The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (20 page)

private, standing between the horizon and the framing lens. It is not the balustrade that holds me safe above the drop but his eyes on me, alternately driving me on and following me, his gaze unfurling between us like an an- chor. When I face the sea and turn my back on the camera so that I am no longer aware of how far it is from me, then the lens seems to attach itself to my shoulders and the small of my back, drawing me in with a powerful suction.

After supper we go back to the car, which is parked near the cemetery. Now we make the most of the evening light for some frot- tage, ass against fly. My undressing requires that we up the stakes; having done nothing but unbutton and undress, I want to open myself up wide again. I am half lying on the hood, and my cunt is getting ready to swal- low the end of his prick when the air is sliced by violent barking. A furious little dog crosses the halo of light around the only

streetlamp, a man hobbling along behind him. Brief moment of confusion: I push the skirt of my dress back down, Jacques man- ages as best he can to stow his now unpliable parts. Still stroking him through the thick- ness of his trousers, I insist that we watch which way the man goes because, as if this was meant to happen, he is now pacing up and down watching us out of the corner of his eye. Jacques decides it would be better to go home. In the car, in the state of panic I am always in when very frustrated, I am over- come with anger. I counter Jacques’s cau- tious comments by saying the man might have come and joined us. Exasperated desire is a naive dictator that cannot believe anyone would oppose it or even inconvenience it. Isn’t it also that I feel I have been abandoned by the extreme attentiveness that has fol- lowed me and protected me all day and that was, to some extent, my link with the world? My anger derives from a sense of

powerlessness. When my need to be penet- rated is thwarted, I am torn between these two conflicting states: on the one hand, an incredulity that means I cannot understand the reasons (however reasonable they may be) why my partners aren’t responding to my imperious waiting; and on the other hand, an equally stupid inability to break down their resistance (however circumstantial, definit- ive or wavering it may be), in other words, to take the initiative by making some seductive or provocative gesture that would make them change their minds. I wait stubbornly, ex- haustingly, for some initiative on the other’s part which they may never take. How many times have I resented Jacques when the urge came to me while doing something quite or- dinary, some domestic chore, for example, but I didn’t let it show and somehow felt re- proachful toward him for failing to read the circumvolutions of my brain where the source of my libido lies. If I can be forgiven

for drawing a parallel with a situation that bears no comparison with these capricious outbursts of mine, I would compare it to the state of someone who, since birth or as a res- ult of an accident, doesn’t have the use of his limbs or the power of speech, but whose in- telligence and need to communicate remain intact. He depends entirely on what around him to break through his isolation. It is said that this entourage can have some degree of success if they pay minute attention to the subtlest signals, such as blinking, from the patient, or by massaging him patiently to awaken his nerve endings. Sexual frustration plunges me into what I would call a benign autism, which makes me utterly dependent on the twinkle of lust in someone else’s eye and the caresses he has the goodness to offer me. On that condition, my anxiety dissipates and I can reclaim my place in an environ- ment that is no longer hostile to me.

On the way home, I ask to stop on the shoulder. But my anger only increases be- cause we are on a busy main road and it really wouldn’t be possible. So I cut myself off from the road and the car. I concentrate all my attention on my pubis, which I thrust forward, and become absorbed in a slow, cir- cular stroking movement of the sort of sticky little animal that lives there. From time to time the headlights of oncoming cars light up my stomach, as smooth as porcelain. What sort of mirage am I burying myself in then? Surely not a continuation of the events that were left in suspense a few minutes earlier. That particular business is over. No, I prefer taking refuge in one of my reassuring old scenarios, a long way away from where I ac- tually am. In an intense, sustained effort of concentration, I construct the scene in great detail, perhaps the one in which I am pulled to pieces by countless fingering hands on a stretch of wasteland or in the toilets of a

fleabag theater—I don’t really remember. When Jacques stretches out his arm without taking his eyes off the road and traces blind, sweeping movements over my breasts and stomach, and when he dives his hand down to fight mine and gain possession of its soak- ing little toy, he upsets the seamlessness of the scene. I resist the urge to stop him.

