Paris Adieu
Page 16
My grandfather had taken me on occasional house calls when I’d been a young girl. I’d enjoyed them, holding the hands of blue-haired ladies in big homes filled with antiques and musty smells. On other occasions, we’d visit funeral homes, where my grandfather signed paperwork and chatted with the man in charge. Since my grandfather was relatively old, his patients were, too. It wasn’t uncommon for one to die, whereupon my grandfather would be called in to confirm the death and sign the death certificate. While he was busy, I’d wander around the funeral home, invariably going over to the casket to check its contents. Usually, it would be another one of the blue-haired ladies in peaceful repose, eyebrows penciled in, wearing attractive pearls and immaculately applied red lipstick. Sometimes, it was a bald-haired old man, distinguished and proper, in an impeccable black suit, hands folded on stomach.
At the age of seven or so, I never found these tableaus morbid. They seemed natural, a sort of pleasant end to the prosperous lives most of my grandfather’s patients led. My grandmother referred to my grandfather’s practice as a society one, consisting of holding the hands of hypochondriac old ladies. She meant it disparagingly, but I saw nothing wrong with making a good living for our family by providing comfort to little old ladies.
I had met death head on at an early age, and it hadn’t struck me as a big deal. It was part of the cycle of life, nothing more. My grandparents, as well as my great-uncle and aunt, had already made full end-of-life arrangements. They had their plots picked out, headstones chosen, and a file for final arrangements in their desk drawers, along with folders for taxes, wills, and stock certificates.
When they died, someone would come to wash their bodies if they were in a hospital, then someone else would take them to their pre-arranged funeral home of choice. Pascal was one of the workers involved in that process. What was the big deal?
As long as he washed his hands. Had I seen him washing his hands the day before? Yes, multiple times. Not only was he a good cook and a superb lover, but his flat had been tidy and clean. When I pushed him into the shower, he hadn’t protested overmuch.
A part of me found the whole thing funny. It would be very funny indeed, if a girlfriend had related to me the news that her most phenomenal lover of all times had a job washing dead bodies, among other functions. What was so terrible about it? What if Pascal had a job washing newborns, was an average lover, and lacked the skill to bring me to climax? What then? Which version of Pascal would I choose?
I’d choose the Pascal who washed les morts in a heartbeat. Still, I made a tiny mental note to make sure I saw him wash his hands with soap that evening, before he went anywhere near any hidden part of me.
By half past ten, I was back in my room. I changed into fresh clothes, putting on a floaty, lilac summer top that was just the teensiest bit sheer. It would drive Pascal crazy. I was now a full-fledged woman, whose sex appeal had a destination in mind. For the first time in my entire life I realized the whole point of having sex appeal wasn’t really about making men happy. It was about making myself happy. Who knew?
For the past six years, I’d thought sex was about men having a mind-blowing experience, and women enjoying a pleasant time with some messiness at the end. But the image of the woman in the underpass along the Seine had lingered in my brain. Her unearthly cry teased me, hinting at a secret I wasn’t privy to, inviting me to share it with her when the time came.
Now, it had come. And so had I. Brava, Ava!
I stuffed a notebook, several pens, and a bottle of water into my backpack and went out again. Posterity commanded me to write down whatever I could articulate of the watershed event that had just taken place. I would show this notebook to no one. Or perhaps lock it in a safe deposit box with instructions to a future daughter to read it after my death, provided she was at least eighteen.
The day passed in a pleasant haze of writing, walking, sunning on park benches and shopping. I bought Pascal an Arab scarf, a red and white one known as a keffiyeh, in the small streets behind Saint-Michel. It was the least I could do for him after he’d introduced me to myself.
Soon I was on the 6:13 P.M. train, speeding back to Saint-Denis and my personal savior. Pascal had saved me from wasting any more years of my life wandering around in the Sahara Desert of sexual ignorance. How many women remained that way for a good part of their adult lives? I’d spent six years no longer a virgin but still an ignoramus. Was it possible that some women never got a chance to climb the stairway to heaven? I hoped not, for their sakes.
