MEMOIRS OF A YOUNG RAKEHELL: The Famed French Poet's Sexual Confessions

by Guillaume Apollinaire

  There was of course an ample supply of cold water in the courtyard well, but had we gone there we would certainly have been spotted and called to account, with the result that all further excursions throughout the chateau would have been forbidden us. So I suggested that we go to the little pond at the end of the garden which we had one day espied from the rooftop.

  Upon reaching this spot we found, almost hidden among dense undergrowth, some artificial rocks, where a spring flowed into the pond.

  Berthe sat down on a stone bench. I made some compresses with our handkerchiefs. She was slightly overheated and out of breath. But it was well before noon, and at the end of half an hour she was feeling much better, although she still sported an impressive lump on her head. Fortunately, however, her hair concealed it.

  During that half hour I had catalogued all I had just seen, and fully enjoyed letting my mind linger over these new discoveries. But I had no idea how, in the light of them, I should act with Berthe.

  Finally I decided what I should do: while Berthe had been lying there naked I had noticed that under her feathery bush she had a beauty spot at the point where her cunt ended.

  It so happened that I had one too, in exactly the same place, just behind my balls.

  My mother and aunt had one day looked at it laughingly, and I had never understood why.

  Later I had examined my buttocks in the mirror and discovered it.

  When I told Berthe about it she appeared surprised and blushed profusely. At first she pretended not to understand, and when I carefully described its position to her, stretching out on the ground with my legs spread to show her how I had happened to see it, she became horribly embarrassed.

  I had to make sure that we were alone in the garden. The surrounding vegetation was high enough to hide us from any distant eye, and we could easily see if anyone were approaching.

  I unbuttoned my suspenders and, letting fall my light summer trousers, lay down on my back directly in front of my sister.

  "Oh, goodness, Roger, if anyone were to see you!" she said half-aloud, without, however, shifting her gaze.

  "There's nobody around here, Berthe," I replied in the same half-hushed tone. Then, getting up, I stood in front of her, lifted my shirt and said: "Since I saw all of you, you can see all of me."

  Berthe's curiosity was aroused, and she looked at me without constraint. Her gaze was beginning to affect me; my member began to stir, then rose and, stiffening, bared its head.

  "You see, Berthe, I piss out of that little hole, but now I can't, even though I want to."

  "I've had to go for a long time," she said softly, "but I'm ashamed to. Don't look at me, Roger."

  "Now, Berthe, don't be such a prissy. If you hold it too long your bladder will burst and you'll die. That's what our old nurse used to say."

  Berthe got up, glanced all round, then squatted beside the bench and began to piss. I bent down quickly so as not to miss a trick, and saw a thin but steady stream spurting from the top of her cleft and falling obliquely to the ground.

  "No, Roger!" she said tearfully, "that's not nice."

  She finished pissing and stood up.

  "But Berthe, nobody can see us," I protested, "don't be like that."

  I smiled and added, "Look at me, I'm not shy in front of you." I began to piss, but in jerks, because my member was still stiff. Berthe burst out laughing. Taking advantage of her good mood, I deftly raised her skirts, forced her to squat and made her piss.

  She no longer resisted, but spread her legs and bent forward slightly. I saw the stream which fell to the ground with a splash, before it slackened off. My sister seemed to be forcing at the end, and her crevice opened near the top, revealing the red flesh.

  All this lasted only a few seconds. The stream had dried to a mere dribble.

  Suddenly I seized the lips of her Lady Jane and drew them apart. She seemed to enjoy it immensely, for otherwise she would never have lifted her skirts so obligingly.

  In so doing, I discovered that her crack, which might be compared to a half opened mussel, contained two additional lips, smaller than the outside ones. These inner lips, a beautiful red, were shut tight. At the top was the little hole through which she had just peepeed. A little jut of flesh the size of a pea was also visible. I touched it and found it to be extremely hard.

  My caresses seemed to please my sister, for she remained motionless, pushing her belly out slightly.

