My name is Annabelle Caroline Lorand.
But everyone calls me Elle. All my friends, anyway.
I was born on June 18, 1986, at exactly ten p.m.
AND AT EXACTLY TEN P.M. on June 18, 2009, on the very day, minute, second of my twenty-third birthday, I stepped into the Josephine de Beauharnais room of the Hôtel des Charmes. My teenage years had dragged on for too long. And as I entered the room, I knew it was time to leave them behind. Enter and shed this skin that no longer suited me. My budding love had slowly been stripping me of it. Enter and banish the indecisive shape of a young, chubby girl in order to become the accomplished woman that Louie had always seen in me. Polished. Refined by his discerning eye and able hands. Leave my old self behind and bloom.
Born from my own sex.
AFTER LEAVING NANTERRE, I SPENT the day wandering Paris in my patchwork wedding dress, holding my ballet flats in one hand, my bare feet on the hot asphalt. The sun was shining; it was already summer. Summer and its crowded terraces; summer and its skimpy outfits that show off thighs, middles, shoulders; summer and its pickup artists, who emerge from hibernation with the sun’s first rays. As I meandered, I let myself be flattered. It was like a sweet echo of the happiness growing inside me. A fire waiting to be unleashed. Tonight.
“Hey, girl! Marry me!”
“Sorry, not today.” I laughed.
“Come on, don’t be like that, marry me! You got the dress, the class, everything! I’ll be your man! We can make a ton of babies.”
And the guy did a suggestive hip movement as he bit his incisors into his lower lip.
At least people noticed my outfit here. But males in heat weren’t the only ones to do a double take when they saw me. For little girls, I was a fairy-tale princess. For teenagers, a punk-rock bride. For adults, a kind of madwoman, a crazy person, maybe even someone dangerous like a junkie, better to avoid me; some even changed sidewalks when they saw me coming.
I didn’t care. I ignored the attention. I was exhausted, but I felt great. The concrete had worn my feet, which seemed to float above the hot ground, as though carried by a cushion of air. I wasn’t afraid of anything anymore because I now knew where I was going. Toward unbound happiness. I thought of Mom and knew without having to hear it that she would have encouraged me to seize this moment and live my life.
BACK IN THE KITCHEN IN Nanterre, I had taken a few ten-euro bills from the old coffee grinder. “Emergency treasure,” Mom had called it. I used it to buy a few Monacos and a little snack in a bistro.
The place was pretty rustic, and still had a phone behind the counter. The proprietor, a redheaded woman in her fifties, shot me a complicit smile as she handed it to me.
“Here, sweetheart! You have five minutes to tell him no.”
“I’m saying yes right now!” a drunk from the other side of the gleaming bar cried. “Did you see this girl, Simone? She reminds me of my Vero . . .”
“Ha! Exactly, your Vero said no. So just leave the girl alone, okay?”
I called Max Fourestier Hospital. Mom’s condition was critical but stable. Every passing minute could be the one, but it was impossible to tell when it would happen. I gave the nurse Sophia’s number, telling her to call in case of emergency. At least until the following day. After that . . . I had no idea where I would be or if I would even be reachable.
After this crucial check-in, I went back to my walk, crossing the center of Paris, feeling carefree. I was as light as my heart was full of emotion.
I stopped in front of the Louvre des Antiquaires and ogled the antique canes. Good-bye, vintage watches. Now I only had eyes for elegant walking sticks whose fine silver, ruby, ivory knobs had fascinating stories to tell.
I DON’T REALLY KNOW HOW I made it to Rue du Chemin Vert. I instinctually recognized the row of bazaars and kebab shops. Then the sign and bordeaux-colored awning. When I rang the bell, ten pairs of male eyes turned in concert and stared at my silk-and-felt-clad silhouette. I thought I recognized one or two faces from my previous visit.
I carefully avoided the Pink Pussy books and went straight for a copy of Secret Women that was sitting on one of the tables marked literature. I still had fifty pages left and decided to purchase a second copy.
I spent my last euros on the book and headed back out past the Père Lachaise cemetery. I set up shop on the first bench I found in the sun, in the tree-lined and shady Boulevard de Ménilmontant. Amid the white noise of traffic, I had no trouble diving right into my reading.
