‘Minou!’
‘Bashira!’
‘Habiba!’
‘Wei!’
‘Hong!’
‘Falala!’
‘Batool!’
‘Odile!’
‘Halima!’
‘Shoshana!’
‘Li Li!’
‘Malika!’
‘Ming!’
‘Haboos!’
‘Sultana!’
‘Mei Xing!’
‘Kalifa!’
‘Hua!’
‘Tzipporah!’
‘Jìng Yì!’
‘Magali!’
Pascal reached for his mobile phone and tried to ring the police. He managed the 1 button twice but the gadget slipped to the ground and into a sewer grate before he could press the final 2. Pascal kept running, through the market stalls and along the shops on the margins, passing the sidewalk vendors and the crowds browsing their merchandise– sacks of dried lentils and peas, fruits and vegetables, bolts of African fabrics, plastic crates full of mini Eiffel Towers, flat displays holding cheap telephone cards. A man in front of the Tout à 1 € store stuck out a foot to trip him, withdrawing it in the last second.
The lanes of the Boulevard were filled with cars. There were few taxis and those present had solid orange roof lights indicating passengers. Pascal crossed the street, dodging the moving vehicles. He found a narrow alley, the width of one person. A man carrying two pillows on either side of himself approached from the opposite direction. Pascal managed to pass him but the pillows momentarily blocked the rush of the screaming pack on his heels. There was a pop and a million white and grey feathers filled the alley. The red brassiere ricocheted off the walls in a zig zag with the velocity of its forward propulsion. Pascal spotted a patch of grass beyond a decaying wooden fence matted with movie posters, away from the mêlée. He checked to see that the red brassiere was steadily behind him. It lurched over the barrier while Pascal scaled the structure and for a moment everything stood still.
The voices got louder, closer.
‘Galia, I can smell you!’ cried one man.
‘Kumani, I know you’re there!’ screamed another.
‘Mahmoode, I’m coming to get you!’ bellowed a third in a caftan.
It was too late. The gang broke down the fence. The red brassiere gave off an odour of pure fear as its strap snagged on a café sign shaped like a top hat. One man scrambled onto the shoulders of another and dislodged the red brassiere, capturing it and yanking it down.
Droplets of nervous perspiration formed on the piece of lingerie. It crumpled and shuddered, then disappeared from Pascal’s view obscured by the drapery of a sea of hands. One hundred erections pointed towards the red brassiere like hungry knives. The knot of men released an intense heat. There was the sound of cloth being ripped, and ripped and ripped again. When, finally, there was no more rending to be done the men retreated, man by man, each with a shard of red lace or silk as bounty. Three had hooks, three more eyes. One man held the small decorative bow from the front, still intact like a perfect unmolested rosebud. Short scarlet threads covered the ground, twitching like organisms under a microscope. Pascal sat forlornly, abandoned by the herd of men, holding the very last piece of the red brassiere, a tiny red sliver, off of which hung the tattered label– now a blank scrap without a name– soiled with shoe scuffs, a discarded grape skin. There was no smell.
In that moment, one by one, brassieres were seized from every corner of the city. Women strolling each rue, boulevard and avenue felt themselves coming undone– unravelled– the intimate harnesses drawn out through their sleeves. In thousands of boudoirs, from the 1er to the 20eme, drawers slid open, their contents unfolding and taking flight out windows and skylights. A parade of fantasy lingerie emerged from the department stores. Street market brassieres fastened around headless mannequins unhooked and dashed away. In the Père Lachaise a half dozen Wonderbras were pulled from the hands of young female tourists about to fling the apparel onto Jim Morrison’s grave. The gigantic brassiere of Babar’s cousin Celeste vacated Jean de Brunhoff’s book illustrations and took to the air like a magic carpet.
Women all over Paris stood at their windows– topless and stunned– watching the silent ascension of silk, satin, lace and nylon in hues of white, yellow, orange, red, blue and green. One woman tried to loop a strap as it passed.
The brassieres formed tandem rows, filing through the streets and across the Seine– on and off bridges– the march of an invisible, scantily-clad army; bounding on cobblestones in a rainbow arc, going up stairs, turning corners in a calico jumble. People seated in cafés dropped their glasses at the sight of the promenading spectacle.