  She became very excited and lifted her skirt even higher, to above her navel. Then I caressed her belly, moving my hands exploringly across her flesh. I tickled her navel and tongued around it. Then I moved off to get a better view, and saw for the first time the lovely down adorning her soft rectangular mound.

  The hair was sparse, short and downy, so blond that one would really have had to be close to see it. Not that I had much more myself, but mine was darker.

  I twisted the hair a bit and told Berthe how surprised I was to find that the color of our pubic hair was so different.

  "It's always like that," she replied.

  "How do you know?"

  "Kate told me so once when we were alone in the bath. Besides, I'm going to have my periods soon."

  "What are they?"

  "There's a flow of blood every month for several days from your Lady Jane. Kate had her periods and hair when she was my age."

  "Does she have hair like yours?"

  "Don't be silly!" Berthe said with evident superiority. And letting her clothes fall back into place she added:

  "Kate has red hair and mine is blond. She uses oil on her head to make her hair seem darker. Besides, she has so much hair down below that you can only see her thingamajig if she spreads her legs apart."

  While Berthe had been saying all this my member had unstiffened.

  Berthe noticed it and said:

  "You see, your tiddley has shrunk again. Kate told me all about it one day when I asked her why she had laughed in the bathroom. She told me that Roger's member had stood up straight like a man's. As a matter of fact, she says that it's pretty big. If he were a man, she said, I'd let him stick me. Watch your step that he doesn't try to stick you, Berthe."

  "What's that mean, to stick someone?"

  "Well, you know, when two people stroke each other. Kate's already done it to me, and she made me do it to her too. I enjoy what she does much more than what you did to me just now. She always wets her finger.

  "She made me use my thumb, because it seems that that's the finger which goes in the farthest. So I moved it back and forth as fast as I could and she loved it. She did it to me and I loved it too, but the first time she made me do it to her she scared me 'most to death. She began to sigh and pant, and then when she started to shout and shake allover I thought I'd hurt her and was going to stop. But she said, 'No, Berthe, don't stop.' and became ever so excited and cried out, 'Oh, Berthe, it's coming, oh, oh, oh!.."

  "And then she fell back on the bed as though she had fainted. When I took my finger out of her crack it was covered with something gluey. She made me wash and promised to make me come when I was a little older and had hair on my mound."

  A thousand thoughts raced across my mind. I had a hundred questions I wanted to ask, for there was much of all this that I didn't quite understand.

  Who knows what might have happened if the dinner bell had not rung. I cast a final glance at Berthe's treasures, and showed her mine. Then we both set our clothes in order and kissed, promising, on our word of honor, to say nothing to anyone of what had transpired between us. We were on the point of leaving when the sound of voices detained us.

  CHAPTER THREE

  BUT THEN WE REALIZED that the bell which had just rung was not for us, but to call the servants to lunch. And since we were respectable, we were in no special hurry to leave, since anyone coming upon us there would have had absolutely no inkling of what we had just been doing.

  The noise we had heard close by had come from beyond the garden. We soon saw that the voices
belonged to some servant girls who had been working in the fields directly behind the garden. But since the servants' lunch began only fifteen minutes after the first bell, we could watch their sport.

  It had rained the night before. The freshly plowed earth clung to the girls' feet, and their skirts – in truth they each appeared to be wearing only one – were extremely short, reaching barely to their knees. They were not extraordinarily pretty, but they were nevertheless sturdy sun-tanned peasant girls, whose ages ranged between 20 and 30.

  When they reached the spring they sat down on the grass along the bank on the stream and dipped their feet into the water.

  As they bathed their feet they set to chattering like a flock of magpies.

  They were directly in front of us and not 30 feet away. The contrast between their bronzed calves and white knees was clearly visible, and in some cases even the hint of the thighs.

  Berthe did not seem to be enjoying this spectacle in the least, and began tugging on my arm for us to leave.

  But then we heard footsteps close by and saw three hired men approaching along a little path which ran beside our hiding place.

