Marcel came to the houseboat, his blue eyes full of surprise and wonder, full of reflections like the river. Hungry eyes, avid, naked. Over the innocent, absorbing glance fell savage eyebrows, wild like a bushman’s. The wildness was attenuated by the luminous brow and the silkiness of the hair. The skin was fragile too, the nose and mouth vulnerable, transparent, but again the peasant hands, like the eyebrows, asserted his strength.
In his talk it was the madness that predominated, his compulsion to analyze. Everything which befell him, everything which came into his hands, every hour of the day, was constantly commented upon, ripped apart. He could not kiss, desire, possess, enjoy, without immediate examination. He planned his moves beforehand with the help of astrology; he often met with the marvelous; he had a gift for evoking it. But no sooner had the marvelous befallen him than he grasped it with the violence of a man who was not sure of having seen it, lived it; and who longed to make it real.
I liked his pregnable self, sensitive and porous, just before he talked, when he seemed a very soft animal, or a very sensual one, when his malady was not perceptible. He seemed then without wounds, walking about with a heavy bag full of discoveries, notes, programs, new books, new talismans, new perfumes, photographs. He seemed then to be floating like the houseboat without moorings. He wandered, tramped, explored, visited the insane, cast horoscopes, gathered esoteric knowledge, collected plants, stones.
“There is a perfection in everything that cannot be owned,” he said. “I see it in fragments of cut marble, I see it in worn pieces of wood. There is a perfection in a woman’s body that can never be possessed, known completely, even in intercourse.”
He wore the flowing tie of the bohemians of a hundred years ago, the cap of an apache, the striped trousers of the French bourgeois. Or he wore a black coat like a monk’s, the bow tie of the cheap actor of the provinces, or the scarf of the pimp, wrapped around the throat, a scarf of yellow or bull’s-blood red. Or he wore a suit given to him by a businessman, with the tie flaunted by the Parisian gangster or the hat worn on Sunday by the father of eleven children. He appeared in the black shirt of a conspirator, in the checkered shirt of a peasant from Bourgogne, in a workman’s suit of blue corduroy with wide baggy trousers. At times he let his beard grow and looked like Christ. At other times he shaved himself and looked like a Hungarian violinist from a traveling fair.
I never knew in what disguise he was coming to see me. If he had an identity, it was the identity of changing, of being anything; it was the identity of the actor for whom there is a continual drama.
He had said to me, “I will come some day.”
Now he lay on the bed looking at the painted ceiling of the houseboat. He felt the cover of the bed with his hands. He looked out the window at the river.
“I like to come here, to the barge,” he said. “It lulls me. The river is like a drug. What I suffer from seems unreal when I come here.”
It was raining on the roof of the houseboat. At five o’clock Paris always has a current of eroticism in the air. Is it because it is the hour when lovers meet, the five to seven of all French novels? Never at night, it would seem, for all the women are married and free only at “tea time,” the great alibi. At five I always felt shivers of sensuality, shared with the sensual Paris. As soon as the light faded, it seemed to me that every women I saw was running to meet her lover, that every man was running to meet his mistress.
When he leaves me, Marcel kisses me on the cheek. His beard touches me like a caress. This kiss on the cheek which is meant to be a brother’s is charged with intensity.
We had dinner together. I suggested we go dancing. We went to the Bal Negre. Immediately Marcel was paralyzed. He was afraid of dancing. He was afraid to touch me. I tried to lure him into the dance, but he would not dance. He was awkward. He was afraid. When he finally held me in his arms he was trembling, and I was enjoying the havoc I caused. I felt a joy at being near to him. I felt a joy in the tall slenderness of his body.
I said, “Are you sad? Do you want to leave?”
“I’m not sad, but I’m blocked. My whole past seems to stop me. I can’t let go. This music is so savage. I feel as if I can inhale but not exhale. I’m just constrained, unnatural.”
I did not ask him to dance anymore. I danced with a Negro.
When we left then in the cool night, Marcel was talking about the knots, the fears, the paralysis in him. I felt, the miracle has not happened. I will free him by a miracle, not by words, not directly, not with the words I used for the sick ones. What he suffers I know. I suffered it once. But I know the free Marcel. I want Marcel free.
But when he came to the houseboat and saw Hans there, when he saw Gustavo arriving at midnight and staying on after he left, Marcel got jealous. I saw his blue eyes grow dark. When he kissed me goodnight, he stared at Gustavo with anger.
He said to me, “Come out with me for a moment.”
I left the houseboat and walked with him along the dark quays. Once we were alone, he leaned over and kissed me passionately, furiously, his full, big mouth drinking mine. I offered my mouth again.
“When will you come to see me?” he asked.
“Tomorrow, Marcel, tomorrow I will come to see you.”
When I arrived at his place he had dressed himself in his Lapland costume to surprise me. It was like a Russian dress, and he wore a fur hat and high black felt boots, which reached almost to his hips.
His room was like a traveler’s den, full of objects from all over the world. The walls were covered with red rugs, the bed was covered with animal furs. The place was close, intimate, voluptuous like the rooms of an opium dream. The furs, the deep-red walls, the objects, like the fetishes of an African priest—everything was violently erotic. I wanted to lie naked on the furs, to be taken there lying on this animal smell, caressed by the fur.
