The Decadent Handbook

by Rowan Pelling

  Mary looks at the dishes paraded before her. She sniffs. ‘Ugh. Garlic,’ she grimaces. She puts up her hand to indicate revulsion and refusal. Tony accepts some of the veal but nothing else. He’s not sure what any of the rest of it is and, anyway, he never has much of an appetite after a flight.

  A pianist from the Accademia di San Rocco arrives and sits at the Fazioli grand piano in the salone just off the terrace. She plays the last movement of Schubert’s Sonata in D Major. The music seeps in through the open doors of the room. The waiter bows his head in reverence. Tony gets up and closes the doors. He can’t concentrate on the bloody news with that noise going on.

  Mary and Tony sit wordlessly. Tony chews; Mary picks at the crust of her roll.

  Finally, when the news is over, Tony puts the TV on mute and announces that he thinks this is getting silly and that they should ring Diana.

  ‘Fine,’ says Mary eagerly.

  They dial Diana’s number. ‘Hi Diana,’ says Tony. ‘Look, Diana,’ he says, ‘this isn’t going very well. Could I just put my mobile on speaker phone and you just stay on line for a bit?’

  ‘OK, of course, I’m here for you.’

  Mary and Tony both sigh with relief.

  Tony returns to his supper.

  ‘How is it?’ Mary asks politely.

  ‘How’s what?’ Tony asks desperately. Jesus, not another analysis of his existential state, he prays, please God no.

  ‘The food.’

  ‘So so. Aren’t you going to have anything?’

  ‘I’m finishing this cigarette first.’

  ‘Yes, I noticed that.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean? Is this the prelude to another lecture about smoking? Because I don’t think I could handle that right now, I really don’t!’ Mary shrieks.

  ‘You see, Diana – even the most trivial comment is misinterpreted.’

  ‘Let her express herself, Tony,’ Diana advises calmly over the airwaves.

  ‘Is this part of her process?’ Tony asks in a thin, tired voice.

  ‘Yes, Tony, it is,’ says Diana.

  ‘OK,’ he whispers meekly.

  ‘The fact is,’ Mary continues loudly, ‘I can’t stop thinking about the langoustine I had on the plane. It was definitely off, I could taste it, I could smell it, and I think that it may have been a metaphor for my marriage. That too is off, over.’

  ‘OK, Mary, this is good,’ Diana says reassuringly. ‘You’re getting in touch with your anger. That’s good.’

  ‘No, it’s not! You know I can’t do anger without you here, Diana,’ Mary trembles.

  ‘I know that,’ says Diana.

  There is a knock at the door. When the waiter opens it there is Diana.

  ‘Diana!!’ Mary and Tony both cry as they rush over to embrace her, their bodies colliding spontaneously against each other for the first time in years.

  ‘I thought I’d better come to support you in case things got really tough so – here I am.’

  ‘Marvellous!’ Tony beams. ‘Waiter!’ he instructs, ‘bring another place setting!’

  ‘No,’ says Diana firmly, ‘no, I won’t actually sit with you, I’ll just sit near you, so you know that I’m here, so you’ve got the confidence to really be yourselves.’ Diana goes over to a low armchair at the edge of the room.

  ‘Oh. OK,’ Mary and Tony both mumble in disappointment. Dejectedly, they walk back to their seats.

  The waiter brings a bottle of Vin Santo and cheeses and desserts. Quartirolo Lombardo, Robiola di Roccaverano, Provolone Val Padana. Zabaione, Tiramisu, Panna Cotta, Amaretti, Cioccolatini con Aceto Balsamico di Modena. Tony takes one of the biscuits but it’s terribly dry, nothing like Digestives. Mary pings her finger against her cut-crystal glass. Eventually the handsome waiter clears the plates of uneaten food away. ‘Non è piaciuto?’ he asks them both.

  ‘What did he say?’ Mary asks.

  ‘God knows,’ says Tony. Why should he care what the waiter has said?

  *

  It’s time for bed. Tony and Mary undress and put on their pyjamas. Diana sits quietly on the chair at the foot of the bed.

  ‘Thank you for being here,’ says Tony humbly.

  ‘No problem,’ says Diana. ‘Use me as you need me.’

  ‘Fine,’ says Mary gratefully.

  Mary and Tony get into bed. Tony reads The Financial Times, The Investors Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal and Money Week. Mary watches Casablanca on TV and orders a new Fendi handbag from the internet on her laptop. There is a reproduction in oil of Lorenzo Lotto’s ‘St Catherine’ on the wall. The saint is holding her head at an irritating angle. Mary gets up and takes the painting down.

