Satisfaction Read online

  After the death of my mother, I went from being a borderline dunce to a borderline good but virtually autistic pupil (I thought of myself as an adult by now). A little later I started growing hair in places there wasn’t any before, and I discovered a new source of consolation: my dick.

  No need to spell it out, everyone knows the score. Serial masturbation, teenage rebellion, fights with my father, first girlfriends, drinking, wishing I were dead … Whatever the variations, you can’t avoid it: you have to go through the hell of adolescence. You emerge from it bolted up securely like a rancid cunt inside a chastity belt, or else simply a goddamn bloody cunt—fascinating but repulsive.

  Anyway, emerge from it I did, don’t ask me how. (Don’t ask me anything. That way, you’ll be able to let your imagination go. What more can I do for you? Look at my pretty face, look at my athlete’s body; with pleasure you tell yourself you’re smarter than me … and yet … those eyes … What if he’s not as dumb as he makes out? No, that’s not possible, look at me … That’s it, get carried away, look for the secret!)

  My first marriage didn’t last long. “It’s over, I can’t take any more of your lies,” she screamed, and would get so riled up her bones would protrude from her skin and her eyes would pop out.

  However, she said this for a few years before she finally cleared out, taking our son with her.

  What lies? What is it that they want? They’re always digging for something. You can give them everything you’ve got—your balls, your money—it’s never enough!

  OK, OK, Babe taught me not to speak like that. It’s my father talking. It’s like I’m possessed by him. Every so often he gets inside me, takes over, speaks through my mouth, moves my arms like some ridiculous puppet. I have to exorcise myself to get rid of him, a job that gets harder and harder, more and more violent. And one I have to do more and more often.

  I was single for quite a while after that. I got a job at the Road Forks Garage; that was enough to keep me happy. I was very wary of women at that time. This was when Internet porn was becoming available. For years I screwed around without laying a finger on any of them. No diseases, no hassle, all very refined. But all good things must come to an end, and finally I cracked. Babe wasn’t the first person I’d contacted on the Web who wanted to meet up, but she’s the first I actually agreed to get together with.

  I’d never seen anything as gorgeous as her face. Same goes for her body. She wasn’t a child-woman, she was a baby-woman. Her skin smelled like fresh bread; it was all soft with an odor that made your mouth water. I knew she hadn’t been born just the day before, but she had that wide-eyed, innocent look, as if she was new to the world.

  I adore women. I think they should fight for their rights—I’m right behind them on that. But the way these modern women come on to guys, looking for a fuck … that makes me run the other way. If you’re going to step into that trap, good luck to you!

  Babe was different, totally different. We liked each other, and that was that. It’s been ten years now. We got married the weekend after we first met. The boss let me borrow a white Cadillac that had just been checked in to the garage. I took her to Las Vegas, and we had one of the best Elvises for the ceremony. A late-period Elvis—sideburns, swollen cheeks and a white outfit to match the Cadillac, the jacket with a big collar encrusted with diamonds.

  His voice was a bit too loud, not as smooth than the original, but he had gusto; he sang “He touched me,” which added something profound to the wedding—and gave me a massive hard-on. Every time our King sang and repeated, “Oh, he touched me,” he seemed like he was a man with a sacred mission; it was as if Jesus, or Babe, was actually touching him, and he was generously allowing us to share in his emotion. As he sang he leaned over toward Babe through the open window, then stood up and leaned over again, looking at the bride as if he were in a trance and about to achieve a state of ecstasy. Then the priest, a thin, businesslike broom of a man, had us make our vows. We slipped on our rings, then drove off.

  A real nice wedding. I find that on a special occasion such as this, a drive-in provides both solemnity and sexiness. Everyone gets turned on in a nice car. You feel like you’re alone in the world … Free … All-powerful … Isn’t that right?

  There were other cars waiting behind us, but ours was the classiest by far. We went to eat in a super Tex-Mex, then we spent our first night together at Caesars Palace in a luxury suite for the price of a motel room. It was an unforgettable night, as it should be … (Especially for Babe.) (Only joking.)

