The Decadent Handbook

by Rowan Pelling

  Another woman plugged the hole with paper, a knowing one who did it the moment she entered the privy. I pushed it away directly she had left, she grunted much, and was a long time there.

  Then I saw the cunts of an English mother and four daughters, just as the train was ready to go. They had from what they said been eating and only just came in time. The girls looked from fourteen to twenty years of age, the mother not forty.

  Luckily some one before must have fouled the seat. The mother entered first with the youngest. ‘Stop dear,’ said she in a nice quiet voice, ‘the seat is filthy.’ She opened the door, put her head out, and I expect called the woman. Returning, ‘Get on to the seat, dear.’ ‘How Mamma?’ ‘I’ll show you,’ and she got up, but daintily hid her limbs from her child. ‘Look the other way dear.’ The girl turned her back, and then she pulled up her clothes, and I saw the maternal quim and piddle. Then she helped the girl up. ‘I’ll tell Clara what to do,’ said the mother, ‘take care of your clothes dear,’ and she left the privy. The girl did take care, and showed her nice little bum and unfledged cunt charmingly. Piss only again thank God.

  The other girls entered afterwards. Each smiled as she mounted. Would they have smiled, had they known my eye was so near their bum-holes? Piddle only. Then the fourth followed and piddled. The train moved off, directly they had left.

  The care-taker soon came round to the shed. I told her all, talked baudy, soon at her I went, we fucked, and after our privates had separated we talked. There would not be another train for some hours, she usually went home to dinner, any one could go to the closets then without paying. I wanted to go home with her, but she refused it. She would be there at *** o’clock, an hour before the *** p.m. train. Yes on her honour. I gave her a louis. ‘How good you are,’ said she. She was surprised. I had promised her nothing for fucking her. We both wanted that, and therefore did it, – that is all.

  I went to my hotel, eat and drank, and before the time, let myself into the shed with a key she had given me. She came back early, and dropped her eyes. She was a stout woman with large waist and haunches, a sturdy, plump, well-fed peasant with good eyes, and bronzed cheeks, a good bit of flesh for a fuck. I wonder how I had cheek to attack her for all that. Now however I had felt her hard buttocks, and in my randiness her cunt had seemed divine. I had whilst waiting, pulled down a dusty, long, cushioned seat from the miscellaneous heap of things, and we sat down on it. I began feeling her. ‘Let me see your cunt.’ ‘Haven’t you seen enough women’s?’ ‘No I must see yours.’ ‘Tell me about the two girls again, – I think I know them,’ she said. On being asked I told her, and a lot more. ‘Que vous êtes méchant, you men, – do you so like looking at women when they are doing caca?’ ‘No I did not, – I could not bear it, but their thighs, their lovely round bums, their cunts, anything to see those parts, – I will see yours,’ I got her to stand up; and then with the modesty like that of a newly-married woman permitting her husband, she let me see. It was not a bit in the manner of a harlot. I looked at her wet quim in the dim light, and soon we fucked again.

  Then we questioned each other. What she had to say was soon told. Her husband had for many years held his post, he was here, there, and everywhere, and came home once a week if lucky, but generally once in ten days, and then had an entire day to himself. She had the post of privy-opener given her, because of her husband, and made more money than he did though only in pennies. It would be a good deal more now, if they let her have it all, for there would be more trains, but they would divide it, for there were to be closets on both sides. ‘Then you only get fucked (not mincing words now), once in ten days.’ ‘That’s about it,’ said she laughing. ‘You long for him to come home?’ ‘That’s true.’ Just then we heard some one in the privy. I looked, she would not, and went off with a moistened quim to attend to the people. A train was coming in.

  Back came she afterwards, and we talked for two hours. My cock was ready. I laid her on the form, and straddling across the seat, and holding her legs up across my arms, entered her quim. But she nearly fell off the seat, it was so narrow; so again up against the wood-work, we copulated. She was well grown, so it was not difficult. She took to the fucking, as if I had a right to it, and she liked it, but I always disliked uprighters.

  Again we sat down and talked. ‘You won’t want your husband now.’ ‘He comes home to-morrow,’ and she showed me a little scrap of dirty writing-paper with, ‘On Tuesday’ written on it, and a mark at the bottom with a date. ‘That’s his mark,’ said she, ‘he can’t write. I’ve been frightened to-day, for sometimes he comes without writing, – I’m here to meet him.’ We then kissed each other. ‘You are very handsome,’ she said. ‘You are beautiful,’ said I. ‘Am I really?’ ‘Yes, and fuck divinely.’ ‘Do I really?’ said she in a most flattered manner.

