by Emma Becker
But I would not. My lips wet, I ordered Monsieur: ‘Lick my cunt.’
Lick my cunt!
He laid both his hands at the apex of my thighs, spreading me. The wetness of the sound made me jump. This was what it meant to be open, truly open, monstrously so. His thumbs grazing across my opening made a slow bee-line towards my lips, meeting at the perfect spot, with the assurance of someone who can calculate to the nearest millimetre (surgical exactitude). I felt like a butterfly pinned to a board. Monsieur, studying my face as I became overwhelmed, quickly took hold of me between his forefinger and his second finger, as you pinch a child’s nose. Even with my eyes closed, I sensed the hardness of his gaze, its penetrating intensity.
Driving in two fingers, he opened me like a wound, with his customary grave delicacy, unveiling the velvet flesh that is seldom bared, while I twisted on the bed, mumbling words I couldn’t finish, the primitive language of love.
Babette and I had often wondered what silent question passed across the lips of men for us to keep saying, ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ when we made love. Just as there are rhetorical questions, there are also ornamental answers that do not involve or commit you: the yes born of that specific moment, precisely forming in your throat, is a form of unchallenged approval, the very essence of approval. It does not mean that you are saying yes to fingers or a cock, however interchangeable they might be, even if at that precise instant they form the central axis of the momentary parallel world you are wading through. It’s a total surrender to the moment, pleasure, feeling completely happy, way beyond anything that’s ever happened before or might take place later. The only thing you can say is ‘Yes.’
And I thought again of the way Henry Miller described the sound of a finger delving inside a cunt, a sort of squish-squish micro-sound, while below my stomach Monsieur was distilling wet gurgles my words could barely disguise, suction noises miles away from the more elegant squish-squish that would rightly belong to a nineteenth-century boudoir. I heard myself say: ‘Kiss me.’
Displaying not an ounce of resistance (he probably thought I was totally under his thumb), Monsieur promptly aligned his lips against mine. In a trance, I stared at the man’s head between my thighs, the hands and fingers digging small pits in the flesh of my arse cheeks. I could feel but not hear his warm breath.
‘You smell so good . . . Your cunt smells so good!’
As I caught my breath again, in anticipation of my next series of frenzied yelps, Monsieur began to lap at me, at first slowly enough for me to feel every square inch opening as his tongue travelled across my private surface, almost as if he was licking the back of a stamp! That was the thought that sprang to mind before he deepened his assault as if to fuck me with his tongue, and the sensation of being only partly filled set my nerves on edge. My thighs were shuddering to a maddening rhythm beside his ears. Neutralizing my frantic movements with a sharp parting of my knees, he continued to peck at me. I could almost see myself swell and harden under his lips, jut like a small, wet nipple between his teeth, between his fingers as his whole mouth encompassed my opening, drinking from me, drinking, drinking, drinking again, again and again. It had taken him only a few minutes to turn the torture, the endless wait, the months of mortification, into a necessary road travelled to reach this sublime moment of supernatural communion. The language of love is a construct of thighs rubbing against each other, the muted sound of sheets crinkling, sudden hardness and, of course, ‘Yes, yes, yes’.
It was when I least expected it (I was drowning in a whirlpool of pleasure) that Monsieur, with no word of warning, slipped two fingers into my arsehole, and I almost screamed, dear God. Actually, I think I did. I joined the ranks of the women who know: the small proportion of readers who will truly understand the exquisite and disgusting violence I experienced. My guts felt twisted from the speed with which I had been opened and closed again, and there I was babbling away, my legs in the throes of paralysis.
‘I’m going to fuck you in the arse now,’ Monsieur whispered. ‘I’m going to fuck you in the arse, Ellie.’
‘Do it facing me, please,’ I muttered, my breath sticking in the back of my throat.
‘Yes, it’ll be wonderful, my cock inside your small arsehole while just above I watch your dripping cunt.’
Monsieur rose slowly above me. His cock shone in the pink darkness of the room (I had forgotten how wet some men’s cocks appear after you’ve briefly blown them).