First of all, I found the end of the book disconcerting. The main character, the author who goes looking for his wife, who has disappeared into a city’s subterranean labyrinth, ends up accepting his new condition as an erotic slave for the cult of women. And now that he’s Cyprie and Sophie’s thing, he is committed to their idea of creating a new community of Amazons.
The parallel with my current situation was obvious. I, too, was ready to surrender myself completely and without reserve. My thirst for discovery seemed unquenchable. But much like the novel’s narrator, I wasn’t only interested in the wanton. I was abandoning myself to Louie, but it was not simply a reaction to his treatments, the capitulation of my overstimulated senses. Nor was I submitting myself to the unmentionable out of love. I finally understood: it was a blossoming of my whole being. Like peeling fruit, each new electric touch had removed a layer, session after session, until my quivering flesh was completely naked. And loving. Until my feelings were completely out in the open.
The light ended up convincing me. The flounce of my dress was scrunched up around my thighs. My eyes were closed. I let the heat pour into my skin, which became more and more sensitive with every passing minute. The afternoon drew on like a dream. I heard the voices of passersby, and a few snippets from my nights at the Hôtel des Charmes. I felt as though I were visiting all of its rooms, one after the other, and that each one awoke in me a new sensation, a novel desire. Behind each door, I found a letter left for me by my Alphabet Man. Could it be that the hotel had exactly twenty-six rooms? I liked the thought, and let my mind wander, giving in to reverie.
I also imagined someone delivering my silver package to Avenue Mandel. Louie opening the door and then exploring the contents of the box, his beautiful emaciated face twisted in surprise.
Melted into a grave smile.
AROUND DINNERTIME, I TOOK THE metro for our rendezvous. I got off at the Notre-Dame-de-Lorette station and could have avoided Rue de la Rochefoucauld to get up to Pigalle. But something told me to turn left on Rue Saint-Lazare until it intersected with Rue de la Tour-des-Dames. I was only a few steps away from Duchesnois House. From where I stood, the panic that had taken hold after my earlier disappearance seemed to have subsided. The guests had probably all left long before, after they had run out of consolations and words of encouragement.
I only noticed two rental trucks, both with their back doors wide open, one filled with untouched comestibles, the other with planks and metallic tubes from one of the platforms or tents. I wondered if Madonna, whose private concert was supposed to be the shining moment of the reception, had also been inconvenienced by my defection. Or if someone had warned her.
There I was, contemplating this situation, when a thick silhouette coming out of the circular courtyard bumped into me.
“Elle!”
I started running. Armand, who was once again wearing his corduroys and a vest, chased after me.
“Elle! Come back!”
Thanks to the street’s fairly pronounced downward slope, and despite the layers of silk between my legs, I had no trouble losing him. By the time I reached the intersection with the Rue d’Aumale, it was clear he wouldn’t catch up with me. I glanced over my shoulder and saw him retreat, probably to tell his master about my recent appearance.
It was stupid of me to go. But I suppose it had been necessary. You can only leave your old skin behind after having duly burned it. I’d needed to measure what I had decided to lose in order to value what I was about to gain.
I wondered if I should call Sophia, then decided against it. What could she tell me that I couldn’t guess? I was leaving David’s wrath behind me, and there was nothing anyone could say to change my mind. Rather than dwell on a past that was impossible to rewrite, I was much happier to think of the present, which was lively and sweet, and filled with promise and new sensations.
HONESTLY, I COULD NOT SIT still. The more the hour approached, the less capable I was of staying calm, much less sitting down. I got some pho from a Vietnamese takeout place and ate it standing up, a few steps from the hotel, stuffing each forkful into my mouth as though my life depended on it.
Over the course of the final hour, the shops started closing one by one. I walked through the neighborhood, doing the same loop over and over, noticing little changes with each rotation. I felt more and more as though I belonged here. I was at last becoming an Athenian. Perhaps I wasn’t as accustomed as Louie at reading every architectural detail as though it were speaking to me, but I was becoming affected by its poetry. The neighborhood was inscribing itself in me, just as my name had once been written on it.
On that note, I did not regret having left my second copy of the Secret Women on the bench on Boulevard de Ménilmontant. Soon some stranger would find it and get lost in the stupefying city where women were the masters. That mysterious reader would decide whether to become one of them or one of their toys. I didn’t care: it was up to him or her.
