Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

She’s the one who wanted Pauline to come with them: “We’re not going without Claudine!” And Pauline followed, she was tired of the party. Now she has a headache.

  Suddenly, she calls her as a witness. “Right? Claudine, you’re not saying anything, what do you think?”

  “I think you talk a lot. Other than that . . .”

  She takes advantage of the other two laughing to keep quiet and be forgotten. The girl has other things to say. “The first time I had an orgasm, I was completely drunk. And it wasn’t a coincidence: alcohol opens up a girl’s insides.”

  More laughter. Pauline snickers too, trying not to make waves. They all have this extremely casual way of talking about getting laid that turns every quip vulgar. She would have preferred they take her home. Maybe the bar isn’t far and she’ll be able to walk back.

  But in fact it’s not really a bar, more of a nightclub.

  As soon as they arrive, one of her new friends—whose name she doesn’t know but who knows hers because he knew Claudine and seems to like her—suggests that they go to the bathroom to “do some more.”

  She begins to feel that it’s having an effect after all. Those little details that make an enormous difference.

  When they come back to sit down again, the other two have disappeared.

  Pauline asks, “Where are they?”

  He squints a little, like a psychic, replies, “They must have met up with their knitting club.”

  Then he bursts into laughter, she senses she should follow suit and laughs with him.

  They stay there without saying anything. There is almost no one in the club and the music is fucking terrible. There must be other dance floors because people are coming and going nonstop. It’s strange that people so worried about being “on trend” finish their nights in this kind of club. It feels a little like being in the middle of nowhere, in the eighties . . . It must be ironic. The guy stands up.

  “I’m going to take a look around. Are you staying here?”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  It’s not that she wants to move, but a guy had sat down on her left, with his wife, and is staring intently. She’s not going to stay there waiting for him to start chatting her up.

  He goes down a little hallway; the other dance floors must be through there.

  He stops on the landing, looks, continues, signaling for her to follow.

  “Nothing’s happening over there.”

  She follows closely behind him. He stops again, for a bit longer. She approaches to see what he’s looking at.

  When she masturbated for the very first time, she already knew the word and what it meant, but it took a few days for her to make the connection between that word and what she was doing.

  Here, it’s the same. She knows the term—sex club—and had an idea of what it meant. But it takes several minutes for her to understand where she is and what’s going on.

  At first glance, now that she’s next to him, watching, it makes her think more of a hospice. Sick bodies, suffering and moaning, wretchedness approaching death, pale figures, deformed, searching for relief. Whispered groans from every direction.

  It takes her a moment to understand that these people are fucking. At least, that sex is involved. Once you know, it’s obvious. It’s only bizarre at first glance.

  Lurkers extend a hesitant hand, women arched and languishing without conviction. Gray, everywhere, no lights, no music. People move around slowly, snake their way through the bodies.

  The place is like a war zone, just after a battle, when bodies are still writhing around, shouting for water when there’s no one left to help them.

  First, her eyes couldn’t make anything out. But, little by little, they assemble the gestures and comprehend the details. It’s not that they’re having sex or enjoying themselves. It’s a question of genitalia. In contact. Exhibited.

  One girl at the edge of a bed. She’s wearing a bodice, her breasts popped out a little. She’s blowing a guy, staring up at him. He still has his shirt on, his pants down under his ass, which is flat and hairy. A badly aged fiftysomething man, flesh pale and flabby, round stomach, a sickly look, and the skinny thighs of an old man. He’s bent over. He’s barely hard, seems content. His cock is thin and slouched.

  Around them, three men watch. Without doing anything, without saying anything. They’re still in suits, just their dicks out, which they fiddle with half-heartedly. One of them starts to touch her breasts. Immediately she jerks him off, then turns her head and blows him in his turn, while continuing to stroke the other guy.