  A man’s lucky if he finds the woman of his life. I don’t understand those people who get divorced at the drop of a hat. Babe and I, we’ve had our ups and downs. So what? I wasn’t going to give her up for that. She’s solid gold. We are of the same mind on just about everything.

  Just about everything.

  It’s thanks to her I got back in touch with my son Tommy. She hasn’t had a child herself, but that doesn’t stop her loving other people’s kids. We’ll grow old together, my blonde lady and I.

  At least, I thought we would. Before she discovered Carmen.

  γ

  Crouching down in the grass, her face straining toward the skylight, Babe doesn’t know why that story about the hole in the ozone layer has suddenly come back to her. It’s as if the sky has opened for her and she is hovering above the cellar like the eagle over the prairie, and what she can see is Bobby’s Pistol, and his face filled with a wicked pleasure as he kneels on the hood over the girl’s face pushing it down her throat, in and out, in and out.

  A blonde goes into an optician’s and says:

  “I’d like some dark glasses.”

  “Are they for you?”

  “No, they’re for the sun.”

  Shirley Gordon’s latest. Because she has hair like crows’ feathers, she thinks it’s OK to regale me with jokes about blondes. You can’t choose your neighbors, and this one’s a nightmare. Always spying on us and trying it on with Bobby. For years I’ve been wanting to slap her, insult her, dig my fingernails into her fat flesh, beat her stupid face to a pulp, scratch her eyes out, clean my toilet with her scalp, chop her into pieces with an axe.

  Among other things.

  Instead of this, I say really intelligent things to her, which makes her quiver with rage and run away like Lucifer from the Cross. For example:

  “Do you know what the philosopher Pat Amodley said in his latest book, The Cultivated and the Uncultivated? ‘Perversion or religion, voyeurism is a passion that can take on different values on the scale of good and evil, of the ugly and the beautiful, of the trivial and the spiritual. The voyeur is excluded from the spectacle by fascination, but is connected to its actors by identification. Secret looking can constitute an experience of trance. Of metamorphosis even. The staring eye, in its cruelty, chops up Time in transversal, transcendental slices. The edges of the body spread out, separate into gaps open to the air, through which the spirit exorcises itself, demonizes itself in the ecstasy of the fugue.’ Not bad, eh? Do you know what the American Indians used to do? They shut themselves away in sweat lodges until they escaped from their own bodies and, in the form of an eagle or some other animal, explored another dimension of the world. What would you be, Shirley? A hog? A rat?”

  To tell the truth, I didn’t manage to say this at all, any more than I managed to knock her head off. But why is it that I feel obliged to listen to her, even sometimes smile at her?

  It’s weird. The girl Bobby is thrusting his Pistol into looks like me. The same face as me. Except she’s dark, instead of blonde.

  Apparently, our lot is built on top of a former Indian cemetery. Shirley told me, but Bobby doesn’t believe it; he says if you think about it, the whole of America is built on an Indian cemetery. One time Shirley started making out that the dead were among us. She’s nuts. A prick-tease. A clairvoyant who has to invent mysteries. If I hide myself it’s to know the truth better.

  I’d forgotten Bobby’s Pistol was so big. H
ow is she managing not to choke on it?

  I, Babe, am in the shadows. Invisible. Warm, damp, dark. Like the night. And Bobby in the light. Exposed. I am spying, and my whole body is this gaze, in its electric, irradiating shell. Let the Lid of my Shell open, and it is I who illuminate the Spectacle.

  “What are you doing, Bobby?

  What are you doing with your Pistol?”

  “It’s not a pistol, Babe. It’s a dick. It’s my dick, Babe.”

  She used to be afraid at night. Of going outside. Of stepping on a toad. When it rains we are invaded by huge, black, slimy toads. They surround the house, silent and motionless, like traps, with their fat globular eyes and their repulsive bodies; they inhabit the damp nights, the invisible horror of defenseless nights. Who knows what might be going on when you can’t see? What might you do without realizing it? What might happen to you? What might you tread on? Even in the best-kept gardens, the night is menacing.