  Some of the girls set to arranging their clothes when they saw the men approaching, and in particular one girl whose coal-black hair and clear gray roguish eyes led one to believe that she was of Spanish descent.

  The first of the hirelings, a dull-looking clod, took no notice of the women's presence and, standing directly in front of our hiding place, unbuttoned his trousers to pee.

  He took out his member, which looked much the same as mine, except that his glans was completely hidden. He uncovered it to piss. He had lifted his shirt-tail so high that the hair surrounding his genitals was visible. He had also pulled his balls out of his trousers and was scratching them with his left hand while holding his member in his right.

  I was as bored by all this as Berthe had apparently been when I had pointed out the peasant girls' calves to her, but now she was all eyes. The girls pretended not to notice him. The second hired man likewise unbuttoned his trousers and brought forth a prick which was smaller than his companion's, but brown and half-uncovered. He began to piss. At that the girls all burst out laughing, and their shrieks grew even more hilarious when the third also assumed the position.

  By this time the first fellow had finished. He uncovered his prick completely, and shaking off the last bit of dew, bent his knees slightly to replace the package in his pants. In so doing he let fly a clear, emphatic fart and gave a deep sigh of satisfaction which set the girls to laughing even more.

  The hilarity increased when they noticed the third fellow's joy-stick.

  He had placed himself on a slope, so that we could see both his member and the peasant girls seated beyond.

  He raised it skyward and sent his fountain arching high. The girls' laughter reached a new pitch. Then the men approached the maids, and one of the latter began to splash water playfully on the stupid-looking hired man. The third man remarked to the brunette who, upon seeing the men arrive, had settled her skirts:

  "A lot of good it does you to hide it, Ursula. I've already seen that article you hold so dear."

  "There's plenty of things you haven't seen yet, Valentin! And a lot you'll never see," Ursula replied coquettishly.

  "Oh you think so, do you?" said Valentin, who was now standing directly behind her.

  And seizing her shoulders he forced her backward to the ground. She tried to remove her feet from the water, but neglected to keep her light skirt and blouse from billowing upward, so that she wound up in the same position as my sister had been in a little while before. Unfortunately, this enjoyable spectacle lasted only a few seconds.

  But it had nevertheless lasted long enough for me to see that Ursula, who had already shown herself to be the proud owner of a pair of splendid calves, also possessed a pair of thighs which in themselves were worthy of the highest honors, and buttocks whose cheeks left absolutely nothing to be desired.

  Between her thighs, at the bottom of her belly, lay a bush of dark hair which extended far enough to envelop both pretty lips of her cunt. But there the hair was more sparsely scattered than above, where it covered an area whose dimensions my hand would scarcely have sufficed to cover.

  "You see, Ursula," said Valentin, by now quite excited, "now I've seen your black marmot."

  And without flinching he took the series of blows and insults which the girl, now really angry, rained upon him.

  The second hireling wanted to pull the same stunt with another of the girls as Valentin had tried with Ursula. This second peasant girl was fairly pretty. Her face, neck and arms were so covered with freckles that it was almost impossible to distinguish the real color of her skin. Her legs were also freckled, but the freckles there were larger and more dispersed. She had an intelligent look about her; her eyes were a deep brown, her hair red and crinkly. She wasn't really pretty, but nevertheless a tempting enough morsel to give a man ideas. And the hired man Michel seemed to have a few. "Helen," he said, "you should have a red mound. If it proves to be black, that means you've stolen it somewhere."

  "Dirty dog!" spat the lovely peasant girl. He grabbed her as Valentin had done.

  But she had had time to get to her feet, and instead of getting a glimpse of her pretty mound, Michel received such a storm of blows full in the face that he must have seen all the planets and half the stars.

  The other two girls joined in the fracas and began to pummel him.

  But at last he broke away and, pursued by the three girls' mocking laughter, ran to catch up with his companions.

  The girls had finished bathing their feet and had left. Only Ursula and Helen remained, and they were getting ready to go.

