Hervé Le Tellier

The Sextine Chapel

Sexual practices are banal, impoverished, doomed to

repetition, and this impoverishment is disproportionate to the wonder of pleasure they afford.

Roland Barthes, preface to Tricks by Renaud Camus

I fail to understand why women, especially beautiful ones,

agree to sleep with men other than me.

Jacques Bens, La cinquantaine à Saint-Quentin

for Harry Mathews, these plural pleasures

~ ~ ~

Anna and Ben. Afterward, Ben opens the curtains. It’s January and already night. The red and blue neon lights of the Holiday Inn on Place de République make Anna’s willowy body turn yellow as she lies on her back, naked on the sheet. He kneels by the edge of the bed, kisses her feet, spreads her thighs, grabs her hips and draws her towards him. Anna closes her eyes. She can’t understand a word of what Ben is saying as he penetrates her and starts his slow to and fro. She feels sorry she took German and Spanish at school.

Suddenly, she catches the word darling. It sounds so terribly off.

Ben and Chloe. In a leafy suburb of Houston, Texas, on the double bed belonging to Ben’s parents — whose holiday in Nassau is going just swell, we’ll be back home Monday — he feels his penis stiffen between Chloe’s fingers while she kisses him shyly, then more and more boldly. On television, CNN is showing again and again a terrorist attack that has just occurred in New York. Chloe goes so far as to lick the tip of his penis. Right there, she feels, the skin is as dry and soft as a kitten’s paw. But Ben doesn’t even purr.

Chloe thinks that if she were a man, she’d be gay. Then, a second later, what an absurd thought that just was.

Chloe and Dennis. In an ivory Kimberley Clark bathtub, Chloe has crouched down over Dennis, turning her tanned back and short-cropped brown hair towards him, while taking in his phallus (after a deal of wriggling). Once the bathroom floor has been drenched, she decides to pull the plug. So it’s now in an empty tub that she’s rising and descending and groaning with all the requisite energy. Their genitals shunt with a slight sucking sound and, from time to time, air escapes as though from a puncture.

Dennis has a backache, finds the lighting too bright, and his arms aren’t long enough to reach her breasts and so convince him that he really is with a girl.

Dennis and Elvire. The ART elevator (for two people, load 180 kilos) is taking Dennis and Elvire up to the seventh floor of their Parisian apartment block (“Go up with our friend,” Elvire’s husband just told her, “Chloe and I’ll take the next one”). On the first floor, Dennis kisses Elvire’s nape and strokes her buttocks through her dress. On the third, his hand slips round her hips, raises the cloth, and his fingers slip between the material to touch her belly. On the fifth, his middle finger is inching its way ever deeper between her moist flesh. On the seventh, his finger recedes (regretfully) after a final caress. The door opens, Dennis delicately removes his hand, and they get out. The elevator goes down again at once.

Nothing is more reassuring than a woman’s wet, salty desire, Dennis thinks, as he sniffs at his scented hand.

Elvire and Farid. Elvire is amazed at the power of the jaws of the crocodile of the pit of the aquarium of the Museum of African and of Oceanic Art of the Porte Dorée of Paris, but not of the number of genitives in this sentence. While whispering sweet nothings into Farid’s ear, she rapidly slips her hand between the young man’s belt and belly. His beige parka conceals what she’s doing. Her index finger moves back and forth, stroking the centre of his testicles. His rising erection slowly wrinkles their skin. Her fingers squeeze them gently, before letting go and re-emerging from his trousers. Farid feels petrified.

Unbeknown to Farid, several years later, he will masturbate while thinking back over the scene of the crocodile of the pit of the aquarium, etc.

Farid and Galata. The orange tent has been pitched on the edge of the Aiguille du Midi. Galata and Farid are pretending to sleep so as not to wake up their two companions. Farid, staring into the darkness, has managed to open Galata’s duvet and slip his right arm through the gap. Galata is trembling as much from excitement as from the cold, because an icy blast of air is giving her gooseflesh. Farid’s hand reaches her tawny fleece and his middle finger tries to enter her twat, her snatch, her pussy, whatever.

Farid thinks: there are fifty words in French for a woman’s sex, and even more for a man’s, but how few that it is given that there are 366 for curdled milk.

Galata and Harry. The old Audi 80 turns off the A46 for the La Voulte rest area. Harry pulls up beneath a tree, then turns off the headlights and engine. The yellow streetlight makes Galata’s naked legs look even slenderer. She’s sobbing, in staccato bursts. Harry leans over to kiss her mascara-stained cheek. She kisses him back, opening his mouth with her tongue, almost by force, while stroking the grey hairs of his chest. She straddles Harry, as best she can, still sobbing, undoes his belt, unzips him, and squeezes his rapidly hardening penis between her fingers. Swiftly, she lowers her panties and slips his already hard member inside her: she has never been so wet, he has never seemed so big.

I love you, you bastard, I love you, you bastard, I love you. . are the words that Galata’s lips keep just unspoken each time Harry shoves deeply inside her.

Harry and Irma. Harry, on his knees, is holding Irma by her hips and penetrating her from behind (though not via the vas illegitimum). This position is bending his penis downward, giving him a feeling of exceptional stiffness. From time to time, he leans on his hand and Irma nibbles his thumb and groans. Her lovely face is being crushed against the sheet, where she leaves several blonde strands of hair with brown roots. As for the slats of the bed, each of Harry’s thrusts is making one fall, then two, leading to the risk of total collapse.

