Desire

by Mariella Frostrup

  “Very nice nipples you have. You don’t need to use lipstick on them, do you? They are naturally rosy. Most of them have a leather color.”

  I covered myself.

  That was all for that day. He asked me to come the next day at the same time.

  He was slower in getting to his work on Tuesday. He talked. He had his feet up on his drawing table. He offered me a cigarette. I was pinning up my shawl. He was watching me. He said: “Show me your legs. I may do a drawing of legs next time.”

  I lifted up my skirt above the knee.

  “Sit down with your skirt up high,” he said.

  He sketched in the legs. There was a silence.

  Then he got up, flung his pencil on the table, leaned over me and kissed me fully on the mouth, forcing my head backwards. I pushed him off violently. This made him smile. He slipped his hand swiftly up under my skirt, felt my thighs where the stockings stopped and before I could move was back in his seat.

  I took the pose and said nothing, because I had just made a discovery – that in spite of my anger, in spite of the fact that I was not in love, the kiss and the caress on the naked thighs had given me pleasure. While I fought him off, it was only out of habit, but actually it had given me pleasure.

  The pose gave me time to awaken from the pleasure and remember my defenses. But my defenses had been convincing and he was quiet for the rest of the morning.

  From the very first I had divined that what I really had to defend myself against was my own susceptibility to caresses. I was also filled with great curiosities about so many things. At the same time I was utterly convinced that I would not give myself to anyone but the man I fell in love with.

  I was in love with Stephen. I wanted to go to him and say: “Take me, take me!” I suddenly remembered another incident, and that was a year before this when one of my aunts had taken me to New Orleans to the Mardi Gras. Friends of hers had driven us in their automobile. There were two other young girls with us. A band of young men took advantage of the confusion, the noise, the excitement and gaiety to jump into our automobile, remove our masks and begin kissing us while my aunt raised an outcry. Then they disappeared into the crowd. I was left dazed and wishing that the young man who had taken hold of me and had kissed me on the mouth were still there. I was languid from the kiss, languid and stirred.

  Back at the club I wondered what all the rest of the models felt. There was a great deal of talk about defending oneself, and I wondered whether it was all sincere. One of the loveliest models, whose face was not particularly beautiful but who had a magnificent body, was talking:

  “I don’t know what other girls feel about posing in the nude,” she said, “I love it. Ever since I was a little girl I liked taking off my clothes. I liked to see how people looked at me. I used to take my clothes off at parties, as soon as people were a little drunk. I liked showing my body. Now I can’t wait to take them off. I enjoy being looked at. It gives me pleasure. I get shivers of pleasure right down my back when men look at me. And when I pose for a whole class of artists at the school, when I see all those eyes on my body, I get so much pleasure, it is – well, it is like being made love to. I feel beautiful, I feel as women must feel sometimes when undressed for a lover. I enjoy my own body. I like to pose holding my breasts in my hand. Sometimes I caress them. I was once in burlesque. I loved it. I enjoyed doing that as much as the men enjoyed seeing it. The satin of the dress used to give me shivers – taking my breasts out, exposing myself. That excited me. When men touched me I did not get as much excitement... it was always a disappointment. But I know other girls who don’t feel that way.”

  “I feel humiliated,” said a red-haired model. “I feel my body is not my own, and that it no longer has any value... being seen by everybody.”

  “I don’t feel anything at all,” said another. “I feel it’s all impersonal. When men are painting or drawing, they no longer think of us as human beings. One painter told me that the body of a model on the stand is an objective thing, that the only moment he felt disturbed erotically was when the model took off her kimono. In Paris, they tell me, the model undresses right in front of the class, and that’s exciting.”

  “If it were all so objective,” said another girl, “they wouldn’t invite us to parties afterwards.”

  “Or marry their models,” I added, remembering two painters I had already met who had married their favorite models.