  They were whispering together. Ursula burst out laughing and, wrinkling her forehead, made a wry face. Helen was looking at her and nodding her head in assent.

  The former seemed to be thinking over what Helen had told her. Helen shot a glance around her to make sure that everyone had left, then quickly lifted her skirts in front and, holding them high with her left hand, slipped her right hand between her thighs at the spot where one could see the forest of red hair. By the movement of the hair, which was much thicker than Ursula's, one could see that she was squeezing her love lips between her fingers. Ursula was watching her intently. Suddenly a stream shot forth from the bush; instead of failing straight to the ground, it arched and described a half circle in the air. Both Berthe and I were astonished to see it, for neither of us had ever imagined that women could piss like that.

  Ursula likewise seemed surprised, and apparently wanted to try it herself, but she gave up the idea, for just then the second and last bell for lunch rang, and the two girls set off posthaste.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  WHEN BERTHE AND I RETURNED to the chateau we found the table already laid. But my mother and my aunt had not quite finished arranging the dining-room. While Berthe was helping them I picked up the newspaper which my father had forwarded us, and read a short article which related how a Mr. X. … had raped a Miss A ... I looked up the meaning of the word "rape" in the dictionary, and found: "to deflower." Which didn't help matters much, although it gave me another subject for thought.

  At table Berthe and I, contrary to our wont, did not exchange a single word. My aunt and mother were surprised by our silence, but the latter concluded merely: "They've probably been fighting again." It seemed wiser to us to conceal our new-found intimacy beneath the factitious veil of spite.

  My mother explained how she had arranged the rooms for my father and herself, and for my aunt. Their rooms were on the first floor, along with Berthe's and Kate's. Mine was on the ground floor, behind the stairway leading to the library. After lunch I went up to the library to look around. It contained an impressive number of old books, and a smattering of modern works.

  The room prepared for the friar was right next to the library. It was separated from the chapel by a corridor. The chapel contained two large stalls set n
ear the altar, where the former proprietors had sat at mass. Behind one of these stalls was the master's confessional, whereas the servants' confessional was tucked at the far end of the chapel.

  I had time to note all these details after dinner, since Berthe had been called to help the ladies, and I had scarcely had time to give her a stealthy kiss when I had gone out to see if I could be of any help.

  Several days passed without anything noteworthy happening.

  Berthe was still kept busy by the ladies, who had not yet finished getting the house into order.

  Since the weather had turned bad, I spent most of my time in the library, where I had been pleasantly surprised to come across an anatomic atlas in which I found an illustrated description of the intimate parts of both sexes. The book also contained an explanation of pregnancy and of all the phases of maternity, none of which I had known before.

  This last interested me especially because the bailiff's wife was then pregnant, and the sight of her enormous belly had greatly aroused my curiosity.

  I once had heard her discussing the matter with her husband. Their quarters were on the ground floor right next to mine, near the garden.

  Needless to say, the events of that memorable day, when I had seen my sister naked, and afterward the sport of the peasant girls and men, had been constantly with me. My mind returned to them again and again, with the result that I had an erection most of the time. I frequently examined and played with my member. The pleasure I felt when handling it incited me to continue.

  In bed I amused myself by lying on my belly and rubbing myself against the sheets. My feelings grew more and more sensitive every day. A week passed in this way.

  One day when I was sitting in the old leather chair in the library, the atlas open in front of me to the page describing the female genital organs, I had such an erection that I unbuttoned my trousers and took out my prick. From constant rubbing it now uncovered easily. I was as a matter of fact sixteen by now, and considered myself a man. My hair had grown thicker and resembled a handsome mustache. That particular day I felt such a profound and unaccustomed voluptuousness as I rubbed it that my breathing grew short. I tightened the grip on my member, loosened it, stroking back and forth. I uncovered the tip completely, tickled my balls and my arsehole, then examined my glans, which was deep red in color and as shiny as lacquer.