“Ugh,” said the angel, peeling sweat-soaked lace from her ass.
“You didn’t have to wear the liquid latex,” said the demon. She’d started peeling the stuff off with her fingers, and ragged strips of bright red shiny skin hung from her now-bare breasts, her arms, her thighs.
“You got a smoke?” said the angel.
“In a California restroom?” said the demon. But she passed over a pack of American Spirits.
“I’ve got the Scotch,” said the Catholic schoolgirl. She kicked off her clunky mary janes and padded over stocking-footed to hand the bottle to the angel.
“Fuck,” said the vampire, dabbing at her nipples with a cottonball. “Goddamn spirit gum.”
“Goddamn Comic Con,” said the angel, slumping back against the brick wall.
“Beats the car shows,” said the superheroine, pulling off her domino mask, fingering a crumb of mascara from the corner of her eye.
—in May or June 2008 I sent four postcards intended for an exposure of Mail Art entitled “Erotic Moments” curated by Mr. Mark Falkant. The artworks are collages made from postcards of the pastoral village of Castelnau-Montratier (in Southern France), and old photographs of a girlfriend, taken around 1991 – 92, with two to three clothespins on her nipples.
I sent them, without adding them in an envelope, as is the norm, for purists of “postal art.” After having participated and showing my erotic Mail Art for the past 25 years, I didn’t think that they could pose problem—
—an notice insisting I present myself to the Gendarmerie of Castelnau-Montratier because of a “file related to me.” I go there, and they end up interviewing me, within the framework of a preliminary investigation, on the behalf of people who do not have the decency, to introduce themselves (I later learned I was summoned by the “Brigade of Search of the Gendarmerie of Cahors.”) First, they asked me questions about my professional life, they showed my postcards (under court seal) and tell me that someone filed a complaint against me using the article 227 – 24 of the New Penal code, which stipulates that: “the simple act of making, traveling with or transporting, and promoting by any ways a message with a violent or pornographic content or with the intention of hurting human dignity can be punishable with 3 years in jail and 500,000 euros when the message can be seen by an underage person.”
I answered : “The mailbox is managed by an adult, the postman and the other employees are also—and the same goes for the recipient.”
And my interrogator countered with: “Yes, but imagine that the postman has your cards in his hand, that they happen to fall, and then suddenly a minor appears who happens upon them. This is likely to happen.”
The Queen shivers and before she opens her eyes she smiles and kisses the calf of the Duchess of Ten Sleeps, her hands above her head on the Duchess’s thighs. The Privy Maid lifts her head from the Duchess’s breast as the Queen chuckles and stirs, her thighs opening as the fingers of the Countess My Lady Dinsmere stir in the white feathers puddled there. The Privy Maid rolls off the bed and naked pads through drifts of feathers, shreds and tatters of pillows and bolsters, duvets and robes, nightgowns and chaise-cushions, chemises and mattresses. She rings the bell that sits atop the commode and stands there, yawning, brushing feathers from her hair, scratching at the fluff of white goosedown caught in the dark tangle of hair about her sex, watching as the Countess My Lady crawls over the Queen’s leg to settle between her thighs, as the Markgreifynja Katrín Fjalarsdottir on her hands and knees, her impossibly long hair like a golden cloak over them, leans down, the first to kiss the Queen’s mouth in a shocking breech of morning protocol, but no one seems to mind. The Queen’s hands are busy pulling the Duchess’s Stiléan knickers over her hips. The Duchess’s hands are busy between the thighs of the Markgreifynja.
There is a knock at the door, and the Privy Maid opens it. The girl with the tray of steaming chocolate tries to step into the room, but the Privy Maid blocks her, takes the tray from her, smiles tightly. “You must go,” she says. The girl’s trying to peer over her shoulder.
“Mm,” says the Queen. “Charlotte?”
“Just the chocolate, ma’am,” says the Privy Maid, setting the tray down on the commode.
“Set it down, set it down,” says the Queen. “Come back to bed, Charlotte. Come back to bed. I want your little mouse to suck.” But the door is still open, and the girl still stands there, eyes wide, watching the bodies move on the bed in the morning light, the Queen’s hips rolling under the Countess My Lady’s moaning mouth, the Queen’s hands buried up to the elbow in the Markgreifynja’s hair, the Duchess her head beneath the Markgreifynja’s hips, her feet slipping a little in the feathers everywhere.
“Go,” snaps the Privy Maid, but the girl in the doorway does not move.
“Who is that?” says the Queen, her head upside down, lolling from side to side. Her eyes half-lidded but sharp and bright.
“Just the girl with the chocolate,” says the Privy Maid.
“But who is it?” says the Queen. “She looks so alike you, little mouse.” The Markgreifynja cries out.
“Anne,” says the Privy Maid, and then, “my sister.”
