The Sextine Chapel
Page 3
Wendy and Harry. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Wendy yells, while being penetrated by Harry beneath the beams of his one-bedroom flat in the Marais quarter of Paris. Her feet are flat on the linen sheet and her hands far behind her, while she rams herself down forcibly on his hard, stubby stick. Meanwhile, he’s stroking her taut thighs, and admiring her young, muscular body. As she shifts up and down she repeats: oui! oui! in French now. Though flattered that she’s now decided to yell in this language, Harry would still like her to change her tune, and stops himself from asking her: yes what?. . What was the question?
Every time I sleep with her, Harry thinks in a sweat, it feels like a shovelful of earth has fallen on my head.
Harry and Sofia. “Harry, you don’t keep tampons any more?” Sofia yells from the bathroom, waking up a good stretch of the rue des Francs-Bourgeois. It was just a rhetorical question, because she comes back to lie on her stomach, legs spread without any pretence to prudery. Harry kisses her buttocks, which she hasn’t even dried. The wick of a white candle (or dynamite) is now dangling from her sex. A forgotten word crops up in Harry’s mind. He smiles: catiminis. .
“It was an expression used in the sixteenth,” he explains. Sofia looks puzzled, she lived near La Muette until recently, so he adds: “Sixteenth century, not arrondissement.”
Sofia and Dennis. The memory of a scene in the film The Postman Always Rings Twice, directed by Bob Rafelson, in which Frank (Jack Nicholson) takes Cora (Jessica Lange) on the kitchen table, is clearly stimulating Dennis while he sodomizes Sofia on just that same item of furniture. Sofia, for whom sodomy is exciting but not quite orgasmic, is rubbing her clitoris faster and faster. The bottle of olive oil is marked “Cold-Pressed Extra Virgin,” but that’s irrelevant.
It occurs to Dennis that if he were a praying mantis, his female would now turn round and devour his head. He shivers.
Dennis and Oriane. The Estufa Fria of Lisbon is echoing with the melodious song of the Aræ araraunæ perched on the highest branches of the Monsteræ deliciosæ. At the far end of a fountain full of Eichhorniæ crassipes, hidden from curious gazes by the broad leaves of a clump of Dicksoniæ antarticæ and Pteridiæ aquiliniæ, Dennis has raised Oriane’s flounced skirt. Dennis’s phallus erectus penetrates a tergo her vagina lubrificata and the fragrance of their coitus more canino (before long interruptus by a group of schoolboys) mingles with the exotic odors of the Proustian cattleyæ.
A few days later, Oriane notices that the chlamydiæ Dennis gave her are not ornamental plants.
Oriane and Zach. Making the most of the fog and the eight fleeting minutes of the ascent of the cabins of the Montriond-Avoriaz ski lift, Zach and Oriane have ardently unclasped their Fusalp™ ski-suits which are now dangling like banana-skins over their boots. Oriane offers her buttocks to Zach, whose hardened member penetrates her welcoming vagina. From time to time, the icy metal zip of his ski-suit touches Oriane’s skin, making her tremble. The steam they exhale frosts over the windows.
Luckily enough, Oriane thinks, she doesn’t like sodomy, otherwise she’d obviously end up getting sodomized, and how dreadful that would be.
Zach and Katia. Katia stands up and goes over to Zach, who is leaning out of a window surrounded by Virginia creeper. If it weren’t pitch-dark, they would be able to see the “Aiguille Creuse.” She lays her head on his shoulder and her hand slips down to his penis, which swells under her gentle pressure. The name of the blue pill (which, to Zach’s delighted astonishment, is performing its second miracle of the evening), is supposed to have been chosen because it begins like virility and ends like Niagara. What a strange idea, to choose the name of a waterfall to stimulate an erection.
“According to Aristotle, the penis and the heart are the two organs that set themselves in motion,” Katia whispers. “When Aristotle was young, no doubt,” Zach replies.
Katia and Vincent. Vincent is asleep. He is even snoring gently. His regular breathing raises Katia’s brown hair. Without making a sound, she gets up and looks at this tall young man, who has not made her come, and this room with its dull, dated pink walls. A comedian’s joke comes back to her: after making love, one man out of ten goes to sleep on his right side, one out of twenty on his left side, while the rest get dressed and go home. She sighs, silently puts on her clothes, and decides to do the dishes.
