Satisfaction Read online

  She could already feel the push of his fingers on her throat, the thumbs digging into her neck … She could picture herself arching back under the pressure, her head thrown back … losing her mind as she lost the ability to breathe.

  So she would have to be able to throw out an arm and find behind her bed some blunt object with which she could strike a blow on her assailant’s skull … Or else, lift her leg to knee him in the balls … Unfortunately, far from reassuring her, these unlikely scenarios only exacerbated her fear. She felt giddy, faint, became crazy, then finally lost consciousness.

  That’s when the TV came on. Like every other morning, she and Bobby groaned and writhed in concert on their respective pillows. Then she regained consciousness totally as she always did—that is, exhausted, nauseous—but in spite of everything quite relieved to have crossed the vast ocean of the night in a single leap into the dark. She remembered nothing.

  She performed the daily rituals in her usual mental haze. At this hour she was always on autopilot. It was only after Bobby had left—when, as she was about to leave in turn, she checked her appearance one last time in the hall mirror—that something happened. I told her that instead of going to work, she should go down to the garage.

  ζ

  If I had taken pills like Babe, I wouldn’t have been harassed at night by all these women. Ghosts, phantoms, madonnas and whores, holes, vaginas, asses, tits, mouths, strict ones, insatiable ones, an army of leeches clamped to my nether regions to make me shoot my load, from shame or sheer joy …

  To me, the sea has always tasted of tears… When a girl wouldn’t go to bed with me straightaway, I’d tell her about my mother’s suicide, in a sober tone, and, with an unmistakable catch in the throat, I’d end on that phrase. It never failed. Women like nothing better than a bit of unhappiness. They’d throw themselves at me like animals do when they lick the salt off your fingers.

  All sorts of people have found me attractive. But I am straight. Rock solid, 100 percent. Bobby’s no faggot. The guys I attract are after the same thing: a bit of muscle and a hint of unhappiness.

  A secret and a weeping scar. If you have both, and you know how to use them, you can be whoever you want. It’s not how you thought, Pa: your modern-day hero has a flaw. A large flaw, like women have between their legs, that’s what you need these days to be successful.

  But not as far as Bobby’s concerned, no way. You don’t have to be born into a people that has known suffering, you don’t have to have been abandoned as a baby to bear the mark of unhappiness all your life. I’m not claiming anything like that, my ancestors were all white, well-off and educated, they weren’t massacred, reviled, downtrodden, dominated, degraded, exploited, brutalized, oppressed by another class or an enemy nation. And I was brought up by loving parents, my mother didn’t dump me in a trash can after I was born with the umbilical cord wrapped round my neck, I wasn’t discovered crying in bed full of excrement after a beer can had been dropped on my head. These things happen and that’s not what damns you. It’s other people who condemn you. You should never reveal your weaknesses to others; they will use them to trap you.

  No one gets a piece of Bobby. Bobby never complains. Bobby is strong. Bobby is solid, and his wife knows she can count on him, whatever happens. Bobby is a man. Bobby has a big dick and everything that goes with it; when he slides his hand inside his underpants to weigh it all up, he’s got plenty to be pleased about.

  That’s why Bobby needs a woman on the side. A woman for sex. A man has his needs.

  Bobby has his needs, big needs. And Carmen is his ideal woman. Always ready and willing to do anything. When I’m at the garage, I’m obsessed with her, I can picture everything I did last night, everything she took from me without flinching … And I get a massive hard-on and have to go to the bathroom and bring myself off, quickly, because I’m a conscientious employee and I don’t like to waste the company’s time.