  Seated next to them, another guy is being sucked off by an incredible girl, her back forms an impeccable triangle, she’s on her knees between his legs, she blows him skillfully. He doesn’t get hard at all. A couple watches them. The guy starts to get excited, really excited. He gets hard. But he doesn’t dare get too close. He seeks the hand of his wife so she can take care of him. She’s wearing a beige suit like people wear for communion. She shakes her head no, doesn’t seem convinced that she’s happy to be there. And even less that she’s aroused. He insists, gently, firmly. He wants her to participate. He thinks that if his wife gets involved he’ll be able to touch other people’s wives.

  Pauline watches him. She has a nephew just like him. The kid must be nine years old and he always wants people to play annoying games with him; he’s really tiresome. But he doesn’t let up, he wants people to play with him and will insist for hours. Snot-nosed brat and irritating as hell, some guys never grow out of it.

  The girl on her knees has super long hair that goes down to her butt. She’s overdoing it a bit, like: I’m the queen of blow jobs. The guy still isn’t getting hard, but he plays with her head, her hair, her breasts. He keeps busy, legs spread.

  Slow rhythms, from everywhere, muffled cries, sleazy moans. A very, very restrained bacchanal of meek and stubborn blasphemy. Underground.

  A guy standing next to Pauline in the entryway stares at her for a good five minutes. A new arrival starts to do the same but even more insistently. So the first one makes up his mind, goes over to her, places a hand on her breast, a strange gesture, resolute but also vigilant: How is she going to react? He’s still afraid of getting slapped, even here. She pushes him away and turns to leave. The second guy grabs her hand, gives her an imploring look. He reminds her of a hobo, really begging, he wants what he wants so badly you can tell he’d rob you at gunpoint.

  Pauline whispers in his ear, “Let me go or I’ll kill you.”

  In a very serious tone, not relaxed. He brings a finger to his temple, calls her a nutjob and backs away.

  In front of the staircase, to her left, a tiny dark room. She recognizes the redheaded girl, standing, being eaten out by an old hunchbacked man kneeling between her thighs.

  When she gets to the exit, the old blond woman who had kindly welcomed them informs her that she’s sorry, but, “You may not leave alone.”

  “I can’t do what?”

  Stunned. She might just strangle the old woman, it’s entirely plausible if things don’t go her way. Now the alcohol is waning but she really feels the coke. She starts yelling immediately, waving her hands and threatening, “You give me my jacket and my bag immediately, I’m leaving right now and you have no right to keep me here!”

  The old woman wants to know who she came with, pretty upset that someone raised their voice in her office, Pauline can’t even tell her the name of the person she came with, she doesn’t know this guy who seems to know her so well.

  In the mayhem, he shows up, apologizes to everyone, leaves an outrageous tip, drags her by the arm.

  Street, he’s not angry, it actually made him laugh that she had such a fit; for once something unexpected happened. He offers to take her home. In the car, before starting the engine, he cuts two lines, offers her one.

  “I had no idea coke made you so crazy.”

  “It’s not the coke. If I want to leave, I’ll do what I like. It’s not jail, what’s their problem?
”

  “You know the rules though. You should have told me you were over it . . . You got bored?”

  “Yes.”

  He laughs, changes speed, drives like a show-off.

  “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen you stand around while we’re out . . .”

  Then he puts on some music, the song is nice; it transforms the whole scene.

  The city is enormous and chic, full of lights and surreal people everywhere, wind through the window, cool.

  It’s like living on the big screen, leaning back in her seat.

  Claudine used to go there with them, and she did things there. In that dreary atmosphere, her, so blond and spirited.

  And she used to sleep with Sébastien. He did all kinds of things to her and in every hole, every position.

  During the party, earlier, a man had cornered her and started talking about all the things they had done together, how he had fucked her in the ass and stuck a lamp up her vagina.

  It’s been exactly three months since she died. Pauline’s not angry anymore; on the contrary, she’s come to a certain understanding. Claudine is closer than ever, really.

