Little Birds (9 page)

"After following her thus through the shops, he will finally speak to her. She will see his handsome face smiling at her and the chivalrous way he has of carrying himself. They will go off together and sit having tea somewhere, then go to the hotel where she is staying. She will invite him to come up with her. They will get into the room and then pull down the shades and lie in the darkness making love.

"As he presses his pants carefully, meticulously, my friend imagines how he will make love to this woman—and it excites him. He knows how he will grip her. He likes to push his penis in from behind and raise the woman's legs, and then get her to turn just a little so that he can see it moving in and out. He likes the woman to squeeze the base of his penis at the same time; her fingers press harder than the mouth of her sex, and that excites him. She will also touch his balls as he moves, and he will touch her clitoris, because that gives her a double pleasure. He will make her gasp and shake from head to foot and beg for more.

"By the time he has envisioned all this standing there, half naked, pressing his pants, my friend has a hard on. It is all he wants. He puts away the pants, the iron and the ironing board, and he gets into bed again, lying back and smoking, thinking over this scene until each detail of it is perfect and a drop of semen appears at the head of his penis, which he strokes while he lies smoking and dreaming of pursuing other women.

"I envy him because he can get so much excitement from thinking all this. He questions me. He wants to know how my women are made, how they behave..."

Lena laughed. She said, "It's hot. I will take my corset off." And she went into the alcove. When she came back her body looked free and lax. She sat down, crossed her bare legs, her blouse half-open. One of her friends sat where he could see her.

Another one, a handsome man, stood near me as I was posing and whispered compliments. He said, "I love you because you remind me of Europe—Paris especially. I don't know what there is about Paris, but there is sensuality in the air there. It is contagious. It is such a human city. I don't know whether it is because couples are always kissing in the streets, at tables in the cafés, in the movies, in the parks. They embrace each other so freely. They stop for long complete kisses in the middle of the sidewalk, at the subway entrances. Perhaps it is that, or the softness of the air. I don't know. In the dark, in each doorway at night there is a man and a woman almost melted into one another. The whores watch for you every moment ... they touch you.

"One day I was standing on a platform bus, looking up idly at the houses. I saw a window open and a man and woman lying on a bed. The woman was sitting over the man.

"At five o'clock in the afternoon it becomes unbearable. There is love and desire in the air. Everybody is in the streets. The cafés are full. In the movies there are little boxes that are completely dark and curtained off so that you can make love on the floor while the movie is going on and not be seen. It is all so open, so easy. No police to interfere. A woman friend of mine who was followed and annoyed by a man complained to the policeman at the corner. He laughed and said, 'You'll be sorrier the day no man wants to annoy you, won't you? After all, you should be thankful instead of getting angry.' And he would not help her."

Then my admirer said in a lower voice, "Will you come and have dinner with me and go to the theatre?"

He became my first real lover. I forgot Reynolds and Stephen. They now seemed like children to me.

The painter sat beside his model mixing colors while he talked about the whores that had stirred him. His shirt was open, showing a strong, smooth neck and a tuft of dark hair; his belt was loosened for comfort, a button was missing from his pants, and his sleeves were turned up for freedom.

He was saying, "I like a whore best of all because I feel she will never cling to me, never get entangled with me. It makes me feel free. I do not have to make love to her. The only woman who ever gave me the same pleasure was a woman who was incapable of falling in love, who gave herself like a whore, who despised the men she gave herself to. This woman had been a whore and was colder than a statue. The painters had discovered her and used her as a model. She was a magnificent model. She was the very essence of the whore. Somehow in the whore the cold womb, constantly subjected to desire, produces a phenomenon. All the eroticism comes to the surface. The constant living with a penis inside of one does something fascinating to a woman. The womb seems to be exposed, to be present in every aspect of her.

