That’s what I remember from the first time: it was in Barcelona, in that hotel room with a rancid smell, where I had been dragged by two Russian sailors from Novorossisk, who were wandering, like me, in the alleyways of the Barrio Chino. We had drunk too much, as if each of us wanted to lose some of our life in that bad drunken state. We made love, the three of us. They rode me, shot all over me, soiled me with sperm and piss. Dawn surprised us, limbs entwined, in sheets soaked with urine. My teeth were chattering, my lips and tongue swollen from far too many bites, a taste of salt and ashes in my mouth, too much sperm swallowed. I was shaking.
It was at that precise time, in that bleak light of early morning, the time for ultimate confessions, that one of the sailors mentioned the man from Albuquerque. I realized immediately that I had to find him. That now my life had meaning. I had to reach him, the elusive man, whatever the cost. He was a cloud pushed by the wind, a stench; he brushed against the black walls of warehouses, a vague silhouette in the fog drowning the pier, barely alive, barely real. We were the same, he and I.
I wasn’t always like that. I was married to a powerful man, wealthy, very wealthy and influential. I was an ornament in his house, I was refused nothing. In exchange I had an obligation: to know how to behave, to spare my husband the least scandal. I loved another man. It was a passion approaching madness. Under the pretext of being looked after, I demanded to be split up. In reality, it was to be even closer to the object of my desire. That lover taught me the mysteries of my body, he pulled my body apart, he offered me to others, he fucked me alive and dead. I came for him, in front of him, I came because of him, he crucified me in anticipation of his goodwill . . . Then death took him away from me. For days and nights I howled like an animal for its food – my lover’s flesh, which I would never taste again. My husband offered to help me. I started to hate him. I bought my freedom for the price of my silence and total disappearance. As a result of his upbringing, if not fear that I would prostitute myself in order to survive, his ruthless generosity forced him to provide for my needs. I accepted that condition, for I was free then to take all the men I wanted without thinking about money. I would give my bush, my tuft to eat to anybody I fancied, and if I felt the desire, I would pay – with the money of the man whose name I bear – rough men who, however, don’t ask for anything other than fucking the woman who offers herself asking nothing in return. At the beginning I sought those men at the gates of factories, the men who worked by night. I waited for them in the early morning, I chose one at random. Some were frightened by my offer. The money scared them, they feared a devious trick. Others, fortunately, agreed to make the most of that godsend. They allowed me to slip my hand into their fly, forage around until I pulled out their naked penis, which I masturbated until it went stiff. Standing against the factory wall, I let them work me, but none managed to calm my fury. Like a crazy bitch, from my throat sprang the growls of a trapped animal. I ordered: “Deeper, deeper, smash me!” Then, with a nasty laugh: “Are you scared? Are you scared I’ll swallow you and your prick, and your balls, and all your shit? Scared I will gulp you down, drain you of your blood, drain you of your life? Fuck you! Go deeper, deeper than that! Do as I say!” They did their best. I could see in their eyes desire mixed with fear in the face of such rage. In the end I found those men too servile; they stank of machine grease and obedience. I was aiming for something else. Men of another consistency – but their bodies always had to be dirty and their cocks had to stink – men whose language I would not understand and who would not hear my words, men coming from the four corners of the earth, with no home, no homeland, like myself. I knew I would find them in ports. Makeshift crews, they arrive from every part of the world, all races mixed, embarked for a mere pittance of a wage on tankers so decrepit that no repairs can save those floating monstrosities from disaster. Indians, Malaysians, Yemenites, they feed on spicy stews and raw onions; they have foul breath and their sweat reeks. It’s them I want, them I need.
So I left. Gibraltar, Tangier, Alexandria and then, as I said, Barcelona and the two sailors from Novorossisk . . .
