Free The Elementary Particles by Michel Houellebecq Page B

with a lot of beautiful women in his life, but he was asleep—actually, he was completely drunk, he didn’t wake up until ten o’clock that night. Strangely, she wouldn’t let me take off her panties. She told me she’d never done it before, in fact she’d never really done anything with a boy before. But she was quite happy to jerk me off, she was pretty enthusiastic; I remember she was smiling. Then I moved my cock up to her mouth; she sucked it a little bit but she didn’t really like it. I didn’t push it. I straddled her, and when I slipped my cock between her tits she moaned a bit and seemed happy. I was really turned on. I pushed down her underpants—she didn’t stop me this time, she even lifted herself up to help me. She wasn’t particularly pretty, but her pussy was as beautiful as any pussy in the world. Her eyes were closed. When I slipped my hands under her ass, she parted her thighs completely. I was so excited that I came right there before I could even put it in her. There was jism in her pubic hair. I was really upset, but she said that it didn’t matter, that she was happy.
    “We didn’t really have much time to talk. It was nearly eight o’clock and she had to get back to her parents. I remember she told me she was an only child, I don’t know why. She seemed so happy, so proud to have a good reason to be late for dinner that I nearly cried. We kissed for a long time in the garden in front of the house. The next day I went back to Paris.”
    When he finished his story, Bruno paused for a moment. The psychiatrist discreetly shifted in his chair and said, about nothing in particular, “Good.” Depending on how much of the hour had elapsed, he would prompt Bruno again, or simply say, “We’ll leave it there for today?” stressing the last word a little to make this a question. As he said this, his smile was polished and effortless.

13
    In that same summer of 1974, at a disco in Saint-Palais, Annabelle let a boy kiss her. She had just read an article about boy-girl relationships in
Stéphanie.
The article had propounded a miserable rationalization on the subject of childhood friendships. It was extremely rare that a childhood friend became a boyfriend, according to the magazine. His natural role was to become a friend—a
loyal friend;
he might perhaps be a confidant and offer emotional support through the trials of first
boyfriends
.
    In the seconds that followed that first kiss, despite the assertions of the article, Annabelle was horribly sad. She felt flooded by some new, painful sensation. She left the Kathmandu and refused to let the boy come with her. She was trembling slightly as she unlocked her moped. She had worn her prettiest dress that evening. Her brother’s house was only a kilometer away. It was barely eleven o’clock when she arrived, and there was a light on in the living room. When she saw the light, she started to cry. It was here, on a July night in 1974, that Annabelle accepted the painful but unequivocal truth that she was an
individual
. An animal’s sense of self emerges through physical pain, but individuality in human society only attains true self-consciousness by the intermediary of
mendacity,
with which it is sometimes confused. At the age of sixteen, Annabelle had kept no secrets from her parents, nor—and she now realized that this was a rare and precious thing—from Michel. In a few short hours that evening, Annabelle had come to understand that life was an unrelenting succession of lies. It was then, too, that she became aware of her beauty.
    Individuality, and the sense of freedom that flows from it, is the natural basis of
democracy.
In a democratic regime, relations between individuals are commonly regulated by a social contract. A pact which exceeds the natural rights of one of the co-contractors, or which does not provide a clear retraction clause, is considered de facto null and void.
    If he was willing to talk in some detail about the summer of