  Impossible for Pauline to understand why she did that, all that, with men. It’s like impoverishing yourself, a failure of self-preservation. Gaining nothing, in fact, other than a heap of bad memories that you lug around like a lost soul.

  The guy leaves her in front of her door. The street is still deserted, funny to see it like that. The sun is just starting to rise, she gets out of the car, he hands her a ball of bud that he just found in his pocket, kindly says goodbye. He must have really liked her sister.

  On her floor, the door is kicked in, left slightly ajar. At first she’s scared, she hesitates to enter. In case someone is waiting for Claudine, to subject her to who knows what.

  Standing in front of her doorway, immobile. The latch has been torn off, the sight terrifies her, she imagines herself as the door for a few seconds. Antagonized, open, easily vanquished.

  Then she understands. A leap in her chest at having guessed.

  She goes in. Lying on the couch, Sébastien is asleep, fully dressed. The TV is still on. She goes to sit against his stomach, puts a hand on his arm, waits for him to wake up.

  When he opens an eye she asks, “Come to bed?”

  In the same tone in which she’s asked him 150 times. And he follows her like he’s done 150 times, groggy, rubbing his neck, as if they had parted ways the night before.

  Sleeping against each other, she situates herself inside his skin, an old habit, right away she knows where to put his arm, there’s nothing unfamiliar about him, he is her sleep. She sees nothing but him, the tip of his shoulder and neck close-up, around her there is nothing but his breath, his scent, and his skin, she is completely inside of him.

  He says, “I lost it tonight, I had to see you.”

  His large body is honest, only wishes her well, she rediscovers that unique familiar intimacy. “I missed you so much.”

  Then, “We have to fix the door tomorrow.”

  So she pretends to sleep, her hand strokes his back, calms him. On the inside, she begs him, Don’t ever leave me alone, don’t let me do what I did again: no matter what, don’t ever leave me free to go see what it’s like outside. She thinks of the heroines in the stories she read when she was a little girl, who follow seemingly trustworthy wolves. It’s as if she has returned from the woods: she risked something serious, that she comprehends only vaguely, but feels distinctly, hideous things that smile at her. Don’t ever let me go back there.

  And she trusts him, he’ll know how to keep her in check, watch over her all the time, as he did in the past.

  That morning, probably because she’s hungover, she thinks again of Claudine, who had no one to sleep with, to wake up to, to behave for. No one next to her, concerned with shielding her from the worst.

  “IL FAIT CHAUD, il fait de plus en plus chaud . . .”

  All the windows wide open, the noises on the street sound like they’re coming from inside. You’d think they lived on a terrace.

  Pauline is on her stomach, nestled in the pillows, one leg extended, the other bent. She looks like a baboon, bare ass sticking out of her short blue satin nightdress.

  Next to the bed are a shoe, a T-shirt rolled into a ball, an open book, and the wrapper of a Miko’s ice cream bar.

  Sébastien counts the cigarettes, glances at the time, speculates whether it’s possible to hold out until tomorrow before going to buy more. He sighs.

  “You don’t want to run to the tabac? It would be good for you to get out a bit.”

  She doesn’t even respond. He insists.

  “I’m always the one who goes grocery shopping.”

  She laughs, slumps in the bed.

  “That’s what’s good for me!”

  She turns around and sits down, takes the tray with everything on it to roll another joint. She makes her list.

  “You’ll need to get bread too. What are we eating tonight?”

  She thinks, scratches a mosquito bite.

  “You should get tomatoes and ham.”

  The whole week passed like that, in peaceful bursts, nothing to do other than take showers, get out of bed to go lie on the couch in front of the TV, drink Coke with ice. Sébastien, bare chested, spends hours at the window, never gets bored of watching what’s happening below.

  And Pauline never gets tired of running her hand along his back, all its reliefs, his man’s body, toward the shoulders, it’s like caressing her happiness. A vein goes from his wrist to his neck, she could trace it with her fingers for hours, rest her cheek against his chest.

