Pretty Things

by Virginie Despentes

  Sometimes she finds an excuse. But she has to go, regularly, to the boss’s office. He does the same things to her that Sébastien did to Claudine. As if they knew each other, or learned it from the same place. When the time comes, it’s the same movements and the same words, even their faces resemble one another’s.

  It’s a huge room, beautiful furniture, a small bar cart. His desk is immense, and sturdy. She lays her whole body on top of it with him on top of her.

  “What’s new?”

  Each time, it plays out the same way. Fifteen minutes of discussion, he takes keen interest in the album, gives advice, orders, notes down things he can’t forget to do for her. That he never forgets to do. He takes care of his new singer very well. He pours her a drink, shows concern for her smallest problems. He treats her like a queen; it’s part of the show.

  It’s an image that he creates for women, a moral duty to be gallant with them. Because they are pure, beautiful, venerable. He’s old school, from a time when women were truly distant, strange animals, deprived of everything except a man’s pleasure.

  So he showers them with attention. Otherwise, it wouldn’t have the same relish when he enters their every hole, treating them like good little whores. He has to venerate them a little to be able to really debase them.

  Short silence. And it begins.

  “It’s hot out. Why don’t you open your blouse a bit?”

  He watches her do it. He likes for it to be slow, button by button. Then she has to fondle her breasts, it can go on a good five minutes; the spectacle renders him speechless.

  “Lean back a little, rub your chest, yes . . . Now take off your bra, so I can see your beautiful tits.”

  Then he starts with the funny noises. It’s not a laugh, it’s not a moan, it’s his funny noise that he makes when something excites him.

  She does what he says, each time it’s disconcerting that just the act of her showing her body can rile him up so much.

  It’s that she does it for him, it’s the shamelessness, or who knows what. In any event, it’s really something.

  “Spread your legs now, take off your panties, slide them down, there you go . . . Touch yourself in front of me, finger your pussy.”

  Then she has to moan a little. The idea that she is aroused goes right to his head. Every time it’s like some big miracle, he’s transcendent: a woman who orgasms, in front of him, with impunity, transports him to other realms.

  When he takes out his little prick, all ugly but rigid despite his age, she’s embarrassed for him. His measly red thing, it’s a whole adventure for him, to see it screwing her, as if it were a saber.

  “Come here, on your knees, get underneath the desk and make me happy.”

  It’s funny how men don’t have self-esteem issues. At least not until later. Every part of his body is gross, Mother Nature has not been kind to him, but he doesn’t think he has anything to be embarrassed about, he only thinks of his own enormous pleasure. It must be nice, to be like that—terrible for anyone who has to put up with him, but pleasant for him. Only thinking of his own perspective, staring out at others, never thinking of the opposite.

  Then he’s doing her doggy style, she cries out the way he likes, he plows into her, saying, “I’m going to make you come.”

  And slapping her ass; when it’s over it’s all red.

  He’s convinced she likes it. Once, though, he asked her, “You’re not faking it with me, are you?” She replied, “Why would I do that?” and that completely reassured him. He’s crazy about his cock, he never gets over it, that he has one and that it gets hard. It’s not difficult to convince him that it works well, pushes all the right buttons inside of her. He was already sure of it.

  He thinks if she’s capable of doing it with him, it has to be because she adores it too. He must think that prostitutes are born with a mark on their forehead that distinguishes them from other women. He must imagine that if she didn’t like it, her hole would stay closed or her thighs would be completely welded together. It’s that he believes a lot of bullshit, it’s that he likes women, those splendid and different animals . . .

  He said to her once, “There are people who have their doubts about us. They think you do it out of self-interest.” He smiled, satisfied, wise to secrets unknown to others. “They have no idea what you’re like.”

  And it’s an enormous compliment. He thinks of her as carefree, liberated, precisely the kind of woman he likes.

  If he knew the actual effect his nub of rotten meat has on her, he would surely think there was something wrong with her. Obviously out of the two of them, it must be her who has a problem.

  Women are never as crazy as men are capable of being, eager to do it all the time with everyone in every way. Women, they have a hole, it always works, and they’re there, with stomachs capable of blowing up and growing a child. They don’t pass the time with their thingamajig worried, wondering if it can grow and go into ecstasies when it’s hard.

  When he feels it coming, he panics, he pulls out of her, tells her to turn over while he jerks off onto her breasts.

  Once again trying to convince himself that something comes out of him. A pittance, a bit of white snot. They’re all crazy about seeing it on something.

  Then they put their clothes back on and talk for another minute. He is full of benevolent respect, listens to her, is interested in her, reassures her.

  Before she leaves, he asks, each time, “You’re sure you don’t need anything?”

  SÉBASTIEN IS SICK of being there, he repeats it every day. She tries to make him wait. She suggests that he take a vacation, but he sighs when she says that. “And with what money would you like me to do that?”

  He thinks it stinks, in the street. As if it weren’t safe to breathe. He thinks the people are unfriendly. That everything is expensive, he goes nuts every time he goes out for a coffee, the next day he brings it up again: “Fifteen francs! And in a shitty, disgusting local bar. I got one look at the john and came back to piss here.” He thinks the neighborhood is unhealthy. “Fuck, it stinks of poverty. I already have enough of my own without having to deal with other people’s.”