Harry admires Irma’s delighted behind, then his stare wanders through the dormer window, over Paris’s zinc roofs, where a grey pigeon with tiny round eyes is cooing indifferently.

Irma and Johann. In the kitchenette of a show condominium (with two bedrooms on the outskirts of Lyon), Johann is negotiating — blueprints spread out on the Brazilwood bar — with the real estate agent, who has stayed on the “living-room” side. Irma studies the blueprints then slips behind Johann and runs her hand through her fiancé’s brown hair, while discreetly placing an index finger on his fly. She smiles at the young salesman, and as her caresses grow increasingly precise, listens with delight while her future husband stammers on about mortgages and interest rates.

I’m crazy, extremely well-behaved Irma says to herself, quite thrilled at the idea that, yes, she might just be slightly nuts.

Johann and Katia. The steam train bursts out of the chimney, in a frame of (fake) elm burr. This Magritte poster is partly hidden from Johann’s eyes by the muscular roundness of Katia’s buttocks. Just like every Thursday, from three to five p.m., in this one-bedroom Belleville flat, his nose is hidden in her dark rigid pussy, while he licks the crimson petals of her vulva, at the same time as she is sitting on his solid hairy body and greedily gobbling his thick penis. They alternate speed and slowness, gentleness and vigor, without really knowing who is dictating the tempo to whom.

Why, Katia wonders in amazement, do I so enjoy sucking off this charmless guy whom I do not love and who loves me even less?

Katia and Laurent. Night has fallen on the “Fresh Fruit” parking lot at the Rungis market, where a Volvo pick-up truck, 349,548 kilometers on its counter, is parked. Behind the velvet curtain in the driver’s cabin, Laurent makes no effort to calculate how many trips around the world that makes. Kneeling on the worn and dirty mattress, he is struggling to penetrate Katia, who is grimacing in pain. He then spits a large drop of saliva on his penis (“yuck,” Katia thinks), even though a little patience would have done far better.

In one of those coincidences that sometimes go unnoticed, on the radio Mick Jagger is wailing: I can’t get no satisfaction.

Laurent and Mina. “Sure, no problem, by the end of the afternoon,” Laurent calls down from the window of his two-bedroom apartment in a leafy Paris suburb to Widow Chabert, who is speaking to him from two floors below on the sidewalk. The noon sun, as much as the pleasure, is making him blink, while mischievous Mina, crouched and invisible, has slipped down his trousers and boxer shorts, then runs her incisors over his penis before taking him in more fully. So it is that, a few minutes later and without interrupting garrulous Widow Chabert, who is now talking weather forecasts, Laurent ejaculates inside Mina’s welcoming mouth.

While tasting his admittedly bitter, but protein-rich sperm, Mina doesn’t really give a damn about being at one extreme of the food chain.

Mina and Niels. As soon as Mina, a temp secretary in the Paris office of Searson & Wilman & Partners, answers the telephone (with her left hand), she recognizes the vice-chairman’s voice. But she still does not release (from her right hand) the testicles of young Niels, who has recently been promoted to senior associate and whom she is gratifying through his flannel trousers. Quite naturally, she changes hands to note down an important telephone number with her blue ballpoint. She is neither gauche nor left-handed.

In a few hours’ time, Niels will learn that “the Lotus” is not just a sports car and that his marriage plans with Gertrud Wilman have fallen through for good.

Niels and Oriane. Because “Junkie” was too nervy this morning, Niels has mounted “Jade,” a three-year-old bay mare. At the end of his ride, Oriane is awaiting him, leaning against a tree. Her hand has slipped down across her belly, pushing into her mane and stroking the silvery pearl concealed within. As her blood pounds in her diaphanous temples, she emits a raucous gasp, and a spasm of pleasure quivers through her. Then, she throws herself onto Niels, unexpectedly grabs his index finger, and closes her crimson lips upon it, sucking avidly, while panting with desire.

Stunned by this festival of literary clichés, Niels thinks that Oriane is a dead-ringer for an oil painting by some artist or other whose name currently escapes him.

Oriane and Philippe. The Limoges-Paris midnight express is rattling through the night. In carriage 12 (first class), which is almost empty, the charming Philippe — with a golf handicap of five — is intrusively kissing his neighbor Oriane, after making her laugh with a dumb joke: “I’ve just won the Condom Open. . it’s a golf tournament, of course.” He starts stroking her naked thigh, before working up little by little toward her panties.

Philippe thinks how much kisses are like pickles in a jar. Once you manage to extract the first one, the others come out of their own accord.

Philippe and Qiu. The din of Shanghai fails to reach the twenty-third floor of the Hilton where Philippe, in room 2412, is kneeling on the thick carpet while licking with skill the delighted vulvae of Qiu, her legs spread across the bed. He then reaches out to stroke her breasts, in no way regretful about having provided them with a few extra centimeters. This position is also quite good for soothing tennis elbow.

Given that you need at least seven different clubs and nine holes to play golf, Philippe wonders: does this prove the superiority of golf over sex, or vice versa?

