Delta of Venus

by Anais Nin

  Marianne

  I shall call myself the madam of a house of literary prostitution, the madam for a group of hungry writers who were turning out erotica for sale to a ‘collector’. I was the first to write, and every day I gave my work to a young woman to type up neatly.

  This young woman, Marianne, was a painter, and in the evenings she typed to earn a living. She had a golden halo of hair, blue eyes, a round face, and firm and full breasts, but she tended to conceal the richness of her body rather than set it off, to disguise it under formless Bohemian clothes, loose jackets, school-girl skirts, raincoats. She came from a small town. She had read Proust, Krafft-Ebing, Marx, Freud.

  And, of course, she had had many sexual adventures, but there is a kind of adventure in which the body does not really participate. She was deceiving herself. She thought that, having lain down with men, caressed them, and made all the prescribed gestures, she had experienced sexual life.

  But it was all external. Actually her body had been numb, unformed, not yet matured. Nothing had touched her very deeply. She was still a virgin. I could feel this when she entered the room. No more than a soldier wants to admit being frightened, did Marianne want to admit that she was cold, frigid. But she was being psychoanalyzed.

  I could not help wondering, as I gave her my erotica to type, how it would affect her. Together with an intellectual fearlessness, curiosity, there was in her a physical prudishness which she fought hard not to betray, and it had been revealed to me accidentally by the discovery that she had never taken a sun bath naked, that the very idea of it intimidated her.

  What she remembered most hauntingly was an evening with a man she had not at first responded to, and then, just as he was leaving her studio, he had pressed her hard against a wall, lifted one of her legs, and pushed into her. The strange part is that at the time she had not felt anything, but afterwards, every time she remembered this picture, she grew hot and restless. Her legs would relax, she would have given anything to feel again that big body pressing against her, pinning her to the wall, leaving her no escape, then taking her.

  One day she was late in bringing me the work. I went to her studio and knocked on the door. No one answered. I pushed the door open. Marianne must have gone out on an errand.

  I went to the typewriter to see how the work was going and saw a text I did not recognize. I thought perhaps I was beginning to forget what I wrote. But it could not be. That was not my writing. I began to read. And then I understood.

  In the middle of her work, Marianne had been taken with the desire to write down her own experiences. This is what she wrote:

  ‘There are things one reads that make you aware that you have lived nothing, felt nothing, experienced nothing up to that time. I see now that most of what happened to me was clinical, anatomical. Here were the sexes touching, mingling, but without any sparks, wildness, sensation. How can I attain this? How can I begin to feel – to feel? I want to fall in love in such a way that the mere sight of a man, even a block away from me, will shake and pierce me, will weaken me, and make me tremble and soften and melt between the legs. That is how I want to fall in love, so hard that the mere thought of him will bring on an orgasm.

  ‘This morning while I was painting there was a very gentle knock on the door. I went to open it and there stood a rather handsome young man, but shy, embarrassed, to whom I took an instant liking.

  ‘He slid into the studio, did not look around, kept his eyes fastened on me as if begging, and said, “A friend sent me. You are a painter; I want some work done. I wonder if you would … will you?”

  ‘His speech was tangled. He blushed. He was like a woman, I thought.

  ‘I said, “Come in and sit down,” thinking that would put him at ease. Then he noticed my paintings. They were abstract. He said, “But you can draw a lifelike figure, can’t you?”

  ‘“Of course I can.” I showed him my drawings.

  ‘“They are very strong,” he said, falling into a trance of admiration for one of my drawings of a muscular athlete.

  ‘“Did you want a portrait of yourself?”

  ‘“Why, yes – yes and no. I want a portrait. At the same time, it is a sort of unusual portrait I want, I don’t know if you will … consent.”

  ‘“Consent to what?” I asked.

  ‘“Well,” he blurted out finally, “would you make me this kind of a portrait?” And he held up the naked athlete.