  *

  One day I had to pose for an illustrator of stories. When I arrived, I found two other people already there, a girl and a man. We were to compose scenes together, love scenes for a romance. The man was about forty, with a very mature, very decadent face. It was he who knew how to arrange us. He placed me in a position for a kiss. We had to hold the pose while the illustrator photographed us. I was uneasy. I did not like the man at all. The other girl played the jealous wife who burst in on the scene. We had to do it many times. Each time the man acted the kiss I shrank inside myself, and he felt it. He was offended. His eyes were mocking. I acted badly. The illustrator was shouting at me as if we were in a moving picture, “More passion, put more passion into it!”

  I tried to remember how the Russian had kissed me on returning from the dance, and that relaxed me. The man repeated the kiss. And now I felt he was holding me closer than he needed to, and surely he did not need to push his tongue into my mouth. He did it so quickly that I had no time to move. The illustrator started other scenes.

  The male model said, “I have been a model for ten years now. I don’t know why they always want young girls. Young girls have no experience and no expression. In Europe young girls of your age, under twenty, do not interest anyone. They are left in school or at home. They only become interesting after marriage.”

  As he talked, I thought of Stephen. I thought of us at the beach, lying on the hot sand. I knew that Stephen loved me. I wanted him to take me. I wanted now to be made a woman quickly. I did not like being a virgin, always defending myself. I felt that everyone knew I was a virgin and was all the more keen to conquer me.

  That evening Stephen and I were going out together. Somehow or other I must tell him. I must tell him that I was in danger of being raped, that he’d better do it first. No, he would then be so anxious. How could I tell him?

  I had news for him. I was the star model now. I had more work than anyone else in the club, there were more demands for me because I was a foreigner and had an unusual face. I often had to pose in the evenings. I told Stephen all this. He was proud of me.

  “You like your posing?” he said.

  “I love it. I love to be with painters, to see them work – good or bad, I like the atmosphere of it, the stories I hear. It is varied, never the same. It is really adventure.”

  “Do they... do they make love to you?” Stephen asked.

  “Not if you don’t want them to.”

  “But do they try...?”

  I saw that he was anxious. We were walking to my house from the railway station, through the dark fields. I turned to him and offered my mouth. He kissed me. I said, “Stephen, take me, take me, take me.”

  He was completely dumbfounded. I was throwing myself into the refuge of his big arms, I wanted to be taken and have it all over with, I wanted to be made a woman. But he was absolutely still, frightened. He said, “I want to marry you, but I can’t do it just now.”

  “I don’t care about the marriage.”

  But now I became conscious of his surprise, and it quieted me. I was immensely disappointed by his conventional attitude. The moment passed. He thought it was merely an attack of blind passion, that I had lost my head. He was even proud to have protected me against my own impulses. I went home to bed and sobbed.

  *

  One illustrator asked me if I would pose on Sunday, that he was in a great rush to finish a poster. I consented. When I arrived he was already at work. It was morning and the building seemed deserted. His studio was on the thirteenth floor. He had half of the poster do
ne. I got undressed quickly and put on the evening dress he had given me to wear. He did not seem to pay any attention to me. We worked in peace for a long while. I grew tired. He noticed it and gave me a rest. I walked about the studio looking at the other pictures. They were mostly portraits of actresses. I asked him who they were. He answered me with details about their sexual tastes:

  “Oh, this one, this one demands romanticism. It’s the only way you can get near her. She makes it difficult. She is European and she likes an intricate courtship. Halfway through I gave it up. It was too strenuous. She was very beautiful though, and there is something wonderful about getting a woman like that in bed. She had beautiful eyes, an entranced air, like some Hindu mystic. It makes you wonder how they will behave in bed.

