The Exchange (9 page)

Orgasms had never been a problem, not with Kyle or anyone else. In fact, I thought now that I’d focused too much on the end-point of sex, at the expense of the rest. I’d had an essentially businesslike approach and had never let myself fully participate. Being here, for some reason, seemed to be opening my mind and senses to the possibility of sex as something joyous and unconstrained.

I thought guiltily of Konrad. It was wrong of me to develop a crush on Rochelle’s boyfriend, but he had seemed to be leading me on. Was he serious, I wondered, or was he actually interested? I couldn’t believe that he was, but the thought of him watching me as I wanked was so unbelievably potent that I couldn’t help but hope, in some secret part of me, that something might happen between us.

***

When I was finally dressed, I went out, stopping at a
boulangerie
to buy a fresh cheese and ham baguette that I could munch as I walked. I moved aimlessly through the streets, barely even aware of what direction I was going in. I had a
plan de Paris
in my pocket, so I didn’t need to worry about getting lost. I could roam freely.

I took hundreds of pictures, having downloaded the ones from that morning onto my laptop, stashing them away in a folder with an innocuous name just in case anyone ever got access to the computer. My mind kept returning to one image taken just as the first wave of climax hit me, with my lips apart and teeth clenched, my eyes wide in surprise – amazement, even. As if it was the first time. As if I hadn’t known what this felt like. And in a way, I thought, it was true – every orgasm still came as a surprise, a precious and holy gift.

I decided to wander along the boulevard de Clichy towards the Place de Clichy, imagining I was walking in Henry Miller’s footsteps. As I snapped prostitutes, waiters on café terraces, random passers-by, I said to myself that Miller was one of those rare people who followed their instincts, no matter what kind of trouble they led to. Miller had once lived in Clichy itself and therefore often passed through or spent time at the Place de Clichy – hence its appearance in his work. I’d read that some of the cafés that he had once frequented still existed – most notably Au Petit Poucet where he had written some of his love letters to Anaïs Nin.

I didn’t know that much of Miller’s work first hand. I knew him mainly through his friendship with the photographer Brassaï. Hungarian-born Brassaï, with his quest to ‘seize the Paris night’, had been one of my first artistic crushes. Miller had often accompanied Brassaï as he prowled the gaslit streets by night, photographing cafés, brothels, dance halls and opium dens, along with the barflies, small-time crooks, cabaret performers and ‘fallen’ women who frequented them. Together the friends would pore over the ‘nightly harvest of photographs’, which, though prosaic in terms of subject matter, possessed an eerie, almost supernatural quality – especially when they had been taken in fog, as they so often were.

Brassaï broke new ground – these were aspects of French life that had not been photographed. His vision was also highly provocative, as images such as ‘Fat Whore, Italian Quarter’ attest. I could only aspire to Brassaï’s level of genius, but street photography and the lure of the spontaneous and unvarnished image were a passion of mine. While some of my work did have an explicit social commentary, I had great fondness for the images that held a greater complexity, whose mysteries could not be mined so easily – images that refused to yield their secrets.

I bore all this in mind as I walked along, discreetly snapping away. I generally found, in most places I went, that people didn’t mind me taking pictures of them. Modern technology allowed me to keep a discreet distance, and often they were unaware of me focusing on them, although if I suspected I’d end up trying to sell an image or use it in an exhibition and the subject was clearly identifiable, I’d have to stop and ask him or her to sign a release form. They normally did that too. Most people were flattered, to be honest – grateful to have been singled out for someone’s attention, no matter the reason.

It seemed to be the same in Paris – people either didn’t notice, or they didn’t care, or they actively started playing up when they noticed the camera. The latter category, obviously, were of the least interest to me.

The boulevard de Clichy, though hardly one of Paris’s most picturesque streets, proved fertile hunting ground – although I did maintain if you were a good photographer, you could take interesting images anywhere, no matter how mundane the subject matter. In fact, that’s what drew me to being a photographer – the challenge of finding beauty or value in the ordinary or even the ugly.