"Somehow or other even the hair of a whore seems impregnated with sex. This woman's hair ... it was the most sensual hair I have ever seen. Medusa must have had hair like this and with it seduced the men who fell under her spell. It was full of life, heavy, and as pungent as if it had been bathed in sperm. To me it always felt as if it had been wrapped around a penis and soaked in secretions. It was the kind of hair I wanted to wrap around my own sex. It was warm and musky, oily, strong. It was the hair of an animal. It bristled when it was touched. Merely to pass my fingers through it could give me an erection. I would have been content just touching her hair.

"But it was not her hair alone. Her skin was erotic, too. She would lie for hours letting me stroke her, lie like an animal, absolutely quiet, languid ... The transparence of her skin showed turquoise-blue threads interlacing her body, and I felt that I was not only touching satin but living veins, veins so alive that when I touched her skin I could feel the movement underneath. I used to like lying against her buttocks and caressing her, to feel the contractions of the muscles, which betrayed her responsiveness.

"Her skin was dry like some dessert sand. When we first lay in bed it was cool, and then it would become warm and feverish. Her eyes—it is impossible to describe her eyes except by saying that they were the eyes of an orgasm. What constantly happened in her eyes was something so feverish, so incendiary, so intense that at times when I looked straight at her and felt my penis rising and palpitating, I also felt as if something were palpitating in her eyes. With her eyes alone she could give this response, this absolutely erotic response, as if febrile waves were trembling there, pools of madness... something devouring that could lick a man all over like a flame, annihilate him, with a pleasure never known before.

"She was the queen of the whores, Bijou. Yes, Bijou. Only a few years ago she could still be seen sitting at some little café in Montmartre, like an Oriental Fatima, but still pale, the eyes still burning. She was like a womb turned inside out. Her mouth, not a mouth that made you think of a kiss, or of food; not a mouth to speak with, to form words, to greet you—no, it was like the mouth of woman's sex itself, the shape of it, the way it moved—to draw you in, to rouse you—always moistened, red and alive like the lips of a caressed sex ... Each motion of this mouth had the power to awaken the same motion, the same undulation in the sex of a man, as if transmitted by contagion, directly, immediately. As it undulated, like a wave about to curl and engulf one, it ordained the undulation of the penis, the undulation of the blood. As it grew moist, it drew out my erotic secretion.

"Somehow, Bijou's whole body was guided only by eroticism, guided by a genius for exposing every expression of desire. It was indecent, I tell you. It was like making love with her in public, in a cafe, in the street, before everyone.

"She kept nothing for night, for the bed. It was all in the open, on view. She was indeed the queen of the whores, enacting possession at every instant of her life, even while she ate; and when she played cards, she did not sit impassive, her body deprived of sensuality, as other women would sit with their attention on the game. One felt from the pose of her body, the way her ass spread on the seat, that everything was still set for possession. Her breasts almost touched the table with their fullness. If she laughed, then it was the sexual laugh of a satisfied woman, the laugh of a body enjoying itself
through every pore and cell, being caressed by the whole world.

"In the street, walking behind her sometimes when she did not know that I was there, I could see even urchins following her. Before they had seen her face, men followed her. It was as if she left an animal scent behind her. Strange what it can do to a man to see a truly sexual animal before him. The animal nature of woman has been so carefully disguised—the lips and ass and legs made to serve other purposes, made, like some colored plumage, to distract man from his desire rather than accentuate it.

"The women who are unabashedly sexual, with the womb written all over their faces, who arouse in a man the desire to fling his penis at them immediately; the women for whom clothes are only a means of making certain fragments of the body more prominent, like the women who wore bustles to exaggerate their asses, and the women who wore corsets that thrust their breasts out of their clothes; the women who throw their sex out at us, from the hair, the eyes, the noses, the mouth, the whole body—these are the women I love.

"The others ... how you have to search for the animal in them. They have diluted it, disguised it, perfumed it, so it will smell like something else—like what? angels?

"Let me tell you what happened to me once with Bijou. Bijou was naturally faithless. She asked me to paint her up for the Art Ball. It was a year when the painters and models were supposed to go dressed as African savages. So Bijou asked me to paint her up artistically, and for this purpose she came to my studio a few hours before the ball.

