Sex in the City Paris

by Maxim Jakubowski (ed)

  ‘You are dense,’ Dominique said, rolling her eyes more. ‘It is your most endearing quality, Maurice.’

  ‘Has she always wanted to be a man?’ I asked.

  ‘Always,’ said Dominique, ‘always and always.’

  I rubbed my temples.

  ‘But she doesn’t care to fuck women,’ said Dominique, ‘she likes to be fucked by men.’

  ‘She sure does,’ I said.

  ‘In the anus, like a boy.’

  I smiled. ‘Your sister.’

  ‘You care for her.’

  ‘Of course I do. So do you.’

  ‘I love her– always and always.’

  ‘What about your parents?’

  ‘They love her as well.’

  ‘Do they know?’

  ‘I’m sure they suspect,’ said Dominique as she looked away, ‘But, like many parents, they pretend the reality doesn’t exist.’

  I sipped cognac.

  She said, ‘Do you love Sabine?’

  I said, ‘Do you need to ask?’

  She said, ‘Don’t answer a question with a question.’

  ‘I love you both,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘now that you know what you know about my sister, do you still wish to fuck her in that special way she likes? To play her little game?’

  ‘What about you? Do you still want me to fuck her?’

  ‘Why do you ask, lover?’

  ‘Don’t answer a question with a -’

  Dominique sighed, heavy and loud. ‘If she wants your cock inside her… so be it.’

  ‘Do you even care?’

  She sighed and rolled her eyes.

  ‘If you do that thing with your eyes again,’ I said, ‘I will pluck them out and you’ll live the rest of your life as a blind woman.’

  She laughed.

  I laughed, and sipped cognac.

  ‘So violent,’ she said.

  ‘I’m a man of my times.’

  ‘Things are changing, lover.’

  ‘Hey, those are some nice clothes you got on there, lover.’

  Why hadn’t I noticed this before?

  I was the blind one.

  I always am.

  What the hell.

  Her long leather jacket, her cashmere sweater.

  ‘My clothes,’ said Dominique. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Where did you get them?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How did you buy them?’

  ‘With printed notes called currency,’ she said with a pronounced Parisenne huff.

  ‘You don’t make that kind of money, Dominique.’

  She crossed her legs and wagged a finger at me. ‘Oh you are impossible sometimes! Do you know that? Do you?’ she said.

  I said, ‘How about them gloves, baby? Those are some nice leather gloves, baby. How did you afford them, baby? Gloves like that would cost you a week’s pay, baby.’

  I smiled because I was seeing clearly now in my cognac-induced drunk.

  ‘Shut your dirty mouth,’ was her response, ‘And you have a real dirty mouth, don’t you? You cretin.’

  ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘I am talking to you.’

  Silence.

  I sat back and said: ‘So… what’s going on, Dominique?’

  ‘Things are changing,’ she said.

  ‘“Things” don’t,’ I said, ‘people do.’

  ‘The world,’ she said, raising an eyebrow, ‘is.’

  Silence.

  ‘Back to my inquiry,’ she said, ‘do you still desire to fuck my sister who covets, in her tainted heart, to be a man hole?’

  ‘Right now, at this moment,’ I said, ‘I want to fuck you,’ because I had a feeling it might be the last time my cock would connect to her.

  ‘Very well,’ said Dominique, standing up, ‘let’s go home and make love.’

  It was the best, and the last.

  VI

  So this is what happened:

  Dominique went her own way, the beginning of October, a cold fall. I suspected there was a man who was buying her things and clothes and good food and this turned out to be true; he now wanted her all to himself; he was a forty-two-year-old doctor who spotted Dominique at her market job and said to himself, ‘I shall covet that jeune fille.’ She was resistant at first, but reality took hold of her senses like Ernest Hemingway reeling in a marlin; she knew she needed to get serious about her life and find a good man to marry and, well, the doctor wanted to marry her! ‘Imagine that,’ said Dominique, ‘I, moi, a doctor’s wife.’ Sabine accused her sister of wanting to bring babies into a crowded, violent world. Dominique said: ‘Yes, I do want children. I shall be a wholesome mother.’ I wished Dominique good luck, gave her a kiss on the forehead and sent her off to a new life.

