The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (10 page)

such a thing with a woman was less “con- sequential” than with a man. I was given a rendezvous time in a café in Montparnasse, with a suspicious go-between, a man of about thirty-five who looked like a real estate agent. As a precaution, a friend watched me from a distance. I don’t remember anything about the conversation or the proposed ar- rangements; I seem to recall the guy was very careful to describe the woman we were meant to be meeting, while I, probably un- able to imagine myself cast as a prostitute, switched the roles in my mind’s eye and ima- gined this woman as an aging call girl, with bleached hair and lingerie that sagged on her flesh, lying back on a furry bedcover with si- lent authority. Despite my naïveté, I realized as soon as the man took me to one of the little hotels I knew on the rue Jules-Chaplain that I would never see the woman. Perhaps the fact that he had spoken about her so much had immediately and definitively sent

her back to the realms of imagination. The room was pleasantly cozy; he switched on both bedside lights without bothering to switch off the overhead light, undid his zip- per straightaway and asked me to suck him, in the same tone of voice as a man apologiz- ing for bumping into you on the Métro even though he seems to think it’s your fault. I carried out the job, only too relieved that I no longer had to face his rudeness. He lay down on the satin bedcover, he had a good hard erection and was easy to handle. I sucked him steadily without tiring, resting squarely on my knees, which were perpen- dicular to his hips—one of the most comfort- able positions. I was keen to finish because my thoughts were spinning. Should I say anything more about the woman we were meant to be meeting? That would be stupid. Should I ask for money for the blow job? But shouldn’t I have done that first? What was I going to tell the friend waiting for me? I was

surprised by the sincere and youthful, aban- doned expression on his face when he came, it was such a contrast to the way he behaved; it was also the only time in my life that I saw our pleasure of a man I didn’t like. I still have a clear image of the room as it was when we left it, the immaculate bedspread, the untouched chairs and the uncluttered surfaces of the little bedside tables under the lamp shades. I denied it, but I could not dis- guise from the attentive friend who met me on a nearby terrace that I had made extens- ive use of my mouth. A blow job, especially if it is well done, bruises the insides of the lips. If you keep on going back and forth with your mouth, it’s better to protect the aroused member by curling your lips over your teeth—at least that’s the way I have always proceeded. “Your lips are all swollen,” said my friend, telling me I was a fool. The young man who looked like a real estate agent had followed me. He insulted us, claiming we had

tried to con him in some way. I couldn’t quite see how, but luckily he didn’t press the point.

What teasing I have had for offering my body so easily but not knowing how to make money from it! I was with men who were rel- atively well off, but I wasn’t the type to put on the sort of performance that would have been necessary to gain any material advant- age from them—advantages that they doubt- less conferred on other girls. If I had to make a list, like a head of state who has to keep re- cords of gifts received from ambassadors or foreign heads of state, the spoils would be meager: a pair of sparkly orange stockings I have never worn; three thick 1930s bangles in Bakelite; a pair of off-white knitted shorts (definitely one of the first styles to come out in the winter 1970 prêt-à-porter collection) with a matching top; an authentic Berber wedding dress; a dime-store watch; a plastic brooch with a baroque geometric design

typical of the early eighties; a necklace and a ring by Zolotas, which, sadly, tarnished very quickly; a pearl-edged pareo; a Japanese- brand vibrating dildo, along with three little metallic balls meant to be inserted in the va- gina to stimulate you during the act, which never worked for me…I should also add a contribution to the first dress I ever bought from a YSL boutique; a bath towel, also from YSL; extensive free dental care; and a loan of several thousand francs that I never had to repay. Taxis and airfare have always been paid for. “You looked lost,” someone who knew me when I was very young tells me, “and people just couldn’t help themselves giving you hundred-franc notes.” I must have gone on looking like that to men all my life, not like a woman who was after money, far from it, but like an adolescent who was no good at earning her living and needed help with a little allowance. I have, of course, ex- cluded from this list all the presents Jacques

gave me, given that our relationship was of a different order, and I also separate the works given to me by artists, because I always think—as, indeed, I do every time my profes- sional interests have been closely linked with my sexual relationships—that they gratify the art critic in me just as much as, when that is their intention, they do the lover.

