The Sexual Life of Catherine M. Read Online Free PDF

the rough wood.
    In the end Aimé closed. We went one last time; the place was deserted and Aimé him- self, his bulk hovering behind the bar, was quietly but furiously railing at his wife. He had been summoned by the police. He was angry with her because she had persuaded us not to come back later.
    That evening we ended up at Les Glycines, my first visit to a place that had seemed en- chanting. Claude, a friend called Henri, and I made up the most amicable trio. Henri lived in a tiny apartment on the rue de Chazel, fa- cing the pale, roughcast surface of a high garden wall that hid a large private house. Because it was on our way, Claude and I used to stop off with Henri on our way home from our Sunday visit to our parents. The three of us would fuck together, both boys inside me
    at once—one in my mouth and the other up my ass or my cunt—under the playful gaze of one of Martin Barré’s loviest paintings: we called it Spaghetti and the artist himself had given it to Henri. Afterward we would look out of the window, watching the comings and goings at Les Glycines. Henri had heard that the club was used by film stars, and sometimes we would think we’d recognized someone. We were just kids, the best kind of gawpers, fascinated and amused by this secret activity that we didn’t even try to ima- gine, and actually more excited by the sight of things that were completely inaccessible to us: the swanky cars dropping people off, the classy deportment of the silhouettes who stepped out of them. When I went through the porch a few years later, I knew instantly that I preferred Chez Aimé’s less spare style.
    We went up a little gravel path blocked by a group of Japanese visitors who had been refused entry by the flight-attendantish girl
    at the door. The latter asked to see my Social Security card, to prove I was not a prostitute. Not being regularly employed, of course, I didn’t have one, either on me nor anywhere else. Even on the occasions when I was able to produce a pay stub, I would still be in the wrong because, even today, whenever con- fronted by a woman taller than me, I turn in- to an awkward child. We went in anyway. It was lit up like a dining room, there were a lot of people lying naked on mattresses on the floor, and what unsettled me even more than the threat of the “employment officer” was that people were telling jokes. A woman with very pale skin, no makeup and tousled hair that still had the vestiges of the same French braid as the hostess, was making everyone roar with laughter because her little boy “really wanted to come with her this even- ing.” I could see Éric, who was always very practical, working his way along the base- board looking for the outlet, because we had
    managed to arrange a swap with a couple and it would have been nicer to unplug the light. There were little waitresses navigating amid the bodies, holding aloft trays of cham- pagne in flutes; one of them caught her foot in the electric cable and switched the light back on. She even accompanied the act with a loud “Shit.” After that, I don’t recall us waiting for me to extract even the scantiest bodily emission.
    Apart from in the Bois—even there, as we’ve seen, even there!—you don’t mix with people until you have greeted them first, un- til you have respected a transitional moment in which a few words are exchanged, where each person maintains just the time and space between themselves and the others to offer a glass or hand over an ashtray. I al- ways wanted to abolish this suspense, but there were some rituals that I tolerated bet- ter than others. Armand used to make me laugh when, while everyone else was still at
    the chatting stage, he would strip completely naked, incongruous by a few minutes of anti- cipation, and fold his clothes as carefully as a butler. Or I would comply with what I thought was the stupid policy of one group who would not swing until they had eaten dinner, always in the same