  Deep down, man is just a machine, with lungs, balls, a stomach that gets full and needs to be emptied, in a perpetual cycle … It’s all mechanics … and every car has an exhaust pipe …

  Ah, les femmes … ! Every man should have one, a woman who never says no. A good bitch you can keep locked away to satisfy your urges, who’ll do anything and everything, who is always available and who is always satisfied …

  But they never are. When my mother left us, my father thought she’d run off to be with her lover. Did she have one? A man on the side to attempt to achieve that impossible satisfaction? Whatever, it was the sea she went to, as if she wanted to go back to the continent of her ancestors, where they say women are so easy and light and happy …

  The sea has the taste of her tears. Is Timmy bathing with her in that vast amniotic fluid? I cut the umbilical cord, I won’t be joining them, I’m holding on to life. In any case my mother never really loved me. Her children were a burden to her, that’s why she left, so there’s no reason to follow her like that perpetual baby Timmy.

  I can see her face, her large gray eyes; as she bends over me, I see how bright they become. Her whole girlish body sighed with pleasure when she opened her arms to draw me close to her, I was her favorite, there’s no doubt about it, and Timmy would get jealous, would come join us to get his slice of the pie, and the three of us would hug with all our force, as if to weld ourselves together, and tears would roll down her cheeks, Mom, Mom, why are you crying, it’s nothing, my dears, go play now, come on, leave me be, that’s enough, let go of me, give me some peace, go to your rooms, go outside, I don’t want to see you around, her voice became scary, we went before we got a slap, laughing, laughing our heads off, mocking her, the nasty mother.

  For months, years, I tossed and turned in bed next to Babe, who slept like a baby seal clubbed to death on an ice floe, and whom I could probably have screwed without her realizing, if I’d had the heart to do it.

  At first I waited stoically for it to go away, for the phantoms to let go of my balls so I could go to sleep. But that screwed me up, and then I had nocturnal emissions, so clearly the harpies returned to the attack when I was asleep, and when Babe saw the stain on the sheets the next morning she went pale, but didn’t say a word. Awful.

  In the end I resigned myself to solitary pleasures. Usually I got up and did it in the bathroom, a quick flick of the hand and it was over, but sometimes it wasn’t enough and I had to start over again a quarter of an hour later.

  I soon became addicted. I could even make it last without having to count to ten, using two hands like a geisha, bring myself to the brink of ejaculating, then hold back … In the end it was better than with Babe, and had the advantage that I didn’t have to beg her to lend me her body for ten minutes, during which I’d have to try to satisfy madam without tiring her out—mission impossible …

  I needed depressants rather than stimulants, but I couldn’t prevent myself seeking out new ways to turn myself on. I was a total fucking obsessive. When I was single, I had the time to explore what was available on the Internet, on video, even on the phone. Enough to get off 24-7 for several lifetimes.

  I started collecting videos around the time of my first marriage. I watched them at night, while my wife was asleep. But either she suspected something was up or she knew everything but didn’t dare mention it (except to drop pointed, spiteful hints). In any case, she was mad all the time, and it made her look ugly. A clear case of a vicious circle if ever there was one. The madder she got, the more I jerked off.

  So there we were, with a wall between us. Maybe I should have seen other women, but I was married, I had principles, still do. Unfortunately, she wasn’t as honest as me, since in the end she asked for a divorce. Ah, les femmes … !

  With Babe I decided to make do with my own imagination. No chance of her coming across that by accident. I had two or three scenarios I used—very simple but very effective. (What a great porn director I’d have been!) I picked one, visualized it while I pulled my choke, until the motor burst into life. One hell of
a mechanic. Everything well-oiled, no breakdowns, no nasty surprises. Just had to think about it, and I came.

  If only the female machine were so straightforward … I reckon with them the Great Mechanic wanted to do something fancy, something refined and sophisticated … As a result, not only are they complicated and high-maintenance but the system is constantly breaking down … And since they don’t know one end of the machine from the other, they don’t know how to fix it and get themselves going again. We guys have our little list of fantasies, sometimes just the one, and then just a quarter turn of the ignition is enough.

  I know, they say that guys are having more and more problems with women. More and more of them can’t get it up or have turned gay. But that’s not a construction fault. We’d have no problem at all with women if only they were made like us … (I mean in the head. I’m not a faggot, you know what I mean?)

  Easy to grasp, simple mechanism … That’s the principle of man. Modern, quick, efficient, with the risk of breakdown reduced to a minimum. Then woman comes along, with her endless complications, and everything goes wrong.