Qiu and Rémy. The bedroom window of Villa Luciana looks out over the blue sky, wheat fields, and cypresses of a Tuscan landscape. Wearing just shirts, Qiu and Rémy are lying on a white cotton sheet. On her Finnish-brand cell phone, Qiu composes a haiku text message for her husband, who has been away on a business trip to Dublin for the past two weeks. She punctuates each word, abbreviations included, with a kiss on Rémy’s still-damp penis. He’s humming a Haydn air and fingering the delicate hairs of her jade-colored, oriental pubis.

If, at that moment, Rémy could see inside Qiu’s belly, the first thing he’d say would be: “It’s a boy!”

Rémy and Sofia. The metro leaves the “Plaisance” station in Paris (line 13) with a roar, but without blonde Sofia managing to convince Rémy about the enormous absurdity of the Freudian notion of “penis envy” in little girls. Given such obvious lack of good faith, she drops the subject, sticks out her sharp pink tongue and abruptly slips her little finger into Rémy’s mouth. He instinctively parts his lips.

Sofia decides not to tell Rémy that women may not have penises, but this means that they do not — unlike you — spend their lives wondering if they’re well-endowed enough.

Sofia and Terence. The rumbling of the New York City — Philadelphia Greyhound is deafening at the back of the bus, which is almost empty. The diesel engine covers Terence’s groans of pleasure: he’s sitting, with his jeans round his knees, a Columbia University T-shirt hiked up over his chest, while penetrating Sofia, who’s in his lecture course and wriggling crazily as she straddles him. Any desire to urinate has utterly disappeared.

“Oh yeah, oh yeah!” he groans. If people have two ears and just one mouth, it’s because the latter tends to spout twice too much.

Terence and Ursula. On the patio of a penthouse apartment overlooking the Hudson, dessert is being served. Terence is going on about how awful it is that young psychiatrists have stopped using hypnosis. Opposite him, Ursula, a slender and beautiful black woman, with cropped and dyed-blonde hair, stretches out her leg and wriggles her naked foot up between his thighs. Slowly, her deft toes open his fly buttons one by one, before rummaging inside in search of his suddenly swelling penis. Terence had no idea that such virtuosity was possible.

Losing his concentration, he tells the dinner guests that “the penis is an island” while “sexuality is a continent.” In other words, garbage.

Ursula and Vincent. In the bedroom of a two-star hotel in the tenth arrondissement of Paris, Vincent and Ursula are lying naked on their sides, head to toe. The bedspread is decorated with red fleurs-de-lis, and the window looks out over the tracks of the Gare du Nord, where the 1:29 train (it’s late) to Compiègne is passing alongside the Thalys from Brussels. Vincent slips his head between the young marketing director’s ebony thighs and starts to separate her pink labia gently. As for her mouth, it is just beside his erect penis. Though Ursula knows what is expected from her, she is still dithering about what to do next.

Ursula does not realize that, confronted by his swollen member, she now has the reptilian gaze of a crocodile in a tanner’s workshop.

Vincent and Wendy. Unafraid of the prowling, man-eating sharks (if the warning signs along the beach of Acapulco are to be believed) Wendy and Vincent have strayed far out into the Pacific, while still remaining in their depth. Vincent is kissing her young, hardening nipples; she is squeezing her charming “Frenchie” against her, while kneading his muscular buttocks and sticking her left index finger into his anus almost brutally. His eyes light up at once in astonishment.

This astonishment is followed by delight and then a certain regret, because he guesses that he’ll never dare demand such a thing from his future partners.

Wendy and Xavier. The brass bed stands majestically in the middle of the bedroom, on the second floor of a town house in Saint-Cloud, where Wendy, a young “au pair,” still tanned from the tropical sun, is surrendering herself to Xavier, the household’s eldest son. As naked as her, on the flowery sheet, he is stroking her breasts, then her belly, before gliding across her clitoris and introducing the full length of his middle finger into her moist sex. Wendy arches her back, cries out with pleasure, while Xavier feels her ischiocavernosus and bulbospongiosus muscles contract, thus imprisoning his finger.

Unless, the young medical student suddenly wonders, the correct terms are ischiospongiosus and bulbocavernosus?

Xavier and Yolande. Trapped for the past twenty minutes in the bleakly motionless cargo elevator between the second and first floors of the teaching hospital in Tours, Xavier and Yolande are keeping themselves busy. Clumsily, the houseman is kneading the nurse’s generous breasts while she (with a more expert touch) is removing his penis from his fly, which rapidly loses the consistency of a sausage in her fingers. Meanwhile she continues to hold a lively and cogent conversation with the outside world, here represented by the repairman.

As for me, Yolande thinks rather proudly, I can talk the hind leg back onto a donkey.

Yolande and Zach. It little matters how Zach, Professor of Latin at the University of Aix-Marseille, ended up at the wheel of this damned Massey Ferguson tractor in the middle of the fields of Beauce. What does matter is that he is licking the erect left nipple of Yolande, who is sitting beside him. It is sometimes said that the moment when the nipple appears is the moment sexual relations have begun, and so it is, because Yolande straddles him, in the so-called Andromache position.

Zach is about to penetrate Yolande when she cries out: “Oh, look! The spires of Chartres Cathedral!” and its competing erections immediately make his go limp.