Two hours of cooking just for this. How much did that come to? One minute of sex per fifteen minutes of preparation. Not counting the cooking time.
Vincent and Galata. A summer storm has taken the two cyclists by surprise: dripping wet, Vincent and Galata take shelter in the nearest barn. While their clothes are laid out to dry around them, Vincent delicately slips his tongue into Galata’s tawny mane. The youthful freshness and firmness of this mature woman’s body surprise him. As Queneau said, her mantelpiece is as good as her fire.
Is cunnilingus devilishly good or divinely good? Galata plumps for the devil; Vincent does too, because of the aftertaste.
Galata and Rémy. In the intimacy of a fitting room in a Lyon department store, Galata is trying on rather a severe suit. It hugs her hips perfectly, proof that she still has the hourglass figure of her youth. She is almost naked. A twitch of the raw silk curtain reveals her long legs to Rémy. He goes inside, grabs her firm breasts and tanned hips. She kisses him, then takes hold of his penis which she guides into herself. She yells with pleasure. He comes almost at once.
Of course, this is just a waking dream sustaining Rémy’s masturbatory efforts. Because he has never dared, and never will, admit to his aunt the desire he has felt for her ever since he was twelve years old.
Rémy and Chloe. In a maintenance room, whose grubby dormer window looks out over the keep of a fairy-tale castle, Mickey has taken off his round-eared false head and has knelt down in front of Snow White. The princess has hiked her dress up and placed one leg on a bench. His face is now rummaging into Chloe’s mane, his hands squeezing her soft buttocks, and his tongue working its way in among her fine hairs, looking for her little pink clit. On the main boulevard, a band is playing the theme tune from The Aristocats.
A scarred uniformed officer enters the empty room where she is standing, naked. He walks over to her and fingers her neck — this is what Chloe has to picture to herself so as to come at last.
Chloe and Niels. On the legendary beach of Boucan Canot, on Réunion Island, the sun is at its zenith while the pheromones diffused by the apocrine glands situated under brown-haired Chloe’s armpits, allied to the euphoric effects of the sea air, are stimulating Niels’s libido. His brain then produces a reasonable dose of phenylethylamine, inciting him to stroke her tiny breasts. She at once drags him away into the Indian Ocean, where, amid the waves, she grabs his penis and masturbates him rapidly, until he ejaculates.
Before long, a huge secretion of endorphins will make Niels nod off, and so he will never forget the terrible sunburn he got on Boucan Canot.
Niels and Yolande. OK, it’s almost healed up completely, Yolande tells Niels, as she examines his scarred penis with delicate professionalism. This is all far more medical than pleasurable, but the situation remains so tense that her heavy breasts beneath her white coat are making his still-convalescent member swell. Niels is panting. Yolande grants herself a few more lingering seconds of palpation, before asking Niels to pull his pants back up. He puts himself back inside with a deal of difficulty.
His eyes come to rest on Yolande’s badge. She smilingly says, “Yes, I know, this photo’s so old that I look young in it.” He blushes.
Yolande and Johann. A fart once released can never be caught, according to the proverb of a great and wise nation. The one that has just escaped from Yolande, at the very moment when Johann was thrusting his penis deeply inside her, was thunderous. But the television is reeling out advertising slogans, while the powerful diesel engine of a garbage truck is making the windows vibrate, so this flatulence goes unnoticed. What’s more, this really isn’t the right moment to lose concentration.
> What would Teishi Hiro have written, Johann wonders in petto?
A coquet fart of joy
Welcomed my entry
With giggling
Johann and Ursula. Tongue or lips / whatever is she doing / with my dick? Johann wonders, quoting our now familiar poet. The answer is “lips.” Then, once again, Ursula presses the canister of whipped cream (0 % fat content) and sprays snowy spirals around his penis. And, once more, she licks him, swallows the cream, and her tongue slithers as far as his testicles, before she cautiously sucks one of them, then the other. She’d like him to come quite fast, because this is starting to make her feel a tad nauseous.