  Eventually Tony feels sleepy and turns out the light. Mary nods off at the bit where things get emotional in the film.

  *

  Diana takes off all her clothes and walks out onto the terrace. She feels the terracotta stone still warm with the heat of the day. She feels it glowing, vibrating under her feet. The waiter comes and takes her in his arms and kisses her. He massages Vin Santo into her breasts; he wipes Zabaione down the length of her back and licks it off. He crams Carpaccio into her mouth and eats it out of her. He wipes ripe figs across her thighs, and smears Panna Cotta up between her legs then devours it all.

  *

  The next morning Mary and Tony wake up. Diana is there, awake, in her chair. Tony has an erection. He says to Diana, ‘I had an amazing dream in the night.’

  ‘Dreams are good,’ Diana says.

  He turns to Mary. ‘Shall we take a boat to the islands today? There’s the cathedral of Santa Maria Assunta on Torcello which is a thousand years old.’

  ‘Jesus, Tony,’ says Mary, ‘I don’t think I can be bothered, not in this heat.’

  ‘Yes. Maybe you’re right,’ he says. He reaches for the phone to order breakfast and then to ring the office in London.

  Diana smiles.

  Decadent Sex

  Forbidden Fruit

  Elizabeth Speller

  The defining moment of my life was when Jeremy Naismith-Green’s father put his tongue in my mouth. Never mind that he was egged on by Jeremy, his nasty little brother Tom and my cousin timing us with a stop-watch (in those days he timed everything: the length it took him to pee, to bicycle to the post box or finish a gobstopper; it stood him well in the long run: now he works as a city lawyer, his day fragmented into six minute intervals charged exorbitantly to his diaspora of clients). Never mind the mistletoe – in fact, God bless the mistletoe – which I had been hovering under for an hour in the chilly, liminal area between the stairs and the front door, with only Tom showing any interest in kissing me and, from the chewing I’d observed earlier, only to pass his slimy gobbet of chewing gum into my mouth.

  But then, suddenly, he was there. Owner of the area’s largest leather factory. Three children, a big house with a high hedge, a wife who played bridge and whose hair never moved, a Rover car and a sports coat. Indisputably a grown up.

  ‘Kiss her kiss her!’, the boys yelled with the same excitement they usually showed for egging each other on to something really repulsive, like letting a slug crawl up your arm or pouring boiling water on ants.

  And then he kissed me.

  Laughingly at first; a brush of his slightly scratchy lips on mine, but they didn’t leave. They pressed a little harder and the hand that had rested, light as a feather, on my hip became two and moved from a matter of balance to control, holding me, almost imperceptibly, against him. Meanwhile under the increased pressure of his lips, mine opened a little and inside the scratchiness, his too were soft. My cousin had been counting backwards from ten but, having arrived at nought to find things at no kind of conclusion, began again at sixty. Vile Tom was jumping about on the third step of the stairs in an attempt to be at eye view.

  Mr. Naismith-Green’s head turned a little so that we were a better fit and the hand round my waist became fingers; I could feel each one against my flesh. My open cardigan fell
back and the tips of his thumb on the other side rested on my viyella shirt, just on the lowest curve of my bra, while the rest of his hard cupped my rib cage. ‘Thirty-siiiiiix, thirty-fiiiiivvve.’ My cousin slowed his counting to funereal pace.

  And then, our mouths were wet and the tip of his tongue parted them further and I could smell soap on his face and, where my shirt had come untucked, because I was on tip-toes, his cuffs rubbed against me. His tongue went further in, or perhaps my mouth just opened wider, and our teeth clashed for a second and either the boys fell silent or I shut my eyes and it all died away, but as he steadied me from losing my balance, I could feel something – him – against my thighs. And then Jeremy said ‘Dad …’ plaintively, and my cousin said, ‘three, two, one, Blast off!’, with a certain lack of conviction and Tom jumped off the stairs and tried to pull the mistletoe off the hall light and suddenly Mr Naismith-Green was himself again; jolly, adult and in charge. But I was never myself because it had, thus far, been the single most exciting experience of my life.

  The Cow Shed

  André Pieyre de Mandiargues

  ‘Are you an aficionado of the brothel?’ he asked me.

  ‘It’s a good deal more interesting than solitaire or jeu des graces. But is there one, in this town of Protestants, with their frigid pricks and black feet?’