  Sabine said, ‘So be it, I’m relieved.’ This was not true. I could see the distress in her eyes, feel the anxiety when I held her body to mine; when I fucked her and said into her ear, ‘You are my good little boy, Saul Bean…’ Gradually, Sabine showed signs of depression: she wouldn’t eat, wouldn’t sleep, wouldn’t go to her classes, and she wasn’t interested in sex.

  Then, a change: she’d close her eyes and sleep and wake me up with my cock in her mouth and be the girl/boy I knew and was growing very fond of. ‘When I get an operation and have a penis,’ she asked once, ‘will you still want me?’ I told her I was willing to try anything and this pleased her. A few days later she’d get depressed yet again; this was making me insane like a character in Ken Kesey’s One Who Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (which I read that week); I told her she should look into getting some kind of medical help at the university; this was a socialist country so surely that was available, but Sabine merely turned up her nose and told me, ‘Mindfuckers are assholes.’

  October 27: the Muslim riots happened. Hundreds of Muslim young men took to the streets, destroying property, fighting with the police, setting hundreds of cars on fire. Sabine was gleeful and ready to mutiny with the masses. I followed along with her although we were in danger because our skin was too white and we didn’t worship Allah: we were possible targets; on the other hand, the police ignored us. I was an outsider in many ways but I understood what was happening, I felt what the kids were experiencing, all the years of perceived repression and racism. Word on the street was that the police had murdered two Muslim youths, but later the truth (or what we were told was the truth) came out: the young Muslim males ran away from the authorities checking papers, they hid in an electrical sub-station and, apparently, accidentally electrocuted themselves . The memory of 9/11 and the London attacks was still fresh, and there was a war going on in the Middle East that France did not support, but that did not mean the French government was pro-Muslim. A great change was in the air. Dominique was correct; it was intoxicating and made Sabine and I fuck for many sweaty hours, whispering let the city burn orgasms. And the city did burn, for nearly two weeks. It was the French Revolution all over again! It was 1968 redux, with a different agenda but a similar spirit: a distrust in the powers that be, a need for violent expression. A new era had dawned and it made me want to fuck the crack of that dawn! When it was all finally over, Sabine was disappointed; she didn’t go to her classes for a week, she didn’t bathe or eat and she didn’t want to fuck; it was the worst of her bouts with dejection.

  We stopped playing our lovers’ game. I don’t know what we were. She refused to say a word of English any more. I could get by on the French I had now acquired, and was taking odd jobs washing dishes and cleaning up the mess the riots left; mostly to get away from that tiny fucking apartment and Sabine’s depressing shit.

  And one cold day in late November, I returned to that apartment after a hard day’s work and found Sabine in the tub, her wrists and neck slashed open. She left a note, it was brief. Farewell, it said. The police questioned me for a day, trying to coerce me into a confession: that I had murdered my girlfriend and tried to make it look like a suicide.

  I said: �
�She was not my girlfriend.’

  They asked: ‘So what was she?’

  ‘She was a person.’

  ‘Why did she kill herself?’

  She’d had problems with ‘moodiness’ all her life; this is what Sabine’s mother told the police.

  ‘My daughter never said she had a beau,’ the mother told the police.

  ‘You are free to go now,’ I was told, and I quickly left the station and found a cheap room to rent on the other side of the city.

  VII

  Dominique blamed me for Sabine’s death. I met her and her husband for lunch, but no one had much of an appetite. ‘You should have stopped her,’ she said, ‘you filthy bastard!’

  ‘How was I to know?’

  ‘I told you!’

  ‘You left out the details, lover.’

  ‘There must have been signs! You knew what was in her heart, you knew her secrets.’

  ‘I didn’t know her at all.’

  ‘You loved her!’

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I fucked her.’

  Her middle-aged doctor husband took Dominique’s side. ‘You should feel shame,’ he told me, holding his wife close.

  ‘I feel bad, I feel sad, I feel like a piece of dung,’ said I. ‘But shame? Guilt? No. No. No way, man. I’m not taking the fall for this. I won’t be the passion patsy. Your sister had some major problems in her noggin and there was nothing I could do about it. She wanted to be a man. She was a freak!’