  ‘He expected some reaction from me. I was so accustomed to men’s nudity at the art school that I smiled at his shyness. I did not think there was anything odd about his demand, although it was slightly different having a naked model who paid the artist for drawing him. That was all I could see, and I told him so. Meanwhile, with the right to observe that is given to painters, I studied his violet eyes, the fine, gold, downy hair on his hands, the fine hair on the tip of his ears. He had a faunish air and a feminine evasiveness which attracted me.

  ‘Despite his timidity, he looked healthy and rather aristocratic. His hands were soft and supple. He held himself well. I showed a certain professional enthusiasm which seemed to delight and encourage him.

  ‘He said, “Do you want to start right away? I have some money with me. I can bring the rest tomorrow.”

  ‘I pointed to a corner of the room where there was a screen hiding my clothes and the washstand. But he turned his violet eyes towards me and said innocently, “Can I undress here?”

  ‘Then I grew slightly uneasy, but I said yes. I busied myself getting drawing paper and charcoal together, moving a chair, and sharpening my charcoal. It seemed to me that he was abnormally slow in undressing, that he was waiting for my attention. I looked at him boldly, as if I were beginning my study of him, charcoal stick in hand.

  ‘He was undressing with amazing deliberateness as if it were a choice occupation, a ritual. Once he looked at me fully in the eyes and smiled, showing his fine even teeth, and his skin was so delicate it caught the light that poured in through the big window and held it like a satin fabric.

  ‘At this moment the charcoal in my hands felt alive, and I thought what a pleasure it would be to draw the lines of this young man, almost like caressing him. He had taken off his coat, his shirt, shoes, socks. There were only the trousers left. He held these as a stripteaser holds the folds of her dress, still looking at me. I still could not understand the gleam of pleasure that animated his face.

  ‘Then he leaned over, unfastened his belt, and the trousers slid down. He stood completely naked before me and in a most obvious state of sexual excitement. When I saw this, there was a moment of suspense. If I protested, I would lose my fee, which I needed so badly.

  ‘I tried to read his eyes. They seemed to say, “Do not be angry. Forgive me.”

  ‘So I tried to draw. It was a strange experience. If I drew his head, neck, arms, all was well. As soon as my eyes roved over the rest of his body I could see the effect of it on him. His sex had an almost imperceptible quiver. I was half tempted to sketch the protrusion as calmly as I had sketched his knee. But the defensive virgin in me was troubled. I thought, I must draw attentively and slowly to see if the crisis passes, or he may vent his excitement on me. But no, the young man made no move. He was transfixed and contented. I was the only one disturbed, and I did not know why.

  ‘When I finished, he calmly dressed again, and seemed absolutely self-possessed. He walked up to me, shook my hand politely and said, “May I come tomorow at the same time?”’

  Here the manuscript ended, and Marianne entered the studio, smiling.

  ‘Wasn’t it a strange adventure?’ she asked me.

  ‘Yes, and I would like to know how you felt after he left.’

  ‘Afterwards,’ she confessed, ‘it was I who was excited all day, remembering his body, and his very beautiful rigid sex. I looked at my drawings, and to one of them I added the complete image of the incident. I was actually tormented with desire. But a man like that, he is only interested in my looking at him.’<
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  This might have remained a simple adventure, but to Marianne it became more important. I could see her growing obsessed with the young man. Evidently the second session had duplicated the first. Nothing was said. Marianne revealed no emotion. He did not acknowledge the condition of pleasure he was plunged in by her scrutiny of his body. Each day after that she discovered greater marvels. Every detail of his body was perfect. If only he would evince some small interest in the details of hers, but he didn’t. And Marianne was growing thin and perishing with unsatisfied desire.

  She was also affected by the continuous copying of other people’s adventures, for now everyone in our group who wrote gave his manuscript to her because she could be trusted. Every night little Marianne with the rich, ripe breasts bent over her typewriter and typed fervid words about violent physical happenings. Certain facts affected her more than others.