TEN OH-ONE. 22 + 1 = 23. I am twenty-three years old.
I push open the gilded door of the Josephine. Monsieur Jacques gave me a keycard, no questions asked. He almost seemed relieved to see me. I am now also part of this hotel. Along with Marie, Margaretha, Caroline, Esther, Lola, and the others. I am one of them now.
The room is as it was when I visited it two weeks ago, with my athletic client. But then I only saw it in the dark, and here it is bathed in the light of the setting sun. The star only disappeared three minutes ago, if that, and the building is covered in its dying glow. The window is open. The light dives through it, licking the gilding.
LOUIE IS STANDING IN THE middle of the room.
Naked. Fragile.
He is waiting for me.
He also looks different in this light. For the first time, he is also presenting himself to me without artifice. Not even his eternal cane. Just him, at the mercy of a new history that is just beginning. Just him and his suddenly vulnerable attitude. He is open like the blank pages of a new notebook that we will write together. Despite my invitation, neither one of us shall order the other around, from here on out. We shall only be as we are now: eager to discover each other and accept the present moment, ready to let whatever must blossom between us burst forth. No expectations. No plots.
SILENTLY, HE WATCHES ME ENTER the room. He puts a finger over his lips. All words are superfluous tonight. I stop a few paces from him. I’m savoring the moment. I want to feel myself against his skin, muss myself up with his desire, roll around in our sweat, our scents, and gild myself in his love.
The light has chiseled him into a statue of white skin and long muscles, a perfection of flesh that I long to grasp and bite. I am discovering him for the first time. In his entirety. In his grace. I am reveling in his harmony. Who says that only a woman’s body is fascinating?
My appetite for him is whole, intact, devouring, a warm ball that thumps in my chest, my belly, my sex. Soon, I won’t be able to contain myself. Soon, it won’t just be a question of bodies groping, kneading, converging. Soon, we will love each other.
But we don’t need to rush things, his eyes keep telling me.
AS THE SUN SLOWLY FINISHES its descent behind the white meringue of the Sacré Coeur, Louie’s body is plunged into darkness. All that remains in the light is his profile and his upper left shoulder. On this latter, I am only just noticing a new tattoo: his initials in old English script woven around a black-ink climbing rosebush. No colors, just lines and shadowy shades of gray. A thorny branch shooting out from the bush runs through the hollow of his clavicle to the base of his neck, where a timid bud blossoms. It must be a recent addition; otherwise I would have seen it before, peeking out from under his shirt collar.
And here he is before my very eyes: the Alphabet Man who will write his own language on me. He will find the right words. Not to play with me but to express, inhale, and feel.
HIS PRESENCE ALONE MAKES THE air vibrate like the quiet music playing all around us, innervating every particle of dust: Words like violence break the silence, come crashing in, into my little world.
The various aspects of the room’s decor seem to dissolve, becoming one of the floating particles. Soon, everything else disappears; there is only him. And me. And this light.
HE SLOWLY STEPS TOWARD ME. He isn’t in a hurry. Neither of us are. We have all night to study the lines between us, the rough draft of our narrative.
His eyes dive into me, piercing me sweetly. Incandescent points at once light up deep inside me. They blaze, they burn me. Painful to me, pierce right through me. Can’t you understand, oh my little girl? Louie hammers the point home, tapping his finger on his lips in time to the electronic music, signaling his instructions. I grasp my lesson: our bodies, and only our bodies, shall be allowed to express themselves. They alone are up to the task of bandaging wounds and filling the cracks that have been keeping us apart.
His hands act first, as messengers of pleasure to come. They are closer to me than ever. So elegant and yet so firm and powerful.
Delicately, they remove my layers of silk. The dress melts softly to the Oriental carpet. All I am wearing now are an immaculate demi-cup bra and panties. His trembling hands naturally find the small of my back. My body shines at his touch. We melt into each other, our skin becoming one fabric. All I ever wanted, all I ever needed, is here in my arms. Words are very unnecessary, they can only do harm. At last I am his. At last he is mine. We have won. We have overcome all obstacles. We have found each other.
Yet a shiver runs through him, telling me he is still incredulous: he still can’t believe it. So he tightens his embrace. He holds me. He doesn’t want to let me go. He grips me close, afraid I might fly away. And yet I still sense that he wants me to be free. That his love for me will not be a suffocating jail. Not anymore.
