She said “you can sleep with me if you want”, and as I met her gaze in mute, explicit questioning, added: “but only sleep”. I considered her proposal.

We stayed in small bedrooms opposite each other, two of twelve identical cells on the top floor of a former monastery, in Southern France, converted into a library and lodgings for literary translators, who applied for weeks- or months-long residence when in need of focusing on a particular project. She translated children’s books from French into Japanese, I translated contemporary novels from English into French, and under the pretext of enjoying the same torrefied tea, or hojicha, before sleep, we had begun hanging out in private almost every night.

Our attraction for each other had only grown with further acquaintance, but remained unspoken until, one evening in my room, a moment of intimate, subtle silence lasted so long that, fearing that continued passivity on my part would risk a misunderstanding, an accidental deflation of interest, I grabbed the chair on which she sat and slid it toward me (the benefit of a significant size difference), manifesting frankly my desire for proximity. That made her laugh and we kissed (in a strange, lipless fashion, all tongue and sucking of the tongue, which I would later find out to be typically Japanese), allowing our bodies the first, tentative touches. Then, by these both apparently pleased, we progressed to deeper, plausibly prefatory petting, until she said: “I only want to have sex if it’s love, like, 100%”. 

Excited beyond thinking, I said “me too”. And if pressed, I could have felt that I was there, at 100% already, in spite of having just started; such is often the intensity of male desire, also known as self-delusion. Nodding in approval, she added, as the obvious consequence of our previous exchange: “And I need some time to know that.” I was surrounded before the battle began, so, naturally, I went along with it and said “that makes sense”, although that was not the sense that I had had in mind a moment earlier. Purportedly in full agreement, we kissed a short while more before parting at my door, very romantically: a slight self-imposed heartache tinged the quasi-virginal elation of new beginnings, transforming one night’s delight into, possibly, the promise of love.

The morrow night, then, we were in her room, she sitting in my lap, on her desk chair, having drank our torrefied tea and exchanged enough kisses to wonder what came next, when she bade me to stay. If you have ever been a male, you understand my conundrum; if not, it will take a bit of imagination, but not that much. The fact is, sleeping in the same bed as the object of our desire can be a daunting prospect, involving neither sleep nor comfort, as long as a certain instinctive urge, reproductive in nature but quite amenable to many forms of simulacra, isn’t one way or another fulfilled. The best of us can modulate our behavior, but no tripod, I mean, man, has ever successfully summoned sleep in that situation. Yet I did want to become more intimate with Misao, emotionally as well as physically; I sensed from her that the right or expected answer was “yes”; and also I was raised a Roman Catholic: in that particular circle, self-denial in matters of the flesh is considered virtuous (don’t ask me why), and being initially a bit of an eager beaver, a wannabe “good boy” of the first order, I internalized that principle early, and most excessively, in my relationships to girls first, then women.

Poor girls first, then women! Having secured the interest of, if I may be so vain, a rather genetically privileged, acceptably articulate male, they found themselves in an appropriate setting, of those reserved for making moves or in their view, having moves made on them, only to see that so promising partner inexplicably freeze, repressing for no good reason a resoundingly evident desire, and seeming to expect from them, in exchange for that most superfluous feat of self-blueballing, appreciation or even tenderness, such as be their response to a declaration of love, rather than their obvious disappointment at remaining untouched, untapped the natural and fluttering flame in their loins. Not being provided by their cultural background the option of taking, as females, physical initiative in matters of romance, they became fairly stuck, likely judging unkind or distasteful the alternative of leaving, hoping maybe, such was the weight of burbling water behind, for the dam to finally burst and seize them in its twirling wave of surging foam, seeing that I wanted it, not understanding why I wouldn’t do anything about it, just sit or stand there, petrified, smiling, not moving.

On my end, I experienced such moments as intensely shameful failures, based on the social and individual expectations that my involuntary passivity kept breaching, and the perceptible frustration that it created in others and myself. Even more so as I was well able to imagine, in the mental seclusion of masturbatory fantasies, what I wanted to do to them if given the chance; these inner pictures indeed inspired the behaviors which, while skillfully (I thought) concealing desires that my own cultural background had not informed me that women shared, led rather efficiently to their private chambers; only to be abruptly replaced, at the first inviting smile or whisper, by an inexplicable inability to initiate intimacy. Afterward, while they swiftly switched their attentions to another suitor, I remained tormented, burning with an agonizing self-hatred that returned, pretty much, every time a situation might entail the slightest allusion to sexuality, gender, the possibility of seduction, or the collective pairing rituals that the youth call “hanging out” and “partying”. Thus I also remained alone, and growingly disgruntled with myself and with life, until the vagaries of cultural diversity furnished me with a partner that could, ere the moment for love became a lack on my part, joyfully take me in her mouth and get us started, at the same time unwittingly transporting me to the far shore of puberty: an American.

