Free Submission by Michel Houellebecq Page B

this had given me an enormous amount of pleasure. And sources of pleasure were hard to come by. In the end, my cock was all I had. My interest in the life of the mind had greatly diminished; my social life was hardly more satisfying than the life of my body; it, too, presented itself as a series of petty annoyances – clogged sink, slow Wi-Fi, points on my licence, dishonest cleaning woman, mistakes in my tax return – and these, too, followed one after another without interruption, and almost never left me in peace. In the monastery, I imagined, one left most of these worries behind. One laid down the burden of one’s individual existence. One renounced pleasure, too, but there was a case to be made for that. It was a shame, I thought while I read, that Huysmans spent so much of
En route
insisting on his disgust at the debauches in his past. Here, perhaps, he hadn’t been completely honest. What attracted him about the monastery, I suspected, wasn’t so much that one escaped from the quest after carnal pleasures; it was more that one could be freed from the exhausting and dreary succession of aggravations that made up daily life, from everything that he had described with such mastery in
À vau-l’eau
. In the monastery, at least, one was assured of room and board – and, best-case scenario, eternal life as a bonus.
     
    Myriam came over at seven. ‘Happy birthday, François …’ she said in a tiny little voice when I opened the door, then she threw herself into my arms. Our lips and tongues met in a long, voluptuous kiss. As I walked her into the living room, I saw she was dressed even more sexily than last time. She had on another black miniskirt, even shorter than the one before, and stockings: when she sat down on the sofa I could see a garter, black against the top of her very white thigh. Her blouse, also black, was very sheer. I could see her breasts moving underneath. I realised that my fingers could still recall the touch of her aureoles. She gave a hesitant smile. There was something momentous and undecided in the air.
    ‘Did you bring me a present?’ I asked in what I hoped was a joking tone of voice, to lighten things up.
    ‘No,’ she answered gravely. ‘I couldn’t find anything that seemed right.’
    After another silence, she suddenly spread her thighs wide; she was naked under her skirt, and it was so short that I could see the outline of her hairless, unabashed pussy. ‘I’m giving you a blow job,’ she said, ‘a good one. Come here, sit on the edge of the sofa.’
    I obeyed, letting her undress me. She kneeled down and began by tonguing my arsehole, slowly and tenderly, then she took me by the hand and raised me to my feet. I leaned back against the wall. She kneeled down again and began licking my balls, all the while wanking me off with short quick strokes.
    ‘Tell me when you want me to suck you,’ she said, pausing. I waited and waited, until my desire overwhelmed me. ‘Now,’ I said.
    I looked her in the eye just before she touched her tongue to my cock; seeing her do it turned me on even more. She was in a strange state, a frenzy of concentration, as her tongue swirled over my glans, now fast, now hard and slow; she squeezed the base of my cock in her left hand, and with her right hand she stroked my balls. Waves of pleasure surged and swept over my consciousness. I could hardly stand, I was about to faint. Just before I exploded into a cry, I found the strength to beg her, ‘Stop … Stop …’ I hardly recognised my own voice – it was distorted, almost inaudible.
    ‘You don’t want to come in my mouth?’
    ‘No – not now.’
    ‘All right … I hope that means you’ll want to fuck me later on. Let’s have something to eat.’
    This time I’d ordered the sushi in advance. It had been sitting in the fridge since mid-afternoon. I’d also chilled two bottles of champagne.
    ‘You know, François …’ she said, after she’d taken a first sip, ‘I’m not a whore.