  ‘I hate you!’ Dominique screamed. ‘I hate you! You… you… sonuvabeetch!’

  ‘You are a sorry excuse for a man,’ said her husband. ‘I say this with conviction.’

  ‘Fuck you,’ said I. ‘You don’t even know this woman here, this tramp you call a wife. Oh, there are stories I could tell you, Monsieur.’

  ‘Kill him!’ cried Dominique to her husband. ‘Murder him like he did to my sister!’

  Her husband said, ‘I admonish you to leave Paris.’

  I replied, ‘Great idea,’ and that’s exactly what I did.

  About the Story

  Marlon Brando said in Last Tango in Paris, “There are more rats in Paris than people.” I’ve had some strange and wonderful and memorable and sad and happy tangos the three times I’ve been to Paris. I lived there for nine months in 1992. It was grey and cold, or so I recall. Some of my best memories are going to the Sorbonne to listen to Jean Baudrillard guest lecture, and sex in a cold damp cellar. The two are not related but may have happened in the same week. There was this great white wine I used to drink there; I think it was called Georges Messengy or something like that. I once found it in a Farmer’s Market in San Diego and have not been able to find it since. It was the only wine I ever had that tasted good at room temperature.

  The Poetry of Pigalle

  by Savannah Lee

  ‘You are obviously American,’ said the intolerably sleek woman in intolerably precise English to the intolerably rumpled man whose mouth was intolerably wide open for his next bite of food.

  His name was Lawrence A. Pinney, and he was showing off his fillings under the tattered awning of the Café de la Chance, one of the less favoured sidewalk establishments of Pigalle.

  ‘I suppose you came to Paris to visit the Louvre, like everyone else,’ snorted la femme.

  ‘Guilty as charged.’

  ‘So what are you doing here in Pigalle?’

  Lawrence A. Pinney thought about it. ‘Maybe I feel sorry for the place.’

  ‘Oh do you! And why?’

  ‘Well, imagine when it goes to a cocktail party and the other neighbourhoods ask it what it does for a living!’

  Lawrence A. had been experiencing some problems with that question himself. He was too old by now to bring out his tales of taking a few months to learn fibre arts or backpack the Himalayas. He was starting to have to take a deep breath and say, ‘I’m living off my trust fund.’

  In other words, he was starting to have to admit that he was a cliché.

  So he felt for Pigalle at that imaginary party as she tugged on her dress and sweated into her drink. ‘Well, I’m about sex, really,’ she admitted, ‘but please don’t confuse me with one of those booths on 42nd Street back in 1987– please?’ He could see her hopeful eyes, her tender…

  ‘Are you listening to me?’ demanded the tiny, steely woman in front of Lawrence A. ‘I asked you whether you considered that ridiculous remark to be whimsical in some manner.’

  Lawrence A. Pinney merely shrugged.

  His affable indifference only seemed to enrage her more. ‘Look at your appearance, you look as though you spent two hours walking in a rainstorm. And you come to a café in such a state? To say nothing of your large ears, your rough cheeks and your thick eyebrows. What do you have to say for yourself?’

  Lawrence A. barely heard her. He was busy doing a visual inventory of his own. ‘You,’ he told the woman, ‘are a 32E with a 25-inch waist or I’m not a former tailor’s apprentice. And despite your tiny dimensions,’ he continued, ‘your suit is just a little too tight.’ He put a twinkle in his eye. ‘Have you gained some weight in the hips?’

  ‘A mouth like that deserves a muzzle!’ the woman cried.

  ‘A muzzle, eh? If you’re not careful, I’m going to get the idea that you’re trying to seduce me in some bizarre way.’

  ‘What on earth makes you think you deserve to be seduced by me, you upstart? Look at yourself! Vous n’avez pas honte? Are you not ashamed? You are holding your fork in a bear’s grip, your elbows are presumptuous and without discipline, and your giant bites of food make your gums gape like the over-used flaps of a whore. Only Americans eat in this horrible manner. And occasionnellement les Australiens,’ she added.