‘Use your fingers, spread yourself open further.’
I obeyed, holding my hole wide, subterranean sounds rising from my tight throat. Monsieur created a passage for himself, forcing open the breach he had already wetted with his spit. A brief flash of pain coursed through me as he thrust himself forward and half buried inside me, whispering: ‘That’s it, darling . . . I’m in.’
I felt his hairs brush against my bum cheeks, and hot flesh filling me to the brim, filled like a whore.
‘It’s there, Ellie. Deep inside your arse.’
‘Yes, yes, yes . . .’
‘Talk to me, tell me how you feel, how good it feels when I fuck you in the arse.’
‘It’s good,’ I confirmed, my voice unsteady. ‘Your cock is so . . .’ (total contrition as my vocabulary betrayed me while, above me, he waited for me to find the right adjective) ‘. . . so good!’
‘Just look at you.’ Monsieur smiled.
I stared at his chin, disgusted by the obscene swelling of my cunt as it gaped wildly, lazily, wet and carmine. I instinctively felt I should conceal it from his gaze and began to touch myself. Monsieur immediately spread-eagled me with his outstretched hands and there I was, wallowing on the hotel bed, my thighs held apart at what seemed an impossible angle, my belly full (and that feeling of being filled was as much ecstasy as it was sheer torture), half of a painfully hard cock sticking out from my arsehole and then thrusting back inside me to its full length, and right above it, my slit gaping open. And while I felt like the lowest of the low, Monsieur kept fixing me with intense concentration, light years away from repugnance, visibly delighted by the dichotomy of my shuddering body and the remnants of civilized propriety still visible on my face. A face he often described as doll-like. But as the waves of pleasure rose inside me, civilization was losing ground, rapidly losing its foothold, and the whole world beneath my half-open eyelids was turning hazy, my heart was beating faster, my nerve endings were growing harder by the second. The air around us thickened. All of a sudden, everything was more beautiful, warmer, as if, without renouncing Monsieur, I was once again alone in the room, totally unconcerned that anyone could be watching me. Until Monsieur decided on something even more obscene: brutally withdrawing from my arse, he stood still, facing me like a statue, his hands still holding me down, and gazed at me, his cock high against his stomach.
‘Don’t do that!’ I breathed out, terrified by the sheer crudeness of the situation and by the thought – somewhat pragmatic in view of the circumstances, but after all I’m only a girl – that my cunt was so wide open it could have right there and then have hoovered up all the air in the room.
But Monsieur, on the other hand, was only a man, and the collateral damage this sort of situation could cause didn’t appear to bother him in the slightest and he just kept on standing there, his fingers holding my knees back so he could watch my arsehole and my cunt in all impunity while I squirmed with embarrassment. Or maybe he was quite aware that I did not dare move even an ear, fearful the mood might change. And so I found myself pinned down motionless, just my hands frantically wriggling out of my control, half hoping not to have to picture what I looked like, all my openings open to the wind. I mumbled:
‘Fuck me!’
‘Let me look at you a little longer,’ Monsieur kept saying, as he swept the burning tip of his cock along the ridge separating my arsehole from my cunt.
‘Please,’ I begged, hoping my submission might weaken his resolve.
‘Keep touching yourself,’ he said.
&nbs
p; OK, OK, I thought, my pride dented. But there’s a distinct lack of cock in all this.
And while Monsieur, fascinated, could not find it in himself to cut the spectacle short, I impaled myself on him in one single thrust, arse first, locking my legs around his back so he couldn’t slip away. One of those long hands I loved and feared made its way to my neck, Very good, Monsieur said, and filled my cunt with God only knew how many fingers, still fucking me to a steady rhythm – is there a word to describe the perfect rhythm men sometimes miraculously come across following an eternity of trial and error? It almost brought tears to my eyes.
‘You’re quite a slut, Ellie,’ he smiled as I kept on warning him that I was about to come any moment now.