  “I have known other sexual angels. It is wonderful to see the change in them. These clear eyes that you can see through, these bodies that take such beautiful harmonious poses, these delicate hands... how they change when desire takes hold of them. The sexual angels! They are wonderful because it is such a surprise, such a change. You, for instance, with your appearance of never having been touched, I can see you biting and scratching... I am sure your very voice changes – I have seen such changes. There are women’s voices that sound like poetic, unearthly echoes. Then they change. The eyes change. I believe that all these legends about people changing into animals at night – like the stories of the werewolf, for instance – were invented by men who saw women transform at night from idealized, worshipful creatures into animals and thought that they were possessed. But I know it is something much simpler than that. You are a virgin, aren’t you?”

  “No, I am married,” I said.

  “Married or not, you are a virgin. I can tell. I am never deceived. If you are married, your husband has not made you a woman yet. Don’t you regret that? Don’t you feel you are wasting time, that real living begins with sensation, with being a woman...?”

  This corresponded so exactly to what I had been feeling, to my desire to enter experience, that I was silent. I hated to admit this to a stranger.

  I was conscious of being alone with the illustrator in an empty studio building. I was sad that Stephen had not understood my desire to become a woman. I was not frightened but fatalistic, desiring only to find someone I might fall in love with.

  “I know what you are thinking,” he said, “but for me it would not have any meaning unless the woman wanted me. I never could make love to a woman if she did not want me. When I first saw you, I felt how wonderful it would be to initiate you. There is something about you that makes me feel you will have many love affairs. I would like to be the first one. But not unless you wanted it.”

  I smiled. “That is exactly what I was thinking. It can only be if I want it, and I do not want it.”

  “You must not give that first surrender so much importance. I think that was created by the people who wanted to preserve their daughters for marriage, the idea that the first man who takes a woman will have complete power over her. I think that is a superstition. It was created to help preserve women from promiscuity. It is actually untrue. If a man can make himself be loved, if he can rouse a woman, then she will be attracted to him. But the mere act of breaking through her virginity is not enough to accomplish this. Any man can do this and leave the woman unaroused. Did you know that many Spaniards take their wives this way and give them many children without completely initiating them sexually just to be sure of their faithfulness? The Spaniard believes in keeping pleasure for his mistress. In fact, if he sees a woman enjoy sensuality, he immediately suspects her of being faithless, even of being a whore.”

  The illustrator’s words haunted me for days. Then I was faced with a new problem. Summer had come and the painters were leaving for the country, for the beach, for far-off places in all directions. I did not have the money to follow them, and I was not sure how much work I would get. One morning I posed for an illustrator named Ronald. Afterwards he set the phonograph going and asked me to dance. While we were dancing he said, “Why don’t you come to the country for a while? It will do you good, you will get plenty of work, and I will pay for your trip. There are very few good models there. I am sure you will be kept busy.”

  So I went. I took a little room in a farmhouse. Then I went to see Ronald, who lived down the road in a shed, into which he had built a huge window. The first thing he did was to blow his cigarette smoke into my mouth. I coughed.

  “Oh,” he said, “you don’t know how to inhale.”

  “I’m not at all interested,” I said, getting up. “What kind of pose do you want?”

  “Oh,” he said laughing, “We don’t work so hard here. You will have to learn to enjoy yourself a little. Now, take the smoke from my mouth and inhale it...”

  “I don’t like to inhale.”

  He laughed again. He tried to kiss me. I moved away.

  “Oh, oh,” he said, “you are not going to be a very pleasant companion for me. I paid for your trip, you know, and I’m lonely down here. I expected you to be very pleasant company. Where is your suitcase?”

  “I took a room down the road.”

  “But you were invited to stay with me,” he said.

  “I understood you wanted me to pose for you.”

  “For the moment it is not a model I need.”

  I started to leave. He said, “You know, there is an understanding here about models who do not know how to enjoy themselves. If you take this attitude nobody will give you any work.”

  I did not believe him. The next morning I began to knock on the doors of all the artists I could find. But Ronald had already paid them a visit. So I was received without cordiality, like a person who has played a trick on another. I did not have the money to return home, nor the money to pay for my room. I knew nobody. The country was beautiful, mountainous, but I could not enjoy it.

