Dolorosa Soror (2 page)

Notes

1. Let's be clear: I do theater as much to find myself as to express myself. As with carnival masks, it's never "just for laughs." J. P. constantly puts himself onstage. In other words, he is always trying to find himself, without any luck, and his
self-assurance (which is limited to detachment, or reserve, as we shall see) is only, when all is said and done, a request. If we still love each other, it's only when one of us looks at the other from the wings. With the exception of these lines, all the notes in the following pages are the work of J. P., whom I asked to respond as if he were hearing this story read aloud. I did not censor anything he wrote. But I still ask myself what prompted him to slip in a note here rather than there...

2.Florence's story is peppered with theatrical citations, a reflection, no doubt, of her training, of roles learned for the stage, that come back in full force in real life.

3.Florence suffers early on from what I call the "quotation effect." Behind each sentence, each pose, she thinks she can discern text, arrogant borrowings from other sources, without quotation marks. Words of love strung end to end. Gestures, like memories of scenes written by others, for others.

4.Florence sometimes still hesitates to speak in the past tense. Writing also helps in this respect, to perpetuate what have proved to be fallible and fleeting moments.

5.When I compare these first days to what I have made her suffer since, or what she herself inflicted on Nathalie, to speak of pain with regard to this first experience seems exaggerated. Florence writes, curiously enough, as if this were the first time, as if she were recopying, without knowing what comes next, a sort of journal kept day by day. As if she were unaware, at the moment of drafting these lines, that she would later be whipped until her blood ran. As if she did not remember that sometimes, although we saw each other only for very reputable reasons—work, for example—as soon as we would begin to grapple with the Sophocles scenario she was supposed to be finishing, she would want to sleep with me. Before leaving, I would ask her to lift her skirt so I could mark her with the crop or flogger; I wanted the marks to keep her company until our next meeting. I wanted her to rediscover, the next day, when she was in an elevator or on a staircase or on the street, the very welts she had the impression everyone could see through the light fabric of her clothes. Wanted her to have those feelings of embarrassment and pride—and let life pass by, indifferent.

6.Internal autopsy, as they used to say. Florence very often visualized the interior of her body, the creamy jets striking the purple membranes, brought to life by the cock laboring against them. One day, when seven or eight men had come in her mouth, one after the other, as she would tell it later on, she had positively seen her digestive system assimilate the new juices, gorging itself on male proteins.

Chapter II

October

“Flo? Are you free tonight?"

"I don't like it when people call me Flo" I say.

But of course I was free—liberated, even. For a week I had been feeling loosed from my cage; gone was my straitjacket of infancy and anguish, and I was free from the sugar of sentimentality, and ready to love him. Free and yet a slave.1

"So, are you free?"
"Yes," I say.
"Good. Meet me at ten o'clock tonight in front of the
entrance to the Jardin des Plantes, at the traffic circle at the Austerlitz exit—where the bus stop is, you know? Oh! There's one thing: I want you to wear a pair of pants and a sweatshirt. The most boyish possible. Nothing else. No panties, no bra. And slick back your hair with gel."

With my hair parted on the side, I could have been mistaken for Julie Andrews's twin brother in Victor, Victoria. (Once in drag, everyone belongs to the same family.) I gazed at myself in the mirror. Should I anticipate his desire, play to what he seemed to want? Among my theater accessories, I found a small, fine mustache I had used before to play Feydeau. Easy to glue on. Glance in the mirror: I would be by for the prettiest street rogue out that night.

He takes me by the hand, kisses my fingertips tenderly. "You are perfect," he says. "Perfect."
He leads me along. We cross the traffic circle diagonally.

Cars are rare at that hour. We descend to the banks of the Seine by way of a metal footbridge at the Quai d'Austerlitz.

It is gloomy in the semi-subterranean parking lot by the edge of the water, deserted at this hour. The only lights—from the Right Bank and the large office buildings of Bercy—are cut off by the shadows cast by the large concrete pillars. As you progress toward the back, the shadows multiply and grow and darkness triumphs. But you get used to it.