I also begin to tremble so violently I’m afraid I might collapse. His contact holds me upright. Every new touch practically makes me faint. He is the cause and the solution. The sickness . . . and its remedy. I want to fall into his chest, feel his strength, and give myself to him entirely.
That is not what he wants. He picks me up. He wants me upright, open, proud. Divine. I won’t be a rag doll in his arms. He hasn’t led me through so many steps to discover my inner wealth of resources to then have me simply abandon myself to him. Has anyone ever loved me as he does? Has anyone ever desired me to the point of causing inextricable pleasure and pain in me? Tears well in my eyes.
But it is not time to relax. I must act. I must confront him, too. I must climb him like a mountain. I must plant my claws in him like an ice axe. He has already conquered me, body, heart, and soul. I want to possess him, like a man possesses a woman. It is my turn to flush new blood into his organs. It is my turn to give him life.
LAUGHTER FROM THE NIGHT OUTSIDE rings through the window. But the sound does not disturb us. We are burning for each other. We have barely touched, and yet our bodies are already feasting on each other. The surface of our skin seems to have escaped from a planet that has gotten too close to its star. More contact will only be painful.
His cologne blends with his body’s smell, which I am discovering for the first time. I can also make out his sex’s perfume emanating from between his thighs. His penis is eager, hungry. It points into me, erasing what is left of the distance between us. I have the feeling our intimate parts will blend with as much grace as our scents. That the bouquet of our skin and hair will be harmonious. Touchdown.
YES, THIS TIME I AM the one to initiate, to conquer. I grab his member—the softness of the skin on his shaft is a delightful surprise—and gently guide it to my wet lips. His sex brushes against my clitoris, sending out an electric charge. Something in me explodes, rending the ultimate chasm, the one that has been waiting for just this moment.
My throat suddenly tightens as a ball of lava hurtles from my chest to my vagina, sending delicious pleasure through my body. I arch my back, thrust my pelvis forward, and open my avid lips. I moan with desire, but stop when a new tremor shakes my lower body. I am burning and liquefying all at once.
Years of desire are finally being unleashed, and I find myself submerged in them like a mariner surprised by a giant swell. I stagger, then grab ahold of myself. I am still standing, my body is mine.
I have been waiting for one thing over the past several weeks: him in me. He has been hoping for the same thing for the past several months. Waiting for a lifetime, waiting for me. He alone can satisfy me.
Still, his sex alone cannot erase all that he has put me through. That would be too easy. I am going to need to experience a lot more pleasure to make up for it. If he wants me to love him even more, I am going to need thousands of kisses, able caresses, and looks saturated with desire and love.
I will also need to tend to him, to torture his senses, be lewd, vicious, relentless, in order to forget our twisted beginnings planned by someone else.
But I have no doubt that in the end—once our bodies are united, melted into one orgasmic cry, a heavy and sticky magma—all the hurtful things we have said will be erased.
As if to confirm this thought, we are jolted by another eruption borne from the joining of our sexes. The volcanic activity that unites us is just getting started.
I AM MASTURBATING HIM GENTLY against my thigh. He has been teasing me all this time with agonizing desire. I, too, want to draw out his frustration, to the point of explosion. Until he can’t take it anymore. Until he begs. Until he rubs himself against me like a dog driven mad. Until he barks his need for me. Until he bites me. It is his turn to be my toy.
So I play, with care and tenderness, as with what we hold most dear. My hand looks minuscule next to his member. I have trouble grasping it in its entirety. I like that it has grown so immense for me. I tickle it with my fingers, making his shaft tremble. He sighs in delight. At some intervals, I imprison him in my palm like a little bird, and then I set him free again. At another moment, my hand feels a pulse in his inflated, sweating member, as though his heart were limitless and beating in every one of his organs.
The more I play with him, the more he suffers, I can feel it. His panting has given way to long moans. An almost continuous howl. He is going crazy. He begs in a deep voice that resonates like a bell in my ears:
“Take me . . . Take me, now.”
The fact that he pleads with me like a woman radiates through my innermost depths. He is offering himself to me, and I am deeply moved. Outside, the day has disappeared. Only a few remnants of light from the lampposts on the square outside distinguish our bodies from the shadows.
