She didn’t know if she were imagining it, but the DJ seemed to be trying to work the room up to some sort of climactic highpoint, lifting the dancers, perhaps without them realising, to some higher plane of consciousness. It was a question, she sensed, of letting go, of submitting, and she had never been very good at that. But what had happened as Louis had played his accordion back there in the fire station had shown her that she was capable of it, that she could allow herself to lose control. It was all a matter of trust.
She lifted her head, looked Louis fiercely in the eyes, then let her head loll back away from him, closed her own eyes. The strobes sent multicoloured waves of light racing over the insides of her lids. The music pounded away inside her brain, up through her body, like some kind of powerful narcotic. Her cunt ached, ached for this man whose delicate but sure hands were the only thing between her and the floor. It was all she could do not to reach down and start rubbing at her palpitating clit.
She must have been about to pass out, or to look as if she might, for before long Louis scooped her up in his arms and carried her out of the club. The July night was cooling now. He set her down on her feet, gently.
‘Told you it would be fun,’ she heard him say, ‘in a weird kind of way. Not that I’m a big fan of modern music. Give me Piaf any day. Or John Coltrane. Or Gershwin.’
Not eliciting any response from her, he began to hum, and then to sing:
‘Fascinating rhythm
You got me on a go
Fascinating rhythm
I’m all a-quiver
What a mess you’re makin’
The neighbours want to know
Why I’m always shakin’
Just like a flivver.’
As they began to walk back up towards the fire station, he stopped singing, turned his head to her. ‘You’ve gone awfully quiet,’ he said. When she didn’t reply, he took her hand and they continued in silence.
As they approached the fire station, raucous cries could be heard through the windows open onto the night. Louis turned to smile at Mona.
‘La surprise,’ he said, and mischief flickered in his eyes like wild fire. He made for the door, beckoning her to follow him.
When they stepped inside, the room was even more packed than before, and the temperature had risen perceptibly. But the dance floor was still, all bodies turned towards the stage, backs to the door from which Louis and Mona had entered.
Mona raised her eyes to the stage and let out a low moan. On it, five or six firemen were gyrating to the music emanating from the loudspeakers on either side of it. Slowly, tantalisingly, they were stripping off their tight navy uniforms. Mona swallowed, almost painfully, as she watched taut limbs being unveiled, as bronzed biceps and well-define six-packs were revealed, and honed buttocks signalled their firm presence through crisp white boxer shorts.
The men danced on, obviously enjoying the eyes on them, revelling in the power of their manliness, savouring the thrill of performing this act normally forbidden to them, alien to their daily lives and vocation. Running their powerful hands over skin that looked, in its sheen, to have been lightly oiled but may just have been slick with perspiration, they let their eyes roam the audience, occasionally winking at someone who caught their eye, giving them a cheeky grin and a come-hither look.
As the pace quickened, Mona became aware that she was moving in time to the music, swaying her hips then her torso and shoulders, almost aping the firemen’s moves. Half-closing her eyes, she imagined for a moment she was up there with them, stepping up to one of them, running her hand down over his bare, smooth chest, insinuating a finger into the top of his boxers, starting to inch them down, by infinitesimal little tugs, until she could feel the soft hair of his groin lap at her fingertips.
She must have staggered again, almost fallen, for suddenly she was in Louis’s arms for the second time, and his face was in hers, half anxious, half lustful, shining with a film of sweat. He too, she sensed, was not unmoved by the sight of the muscular bodies on the stage.
‘Time to go home,’ breathed Louis, and she nodded.
He carried her back down the Ménilmontant hill, paying no heed to the passers-by who stared at them. Then, where she pointed, he turned right off Oberkampf onto Rue Saint Maur. After a few moments, he prompted gently, ‘Where do you live?’
‘Opposite the church,’ she uttered with effort, weakly waving a hand towards her apartment block.
He moved towards it. She felt in her pocket, produced the key and handed it to him.
As if bringing his bride over the threshold, he carried her in and began to ascend the staircase, looking down at her.