  ‘Directly he comes he fucks you here?’ ‘He’s never been in here in his life, but he makes love directly he gets into our rooms,’ she replied in a quiet tone, as if she’d been telling a doctor her ailments. Still we sat and talked. The shed had been only built for storing things quite temporarily, the privy was for the Chef, but it had not been used by any one for some time. The hole in the wood could not have been there long. How made, she knew not. She must have noticed it, had it been there long, for she washed the seats continually. Holes were often made by men in the sides next to the women’s closets, they bored holes to look at the women, she wondered ‘pourquoi mon Dieu,’ why they wanted to see when they were doing their nastiness?

  Again through the peep-hole I saw such a nasty, dirty, frowsy, beshitten backside, and the chemise of an oldish-rabbit-arsed female, that a disgust which had been gradually intensifying, made me indifferent to seeing any more, and females came and went without my even looking. I now sat on the cushioned though dirty form comfortably (before I could only sit on the privy-seat), waiting for the privy-woman to come back. But curiosity still got the better of me. An express train came in with English and Americans, and I looked. People who come by train are always in a hurry, sometimes they have wanted to ease themselves an hour or more, and then let fly before almost they get their breeches down, or their petticoats up, very often indeed they let fly at random over the seat. Then those following them finding the seat dirty, mount it to avoid fouling their clothes.

  ‘It’s beastly,’ I heard in a high pitched American tone. Two nice, young, shortish girls, were there. ‘Let’s go to the next one.’ ‘There is some one there, – there is not time, – get on the seat.’ Up got the girl with her face towards me. ‘Not so Fanny, – turn round stupid.’ ‘I can’t, – this will do,’ said Fanny, and pissed out of a dear little cunt covered with lightish brown hair, set in delicious buttocks. I put my eye close to the hole, and the piddle spashed into it, for she peed on to the back of the seat, and how she wanted it! ‘Make haste Fanny.’ ‘Oh! I did want so, – I’ve not done it all day. Then up got the other in other fashion, close to my peep-hole, and watered! In shape of bum, thigh, and cunt the two were as like as two pins, pretty, fleshy little bums, round little thighs, plump as a partridge. I was so lewd I could scarcely resist a desire to call out to them, and say I had seen their charms. The last one turned round when she had done, and got down. ‘Oh!’ said she, ‘there is a hole in the wall.’ ‘Oh! if –’ said the other. That was all I heard, for they quitted the privy like lightning, putting their heads together, and lowering their voices to a mumble, and talking earnestly. Afterwards when the train had left, back came the keeper to me, and said the young ladies had told her of the hole.

  She begged me not to go there the next day, for her husband might arrive by any train; but I did, and had her. I dined at the hotel, and at night having nothing better to do, strolled towards the station smoking a cigar. – The attraction of cunt I suppose did it. She had said that she left directly after a particular train, and some other woman took her place for night-work. There she was, – no her husband could not arrive now till next morning. Let me go home wit
h her, on no account would she. Between the station and the town were some woods being made into public gardens. Walking there against her will and in the dark, I talked lewdness to my heart’s content, and at length had her with her back up against a tree. ‘Lay down, – it’s quite dry,’ said I, and on some coarse sort of dryish herbage, – I could not see what – I fucked for the last time and on the top of her. We got up whispering adieu, when we saw dimly a man and woman who began the game. She was scared ‘Let me go, and you stay,’ said she. Just then their vigorous love-making made a great noise. Off she went, I in a second or two followed and overtook her. ‘C’est une sale putain,’ said she, ‘she has commenced coming here of a night to meet men going to the station – it is disgraceful, – I shall inform the Chef to-morrow.’ Then the closet-keeper kissed me, and went off with her cunt wet, and a Napoleon which I insisted on her accepting.

  The next morning I left A***, but could not keep my promise, and went to her at the station. The blood rushed into her face, she looked scared, and shook her head seemingly in a funk, and I departed by the next train.

  I have often wondered at the affair, and at that woman. Had she been a whore? Did she in her husband’s absence usually have a bit of illicit cock? My impression is that she was steady and honest; that I caught her just when she was hot-blooded, that my doings were so baudy, that her lust was roused, and so she was helpless at my first attempt, and then having slipped, thought she might as well have all the pleasure she could. She had no children. French women don’t see so much harm in an outside fuck or so. I had promised her no money, had offered no inducement whatever but my prick. It was lust which stirred lust, and we gratified each other. What more natural?