Pascal was on the platform, waiting for me. As I returned his four kisses –left, right, left right – I breathed in the aroma of fresh, pine-scented shower gel. He’d showered after getting home from work. Showering regularly was not altogether common among French men. Not only had Pascal washed his hands, he’d used them to wash his whole body, too. I thanked Saint-Denis, whoever he was, for the regular saint he’d sent me.
“How was your day?” I asked, hoping he wouldn’t go into any detail. Who cared, when all that mattered was our time together?
“Comme ça.” he shrugged, meaning “like that” or “the usual, not worth mentioning.”
It was the response I’d hoped for. We set off toward his flat, the day still in full swing, dusk nowhere near.
As we passed the café on the corner, a voice rang out.
“Eh! Tête-bouclé! Curly head!” Gerard called. He could have been addressing either one of us. I’d decided to let my wavy, frizz-prone locks go wild, now that I was a complete woman.
He sat at a table on the terrace, one leg swung over the other, his thick, dark hair slicked back in a leonine coiffure. We strolled over, kissed multiple times all around, then sat.
“Ça va?” Gerard inquired.
“Ça va bien,” I responded. Pascal echoed me.
“Qu’est qui se passe? What’s happening?” Gerard continued, looking at Pascal.
“Comme d’habitude. The usual,” Pascal responded, his voice flat.
The usual, my foot, I thought. My world turned upside down was more like it. I closed my eyes, lifting my face to the sun, as Gerard’s inquisitive gaze moved slowly over me.
Gaze away, man. You’ll never know the secrets I’ve got now. I was a woman of mystique – one way to Gerard, another to Pascal. Every man I passed on the street would sense an air of mystery about me. They would speculate, wondering what noises I made when I came: if I screamed, moaned, or cried. I had become a sort of female deity in the past twenty-four hours. To celebrate my newfound goddess status, I ordered a kir royale from the waiter. Pascal and Gerard got draft beers.
When our drinks arrived, I held mine by its delicate stem. Never again would I hold a glass by the body of its goblet. Fingers were made for delicate operations. Now, I knew what some of the more important ones were.
Over the rim of the champagne flute, I eyeballed Pascal who squinted back at me. We silently toasted the evening to come.
Gerard and Pascal exchanged small talk as I basked in the late afternoon sun, sunglasses hiding my mysterious eyes.
“Shall we meet Gerard at the pool this Saturday?” Pascal asked.
“Bah, pourquoi pas?” I said easily. Why not indeed? Pascal was making plans for us for the weekend already. What was wrong with that? Now that our nights would be filled with trips to the moon, who cared what daytime plans we made? He could have suggested we whitewash the outside of his apartment building that weekend, and I would have said fine.
No wonder Brigitte Bardot had looked so blissfully happy in that ratty little seaside town, in her pathetic, run-down apartment in the film that made her famous, And God Created Woman. She’d run around barefoot with her lips all puffed out from having them bitten by her husband. Domestic tasks hadn’t annoyed her at all. Now, I knew why. She’d been having multiple orgasms every night. At the time I’d seen the film, I’d wondered what a knockout like her was doing married to a modest, little guy like her husband, played by the actor Jean-Louis Trintignant.
At the rate Pascal and I were going, I’d learn how to cook and enjoy it. Maybe I’d even go to the market the following day to shop for our dinner. I could squeeze a few fruits while screwing up my face at their lack of ripeness. The art of shopping skeptically was yet another French tradition I was determined to master.
After forty-five minutes, we said our goodbyes to Gerard in another flurry of kisses. Then we strolled home, stopping at the graffiti-covered super marché on the way. Pascal pulled a net bag out of his jacket pocket, and we filled it with small amounts of delicacies we’d have been better off to have picked up in specialty stores, which were now all closed.