  She liked violence. That is why this situation with the young man was for her the most impossible of all situations. She could not believe that he would stand in a condition of physical excitement and so clearly enjoy the mere fact of her eyes fixed on him, as if she were caressing him.

  The more passive and undemonstrative he was, the more she wanted to do violence to him. She dreamed of forcing his will, but how could one force a man’s will? Since she could not tempt him by her presence, how could she make him desire her?

  She wished that he would fall asleep and she could have a chance to caress him, and that he would take her while he was half-conscious, half-asleep. Or she wished that he would enter the studio while she was dressing and that the sight of her body would arouse him.

  Once when she expected him, she tried leaving the door ajar while she was dressing, but he looked away and took up a book.

  He was impossible to arouse except by gazing on him. And Marianne was by now in a frenzy of desire for him. The drawing was coming to an end. She knew every part of his body, the color of his skin, so golden and light, every shape of his muscles and, above all, the constantly erect sex, smooth, polished, firm, tempting.

  She would approach him to arrange a piece of white cardboard near him that would cast a whiter reflection or more shadows on his body. Then finally she lost control of herself and fell on her knees before the erect sex. She did not touch it, but merely looked and murmured, ‘How beautiful it is!’

  At this he was visibly affected. His whole sex became more rigid with pleasure. She kneeled very near it – it was almost within reach of her mouth – but again only said, ‘How beautiful it is!’

  Since he did not move, she came closer, her lips parted slightly, and delicately, very delicately, she touched the tip of his sex with her tongue. He did not move away. He was still watching her face and the way her tongue flicked out caressingly to touch the tip of his sex.

  She licked it gently, with the delicacy of a cat, then she inserted a small portion of it in her mouth and closed her lips around it. It was quivering.

  She restrained herself from doing more, for fear of encountering resistance. And when she stopped, he did not encourage her to continue. He seemed content. Marianne felt that that was all she should ask of him. She sprang to her feet and returned to her work. Inwardly she was in a turmoil. Violent images passed before her eyes. She was remembering penny movies she had seen once in Paris, of figures rolling on the grass, hands fumbling, white pants being opened by eager hands, caresses, caresses, and pleasure making the bodies curl and undulate, pleasure running over their skins like water, causing them to undulate as the wave of pleasure caught their bellies or hips, or as it ran up their spines or down their legs.

  But she controlled herself with the intuitive knowledge a woman has about the tastes of the man she desires. He remained entranced, his sex erect, his body at times shivering slightly, as if pleasure coursed through it at the memory of her mouth parting to touch the smooth penis.

  The day after this episode Marianne repeated her worshipful pose, her ecstasy at the beauty of his sex. Again she kneeled and prayed to this strange phallus which demanded only admiration. Again she licked it so neatly and vibrantly, sending shivers of pleasure up from the sex into his body, again she kissed it, enclosing it in her lips like some marvelous fruit, and again he trembled. Then, to her amazement, a tiny drop of a milky-white, salty substance dissolved in her mouth, the precursor of desire, and she increased her pressure and the movements of her tongue.

  When she saw that he was dissolved with pleasure, she stopped, divining that perhaps if she deprived him now he might make a gesture towards fulfillment. At first he made no motion. His sex was quivering, and he was tormented with desire, then suddenly she was amazed to see his hand moving towards his sex as if he were going to satisfy himself.

  Marianne grew desperate. She pushed his hand away, took his sex into her mouth again, and with her two hands she encircled his sexual parts, caressed him and absorbed him until he came.