  Every day when she gets home, he’s sitting in front of the TV.

  It’s still the same story, between them, with one difference: he’s the one who stays at home, waiting for her to finish with her wheeling and dealing.

  She tries to find things to distract him. Obviously without money, it’s not easy. “You don’t want to go to a museum? Apparently there are free days.” “That’s it, yeah. I’ll go take knitting classes while I’m at it, I’ll have a ball.”

  Every day when she gets home, he hides: the housing assistance office worries him. Same with the people from income support—they refuse to believe that they’re not a couple. As if it were her fault: “They said they’d do an inspection.” “We’ll say you sleep on the couch, why not?” “Why not, that’s it, take them for idiots.”

  And she says, “You don’t realize it now, but it’ll be okay, this album will come out and it’ll work, then we’ll leave. Do you want me to show you where we’ll go?”

  All the leaflets she had put aside, it was for the sole purpose of being able to show him. He doesn’t want to hear it. “You’re a singer like I’m a plumber, I don’t get why you bore me with all that.”

  He flips through a few magazines, opens one to a photograph of a girl with long legs, shoves it in her face: “Is this what you want? Is that it? To show your ass to everybody? Is that what gets you off?”

  When he’s in that mood, she laughs, goes to look for a porno magazine; Claudine has plenty in her apartment. And she shows him one of the photos, facial or fellatio, she says, “My ambition, you see, is to one day be able to do that,” in her best skank voice. He doesn’t want to laugh at first, but she keeps going for as long as it takes. Until he wants to join in on the game, calms down, changes his mood.

  She almost never talks about the album. Just keeps him up to da
te, the bare minimum. She can tell it annoys him more than anything. “But you’re too old to be a singer.” “But darling, I’m twenty-five . . . That’s not old.”

  He isn’t even two years older than her, he already sees himself at his worst. It changed him, his year locked up. Little things about him that she didn’t pick up on at first, but that have become more acute over time. As if the walls had closed in on him to the point of smothering him completely, he’s overflowing with a desperate rage.

  She feels sorry for him. Convinced that he’s wrong, that the sun will shine for them one day too, and even soon. When they’re on vacation, far away from here, he’ll gradually return to the way he was before. His sense of humor, his voracious desire.

  Apart from her and the big boss, no one believes in the album. That she’ll really kill it. She never says it out loud. But she knows it, irreproachably. It will change everything, everything they know now will be over. And he’ll see, he who thinks that everything is lost and that they’ll be in the red forever.

  They’re going to hit the big time.

  And knowing that, day after day, she tries to give him what she can, so that he holds on until they reach the other side.

  Fortunately there’s the TV, to sit in front of instead of talking to each other.

  She bought groceries. He opens the second bottle, she’s drunk, ends up letting herself go.

  “They’re a pain in the ass about everything, you know, the lyrics, my outfits, the production . . .”

  She knows it irritates him when she talks about the album. Why can’t he think of it with some detachment, take it like a kind of experiment? That night, she lets loose.

  “I’m afraid of them, seriously. It’s not so much that they’re mean, it’s a question of culture, I think, of experience. They’ve been surrounded by the music industry since they were little, they can’t imagine anything else.”

  And since he doesn’t say anything, and she’s getting really plastered, the words come out more easily. She tries to explain it better. She still has this fantasy, it’s almost a cliché, that he will help her, understand her.

  She continues, openly bitter, “It’s a funny feeling, to be taken for an idiot. Because for them my boobs are too big, my lips are too big, my eyes are too big, my hair is too blond. You can’t imagine how much they despise me.”

  It’s the first time that she’s talked to him about this. He doesn’t turn to face her, looks at her out of the corner of his eye, severely.

  “I don’t understand why you’re complaining. You got what you wanted, didn’t you?”

  It’s sad. That he speaks to her this way. That he doesn’t put his head on her lap, tell her that they’re all jerks, that she shouldn’t give a damn about them, that she’s great, that he cares about her.

  PLACE D’ITALIE. NICOLAS is waiting for her. He finished his beer a while ago. He doesn’t have anything to pay for it, he speculates about her arrival, isn’t sure whether to have a second.

  Since her boor of a boyfriend started living with her, Pauline always meets up with him outside of the apartment. He’s a big hulking man, the kind who beat up four-eyed nerds during recess, the kind girls often like. In his presence, next to him, she erases herself, a way of withdrawing. Bridled like that, she’s less fun.

  It was when he saw her with him that Nicolas first got the idea that he wanted to fuck her.

  Since then, as soon as she turns up, he gets hard. He has to be mindful of what pants he wears, has to go to the can regularly to ease the pressure.

  When he looks at her, he doesn’t even see Claudine anymore, gone is the fear of causing pain, the silent pact they sealed.

  White skirt suit, blond bun. Unintentionally the perfect high-class whore. Confident walk, as if she were strutting in sneakers. With her boyfriend back, she keeps her distance. But it passes after two or three drinks.