I went up north, ready to scour all the ports on the Baltic. I ended up in Hamburg. In the evening, I wandered in Sankt Pauli. Girls in their windows, boxed in tackiness, with an air of decent housewives displaying their asses. Not one worth fucking, but men were there, strolling about, eyeing them. My God, they looked like first communicants walking slowly to the altar to receive the host! Monumental hard-ons because that one shakes her tits under their noses and they imagine themselves stuffing their pricks in the holy of holies! You bet they haven’t grown one inch since the time when, as adolescents, they shut themselves in the toilet to jerk off out of sight of their mommy’s eyes! Men’s desire disgusts me.
It was certainly not in those alleyways with no dark corners, where the gaudy pink neons filter, that I was going to meet the man from Albuquerque. It was down to the wharves I had to go . . . I hung about between the angular shadows of the container stacks waiting to be loaded. I moved toward the ship I thought was the most rotten, an old tub with the look of a rusty scrap heap. I took the gangway that hadn’t been lifted, a useless precaution anyway. Where could they go, the crew, those poor guys with no papers, with no money? I hadn’t walked three steps onto the deck when a voice came out of the shadows to stop me.
“What the hell are you doing here?”
I answered:
“I’m looking for men.”
“Men. What for?”
“For fucking.”
I heard him sneer and saw him come toward me. I thought he must be the captain.
“You’re in the wrong place. Do you know what the men down there look like? For three weeks, since we berthed, their wages haven’t arrived. There’s nothing to take here, fuck off!”
“You’ve got it wrong. I’m the one who pays.”
He grabbed me by the sleeve, and there I was, in what must have been the steward’s room. He and I sat in front of a glass of bad whiskey.
“So then, you are the one who pays? Tell me more.”
I told the captain the woman I had been before, before knowing myself, before knowing who I was. I talked about the deceased lover who had taught me to understand who I was. I told him about my taste for filth and abjection. That what would seem a descent to hell in the eyes of the uninitiated was for me the path to the absolute. That I was not crazy. That I had chosen and that I had to go all the way, till the end of what I had decided to accomplish. And that it was for that reason I was looking for the man from Albuquerque.
The captain remained silent for a moment before blurting out:
“Port Sudan, in a month’s time.”
He showed me how to gain access to the holds. As I went in, I had difficulty discerning the dozen men sleeping on the bare floor. I slipped between them. The heat was stifling. The first body my hand encountered was half-naked and sweaty. I touched the damp torso and the sleeper woke up, muttering in an incomprehensible tongue. I quieted him by placing my mouth on his. His breath was repugnant and my tongue plunged into a cesspool. At the same time I undressed and lay down on top of him. I became an undulating reptile. My belly rubbed against his and when I felt the hard swollen penis, I undid the man’s sarong and, opening my thighs, I violently forced his penis inside me. There was a long moan, like a powerful note on the barely audible chords of the breath of the other sleeping sailors. My movements became more rapid, more violent, to make the man cry louder and wake up his companions. The first to wake up lit a hurricane lamp and moved closer. I beckoned him to come even closer. I undid the belt that held up his rough cotton trousers, I took his penis in my mouth. I started to suck him as if I was going to draw out the substance in his balls. The one I was riding let out an anguished rattle and I felt he was coming with all the power of a male deprived of women for ages. All the others were now crowding around the three of us. Each wanted his turn, now. I gave myself to all. I offered them my cunt, my lips, the furrow betwee
n my breasts, my armpits, my hair, all the places in my body where their come could pour out. I think they were laughing and crying at the same time. It lasted quite a while. Dawn was already breaking. Each part of my flesh was pain and pleasure at the same time, as if I had just gone up the Via Dolorosa on my knees with a crown of thorns on my forehead and the weight of the cross on my back. Transfiguration through abasement, with voluntary suffering. Before coming out into the open air, I threw them a bundle of banknotes, which the men rushed for, with the greediness of famished dogs.
As I walked down the wharf where the first dockers were already at work, I heard the voice of the captain shouting:
“You’re really going there?”
I nodded. He added:
“Perhaps we’ll see each other again!”