  He leaned over with gratitude, tenderness, and murmured, ‘You are the first woman, the first woman, the first woman …’

  Fred moved into the studio. But, as Marianne explained, he did not progress from the acceptance of her caresses. They lay in bed, naked, and Fred acted as if she had no sex at all. He received her tributes, frenziedly, but Marianne was left with her desire unanswered. All he would do was to place his hands between her legs. While she caressed him with her mouth his hands opened her sex like some flower and he sought for the pistil. When he felt its contractions, he willingly caressed the palpitating opening. Marianne was able to respond, but somehow this did not satisfy her hunger for his body, for his sex, and she yearned to be possessed by him more completely, to be penetrated.

  It occurred to her to show him the manuscripts that she was typing. She thought this might incite him. They lay on the bed and read them together. He read the words aloud, with pleasure. He lingered over the descriptions. He read and reread, and again he took his clothes off and showed himself, but no matter what height his excitement reached he would do no more than this.

  Marianne wanted him to be psychoanalyzed. She told him how much her own analysis had liberated her. He listened with interest but resisted the idea. She urged him to write, too, to write out his experiences.

  At first he was shy about this, ashamed. Then, almost surreptitiously, he began to write, hiding the pages from her when she came into the room, using a worn pencil, writing as though it were a criminal confession. It was by accident that she read what he had written. He was urgently in need of money. He had pawned his typewriter, his winter coat and his watch, and there was nothing more to be pawned.

  He could not let Marianne take care of him. As it was, she tired her eyes out typing, worked late at night and never made more than was necessary for the rent and a very small supply of food. So he went to the collector to whom Marianne delivered manuscripts, and offered his own manuscript for sale, apologizing for its being written by hand. The collector, finding it difficult to read, innocently gave it to Marianne to be typed.

  So Marianne found herself with her lover’s manuscript in her hands. She read avidly before typing, unable to control her curiosity, in search of the secret of his passivity. This is what she read:

  ‘Most of the time the sexual life is a secret. Everybody conspires to make it so. Even the best of friends do not tell each other the details of their sexual lives. Here with Marianne I live in a strange atmosphere. What we talk about, read about and write about is the sexual life.

  ‘I remember an incident I had completely forgotten about. It happened when I was about fifteen and still sexually innocent. My family had taken an apartment in Paris which had many balconies, and doors giving on these balconies. In the summer I used to walk about my room naked. Once I was doing this when the doors were open, and then I noticed that a woman was watching me across the way.

  ‘She was sitting on her balcony watching me, completely unashamed, and something drove me to pretend that I was not noticing her at all. I feared that if she knew I
was aware of her she might leave.

  ‘And being watched by her gave me the most extraordinary pleasure. I would walk about or be on my bed. She never moved. We repeated this scene every day for a week, but on the third day I had an erection.

  ‘Could she detect this from across the street, could she see? I began to touch myself, feeling all the time how attentive she was to my every gesture. I was bathed in delicious excitement. From where I lay I could see her very luxuriant form. Looking straight at her now, I played with my sex, and finally got myself so excited that I came.

  ‘The woman never ceased looking at me. Would she make a sign? Did it excite her to watch me? It must have. The next day I awaited her appearance with anxiety. She emerged at the same hour, sat on her balcony and looked toward me. From this distance I could not tell if she was smiling or not. I lay on my bed again.

  ‘We did not try to meet in the street, though we were neighbors. All I remember was the pleasure I derived from this, which no other pleasure ever equaled. At the mere recollection of these episodes, I get excited. Marianne gives me somewhat the same pleasure. I like the hungry way she looks at me, admiring, worshiping me.’

  When Marianne read this, she felt she would never overcome his passivity. She wept a little, feeling betrayed as a woman. Yet she loved him. He was sensitive, gentle, tender. He never hurt her feelings. He was not exactly protective, but he was fraternal, responsive to her moods. He treated her like the artist of the family, was respectful of her painting, carried her canvases, wanted to be useful to her.

  She was a monitor in a painting class. He loved to accompany her there in the morning with the pretext of carrying her paints. But soon she saw that he had another purpose. He was passionately interested in the models. Not in them personally, but in their experience of posing. He wanted to be a model.