I stood there in the red room, and Marcel undressed me. He held my naked waist in his hands. He eagerly explored my body with his hands. He felt the strong fullness of my hips.
“For the first time, a real woman,” he said. “So many have come here, but for the first time here is a real woman, someone I can worship.”
As I lay on the bed it seemed to me that the smell and feel of the fur and the bestiality of Marcel were combined. Jealousy had broken his timidity. He was like an animal, hungry for every sensation, for every way of knowing me. He kissed me eagerly, he bit my lips. He lay in the animal furs, kissing my breasts, feeling my legs, my sex, my buttocks. Then in the half-light he moved up over me, shoving his penis in my mouth. I felt my teeth catching on it as he pushed it in and out, but he liked it. He was watching and caressing me, his hands all over my body, his fingers everywhere seeking to know me completely, to hold me.
I threw my legs up over his shoulder, high, so that he could plunge into me and see it at the same time. He wanted to see everything. He wanted to see how the penis went in and came out glistening and firm, big. I held myself up on my two fists so as to offer my sex more and more to his thrusts. Then he turned me over and lay over me like a dog, pushing his penis in from behind, with his hands cupping my breasts, caressing me and pushing at the same time. He was untiring. He would not come. I was waiting to have the orgasm with him, but he postponed and postponed it. He wanted to linger, to feel my body forever, to be endlessly excited. I was growing tired and I cried out, “Come now, Marcel, come now.” He began then to push violently, moving with me into the wild rising peak of the orgasm, and then I cried out, and he came almost at the same time. We fell back among the furs, released.
We lay in half-darkness, surrounded by strange forms—sleighs, boots, spoons from Russia, crystals, seashells. There were erotic Chinese pictures on the walls. But everything, even a piece of lava from Krakatoa, even the bottle of sand from the Dead Sea, had a quality of erotic suggestion.
“You have the right rhythm for me,” Marcel said. “Women are usually too quick for me. I get into a panic about it. They take their pleasure and then I am afraid to go on. They do not give me time to feel them, to know them, to reach them, and I go crazy after they leave thinking about their nakedness and how I have not had my pleasure. But you are slow. You are like me.”
As I dressed we stood by the fireplace, talking. Marcel slipped his hand under my skirt and began caressing me again. We were suddenly blind again with desire. I stood there with my eyes closed, feeling his hand, moving upon it. He gripped my ass with his hard, peasant grip, and I thought we were going to roll down on the bed again, but instead he said: “Lift up your dress.”
I leaned against the wall, moving my body up against his. He put his head between my legs, seizing my buttocks in his hands, tonguing my sex, sucking and licking until I was wet again. Then he took his penis out and took me there against the wall. His penis hard and erect like a drill, pushing, pushing, thrusting up into me while I was all wet and dissolved in his passion.
I ENJOY making love with Gustavo more than with Marcel, because he has no timidities, no fears, no nervousness. He falls into a dream, we hypnotize each other with caresses. I touch his neck and pass my fingers through his black hair. I caress his belly, his legs, his hips. When I touch his back from neck to buttocks his body begins to shiver with pleasure. Like a woman, he likes caresses. His sex stirs. I don’t touch it until it begins to leap. Then he gasps with pleasure. I take it all in my hand, hold it firmly, and press it up and down. Or else I touch the tip of it with my tongue, and then he moves it in and out of my mouth. Sometimes he comes in my mouth and I swallow the sperm. Other times it is he who begins the caresses. My moisture comes easily, his fingers are so warm and knowing. Sometimes I am so excited that I feel the orgasm at the mere touch of his finger. When he feels me throbbing and palpitating, it excites him. He does not wait for the orgasm to finish, he pushes his penis in as if to feel the last contractions of it. His penis fills me completely, it is just made for me, so that he can slide easily. I close my inner lips around his penis and suck him inwardly. Sometimes the penis is larger than at other times and seems charged with electricity, and then the pleasure is immense, protracted. The orgasm never ends.
Women very often pursue him, but he is like a woman and needs to believe himself in love. Although a beautiful woman can excite him, if he does not feel some kind of love, he is impotent.
It is strange how the character of a person is reflected in the sexual act. If one is nervous, timid, uneasy, fearful, the sexual act is the same. If one is relaxed, the sexual act is enjoyable. Hans’s penis never softens, so he takes his time, with a sureness about it. He installs himself inside of his pleasure as he installs himself inside of the present moment, to enjoy calmly, completely, to the last drop. Marcel is more uneasy, restless. I feel even when his penis is hard that he is anxious to show his power and that he is hurrying, driven by the fear that his strength will not last.
Last night after reading some of Hans’s writing, his sensual scenes, I raised my arms over my head. I felt my satin pants slipping a little at the waist. I felt my belly and sex so alive. In the dark Hans and I threw ourselves into a prolonged orgy. I felt that I was taking all the women he had taken, everything that his fingers had touched, all the tongues, all the sexes he had smelled, every word he had uttered about sex, all this I took inside of me, like an orgy of remembered scenes, a whole world of orgasms and fevers.