Still, being human and needing my story to make sense, I rationalized: wasn’t there more pleasure, I posited, to be had by resolutely restraining desire, diligently delaying the physical aspects of love, thus intensifying the emotions which, in the end, determined their quality, than one could ever find in quick and easy releases?—This was once I’d had sex a few hundred times. Before that, no amount of wisdom seemed fit to contain, no matter the potential benefit in terms of physio- and psycho-logical balance, the volcanic tumescence of male virginity. After that, I had unfortunately returned to Europe.—That thrill which I knew so well, and had labeled as “fear” since it prevented me from fulfilling the male duty to action (after having initially conceived of it as “respect” or “courteous love” or “the highest form of compliment a man can make to a woman” or other such bookish nonsense), wasn’t that thrill actually pleasure? Was it not these girls’ and women’s silliness, in wanting to grasp so quickly the low-hanging fruits of passion, which had misguidedly precluded the attainment of higher, more intense, supremely worthwhile enjoyments?

Our minds are truly great at this: finding ways to reframe as positive choices that which we cannot change about ourselves. It allows the worst of us to think well of themselves, which is magnanimous, really, on the part of the Creator, or else expedient on the part of evolution, since self-esteem cannot be the criterion for natural selection and must, therefore, as the fuel of self-preservation, be provided to all.

Thus, it came easy to me, the idea that by mastering my mojo in Misao’s bed, I would not only demonstrate my sincerity, leading maybe to her future evaluation of our nascent relationship as the coveted “100%”, but also potentially experience with her the superiorly elaborate forms of eroticism which are reserved for the wise. Misao was 13 years older than me, who had just started my thirties, and as previously mentioned, she was from Japan: to me, a still-exotic Orient, with whose inhabitants this was my first such proximity. I had done some research on my computer a few nights before, and a women’s magazine had provided me with this intriguing tidbit: “For a Japanese couple, the most intimate acts consists for the man to lay his head in the woman’s lap, and for her to clean his ears with a Q-tip.” Understandably, after that, I had high hopes! and every reason to suppose that Misao knew more than me in certain matters, whose practicality remained thoroughly mysterious, but also full of promise for someone as curious as I am—like a dense, steamy jungle on a virgin shore, calling with moistness and danger to the ardent, the adventurous explorer. Concluding therefore that, ultimately, my genital bravery might well be richly rewarded (and all the while feeling not a little infatuated, calculations aside), I accepted her proposal.

We went to bed, she wearing a nightgown, me coyly removing all but a pair of Hawaiian boxers, anticipatorily selected in vesperal presumption, and briefly kissed goodnight before she settled her head in the nook of my right shoulder, softly nuzzled against me down to her toes (which barely reached my upper calf) and, seemingly content, fell asleep. I remained, while enjoying the warmth and candor of this agreed upon and certainly quite sweet platonic cuddle, wide awake for some time; intensely erect as could be expected, but more, in truth, than I had foreseen. I think that my penis permanently grew in size, that night, expanding to a scale new and heretofore inconceivable to me, from the combined pressures of constant stimulus and unbudging, rigorous repression. Not only was my prick turning into an ICBM (InterContinental Ballistic Missile) with a plethora of possible targets; my entire body blazed with contained arousal, a raw primal craving which, constrained in unbending immobility, kept sending prickly shivers through my arms and legs, raising on my skin a feverish sweat and in my frantic mind delirious, demented carnal images; and my feelings were diamonds of ice compressed by tectonic subduction to a fathomless refinement… and all in all, in my padlocked ecstasy, I felt like I might pass out. But kept breathing and burning, breathing and burning the dual flame of distress and delight.

This for, I don’t know, hours. I must have dozed off in the morning, as my next memory is of a nightingale singing on the roof, pale dawn seeping in through the skylight. Misao began to stir. Softly, tentatively at first, I let my left hand roam free on her stomach, along her hips, tracing on her skin slow, random patterns that were as many question marks. Conceivably still half-asleep, not signaling otherwise, she welcomed my touch with muted but moaning abandon, and accordingly, displaying attentive and playful largesse, I ventured down an overgrown path until I found, and kept under my finger for a while, the key to making her come.

Having caught her breath, she whispered: “Antoine, what did you do?” 

I knew what she was asking: did I expect reciprocation, which would mean that my caresses had broken our vow, or had I given with pure and selfless intent, if maybe a hint of—in hindsight (post-orgasm) pardonable—naughtiness? Quite certain by now of what suited her, I replied, imperceptibly withdrawing my groin: “that was just a way to say good morning”. She glowed and tenderly pecked my lips, then we got out of bed and I put my package back in my jeans, unused, unwavering, and proud.

The next night, in my room, we kissed then quickly, unconditionally went to bed. Taking charge, she had me lay on my back and proceeded in turn, with her small and strong hand, to rubbing me. Never, for two obvious reasons, have I been more grateful for the slight leftward slant in the axis of my dick, born from years of right-handed self-pleasure, than when I c-c-came and felt and heard a huge splatter of cum land upon my pillow, splashing into my left ear. 

1) because it missed my face.

2) because, to my wonder and delight, Misao then produced, from the pocket of her neatly folded jeans, a Q-tip, and looked at me inquiringly.

---