We chose paté de campagne, a coarse country paté with enormous fresh peppercorns dotting its rough texture. Next was a bottle of cornichons or little pickles to accompany the paté. Some saucisse de merguez, a North African spicy sausage that went well with coarse mustard followed. Then there were the cheeses, not much of a choice. We picked a soft and a hard one. I promised Pascal I would go to the market the following day to pick up other cheeses at the crémerie where the selection was better.
Adding another bottle of wine and two bottles of water to our bag, we were done. We would picnic that evening in Pascal’s living room. A bit of this and a taste of that would fortify us for the real feast to come once dinner ended.
I tried not to think about it as we stood in line, Pascal’s hand surreptitiously on my left hip as he stood only centimeters behind me. His breath sucked in as he inhaled the scent of my hair.
Back at his place, we unwrapped our parcels. Returning from food shopping in France is like unwrapping presents on Christmas morning. Delightful smells and the promise of delicious tastes ravish one’s nostrils at the unveiling of each item. We pulled small plates out of Pascal’s cupboards and arranged the cooked merguez sausages on one, with a tiny bowl of coarse mustard to one side, then another plate with the paté accompanied by its own bowl of tiny cornichon pickles. Finally, the cheese tray was assembled, and we carried everything out to the small table in the living room.
I sensed that routine would be nice with Pascal. He didn’t seem the type of man to tire of it. I would be more the problem in a cozy domestic scenario. But this particular domestic setting was tinged with exoticism. Not only were we enjoying our temporary ménage in France, a country as far apart in sensibility from my own as cornichons with paté were from dill pickles with pastrami, but when dinner was over, we would once again enter a new world to which I’d just been introduced. My senses sharpened, I tried to push away thoughts of later and enjoy the distinctness of the taste combinations spread before me on the table. Be here now, I told myself. God, how I would embrace that phrase in a few short hours.
“Close your eyes. I’ve got a surprise for you,” I told Pascal the minute he pushed his cheese plate away. The silky command in my voice startled me. In two short weeks I’d graduated from clueless American college grad to woman of mystery.
“What’s that?” he asked, sounding far more receptive than Jean-Michel would have been.
“Tais-toi.” I ordered him to be quiet, using the French phrase that hovers between ‘hush up’ and ‘shut up’.
He obeyed, shutting his eyes, and leaning back. A smile played on his lips.
“Be right back,” I whispered, a trace of steel in my voice. The keffiyeh, the red and white Arab scarf I’d gotten him, was stuffed in my bag in the hallway. Quickly, I found it then returned. Pascal’s eyes remained obediently shut.
I slid my hand across his face, thanking him silently for his freshly-shaven cheeks. Later they would rub my flesh without scratching it. Quickly, I tied the scarf around his eyes, securing it tightly at the back.
“What are you doing?” he asked laughingly.
“Come with me,” I ordered, pulling him out of the chair and over to the couch. With my fingertips just below each collarbone, I pushed him down onto the soft pillows.
“What are you doing to me?” he asked again, his voice tinged with excitement.
“What I please,” I stated firmly. He would be my slave for the next few minutes, until I inevitably became his.
It wouldn’t do to let him call all the shots in one evening. Now that I was a full-blown woman, I was ready to call some shots too. I wasn’t quite sure what they were, but one thing was certain: whatever part of him I touched at that moment, with whatever part of me, would turn him on.
I took his chin firmly in my hands and massaged upward along his jaw line.
“Hunh.” The sigh that escaped his mouth as it fell open told me I was on the right track.
I circled his cheekbones with my thumbs. The right one stroked clockwise, the left counterclockwise. As I touched him, color flooded into his face below the blindfold.
“Umm,” he groaned.
My newly minted goddess within lit up with pride in her seduction skills.
Gently pushing his torso forward, I slipped onto the couch behind him. Then I stroked his ears, moving down his neck to his strong, broad shoulders. Like heat-seeking missiles, my fingers searched for his flesh under the fabric of his shirt. I’d never been so turned on by a man before.