MARCEL AND I were lying together on his couch. In the semidarkness of the room he was talking about erotic fantasies he had and how difficult it was to satisfy them. He had always wanted a woman to wear a lot of petticoats and he would lie underneath and look. He remembered that is what he did with his first nurse and, pretending to play, had looked up her skirts. This first stirring of the erotic feeling had remained with him.
So I said, “But I’ll do it. Let’s do all the things we ever wanted to do or have done to us. We have the whole night. There are so many objects here that we can use. You have costumes too. I’ll dress up for you.”
“Oh, will you?” said Marcel. “I’ll do anything you want, anything you ask me to do.”
“First get me the costumes. You have peasant skirts there that I can wear. We will begin with your fantasies. We won’t stop until we have realized them all. Now, let me dress.”
I went to the other room, put on various skirts he had brought from Greece and Spain, one on top of another. Marcel was lying on the floor. I came into his room. He was flushed with pleasure when he saw me. I sat on the edge of his bed.
“Now stand up,” said Marcel.
I stood up. He lay on the floor and he looked up between my legs, under the skirts. He spread them a little with his hands. I stood still with my legs apart. Marcel’s looking up at me excited me, so that very slowly I began to dance as I had seen the Arab women do, right over Marcel’s face, slowly shaking my hips, so that he could see my sex moving between the skirts. I danced and moved and turned, and he kept looking and panting with pleasure. Then he could not contain himself, pulled me down right over his face, and began biting and kissing me. I stopped him after a while, “Don’t make me come, keep it.”
I left him and for his next fantasy I returned naked wearing his black felt boots. Then Marcel wanted me to be cruel. “Please be cruel,” he begged.
All naked, in the high black boots, I began to order him to do humiliating things. I said, “Go out and bring me a handsome man. I want him to take me in front of you.”
“That I won’t do,” said Marcel.
“I order you to. You said you would do anything I asked you.”
Marcel got up and went downstairs. He came back about half an hour later with a neighbor of his, a very handsome Russian. Marcel was pale; he could see that I liked the Russian. He had told him what we were doing. The Russian looked at me and smiled. I did not need to arouse him. When he walked towards me, he was already roused by the black boots and the nakedness. I not only gave myself to the Russian but I whispered to him, “Make it last, please make it last.”
Marcel was suffering. I was enjoying the Russian, who was big and powerful and who could hold out for a long time. As Marcel watched us, he took his penis out of his pants, and it was erect. When I felt the orgasm coming in unison with the Russian’s, Marcel wanted to put his penis in my mouth but I would not let him. I said, “You must keep it for later. I have other things to ask you. I won’t let you come!” The Russian was taking his pleasure. After the orgasm he stayed inside and wanted more, but I moved away. He said, “I wish you would let me watch.”
Marcel objected. We let him go. He thanked me, very ironically and feverishly. He would have liked to stay with us.
Marcel fell at my feet. “That was cruel. You know that I love you. That was very cruel.”
“But it made you passionate, didn’t it, it made you passionate.”
“Yes, but it hurt me too, I would not have done that to you.”
“I did not ask you to be cruel to me, did I? When people are cruel to me it makes me cold, but you wanted it, it excited you.”
“What do you want now?”
“I like to be made love to while looking out of the window,” I said, “while people are looking at me. I want you to take me from behind, and I want nobody to be able to see what we are doing. I like the secrecy of it.”
I stood by the window. People could look into the room from other houses, and Marcel took me as I stood there. I did not show one sign of excitement, but I was enjoying him. He was panting and could scarcely control himself, as I kept saying, “Quietly, Marcel, do it quietly so that nobody will know.” People saw us, but they thought we were just standing there looking at the street. But we were enjoying an orgasm, as couples do in doorways and under bridges at night all over Paris.
We were tired. We closed the window. We rested for a little while. We began to talk in the dark, dreaming and remembering.
“A few hours ago, Marcel, I entered the subway at the rush hour, which I rarely do. I was pushed by the waves of people, jammed, and stood there. Suddenly I remembered a subway adventure Alraune told me about, when she was convinced that Hans had taken advantage of the crowdedness to caress a woman. At the very same moment, I felt a hand very lightly touch my dress, as if by accident. My coat was open, my dress thin, and this hand was brushing lightly through my dress just at the tip of my sex. I did not move away. The man in front of me was so tall that I could not see his face. I did not want to look up. I was not sure it was he, I did not want to know who it was. The hand caressed the dress, then very lightly it increased its pressure, feeling for the sex. I made a very slight movement to raise the sex toward the fingers. The fingers became firmer, following the shape of the lips deftly, lightly. I felt a wave of pleasure. As a lurch of the subway pushed us together I pressed against the whole hand, and he made a bolder gesture, gripping the lips of the sex. Now I was frenzied with pleasure, I felt the orgasm approaching, I rubbed against the hand, imperceptibly. The hand seemed to feel what I felt and continued its caress until I came. The orgasm shook my body. The subway stopped and a river of people pushed out. The man disappeared.”