by Marie Wilson
In Paris, scarf wearing is practically a religion (Our Lady of the Scarf—the oldest church in Paris). I had to have one, so Wyatt took me to a little shop on the Rue Descartes and picked out a gorgeous crimson swath trimmed with gold beads and small tassels. I wrapped it around my neck and walked on, a newborn Parisian swaddled in blood-red.
Somewhere in a labyrinth of galleried streets near the École des Beaux-Arts, we come across, quite by accident, a small, secluded circle called Place de Furstenberg. I recognize it from Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer: “In the middle of the square four black trees that have not yet begun to blossom. Intellectual trees, nourished by the paving stones. Like T.S. Eliot’s verse.”
I lean against one of those black trees and imagine a drunken night in 1920s Gay Paree, when Henry might have wandered home in the early hours and relieved himself on this rough bark like some stray dog. Or, as I’m sure he did more than once, backed a woman against a trunk—flutter of skirt, scent of roses, tobacco, sex.
As if reading my mind, Wyatt puts an arm around my waist and presses against me, biting my ear, kissing my neck. In the streetlamp’s glow he lifts my red cancan skirt (bought in the Latin Quarter) to find I am sans knickers and wet with desire. He pushes into me as forcefully and naturally as these trees push through the paving stones.
Now I know what Rose meant when she said that sometimes when she’s getting fucked really good she doesn’t have to climax right then and there. I also understand her tree thing now. Wyatt comes quickly and fantastically and leaves me panting for more. We retreat to our hotel room.
I pour the bath while Wyatt pours the wine. The tub is too narrow for two, but the bathroom itself (sans toilet, which has its own little room) is big enough for a small party. Wyatt sits by its open gabled window and looks out at the rooftops of Paris. A breeze rushes in and whispers over my naked body.
Wyatt crosses the aquamarine-tiled room to massage my feet, but it isn’t long before his hands move up to my calves and then on to my thighs. When he reaches his final destination, water sloshes around me as I arch my back and spread my legs over the edges of the tub. Wyatt plunges his head under the water, finds my clit and sucks, a sensation of oceanic proportions, vast, deep and furious.
He emerges to inhale and drop a Sex Bomb into the tub. One of Lush’s bath bombs, the confection fizzes around me and releases fuchsia confetti, pink sparkles and flower petals into the water. Scents of ylang-ylang and jasmine fill the air. Wyatt pushes the bomb under my ass, where it tickles and makes me giggle. Then he holds it at my clit, where it provides faint but exciting echoes of his tongue. Eventually the bomb dissolves completely, revealing a rosebud at its centre.
“Slightly forensic,” Wyatt observes as he pulls the plug on the pink water. Flower petals and sparkles stick to the sides of the tub and to my skin. When the water has almost drained, Wyatt grabs his shaving cream and razor. He tells me to lie back and relax. He shaves my pussy.
“Trust me, Wanda,” he murmurs mysteriously. I inhale deeply and decide to trust completely this man I hardly know but feel such deep connection to. Call me crazy or call me brave, but I accepted his invitation to Paris after having dated him only a handful of times. He draws the razor over my most precious skin with a sure and steady hand, then splashes with water to rinse.
“Touch yourself, Wanda,” he says when he’s done. I do. It feels as soft as a horse’s muzzle. I am in awe of my Venus de Milo hairlessness, and look down to see my clit shining like a small pink-purple heart, inverted from my perspective. Wyatt flickers his teasing tongue over it.
“Make me come,” I murmur.
“No,” he says. “You do it. I like to watch.”
CON
I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.
—Dorothy Parker
Mrs. Parker may have consumed many bottles of bathtub gin, but let me introduce you to the bottles that surround my bathtub—not gin, but just as intoxicating.
My stash of little bottles gives the impression that bigger bottles have been getting together at night and making babies. In fact, they’re orphans collected from hotels that Ty and I have occasionally holed up in together over the past three years. They contain the shampoo and conditioner, bath gel and body cream that I always feel compelled to pack when I leave a room.