  ‘Not officially, but if you’ll allow me, this evening I’ll take you to a certain establishment which I frequent. It’s a place not entirely devoid of a certain charm.’

  So Sir Horatio took me on an expedition to one of the lower class districts on the other side of the river Aar. We went down a stinking alley and stopped in front of a dark doorway. Here, he rapped out a long and complicated pattern of beats on the door with the ferrule of his walking stick. This was done so that I’d be able to remember the pattern in the future. The door was opened, the English diplomat was recognised and we were ushered into one of those ‘lucky cowsheds’. These are to be found in great numbers in some of the more backward cantons of German-speaking Switzerland where none of the girls are particularly keen to make their cunt or arse available to all-comers.

  Under a roof of large beams was a vast room with a white wooden floor. Around the walls of the room, I recall, were a series of square stalls each one of which contained a pedigree Emmenthal cow. The animal was provided with a thick bed of straw, but dirtier than might have been expected given its role. In the middle there were tables where the customers, of which there were a fair few that night, sat and drank beer from huge tankards. As soon as these were empty, they were refilled by serving girls who were perfect representatives of the Berne type. By that I mean they were round-bellied, with heavy pendulous breasts, fat arses and shapely legs – rather exciting, for all that they exuded an air of monumental stupidity.

  ‘Try your luck. An ecu a go,’ announced the owner, as he paraded from one table to the next an object which struck me as repulsive. It was the belly of an old doll which had been hollowed out like a piggy bank, its cunt edged with rabbit fur. Into this cunt, exactly the same size as a coin stamped with the head of William Tell, the revellers stuffed their cash.

  Most of the time, absolutely nothing happened. (The owner of the cowshed did good business). However, now and again, after the insertion of a coin, a Swiss national flag would pop up from the navel. In this case, all the barmaids quickly gathered around the winner allowing him to choose one of them. Curiously, to my way of thinking, they stood with their backs to the winner. Although from the front they displayed the utmost modesty, buttoned up to the neck, at the back their dresses were lifted to reveal their buttocks, unimpeded by any underwear. Apparently, in German Switzerland the only thing a woman is judged by is her arse.

  Having chosen his prize, the winner led her to a cowstall. Some closed the stall doors, which meant that during their ‘private moment’ all we could see were the upper parts of the cow. The majority, on the other hand, left the door wide open to besport themselves in front of their friends who were still at the table. They got undressed publicly, often hanging their trousers and shirt on the horns of the cow, then stripped the scrubber and fucked her underneath the belly of the bovine in full view of everybody. The cows remained placid enough. They were well and truly used to all this.

  Sir Horatio and I tried our luck on a number of occasions, and I was the first to succeed in running the cross of Geneva up the flagpole. I plumped for the least buxom of the females, a choice which was loudly mocked by the drinkers. She was a real beauty, at least as far as her shape was concerned. But she shared with her peers such a thick hide that it felt more like running my hand over rind than over a woman’s skin.

  When the two of us were naked, I didn’t shut the doors. I thought that in a gesture of gratitude for having brought me to such a delightful dive, Sir Horatio might like to watch me fucking.

  It’s a strange sensation to be lying totally naked, albeit with a really beautiful woman, stretched out on a bed of straw soiled with cow pats and urine, between the legs of a cow which could crush you or seriously injure you with one blow from its hoofs.

  My companion (she told me her name was Litzi) made me lie with my face more or less directly under the animal’s arse. While Mlle Litzi, who was positioned on top of me, energetically rubbed the rear end of the animal, I was fondling the swollen udder of this huge animal and amused myself by pulling on the teats and squirting warm, creamy liquid over the two of us.

  Later on, Sir Horatio’s flag went up, but he shut himself in very carefully and nobody could see how he took his pleasure with the young fat girl he had chosen. Some of the regulars, however, were heard to say that the cow had never been so upset. The diplomat emerged from the cowstall at the end of three quarters of an hour.

  ‘I will let you see my prick another time …’ he said to me. ‘… and when it’s erect, which is a rare occurrence. I only did it today for a little amusement.’

  The girl was dripping with cow piss. She was twisting her long, sponge-coloured hair to try and dry it out a little. But in vain. She was looking very put out, which was delightful to see, and it occurred to me that I’d been rather stupid with mine to find nothing better to do than ride the lazy bitch and shower us with milk. Sir Horatio was as buttoned up as ever, more like he’d just stepped out of a lavatory rather than a stable of whores.