Zach and Anna. Under a porch in rue des Francs-Bourgeois in Paris, Zach leans against the wall and draws Anna toward him. He slips the coolness of his old professorial palms through a gap in her dress and onto the warmth of her young student buttocks. Then he murmurs a Georges Bataille quotation into her ear: “The sexual act is to time what the tiger is to space,” though its meaning has always rather eluded him. “See you tomorrow,” Anna replies, before disappearing up the staircase.

How exasperating: in Zach’s pants, Sildenafil, an active ingredient discreetly swallowed in the form of a blue pill, is slowly and pointlessly coming into effect.

Anna and Harry. On the third floor of a building on rue des Francs-Bourgeois in Paris, Harry, wearing a dressing gown and with two days’ grey growth, opens the door to Anna, who drags him at once into the bedroom. She sheds her clothes on the way, and is naked by the time she pushes him onto the bed with a laugh. Anna whispers into his ear: “Do you know what? The sexual act is to time what the tiger is to space.” “Who said that, you?” “No, Bataille,” Anna replies before nibbling his stubby penis tenderly. Bataille? Harry has never heard of him.

Once again, Harry notes that Anna has nothing over his wife, but for him, variety is definitely the spice of life.

Harry and Oriane. In a trendy Parisian restaurant, Oriane has dragged Harry into the palatial toilets, tiled with mosaics and azulejos. There, sitting on the pine seat, she drags him toward her. She pulls down his trousers, his boxer shorts, kisses his belly, strokes his buttocks, his thighs, and smilingly brushes, but only brushes, against his upright member. Not even a minute has gone by before an overexcited Harry is ready to beg for her to act.

Oriane is tempted to ask him for money, just to see his reaction. OK, she says to herself, but what’s the going rate?

Oriane and Vincent. The last rays of the April sun caress the statues of the Jardin du Luxembourg and Oriane’s greying hair. She and Vincent, sitting on a bench, are quietly discussing Biblical forbidden fruit, while a growing and unstoppable erection in Vincent’s trousers is about — he knows — to push him into trying to kiss her. He lets his dick do the thinking. Because, as the French put it, he clearly doesn’t have enough blood to feed both his brain and his cock at the same time.

Vincent sometimes thinks that he would choose his partners more carefully if he had a vagina rather than a penis.

Vincent and Chloe. On the goum rug of a bourgeois apartment, Vincent and Chloe are copulating in the so-called missionary position, which, incidentally, Bonobo monkeys also adopt. Chloe raises her legs, and grips Vincent’s pelvis with her thighs, thus making his penis enter her even more deeply. Vincent’s pace speeds up, scarlet heat radiates from his glans, which is rubbing against the membrane of her vagina, the delicious burning sensation sets his entire belly on fire, making him lose control completely.

He doesn’t want to say it, he doesn’t want to say it, but then, he says it anyway, I love you, I love you. He immediately regrets this moment of abandon, even though it intensifies his orgasm.

Chloe and Johann.

Smothering the world

Pressed over my ears

Her thighs

wrote the celebrated poet Teishi Hiro, whose work Johann is translating. His tongue takes another turn around Chloe’s sex, and the haiku’s poetic assertion comes true at once. Chloe’s vulvae have a sapid, almost salty taste. The Japanese poet would have found just the right adjectives to describe the unique tang of women’s sexes. Maybe he would have used the word umami, which is unfortunately untranslatable.

As regards the senses, Johann wonders, if he were blind, whether he could stop himself from wondering out how cute the woman he was tonguing really was.

Johann and Qiu. On the Romanesque capital of a pillar in the cathedral of Autun, an anonymous artist once sculpted a Flight to Egypt. His untaught technique doesn’t mean that his work isn’t also technically taut, Johann thinks. Beside him, Qiu, who has never before had such a hirsute lover, is stroking his chest again and again in fascination. Then, her hand follows the pathway of hair down his belly and, what a surprise! further still, into his boxer shorts. Fantasy is to sex what religion is to the real world, Johann thinks to himself, unwittingly parodying Karl Marx.

As for his book, he thinks he’s now found the title: The Penis Mightier than the Word (his publisher will turn it down, however, on the grounds that some female readers won’t dare ask for it in bookstores).

Qiu and Xavier. Buzz buzz, goes the irritatingly persistent Cairo mosquito. Its jolting hum saturates the vibrant air in Xavier’s room, meanwhile his face is nosing into Qiu’s pussy, proving to her once more that, as Boris Vian rightly said, the tongue is a sexual organ occasionally used for speaking. Or for eating, Hugo von Hofmannsthal added, long before the invention of Beaver Steaks.

Qiu blushes up to her ears as she remembers having once called a student, who could pick up languages like a parrot, a cunning linguist.

Xavier and Elvire. On the terrace of a Paris bar, Xavier is drinking a half pint of Gringo Honeymoon and Elvire a glass of barley water. Elvire’s cell phone beeps; she reads the text message, sighs, and says she has to go, before bending down beside him and whispering in his ear. He won’t be able to recall exactly what was said, but it featured — in no particular order — the words balls, dick, suck, swallow, fuck. She kisses him on the tip of his nose, then hurries away.

Does Xavier realize that some people are willing to spend $4.50 a minute to hear such things? Though there are discounts for loyal customers.