For some time now I’ve felt annoyed at how they take up space and clutter my already cluttered bathroom. Sure, they come in handy when I run out of shampoo, but other than that I have little use for them and a kind of disdain for their very diminutiveness.
That is, until I hop in the shower with Ty and reach for one of those little bottles to spread a dollop of its contents on his body. A wonderful, earth-by-way-of-heaven fragrance fills the steamy air. On waves of that lovely aroma, I’m transported back to a rainy night last spring when he and I checked into the Hotel Le Germain in downtown T.O.
The lighting in the room was golden, the artwork vibrant, and outside the rain fell steadily. I did the requisite bed-bouncing and closet-checking upon arrival, then undressed, kissed my beloved long, slow and hard, and climbed into the rainforest shower. The wall separating the tub from the bedroom was all glass—one huge window covered with a big wooden Venetian blind. As the water poured over me in refreshing, sensual torrents, my naked partner lounged on the bed, watching me through the open slats. Film noir via the jungle. Sam Spade meets Jane.
As I washed my hair, the shampoo’s scent enveloped me and floated out into the room, inviting Ty. He got up from the bed and walked toward the window, pulling up the blind that separated us.
Sam Spade transformed into Tarzan, hard and primal. His eyes never leaving me, we came together with the sheet of glass between us, just like all those early encounters I never knew about.
Later, he showered and I watched.
These days, the bathtub has become a glorious retreat for this mother-to-be. Today I squeeze body gel into my palm, and its fragrance sends me back to Sofitel in Montreal, a room of champagne tones and black wood, brass fixtures and soft lighting, with single orchids elegantly arranged in glass vases. Tired from the trip, I shed my travelling garb and relaxed in the big bed. I sank under the duvet while my lover went out to survey the Montreal scene. I fell into delicious dreams and woke up wanting him.
When he tiptoed in an hour later, I beckoned to him. He pulled a crackly bag of M&M’s from his pocket and held it out to me, and I crunched a few as I watched him disrobe. Then, as he lay down beside me, I put a yellow one in his mouth and a red one on his cock. He crunched the yellow while I took in the red.
As I moved over his growing hardness, the candy floated and swirled, got lost, then resurfaced. My tongue whirled and twirled, and as I sucked I tasted warm chocolate on his hot, silky skin.
Candy cock and lemony marshmallows—the latter being the scent of Casino Rama Hotel’s Citrus Body Wash. It makes you want to inhale your beloved, lick him, eat him, gobble him up. We use it regularly and return to this love-and-sex retreat as often as we can to replenish both libido and shower gel.
At home, I shampoo my hair with a concoction called Purify, from the Pantages Hotel. The contents of the clear little bottle with the silver top smell fresh and sensual, like a garden in the rain. The Pantages bathroom was boring, but the suite’s low ceilings created an intimate feeling. It was a good venue for hot sex. With my head hanging over the edge of the bed, Tyler fucked me long and hard. I noticed, in the heightened awareness of sex-induced delirium, that the old city buildings I could see through the window resembled drawings from an old kids’ book. As I thrust my pelvis up to meet him, the drawings became mere scribbles, then an ecstatic, bouncing blur.
In the movie Fight Club, these same little bottles in the protagonist’s apartment symbolize modern alienation. I feel quite the opposite about them. They stir up sexual memories that often lead to brand-new explora
tions in lovemaking.
Slathering a Pantages lotion called Renew on Ty as he lay back on the bed, I discovered it to be true to its name. Renewed passion, renewed awareness, renewed connection: what these little vials actually contain are love potions, sex serums and ecstasy elixirs.
Soon the baby will arrive. Tyler and I might have a big bottle of champagne to celebrate, but most definitely we’ll crack open a tiny bottle of Rain Bath for that glorious postpartum soak. Cheers!