We do not stick to the same sexual diet all the way through our lives! This may be due to our emotional circumstances (all our de- sires may be channeled through one person) but also to those times when we take stock of ourselves, thanks to changes that may have intervened in aspects of our lives not neces- sarily connected with love (moving, illness, a new professional or intellectual environ- ment), when we find ourselves off the track we were following.

I can think of two occasions when my li- bido was stalled. When Jacques and I were preparing to live together, he wrote to tell me that we should hide absolutely nothing from each other, that we shouldn’t lie. Now, it just happened that I had formed some relation- ships that I thought he wouldn’t be happy about. I managed to avoid a couple of meet- ings, to stagger my visits to orgies and to go through with the rest in a guilty state that I had hardly ever experienced and which had an inhibiting effect, moderate but nonethe- less real. On the other hand, one particular orgy, which was in no way extraordinary, marked a turning point for me. I knew the couple who were our hosts, and—because he had just taken on the management of a big newspaper and she was a singer—I thought of them as parodies of characters from
Cit- izen Kane.
I had already fucked if not both of them, certainly him. There were some distin- guished guests, and they had split into two

groups: one in a bedroom, the other on a sofa that stood rather oddly in the middle of a living-room, lit by a chandelier. I was on the sofa, definitely glad to be in the group that was better lit, and active as I always was. I rather liked our host’s dick, a short sturdy organ whose proportions made it a reduced model of his entire, compact body. Some people started to head for the bedroom, where a young woman buried in a thick down comforter and waving her limbs in the air like a baby in its crib was hidden under the succession of broad backs that came and covered her, and whose cries could be heard all over the apartment. I observe this sort of extroverted behavior with placid indiffer- ence. One of the participants expressed his admiration, saying she was “really going for it,” and I thought this was stupid. I went back to relax on the sofa. I thought that this young woman had taken up center stage, which, till then, had been mine, and that I

should have been jealous of her, but my jeal- ousy was lukewarm. For the first time ever, I was pausing during one of those sessions in which I normally kept it up without stop- ping. And I appreciated that pause in the same way as I valued those moments when I withdrew into myself during a meal or while out with friends. Of course, I wondered about this new reaction. The answer I found was that by constantly talking openly about these sort of practices with people who did or did not perform them; by commenting on them and interpreting them, usually with the arsenal of lay psychoanalysis (which had the same effect on me as a cavalry regiment des- cending on an encampment of rebel Indi- ans); in short, by heading to a couch three times a week not to fuck but to talk about it, I had—without realizing it—taken on the role not only of an active participant but also of an observer.

And it was when I moved away from the center of the spiral that I discovered something: my pleasure was never more in- tense than when it was the first time—not the first time that I made love with someone, but the first time we kissed; even the first em- brace was enough. Obviously there were ex- ceptions. Be that as it may, in most cases, even if what followed was not unpleasant, it was a bit like biting into the cone when you no longer have a mouthful of ice cream to melt on your tongue; it had all the attraction of a painting that you admire but on which you are feasting your eyes for the fifteenth time. If I was taken by surprise, the pleasure was overwhelming. It is these situations that provide some of my clearest recollections of orgasms. I can cite them: late at night, cross- ing the huge lobby of an Inter-Continental hotel; the elegant and distinguished assistant who has been traveling across the country with me for more than two weeks catches

hold of my arm after we have just said good- night to each other, pulls me to him and kisses me on the mouth. “In the morning, I’ll come and see you in your room.” I can feel the spasm rising right up to my stomach, and I set off toward the tiny little concierge’s desk in the distance, twisting my ankle as I go.