I was a firm subscriber to the Japanese philosophy of
wabi-sabi
, which seeks beauty in imperfection and even in decay and death.
Wabi-sabi
is the reverence for authenticity, for the cracks and crevices of life, for weathering – whether by the elements themselves, time or use. Through
wabi-sabi
, we can embrace our own transience in a transient universe.

Like photography,
wabi-sabi
is all about the fragmentary glimpse, a random moment of beauty or illumination that will never be repeated. That, in essence, was what I sought to capture, whether it was in the raddled face of a drug addict in an abandoned Tube tunnel or shards of glass on a pavement, fallen from a broken window. But even a picture like those I’d taken the night before, of Konrad, bare-chested, gyrating playfully in front of me, was
wabi-sabi
. That instant when my drunken lust collided with Konrad’s mischief would never come again. To preserve it was to hold on to some of the holiness of that glowing moment.

I snapped drivers unloading boxes from the backs of vans, women in shoes that looked far too high to walk in climbing out of taxis and tottering away down the street, people looking uncertainly at the sky and then unfurling colourful umbrellas. At the Moulin Rouge, the legendary Belle Epoque home of the sexed-up working-class party dance the cancan, I went inside and had a look at the historical décor of the foyer, which included some original Toulouse-Lautrecs. I wasn’t particularly interested in staying on for a show, but send me back in time and I’d have loved to have visited this part of Paris when it was farmland dotted by several real
moulins
or windmills and to watch as it slowly evolved into a seedy mecca of both nightlife and artistic ferment populated by such greats as Renoir, Picasso and Satie.

As I stepped out of the Moulin Rouge I clocked, opposite it, the Musée de l’Erotisme, its entrance flanked by two rather unerotic silver-painted sculptures of fat, Buddha-like figures. I didn’t hold out much hope for the contents of the museum, after that introduction, but it turned out to be a strangely agreeable, and instructive, place to while away an hour – another place where sex and art were inextricably entwined. There were strange gaps in the coverage – I would have liked, and expected, for instance, displays on the Marquis de Sade, and on homosexuality and BDSM, but the spread of erotic artworks and artefacts from cultures around the world was of great interest, not least in the way it demonstrated that fascination with sex is a universal, cutting across all social and cultural boundaries. There wasn’t any proper analysis of the works given within the museum – the presentation itself was quite poor. But for anyone prepared to pay the objects such as tribal artworks and Peruvian phallic pottery their due attention, there was much food for thought.

The best section of the museum, for me, was the one detailing the history of Parisian
maisons closes
– legal brothels banned in 1946 – and the Pigalle red-light district as a whole. This section features some sketches by Degas, plus photos, engravings, writings and police documents. They included one photo of the ecclesiastical
chambre ducale
, used for black masses at a brothel that had stood at 6 rue du Moulin, and another of the amazing Art Nouveau façade of a brothel that had occupied 16 rue Blondel. There was also a photo of a brothel chef with two prostitutes, the latter naked beneath their aprons, and a fascinating ‘slice of life’ shot of some prostitutes having lunch or dinner together in the refectory of their brothel at 122 rue de Provence. More prosaically, one showed the clinically bare medical annexe of a
maison close
where the prostitutes were examined several times a week.

For a while I lost myself in reveries of what Pigalle must have been like back in the day when it was home to these
maisons closes
and to lots of cabarets, not just the Moulin Rouge. These layers of history, I thought, were what made cities like Paris and London so compelling – what lay beneath the surface, literally but also in terms of echoes of the past, gave an added piquancy to what we saw, an extra dimension. This, too, was something I sought to capture in my photographs, without really knowing how to do so. I often felt that it was a matter of chance – the viewer of the photo either ‘got’ it or they didn’t. I was merely, in this case at least, a recorder, not an artist.