  Nevertheless, she did it. She launched herself into the blind world, she trampled the damp, secret, forbidden grass. The one known as Babe. Me. I am. I am the Night. The Night in me. Who sees my Night? Not even me. The Night sees me.

  “Look, Babe, it’s my dick. Look at it.”

  Babe, this so-called me who gets up in the morning, does all the things everyone does and then finds, by the time evening comes, that the days are too short.

  Because even if she has been very active, even if she has worked, earned her hamburger by the sweat of her brow, I have done nothing, I have done nothing really Deep, really Personal, I have not exercised my Freedom, my Singularity, for there is never time for I in a regular day, even if she seems to be doing her own thing, Working Out, Seeing People, Thinking about her Career, her Health and Beauty, filling her void with the same things everyone uses to give themselves the feeling that they exist—which is nothing but packaged, sterilized shit that obliges her, Babe, to fatten up the pharmaceutical industry in order to lose the Bad Taste of her life.

  Because she, a woman, never actually knows what being a woman means. Others seem to know quite well, especially men, who have very clear ideas about what they want you to be or don’t want you to be: that girl Bobby is fucking and definitely not that girl. That girl and her opposite. Other women also seem to know this. You see women everywhere, on TV, in magazines, in ads; woman is represented in a very particular way, comes in clearly defined forms, has a very precise way of talking to men. Babe knows the user manual for this cumbersome body off by heart; like every little girl, she has always known it; yet it is as if she has to check the manual for the washing machine after every wash: you push the buttons, but when it breaks down you realize that you don’t know what’s behind them, you don’t really know how the thing works, and you find yourself in a fine mess.

  “My dick. What have you got to say about that, Babe? Do you see how much this girl likes it?”

  A car passed slowly in front of the house and drove off down the deserted streets. It was a night in late April, already warm and humid. She had discussed it again yesterday with Bobby: wasn’t the hole in the ozone layer turning all the seasons upside down? Nothing was in the right order now: the seasons were going mad and telescoping together as if they, too, were gripped by fear, the desire to turn over or have done with the good old days. Do you believe all that crap? Bobby had said. They had had a bit of a showdown over this, just for something to do. No, seriously, she was sure They were hiding lots of things. He didn’t really give a damn, so long as it didn’t stop him polishing his chrome and selling his cars.

  Babe would have preferred to have an intelligent husband, but that’s a rare commodity. And they can deceive you, as her first husband had done. Most of the time intelligent men are unfaithful, or worse, depressed. At least Bobby had remained the same cute, happy-go-lucky, uncomplicated boy she had fallen for all those years ago. Despite the strange look in his eyes.

  “Do you want some, Babe? Do you want me to stick it in you?”

  At first she had been a little afraid, like everyone is. That absent look in the eyes, as if he were looking at something inside himself, or far behind you, anything but the here and now. But that was nothing, nothing at all.

  “Stop messing around. Just look at my dick.”

  “Your dick, yeah, I know. So what? Why’s it better to say dick than Pistol?”

  He was a fine boy, a real homebody, he wasn’t interested in politics, he didn’t go drinking in bars. He spent his free time doing odd jobs in the basement or smartening up his classic car. They ate dinner together in front of the TV, which was a stress-free way to pass the few hours before bedtime.

  They would sometimes spend the evening in the little study next to the living room, watching DVDs or chatting on the Web—that passed the time even more quickly. So they never got bored and never took any risks: all Babe wanted was to hold on to her Bobby and her creature comforts, and he only exploited his pretty face and his strange green eyes to stay top dog on the Road Forks Garage sales force.

  Crouching down in the grass, her face straining toward the skylight, Babe hovered over the cellar and looked at Bobby’s Pistol. His face filled with a wicked pleasure as he knelt on the hood over the girl’s face, pushing it down her throat, in and out, in and out. Stretched out on the pink Cadillac, her long black hair fanned across the windshield, her doe eyes fixed on the lightbulb above, her limbs spread wide, calves against the fenders, the girl suddenly looked toward the skylight. Babe withdrew behind the wall, her heart thumping.