I feel the liquid of his desire stipple my thigh and melt into the river of fluid that has already slickened the area. Our fluids are now one. They coat me in one same desire. It is getting harder and harder to restrain myself. But doesn’t being the mistress of our games entitle me to succumb as I see fit? To give myself as I please?
Our bodies are now grafted to each other. They swell under our heavy breathing, which presses them and molds them together. A sweet prelude to the fusion of our sexes. But again, we aren’t in a hurry. One hour, one night, one life of desire is opening up before us.
HE TRIES TO INSERT A finger inside me. But I withdraw it. I want to accompany his touch as it journeys slowly over my pelvis to the edge of my swollen lips, diving into the wild bush that covers them, to the avid, emerging point. My love peak. The contact of his index finger on my fleshy mound draws a new tear from me. He is no longer a savage laying me to waste, a mercenary only doing his job. He is the man who desires all of me. The one I greet like a hero with my miniature triumphant arch.
He knows it. He begins tracing circles around my button, driving me wild with desire. His eyes mist over, and he closes them to concentrate on the sensations blossoming under the pads of his fingers. He takes pleasure in seeing me so close to explosion. He loves loving me. My hips sway uncontrollably. My body is no longer mine. Now it will only obey his expert hands. We rock in unison, our movements supple and fluid. Ours is a dance in which every step defines us, invents us.
I search his face. A silent wave washes through us both. At this moment, we are standing at the edge of a precipice, and it is the most delicious sensation we have ever known. And this is just the beginning. We stay here, petrified, savoring the moment like an endless hard candy. A tart second. I refrain from saying sweet nothings, from uttering “I love you.” It’s still too early for declarations. Nothing could be more expressive right now than our bodies.
His attention to my lips is exquisite. I close my eyes and let the orgasm rise over the horizon of my innermost depths. It comes like a tsunami, crashing into my whole body, from my belly button to my lips, threatening to wipe everything out. Louie presses his sex into my hip, panting heavily. Is he going to come with me? Is it possible to feel so much pleasure, so quickly, and with just a few gentle touches?
I AM THE WOMAN IN our common fall, the angel of our voluptuous undoing. I take him by the hand like a girl on her first time. I lead him to the bed. We have all the time in the world to explore our pleasures, but for now I know what I want. I remember a quote from Saint-Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, that my girlfriends in high school always used to write on their notebooks: “Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.”
Tonight, for the first time, we are not making love face-to-face. We are experiencing ecstasy while looking in the same direction. Our orgasms take aim at the same far-off and invisible target. The firmament.
I stretch out on my stomach, spreading my thighs just wide enough to give him room. My arched back gives way to the proud and generous curve of my buttocks. My crotch peeks out from the hollow between my legs, shining with desire. It has never blared its wish to be taken with such force. Louie lies down on top of me, though without crushing me, as though he were a comforter of skin and flesh. He is long and warm and soft, though a bit angular in parts. He is solid. His incredibly firm shoulders, chest, and stomach meld perfectly with every nook and cranny of my body’s surface.
With one hand, he reaches for the small silver wrapper lying on the bedside table. Again with one hand, he manages to tear open the package and remove its contents. Still with one hand, he rolls the condom over his member, which I can feel pressing urgently against my buttocks. He doesn’t need it. I could do without. But he respects my commandment.
He enters me slowly, bit by bit, emotion by emotion. A feeling of well-being and fulfillment invades my senses. My body is receiving him for the first time, and yet my vagina recognizes him. He is as I have seen him before, and felt him in my mouth. Long and slender. He touches the sensitive parts of my innermost depths with precision. Gently, when it comes to probing me where the threshold between pleasure and pain is particularly tenuous. Forcefully, when he rocks in and out of me. The walls of my sex envelop him perfectly, guiding first his tip, then his shaft through my intimate folds. I invite, aspirate, devour him. I open myself wide so he can invade my whole being. He slides in me again and again. He is tenderly excavating me. Occasionally, he withdraws so we can savor the moment. And then when he fills me again, we experience the pleasure of rediscovering each other anew.
Another tremor runs through me like a wave unfurling. One, then another crashes down into my crotch, which keeps opening wider and wider for him. Two giant flowers seem to bloom at this moment, one on top, one on bottom. They share the same root, the same lifeblood.