Part Seven
Fairy Lights & Lingerie Up the Yingyang
Wanda: Hey guys, I hereby convene this Yahoo! Chat with an astute literary observation from our beloved Mrs. P: “I hate writing, I love having written.” I thought of this quote yesterday on the Rue Descartes when we found the building where Hemingway rented a room in the 1920s.
Rose: Excellent quote, Wanda! (& I love Papa.)
Con: Moi aussi.
Wanda: Hem wrote this of that time and room: “But sometimes when I started a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think: ‘Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.’”
Con: Brill.
Wanda: So here I sit in this internet café on the Place Maubert, struggling to write one true sentence for you guys. But all I can come up with is one true list of Paris purchases.
Rose: Merveilleux!
Wanda: Four French frocks, three pairs of sparkly earrings with those great European clasps, one poppy-red cancan skirt, a pair of black espadrilles and lingerie up the yingyang.
Rose: If you got thongs, they really are up your yingyang. :)
Wanda: :)
Con: I’m so fat right now all my lingerie, thongs and otherwise, disappears up my yingyang.
Rose: Not fat, Con. Just overdue.
Con: If this little person doesn’t decide to come out soon my labour will have to be induced.
Rose: One of mine was induced, Con. It’s no problem.
Con: Hey, did you guys read about those people who are keeping their baby’s sex a secret so that there can be no behaviour toward it that sways it to one gender or the other?
Rose: Yeah, pretty remarkable.
Wanda: I don’t get it.
Con: It’s about bucking labels, Wanda.
Rose: With the exception of Chanel and Louboutin.
Con: Rose, you jester, I would add Vivienne Westwood. But other than our amusing little joke, all labels deserve to be bucked. And all the expected behavior that goes with those labels must also face the wrecking ball.
Rose: It’s about a refusal to be typecast.
Con: People are searching for who they really are these days instead of having outside forces tell them how they should act and who they should be like.
Wanda: Now that I understand. I feel like ever since we touched down in Paris I have been searching—amid the garbage and the flowers—for who I am and who Wyatt is.
Rose: What have you found?
Wanda: Last night we rounded a cobblestoned bend and came across a man in a trench coat rummaging through a bag of garbage. A car with a driver idled nearby.
Con: Sounds like Dash Hammett. Was it foggy?
Wanda: This is Paris, Con, not London or San Francisco.
Rose: Go on.
Wanda: Sporting pale latex gloves and a funny little hat, looking more Clouseau than Spade, he searched for whatever he had lost in the streets of Paris. His heart? His wallet? His soul? Or perhaps his identity. Perhaps the same thing Wyatt and I are looking for. Breathing the silver air, smiling for the camera, we are strangers in a strange land and we are strangers to each other.
Rose: Wanda, I think you have just proved you love writing, not just having written!
Con: And how is Wyatt, Ms. Brontë?
Wanda: Wyatt is a complicated man, but kind. And oh, so wonderful in bed . . . or against a tree . . . . I had my first tree sex, Rose.
Rose: Fabulous! I have yet to get Joe in or even under a tree, but I’m still dreaming of it, for he is someone who knows me, someone who cares, someone who loves me.
Wanda: I am sure you will make it happen, Rose. Wyatt and I have also made good use of the bed, as I know you and Joe do. Our first night here he woke me from a deep sleep and whispered, “Look at the tower. They lit it especially for you.” My sleepy eyes tried to focus on the sights out the dormer window. There, beyond the rooftops and chimney pots, I saw the top of La Tour Eiffel twinkling and sparkling with thousands of silver fairy lights. We fell back asleep in each other’s arms while Paris glittered all around us. When her silver-white light awakened us at dawn, we made love before touching down on the hallowed cobblestones where some of the greatest lovers and artists have tread, chasing Rimbaud and other dreams.
Con: You wrote more than one true sentence, Wanda. Congrats and have fun! Now I’ve got to go pee. Au revoir!
