The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (18 page)

while he waited. Then I would kneel squarely beside him with my left hand resting gently on his back or his hip, and my moistened right hand would start by rubbing round the outside of his anus, then I would put in two fingers, three, four. With my back bent and my frenetic arm movements, I must have looked very like a housewife desperately try- ing to stop a sauce from curdling, or someone proudly finishing up a home im- provement. His moans had the same nasal resonance as his laugh. Measuring the fruits of my sustained efforts by listening to them afforded me such an extreme state of excite- ment that it was only with great regret that I abandoned the movement, which had be- come painful. Then we undertook a series of positions with the logic of acrobats who end up exchanging places as they flow from one movement to the next. I would substitute my tongue for my fingers, then I would slide un- derneath him to form the sixty-nine position,

then it would be my turn to go on all fours. The acute level of pleasure that I then reached was also a recurring subject for interrogation.

Not many people knew his lair, and wal- lowing in it undoubtedly revived the childish predilection for sewers. Sewers are hidden places, not so much because it would be hu- miliating to be seen there but because, fol- lowing the example of animals that release a powerful stench to put off a predator, we hide ourselves in them like a protective en- velope, we take refuge in them like a nest that is all the more secure for being partly strewn with our own excretions. Even so, my friends were in a position to confirm that the man in question was dirtier than is usually acceptable for intellectuals who often neglect their physical appearance. I didn’t discour- age their questions or their comments. There was a controlled defiance in my response: “Well, yes, I go just as I am now—freshly

showered and in clean panties—and rub my- self up against that filth.” Or, if need be: “I rub myself against him just like I’m cuddling up to you.”

You don’t have to be a great psychologist to deduce from this behavior an inclination for self-abasement, mixed with the perverse intention of dragging others into that same abasement. But this tendency doesn’t stop there; I was carried by the conviction that I rejoiced in extraordinary freedom. To fuck above and beyond any sense of disgust was not just a way of lowering yourself, it was, in a diametrically opposite move, to raise your- self above all prejudice. There are those who break taboos as powerful as incest. I settled for not having to choose my partners, however many of them there may have been (given the conditions under which I gave my- self, if my father had happened to be one of the number, I would not have recognized him), and I can also say whatever sex there

may have been and whatever their physical and moral qualities may have been (in the same way that I have never tried to avoid a man who didn’t wash, I have with full know- ledge had sexual contact with three or four who were completely spineless and stupid). And I was still waiting to find myself under a trained dog, as Éric kept promising, but which never happened, either because the opportunity just didn’t arise or because he thought it ought to stay in the realms of fantasy.

Earlier on in this book, I applied my thoughts to the theme of space. I have now just spoken of animals and of immersing oneself into human bestiality. What path should I take to convey most clearly the con- trasting intermingling of experiences of pleasure, which projects us outside ourselves, and filth, which belittles us? Per- haps this one: on some plane journeys I like looking out over desert landscapes. Being

shut up in the cabin on a long-haul flight promotes a general sloppiness among the passengers, and in that promiscuity, you end up exchanging the smells of musty armpits and overheated feet with those sitting next to you. The feeling of wonderment I have if I have an opportunity to look over a stretch of Siberia or the Gobi Desert is all the greater if I am shackled not so much by my seat belt as by the soupy bath in which I am submerged.

I feel a need to suture the cut between the in- terior and the exterior of my body. Without going so far as a frank anality, I have a facil- ity for finding appeasement in filth: some of the traits of my sexual personality support slight regressive tendencies. I would add to that my habit of completing the sexual act in a maximum number of spots in my familiar space. Some of these places allow a couple to

express the urgency of their desire and, at the same time, to experiment with unusual positions, between the elevator and the door to the apartment, in the bath or on the kit- chen table. Some of the most exciting loca- tions are in the workplace. Here intimate space and public space meet. One friend whom I used to meet in his office, overlook- ing the rue de Rennes, would happily let himself be sucked off in front of the floor-to- ceiling window, and the euphoric activity in that part of Paris, which bubbled up to me from the street as I knelt silhouetted against this window, must have contributed to my pleasure. In cities, deprived of distant hori- zons, I like being able to look out from a win- dow or balcony while I keep a languorous dick captive in a secret place. At home my gaze roams over the narrow courtyard and the neighboring windows; from an office I once worked in on the boulevard Saint-Ger- main, I contemplated the vast facade of the

Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I have also men- tioned some of these places when I spoke of the exquisite fear of exposing oneself to in- voluntary witnesses. To this exhibitionist temptation, I could add the impulse to mark one’s territory as an animal would. Like a lemur, which marks out its chosen space with a few jets of urine, you leave a few drops of come on a staircase or the office carpet, you impregnate the storeroom where every- one hangs up their coats. By inscribing this terrain with the act in which a body exceeds its limits, you appropriate it for yourself by osmosis. And you take it from others. There is, without doubt, a degree of provocation or even of indirect aggression toward others in this operation. Our freedom seems all the greater when we claim it in a place where professional cohabitation usually imposes rules and limitations, even if you share that place with the most discreet and tolerant people. Not to mention the fact that we can

to some extent embroil them without their knowledge by annexing their belongings into our most private spheres: a sweater they for- got which you park your buttocks on, or the hand towel in the office bathroom which you use to wipe between your legs. There are some places that I have occupied in this way, and I have felt more at home in them than those who spent the best part of their active time there, because I had left the damp out- line of my buttocks in the place where they laid out their work and their files. This didn’t stop me from entertaining the idea that they, too, might have subverted the role of their workspace, and that we were fucking in one another’s wake.

I have methodically laid out the markers of a sexual territory within a professional loca- tion. Some places lend themselves particu- larly well, such as a photographic darkroom or those windowless rooms in which bundles of newspapers are usually kept. The first is

closed off by a blackout curtain. It is so small that you have to stay standing, bathed in cabaret light. The light makes the skin look soft as velvet, and this optical impression ex- acerbates the touch; you only need to brush your hands lightly over each other. Espe- cially as you feel disembodied: the red light makes pale skin almost transparent and swallows up the darker areas, hair or one’s clothes.

In a storeroom the most unsettling thing is choosing a place. The area carved up into parallel alleys by the shelving is perfectly uniform, you are no less sheltered from in- truders in one alley than another, and you would anyway be seen through the blank spaces between the piles of paper. The net result is that you settle in this place of accu- mulation as arbitrarily as you would in an empty space, and not before you have turned and looked about you a few times. In this sort of place, fellatio was preferable for me as

the act that was easiest to interrupt. I think that it was to do with the gloominess of the place. In a wood, on a deserted track, in any sort of public place, there is always a good reason to choose to hide behind this clump of trees, or in that doorway, either because it offers the greatest comfort or safety, or be- cause it has some playful or aesthetic quality. But here there was none of that. So your stop here was necessarily brief because you could just as easily move a few meters away and migrate from place to place. I would add to that the fact that, if we are happy to be caught in flagrante delicto in a picturesque setting, there would be something almost hu- miliating about being caught somewhere as ugly as that.

I like the atmosphere of a deserted office, there is a feeling of calm that represents not an end of activity, merely a suspension of it. The harassment of the workday is over, but it still threatens in the shape of a telephone

ringing persistently, the gaping jaw of a com- puter monitor, a file left open. All the tools, all the materials and all the space at my dis- posal—and mine alone—give me the illusory but calming impression that I have an unlim- ited capacity for work. As I have already said, when others vacate space, they also vacate time, and it is as if I have all eternity at my disposal to learn how to use every piece of equipment, and to analyze and resolve every problem; it is as if the very fact that I can go into an office without having to introduce myself or apologize smooths out my fitful, halting life. In these situations, and when I was joined in my solitary pursuit by a col- league who doubled as a sexual partner, I only occasionally made use of the relative comfort of the carpet. Worktables were more commonly my platforms. You might think it was because that position, with the woman sitting on the edge of a table and the man standing between her legs, is easier to