Mona smiled at him. She felt like a child in his arms. She felt safe.
In her studio, walking over to her big old lit bateau, Louis threw her down. The rough action woke Mona from her dream-like state and she jumped up, encircled his slim wrists with her hands.
‘Come here,’ she half-snarled, pulling him towards her, twisting him round as she did so, so that he fell backwards onto the bed and it was her on top. The somnolent effects of the alcohol and the repetitive music had worn off now, and she felt incredibly clearheaded, lucid. She knew what she wanted, for the first time in a long while. Perhaps for the first time in her life.
Leaning over him, hair pouring down onto him like water, she ripped his shirt off, too impatient to fiddle with the buttons. Then she pulled the T-shirt beneath it up over his head, at the same time bringing her face down and fastening her front teeth on first one nipple, then the other. As he moaned and wriggled beneath her, she chewed at them in turn, varying the intensity. With her hands she reached down to where her cunt was drizzling his groin with her nectar, took hold of the hard baton of his penis. With her thumb she massaged the head, paying special attention to the ridge of the corona. Then she grasped the shaft firmly in her fist and set in motion a series of regular strokes, listening to his joyful gasps at the up- and down-beats. When his breaths and groans seemed to be rising to a crescendo, she kneeled up above him, presented him with her cunt.
He cupped the succulent mound with one hand, levered himself down and through her legs until his face was directly underneath her. His tongue peeked out from between his lips, tauntingly. She lowered herself, mashed herself against his jaw, his mouth. He opened wide, took a big mouthful of her pussy, his tongue at the centre stabbing at her clit. She juddered, rising towards her climax. When it seemed inevitable, she lifted her haunches and backed up, lowering herself onto his cock. Taking him into the far reaches of herself, she held on as he galloped beneath her, squeezing and releasing him with her walls until both of them were being battered by their orgasms.
She collapsed down on top of him, and as she began to let herself succumb to sleep, clutching her still-throbbing pussy, she was certain that, although the Nouveau Casino was a good few minutes’ walk from her house, she could feel the music from the club pulsing up through her floor.
In the morning she found him frying eggs in the kitchenette, as coffee brewed in the pot, richly scenting the room. Music was playing on the radio– some vapid pop hit– and he was wiggling his fine arse around in time to the beat, clad only in his striped boxer shorts.
She sat down, smiled uncertainly. Memories of the firemen in their underwear flitted through her mind, like the uncertain traces of a dying dream. She was astonished by what she had done the night before, by what the music and the firemen’s striptease had loosed in her, as if she were a dam stopped up for too long. How much had she needed this release?
‘So how long have you been writing erotica?’ he said casually, jerking his head towards a pile of papers that she had left on the corner of the kitchen table.
She didn’t return his gaze, rubbed at an invisible stain on the tabletop. ‘Oh, a couple of years. I’m– I’m just writing an encyclopaedia.’
‘I can’t say I’m surprised,’ he replied.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, a woman with appet
ites like yours. The way you… the way you went for me last night. Like some-thing possessed.’ He looked towards her, trying gauge her reaction, hoping he hadn’t overstepped the mark.
She smiled inwardly. If only you knew, she thought.
‘What about fiction?’ he went on, flipping the eggs in the pan.
She shrugged. ‘I’ve tried, but…’ Her words tailed off.
‘But what?’
‘I don’t know. It’s the characters. They never really come alive. Which means the sex doesn’t either.’
‘Perhaps you need a muse?’
‘Maybe,’ she said, thinking again of how the music from Louis’s accordion, the previous evening, had stirred in her some animal longing that she hadn’t even known existed. She stood up, letting her kimono fall open.
He rose too, eyes riveted to the strip of ivory skin that had been revealed. ‘I’ve been thinking of leaving the band for a while. I’m sick of the wandering life,’’ he said. His voice had a sudden edge to it– desire, certainly, but desire tinged with fear, or awe.
Her kimono fell to the floor. Pushing him down onto the chair, she yanked his boxers down.