The brassieres headed skywards in Pascal’s direction, single-file now, making dotted lines like trolley wires above the centres of streets, an airborne queue flanked by pitched rooftops. As they flew, other objects joined the mass in solidarity: a fleet of berets and handkerchiefs from Left Luggage at the Gare du Nord; bows from the hair of well-dressed children in the Parc Monceau and silk scarves from the necks of their nannies; one hundred paper airplanes set into motion by schoolboys in a hundred classrooms; pornographic passages ripped from paperbacks sold by the Seine bouquinistes; a stream of orphaned gloves from the Bureau des Objets Trouvés, forefingers all pointed towards Pascal. Rose petals fresh off the faces of women getting floral treatments at the hammam bundled with others plucked from the garland of florists and gardens woven through the city. Taxidermied birds left their gnarly branches at Deyrolle. Kites were whisked from small hands in the city parks. Braiding, embroidery, fans and parasols trailed from the two Musées de la Mode. The stockings of Madeline’s Miss Clavel stepped up– in two straight lines, sails detached from toy boats on the pond in the Jardin du Luxembourg and peacocks lost their quills in the Bois de Boulogne. In the Père Lachaise Isadora Duncan’s last scarf slid out her tomb like a long pink tongue while lipstick kisses unpeeled themselves from Oscar Wilde’s headstone, hanging in midair for a moment like frightened spots off a cartoon leopard. Glittering in the evening’s final light were sparklies from Josephine Baker’s last revue, followed by feather boas from the Moulin Rouge, hose and garters once belonging to Kiki of Montparnasse, and, running to keep up, Edith Piaf’s little black dress and tiny shoes.
The various objects filled the skies and soared towards Pascal, sitting long-faced in the grassy lot staring at the shattered red brassiere remains, both spirit and cock deflated. He welcomed the inventory, tethering everything together. Celeste’s brassiere formed a hammock underneath him and he fell backwards into it as into a giant open hand. His cock immediately asserted itself, encouragingly resuscitated. Every item found its place as if part of a puzzle, creating a complex latticework. The craft rose with Pascal at the helm using scarves and straps as directional reins. The toy boat sails spined the ship like dinosaur’s scales, acting as rudders. A poufed string of chef toques encircled the assemblage, jewelled with bits of cotton candy from the Bois de Vincennes.
The multilayered, multidimensional sling caught the wind and Pascal was pulled aloft by the cluster, a helix pulled high over the beige grey city. It began a large outward-moving spiral flight path mirroring the layout of the arrondissements below– a beignet, an escargot shell, a coiled snake.
Pascal veered away from Notre-Dame to avoid the low-voltage shocks intended for gargoyle-bound pigeons. Beneath him he saw the City of Light: the twinkling tiaras of the bridges spanning the Seine; the unbroken red and white meandering automobile beam stripe blurring the boulevards– a long slice of Tricoleur; the blinking green neon animation of pharmacy crosses.
From the Fontaine Stravinsky Jean Tinguely’s shiny red puffed lips blew Pascal a kiss. In unison, the light-sensitive windows at L’Institut du Monde Arabe closed their shutters like camera apertures– 240 portals momentarily constricting in a conspiring wink– giving him the gazes of 1,001 Arabian nights from sheathed feminine eyes behind a thousand burqas. The Tour Eiffel
grew another six inches– the full extension of its phallic architecture– and spouted fireworks from its tip in a lusty salute.
Birds spiralled around Pascal, now moving like a rapid current, intoxicated by the fragrant tufted cloud trapping him in a tempestuous tangled skein. Sharp gusts blew through the rigs of the vessel, stretched and knotted like harp strings, forging a primordial choir of women’s voices– comprising every female utterance since the beginning of time: every moan, whisper and sigh– until that instant a lost bracelet of unheard sound adrift, swirling endlessly around the planet like Saturn’s rings. Pascal felt the sonic vibration created by the choral hum. It entered his body as an electric ribbon, and surged through him, a vein of fire rising from his cock and balls up his torso and into each arm like unfurling tree branches of lightning. He stroked himself in sheer abandon as he inhaled the combined bouquets of the unseen women whose garments surrounded him, cradled him– the women who’d worn them and the women who might– women from past and future, known and not, spanning the centuries. Female names appeared on the hundreds of fluttering labels, writing and re-writing themselves in endless succession– like magic slates ad infinitum. Pascal laughed and sang while he alternately pulled at himself and guided the barrelling sphere. He rode the edge of light turning to darkness as night blanketed Paris. A golden swirl of shimmering Michelin stars, shot in a farewell booster from the restaurants below, formed a constellation around the flying contraption, raising it still further skywards, pulling Pascal up, upwards over the city– ascending far and away– his cock aimed towards the end of the sky.