Elvire and Laurent. Two o’ clock in the morning: the television is broadcasting the next day’s schedule again and again. Laurent, curled up behind Elvire, is stroking her clitoris with his finger, while insinuating his penis, which is still seeking full rigidity, into her slightly sore vagina. They have made love so many times this evening that this attempt may well not succeed. Then the remote control tumbles off the bed, switching the image to a porno film featuring actors in far finer fettle than the two of them.

Where had Elvire read that pornographic films multiply by four hundred the number of asses you see in a lifetime? Yes, but, she thinks, 63 % of all statistics are false.

Laurent and Sofia. It is stiflingly hot. Lying on a cotton duvet in a three-room apartment in the southern suburbs of Paris, furnished by a Swedish manufacturer, Laurent and Sofia are rubbing their gleaming, agile bodies against each other. Laurent finds Sofia extremely exciting, but also as smelly and sweaty as a cyclist. She suddenly shifts away from him and goes down on his member, which she takes in her mouth and sucks energetically. To their mutual surprise, he comes between her lips only seconds later, with a jet of sperm as quick as a bumblebee’s flight.

Sofia tells him, with a certain pride, that her tongue piercing heightens men’s sensations during fellatio. Laurent feels rather disorientated.

Sofia and Zach. Lying on the teak deck of an elegant yacht, Sofia has spread her tanned thighs. Rocked by the gentle swell of the Aegean Sea, she surrenders herself to Zach, who is stroking her clitoris with a gently precise fingertip. When he notices signs of imminent orgasm in Sofia’s breathing, Zach whispers his Bataille citation into her ear: “The sexual act is to time what the tiger is to space,” which he still does not understand. She gently gauges his penis in her hand.

“You call that a tiger?” Sofia replies quite simply, either playfully or cruelly, who knows? And who, Zach wonders, said that in sexagenarian, there is still sex?

Zach and Galata. In his Epigrams, Martial wrote: nemo est, Thai, senex ad irrumandum (no one is too old, Thai, to be sucked off). Perhaps not, but on the patio of this superb country house in the Lubéron, Galata’s heroic efforts are having no effect on Zach’s member, which remains more like a noodle than a triumphant totem pole. She gives it a final kiss, before diving into the (guitar-shaped) pool, while Zach, to lighten up the atmosphere, tells her his joke about “A new drug, called Viazac, ever heard of it?”

It’s half Viagra™ and half Prozac™: you don’t get a hard-on but you don’t give a damn. Galata laughs politely; she’s already heard it.

Galata and Niels. In the sauna which Niels has had installed in his Soho apartment, Galata is glistening with sweat and presenting her buttocks to him, while he strokes them, kisses them, and, after a long moment of hesitation, separates her two globes so as to rim her backdoor, the one-eyed beast, the artists’ entrance, the evening star, the maw, in other words that violet carnation famously celebrated by Rimbaud.

If my sex life became public knowledge, Niels thinks, then everyone would be horrified. He supposes that everybody probably thinks the same thing, but this fails to reassure him.

Niels and Ursula. The convent, which survived the great Lisbon earthquake of 1666, is now a charming hotel. In the “Ambassador” suite, Ursula’s chocolate-brown skin is being set off by the whiteness of the sheet across the four-poster bed. Her dark hand brushes against Niels’s forehead, with its slightly receding hairline. She was born in California, and tells him that the name comes from calor, heat, and fornia, fornication, so it means “hot sex country.” He finds this rather dubious.

Then he explains to her that the avocado takes it name from the Spanish aguacate, derived in turn from the Mayan ahuacatl, which means testicle; she doesn’t believe him either.

Ursula and Ben. On a lemon-yellow Japanese motorcycle, Ursula and Ben are speeding through the night towards Bâton Rouge. Ursula, sitting behind Ben, is hugging him. Suddenly, she takes off her gloves, unzips him and starts stroking his penis, which is both dangerous and not especially easy, given her position. She nevertheless succeeds. It is the first time that Ursula has had a lover as black as she is but, of course, at this time of night, and from where she is sitting, sex is color-blind.

The position is not a very good one for Ben, who is already so tormented by a rather irrational complex that he has bought a “penis enlarger” on the Web (an utter fraud, by the way).

Ben and Irma. Irma willingly admits that the idea is rather crazy. At dusk, she has taken Ben out onto the zinc roof of her apartment block in Montmartre. There, lying on a blanket, they stare at the night lights of Paris. The wind raises her cotton skirt, revealing her naked pink buttocks between which Ben gently slides one finger, then two. Irma groans and arches her back so as offer herself more easily to her lover. Ben vaguely feels that this is not the right time to admit that he gets vertigo.

All of this staging, Irma thinks, is a bit over the top. And anyway, when you actually act out a sexual fantasy, is it still a fantasy?

Irma and Philippe. On the snowy balcony of a Zermatt chalet, Philippe, in boxer shorts and thick socks, is trying to even out his tan in the high-altitude sun. Irma is moving her hand up and down his swelling member. Before Philippe, she had never been with a circumcised man, and she is amazed by the particular texture of the skin around the glans. Speaking so softly that Philippe cannot hear her, she suddenly whispers something to his penis — which cannot believe its ears.

Irma quoted Mao Ze Dong: “There are no straight roads in the world.” “And no straight dicks either,” Jiang Qing, his wife, would sometimes add.