  The adventure left me in an unpleasant state of mind, for I could not bear at that time anything connected with the bum-hole. With women, if I thought of that orifice, it destroyed voluptuous associations. Now I could not look at the prettiest woman without thinking of her shitting and farting. The anus came into my mind when dancing, dining, or talking and whether randy or not; and when the tingling in my prick made me look, and long for a woman, thinking what a leg she had, what thighs and quim perhaps, my mind went to her bum-hole spite of myself. I was punished heavily for my peeping. It was a year or two before my mind recovered its balance, and I was able to think of their sexual organ and its beauty and convenience without reference to its unpleasant neighbour!

  Fast-Food and Fellatio

  The Quest for Houellebecq

  Christopher Moore

  Decadence in Paris, eh? Should be a breeze. But I’m scuppered. The dictionary reckons decadence is ‘refined aestheticism, artifice, and the quest for new sensations.’ In my Anglo-Saxon mind, twenty minutes in the Louvre followed by ciggies over a literary journal covers 66.6% of that. 100% if the coffee’s any good. My idea of decadence is, I suspect, the same as that of many of my compatriots: a loose coalition of sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll, of the kind unavailable in London. I’ve stumbled upon crones bearing time-mottled thigh at Strasbourg St Denis. I’ve bought aspirin and dried basil looking for pills and weed on Grands Boulevards. But for a tourist, even one who lives here, my Paris, côté débauche, might as well be Pontefract.

  There’s no shame in resorting to a guide book. Especially when its genital humour and deconstructionist observations had me laughing like a loony on the Victoria Line. Well the former anyway, the latter hit outside the intellectual ballpark of a mere rosbif brought up on Tesco and Jeremy Paxman. So, Michel Houellebecq, I dedicate this tour of the French capital to you. Or more specifically, to following in the footsteps of Michel and Bruno, the half-brothers in your book Atomised. I point out that I use Atomised, the J’ai lu (think Borders bargain-bin) edition to be precise, purely for location. And, of course, to seek out Bruno, a hard-drinking libertine whose life follows the classical model: man seeks world class fellatio, man finds world class fellatio, man falls in love with she who provided, provider dies following bizarre coital accident at swingers’ haunt Chris et Manu, man sees out days in mental asylum. But first I head to the 15th arrondissement in search of Michel. Before detailing the ideal way to clone the human race, then topping himself in rural Ireland, Bruno’s straightlaced alter ego lived in Rue Frémicourt.

  On this unremarkable street, a Club Med sign hovers over a billboard offering ‘relaxation … Chinese and African,’ (€30). Inside, writhing flesh in lycra gets sweaty to techno. A good start, depending on your reading. Alas, it’s a gym full of off-duty management consultants treading mill. One of these identikit neo-humans, in a T-shirt bearing the words team success, sneers out disapprovingly as I sneer in. If rue Frémicourt was ever decadent, it’s now grown up and works a 50-hour-week – the leave accrued over the 35-hour standard affording bi-annual visits to the beaches of Tunisia. It probably doesn’t buy dog vids, go to swingers bars or expose itself in public toilets.

  On to Monoprix – where Michel was a loyal customer. According to MH: ‘after a few years of work, sexual desire disappears … people turn their attention to food and drink.’ But there’s no lost libido at the rue de Grenelle branch. If you’re into easy anti-capitalism, the stars of this well-heeled quartier are getting jiggy at a natives and colonialists swingers night. I loiter at the fruit bar, where uniformed black people serve the produce of fifteen nations to panting white people. Much of it seems to come from UN-designated problem zones – they’ve even shipped pineapples from the Ivory Coast. The British contribute a tin of corned beef (€1.69). Moving silently among the heaving flesh, I spot a fifty-something Catherine Deneuvea-like in the desserts gourmands section. She coaxes a porno nail up and down a ‘pot de crème’ (€2.29). If that’s not mutated desire, I don’t know what is. Elsewhere a middle-aged gent groans into his camel coat as he fingers a shrink-wrapped salmon steak haché (price unmarked). He’s a dead-ringer for Poirot (David Suchet, thankfully, not Peter Ustinov – but relief is always relative). A kind punter clocks that I’m a bit nervous on my first visit and points out the booze. I buy a four-pack of Vieux Papes (€5.99) – France’s premier wine cum paint-stripper. I’ve often made the case that drinking ‘The Pape,’ is decadent, it has never been upheld. To stop myself feeling dirty, I throw in some UNICEF fruit juice before buttoning-up and hitting the street.