We were too far apart for him to hear my reply:
“I doubt it very much.”
He must have seen, though, that I was smiling at him. I knew that was the image he would keep of me.
Port Sudan. When I disembarked, I was challenged immediately by a native in uniform who was probably acting as harbormaster, customs officer, and commissioner, the symbol of all authorities. He was fat and sweating heavily under his cap. The air was a furnace, no relief to be expected from the sea, no sea breeze, earth and water an inferno. I followed the representative of the law into a shack used as an office, where the blades of a decrepit fan stirred the fire, no more. He wanted to know the purpose of my visit.
“I’ve come to wait for a friend.”
He appraised me suspiciously, the same way he had examined my papers earlier.
“I keep your passport,” he stated in bad English. “You come get it when friend here.”
Used to all sorts of traffic, he was calculating what gains he could obtain for himself from my presence. It was he who found me a place to stay. In a rickety jeep driven at breakneck speed, he took me to an old woman who spoke only Dinka. The house comprised two rooms. I would occupy the one at the back, the old woman’s bedroom.
I lay down, naked, on what was nothing more than a litter stinking of rags and the sour smell of old people. I was exhausted, like someone who has just accomplished the final stage of a race. Sleep! . . . Between my half-closed eyelids, I caught sight of a hand pulling the curtain that was supposed to give some intimacy to my room. I saw the eyes of my landlady, full of curiosity, a black and greedy look whose only intelligence was that of an animal, the eyes of a rat. She came closer, attracted by my nudity, and her bony hand traced the whole surface of my skin. I was too shattered to push that hand away. The caress was soothing, in a way. The fingers lingered on the fleece of my pubis, appreciating its abundance and thickness, then they plunged inside me, digging into my depths, exploring both orifices. It was the hand of an expert who knew what it was to finger a woman, and pleasure rose in me until the combustion of orgasm. The old woman lifted her fingers to her nostrils, sniffing the traces of her exploration. She looked like she was inhaling a delicious perfume whose fragrance she had herself lost a long time ago.
How long did I sleep? When I woke up night had fallen. The old woman and I shared a stew she had prepared. Then, through a series of signs, she explained that she was going out, that she would be back soon, and that I should wait for her. I stood on the doorstep. The sky was nothing but a huge, jet black cavity dotted with stars, an oppressive cover imprisoning each portion of that godforsaken place. I realized that if there was a place where I could find the man from Albuquerque, it was Port Sudan, and nowhere else. One only lands here to run aground or die a slow death. Here everything is wrecked: men and ships.
The old woman came back, as she’d said she would. She had brought with her an adolescent boy whose eyes were lined with kohl – the eyes of a gazelle – a mouth with thick lips, and the skin of a girl. I said to the old woman, no, I was not interested. But she got upset, took me by force back to my room. She threw herself backward onto the bed, lifted her skirt, and, legs spread wide, opened the edges of her cunt and forced me to look. In place of the clitoris there was a long scar, the mark of excision. No need to speak Dinka to catch what the old woman told me:
“You’re lucky, my girl, to possess that bit of flesh that provides woman with a pleasure even more intense than the one given by the bludgeons of men. It’s your pleasure, not that of the male, so enjoy it!”
I let the ephebe with painted eyes put his head between my legs. His tongue came to get me, first pointed and wriggling like a lizard’s tail, then wide and flabby – the tongue of a licker savoring his favorite dish with wet lapping noises. Finally the thick-lipped mouth caught me, sucked me in. I felt my clitoris swelling, my whole body condensed into that single growth, there where the alpha and omega of my woman’s desire resided. I became dizzy. I grabbed the frizzy hair with both hands to make sure he wouldn’t escape, his mouth wouldn’t leave me before I fell back disheveled and shattered. The orgasm left me burning and unsatisfied. I wanted the penis of my lover, I made signs that he should penetrate me. That was when the old woman burst into laughter and lifted the young man’s gandoura, showing me that he had been emasculated. They both laughed, the madame and the ephebe, as if they had played a trick on me in their own way. Afterward, they asked me to pay them, as was only right.