About the Story
The Red Brassiere was inspired by and is an homage to the late Albert Lamorisse’s 34-minute 1956 film, Le ballon rouge, in my language known as The Red Balloon. My childhood memory of this film is that it was in black and white, a supreme error on my part, of course, given the work’s title and premise. Yet, the post-War Paris Le ballon rouge portrays did impress me as being composed solely of grey tones. Perhaps this was because the rich colours, when they do appear, pop out in their Technicolor glory, making the city backdrop seem, well, greyer, by comparison. Also, my remembrance of The Red Balloon is conflated with my recollection of the accompanying book, an oversized hardcover predominantly illustrated with grainy black and white film stills, the red balloon and its coloured environs present only on eight pages.
Almost immediately upon learning of the Sex in the City: Paris project I knew I wanted to do a grown-up take on The Red Balloon, involving an object of desire more appropriate to an adult male whose favourite plaything is his penis. While a brassiere is not a direct correlative to a balloon in that it is generally not something found in the air, unless pegged to a clothesline, I thought it could work. And, although the little boy in the film is Monsieur Lamorisse’s own son, Pascal, after whom my fictional hero is named in tribute, any resemblances to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
Despite my beret collection and fondness for French surrealists, I have set foot in Paris on just a handful of occasions, each visit lasting a precious few days. As a result, my Paris remains an idealized one, and my vision of it comes more from the city as invented and interpreted in fiction– from Babar and Madeline to Henry Miller– movies, music and art, or documented by photographers like Brassaï, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Man Ray, Jacques Henri Lartigue and Andre Kertész, in all cases capturing a Paris either nonexistent outside the imagination or a city that has been lost for ever. The 20th arrondissement districts serving as the story’s setting in The Red Balloon, for example, are mostly no longer extant, having been razed in the 1970s. I can now find bits and pieces of the Paris I seek while flying around Google Maps in “street view” mode, my mouse clicks whooshing me from rue to boulevard in search of crackled paint and architecture in need of rehabilitation. But, because of The Red Balloon I will always have Paris, preserved in time, primarily in black and white.
’
Author Biographies
M. Christian is an acknowledged master of erotica with more than 300 stories in such anthologies as Best American Erotica, Best Gay Erotica, Best Lesbian Erotica, Best Bisexual Erotica, Best Fetish Erotica, and many, many other anthologies, magazines, and Web sites. He is the editor of 20 anthologies including the Best S/M Erotica series, The Burning Pen, Guilty Pleasures, and others. He is the author of the collections Dirty Words, Speaking Parts, The Bachelor Machine, Licks & Promises, Filthy, Love Without Gun Control, and Rude Mechanicals; and the novels Running Dry, The Very Bloody Marys, Me2, and Painted Doll.
Carrie Williams is the author of three novels for Black Lace– The Blue Guide, Chilli Heat, and The Apprentice, as well as countless short stories in Black Lace anthologies, some of them under the pseudonym Candy Wong. Her erotic fiction has also graced the pages of Scarlet magazine and The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica.
As an established travel journalist, Carrie visits and reviews some of the finest hotels, restaurants and shops around the world. Her adventures abroad inspire and inform her fiction, from street markets and temples in India to spas in the South of France, as do the many fascinating characters she meets on her travels.
Carrie began writing erotica after becoming immersed in the work of Sigmund Freud, Georges Bataille and the Surrealists while studying French literature at Oxford. She wrote her dissertation on the work of the female Surrealists, most notably the Argentine painter Léonor Fini, best known for her graphic illustrations for the Story of O.