  She can’t get over it: so much warmth. Even though she had waited for him for so long, and thought of him every night, crying over all that absence, she had still forgotten just how much good it does her.

  They didn’t talk about it again. Except that he often kisses her in the corner of her eye or just behind the ear, very softly, he surrounds her with a thousand precautions, to be sure she doesn’t need anything, and tells her a hundred times a day, “If I lost you, I’d go crazy.”

  He doesn’t talk about prison either. When she asks he says, “It’s in the past, I don’t even think about it anymore.” She tries to figure out how it’s changed him, she finds nothing. He’s the same, completely the same as before.

  He listened to her story, the whole thing, asks questions about Nicolas. “I don’t trust your sister’s friends,” in a knowing tone. She bursts out laughing, ready to tease him a little. He doesn’t like when she broaches the subject, he asks her to continue, “So, after, what did you do?”

  She tells him, the heels, the makeup. She leaves out the men in the street. She tells him, Nicolas again, the lies he told her. And the nightmare of the other night, the party with those idiots. She leaves out the nightclub.

  He takes her in his arms like he’s comforting a child. “It’s okay, it’s over now.”

  And he’s sad for an entire night after learning that Claudine is dead. But they don’t say a word about it to each other. She leaves him in peace, hangs up the laundry, looks at the TV guide.

  Leaves him the time to absorb the shock. Now that she has him all to herself.

  He makes love to her like before, lying on top of her while kissing her, softly, cautiously.

  She talks about the trip they could have taken, that she had dreamed about for so long. She wants to show him the pictures of places they could have seen. He very gently rebuffs her, “Baby, stop making yourself feel worse.”

  They watch TV, men doing a striptease. Sébastien is appalled by the spectacle. “They’re so ridiculous!”

  When he sees them in their G-strings, wriggling in every direction, he bursts into laughter. “Look at them! Seriously . . .”

  Suddenly he asks, “It’s not this ridiculous when girls do it. Right?”

  As if it were obvious. Pauline shrugs her shoulders.

  “What difference does it make
?”

  He gestures to the screen, the guys finish the number bare assed. She rubs her eyes.

  “It’s just a matter of getting used to it. In five years, it won’t shock us anymore, we’ll ogle nothing but the pretty chests of men.”

  The phone rings, Nicolas on the answering machine. She gets up and goes to answer it. Sébastien observes, “That guy calls every day.”

  Then recommends, “Make sure you tell him that I’m back. No need for him to hang around you anymore.”

  She takes it as a joke. He tells her that he’s in the area, she suggests that he come by for a drink. Hangs up. Sébastien isn’t crazy about the idea.

  “You couldn’t have told him to meet you in a café nearby? I’m not in the mood to see anyone.”

  She doesn’t reply. He insists, “You can’t call him back and cancel?”

  “He was calling from a pay phone.”

  “He’s that much of a loser that he doesn’t even have a cell phone?”

  “He’s a loser in every way, actually. At this point, it’s a lifestyle choice. I’m sure you’ll think he’s cool.”

  That thought vanishes as soon as Nicolas enters the living room.

  What had been so natural—seeing him move around these walls—becomes embarrassing and bizarre. Each of his gestures that she had never noticed before strikes her as cumbersome and misplaced now that Sébastien is watching him.

  Even though Sébastien remains silent, his disapproval puts a stop to everything.

  Pauline ends up wondering what they had found to say to each other when they hung out every day for months.

  Almost right away, she can’t wait for him to leave.

  She’s grateful that he realizes it; he doesn’t stay long.

  Grateful, also, that he leaves as if nothing had happened, without trying to ask her questions. Letting her pretend that everything is normal.

  Once the door is closed behind him, Sébastien loses it.

  “I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a pathetic little fag.”

  “He doesn’t show off, but that doesn’t make him a fag.”

  “He’s so puny, it would make people laugh if he tried to show off. You saw him, right? All shriveled and emaciated, he looks like a grandma.”