  Her body was churning with violent, contradictory sensations. The fear of having been discovered, sexual excitement, jealousy, shame, anger. She felt guilty and in danger. All these emotions formed a strange cocktail in the pit of her stomach, and it was ready to explode. She would kill if she could.

  Bobby was wearing nothing but his socks, as usual. Babe was now hanging on to the bars of the grille with both hands. Too bad if the whore sees me. Let her say something, let it all come out into the open! All she knows how to do is lie back and let herself be screwed without moving a muscle, flattened against the hood of the car, her lips clamped round the Pistol like a vacuum cleaner nozzle. Under my own roof!

  When he gets up, the girl lies there, spread flat, inert. Her mouth gapes open in a ridiculous fashion, as if it were still filled by some phantom dick. Only the restless dead become phantoms! She has the same face as Babe, more open. And a body … Long, slim legs, large, firm breasts, a bushy, plump pussy like an apricot. She doesn’t move a whisker. A corpse. She looks completely stoned.

  Bobby, the bastard, is bending over her. Delicately now, as if the whore were made of sugar, he slides a hand under her shoulders, another under her hips. He lifts her up, turns her over, lays her on her stomach. He parts her buttocks, pushes his nose in, takes it out, introduces a finger and … slowly starts to polish his Pistol. Not in any hurry, so calmly it becomes quite enervating. Finally he decides to lie on her, and pushes his Pistol all the way into her little hole.

  Just like in the videos he used to bring home. At first, Babe liked them; you could even say they really turned her on. But she soon realized that it was always the same thing, and she would never see the thing that would really ignite her fantasy: two men fucking. All these films showed love scenes between women, but never between guys. The problem was she couldn’t bring herself to believe in these women. With their honed bodies and silicone breasts, they looked like no woman she knew, not Shirley, not herself. In the end the only thing that excited her in these videos was seeing some guy in the corner of the screen jerking off while he waited his turn. It was the only bit that was believable, the only vaguely mysterious part of the whole thing. All the rest was just sinister, and Babe started to resent it as if it were a personal attack on her integrity and her beauty.

  Allow her angelic face to be transformed into the muzzle of some dirty bitch? Never. Babe was born lovely and would stay that way. When she was quite young, she had decided to disguise her beauty under a ve
il of modesty. So that there could be no misunderstanding. And indeed, because of her physical appearance, people saw her as a paragon of virtue.

  “My dick, Babe. Don’t turn your nose up. Admit you’re mad about it.”

  No, no, not at all. Neither she nor Bobby could have taken it upon themselves to tarnish the ideal image everyone had of her. In the end she became disgusted with sex, with all these lewd images that gave her such painful thoughts. These absurd situations and grotesque positions, the terrible dialogue, the guys with their bodies shaved, the women with their pussies shaved, the enormous dicks, the dilated orifices, the upright breasts, the stupid faces.

  There was a time when I aspired to become a refined, sensitive, cultured woman. When I tried to understand art and literature. But I would have had to struggle against the whole world, and I didn’t have the strength for that. There was a hint of shadow in my mind, a seed of renunciation, and I let it grow.

  He’s going at it like an animal, calling her names, grunting. She has never seen her Bobby like this; God, it’s as if he’s possessed by the forces of Evil. Babe is finding this painful, yet she also understands him: this slut’s flesh is supple, voluptuous, available, completely subjugated; you could do anything you want with her … Could any man resist? Even a woman would want to …

  And on the Cadillac, what’s more! Bobby is crazy about his “queen of queens,” as he calls it. When he first got it Babe would see him caress it like a woman—if anything, more lovingly. It used to belong to Elvis Presley. He had spent a fortune to acquire it. When he brought it home last month he was so overjoyed that, after spending a good hour in the garage fixing it up, he wanted to make love in the middle of the afternoon. But it so happened that Babe had an errand to run, and she let him down as gently as possible before getting out of there as quickly as she could.