Does Johann know that the Google search engine features 2,890,000 pages containing the word “fellatio,” including one in which it is (mistakenly) presented as a character in Shakespeare?
Ursula and Farid. On the flat 16/9 screen, a visibly excited male octopus is sliding its hectocotyle tentacle full of spermatophores into the palleal cavity of a half-consenting female. The television is opposite the double bed on which Farid, in company with Ursula, is carrying out a rather similar act, except that he has no intention at all of propagating his species. Ursula has lost her concentration, and cannot drag herself away from the commentary of the wildlife documentary.
She says to herself that, when you think about it, the design of the new pedestrian precinct is really rather nice.
Farid and Qiu. The camper has been parked on a dirt track, in the middle of some scrubland. Its bodywork seems to be shimmering in the hot air. On the lower bunk, Farid, chest against Qiu’s back, lubricates his member with a knob of pink jelly before trying to penetrate her youthful anus. Are you sure you really want this? he asks again. Panting, she nods. Her skin smells of chloride and musk. When you’re a pretty girl, Farid says to himself, then life is a bed of roses. At the same moment, Qiu is thinking the exact opposite.
A silly thought crosses his mind. This lubricant cream must surely have been tested on animals. If so, in what way?
Qiu and Ben. One little rectangle is still lit up and yellow in the facade of a cheap “Formule Un” hotel. In bedroom 215, the average calorie expenditure of a quarter of an hour’s lovemaking (seventy kcal) has been greatly exceeded. For almost half an hour, Qiu has had her supple thighs spread high in the air, while Ben has been entering her at a regular pace, performing what an observer might see as pull-ups. Qiu’s vagina has been burning sweetly for some time when Ben comes and finally collapses onto her.
Although overcome by emotion (so to speak), Qiu is suffocating beneath Ben’s weight and wonders if she will admit it right away or manage to wait a few seconds.
Ben and Mina. In the vast dressing room of a second-floor bedroom, Ben’s dinner suit trousers are round his knees as he leans against the wall. He’s lifted up Mina’s slight form, while her red lamé dress has been raised to her waist, thus revealing her hips. She entwines Ben in her arms and muscular thighs, and gently draws him in, propping her tiny buttocks on his powerful hands. “You Took Advantage of Me,” played by Art Tatum, rises up from the first floor and paces this slow penetration. Later, they will ask for each other’s first names again.
If she could quote Mark Twain, Mina would say that she has this much in common with Eve: going with the first man she claps eyes on.
Mina and Xavier. Act II of Tosca has barely started: Cavaradossi (Vincent Balmer, not at his best), tortured but thrilled by Napoleon’s victory at Marengo, is chanting a hymn to liberty. In the darkness of a box, stage left, Mina is squeezing Xavier’s stiff penis tightly, uncovering then covering his glans again and again. In a fit of inspiration, she slips his member into her glove and keeps up her toing and froing. Groaning, Xavier ejaculates into the leather and silk just as Tosca (Rose Singer, heartrending with emotion) stabs the ignoble Scarpia (Giovanni d’Arezzo, extraordinary, as ever).
Xavier wonders if they will be on first name terms as of now.
Xavier and Irma. Damn it and damn it again, Xavier just can’t get that song by the Frères Jacques out of his head, entitled “Buttocks,” which France-Culture broadcasted that morning: “There are fat ones / There are matte ones / There are black ones / There are slack ones / Buttocks, buttocks, buttocks.” He opens the waiting-room door, Irma stands up and, despite the protestations of the genuine patients, goes in, closes the bolt behind her, drops her woolen skirt, grabs Xavier’s hands and places them on her naked buttocks, just there. This has all taken ten seconds.
Yes indeed, Xavier thinks, my life has grown far simpler and my days more complicated since I met this girl.
Irma and Terence. Cunnilingus, then fellatio, then penetration, then orgasm (or not). . Terence thinks how right Foucault was: sexuality is quite monotonous. But as monotony and routine are not the same thing; today Terence just wants to stroke Irma off. He has dampened his middle finger with saliva to part her labia and is touching her gently and unhurriedly. He lays his head between her nipples erect, and listens to the beating of her heart. On the alert for an acceleration of her palpitations, he follows her orders, until she comes.