  One Saturday, Babe headed off to the mall, and I was doing odd jobs in the basement. By chance I came across an old supply of porn mags, which had been stashed away for years at the bottom of a box. Before I shoved them into a bag and took them down to the communal trash cans at the end of the alley, I reread them, carefully unsticking the pages. Spread-eagled pussies and erect cocks, faces of girls in ecstasy, positions, orgies, blow jobs, girl-on-girl action, penetration every which way, pools of sperm like condensed milk (or vice versa) …

  Suck me, you slut … Fuck me in the ass, big boy … I know you like it … etc.

  How does a boy stay pure when there’s filth like this in the house? Shit! The world is filthy, man is filthy, there’s no getting away from that. Only love can purify all this, but how do you satisfy your impure urges with the woman you love?

  Sometimes a great sadness descends on me, more than a sadness, a misery as dense and solid as a stone, and to avoid being dragged into the abyss by the weight of this stone, all I can do is jerk myself off.

  Anyway, you only have to switch on the TV or open a magazine to come across images of sexy girls, with their upstanding breasts, their impudent thighs, their cheeky asses … Constant reminders of sex, everywhere you look … How can you think of anything else?

  Delay the moment … That’s what I did. Because I knew that one day my hand just wouldn’t be enough.

  η

  Three short rings of the bell, then a breezy, high-pitched “Babe!”

  Shirley Gordon. Babe sighed and went to open the door.

  “Hi! Shirley!” she recited politely.

  Her neighbor was trussed up in a pink lace robe. Where did she find stuff like that? Babe wondered. She hadn’t had time to get dressed, yet she was already made up like a resprayed stolen car. She was clutching a yellow flyer in her chubby little hand.

  “I got one for you! Must dash!” she prattled.

  Babe grabbed the flyer. It was an appeal by the Church to the generosity of the faithful. In exchange, the ad promised, in large red letters, GOD WILL BE IN YOUR NEIGHBORHOOD.

  “Hey, Babe!” Shirley shrieked ridiculously, spinning round in the sun, which threw a glittering halo around her.

  Dazzled, Babe screwed up her eyes and stood still to show she was paying attention.

  “Do you know what a blonde does when the baby’s bathwater’s too warm?”

  Babe gave a wave of her hand, as if to chase away a fly, and turned on her heels. She hadn’t managed to close the door behind her when the punch line came:

  “She wears gloves!”

  The events of the previous night took some time to beat a path into her memory.

  Enough time for me to reappropriate I.

  I returns with my memory, then leaves me, I can’t hold on to it, I’m too afraid.

  Mom told me that the dead go to heaven, so I used to believe that Papa could see me when I was undressing or washing. Mom would come into the bathroom and turn on the light, and ask me in a suspicious tone: “What are you doing in the dark?” I didn’t dare tell her it was because of Papa. I wouldn’t have told her for anything. I sensed that would have made her really angry with me. She looked at my body, my breasts, my girlish belly. I made you, so I’m allowed to look at you. As if it all belonged to her. Disgusting! It made me want to be sick. To kill her.

  But I couldn’t say anything, show anything, think anything. Otherwise, it would be worse than death. A block of shame fell upon the room, the walls cracked under the strain, the house creaked and tottered, my body was full of cold coal, from my feet to my eyes, there was a taste of ash at the back of my throat, I had to empty myself out and burn it all in order to feel cleansed.

  * * *

  There are lots of places in town where a woman can touch up her hair and makeup, straighten her skirt, check out her figure, the bags under her eyes—in short, the current status of her mobile femininity. The eyes of men and other women, shop windows, mirrors in bathrooms and changing rooms, rearview mirrors, compacts … All these are benevolent and hostile judges of this human being who is forever condemned to see herself as an image. God, protect her, her soul is troubled and her narcissism is contagious, as even men are catching it now! It is as if the whole world were a labyrinth of mirrors, designed to drive you crazy!