  The next day I took a long walk and came upon a log cabin by the side of a river. I saw a man painting there, out of doors. I spoke to him. I told him my story. He did not know Ronald, but he was angry. He said he would try to help me. I told him all I wanted was to earn enough to return to New York.

  So I began to pose for him. His name was Reynolds. He was a man of thirty or so, with black hair, very soft black eyes and a brilliant smile – a recluse. He never went to the village, except for food, nor frequented the restaurants or bars. He had a lax walk, easy gestures. He had been on the sea, always on tramp steamers, working as a sailor so that he could see foreign countries. He was always restless.

  He painted from memory what he had seen in his travels. Now he sat at the foot of a tree and never looked around him but painted a wild piece of South American jungle.

  Once when he and his friends were in the jungle, Reynolds told me, they had smelled such a strong animal odor they thought they would suddenly see a panther, but out of the bushes had sprung with incredible velocity a woman, a naked savage woman, who looked at them with the frightened eyes of an animal, then ran off, leaving this strong animal scent behind her, threw herself into the river and swam away before they could catch their breath.

  A friend of Reynolds had captured a woman like this. When he had washed off the red paint with which she was covered, she was very beautiful. She was gentle when well treated, succumbed to gifts of beads and ornaments.

  Her strong smell repelled Reynolds until his friend had offered to let him have a night with her. He had found her black hair as hard and bristly as a beard. The animal smell made him feel he was lying with a panther. And she was so much stronger than he that after a while, he was acting almost like a woman, and she was the one who was molding him to suit her fancies. She was indefatigable and slow to arouse. She could bear caresses that exhausted him, and he fell asleep in her arms.

  Then he found her climbing over him and pouring a little liquid over his penis, something that at first made him smart and then aroused him furiously. He was frightened. His penis seemed to have filled with fire, or with red peppers. H
e rubbed himself against her flesh, more to ease the burning than out of desire.

  He was angry. She was smiling and laughing softly. He began taking her with a rage, driven by a fear that what she had done to him would arouse him for the last time, that it was some sort of enchantment to get the maximum of desire from him, until he died.

  She lay back laughing, her white teeth showing, the animal odor of her now affecting him erotically like the smell of musk. She moved with such vigor that he felt she would tear his penis away from him. But now he wanted to subjugate her. He caressed her at the same time.

  She was surprised by this. No one seemed to have done this to her before. When he was tired of taking her, after two orgasms, he continued to rub her clitoris, and she enjoyed this, begging for more, opening her legs wide. Then suddenly she turned over, crouched on the bed and swung her ass upward at an incredible angle. She expected him to take her again, but he continued to caress her. After this it was always his hand that she sought. She rubbed against it like a huge cat. During the day, if she met him she would rub her sex against his hand, surreptitiously.

  Reynolds said that that night had made white women seem weak to him. He was laughing as he told the story.

  His painting had reminded him of the savage woman hiding in the bushes, waiting like a tigress to leap and run away from the men who carried guns. He had painted her in, with her heavy, pointed breasts, her fine, long legs, her slender waist.

  I did not know how I could pose for him. But he was thinking of another picture. He said, “It will be easy. I want you to fall asleep. But you will be wrapped in white sheets. I saw something in Morocco once that I always wanted to paint. A woman had fallen asleep among her silk spools, holding the silk weaving frame with her hennaed feet. You have beautiful eyes, but they’ll have to be closed.”

  He went into the cabin and brought out sheets which he draped around me like a robe. He propped me against a wooden box, arranged my body and hands as he wanted them and began to sketch immediately. It was a very hot day. The sheets made me warm, and the pose was so lazy that I actually fell asleep, I don’t know for how long. I felt languid and unreal. And then I felt a soft hand between my legs, very soft, caressing me so lightly I had to awaken to make sure I had been touched. Reynolds was bending over me, but with such an expression of delighted gentleness that I did not move. His eyes were tender, his mouth half open.