Oddly enough, he feels that they share most when he devotes himself just to her, and when they do not in fact make love.
Terence and Elvire. It could be a student’s bedroom: the mattress is on the floor, the sheets are creased, there are books scattered everywhere. Elvire has slipped beneath Terence, unbuckled his belt, lowered his trousers and boxer shorts, and is sucking his member, which is little by little filling her mouth. He lifts up her dress, parts her thighs, and his tongue licks a pussy he knows like the back of his hand. He elbows away a book. Unluckily, it falls open at page sixty-seven.
According to Leonardo de Vinci, a woman’s sex is proportionally three times larger than that of a cow. Fucking ridiculous, thinks Terence, proportional to what?
Elvire and Philippe. On a staircase in Rue des Saules in Montmartre, Elvire is explaining to Philippe, who is standing one step down from her, that the Kama Sutra distinguishes three types of kiss: nominal, moving, and touching. A nominal is just a simple kiss on the mouth. To demonstrate the moving one, Elvire presses Philippe’s lower lip between her lips and, while sucking on it, draws it into her mouth. Then, for the touching kiss, her tongue encounters Philippe’s lip, then she closes her eyes, and puts her two hands into his.
From nearby, “Philippe!” yells a woman who Philippe knows only too well, thus putting a stop to this demonstration.
Philippe and Anna. The forest is large and bleak. In the undergrowth, Philippe and Anna are lying on a blanket and making love. The weather is warm and fine. A niggling breeze starts to cool their naked buttocks. Philippe realizes that sex is probably like dancing the Charleston: when it’s really good, you just do it, without thinking about how you’re doing it.
After lovemaking, the first person who speaks always says something dumb. This time, it’s Philippe: “Anna, what was it you said again about the tiger and space?”
The stories
Stories with Anna
9, 34, 35, 60, 61, 86
Stories with Ben
9, 10, 49, 50, 79, 80
Stories with Chloe
10, 11, 38, 39, 72, 73
Stories with Dennis
11, 12, 53, 54, 65, 66
Stories with Elvire
12, 13, 42, 43, 84, 85
Stories with Farid
13, 14, 57, 58, 77, 78
Stories with Galata
14, 15, 46, 47, 70, 71
Stories with Harry
15, 16, 35, 36, 63, 64
Stories with Irma
16, 17, 50, 51, 82, 83
Stories with Johann
17, 18, 39, 40, 75, 76
Stories with Katia
18, 19, 54, 55, 68, 69
Stories with Laurent
19, 20, 43, 44, 61, 62
Stories with Mina
20, 21, 58, 59, 80, 81
Stories with Niels
21, 22, 47, 48, 73, 74
Storie
s with Oriane
22, 23, 36, 37, 66, 67
Stories with Philippe
23, 24, 51, 52, 85, 86
Stories with Qiu
24, 25, 40, 41, 78, 79
Stories with Rémy
25, 26, 55, 56, 71, 72
Stories with Sofia
26, 27, 44, 45, 64, 65
Stories with Terence
27, 28, 59, 60, 83, 84
Stories with Ursula
28, 29, 48, 49, 76, 77
Stories with Vincent
29, 30, 37, 38, 69, 70
Stories with Wendy
30, 31, 52, 53, 62, 63
Stories with Xavier
31, 32, 41, 42, 81, 82
Stories with Yolande
32, 33, 56, 57, 74, 75
Stories with Zach
33, 34, 45, 46, 67, 68
~ ~ ~
THE FLOOR OF THE SEXTINE CHAPEL
~ ~ ~
THE CEILING OF THE SEXTINE CHAPEL
About the author
HERVÉ LE TELLIER has been a member of the Oulipo since 1992. His most recent books to appear in English include the novels A Thousand Pearls (for a Thousand Pennies), as well as The Intervention of a Good Man, which was awarded the Prix du roman d’amour, and Enough About Love.
IAN MONK became a member of the Oulipo in 1988. His books include Family Archaeology and Writings for the Oulipo.