As the first orgasm hits me, I bury my face into a pillow. I twist left and right. My head rebels. My sex surrenders. I am shaking uncontrollably. My mouth is gaping. My cheeks are hidden by my hair. But my lips peek through the curtain. They are as fleshy as an orchid. His teeth try to sink into them. He rams harder against my soft backside. He quickens his pace. My insides are aflame. He does not let up. He will not be satisfied with one ecstatic moment. He wants to exhaust us both with pleasure. Wear us out with love. Carpet bomb us with sex. Hiroshima, my love.
HIS RIGHT HAND IS STRETCHED out over my front side, clutching my vulva. His middle finger is pressed into my clitoris again with authority. Though at first wary, my pink mound has given in, engorging and clamoring for more. An almost painful sensation shoots through it, joining the low rumble emanating around my uterus. The two vibrations meet at last. They become one, plucking my vocal cords, which ring out and excite the wild man, who growls as he ejaculates in spurts as intense as lightning.
At this point, my prior lovers would have collapsed into a heap. He, on the other hand, continues to rise and fall inside of me, hard and resolute. I realize that this is just the beginning, and my pussy spasms in radiant delight. Neither of us are close to being done.
“More . . .”
I do not wait for a reply. I know there will be more. There will be more nights, days, hotel rooms. We will make thousands of rules and transgress them all.
His tenacity is proof of how much he wants and desires me. Perhaps even loves me. No, my happiness immediately corrects: he definitely loves me. Completely, even. A strange glow seems to emanate from our bodies, a miraculous halo, the dawn of orgasms to come. The light envelops us, suspending us in midair. We are fragile and trembling like two butterflies in love.
The room around us has disappeared. And the sky above has cracked open invitingly. A ball of light carries us up with it, suspending us in space. We are in orbit, two fetuses grafted to each other. We contemplate the new earth being born below. It can only last a second; it can last billions of years. Time and space are meaningless; only the union of our bodies matters. We aren’t sleeping, we aren’t dreaming: we’re savoring the moment, recreating the world according to our pleasure. Elle and Louie. He and I.
Without stopping his gentle movement in and out of me, he reaches for a drawer in the table on our left. He withdraws a flat object that I don’t immediately recognize, but which has a strangely familiar glint.
My Ten-Times-a-Day! Louie places it on the bed near my face. I could pick out its silver cover from among a thousand notebooks. He opens it to the last page, which is not written in my hand. I don’t need to know how he got ahold of it.
As I leaf through it, I see our confessions dancing over the pages in a two-step that has now become one.
I smile. I’ve understood. Seeing this, he covers my neck in light kisses, sending shivers through my body and awakening other appetites, in the space between my thighs.
I desire you completely, fatally. I want to spend my life exploring you, and I know I will never be able to discover all of you. The more I possess you, the more secrets you will hold. The more your sex will be a mysterious continent rich in resources. The more it will jealously guard its pleasures.
Promise me.
Handwritten note by Louie, 6/18/2009
AGAIN HE STRETCHES OUT HIS arm and withdraws a small object that can fit in his hand. He places it on the cover of our notebook. A key. Not a magnetic card, a real key. Unpolished metal, heavy. A tag is tied to its head. Despite the darkness, I manage to read the handwritten message:
Welcome to
room number one.
Room number one?
I almost break our silence to ask. But I refrain. A moment later, it becomes clear. The rooms at the Hôtel des Charmes aren’t numbered because it is up to each person to live her own experiences and attribute numbers accordingly.
The Josephine will therefore always be room number one for me. It is where I experienced my first orgasm as a woman, a woman who chose to abandon herself to a man in order to know more pleasure. It was where we spent our first night together.
THE HALO OF LIGHT HASN’T dissipated. On the contrary, it has become more intense than ever. I feel it all around us. It is surprisingly familiar. Now, it will be with us forever.
However, the musical theme has changed. The first song was imbued with so much meaning. Now, the selection is softer, more hypnotic. I wonder what it is called.
“ ‘Home,’ ” Louie whispers with a smile.
Both the title of the song and the new status of this hotel. We both know it will forever be the seat of our pleasure. Our haven. Our home.
I HAVE NEVER BELONGED TO that category of women who see all hotel rooms as identical, all one and the same, each an anonymous space without any character or personality.
Now I know why.