  She talks to him about the album a lot. Takes everything really personally, reacts negatively to everything immediately, takes offense at every little thing. Whatever her motives, he really likes to feel her anger. It’s what gives him the biggest hard-on. While she’s furious and swearing like only she can do, he imagines her, stammering, reared up underneath him, clinging tightly to his back.

  He listens to her, getting even harder. Tonight, she is more ferocious than ever. A soul black as coal with a glowing red center. Hands clenched in a fist beneath her chin, she looks like she’s praying, eyes lowered, while delivering her tirade:

  “Is there a word for misogynist or chauvinist but the other way around? Fuck, I hate men, I wish I had the words to really express that.”

  But it’s the inevitability that really gets him going. She wants it as bad as he does, it would be enough for him to get close to her for her to realize it. He’s going to fuck her like a madman. Everything happens between her thighs, she has to let him get in there because it would be so fucking good for both of them. She’ll press her pelvis to his while tightly squeezing her legs, knotted around his waist.

  He observes her, the top of her thighs, crossed. And her way of getting red with rage when some guy passes by and looks at her. Always on display against her will. It makes him want to tie her up, do two or three nasty things to her, as if up till now it would have been ridiculous to do so with another girl. He barely needs to respond to her, she’s getting carried away all on her own.

  “You’d think they’d get over it, that obsession of seven-or eight-year-olds with the ‘honk honk’ boob-grabbing thing, but nope, fifty years later men are still just as stupid as they were when they were kids.”

  It’s become a fixed idea for her, discourse promising all males a single and violent punishment. It’s even worse when she talks to him about it, it makes him want to slide inside of her, to see if there’s a way to make her moan and squirm. There’s plenty of trash he dreams of whispering in her ear. Specifically to her, because he’s convinced that she’s never wanted to orgasm from that kind of thing.

  She is devastated by the immensity of the problem.

  “It’s undeniable, the masculine sex is a subspecies. And they’re crazy about their cocks, crazy because of them. It’s not even girls who excite them, it’s the idea that they’ll have a boner. They can’t get over it, but we’re not all going to stay hung up on it for fifteen thousand years. It’s their problem, and they can figure it out . . .”

  Relieved, it’s been a good hour now that she’s been ranting, she empties her glass and apologizes, smiling, “I haven’t given you much of a chance to talk. How are you?”

  “I want to fuck you, badly.”

  It had to come out.

  She is flabbergasted. Tries to take it as a joke.

  “Clearly you’re listening to me very attentively.”

  “That’s irrelevant. We need to fuck.”

  She gives him a dirty look and changes the subject. He gives her a break until they finish their drinks, acting as if nothing had happened.

  While she’s paying the bill, he gets back to it.

  “You stayed here with me because you know perfectly well that we’re going to do it.”

  She turns somber, stares at her hands.

  “I would have preferred not to know.”

  He took her into an alley.

  They fucked on the ground, maintaining the intimate conviction that they were rolling in sand, on the edge of the sea. Anyone could have come upon them but they weren’t interrupted. They took their time, before and after and between each round.

  At first she pushed him off when he tried to go down on her, as if it were something unclean. But then she let him do it. It was like his mouth knew her pussy better than she did, knew how to love it and touch it in all the right places, his tongue precise and soft.

  He buried himself in her slit, pounding her with his cock, no hands, striking until he hit bottom.

  He put a flower in her gut, with a beating heart and petals blossoming in all directions. Long, soft, and smooth. He put a se
a in her insides, rocked by his rhythms.

  He talked about her nice ass, how warm she was inside, how he filled up her pussy and how much she loved it.

  She was surprised to orgasm, at how long it takes, all the build-up and the explosion, so white.

  Surprised, but more astonished at not having sought it out earlier, to have only managed it that night.

  Then they were on the sidewalk. A bit distant all of a sudden, not really knowing how to act around each other anymore. She looked at the time on a parking meter. Crash-landing back to reality: Sébastien, who she needed to get back to and whom she had cheated on once again.

  At the taxi stand, Nicolas’s body sought hers to say goodbye, already seemed misplaced.

  She went home without making a sound. Sébastien was sleeping. Took a shower. And lying next to him, intense regret for what she had done.

  From that moment on, she eliminated Nicolas from her thoughts. He calls a few days later, his voice has become menacing. She waits for him to forget her.

  One night, she comes back from the record label, a bit late, the big boss wanted to talk. His latest obsession is anal. He had bought a tube of lubricant. She refused, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to say no for long.

  Sébastien is in front of the TV. She walks around the living room, lightly cheerful. Then she stretches, saying, “I’m going to take a shower, it’ll do me some good.”

  “If it’s so I won’t know, there’s no need . . . You smell like sex from ten feet away, like you do every time you come back from there.”

  He’s not any angrier than if he had said: you forgot the bread again. He didn’t even make it into a big deal.

  The scent of entangled limbs. Not her own, nor someone else’s, that very particular fragrance created when people have rubbed up against each other.

  She searches as fast as possible for something to say to defend herself, to fix it. And thinks, she’s a complete idiot—several months she’s been lying, and he’s watched her do it.