Philippe and Wendy. It’s battle stations at the office: Wendy has had to cancel her Sunday squash match with Karin. But this technical translation — which was supposedly urgent — has not progressed very much: Philippe is holding his young trainee against the thick windowpane overlooking Neuilly and the river Seine, and his hand, after kneading her buttocks, has slipped beneath her cotton panties as far as her fine blond hairs. “Ass, dick, finger, come what may!” as Prévert used to say. But nothing much does come, because her clitoris is far from Philippe’s finger and showing how elusive it can be.

Wendy decides to guide Philippe. For the clumsy, the clitoris is the Rubik’s Cube of sex: they can fiddle around with it for hours without getting anywhere.

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. .

“It was an expression used in the sixteenth,” he explains. Sofia looks puzzled, she lived near La Muette until recently, so he adds: “Sixteenth century, not arrondissement.”

Sofia and Dennis. The memory of a scene in the film The Postman Always Rings Twice, directed by Bob Rafelson, in which Frank (Jack Nicholson) takes Cora (Jessica Lange) on the kitchen table, is clearly stimulating Dennis while he sodomizes Sofia on just that same item of furniture. Sofia, for whom sodomy is exciting but not quite orgasmic, is rubbing her clitoris faster and faster. The bottle of olive oil is marked “Cold-Pressed Extra Virgin,” but that’s irrelevant.

It occurs to Dennis that if he were a praying mantis, his female would now turn round and devour his head. He shivers.

Dennis and Oriane. The Estufa Fria of Lisbon is echoing with the melodious song of the Aræ araraunæ perched on the highest branches of the Monsteræ deliciosæ. At the far end of a fountain full of Eichhorniæ crassipes, hidden from curious gazes by the broad leaves of a clump of Dicksoniæ antarticæ and Pteridiæ aquiliniæ, Dennis has raised Oriane’s flounced skirt. Dennis’s phallus erectus penetrates a tergo her vagina lubrificata and the fragrance of their coitus more canino (before long interruptus by a group of schoolboys) mingles with the exotic odors of the Proustian cattleyæ.

A few days later, Oriane notices that the chlamydiæ Dennis gave her are not ornamental plants.

Oriane and Zach. Making the most of the fog and the eight fleeting minutes of the ascent of the cabins of the Montriond-Avoriaz ski lift, Zach and Oriane have ardently unclasped their Fusalp™ ski-suits which are now dangling like banana-skins over their boots. Oriane offers her buttocks to Zach, whose hardened member penetrates her welcoming vagina. From time to time, the icy metal zip of his ski-suit touches Oriane’s skin, making her tremble. The steam they exhale frosts over the windows.

Luckily enough, Oriane thinks, she doesn’t like sodomy, otherwise she’d obviously end up getting sodomized, and how dreadful that would be.

Zach and Katia. Katia stands up and goes over to Zach, who is leaning out of a window surrounded by Virginia creeper. If it weren’t pitch-dark, they would be able to see the “Aiguille Creuse.” She lays her head on his shoulder and her hand slips down to his penis, which swells under her gentle pressure. The name of the blue pill (which, to Zach’s delighted astonishment, is performing its second miracle of the evening), is supposed to have been chosen because it begins like virility and ends like Niagara. What a strange idea, to choose the name of a waterfall to stimulate an erection.

“According to Aristotle, the penis and the heart are the two organs that set themselves in motion,” Katia whispers. “When Aristotle was young, no doubt,” Zach replies.

Katia and Vincent. Vincent is asleep. He is even snoring gently. His regular breathing raises Katia’s brown hair. Without making a sound, she gets up and looks at this tall young man, who has not made her come, and this room with its dull, dated pink walls. A comedian’s joke comes back to her: after making love, one man out of ten goes to sleep on his right side, one out of twenty on his left side, while the rest get dressed and go home. She sighs, silently puts on her clothes, and decides to do the dishes.

Two hours of cooking just for this. How much did that come to? One minute of sex per fifteen minutes of preparation. Not counting the cooking time.

Vincent and Galata. A summer storm has taken the two cyclists by surprise: dripping wet, Vincent and Galata take shelter in the nearest barn. While their clothes are laid out to dry around them, Vincent delicately slips his tongue into Galata’s tawny mane. The youthful freshness and firmness of this mature woman’s body surprise him. As Queneau said, her mantelpiece is as good as her fire.

Is cunnilingus devilishly good or divinely good? Galata plumps for the devil; Vincent does too, because of the aftertaste.

Galata and Rémy. In the intimacy of a fitting room in a Lyon department store, Galata is trying on rather a severe suit. It hugs her hips perfectly, proof that she still has the hourglass figure of her youth. She is almost naked. A twitch of the raw silk curtain reveals her long legs to Rémy. He goes inside, grabs her firm breasts and tanned hips. She kisses him, then takes hold of his penis which she guides into herself. She yells with pleasure. He comes almost at once.

Of course, this is just a waking dream sustaining Rémy’s masturbatory efforts. Because he has never dared, and never will, admit to his aunt the desire he has felt for her ever since he was twelve years old.

Rémy and Chloe. In a maintenance room, whose grubby dormer window looks out over the keep of a fairy-tale castle, Mickey has taken off his round-eared false head and has knelt down in front of Snow White. The princess has hiked her dress up and placed one leg on a bench. His face is now rummaging into Chloe’s mane, his hands squeezing her soft buttocks, and his tongue working its way in among her fine hairs, looking for her little pink clit. On the main boulevard, a band is playing the theme tune from The Aristocats.

