, usually late, when everyone in the house is asleep.” “At your desk? Is that comfortable?”

  “Oh yes, really. I have one of the fancy office chairs, so I can recline the seat back, tilt the sitting plane, stick my feet on the desk
and go for it. Plus, the internet is an appropriate aid, and my computer is on my desk.”

  “Oh, the internet…”

  “… said she with the vibrator and Astro-‐glide…”

  “What does that have to do with the internet?”

  “We all find our stimulations where we can, I don’t see why one method would be superior to the other.” “But mine does not involve looking at other men.”

  “So you don’t need visual aids, but you’re not going to tell me that you fantasize about your husband when you masturbate.”

  “I think about you.” “Ah, I’m at a slight disadvantage here. I don’t want to be sounding untoward, but surely there have been times that you masturbated while you were not having an affair, or before that ever, uh, happened.”

  Catherine let the silence hang in the air a little bit before she replied. “You’re right, you are at a slight disadvantage…”

  She then gracefully allowed him to tactfully shift the topic of discussion which in fact quickly whimpered out, and the exchange lingered with her all day. At first she thought that she was upset because she had been pushed a little too far by Michel and his fabled honesty. As the hours went by she realized that there was another reason and that she in fact felt bad about how she had handled the topic. After all, she had initiated the conversation and there was no reason that she should have gotten testy as she had with Michel. That evening, after thinking for the flash of an instant that she had just seen Michel in the tavern where she was having an after-‐ work drink with friends even though he was thousands of miles away, she found herself staring at the mirror behind the bar and asking herself “What would Michel do” and this made her smile broadly at the notion that he would enjoy the irony of her thought. And so she pondered at length the discomfort she had felt at him asking about whom she thought of when she masturbated and slowly came to understand that what truly bothered her was not the answer to his question but rather the immediate implication that her answer would have had. But this was silly, drenched in prejudice and guilt of a type that her relationship with Michel was supposed to have cast away, so she wrote to him the following morning.