"I set about decorating her body with African designs of my own invention. She stood stark naked before me, and at first I stood up and began to paint her shoulders and breasts, and then I crouched to paint the belly and back, then I kneeled and began to paint the lower part of the body and legs ... I painted her lovingly, adoringly, like an act of worship.

"Her back was broad, strong, like the back of a circus horse. I could have mounted her and she would not have bent under the burden. I could have sat on this back and slid down and given it to her from behind, like a whip. I wanted to. Even more, perhaps, I wanted to squeeze her breasts until all the paint came off, caressed them clean so that I could kiss them ... But I restrained myself and continued to paint her into a savage.

"When she moved, the bright designs now moved with her, like an oily sea with undercurrents. Her nipples were hard like berries under the touch of the brush. Every curve gave me a delight. I unfastened my pants. I let my penis free. She never looked at me. She stood there without moving. As I painted the hips and then the valley leading to the pubic hair, she realized I would not be able to finish my task and said, "You will spoil the whole thing if you touch me. You can't touch me. After it is dry, you will be the first. I will wait for you at the ball. But not now." And she smiled at me.

"Of course, the sex remained unpainted. Bijou was going entirely naked but for the semblance of a fig leaf. I was allowed to kiss the unpainted sex—carefully, or I would have swallowed jade green and Chinese red. And Bijou was so proud of her African tattoo designs. Now she looked like the queen of the desert. Her eyes had a hard, lacquered glow. She shook her earrings, laughed, covered herself with a cape and left me. I was in such a state that it took me hours to prepare myself for the ball—merely a coat of brown paint.

"I told you Bijou was a faithless one. She did not even allow the paint to dry. When I arrived I could see that more than one man had braved the dangers of being painted with her own designs. The tattoos were completely blurred. The ball was at its height. The boxes were filled with tangled couples. It was one collective orgasm. And Bijou had not waited for me. As she walked about she left a tiny trail of semen, by which I could have followed her easily anywhere."

Hilda was a beautiful Parisian model who fell deeply in love with an American writer, whose work was so violent and sensual that it attracted women to him immediately. They would write him letters or try for an introduction through his friends. Those who succeeded in meeting him were always amazed by his gentleness, his softness.

Hilda had the same experience. Seeing that he remained impassive, she began to court him. It was only when she had made the first advances, caressed him, that he began making love to her as she had expected to be made love to. But each time, she would have to begin all over. First she had to tempt him in some way—fix a loosened garter, or talk about some experience in the past, or lie on his couch, throw back her head and thrust her breasts forwards, stretching herself like an enormous cat. She would sit on his lap, offer her mouth, unbutton his pants, excite him.

They lived together for several years, deeply attached to each other. She became accustomed to his sexual rhythm. He lay back waiting and enjoying himself. She learned to be active, bold, but she suffered, because she was by nature extraordinarily feminine. Deep down she had the belief that woman could easily control her desire, but that man could not, that it was even harmful for him to try to. She felt that woman was meant to respond to man's desire. She had always dreamed of having a man who would force her will, rule her sexually, lead.

She gratified this man because she loved him. She learned to seek out his penis and touch it until he was aroused, to seek his mouth and stir his tongue, to press her body against his, to incite him. Sometimes they would be lying down and talking. She would place her hand over his penis and find it hard. Yet he made no move towards her. Slowly then, she became used to expressing her own desire, her own moods. She lost all her reserve, her timidity.

One night at a party in Montparnasse, she met a Mexican painter, a huge dark man with heavy charcoal eyes, eyebrows and hair. He was drunk. She was to discover that he was almost always drunk.

But the sight of her gave him a profound shock. He pulled himself up from his faltering, tottering posture and faced her as if he were a big lion facing a tamer. Something about her made him stand still and try to become sober again, to rise from the fog and fumes in which he lived continuously. Something about her face made him stand ashamed of his unkempt clothes, the paint under his nails, the uncombed black hair. She, on the other hand, was struck by this image of a demon, the demon she had imagined to exist behind the work of the American writer.