Free The Sexual Life of Catherine M. by Catherine Millet Page B

may, experience has taught me that they cannot deny the principle of reality when it hits them in the face. If I don’t warm to the telephone conver- sation, they inevitably ask a question, like a password that may or may not open the door. For example: “Are you married now?” “Yes.” “Lovely, well, I’ll give you a call next time I’m in Paris and perhaps we’ll have a chance to see each other.” I know I will never hear from them again.
    To go back to those preliminaries that many women claim are the most delicious phase of a relationship, and which I have always tried to keep as brief as possible, I should make it clear that I have experienced them—and even then without prolonging them—in only two specific situations: when desire was already and unwittingly a breakaway faction of a profound and loving relationship; and after a relatively long period of abstinence, which amounts to exceptional circumstances.
    In the latter case the signs were: an unex- pected and frustrating sitting for a photo- graphic portrait because—needless to say—the lighting was never quite right; a ride up in a elevator that was about as chatty as a funeral vigil; tiny, furtive kisses, then sneaky bites sneaked along the top of my bare arm when I had to place it on top of the layout table…I inhaled these libidinous effluvia rather like an asthmatic who unwisely
    strayed into a stifling hothouse. Very aware that I had done nothing to cultivate this sort of feeling in the past, I put them down to a sort of gentrification of my erotic life.
    The other case proves that the sharpest of our sensual experiences can forge a path even through our least sensitive points of ac- cess. Even though I have no ear at all, and I go to the opera only for reasons that have nothing to do with the art of music, it is thanks to his voice that Jacques first ap- peared on the horizons of the vast plain of my desire. And yet his voice does not corres- pond to the sexy stereotype, it is neither vel- vet nor gravelly. Someone had recorded him reading a text and then played the tape to me over the telephone. I can still feel the echo it sent through me, radiating out to the most highly receptive point on my body. I gave myself over entirely to this voice, which itself seemed to give up entirely every detail of its speaker, a voice with the clarity and the calm
    rhythm of its brief inflections, as firm and as- sured as a hand turning up its palm to mean “There you have it.” Sometime later I heard it on the telephone again, live this time, pointing out a typo in an exhibition catalog in which Jacques had been involved and on which I was working. He offered to come and help me correct the copies. We spent hours on the work, inches away from each other in a tiny office, with me very embarrassed by my mistake while he just got down to cor- recting it. He was attentive without being es- pecially friendly. After one of these tedious sessions, he asked whether I would like to join him for dinner at a close friend’s home. When dinner was over and several of us were squeezed next to one another on a bed serving as a sofa (which meant adopting an uncomfortable, semiprone position), Jacques stroked my wrist with the back of his index finger. It was an unexpected, unusual and quite delicious gesture, and it still moves me
    now, even when it is addressed to other skin than mine. I followed Jacques to the studio he was living in at the time. In the morning he asked me who I was sleeping with. “With lots of people,” I replied. “Damn,” he said, “I’m beginning to fall in love with a girl who’s sleeping with lots of people.”

The Pleasure of Telling

    I have never tried to hide the extent or the eclectic variety of my sexual contacts, other than from my parents. (When I was a child and a “wedding night” was just a vague for- mula, even imagining that my mother would be able to picture me on that first night was truly a source of torment.) I have