“Oh,” says the Queen. “Oh my.” The Duchess is laughing somewhere under the Markgreifynja. “Tell her to come here. Come here, girl. Come and kiss your Queen.”
Her hair stood on end and crackled and everything smelled like a thunderstorm had just rolled through, fresh and clean and sharp. She quickly stuffed the remote control in the pocket of her battered dungarees. There were two of him on the bed, just like she’d thought there’d be.
Two of them, naked, entangled. Two sets of eyes blinking sleepily up at her. Two hands entwined as two hands push against the floor boards. Two groans. A belly against the bare white cushions and a belly rolling over in the air as two knees hit the floor by two knees bending and pushing up. Two of those cocks flopping not quite loosely as his mouth and his mouth both quirked up in that reckless little smile that sent her heart looping.
“Christ,” he said, and “Fuck,” he said.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I must have pressed the wrong button or something. During the gating. I mean, I didn’t mean to.”
“Uh huh,” he said, and “An accident,” he said. “Uh huh.”
“Honest,” she said.
He was sitting there on the cushions, beside himself. One of him put his hand on the other’s knee. They were both looking at her. Neither smile had quite gone away, so she stepped closer to them, and couldn’t not smile herself.
“What am I going to do with myself?” he said at the same time, and she laughed as he grabbed her by the pants, as he grabbed her T-shirt, she laughed as he kissed her throat and he kissed her belly, she laughed as he lifted the shirt free and unbuttoned her pants, yanking them rudely down her legs.
—which I could feel rolling beneath me a pulse like a heartbeat the earthsblood warm and sluggish rich just beneath the skin of the earth the rock a skin a skim under my feet flexing welcoming my weight the water sluicing away around me sizzling almost I hear it where it brushes the rock hot not from the sun but itself smiling I can hear it to see me as I sit and gasp feeling already dizzy with anticipation the first time I did this the shock and surprise but now oh now I just want I want the weight of it under me gravity suspended clinging my thighs and my cunt as the rock and the rock against me within me the slick of it clayey like wet skin the pebbles smooth in my fingers as I try to give back with my fingers what little I can until trembling I’m coming so huge and vast and I close my eyes and groan and it’s shaking beneath me the river is roiling the rapids crash and fall about me the land itself changing around me as I dig my hand into the bloodied rock knuckles stinging my calf cramping tears running down my face and I’m screaming and screaming as the wind cracks and the rock shakes and I’m coming it’s coming I’m done and I’m done oh my God I’m done
He wore a long grey robe, and though the hood of it was down about his shoulders it was hard to make out his face in the dark room. When he spoke, though his did not raise his voice, his words echoed eerily; some sort of tube on the plinth before him caught them and threw them about the space: “Please disrobe,” he said.
“What, just like that?” she said.
“Please,” he said. “Remove your clothing.”
She was already unknotting her corset stays. “Usually,” she said, tugging her chemise free of her underskirt, “they buys me a drink, first. Not that I’m complaining, the cash you’ve given me.”
He said nothing. There were colored lights set in the top of the plinth, and they lit up and died down in rhythmic patterns, chasing his face with greens and blues and ugly reds. He had a beard of uncertain color, and a nose as long and sharply edged as his cheeks. He pressed a level, and suddenly she was lit up in harsh white light. She stood there a moment, blinking.
“Stockings, too,” he said. “And underthings.”
“It’s chilly,” she said. “I said, it’s chilly!”
“It would be best,” he said.
When she’d laid the filmy stuff on the heap of her discarded outfit and stood there, arms about herself, shivering under that light, he stepped out from behind the plinth. He limped as he walked, and something under his robes thumped dully with every step of his right foot. “Lie down,” he said.
“On my back?” she said.
“As you like,” he said. “Stimulate yourself.”
“Stimulate?” she said.
“Manipulate your orifice to generate the lubricative juices. However you might prepare yourself for a customer.”
“A customer?” She sat up, resting back on her elbows, blinking against the light. “Look, sir, I don’t know what you think I am, but—”
“A doxy,” he said. He turned and limped back to his plinth. “Are you ready, then?” He did not wait for an answer, but raised one hand as all the lights on his plinth flashed, bathing him in a lurid stew of color.
The wave that washed over her was at once cold and hot, and started somewhere down near her toes and hiked her knees up, toes stiff, thighs shivering with an uncertain effort. She cried out as it slapped her chest and throat and face, and her hair was suddenly soaked—with water? Sweat? Come? She cried out, and she moaned, jerking, and fell back, raising one leg up into the light, her back arched, as a second wave washed over her from nowhere at all.
When she opened her eyes, she lay in a sticky puddle on the stone floor. He stood at the edge of the bright white light, making notes with a stylus on a wood-framed tablet. “Thank you,” he said, or she thought he said, over the ringing that still sounded in her ears. “It helps, to make the metaphor concrete.”