‘Inspire me,’ she growled, but she didn’t hear his reply. Her head was filled with the wildest, murkiest and most euphoric cacophony, one that she knew no words could ever translate.
About the Story
Like all big cities, Paris can be an unwelcoming and lonely place, for those new in town, without friends or family. Similarly to the heroine of my tale, having moved to Paris for a year to research my thesis on the women Surrealists, I found myself a little lost. Or at least for a while.
For Paris is also the place where much of my erotic education took place. For all those clichés about the city being the capital of lurrvv and romance, Paris is indeed ripe with sex and longing, which sizzle in the most unexpected places. The corridors of the Sorbonne, the library of the Centre Pompidou, the winding paths of the Parc des Buttes Chaumont… All these and other everyday spots proved just as conducive to passion as the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Sacré Coeur.
Among the various characters I met who helped me on my way to finding myself, as a woman, were a mathematician, a model, a jazz singer, a policeman, and even a cinema usherette, who makes an appearance in a story I wrote under the pseudonym Candy Wong. In ‘Second Skin’ (Wicked Words Sex in Uniform), a picture-house off the Champs-Elysées becomes the setting for a tale of seduction suffused by subterfuge.
I’ve set much of my fiction, under my own name and others, in Paris. But the Belleville neighbourhood has always been particularly dear to me, as the place where I first lived and where I began my journey of sexual wakening. In this part of Paris, on Rue Oberkampf, Rue de Ménilmontant and surrounding streets, among the couscous houses, the junk shops and the Oriental boutiques, I got to know an authentic Paris peopled by true Parisians. In old-time cabarets and smoky dives, I became a part of Belleville.
My most memorable night in Paris was indeed the eve of Bastille Day, when I did watch pompiers stripping at the local fire-station, and where I was persuaded to dance the foxtrot with a handsome stranger. Like Mona’s, mine was a night of abandonment, a night when louche music and the sight of gorgeous men dancing in their underwear loosed something within me, changing me forever.
My fourth novel, a work in progress, is set partly in Paris and partly in London, both cities that I consider ‘home’. This time my setting is Pigalle, the red-light district, where one of my characters works as an exotic dancer.
The Window-Dresser
by Alcamia Payne
Monsieur Ficelle follows me around the apartment staring at the seam running up the rear of my nylons. He’s wondering if underneath the fashionable short skirt and ruffled blouse I wear underwear, or if I’m the answer to all his fantasies, and I’m simply smooth and tantalisingly bare.
Unlatching the shutters I throw them wide open, letting in the cacophony of street sounds.
‘You see,’ Ficelle comments. ‘It has the most fabulous view of the Pont and the Seine. It’s exceptional n’est-ce pas?’
‘Yes, it’ll do nicely. I’ll take it. I told Monsieur Démage, if I liked it, I’d need tenancy immediately.’ Reaching up a hand I finger the pearl necklace encircling my throat.
‘Bien entendu. Of course, Madame Pucette. As you can see it comes decently furnished.’
The apartment, a study in faded bourgeois opulence, is absolutely perfect for my little game of charades. It has a salon whose shuttered French windows open onto a wide balcony with views up the leafy boulevard and across the river. Extensively renovated in the nineteen-twenties, I can feel the decadent ghosts as I move through the tall high-ceiled rooms.
There’s a woman who lives across the landing and her name is Madame Culotte. I can tell she is distinctly suspicious of me as I’ve developed a sixth sense regarding the neighbours I rub shoulders with. When I moved in she stood in the doorway to the neighbouring apartment with her small dog in her arms, and her dark eyes glittered in fierce appraisal. She was thinking to herself. This woman is a whore, she wears seamed stockings and her skirts are far too short. I think I shall have to make her my next project. I shall observe the putain and discover if she’s undertaking whorish activities. Then I shall telephone that nice man Monsieur Démage, and tell him he gave the tenancy to a whore and he must expel her instantly. This is one of the more affluent arrondissements in Paris and we only have residents of the highest calibre. Dignitaries and actors have lived here and I was once the neighbour of a Russian diplomat. We simply can’t lower the tone of the apartments.