I wrote down the addresses of the former brothels in my notebook and resolved to visit the sites and take photos of them, hoping to stir up these echoes, to in some way resurrect the past if only by invoking its particular aura. Then wandered round the rest of the museum. Ultimately I found that, true to form, it was the other people in the museum who provided the greatest level of interest for me. I must confess to sneaking a few candid snaps while I was there. There was the young Japanese couple who couldn’t keep their hands off each other, and for whom every phallic or yonic object provoked a fresh volley of flirtatious giggles and fumblings behind a display case. There was the elderly lady with a lapdog tucked under her arm, whose flinty blue eyes continually flickered to the door – was she waiting for a date to arrive, I wondered, or did she hold out hope of picking up some lusty widower within the confines of the museum? Either way, as I took a few pictures of her, I wished her well.

I strolled further along the boulevard, stopping outside the famous Brasserie Wepler to fire off a few shots, remembering how Miller once described it as being suffused by a ‘rosy glow’ emanating from prostitutes congregated around its entrance. For a moment I considered going in and ordering a plate of oysters and a glass of fizz, but the thought of them suddenly made me feel queasy and I decided to return when I didn’t have a hangover. Besides, it would be more fun and decadent to do it with someone else. And I didn’t really know anyone here – one drunken night out didn’t make for a social life, and I had no idea whether Konrad and his merry band of party animals would ever come calling again.

For a while I just sat on a bench, thinking about the previous night and what it might represent to me – the beginning of new friendships, an opening up of myself to a new world. Part of me wanted that, while part of me needed something more. I wasn’t a natural party animal and I needed something to fulfil me while I was in Paris. If I could hang out with Konrad and his cool crowd, then that would be the icing on the cake. But I expected nothing. What I
needed
was a project.

As I strolled back to Rochelle’s’ apartment via Pigalle’s backstreets, with a little help from the
plan de Paris
, it hit me. It had been staring me in the face: I would document the Pigalle dance milieu that Rochelle and her crew inhabited – this mad, spinning world that simultaneously thrilled and frightened me. That way I would be both in and out – just the way I liked it. I didn’t have to commit, I didn’t have to participate. I could get my pleasures vicariously, just as I had in photographing Konrad the night before.

For I didn’t want him either, I told myself. He was beautiful but untouchable. Being with him would burst the bubble because nothing could live up to the physical perfection of him. Whereas looking but not touching meant I would never run the risk of being disappointed.

Back at the flat, I decided that I’d definitely take up Lisette’s invitation to go and watch her unveil her new routine. Finding the number she had given me on a scrap of paper in my pocket, I dialled her number.

I ended up in Selfridges, calling Konrad from the changing room to ask him if he’d lend me some money, and, if so, if he could do the transfer online that very moment so that my card wouldn’t be turned down.

I’d found a frothy pink mini-dress by Vivienne Westwood, with a vintage vibe, and I just had to have it. With my Perspex wedges and accessories, and with my hair slicked back with wet-look gel, I’d look like a crazy mixture of old-fashioned and futuristic. Heads would turn.

I didn’t mean to be anywhere near the designer’s concession, but walking past it I caught sight of the dress and my heart missed a beat. Telling myself I was just going over to have a look, I stroked the expensive material and knew I was lost. I prayed Konrad would answer his phone.

He did, and he obliged. I knew he would. He even found it quite funny, that I was in such a big flap about getting an outfit for my big night out and was prepared to go into debt for it.

‘This must be
some
date,’ he said, without a trace of jealousy, and I thought again of the last time the two of us had had sex, the night before I left. I liked Konrad, and I found him gorgeous. But there was some kind of disconnect between us when it came to sex and I’d never had an orgasm with him. That was weird, because I’d never had a problem climaxing with other guys, and I came easily when I masturbated. In fact, sometimes when I was alone, it was as if I couldn’t come enough – there were times when I’d brought myself off twenty, maybe thirty, times in one afternoon, to the point where I was worried I’d get sore or give myself a heart attack.

But with Konrad, there was something missing, and I still hadn’t figured out what. He had an awesome body, and technically the sex seemed to be spot on. But somehow I couldn’t climax. In fact, as I felt Konrad start to move towards his climax, any pleasure I was experiencing began to retreat. It was as if I didn’t want to share in the moment with him, for some reason.