A scarred uniformed officer enters the empty room where she is standing, naked. He walks over to her and fingers her neck — this is what Chloe has to picture to herself so as to come at last.

Chloe and Niels. On the legendary beach of Boucan Canot, on Réunion Island, the sun is at its zenith while the pheromones diffused by the apocrine glands situated under brown-haired Chloe’s armpits, allied to the euphoric effects of the sea air, are stimulating Niels’s libido. His brain then produces a reasonable dose of phenylethylamine, inciting him to stroke her tiny breasts. She at once drags him away into the Indian Ocean, where, amid the waves, she grabs his penis and masturbates him rapidly, until he ejaculates.

Before long, a huge secretion of endorphins will make Niels nod off, and so he will never forget the terrible sunburn he got on Boucan Canot.

Niels and Yolande. OK, it’s almost healed up completely, Yolande tells Niels, as she examines his scarred penis with delicate professionalism. This is all far more medical than pleasurable, but the situation remains so tense that her heavy breasts beneath her white coat are making his still-convalescent member swell. Niels is panting. Yolande grants herself a few more lingering seconds of palpation, before asking Niels to pull his pants back up. He puts himself back inside with a deal of difficulty.

His eyes come to rest on Yolande’s badge. She smilingly says, “Yes, I know, this photo’s so old that I look young in it.” He blushes.

Yolande and Johann. A fart once released can never be caught, according to the proverb of a great and wise nation. The one that has just escaped from Yolande, at the very moment when Johann was thrusting his penis deeply inside her, was thunderous. But the television is reeling out advertising slogans, while the powerful diesel engine of a garbage truck is making the windows vibrate, so this flatulence goes unnoticed. What’s more, this really isn’t the right moment to lose concentration.

What would Teishi Hiro have written, Johann wonders in petto?

A coquet fart of joy

Welcomed my entry

With giggling

Johann and Ursula. Tongue or lips / whatever is she doing / with my dick? Johann wonders, quoting our now familiar poet. The answer is “lips.” Then, once again, Ursula presses the canister of whipped cream (0 % fat content) and sprays snowy spirals around his penis. And, once more, she licks him, swallows the cream, and her tongue slithers as far as his testicles, before she cautiously sucks one of them, then the other. She’d like him to come quite fast, because this is starting to make her feel a tad nauseous.

Does Johann know that the Google search engine features 2,890,000 pages containing the word “fellatio,” including one in which it is (mistakenly) presented as a character in Shakespeare?

Ursula and Farid. On the flat 16/9 screen, a visibly excited male octopus is sliding its hectocotyle tentacle full of spermatophores into the palleal cavity of a half-consenting female. The television is opposite the double bed on which Farid, in company with Ursula, is carrying out a rather similar act, except that he has no intention at all of propagating his species. Ursula has lost her concentration, and cannot drag herself away from the commentary of the wildlife documentary.

She says to herself that, when you think about it, the design of the new pedestrian precinct is really rather nice.

Farid and Qiu. The camper has been parked on a dirt track, in the middle of some scrubland. Its bodywork seems to be shimmering in the hot air. On the lower bunk, Farid, chest against Qiu’s back, lubricates his member with a knob of pink jelly before trying to penetrate her youthful anus. Are you sure you really want this? he asks again. Panting, she nods. Her skin smells of chloride and musk. When you’re a pretty girl, Farid says to himself, then life is a bed of roses. At the same moment, Qiu is thinking the exact opposite.

A silly thought crosses his mind. This lubricant cream must surely have been tested on animals. If so, in what way?

Qiu and Ben. One little rectangle is still lit up and yellow in the facade of a cheap “Formule Un” hotel. In bedroom 215, the average calorie expenditure of a quarter of an hour’s lovemaking (seventy kcal) has been greatly exceeded. For almost half an hour, Qiu has had her supple thighs spread high in the air, while Ben has been entering her at a regular pace, performing what an observer might see as pull-ups. Qiu’s vagina has been burning sweetly for some time when Ben comes and finally collapses onto her.

Although overcome by emotion (so to speak), Qiu is suffocating beneath Ben’s weight and wonders if she will admit it right away or manage to wait a few seconds.

Ben and Mina. In the vast dressing room of a second-floor bedroom, Ben’s dinner suit trousers are round his knees as he leans against the wall. He’s lifted up Mina’s slight form, while her red lamé dress has been raised to her waist, thus revealing her hips. She entwines Ben in her arms and muscular thighs, and gently draws him in, propping her tiny buttocks on his powerful hands. “You Took Advantage of Me,” played by Art Tatum, rises up from the first floor and paces this slow penetration. Later, they will ask for each other’s first names again.

If she could quote Mark Twain, Mina would say that she has this much in common with Eve: going with the first man she claps eyes on.

Mina and Xavier. Act II of Tosca has barely started: Cavaradossi (Vincent Balmer, not at his best), tortured but thrilled by Napoleon’s victory at Marengo, is chanting a hymn to liberty. In the darkness of a box, stage left, Mina is squeezing Xavier’s stiff penis tightly, uncovering then covering his glans again and again. In a fit of inspiration, she slips his member into her glove and keeps up her toing and froing. Groaning, Xavier ejaculates into the leather and silk just as Tosca (Rose Singer, heartrending with emotion) stabs the ignoble Scarpia (Giovanni d’Arezzo, extraordinary, as ever).