As we come into Perpignan, Jacques parks the car in a brightly lit, empty parking lot at the foot of a block of apartments. In order to get close to me and because of the gap between the seats, he has to throw his chest forward like a gargoyle. His head comes into my field of vision and eclipses everything. He plunges into me with three or four vigorous fingers. I like hearing the smacking sound of my wet labia; the frankness of this noise wakes me from my fantasies. I never stretch out my body to offer it up to these caresses straightaway or that easily. Before I give in and spread my thighs wide, before I throw

my head back and open up my arms to offer up my breasts, I need some time. Time, per- haps, to uncoil from the curled position I automatically assume, the position imprin- ted on my body when, as a child, I had to hide my masturbating; time to accept, as usual and once again (and even after man- euvering in front of a camera for hours), showing my body all at once in its entirety. It is not nudity that I am afraid of—quite the contrary—it is the snapshot moment of revel- ation. And it is even less because I hesitate to abandon myself to others—absolutely the contrary!—it is that I don’t know how to move from my introspective vision to seeing myself. In fact, to achieve it I first need the other’s gaze. I can’t say: “There, look!” I would rather wait till he says, not without caution: “Look how I look at you.”

I let Jacques get on with it. But as I really do seem to have taken refuge somewhere deep inside me, in order to return to reality, I

have to pass through a sort of fetal state. I curl to grab the hardened member so my lips can feel the soft envelope that slides over its axis. I can mobilize myself into this act so ut- terly that I feel full up to the brim, my entire body has been put on and filled out like a glove.

In a series of images taken by an American photographer who published some of them many years later in the magazine
On Seeing,
I can be seen—I can see myself today—first standing like a fragile sleepwalker (almost as if I am swaying) next to a couple fornicating on a mattress. It is dark, it looks as if I am dressed entirely in black, the light falls only on the girl’s knees and the soles of the boy’s feet. In other shots I am sitting next to the couple, bent in two; you can just make out, under a curtain of hair, that my head is

squeezed between the girl’s thigh and the boy’s hips. I must be trying to lick whatever parts of their conjoined genitals I can reach. What do I look like? A conscientious work- man—plumber, decorator, mechanic—ex- amining the areas where his intervention is needed; a child whose toy has rolled under the bed and who searches the darkness to find it; an exhausted runner who sits down and drops his chest forward before catching his breath. I can confirm that the effort I put into introducing my body into the space between their two bodies (and you could be forgiven for thinking I want to insert it whole) is matched by intense mental concentration.

I really like sucking men’s cocks. I was initi- ated in this at virtually the same time I learned to direct the exposed glans toward the other, subterranean entrance. In my naïveté I initially thought that a blow job was a deviant sexual practice. I can still hear my- self describing the thing to a dubious and slightly disgusted girlfriend; I tried to affect indifference when I was actually rather proud of my discovery and my aptitude for it. This aptitude is very difficult to explain be- cause, over and above whatever vestiges there may be of the oral stage, and before the challenge put into accomplishing an act that you believe to be abnormal, there is an ob- scure identification with the member you ap- propriate. During an exploration carried out

simultaneously with fingers and tongue, you come to know every last detail of its topo- graphy and even its tiniest reactions—per- haps better than its owner himself. As a res- ult there is a feeling of ineffable mastery: a tiny quivering of the end of the tongue, and you unleash a disproportionate response. Added to this is the fact that taking something right into your mouth gives you a more thorough feeling of being filled than when it is the vagina that is occupied. The feeling in the vagina is diffuse, radiating out- ward, the occupant seems to melt there; whereas you can perfectly distinguish the gentle proddings of the glans with the inside or the outside of the lips, on the tongue, the palate and even in the throat. Not to mention the fact that, in the final phase, you taste the sperm. In short, you are touched as subtly as you yourself touch. But for me there still re- mains the mystery of the transmission of sensation from the anterior orifice to the