When I go out later, it is as if she is waiting for me. I flash Madame Culotte my most brilliant smile as I reach out to stroke her dog. ‘I once had a poodle exactly like this. They make such devoted companions don’t they?’ Bending down, I kiss Madame Culotte’s cheeks in the familiar French greeting. Perhaps on reflection, I’m being a little presumptuous. ‘My name’s Madame Pucette, like the flea. Baby flea that’s what my father used to call me. I hope we can be good neighbours.’ Beaming at her, I attempt to draw a reluctant smile out of her stony façade but Madame Culotte remains inscrutable.
‘Fleas are undesirable little irritations.’ She mutters, sotto voce. ‘I always think one should get rid of them as quickly as possible.’
But despite her supposition, she cannot fail to like me, I think. I shall make that an important project– to change Madame’s opinion of me. Her black eyes flash the warning that she’ll be impervious to me.
Leaning forward in expectancy, Madame Culotte is waiting for an explanation, but I’m not about to give her one. I’ve met them before of course, the eavesdroppers; it’s the same wherever I go. There’s always a curious person wanting to know my business, ready to upset the well rehearsed execution of the plot. Women notice my opulent ring and they immediately wonder if I’m a widow or if there’s a Monsieur Pucette, and if so where he is. Well I’m not about to tell them; they can go to hell. Part of the excitement is the evasion and subterfuge and it fills me with a wet, perverse thrill.
‘It’s a big apartment for a woman.’ She says. ‘These places were built for families; always they were full of people and laughter. Naturally your husband and children will be joining you later on?’
‘No, madam. I’ll be far too busy to think about the emptiness. I’m always busy, always on the go.’
‘Ah you’re a business woman.’ She strokes the dog’s head and her with lips tightening in a grimace she nods, as if saying to herself. There you are. I was right. I’m never wrong with this instinct I have for people and whorish women in particular. She’s a slut and that’s her profession. She’s not a common street whore. No, she has far too much class for that. She’s a high-class society whore who entertains men. I don’t know which is worse. In a way you can forgive the Parisienne gutter girls because they have to earn a crust and no employer will give a job to a vulgar little mademoiselle with her skirt up around her neck and her cu
nt showing. But high-class putains, they’re the worst. They do it because they’re bored and they enjoy it.
Only yesterday I saw Madame encounter just such a gutter girl sprawled in the doorway to the entrance of the Place Pigalle metro. The girl was totally out of it; everyone could see that and as Madame Culotte disdainfully stepped over her, she’d clutched fiercely at Madame’s ankle and whimpered. ‘Do you have a few euros to spare?’
Later on, I sit down on the faded sofa and I roll down my stockings. I smooth my hands against my bare skin and my flesh tingles. A whore indeed? Never in a million years could I consider myself a harlot. No, I’m simply the girl in the window. I’m the window dresser, la femme à la fenêtre, and that’s quite a respectable profession in my opinion.
Opening a bottle of Burgundy, I sip the warming liquid, and I continue easing the stockings off my toes and wonder what it would feel like for Paolo to suck them.
My first ever lover sucked my toes. He took each one in his mouth, and as he ran his tongue around them I finger fucked my cunt. My husband, Paolo is not very demonstrative in the arena of sex though. It isn’t his fault, it’s just the kind of man he is. Men like Paolo were brought up governed by strict rules concerning sexuality and when I married him I knew his conservative Catholic parents had ruined him. ‘I want you, Evasin.’ He’d said. ‘I know all about you and I know you consider yourself a little damaged, but that doesn’t matter. I love your sense of self and your sex strength and that’s what attracts me to you. What’s a little fetish, a little smudge on your sex landscape? De rien.’ Paolo presented me with a glittering opal in a silver setting. ‘An opal is perfect for you. It’s fire and beauty, yet it’s also fragile and changeable.’ Kissing me chastely, Paolo pushed the ring onto my finger. ‘Now say it and make me the happiest man in the world. Repeat after me. Paolo I’ll be your wife.’
Sex in the City Paris Page 5