My name, in his mouth and this particular context, felt like the bite of a carefully handled whip. I could not hold on any longer (but the mere thought of having to hold back was like a victory over life and the whole wide world) to hear his sublime final remark with any semblance of precision, but I remember it with clarity in the midst of my screams, as the wave rolled over me, and he just thundered in the distance, his voice like a choral accompaniment to my orgasm:
‘You’re so damn wet, my darling . . .’
Then came a few seconds when all I could think of was to begin breathing again, floating in cotton, the sole sensation of my wet thighs and Monsieur’s still hard cock reaching me through a thick curtain of fog. Bathing in a sentiment of full plenitude, wallowing like a sow in the undone bed, I caught hold of my breath as best I could, now indifferent to his remaining movements all over me, the sudden stiffness of his cock deep inside my weary moist innards. It’s when he dug his nails into the flesh of my thighs, kneading me hard enough to raise bruises, that I opened a grim eye. Monsieur’s orgasm began like a soft breeze skimming across the surface of water; under my gaze, his torso and then his neck were caressed by a shimmering wave, and in response, his eyelashes began to flutter. Beneath his half-open eyelids two deep grey pupils searched for mine. Fuck, he’s so beautiful, I remember thinking. The thin-winged nose and quivering nostrils, so familiar from their endless journey between my arse and my knees. The mouth that is always partly open when he makes love, the thick lower lip. His long eyelashes. The scandalous smoothness of his skin, a girl’s skin on a male body. The harshness of his features, the violent beauty of his face when it vibrated, as it did now, above mine, hovering between struggle and surrender. Monsieur was no longer struggling. Monsieur watched me as we held on to each other, as my arsehole sucked at his cock, and I was overtaken by passion, observing how his lips quivered and his eyes could barely stay open.
‘I’m coming,’ he whispered, his fingers wrapping themselves around my hair.
I love you, I thought, stroking his cheek with the back of my hand. ‘Come.’
He threw himself back, holding his cock in his hand, veins throbbing, bones, ligaments, even, a whole unthinkable architecture exposed. I let him endlessly ejaculate across my pussy. A last drop lingered and I caught it on the tip of a finger before bringing it to my mouth, begging him hoarsely: ‘Take me in your arms.’
In the yellow room, the silence sheltered a world of tenderness that reminded me of siestas with my parents when I was five. My voice a thin whisper, I said: ‘I don’t want to talk banalities with you. We see so little of each other that I hate the fact I’ve already wasted so much time chatting about uni, my friends, all those meaningless things.’
‘Those meaningless things interest me,’ Monsieur replied, his hands still firmly pressed against my chest. ‘Everything about you interests me.’
‘I want to talk about literature. It’s what binds us. And I have so many things I want to tell you, ask you, it’s almost like suffocating.’
I turned to face him fully. ‘Stay with me a little longer so that we can at least talk about Bataille.’
‘Ellie, do you really believe we can say all there is to say about Bataille in two or three hours? It’s not the way, debating literature at a moment’s notice. It’s normal that we talk about our lives.’
‘I agree, but you never stay long enough to get past the preliminaries, and that’s all I’m left with.’
Despondent, I lowered my chin and Monsieur suddenly rose, his hands still grasping my neck. ‘All my obligations weigh on me, you know.’
‘Yes.’
‘So what can we do, Ellie? Do you think we should stop seeing each other?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s been some time since I’ve had any idea.’
‘You don’t want to see me?’
‘I don’t know!’
For a few seconds, I buried my face in the pillow, trying to conceal my irritation. ‘You see, I treasure the rarity of our encounters, that I can sometimes count them on the fingers of one hand in an entire season. It makes it seem a much less banal story.’
‘Is that good or bad?’
‘It works both ways, you know that.’
‘I didn’t want us to live like ordinary people. We’re both worth so much more than that, you and I.’
Monsieur always spoke with such assurance that I didn’t have the heart to argue. Hiding my face in his shoulder, I continued: ‘Fine, but maybe I would have preferred it if our relationship had been less extraordinary and I’d seen more of you. Maybe I would have liked to join you every week in a hotel and ask you how your wife was while you undressed. It would have been better than five minutes every three months or so and never having the opportunity to talk. It might sound terribly banal, but there wouldn’t have been any harm in it. If other people act that way, it means it works.’