posterior one. How is it that the effects of sucking can be felt by the other end of the body, that the way the lips squeezing around the penis causes a rigid bracelet to form around the mouth of the vagina? When I perform fellatio really well, taking my time, at leisure to adjust my position and vary my rhythm, I can feel an impatience rising from some source within my body, flowing and concentrating enormous muscular energy in that place of which I have only a vague im- age, on the edge of this abyss that opens me up so overwhelmingly. The aperture of a bar- rel ringed with steel. When the ring is forged by the spreading arousal of the nearby clitor- is, I can understand it. But when the order comes from the mouth!

The explanation undoubtedly lies in some detour via the mind. Even though I may have my eyes closed most of the time, they are so close to this meticulous work that I
see
all the same, and the image I have of it is a

powerful activator of my desire. The fantasy may also revolve around the fact that, lying just behind the eyes, the brain has perfect and instantaneous intelligence of the thing so nearly touching it. First of all, I see the ac- tions that determine my breathing: the flex- ible channel of my hand, my lips folded over my teeth so as not to hurt my tongue, which quickly dabs the glans as it comes closer. I evaluate their progress visually, the whole hand moving with the lips, sometimes with a slight twisting movement, and increasing the pressure when it reaches the thicker bud at the end. Then suddenly the hand goes its own way to rub swiftly up and down, forming a pincer with just two fingers, making the silky tip bob against the cushioned surface of my lips, pursed into a kiss. Jacques always lets out a brief, clear little “ha” of surprised delight (even though he knows the maneuver perfectly well)—which redoubles my own ex- citement—when the hand releases its grip,

allowing the organ to disappear to the back of my throat. I try to keep it there for a mo- ment and even to maneuver its rounded tip over the back of my palate until tears come to my eyes, until I’m suffocating. Or—but for this you need your whole body to be well bal- anced—I hold the hub still and gravitate my whole head around it, distributing gentle strokes from my cheeks, my chin moistened with saliva, my forehead, hair and even the end of my nose. I lick lavishly right down to the balls, which you can take into your mouth whole. These movements are punctu- ated by longer halts on the glans, where the tip of the tongue describes circles, unless it decides instead to devote itself to niggling at the edge of the foreskin. Then, bang! Without any warning I take the whole thing back into my mouth and I hear the cry, which transmits its wave down to the cast- iron ring forged around the entry to my cunt.

It would be easy for me to write pages about this, especially as just describing this painstaking job has already triggered the first signs of excitement. There might even be a distant link between my attention to de- tail in a blow job and the care I take over each description in my writing. I will restrict myself to adding that I also like giving up my role as the driving force. I like to have my head held still by two firm hands and to be fucked in my mouth the way I can be fucked in my cunt. In general, I feel the need to take a man into my mouth in the first few mo- ments of a sexual encounter, just to titillate those few milliliters of blood that produce the erection. Either we are standing and I let myself drop down at my partner’s feet, or we are lying down and I quickly make my way under the sheet. It is like a game: I go into the dark looking for the thing I want. And in fact, in these moments, I have a silly tend- ency to talk like a greedy child. I ask for my

“big lollipop,” and it gives me a kick. And when I lift my head up, because I do have to relax the muscles sucked in along the insides of my cheeks, I stick to the “Umm…it’s good” of someone establishing that her taste buds are enjoying something she is eating. By the same token, I receive all compliments with the same vanity as a good pupil on prize day. Nothing phases me more than hearing that I give “the best blow jobs.” Better than that: when, with a view to writing this book, I talk to a friend twenty-five years after my sexual relationship with him ended and I hear him say that he has “never met a girl who could suck a man off so well,” I lower my eyes, in some ways out of modesty, but also to hide my pride. It is not that I have been deprived of other forms of gratification in my personal or professional life, but as far as I can see, there is a balance to be sustained between the acquisition of moral and intellectual qualities that earn the respect of our peers,