Little Birds (12 page)

The day after we met, she left Saint-Tropez, and I was filled with regrets for not having kissed her. Now I was about to see her again.

In New York I unfold my wings of vanity and coquetry. Mary is as lovely as ever and seems much moved by me. She is all curves, softness. Her eyes are wide and liquid; her cheeks, luminous. Her mouth is full; her hair blond, and luxuriant. She is slow, passive, lethargic. We go to the movies together. In the dark she takes my hand.

She is being analyzed and has discovered what I sensed long ago: that she has never known a real orgasm, at thirty-four, after a sexual life that only an expert accountant could keep track of. I am discovering her pretenses. She is always smiling, gay, but underneath she feels unreal, remote, detached from experience. She acts as if she were asleep. She is trying to awaken by falling into bed with anyone who invites her.

Mary says, "It is very hard to talk about sex, I am so ashamed." She is not ashamed of doing anything at all, but she cannot talk about it. She can talk to me. We sit for hours in perfumed places where there is music. She likes places where actors go.

There is a current of attraction between us, purely physical. We are always on the verge of getting into bed together. But she is never free in the evenings. She will not let me meet her husband. She is afraid I will seduce him.

She fascinates me because sensuality pours from her. At eight years old she was already having a Lesbian affair with an older cousin.

We both share the love of finery, perfume and luxury. She is so lazy, languid—purely a plant, really. I have never seen a woman more yielding. She says that she always expects to find the man who will arouse her. She has to live in a sexual atmosphere even when she feels nothing. It is her climate. Her favorite statement is, "At that time, I was sleeping around with everybody."

If we speak of Paris and of people we knew there, she always says, "I don't know him. I didn't sleep with him." Or, "Oh, yes, he was wonderful in bed."

I have never once heard of her resisting—this, coupled with frigidity! She deceives everybody, including herself. She looks so wet and open that men think she is continuously in a state of near orgasm. But it is not true. The actress in her appears cheerful and calm, and inside she is going to pieces. She drinks and can sleep only by taking drugs. She always comes to me eating candy, like a schoolgirl. She looks about twenty. Her coat is open, her hat is in her hand. Her hair is loose.

One day she falls on my bed and knocks off her shoes. She looks at her legs and says, "They are too thick. They are like Renoir legs, I was told once in Paris."

"But I love them," I say, "I love them."

"Do you like my new stockings?" She raises her skirt to show me.

She asks for a whiskey. Then she decides that she will take a bath. She borrows my kimono. I know that she is trying to tempt me. She comes out of the bathroom still humid, leaving the kimono open. Her legs are always held a little apart. She looks so much as if she were about to have an orgasm that one cannot help feeling: only one little caress will drive her wild. As she sits on the edge of my bed to put on her stockings, I cannot withhold any longer. I kneel in front of her and put my hand on the hair between her legs. I stroke it gently, gently, and I say, "The little silver fox, the little silver fox. So soft and beautiful. Oh, Mary, I can't believe that you do not feel anything there, inside."

She seems on the verge of feeling, the way her flesh looks, open like a flower, the way her legs are spread. Her mouth is so wet, so inviting, the lips of her sex must be the same. She parts her legs and lets me look at it. I touch it gently and spread the lips to see if they are moist. She feels it when I touch her clitoris, but I want her to feel the bigger orgasm.

I kiss her clitoris, still wet from the bath; her pubic hair, still damp as seaweed. Her sex tastes like a seashell, a wonderful, fresh, salty seashell. Oh, Mary! My fingers work more quickly, she falls back on the bed, offering her whole sex to me, open and moist, like a camellia, like rose petals, like velvet, satin. It is rosy and new, as if no one had ever touched it. It is like the sex of a young girl.

Her legs hang over the side of the bed. Her sex is open; I can bite into it, kiss it, insert my tongue. She does not move. The little clitoris stiffens like a nipple. My head between her two legs is caught in the most delicious vise of silky, salty flesh.

My hands travel upwards to her heavy breasts, caress them. She begins to moan a little. Now her hands travel downwards and join mine in caressing her own sex. She likes to be touched at the mouth of her sex, below the clitoris. She touches the place with me. It is there I would like to push a penis and move until I make her scream with pleasure. I put my tongue at the opening and push it in as far as it will go. I take her ass in my two hands, like a big fruit, and push it upwards, and while my tongue is playing there in the mouth of her sex, my fingers press into the flesh of her ass, travel around its firmness, into its curve, and my forefinger feels the mouth of her anus and pushes in gently.

