by Emma Becker
First lovers’ tiff between Monsieur and me. Out of the blue, he asked me: ‘Did you fuck this week?’
‘What sort of question is that?’ I moved a little away from him while I tried to work out the right thing to say.
‘It’s nothing. I just wanted to know.’ He appeared quite calm.
Shrugging, I said: ‘Yes.’
Then I asked him the same thing. Monsieur laconically confirmed that he had.
Oh, tell me more!
‘How many times?’
‘Twice.’ He was not offended by my intrusion into his sex life.
‘With your wife?’
‘Yes. And you?’
‘With my boyfriend.’
The facts were the facts.
Maybe it was then that I first became aware of the trap into which I would soon fall. I was dying to know how she and he made love, after twenty years of marriage, the automatic movements of his hands across her body. But the thought released in me a jealous streak I hadn’t known I had. Like a moth drawn to the brightness of a lamp, I asked: ‘How is it with your wife? After all, it’s such a long time you’ve been sleeping together.’
‘It depends,’ Monsieur said, in a strange tone to his voice. ‘But overall it’s fine. After all these years, it’s still good.’
‘You must know each other very well?’
‘Of course,’ Monsieur replied, without further revelation.
I was consumed with the need to know everything, every single detail. How Monsieur fucked the woman who knew all his perversions. What was her body like? What did her face look like when she came? When did they do it? Did they have favourite positions, preferred techniques? Habits? Were there things they had never done? She was Monsieur’s wife, and her shadow oppressed me.
‘And you?’ he continued. ‘I’m sure it was pretty awful.’
‘Why should it have been?’ I was offended.
‘Because boys of your age know nothing about women.’
‘He’s thirty.’
‘Thirty?’ Monsieur cried, eyes popping out of his head.
Was he joking? For a couple of seconds I stared at him, trying to assess whether his surprise was genuine.
‘Another older guy!’ he said, the beginning of a smile on his lips.
‘So now you’re jealous!’ I smiled back. ‘You’re shocked because I happen to have a boyfriend.’
‘I’m not jealous. I was just wondering why you always seem to go for older guys.’
He moved an inch or so forward across the bed, watching me intently. Then, he changed his mind: ‘Maybe I am jealous. Not a good idea, eh?’
‘No doubt about that,’ I answered, surprised that I could make a man jealous, more so this man.
‘So, what do we do about it?’ he asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘We can go on as we are, can’t we?’
And, in truth, I couldn’t envisage pretending he didn’t exist. The idea of living so close to him, knowing he was just a few kilometres away but being unable to reach him took my breath away. I strove to understand him. To unravel his mystery. And I wanted so much more. But all I could say was,‘Yeah, why not? We go on.’
We go on, even if I already know where it’s leading. To disaster. I can feel in my bones that the coming summer without him, and that’s just the beginning, will be unbearable. And I have no wish to be like the other fools who fall in love with married men.
One of the things I always admired in Monsieur was the way he became erect. So easily, so fast. He could talk to me for hours, casually playing with my nipples and earlobes, a rich intellectual discourse with his courtesan, discussing André Breton as freely as sex, making an inventory of authors still unknown to me. His breath on my neck spoke words of love interrupted by literary wit, then kisses and gentle bites. Halfway through one of my answers – I was about to contradict something he’d said – Monsieur mounted me in one swift movement. His first thrusts overwhelmed me, leaving me unable to breathe or speak, not that he needed any sign of my submission.
‘You like it in your little pussy, too, don’t you?’
‘Have you slept with anyone else since we’ve been together?’
‘No. Why?’
‘Oh, nothing,’ I lied.
It upsets me enough to imagine you making love with your wife but the idea of another woman underneath you hurts deep in my soul.
Monsieur raised himself beside me. ‘Are you jealous?’
There was a touch of jubilation in his voice, which irritated me. ‘Absolutely not!’
‘You’re jealous as hell!’ Monsieur insisted, feasting on the idea.
‘Absolutely not. I just wanted to know, that’s all.’