  Oh, Babe had learned when she was a child not to admire herself. It was evil, it gave the wrong idea. Many of her friends strove without success to make themselves look like models in the fashion magazines. They simply ended up looking like whores. It was ridiculous.

  That is not to say she neglected her appearance. She dyed her hair, because the blonde made her look softer. She wore silky clothes in pastel colors, tokens of her innocence. Although she liked her food, she watched her weight, because bulges were vulgar. She did check her reflection everywhere, but not to look. She merely glanced, and that was enough to ensure that her blouse was correctly buttoned up at the bottom and unbuttoned at the top, that her pants didn’t make her behind look too big and that her long hair was all in place.

  But today, when she glanced in the hall mirror, she was captured by the reflection. Her image looked at her from the mirror: Babe Smith, wife of Wesson. Her image stared at her with dark eyes, as if reproaching her for something.

  Once again, her own image was looking at her …

  But when had she experienced this before?

  Something began to work its way into her mind, a nocturnal Thing; it was perceptible, close, she couldn’t yet name it or recognize it, but like a mole it burrowed its way inside her brain. At that moment she felt a Disruption enter her life, the first effect of which was to make her drop her plan to go out, for no other reason than the sudden urge to go down to the cellar.

  She phoned the university to tell them that she had a fever and was unable to come in. She had never missed a day’s work, even when she was a waitress in a bar. The fear of negative judgment made her voice waver as she tried to justify her unwonted absence.

  The frosty tone with which Kate, the secretary of the French and Italian Literature Department, replied clearly expressed disapproval, even bad temper. Babe stammered out a few more excuses and hung up. Then she stood there in the living room next to the sofa covered by a throw with a vaguely ethnic print, Native American no doubt, wondering what she would do if the telephone rang. But it didn’t, and she finally relaxed. She turned to face the window, for she needed to allow some light inside her.

  She wasn’t really religious anymore, but in her childhood she went to church every Sunday like everyone else. White ankle socks, dark brown curls tied back, sermons, hymns, prayers. God saw everything and she always kept a watch on herself, for she knew that He only liked good girls, and how could you expect Papa and Mom to love you if He was not satisfied with you?

  So she tried to douse the twinkle in her eye, to develop a look of disdain when the boys appro
ached her, to not let her thoughts drift when she was made to say her prayers before going to bed … And she had retained this built-in apprehension of the Almighty who observes us, judges us and scares us with the promise of Hell.

  And as she descended the stairs, Babe was filled with a new mystical feeling, as if her steps were being guided by God, as if God Himself resided in the basement of her house and was calling her down, into His Light that was like a Black Sun. God was no longer His Compassionate Cruelty but His Absolute Insensitivity, His Secular and Indifferent Revelation; God was there, and she went toward him with neither fear nor love, but with serenity and detachment, with a feeling of perfect Justification.

  The events of the previous night came back to her, but with no negative feeling attached—quite the opposite. Bobby’s actions in the cellar now appeared to her in their full magnificent, tragic dimension: Bobby got up at night to sodomize Death personified, Bobby did it to protect both of them, Babe and himself, he shot down Death with his Pistol, it was a splendid sacrifice and she knew, she knew it would change their Lives. Now she knew Why she had lived until now: for That which was about to happen, from this Present Moment that would never come to an end.

  And she goes down to the cellar on a glittering Barge, against the flow of the Stream, except that the countercurrent carries her forward, and when she reaches the Falls, instead of going under, she will sail up to them to be Splashed in their white Showers.

  θ

  The natural hair gives her a wild look, more real than the shaved pussies of modern women. Just thinking about her lovely black bush makes me as hard as hell.

  Women: I could have as many of them as I wanted, if I so desired. I’m not exactly lacking in opportunity at the Road Forks Garage. It’s probably the thought of buying a car that turns them on. But maybe they’re always like that, whatever they’re buying. Even if they’re not buying anything. Women today are uninhibited, even more than men. The mystery is: how come we don’t all go out into the streets, to the malls, to the town squares, everywhere, to fuck one another, how come we’re not indulging in a permanent mega-orgy?