Free The Suitors by Cecile David-Weill Page B

that in our family sex was allowed, authorized, or approved of. The sexual education my sister and I received from our mother was summed up in a few principles: we were to begin our lives as women only after a visit to the doctor, and only if (she always said
if
, not
when
) we were in love—the sine qua non, she said, for making love, thus making the gift of oneself out of what otherwise would be simply an easy lay.
    In that department, though, Marie and I have always been different. Marie is romantic and dreams of meeting her soul mate, but that doesn’t stop her from collecting lovers. She has never found it compromising to sleepwith whomever she pleases. It gives her pleasure, especially when she comes across a hardy and enthusiastic partner with self-assured moves but no real emotional involvement. In short, nothing to write home about. Sometimes she even has to think twice about her scruples when she turns down men who seem to attach great importance to sex. But she’s too sought after to yield to her admirers just to be considerate, so to rein herself in she has come up with some inhibitions and apprehensions: unseemly, occasionally embarrassing noises made by interlocking bodies, and self-consciousness about her nakedness, or about the folds and bulges created during the choreography of love’s embrace. And these barriers keep her from giving in to just anyone, without preventing her from letting herself go whenever she feels like it. Particularly with her pals in the security details for summit meetings, guys for whom my sister, who’s crazy about officers and uniforms, feels a guilty fondness.
    I’m the opposite of Marie. Men never leave me indifferent. Arousing desire or disgust, their skin, their bodies wield a power over me that proves sometimes inconvenient. I’m incapable, for example, of dancing cheek to cheek with a man who doesn’t appeal to me. And I make sure I never touch or brush against a man, evenby accident—in the back of a car, say—for fear of shuddering with desire if he attracts me or with aversion if he doesn’t. In my life, sex has always intruded in an unexpected and uncontrollable way. Falling in love is an invitation to chaos and commotion: I feel immediately on fire, overwhelmed by a painful desire for the man who fills my thoughts. Sleepless, I lie moaning, writhing with longing, capable of climaxing or becoming prostrate with frustration at the memory of a word, a gesture. So it goes without saying that I set great store by physical love. Without any “technique,” I abandon myself to my partner and lose all sense of time. For me, sex is like an elixir that cures me of everything, of both worry and pain. It’s like a prodigious journey that sweeps me up from head to toe, a journey on which I cannot embark unless I love the man to distraction, even if only for a few hours.
    Like the narrator’s aunts in
Remembrance of Things Past
, who thank Swann so obliquely for the case of Asti wine, I tried to be tactful by not looking Jean-Michel Destret straight in the face, so that he wouldn’t feel too ill at ease upon arriving at a strange house. I did sneak a peek at him while he was getting out of his car and noticed that he’d sat next to his driver instead of in the backseat.
    Marcel, who was in charge of the luggage, welcomed the chauffeur and led him off to his room, while Marie and I escorted Jean-Michel into the loggia, where the other guests were chatting over their tea.
    “Jean-Michel Destret, delighted,” he said to my mother, bending crisply to kiss her hand before adding, “Allow me to thank you for your invitation, Madame Ettinguer. I’m very happy to be here.”
    Marie and I looked at each other, stunned by the disastrous impression he had just made. Managing to cram so many gaffes into one greeting was in fact a kind of triumph. Beginning with “Delighted,” 1
totally
provincial, at least when trotted out for an introduction—an absurd rule, perhaps, but an