modify if a colleague should burst into the room. This is not so. It was actually because the movements flowed naturally. Vincent used to make up the dummies, and he and I would sometimes stand side by side looking through the page layouts, not thinking to sit down because he was a man in a hurry and perhaps because we felt we could evaluate them better with an extra thirty centimeters’ distance. The slightest hesitation in the flow of our work, and I would turn around. One quick hop, and with my buttocks next to the dummies, my pubis was at the right level. And the level matters. Quite often the best moment to slip from a professional discus- sion to a silent embrace corresponds to a lapse in concentration, when, for example, you need to look for a document in a bottom drawer. As I bend over to get it, I push out my buttocks. All they want is to be grasped by two firm hands. Then they need a desk to lean on; I am always very cautious if I have

to clear everything aside to lie on my back. But not all work surfaces are at the correct height, many are too low, and there are some desks I never went back to a second time. One graphic designer I used to go to see at his agency had cleverly addressed the prob- lem by acquiring pedestal chairs whose height can be adjusted to the nearest centi- meter. I would sit down on it in front of him, my genitals exactly opposite his. We had ar- ranged to have a table behind him for me to put my feet on. We could stay like that for a long time without either of us tiring; for me it was like lying in a deck chair, while he rolled his supple waist as if twirling a hula hoop. Intermittently he would substitute his own movement with that of the chair seat, grabbing it with both hands and swinging it fluidly from side to side.

I have rarely worried about being caught in flagrante delicto. In the above pages, I have referred several times to the awareness of risk if you undertake a sexual occupation in a place not intended for that purpose, because this awareness also contributes to the pleas- ure. Even so, the risk is almost always calcu- lated, limited by implicit conventions: someone used to the Bois could draw a map of the places that are out of bounds but where the act is nevertheless possible, and those where it would definitively be im- possible; and I have hardly ever made use of offices except outside working hours…In a rather prosaic way, the conviction that sexu- ality, whatever form it may take, is the most widely shared thing in the world, reassures me that nothing unpleasant will happen. An involuntary witness to a sexual act (if he is not driven to join in) would still be suffi- ciently confused by his own impulses to show no reaction, to maintain a discreet

reserve. Jacques who, with a smile, worries about what would have happened if the young backpacker who had just greeted us had passed us two minutes earlier—when, that is, we had our trousers around our ankles and our bucking bodies rustled the leaves by the side of the path, making exactly the same noise as some little animal running for cover. I say nothing would have happened.

I would add that I fear only those I know too well, not the anonymous who mean noth- ing to me, and I don’t think I am alone in this. In this area, the taboo for me would be to use the home you share with someone else while that person was out and unaware of what was going on. Early one afternoon Claude came home to the apartment—a big bourgeois apartment we had just moved in- to—and into the spare bedroom near the front door. He interrupted a copulation I had not been able to resist. It was the first time

that, not in a group session, I had had the full benefit of Paul’s large body, which crushed me most pleasurably. Claude went back out without a word. I saw Paul stand up, his back filling the door frame, his naked buttocks proportionately so small as he fol- lowed Claude. Through the door I heard him say: “I’m sorry, old man.” I was struck by the unaffected tone he used to express his genu- ine discomfort. I, on the other hand, even though I had already fucked Paul in front of Claude, and even though Claude never re- ferred to the incident, couldn’t think about it without feeling persistent guilt for a very long time. At least I could see the spare room as relatively neutral territory. Our shared bedroom, the “conjugal” bed, was absolutely out of bounds. On one occasion the deliques- cence of my entire body and of my will (which I have already mentioned, as I have my fatal reaction to a man’s first touch) led me to the threshold of that room, the room