I felt his lips purse, buried in my hair, and knew that he was pouting. That was how his scorn manifested itself.
‘Do you think a story that just anyone could have lived through would have inspired you to write a book?’
‘I would still have been happier if I’d seen you more often. Sorry! Do you even know how many of the three hundred pages of my book were written because I couldn’t see you and had to find a way to speak to you?’
Monsieur sighed, massaging my small breasts.
‘You don’t give a damn.’
‘Of course I do! Why are you saying such things? If I could spend more time with you . . .’
‘But you never have time. Time is the one thing you don’t have. I know that. And I’m sick and tired of sentences beginning with “if”.’
‘It’s true I seldom have time. I work fourteen hours a day and have a family.’
‘So why won’t you tell me it’s over?’
‘Because I don’t want it to be!’
What struck me right there and then? What came to my mind first? Was it What a selfish bastard or He doesn’t want to leave me? Was I relieved or dismayed? My eyes dry, I looked ahead but could see nothing with any clarity.
‘So would you rather I went on following you, always crying or dripping with wet from my cunt?’
‘What can I say, Ellie? That I no longer wish to see you? I can’t lie to you.’
‘I can’t stand this going on indefinitely.’
‘If I said, “It’s over,” it wouldn’t change your need for me or mine for you.’
‘I can pretend. I’ll move on to something else. I’m only twenty-one.’
Taken aback, Monsieur removed his warm hands from my hips. I let go of his arm, which flopped against mine, and said: ‘I don’t want still to be in love with you when I’m forty-five. This is the other side of the coin: our story is so far from banal that I’ll remember you all my life.’
‘So it’s not a bad thing, is it?’
‘And you, when you’re seventy, you’ll think of me. Haven’t we found a wonderful way to be ever miserable?’
And, for the first time, Monsieur pulled me against him, asking: ‘So what do we do?’
‘I don’t know,’ I answered.
I had to give him enough time to feel scared. I wanted him to stop asking me what we should do, take a firm decision, beg me to break the awful si
lence. For once, if only for a few seconds, he would know how it felt. But my resolve broke.
‘I don’t want to follow in your wake. It leads nowhere. It makes me sad.’
‘What makes you sad?’ Monsieur leaned towards me, his long hand working its way across my stomach, automatically mapping every curve to my intersection. If I’d closed my eyes, I would have felt closeted with a somewhat unconventional psychiatrist.
‘I’ve—’ My throat tightened, and I dived into the refuge of the pillow again. Monsieur took my chin between his fingers, but I was already full of tears and knew that within a few seconds I’d have two streams of thick snot escaping my nose and my eyes would be all puffy, not what was needed right now.
‘Leave me alone!’ I protested, but he flattened himself against me, his long warm body surrounding me, taking my face between his hands.
‘What is it, sweetie?’
‘And stop calling me “sweetie”. You call everyone “sweetie”.’
‘What’s making you sad?’
‘You’re so clever, you’re so damn clever, and you still have no clue?’
‘I still don’t know you well enough, Ellie.’
Motionless in his embrace, I tried to avoid his gaze, hoping I could conceal my tears and raw nostrils from him. But Monsieur pursued me. ‘I have no idea what goes on inside your head. What you expect of others, what you’d like to become, what you expect from me.’
‘It’s all your fault. I—’
‘I know, darling, I know,’ Monsieur interrupted, kissing my forehead, then the tip of my nose.
‘If you’d given me time, I would have told you everything about me. You could have known me so much better than all the others.’ I sobbed uncontrollably, and the kiss he gave me to calm me tasted of salt. ‘It makes me sad never to be able to reach you on the phone, that you never answer my messages, that you never call me back, that you invariably offer me false hope, then let me down at the last moment. There’s no way you can learn about me. Over ten months of frantic comings and goings you’ve never managed to free yourself for one lousy evening to spend it with me, and you have the cheek to tell me you don’t want it to end!’