Wendy and Dennis. The electric door of the garage closes automatically. Wendy groans: “I’m not going to make love on the front seat of a car!” To which Dennis replies: “OK, we’ll use the backseat then,” and this argument overcomes the pretty brunette’s principles. Thus, leaning on the central armrest, she is now receiving his attentions. He takes her from behind vigorously, belly against buttocks. At first she nibbles the leather, then starts yelling, although bellowing might be a more appropriate term.
All these cries, all these pointless cries, it’s something that annoys Dennis even more than people who talk during a play.
Dennis and Katia. Beneath a painting depicting the almost Stendhal-inspired anagram by Jean Dupuy, Katia and Dennis are testing the solidity of an easy chair. Without taking off the skirt of her suit, this middle-aged lady has spread her thighs on the armrests, and is being penetrated by the young man, whose trousers have just slipped down over his socks. For the first time, Katia feels that the fear of revealing her aging body outweighs her desire to excite her lover. Tears of terror run down her cheeks.
It is only later that Katia will point out to Dennis that Crete is also an anagram of erect.
Katia and Rémy. A little lost in the huge super-king-size bed, surrounded by Chinese furnishings — fake Qing antiques bought in Hong Kong — Rémy, on his knees, is raising Katia’s hips as she lies on her back, thighs open. His nonchalant penis is dangling between his thighs. It would not take much for the beast to recover its form, and Rémy tries to find a source of excitement in Katia’s beautifully round breasts. Unfortunately, the fact that he knows they contain silicon implants weakens his libido even more. He suddenly starts breathing faster, gasping for air.
For the first time, Katia realizes that the word orgasmic has always reminded her of the word ogre, but never of asthmatic.
Rémy and Yolande. In Robert Debré Hospital, room number 12 smells slightly of ether. In the distance, the soft hum of the Paris ring road can be heard. On the hospital bed, with its steel bars, Rémy, his nose in the pillow, is penetrating Yolande’s vagina with regular deep thrusts that get faster and faster, before he ejaculates inside her with a long roar. Yolande hasn’t come, but she gently strokes Rémy’s balding head, while his heart is beating fit to burst, just as it does in certain novels.
Is it the ether? His head is spinning slightly. Rémy would love to die like this; Yolande would just hate that.
Yolande and Farid. In an attic room overlooking a Parisian courtyard, the faucet is dripping regularly into the sink. Curled up on the unmade bed, Farid is stroking the hand of a sleeping woman, whose face is mature and finely wrinkled. Didn’t I just beaver old Yolande beautifully, lick her listless, tongue her tweeter, nibble her nub, and suck her sweetness, says Farid to himself, who was in need of a little affection too.
What is sure, the young linguist thinks, is, put like that, things sound quite utterly different.
Farid and Mina. The thunderstorm has crackled into life at last and warm raindrops are wrinkling the pool of a country house overlooking the Gulf of Sperona. Mina has swum over to Farid, who is sitting on the tiled steps. Without leaving the water, she takes hold of his penis and presses it between her breasts, where it recovers its vigor and full dimensions. In what the French call the “notary’s tie position,” Mina jolts up and down over his glans, occasionally applying a sweetly rapid lick to his urethra. Farid is going to come, he knows it, despite the disapproval of his ever-present inner voice.
Mencken was right, Farid thinks: Puritanism is the awful fear that someone somewhere might be happy. Yourself included.
Mina and Terence. Naked on the bed, Mina looks asleep, and her slender hand is resting motionless on Terence’s muscular buttocks. He is toying with a lock of her brown hair, admiring her proportions and the matte sensuality of her skin. He stretches out his arm and parts the curtains just a little, so as to cast her in a better light. He opens the window and the Marseille world of sounds and yells bursts into the room. He lies down next to her.
Now — Terence says — I’m going to count to three then snap my fingers, and all you will remember is that no one has ever made love to you like this before.
Terence and Anna. Using the pretext of protecting him against the Atlantic sunshine, Anna has invited Terence beneath her poly-cotton domed tent, which is supposed to reduce condensation and increase oxygenation. But it is now in a rubbery humidity that her swift fist is moving up and down over his stiff penis. Like Terence, she is a birdwatcher, and she confesses, without slowing up her energetic attentions, to a predilection for the grey wagtail family (Moticilla cinerea), because of their extraordinary tails. Just then, Terence’s wagged tail hits the poly-cotton and Anna’s hair.
This will be a great memory, Terence thinks, unless, as with many good memories, it turns sour.
Anna and Laurent. The showers on the campsite of the Deux Leyres valley are ringing with Anna’s attempts at smothering her groans. Ouhhiiii, mmmmh, hoouhouu, waaii, her onomatopoeias defy exact transcription. Doubled over, leaning her left hand against the tiles, she is squeezing Laurent’s balls in her right hand, while he penetrates her from behind. She hasn’t had time to rinse her hair and the foam from her shampoo is stinging her eyes. She murmurs “Terence,” and Laurent asks “What am I?”
Suddenly, a spitting, hirsute alley cat slips through the door. Laurent, in utter astonishment, wonders what exactly this pussy is after.
Laurent and Wendy. The little red Fasten your seatbelt light has just come on, and the Berlin — Chicago airbus has resumed its reassuring purr. Beneath a grey and red Lufthansa blanket, Wendy and Laurent are pretending to sleep, their bodies touching. She has removed her panties, hiked up her skirt, opened Laurent’s fly, and is attempting to introduce his astonishingly stiff penis into her vagina. Air hostesses are proverbially discreet. With this girl, Laurent thinks, I feel like I’m a cigar going to bed with a lighter.
After a series of multiplications including centimeters, frequency, and various other intimate parameters, Laurent figures out that over the past twenty years his penis has traveled 21.5 kilometers inside a female body.
Wendy and Harry. “Yes! Yes! Yes!” Wendy yells, while being penetrated by Harry beneath the beams of his one-bedroom flat in the Marais quarter of Paris. Her feet are flat on the linen sheet and her hands far behind her, while she rams herself down forcibly on his hard, stubby stick. Meanwhile, he’s stroking her taut thighs, and admiring her young, muscular body. As she shifts up and down she repeats: oui! oui! in French now. Though flattered that she’s now decided to yell in this language, Harry would still like her to change her tune, and stops himself from asking her: yes what?. . What was the question?
Every time I sleep with her, Harry thinks in a sweat, it feels like a shovelful of earth has fallen on my head.
Harry and Sofia. “Harry, you don’t keep tampons any more?” Sofia yells from the bathroom, waking up a good stretch of the rue des Francs-Bourgeois. It was just a rhetorical question, because she comes back to lie on her stomach, legs spread without any pretence to prudery. Harry kisses her buttocks, which she hasn’t even dried. The wick of a white candle (or dynamite) is now dangling from her sex. A forgotten word crops up in Harry’s mind. He smiles: catiminis. .