Wanda: Bonsoir, Con. Happy birthing!
Rose: See you in a few weeks, Wanda.
Wanda: Au revoir, Rose.
ROSE
Love is like quicksilver in the hand. Leave the fingers open and it stays.
Clutch it, and it darts away.
—Dorothy Parker
Melting. Chocolate in my mouth. A man I’ve just met at a friend’s Valentine’s Day dinner asks me to find him the cherry. I do, and he pops it into his mouth as I take another bite from a pair of chocolate handcuffs.
Frozen. The world outside is covered in snow and ice. The man and I leave the dinner party together, slipping and sliding. At Gerrard near Logan, he stops and kisses me. He tastes like bourbon and chocolate and cherries.
Melting. Beneath my muskrat coat, I’m on fire.
Frozen. It takes him a month to call me.
Fire. We meet at Rosewater for drinks, then move on to Starfish, where, amid candlelight and hyacinths, the black threads of my fishnet gloves (a gift from Wanda) soak up oyster and lemon juice. In darker places other juices flow. I lean over and put my nose in the purple hyacinths and inhale deeply. He picks a few blossoms and places them between my breasts, where the lace of my camisole peeks out.
Hot. One of my fishnet stockings keeps falling down. In the ladies’ room I perform a kind of Laurel and Hardy routine: off with the boot, off with the stocking, turn it right side in, put everything back on. Back at the table, I tell him about the vaudeville act in the cubicle and he wonders aloud how stay-ups stay up, so I whisk my leather skirt back to reveal not only the rubber-lined top of my stocking but also my thigh.
Later, he’ll reveal how transported he was by that creamy sight. But on this night at this late hour, I am giddy as hell, having stayed up till the wee hours the night before discussing matters of love and life with a friend. Knowing this, he says he’ll hail a cab and send me home. He helps me into my coat and we leave the restaurant.
Burning. The following week we meet at Canoe. Smoke from ignited sprigs of rosemary excites the olfactory sense, while creamy cheese inspires finger-sucking. Back at his place, hot tongues of flame lick the embossed fleur-de-lys on the inside of the fireplace. By the flickering light and crackling heat, his hot tongue licks my own flower.
Steamy. April brings fiddleheads and a Magic Wand. We share a plate of the tender ferns, steamed, soaked in butter and spritzed with lime, and for dessert we drive to Come As You Are, where he buys the above-mentioned crème de la crème of vibrators—along with a few other toys. They do not threaten him because he has the wisdom to know they don’t replace his tongue, his fingers, his cock. These are all different mediums for exciting me, just as Super 8 and 70mm are for a filmmaker.
Burned. “Trust gets eaten away,” he says.
I reply, “Trust is always there, but life experience creates a murky film, and it gets murkier with each breach.”
“Then you meet someone—someone like you,” he replies, and the film clears, bit by bit. “Love—I feel as if we are inventing it.”
I say, “Yes. Love. It’s not a path already taken. It’s a living thing. It breathes.”
We decide we must invent new words for love, a new language for what we are together. We start with hyacinthisized.
Sweltering. It’s one of those muggy days in late August. I’m feeling jittery as a bug in a jar, all jumpy nerves and wet heat. We stroll along the sidewalks, stop to buy lingerie and duck into Tiger Lily to suck back some noodles.
Iced. He orders me cool cocktails with umbrellas in them and watches as I drink. His eyes are green as fiddleheads, though the light emanating from them is pure silver. It glows through slits of merriment and wide circles of surprise—laughing silver, knowing silver, brilliant silver. And then there’s the way he cares for me—that’s brilliant, too, more brilliant than the silver light of the moon.
Dripping. In the ladies’ room I kick off my G-string, as its pink-and-lilac lace butt strand is most assuredly contributing to my high-strung state. I step into my new green boy-cut undies. Tonight he’ll pass his fingers over the embroidered flowers on the front, then pry beneath to find a pink bud of the flesh-and-blood kind.