Carrie is usually on the road but can often be found in London, Manchester or Paris. When not writing fiction, she enjoys gardening, the theatre and cinema, vintage clothes shopping and spending time with her Russian blues.
Alcamia Payne began writing short stories when she was a child and is a self-confessed book worm. Her favourite genres are erotica (she adores the writings of Anais Nin), crime, science fiction/fantasy and the classics.
She achieved degrees in Languages and English Literature before pursuing careers as both a linguist and teacher. Drawn inexorably to the written word though, she has gradually turned to what she loves doing best of all, putting her thoughts down on paper.
She says of writing. ‘It’s the hardest profession imaginable, requiring extraordinary dedication, but there’s no feeling in the world like producing a satisfying story. I can’t imagine not writing, not expressing myself, it’s just a part of who I am. I love people, observing them, exploring what makes them tick, mentally, emotionally and spiritually and then building the fabric of a story around them. I particularly enjoy writing erotic and amatory dramas and creating atmospheric or unusual settings.
She writes several genres but has a passion for human sexuality and erotica. Her stories have appeared widely and more recently in Scarlet magazine and under the Accent Press Xcite imprint. Her ambitions are to keep writing and improving and loving what she’s doing. Alcamia Payne is currently working on a series of novelettes and a novel.
Debb & O’Neil De Noux: Debra Gray De Noux was the long-time associate publisher of Pulphouse Publishing in Eugene, Oregon. Her fiction has appeared in magazines and anthologies in the U.S., Great Britain and Germany. She is the editor of the anthology Erotic New Orleans (1999, Pontalba Press, New Orleans). Debra appeared in the short film Waiting for Alaina (2001) and has worked as a live nude model.
O’Neil De Noux has published five novels, six short story collections and over 200 short stories in multiple genres, which appeared in the U.S., U.K., Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal, Sweden and Ukraine.
De Noux’s short story ‘The Heart Has Reasons’ won the Private Eye Writers of America’s prestigious Shamus Award for Best Short Story 2007. The Shamus is given annually to recognize outstanding achievement in private eye fiction. His story ‘Too Wise’ won the 2009 Derringer Award for Best Novelette. The Derringer Award is given annually to recognize excellence in the mystery short form.
/> The Louisiana Division of the Arts awarded O’Neil De Noux its Artist Services Career Advancement Award for 2009-2010 for work on his forthcoming historical novel set during the Battle of New Orleans.
John Baxter was born in Australia but has lived in Paris for twenty years. As well as biographies of Robert DeNiro, Federico Fellini, Stanley Kubrick, Woody Allen, George Lucas and Luis Bunuel, he has written three books of memoirs, A Pound of Paper; Confessions of a Book Addict, We’ll Always Have Paris: Sex and Love in the City of Light, and Immoveable Feast: A Paris Christmas. He also compiled Carnal Knowledge: Baxter’s Encyclopedia of Modern Sex, and edits HarperCollins Perennial’s Naughty French Novels series, for which he has translated Gamiani, Journal d’une Femme de Chambre, Morphine and Fumée d’Opium.
Kelly Jameson is the author of the indie thriller Dead On, film-optioned for two years with Gold Circle Films (producer of My Big Fat Greek Wedding; White Noise), and Runner-Up in the 2006 Do-It-Yourself (DIY) Los Angeles Book Festival. Her recently completed novella, What Remained of Katrina, placed in the top 3% of nearly 500 blinded submissions in the 2009 international Leapfrog Press fiction contest (entries received from 10 countries). Ken Bruen, author of Once Were Cops and The Guards, calls Jameson’s second novel, Shards of Summer, “The Great Gatsby for the Beach Generation.� Kelly’s stories have been published in The Summerset Review, The Mammoth Book of Best New Erotica (volumes 8 and 9), Dispatch Litareview, Amazon Shorts, Withersin Magazine, The Twisted Tongue, Barfing Frog Press, Big Stupid Review, Ruthie’s Club, The American Drivel Review, sliptongue, ThugWorks, and Ramble Underground. Kelly is at work on a screenplay, two new novels, and new short stories. She lives in the Philadelphia area with her family and doughnut-snatching dog.
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