He leaned back against me, pressing into my breasts.
I moved my hands farther down his torso, circling his chest in a figure eight. Then, I slid them down to his stomach, finding the buttons on his shirt and unbuttoning them. When done, I slid my hand inside to feel the warmth and hairlessness of his taut physique.
Now, it was his turn. Taking my right hand, he moved it farther south along his firm belly, underneath his belt buckle into the area between his jeans and his jockey shorts. With his left hand, he unbuckled his belt then unzipped his pants. An enormous, rock-hard expansion had taken place while my hands had traveled from neck to male organ.
Using my fingers lightly, I explored. The male body was a marvelous piece of engineering. Was what had happened to my clitoris the night before similar to what was happening to him right now? Hopping off the couch, I pulled off his jeans to release the large animal inside, straining for air.
Pascal reached for my waist and lay me down in his lap, face up, to sketch the same designs on me I had just drawn on him. My hair covered his male glory. I wondered if it tickled. As usual, Pascal’s focus was first on me, not his own swelling sensations. Still blindfolded, he closed my eyelids with his fingers, then traced the contours of my face.
I shuddered in response.
His hand moved farther down, covering my throat. With the middle and ring fingers of his right hand, he began to circle in clockwise strokes. Immediately, muscle memory kicked in. I responded in an area nowhere near his fingers. Forever after, I would respond to the right man’s fingers stroking clockwise, no matter where on my body.
Soon, his fingers moved down to my breasts, encircling each with no hurry; a lazy, clockwise motion, as if to remind me where his fingers eventually would head. The thought of their ultimate destination was now making my insides turn over in pleasure and anticipation.
Were there women out there who could orgasm just at the thought of being stimulated in the right place? What a great skill to have. For the first time, I considered pursuing a post-graduate degree. Higher education had its perks, especially in certain arcane areas of study.
We continued to strum each other’s bodies like a guitar duet. My hands grasped confidently, my strokes more sure of themselves. The remembrance of time slowing down after I’d experienced bliss the night before, made it slow down again until each caress I gave him was exquisitely languid. Now, I knew where we were headed, and part of the satisfaction of getting there meant taking our time. We stood up and walked to the bedroom.
Pascal excused himself for a minute. While he was gone, I noticed something new. Over the bed, near the headboard he had written my name on the wal
l, then added some vertical lines below it. They looked like tally marks, eight in all. The first four had a fifth slashed through them, the other three in a separate group. It took me only a moment to figure out that he’d recorded the number of orgasms I’d had the night before. Not the number he had, which had been less. What a man.
He returned, and our explorations escalated. Soon, I’d be putty in his hands. It was hard to embrace the idea of surrender. My will fought against it. But the memory of surrender’s blissful, explosive result kept my willful spirit at bay. Something told me there was a greater underlying lesson to learn, which my willfulness would drown out if I gave in to my usual instincts to control my surroundings.
Tonight, I would succumb to Pascal. He was a man worth surrendering to.
In a minute, I was on my back, pinned there by Pascal’s arm across my torso and head buried between my legs. His tongue would not be deflected from its destination, no matter how hard I tried to push his head away. My will fought my body, as one sought control and the other surrender. Who was I?
The day before, a girl. Today, a woman.
One hour later, we lay intertwined, spent. My body, in a state of profound relaxation, pillowed Pascal’s inert form, as he snored softly and regularly. But my mind hummed, turning over and examining the implications of what had just happened to me. It hadn’t been just an orgasm or two or three. It had been a complete union of mind, body, and soul. I sought to relate the experience to what I’d spent the past four years studying.
It came to me that the highest truths presented themselves as paradoxes. I had focused on history, philosophy and religious studies during my time at Yale. When we’d studied truths at the highest levels, they always turned out to have some sort of built-in contradictions. In Christianity, one God manifested Himself three ways. Christ’s surrender to death resulted in eternal life. Confusing, huh?