  Pony Girls

  Tom Holland

  ‘Be ye not like to horse and mule,’ the Prayer Book instructs us, ‘whose mouths must be held with bit and bridle, lest they fall upon thee.’ Decadence, which is the transmutation of baseness into beauty, feeds naturally upon injunctions such as this. Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that on the outer fringes of the decadent imagination, where fabulous creatures lurk, one of the most exotic of all should be a human–pony hybrid: a man or woman literally treated as a horse. Like the centaurs supposed to haunt the wilds of ancient Greece, such a figure might seem almost too fantastical to be true – and yet the pony-slave, though elusive, is not altogether a myth. The bitting, the restricting, the reining in of animal passions: the very language of the moralist can be refined, imagination willing, into the most exquisite depravity.

  Ironically, the earliest known person to be associated with such a symptom of decadence was also the first zoologist to argue that different species could never mix: the philosopher Aristotle. A celebrated Renaissance woodcut shows the Stagyrite bitted and bridled, with his mistress Phyllis in the saddle on his back. In a foreshadowing of almost every such subsequent illustration of the theme, the rider lashes the rump of her human steed with a whip. The inspiration for this portrait, however, was not classical but drawn from a medieval poem, in which ‘Aristote chevauché’ was offered as a warning against the capacity of lust to overwhelm reason. But as is so often the way with such fables, the lesson titillates more than it instructs. The very extent of the philosopher’s fall, his debasement from the heights of logic to a bestial status lower than a slave, becomes, to those predisposed to see it s
o, delicious in itself.

  When Christopher Marlowe, a man whose sadism was evident in almost everything he wrote, came to pen that other Renaissance masterpiece of pony play, Tamburlaine the Great, the thrill of humiliation was openly acknowledged. ‘Holla, ye pampered Jades of Asia’: with this celebrated, and much parodied, line, Tamburlaine lashes the backs of two kings he has defeated in battle and harnessed to his chariot. Other kings follow tethered behind him, and Tamburlaine loses no opportunity to revel in their transformation. They will sleep in stables; they will drink from pails; they will ‘die like beasts.’

  What gives added piquancy to this role reversal is that Tamburlaine had originally been a shepherd, very much lower-class, and a foreigner to boot. The vertiginious drop which separates human and beast is widened yet further by class, for it is a curious feature that in almost all the classics of pony-slave erotica, the victims are exquisitely well-bred. In Anne Rice’s Beauty trilogy, for instance, the princes and princesses who are sent to the village suffer a humiliatingly utilitarian slavery, in which their iron-shod boots and horse-tailed dildoes, their harnesses and bits, have no function save to make their wearers more efficient as workhorses. And all this is taught them by rude-handed grooms, strutting around the stables, ‘scrubbing down their charges or rubbing them with oil,their attitude one of casualness and busyness.’

  This could only seem utilitarian in a fairy-tale setting, of course. Even scenarios in ostensibly contemporary settings are invariably located in remote fantasy fiefdoms, whether in the deserts of Arabia or amidst the jungles of South America. Yet while this hardly serves to make them any the more realistic, it does enable one further tooth to be added to the ratchet of equine humiliation. For the victims of your typical ponygirl-rearing Sheik or hacienda-owner are very pointedly not only aristocratic; they are also very white.

  Or to be specific, Anglo-Saxon. This perhaps comes as no surprise when one realises that the earliest and most influential examples of ponygirl literature – and the emphasis is very much on ponygirl – were French. In a succession of anonymous novels published on the theme in Paris during the twenties and thirties, diabolical humiliations were practised by assorted subject peoples upon the Miladies of the British Empire. ‘In the Rajah’s Stable’, reads one typical chapter heading; ‘Race Day at the Wadi’, another. One sequence of illustrations in particular does more to highlight French attitudes towards their imperial rivals than a whole series of historians’ tracts. In the first illustration, a Duchess poses snootily at a Viceregal soirée, in the second she cowers in a stable before the pawings of two Sikhs, while in the third she has recaptured the hauteur which she wore in the first. But gone is her gown and glittering tiara, and in their place are all the appurtenances of the fetishist’s art: harness, bit and bridle, blinkers and nodding feathers, rings through the nipples with tinkling bells. A Rajah looks on at her proudly, a curling whip in his hand, and it is evident that he is preparing to take his new pony for a ride: for haughty though the Duchess may appear, yet she is fastened by elegant chains to the shafts of a cart.