‘Yes, you are. You want to know if I’m sleeping with other girls to establish that you’re the only one. So, darling, you are most assuredly jealous.’
My lips barely parted as he kissed me.
Slipping his trousers on (oh, the curve of his back): ‘Of late, I haven’t wanted to touch anyone but my wife and you. I’m always thinking of you.’
His gaze burned my back.
‘I think of your arse all the time. When I’m operating, your arse is all I can see. You, in that position.’
I was on the bed, contorted, with my bum in the air, my face under my hair, watching him dress. I loved how the light danced around him. I found him beautiful. He put on his pristine white shirt, which clung to the contours of his body. Do men ever consider the chasm between their nudity and the moment they unthinkingly rebutton their shirt? The way their fingers slowly manoeuvre upwards, all the way to the collar, sealing themselves away when, just a few minutes ago, they were on full display. Some, like Monsieur, however elegantly they may dress, still have an aura of nakedness. The suit jacket they add to the ensemble makes no difference: it’s so easy to pull off again. Now, watching Monsieur’s thighs inside his expensive grey trousers, I could already trace the contours of his next erection.
The handcuffs.
‘And I think of your body all the bloody time, not always in terms of making love with you. Just to feel close to you. I’m not aware of the age difference when I talk to you and listen to you.’
I smiled. Then I asked: ‘Are other girls of my age different?’
‘Yes. They’re much more passive. They take, never give much back.’
‘I wasn’t very obedient this morning,’ I said, half hoping this would prompt Monsieur to propose a date for our next meeting.
‘It’s not a question of obedience. I enjoy the random things that rush through your brain.’
‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you’d be a total bastard if you were sleeping with your wife, me and other girls of my age.’
‘You only say that because you’re jealous.’
‘Once again, I’m not. It’s just . . . you know . . . the situation . . .’
‘Jealous, darling.’
‘No. All I’m saying is you’d be a real bastard. Mind you, what with what we’re up to, we’re in no position to judge!’
Monsieur’s mood darkened. He fell silent as he adjusted his shirt collar and came to sit beside me on the bed. ‘I don’t like it when you call me a bastard.’
‘From me, it can be an endearment.’
Which was true, but his eyes were so dark that I thought for a moment he was about to hit me, or that I had hurt him. ‘Don’t look at me like that,’ I whispered, wrapping myself against the cold material of his suit. ‘When my girlfriends and I talk about bastards, it’s in a nice way. Affectionate.’
Monsieur appeared unconvinced, but he kissed me at length.
I added: ‘Anyway, I’m as much of a bastard as you.
What with my uncle, all my family in fact, I have so many reasons not to be sleeping with you.’
‘There’s nothing wrong about what we’re doing. Other than that I’m married.’
‘Can’t you see? We’re immoral. You used to work with my uncle. You spent three days at a seminar in Jersey
with him and my mother. All my family knows you. And I happen to be the young niece and daughter.’
‘It’s not as if I were sleeping with his wife.’
‘It’s almost worse. My uncle adores his nieces. He doesn’t want to know that other men touch them, particularly men he knows. Especially if those men are married and have children. Have you any idea of the unholy mess there would be if anybody found out what’s going on?’ The tone of my voice no doubt betrayed how much the wrongness of the situation excited me.
‘So, the only problem is that I’m married, no? If I happened to be your uncle, I’d rather like to know you were with a man of my age, someone with experience, rather than with a young fool who’d treat you badly.’
‘Come on!’ I was exasperated. ‘Don’t you realize that if Philippe sees you with me, he won’t give a damn about experience or status? Even if he were to ignore the fact you have a wife and children – and I’d find that difficult to believe – the situation remains the same: you’re his age, you worked together and he likes you, which would certainly make you one hell of a bastard in his eyes. No way you could ever hope he might forgive you. He’d also despise me, but because he’s my uncle he would always love me too – somehow. If he ever found out about you and me, which will not happen, all he would see is one thing: that you’re fucking his niece.’
Monsieur sat next to me, his hands on my hips.