Another time, I dive down onto the carpet next to the master of the house, who, slightly drunk, has crashed out on the floor next to some other guests, and who pulls me toward him by tugging under the neck of my sweat- er, kissing me slowly with one of those cinema kisses that makes your head roll from side to side; this was not an evening destined to turn into an orgy, his wife was holding a conversation in the next room. One of his friends who was also sitting on the floor like us and whose face happened to be on a level with ours, watched us in amazement. I go completely limp.

And more: going to see the “Dernier Picas- so” exhibition at the Pompidou Center with Bruno, with him there is always an element of chance. As he goes out of my field of vision while I go up to one of the paintings, his presence becomes all the more vivid and I am caught unaware by a brief but very dis- tinct wetness between my legs. As I keep looking at the exhibition, I can feel the slimy patch on my tights alternately against the lips of my vagina and the swell of my inner thigh, shifting as I walk. In an early period of my life, I didn’t really care whether I reex- perienced these feelings in more extensive caresses or during penetration, but later on, when I had come to understand how singu- larly limited it was, I started to hope that that faraway, ineffable tension in my lower abdomen, and the famous wave that dissip- ated it, could be repeated again and again as a relationship continued.

As I approached middle age, I had two suc- cessive relationships, one easygoing and the other emotionally charged, but nevertheless they both followed a similar pattern: I took the time to let the desire I felt for the other soak in, which made that desire all the more pronounced; it culminated in passionate bouts of fucking during which my satisfac- tion was never as complete as it had been in the inaugural physical contact. For many years I faithfully maintained a friendship with Bruno, but it was threatened periodic- ally by bursts of desire, sometimes aggress- ive, frustrated, not satisfactorily fulfilled, etc. It was my only truly chaotic experience. I would go to see him every day for weeks on end, then one day I would ring the doorbell and there would be no reply; the door would stay closed for several weeks, months even. And this would go on until my incredulous

persistence was at last rewarded by a hoarse interjection on the telephone, authorizing me to come see him once again. Probably be- cause of this climate of uncertainty, I often came instantly to orgasm with him. We would talk volubly, exchanging impressions of books, usually standing in a sparse interi- or that would have made a Quaker feel at home. Time would pass and I would move toward him. “Do we want a little cuddle?” he would ask in the preoccupied but affection- ate voice of an adult disturbed in his work by a child. Then his hand would push aside my panties, and two fingers, four, would elicit a brief, anguished cry from me, because it was as much a sensation of breathtaking surprise as of pleasure. He himself would have the satisfaction of knowing that my pussy was already dripping. We were generous with our kisses and caresses. He made sweeping movements. If I was lying down, he would brush aside the sheet with the same gesture

that he used to stroke my breasts throughout; I could lie straight and motion- less on my back while his palm swept up and down my entire length, as if I was just a sketch. When it was my turn to attend to him, in contrast I explored him minutely, paying special attention to the folds in his body, behind the ear, his groin, his armpits, the crack between his buttocks. I even scoured the furrowed lines in the crook of his hands. Throughout these preliminaries, I kept thinking how delicious it would be later on when he made up his mind to turn me over and take me the way I like it, from be- hind, when he grabbed my buttocks and smacked into them loudly and abruptly with his hips. I particularly like it when the dick jerks in and out; every three or four pumps, a slightly harder thrust comes as a glorious surprise. And yet it was only on a few excep- tional occasions that I felt the same intense pleasure as when his fingers opened up the

way. So I would start thinking that perhaps the next time I would, and I settled in to wait, occupying myself with the need to force the resistance of that closed door or the mor- al lesson.

Before that, I had a relationship with the author of the failed photographs taken in my office. He would arrange to meet me either in a hotel near Gobelins or in a disused apartment near the Gare de l’Est that was on loan to him. These meetings were always at an ungodly hour for anyone trying to carry on professional activities that were just a tad dependent on office hours: between eleven o’clock and midday, between half past three and four o’clock in the afternoon…The day before, I could already feel the anticipation in my pussy responding to the vibrating Métro seat while I looked forward to our re- union. The feeling could be so maddening that I sometimes preferred to get off a few stops before my destination, to calm myself