Suddenly he seems to know where he is going, though he keeps the slow strolling pace habitual to him.

The darkness is peopled with sighs.
"There's a lot of action tonight," he says softly.
Sometimes the brief, white radiance of a body pressed
against a pillar, with a darker shadow gripping the body's back. A brief light, the flame of a cigarette lighter: a guy is smoking, alone, leaning against a wall. J. P. takes my hand and
we stop without making a sound.
"Look," he murmurs.
Useless injunction. I am no more than a gaze.

Two young people—they appear to me really very young— pass in front of us, hesitate an instant, then finally head towards the big solitary guy dragging placidly on his cigarette.

They approach him, exchange several muffled words. The guy offers them a cigarette; one of them accepts. At the flare of the cigarette lighter, I see my first impression was right: this kid is just barely an adult. His cheeks, more polished than mine, are covered with that slight down which, though not yet a beard,
makes the skin velvety. The guy extinguishes his lighter, leaves his hand suspended in the air for an instant, and then caresses the young man's beardless cheek.

We watch them talk without hearing them. Suddenly the man pulls one of the younger guys to him and kisses him, crushing his mouth. At the same time he puts his hand on the guy's’ inner thigh.

The other kid leans over and opens the pants of the guy still glued to the pillar.

The two young men slide to their knees and each in his turn begins to peck, lick, nibble, and suck the object of their delights.

The guy calmly lights another cigarette. He might be about thirty-five or forty years old. A hardened Mediterranean type. Very short hair. A mustache. In gay terms, a clone.

This lasts the time it takes for him to finish his cigarette without hurrying, Then he throws away the butt, which falls in a long parabola in the dark parking garage. He grasps one of the two guys by the neck, raising him up to him.

The other takes advantage of this by sucking the whole of the cock abandoned to him.

The guy again kisses his prey, sucking hard on his hips, then his cheeks. He starts to undo his tight jeans, pushing them down to midthigh level, then caresses his cock with an authoritative hand. Finally, he unglues himself from the pillar and pins himself against the other guy.

The stooge, still on his knees, spreads his friend's buttocks and introduces into his friend's anus the cock he has never let go of, rewetting it with saliva at the last moment.

Arching his back to the fullest, the kid against the column breathes an ecstatic sigh.

The other guy gets up, undoes his jeans, and plants himself against the pillar next to his friend, his ass offered, tense. He stays like that for a minute or two, masturbating quietly, while his friend groans more loudly under the rutting thrusts.

The big guy foregoes penetrating the little guy, shifts slightly to the right, and pokes his cock into the second ass offered to him. He thrusts twenty times, just enough to dilate the other's ass fully.

Then he goes back to the first one.

I am horribly excited by the scene. J.P. passes a hand under my sweatshirt and caresses my breasts, scratches them lightly, twisting the nipples, pulling on them and letting them go, and then making the whole of the breast fill the hollow of his palm, along the length of his luck line, as in the song.

"What would that do for you, to feel up a young hoodlum like that?" I ask.

He snorts, laughing.

"Take me," I say in one breath. A few feet away, the guy switches from one ass to the other.

J. P. unbuttons his pants. His hand plunges down toward my soaking sex. He plays for several instants with the desire running under his fingers; then he wets my ass and spreads my buttocks. It is my turn to be pinned against a urine-drenched cement pillar, my face screwed to the concrete; my turn to be deeply butt-fucked. This time I just shiver when the bulge of the glans crosses the threshold. Does the flesh grow so quickly accustomed? I close my eyes. I need to feel him come right away, hut also need to be fucked for a long time.

Suddenly there is a voice, very near: "Hey, man!" Then: "Can we do him together?"

And the voice of J. P., who at the same instant pulls out of me: "This little faggot? Why not? Here, the place is still warm!"

His hand weighs on the nape of my neck and keeps me pinned to the wall.