Suddenly Mary gives a start—as if I have touched off an electric spark. She moves to enclose my finger. I press it farther, all the while moving my tongue inside her sex. She begins to moan, to undulate.

When she sinks downwards she feels my flicking finger, when she rises upwards she meets my flicking tongue. With every move, she feels my quickening rhythm, until she has a long spasm and begins to moan like a pigeon. With my finger I feel the palpitation of pleasure, going once, twice, thrice, beating ecstatically.

She falls over, panting. "Oh, Mandra, what have you done to me, what have you done to me!" She kisses me, drinking the salty moisture from my mouth. Her breasts fall against me as she holds me, saying again, "Oh, Mandra, what have you done..."

 

I
AM INVITED
one night to the apartment of a young society couple, the H's. It is like being on a boat because it is near the East River and the barges pass while we talk, the river is alive. Miriam is a delight to look at, a Brunhilde, full-breasted, with sparkling hair, a voice that lures you to her. Her husband, Paul, is small and of the race of the imps, not a man but a faun—a lyrical animal, quick and humorous. He thinks I am beautiful. He treats me like an objet d'art. The black butler opens the door. Paul exclaims over me, my Goyaesque hood, the red flower in my hair, and hurries me into the salon to display me. Miriam is sitting cross-legged on a purple satin divan. She is a natural beauty, whereas I, an artificial one, need a setting and warmth to bloom successfully.

Their apartment is full of furnishings I find individually ugly—silver candelabra, tables with nooks for trailing flowers, enormous mulberry satin poufs, rococo objects, things full of chic, collected with snobbish playfulness, as if to say "We can make fun of everything created by fashion, we are above it all."

Everything is touched with aristocratic impudence, through which I can sense the H's fabulous life in Rome, Florence; Miriam's frequent appearances in
Vogue
wearing Chanel dresses; the pompousness of their families; their efforts to be elegantly bohemian; and their obsession with the word that is the key to society—everything must be "amusing."

Miriam calls me into her bedroom to show me a new bathing suit she has bought in Paris. For this, she undresses herself completely, and then takes the long piece of material and begins rolling it around herself like the primitive draping of the Balinese.

Her beauty goes to my head. She undrapes herself, walks naked around the room, and then says, "I wish I looked like you. You are so exquisite and dainty. I am so big."

"But that's just why I like you, Miriam."

"Oh, your perfume, Mandra."

She pushes her face into my shoulder under my hair and smells my skin.

I place my hand on her shoulder.

"You're the most beautiful woman I've ever seen, Miriam."

Paul is calling out to us, "When are you going to finish talking about clothes in there? I'm bored!"

Miriam replies, "We're coming." And she dresses quickly in slacks. When she comes out Paul says, "And now you're dressed to stay at home, and I want to take you to hear the String Man. He sings the most marvelous songs about a string and finally hangs himself on it."

Miriam says, "Oh, all right. I'll get dressed." And she goes into the bathroom.

I stay behind with Paul, but soon Miriam calls me. "Mandra, come in here and talk to me."

I think, by this time she will be half-dressed, but no, she is standing naked in the bathroom, powdering and fixing her face.

She is as opulent as a burlesque queen. As she stands on her toes to lean towards the mirror and paint her eyelashes more carefully, I am again affected by her body. I come up behind her and watch her.

I feel a little timid. She isn't as inviting as Mary. She is, in fact, sexless, like the women at the beach or at the Turkish bath, who think nothing of their nakedness. I try a light kiss on her shoulder. She smiles at me and says, "I wish Paul were not so irritable. I would have liked to try the bathing suit on you. I would love to see you wearing it." She returns my kiss, on the mouth, taking care not to disturb her lipstick outline. I do not know what to do next. I want to take hold of her. I stay near her.

Then Paul comes into the bathroom without knocking and says, "Miriam, how can you walk around like this? You mustn't mind, Mandra. It is a habit with her. She is possessed with the need to go around without clothes. Get dressed, Miriam."