On the third evening the commissioner came to fetch me.
“I think your friend arrived. You want I take you to him?”
I didn’t even ask how he knew that it was precisely that man I was waiting for. I climbed into the jeep and we drove in the direction of the port. The moon was full and its light, a phosphorescent lactation, radiated the sea, changing it to mercury. At the far end of the docks, a few warehouses still stood, the last remnants of a time when Port Sudan had countless fleets mooring there. The jeep stopped in front of the last shed. A man was there. He walked toward me. At first I saw only his teeth, gleaming like snow, brightened by the whiteness of the moon. The face had no outlines. It was as if he wanted to melt in what was still blurred, in that nocturnal part that the reflections of the moon hadn’t been able to reach. The deep voice made me bet the man was handsome. One couldn’t imagine ugliness associated with that voice.
“I know you’re looking for me. In fact I was told a while ago, and I was wondering where we would finally meet.”
As he pronounced those last words with an ironic smile I saw his teeth, so white in his carnassial mouth. He took his time, pulled a cigarillo from his shirt pocket, and lit it. The acrid smell of tobacco suited him. His voice grew louder:
“I know you’re looking for me. But what I don’t know is why.”
I answered simply:
“Snuff movies.”
“You’re a client? You need that to come?”
“It’s not what you think.”
The voice spoke with a falsely innocent tone. It was a way to make fun of me.
“But I don’t think anything! And I don’t care what others think! It’s none of my business.”
“I’m not a client. I just want to be the next.”
There was silence. The man threw down his cigarillo. He took his time to crush the stump.
“I never do it with women. A question of principles. I work with men perfectly aware of what to expect. Most have no more than six months to live. Tuberculosis or that type of shit . . . Their life is not worth more than that of a dead dog. They think that with all the dough they’re going to earn, they can provide their family with a living, back here. You see, those men agree. It’s a proper contract. I don’t know what you are looking for exactly.”
I explained what I was looking for. The stigmata on my body, which were nothing but purification, the come of all those men I had taken and who had come on my belly, breasts, and face, and which was like spit on Christ’s face. Redemption, redemption! The martyr had to reach her end, like Christ crucified. Then I would finally be freed, liberated from the weight of my organs, saved from suffering. I wanted that ultimate orgasm and I wanted him to obtain
it for me.
“Go home! I’ll come tomorrow night and let you know.”
All the next day I waited like a fiancée on the eve of her wedding. The next night he was there. He came into the bedroom. I undressed, and, once naked, I undressed him. His skin was like amber, smooth and golden. I ran my tongue over his torso to get the taste of that skin. He took my breasts in his hands to hold me captive. I knew that this first approach sealed the pact and that he had accepted what I had asked of him. I knelt in front of him, religiously, for my mouth to take his penis. I didn’t want to hurry anything. I wanted that night to become a bountiful eternity.
With incredible slowness I swallowed the man! He had taken my head in his hands to transmit the rhythm he wanted to my movements. There was no impatience in our gestures. With infinite gentleness I came out to the tip, for it was the most vulnerable spot – there, the envelope is so thin that the flesh appears in all its transparency.
“Come here,” he murmured.
He hauled me up. I wound my legs around his loins, my arms around his neck, and he plunged inside. For him I weighed no more than a small child. Again he set the pace of the ebb and flow. So strong, so manly, yet so attentive to my pleasure, as if it was the only thing that was important to him. When he realized, from the paleness of my face and the violence of my moans, that I was about to reach orgasm . . . he allowed himself to ejaculate, so that we came together.
Rolled into a ball, I remained gasping on the floor while he got dressed. He wrapped me in the old woman’s sheet and carried me out to the jeep. I knew where he was taking me. Still in his arms I crossed the threshold of the shed, like a bride. Was it not the case after all, tonight, of celebrating a barbaric wedding?
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