"Easy, guy, easy! Take your time...and put on a condom." There is a hesitation. Powerful hands grip my hips.
Again, this vision of myself from outside of myself. As if
from three meters away, I see my very white buttocks, the sole
illumination in the gloomy light of the garage, and the back of a guy I do not know, toward whom I cannot even turn.

I feel the little rubbery membrane of the condom's reservoir tip being pushed between my buttocks. And then he plunges in.

Good gracious! I feel like a virgin again. Not only apprehension, but also surprise tightens me up: so there are cocks like this in the world? He plunges interminably inside of me. I hug the pillar as if to flee the monstrous object that forces me open and plows me.

Derision: where was I thinking of going? The guy punches me hard in the small of the back to make me throw back my shoulders, to give of myself more. The blow makes me shudder, and he plunges all the way in, his pubic hair scratching my skin.

I cry out; I even shout. The base of his cock is so fat I think my anus will burst. I cry and sob. He starts to thrust in and out, slowly at first, then faster and harder, pulling my hips towards him each time he plunges in. I cry out each time.

And then, whether because the condom is lubricated or not, he slides in and out of me more and more quickly, without difficulty. I feel a strange pleasure, as if I am shitting in the opposite direction. When he is deepest inside me, I arch my back to offer myself even more. I have stopped crying. Is this me, this groaning little faggot? My thoughts run together. I understand why J. P. asked him to put on a condom, but am sorry to know I will not feel his jism burning my entrails.

Then a commentary, not addressed to me: "God, he's tight! It's good."

Then everything happens very quickly. He passes a hand in front of me, no doubt in order to jerk me off, gropes around in the emptiness...

Suddenly he stops his cock in mid-thrust. He pulls out of my asshole and I cry out again, but this time from pain and despair.

"Goddamn! It's a goddamn girl!"
He turns toward J. P.
"Take off, then!"J. P. says. I halfturn. The guy is twenty-five
or twenty-six years old, of mixed race. He is fuming with rage. In the shadows, I see him go limp in a glance. Even so his cock reaches to midthigh.

J. P. leans toward me and pulls up my jeans. “Come on, let's go." I button myself up. He takes me by the hand. My would-be lover, convulsed with rage, throws his fist.

The instant afterwards, he is on the ground, bleeding nastily from the mouth.

J. P. leans over him, seizes him by his hair, and smashes his face three or four limes against the concrete pillar. The sound of bone or teeth shattering. The guy is completely soft now. The odor of blood rises amidst the cement dust and stench of oil and cold piss in the garage.
¹

"Come on, let's go," J.P. repeats, taking my hand.

***

That night he whipped me until I bled with a dog leash he held tightly by its loop of braided leather. He worked over my belly and loins for a long time, making me explode with a mixture of pleasure and fear. At my request he came in my mouth, and I suffocated under the torrent of sperm and bits of shit stuck to his cock. Tears gushed from my eyes. I heard him cry out.

I swallowed all he gave me, and sucked him again and again, nibbling at his dick, rubbing my lips against his pubic hair, stopping only to lick him again and again, taking him as deeply as possible inside my mouth, molding it around his stiff member. For the first time I deep-throated a man, took his dick beyond the glottis, like a sword swallower, and become as open and available above as I was below. He finally tore himself from my lips and laid down next to me. I rested my heels on his lower back, tilted myself as far back as possible, grubbed his cock, and introduced it myself into my ass. With several movements of my fingers, I made myself come yet again, and much more violently this time.

***

I stayed awake in the dark for a long time afterwards, unable to think of anything but the anonymous dick that had ripped me up so well on the quay. Was I really one of "those" women— those who live only for the sensation of being fucked and give no thought to the guy at the end of the dick? My whole body burned—and not only where the whip had torn into me. Next to me, J. P. slept deeply. His breathing was light, childlike, insouciant. I took his hand in the darkness to reassure myself, prove to myself that there was something between us other than sex and blood—and the fear that put my heart in my throat. Again I heard the lapping of the Seine against the walls of the parking garage, the noise of the river as it was slashed by a barge's prow. Again I saw the dancing lights on the water. Be good, my pain. And in my turn I fell asleep.