Miriam goes into her room and slips on a dress, with nothing underneath, then a fox cape, and says, "I'm ready."

In the car she places her hand over mine. Then she draws my hand under the fur, into a pocket of the dress, and I find myself touching her sex. We drive on in the dark.

Miriam says she wants to drive through the park first. She wants air. Paul wants to go directly to the nightclub, but he gives in and we drive through the park, I with my hand on Miriam's sex, fondling it and feeling my own excitement gaining so that I can hardly talk.

Miriam talks, wittily, continuously. I think to myself, "You won't be able to go on talking in a little while." But she does, all the time that I am caressing her in the dark, beneath the sarin and the fur. I can feel her moving upwards to my touch, opening her legs a little so I can fit my entire hand between her legs. Then she grows tense under my fingers, stretching herself, and I know she is taking her pleasure. It is contagious. I feel my own orgasm without even being touched.

I am so wet that I am afraid it will show through my dress. And it must show through Miriam's dress, too. We both keep our coats on as we go into the nightclub.

Miriam's eyes are brilliant, deep. Paul leaves us for a while and we go into the ladies' room. This time Miriam kisses my mouth fully, boldly. We arrange ourselves and return to the table.

Pierre was sharing an apartment with a much younger man, Jean. One day Jean brought home a young girl he had found wandering in the streets. He had seen that she was not a prostitute.

She was barely sixteen, with close-cropped hair worn like a boy's, a youthfully formed figure, two little sharply pointed breasts. She had responded to Jean's words immediately but in a dazed fashion. She said, "I have run away from home."

"And where are you going now? Have you got money?"

"No, I have no money, and no place to sleep."

"Then come with me," said Jean. "I shall make you dinner and give you a room." She followed him with incredible docility.

"What is your name?"

"Jeanette."

"Oh, we fit well together. I am Jean."

There were two bedrooms in the apartment, with a double bed in each. At first Jean had really intended to rescue the girl, and to go to sleep in Pierre's bed. Pierre had not come home. He felt no desire, but a kind of pity for her forlorn, lost air. He made dinner for her. Then she said she was sleepy. Jean gave her a pair of his pajamas, showed her into his room and left.

Soon after he had gone into Pierre's room, he heard her calling to him. She sat up in bed like a weary child and made him sit beside her. She asked him to kiss her goodnight. Her lips were inexperienced. She gave him a gentle, innocent kiss, but this aroused Jean. He made the kiss last and pushed his tongue into her soft little mouth. She permitted this with the same docility she had shown in coming home with him.

Then Jean became more aroused. He stretched himself beside her. She seemed to like it. He was a little frightened by her youthfulness, but he could not believe that she was yet a virgin. The way she kissed was no proof for him. He had known many women who did not know how to kiss but who had known how to clutch at a man in other ways and receive him with great hospitality.

He began to teach her how to kiss. He said to her, "Give me your tongue as I gave you mine." She obeyed.

"Do you like it?" he asked. She nodded her head.

Then, as he lay back watching her, she raised herself on her elbow and very seriously stretched out her tongue and placed it between Jean's lips.

This enchanted him. She was a good pupil. He made her move it and flick it. They remained glued together for a long time before he attempted any other caress. Then he explored her little breasts. She responded to his little pinchings and kissing.

"You never kissed a man before?" he asked her incredulously.

"No," said the young girl, very seriously. "But I always wanted to. That is why I ran away. I knew my mother would continue to hide me. Meanwhile she was receiving men all the time. I heard them. My mother is quite beautiful, and men often came and locked themselves in with her. But she would never let me see them, or even let me go out alone. And I wanted to have a few men to myself."

"A few men," said Jean laughing. "One is not enough?"

"I don't know yet," she said with the same seriousness. "I will have to see."

Then Jean turned his whole attention to Jeanette's firm and pointed little breasts. He kissed them and fondled them. Jeannette was watching him with great interest. Then when he stopped to rest himself, she suddenly unbuttoned his shirt, and laid her fresh breasts against his chest and rubbed herself against it exactly like a languorous, voluptuous cat. Jean was amazed at her talent for lovemaking. She was progressing fast. Her nipples had known just how to touch his own, just how to rub against his chest and excite him.