‘But should anyone find out about us, all I’d have to do is open my in-box and they’d know you came looking for it.’
I looked into his smiling eyes and saw the hint of a threat. Or was it? Perhaps it was the expression of a thug telling a newly arrived shopkeeper: ‘We’re going to play a little game which will be to both our advantage. As long as you play fair, so shall I. If you ever betray me or put me in an uncomfortable position, I can blackmail or hurt you and wouldn’t hesitate to do so.’
I remember thinking, Fucking bastard, as I watched Monsieur without blinking, trying to see if he was serious. If he was capable of defending himself by throwing me to the wolves. From the determination I saw in the depths of his eyes, I knew he was. Indeed. Monsieur was that type of man.
Wordless, smiling back at him, I lay down against his legs, coiled like a cat. I was being held hostage, and Monsieur was now as much an adversary as a lover. He controlled me in vile ways, but the more I thought about it, the more it aroused me.
Monsieur. Monsieur and his lips.
As he began to fade away, already mentally on the way back to his medical and conjugal life, I became his slave. I was lying flat on my stomach and observing every movement he made. He settled back on the bed, taking my hands in his. As if he were about to kiss my neck. Which would have been enough for me.
‘Talk to me of love before I leave.’
My eyes widened with amazement and incredulity.
‘How could I not be a little in love with you when you feel the same way towards me?’
I understood he wouldn’t leave unless I said something, and I was dying to know where all this was leading. Maybe I did love him, in the contemptible way cheap tarts do, or was I just attracted by the idea of love? Who knows? ‘I am a little in love with you,’ I admitted.
Monsieur’s smile was silent, and I felt like slapping my face.
There was nothing cataclysmic about my defeat at his hands. I can see that now. Defeat is just an accumulation of minor acts of surrender. One. And then another. Until the noose around my neck choked me.
ELLIE
I’ve said it already in an SMS, but I have to write it down now. Ten words on a mobile phone mean nothing.
I was thinking of you, your body, your voice, your smell. I was thinking of that morning when I was ashamed of what I was doing. I was thinking of all the things you said to me (words cutting through me to my nerve endings) and I realized I was going to find it really hard to hold out until next Tuesday. You can’t imagine the state I’m in. Every time I think of that morning, my stomach twists, goose pimples spread up my arms, my right leg is paralysed, and I can feel my cunt flickering open and closed, like my eyes do when I am tired.
Can I tell you a secret? Why I’m reluctant to touch myself in your presence? It’s shame, I think. The thought that if I did that, I’d immediately become an object of contempt. Which is paradoxical insofar as it doesn’t bother me in the slightest to be fucked in the most disgusting ways possible, or be called abject names.
Never take pity on me. If I don’t obey you, I’ll be going nowhere. I’ll likely reach the ripe old age of sixty without an orgasm. Use me, manipulate me, turn me into your ideal mistress. Free me. I know you can do it. I’ve never come across anyone more capable of doing it than you. I know that if I don’t manage to come for you, it’s just because of the stupid conditioning I’ve imposed on myself. Listen, when you were taking me from behind this morning, I was overcome by pain, or discomfort, whatever, for five or six minutes. On the other hand I was terribly wet. See the way I am? My body displays a life of its own. It ignores all the obstacles I place in its way and devours every caress you bestow on it. You must help me or I’ll never become one of the women they write about in the books, Irene (I’ve just finished it by the way) or any of the others. Those women whose only ambition is to come, with no concern about being pretty or dignified. You can’t be dignified when you’re being fucked. It doesn’t work.
I so want to talk to you right now, but I’ll hold on until tomorrow.
Earlier, I was reading Irene’s Cunt, and I could smell you all over the pages. A little.
I love the word ‘cunt’. And the fact other people dislike it so intensely fills me with joy. Cunt. Cunt. The only female counterpart to cock. When you think about it, cunt is so apposite. So easy to say. Cunt, all so literary and unsettling, full of a charm most people can’t process. You have to be a keen reader to fully appreciate the sharp sound of the word ‘cunt’, read, fucked, licked, all woman. Or to be a woman and listen to the word whispered in her ears by a man like you.