  Time now, for the unpromising task of Bruno’s bulimia-ridden youth. Fast-food and faster regurgitation in the fifth arrondissement don’t appeal, but it’s in the script. A hot dog gobbled on rue Gay Lussac, I head to the Tunisian patisserie on rue de la Harpe. Here I learn that Czech tourists can eat more baklava than I can. It’s just a pre-cursor to the leg’s highlight, though: McDonald’s on Boulevard St Germain, surely a veritable repository of Houellebecqian theatre. No. The clientele is standard issue: monkeys in Nike, Japanese tourists, serial killers. There are a couple of breaks from the norm. Some bored-looking Sorbonne parents feed their spotty offspring. In the corner, a man of indeterminate age and nationality, dressed entirely in tennis casual, ploughs intently through five cheeseburgers and a bottle of Perrier. I start to worry, it took Bruno most of his adult life to get from fast-food to fellatio, I’ve got about six hours. ‘It’s OK,’ I tell myself, this bit of the trip was always just a mood thing. Nevertheless, I decide to get going on the The Pape, which is bearable heavily iced and through a straw. Tennis man finishes his cow and heads for the gents,The Pape takes me in his wake.

  Standing next to tennis man I obey the rules: no talking, no peeking, get the job done. It seems the rules don’t wash here. He starts to blather. But this isn’t French. In fact it’s no recognisable European language. Before I know it, he’s done the job but is showing no signs of putting it away. He’s still blathering and, by now, starting to grin inanely. He moves towards me and I’m now in no doubt he wants me to see his tool. I mutter something about Ivan Lendl and head for daylight. I’m unsettled but buoyed. I could have seriously lost my way after that shoddy consumerism as care-free sex analogy in Monoprix. But now somebody has s
hown me his cock in McDonald’s.

  Apologies are due to big M.H. here. I couldn’t find the adult cinema of Bruno’s youth, Le Latin. That aspect of my trip will lead inevitably to Pigalle, but for now there’s an opportunity to catch-up with some true decadents on the way north. They drink copiously, sleep around, go to underground parties, expose themselves in public and still turn up to work seven days a week. Nowhere does tramps like Paris. There’s none of the money-for-glue sleaze of London, none of the juggler-ethos of Barcelona. These guys are trousers-held-up-with rope, ruddy-faced, bulbous-nosed alcoholics. And this evening I am among them, for their tipple of choice is The Pape.

  Night falls as I arrive chez Bruno, rue Rodier in the 9th arrondissement. The view hones onto Paris’s only skyscraper at Montparnasse. There are plenty of those ubiquitous shops where you can sate all your scatter cushion needs, but are fucked if you want a pint of milk and a sack of spuds. You get the impression that, when rue de Rodier was young, it probably didn’t buy dog vids, go to swingers bars or expose itself in public. But it probably had friends who did. It’s starting to rain and a little dog plays in a puddle. I’ve always hated little dogs. I find it amazing that well-to-do Parisians, otherwise adept at hiding their job in asset management behind an artily-draped scarf, should choose as the ultimate accessory a squawking, shitting rat on a rope.

  It’s a question I’m pondering as I reach Boulevard de Rochechouart: ‘a rotten area,’ according to bourgeois Parisians. A multicultural one in Anglo parlance. And a haven of whoring right on Bruno’s doorstep. I dive into my next destination where it becomes Boulevard de Clichy. The assistant, a porno Catherine Deneuve, runs a cracked nail down her Danone crème chocolat (€1.99 for four in the Monoprix next door). She’s in a gold spandex miniskirt and probably past sixty. With a little dog and an artily-draped scarf she could pass for fifty-eight. Porno shop certainly does what it says on the tin, on VHS and DVD. A few titles stand out: I fist my aunt (€19.99), She’s got a boner (€14.99). One leaps out: It’s not just my dog (€24.99). And from the footage captured on the cover of this challenging work, it certainly isn’t. I look at the spandex, then back at the DVD. I feel sick. It could just be the The Pape, a second bottle is volatile sherpa.