  Lawrence A. Pinney sighed. ‘Madame,’ he replied, ‘je m’interesse à la question de pourquoi vous devez me dire ces choses dans un lieu comme celui-ci. Nous ne sommes pas,’ he emphasized, ‘dans le restaurant Pierre Gagnaire.’

  For those not acquainted with the tolerable foreigner’s French employed by Mr Pinney, he was asking the steel hourglass why she felt the need to bring these matters up in this particular location. It was not, after all, the highly exclusive restaurant of Pierre Gagnaire.

  To the contrary. This sidewalk café would never make it into a guidebook, except perhaps as an example of what to avoid. There was much to un-distinguish it, ranging from its statistically improbable rates of escargot explosion to the sub-Moldovan calibre of its chocolat (a serious matter even in this neighbourhood).

  And the service would have embarrassed an Uzbekistani hotel staff of 1973. The waiter was one of those who had better things to do than serve people. Or at least, he had better things to do than serve Lawrence A. Pinney.

  He knew Lawrence A. Pinney was there– he’d stood there for quite a while, in fact, staring at Lawrence A. with huge eyes full of backlogged opinions– but had ignored him completely. Lawrence A. was only eating now because this same waiter had mysteriously set a plate of croque-monsieur down on an empty table and walked away. (Lawrence A. had taken the sandwich but left the plate where it was).

  But the main problem with the café would have to be the lamppost. Positioned only a few feet from Lawrence A.’s table, the lamppost turned the space in between into a needle to be threaded by pedestrians. Which frequently included bicyclists riding home from the market. Before the table-manners police made her appearance, Lawrence A. had been struck by baguettes no less than three times.

  Given all this, he hardly expected that his problem would turn out to be one of excess visibility.

  But here this woman was, fixated on him and his appearance.

  And she would not move.

  She was causing a bottleneck, too, yet the increasing numbers of outraged Parisians piling up on either side of her (‘Salope!’ ‘Imbécile!’ ‘Allez, enfin ALLEZ!’) budged her not an inch. She was intent on giving Lawrence A. Pinney the tongue-lashing she felt he deserved. It was almost, he thought, as if she were looking for something
.

  ‘Do you call that ‘French’ which you were speaking just now?’ she demanded.

  ‘Bien sur que non!’ he cried.

  She failed to be mollified. ‘Then why did you attempt it at all? Did you think I would be impressed?’

  ‘Why would I care what you think or not?’ he asked, but more in the manner of an advanced Buddhist than a defiant prisoner or angry stranger. It was reasonably impressive. Even the most aimless lives do make us masters of something or other.

  ‘All right then,’ conceded the woman, and roved him with her eyes to find new weaknesses to attack. It didn’t take long. Pointing, she demanded, ‘Is that an Ungaro tie?’

  Lawrence A. Pinney did not, in fact, remember which tie he was wearing, and drew it out to have a look.

  ‘Oh for heaven’s sake, you foolish man, put that thing away. Of course it is Ungaro. Now why does it look so hopeless? Did you throw it into the washing machine? To say nothing of that suit. How does a Caraceni arrive in such a condition? You could not be so stupid as to have ruined these clothes by mistake. I can see that just by looking at you. So it was deliberate. But the question is why. Tell me, do you hate your origins? The wealth which belongs to your family? Not to you, of course. You surely didn’t earn it yourself, your eyes are not so cruel.’

  Lawrence A. Pinney could only laugh. ‘My eyes are poetry,’ he said, hoping to move the conversation back in what he considered a more flirtatious direction.

  ‘Poetry!’ spat the woman. ‘If you want poetry, go further up into le vrai Montmartre, go to the Marais. This is Pigalle. There is no poetry here.’

  Lawrence A. Pinney shrugged. ‘All right. Whatever you like.’

  The woman’s lips drew tight enough to fire bullets. ‘Fine! Then tell me this. Your battered tie, is it really your cock? And what you hate is yourself?’

  At that, Lawrence A. Pinney had had enough.

  As was his way, he under-reacted, but differently this time. Something new invited itself into his voice. ‘Why don’t you try me and see.’

  To his surprise, the woman’s eyes lit up like the devil’s Christmas. ‘There it is,’ she breathed. ‘At last.’