So, I had my shower when I got home and – how can I make this sound part of the story? – when I washed myself, the soap stung me. I was still quite open, as if you had just withdrawn from me. Is the devil in the detail?
I have to stop now. Monday night. Sleep with me. Or come at night, go home to sleep and return the following day. But I want you as soon as possible.
TUESDAY, 11 MAY 2009, 04.25
I don’t know where the surrounding décor I invent when I’m playing with myself comes from. When I think of Monsieur, the mystery deepens; around us, blue swirling drapery, with a life of its own, full of haphazard breathing and sighs. The walls and the whole world gasp and vibrate to an obscene rhythm. Here and there, a window, the edge of the bed, the smell of a room; a random potpourri of all the places where Monsieur has followed me, trapped me, cornered me.
I’m at the hotel in the ninth arrondissement but I’m also everywhere and nowhere. Do take note of the fact that it’s half past four in the morning and I still can’t sleep. And I have no sleeping pills or grass and only my two fingers guide me towards sleep and liberation.
So, I’m lying here, sprawled out. Naked. The mirrors in the ceiling capture an image with all the purity of a painting, my body at the heart of crimson sheets, a bad-taste odalisque, as kitsch as this ‘Chinese’ room.
It’s weird, this adversarial relationship I have with my pussy, and how it never presents Monsieur with a problem. Why are all men so irresistibly attracted to it? What do they see? What is so fascinating about what I have between my legs? Two lobes of flesh and a thin carpet of fur, shining like a seal’s skin, disfigured by a deep gash. All these ‘gracious undulations, the lacework of love’, as Aragon puts it, how is it possible for Monsieur to find poetry there? How can I not see beyond the superfluous folds of my flesh? Wouldn’t it be nice if I had one of those exquisite sealed pussies in the shape of a shy mouth, slit barely opening when touched, widened by fingers. A sea shell carved from almond pas
te, harbouring minuscule nacreous lips, the tiny muzzle of the clitoris, a miniature rampart in need of courting before it consents to display itself. But I inherited this loud, lippy, porno-movie pussy, ever gaping, open like an obscene smile even when lovemaking is the last thing on my mind. Open-legged in front of Monsieur, I feel as if I’m displaying so much more than my sex. And it’s never enough for him. In such close proximity to my pussy, he wants to watch it come alive, squirm beneath my fingers as it does when I am alone. How can I tell him, face to face, that I’d like to hear him say I’m as beautiful there as I am elsewhere? Monsieur wants to watch, spend hours studying me there, dissecting me until I become catatonic with discomfort. In his ideal world, Monsieur wishes to pin me down like a butterfly with wings extended, pulling and pinching to his heart’s content, but all those assaults on my modesty would exasperate me and render me sopping wet. God only knows how much worse it all is when I’m wet. I become bloated and expand, unable to conceal the fact that mine is no virginal cunt shedding just a few parsimonious drops of inner dew. Doesn’t Monsieur know this already? It’s like a waterfall. A flow of gummy lava streaming down to my arse crack; evidently, even if I look the picture of innocence, the dark folds of my pants betray the mark of the devil. There is no way I can even open my thighs without making untold promises of shameful sex. Maybe that’s what makes his cock grow so hard.
Maybe, maybe. The mirror above the bed has its undeniable charms. The finger I slowly slip inside disappears within the slimy moistness, and the stale odour of the sheets is overcome by my sickly fragrance. A smell that undeniably operates as a spell on all men, strong enough to turn them into murderers. It’s a bit like walking into a cider-house, where the perfume of the apples becomes too much. Maybe it’s this very smell that turns men topsy-turvy so that they find everything beautiful and right about the bodies of women. And now I know this, it’s impossible, IMPOSSIBLE, to proceed with any semblance of normality. Lust makes my slit open and close like a real mouth, and all these silent utterances make me blush. I am annoyed by the nuances of this language I fail to fully understand, and hate the fact that I don’t like watching myself do what excites me when other girls do it.