Xavier wonders if they will be on first name terms as of now.

Xavier and Irma. Damn it and damn it again, Xavier just can’t get that song by the Frères Jacques out of his head, entitled “Buttocks,” which France-Culture broadcasted that morning: “There are fat ones / There are matte ones / There are black ones / There are slack ones / Buttocks, buttocks, buttocks.” He opens the waiting-room door, Irma stands up and, despite the protestations of the genuine patients, goes in, closes the bolt behind her, drops her woolen skirt, grabs Xavier’s hands and places them on her naked buttocks, just there. This has all taken ten seconds.

Yes indeed, Xavier thinks, my life has grown far simpler and my days more complicated since I met this girl.

Irma and Terence. Cunnilingus, then fellatio, then penetration, then orgasm (or not). . Terence thinks how right Foucault was: sexuality is quite monotonous. But as monotony and routine are not the same thing; today Terence just wants to stroke Irma off. He has dampened his middle finger with saliva to part her labia and is touching her gently and unhurriedly. He lays his head between her nipples erect, and listens to the beating of her heart. On the alert for an acceleration of her palpitations, he follows her orders, until she comes.

Oddly enough, he feels that they share most when he devotes himself just to her, and when they do not in fact make love.

Terence and Elvire. It could be a student’s bedroom: the mattress is on the floor, the sheets are creased, there are books scattered everywhere. Elvire has slipped beneath Terence, unbuckled his belt, lowered his trousers and boxer shorts, and is sucking his member, which is little by little filling her mouth. He lifts up her dress, parts her thighs, and his tongue licks a pussy he knows like the back of his hand. He elbows away a book. Unluckily, it falls open at page sixty-seven.

According to Leonardo de Vinci, a woman’s sex is proportionally three times larger than that of a cow. Fucking ridiculous, thinks Terence, proportional to what?

Elvire and Philippe. On a staircase in Rue des Saules in Montmartre, Elvire is explaining to Philippe, who is standing one step down from her, that the Kama Sutra distinguishes three types of kiss: nominal, moving, and touching. A nominal is just a simple kiss on the mouth. To demonstrate the moving one, Elvire presses Philippe’s lower lip between her lips and, while sucking on it, draws it into her mouth. Then, for the touching kiss, her tongue encounters Philippe’s lip, then she closes her eyes, and puts her two hands into his.

From nearby, “Philippe!” yells a woman who Philippe knows only too well, thus putting a stop to this demonstration.

Philippe and Anna. The forest is large and bleak. In the undergrowth, Philippe and Anna are lying on a blanket and making love. The weather is warm and fine. A niggling breeze starts to cool their naked buttocks. Philippe realizes that sex is probably like dancing the Charleston: when it’s really good, you just do it, without thinking about how you’re doing it.

After lovemaking, the first person who speaks always says something dumb. This time, it’s Philippe: “Anna, what was it you said again about the tiger and space?”

The stories

Stories with Anna

9, 34, 35, 60, 61, 86

Stories with Ben

9, 10, 49, 50, 79, 80

Stories with Chloe

10, 11, 38, 39, 72, 73

Stories with Dennis

11, 12, 53, 54, 65, 66

Stories with Elvire

12, 13, 42, 43, 84, 85

Stories with Farid

13, 14, 57, 58, 77, 78

Stories with Galata

14, 15, 46, 47, 70, 71

Stories with Harry

15, 16, 35, 36, 63, 64

Stories with Irma

16, 17, 50, 51, 82, 83

Stories with Johann

17, 18, 39, 40, 75, 76

Stories with Katia

18, 19, 54, 55, 68, 69

Stories with Laurent

19, 20, 43, 44, 61, 62

Stories with Mina

20, 21, 58, 59, 80, 81

Stories with Niels

21, 22, 47, 48, 73, 74

Stories with Oriane

22, 23, 36, 37, 66, 67

Stories with Philippe

23, 24, 51, 52, 85, 86

Stories with Qiu

24, 25, 40, 41, 78, 79

Stories with Rémy

25, 26, 55, 56, 71, 72

Stories with Sofia

26, 27, 44, 45, 64, 65

Stories with Terence

27, 28, 59, 60, 83, 84

Stories with Ursula

28, 29, 48, 49, 76, 77

Stories with Vincent

29, 30, 37, 38, 69, 70

Stories with Wendy

30, 31, 52, 53, 62, 63

Stories with Xavier

31, 32, 41, 42, 81, 82

Stories with Yolande

32, 33, 56, 57, 74, 75

Stories with Zach

33, 34, 45, 46, 67, 68

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THE FLOOR OF THE SEXTINE CHAPEL

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THE CEILING OF THE SEXTINE CHAPEL

About the author

HERVÉ LE TELLIER has been a member of the Oulipo since 1992. His most recent books to appear in English include the novels A Thousand Pearls (for a Thousand Pennies), as well as The Intervention of a Good Man, which was awarded the Prix du roman d’amour, and Enough About Love.

IAN MONK became a member of the Oulipo in 1988. His books include Family Archaeology and Writings for the Oulipo.

Content

Hervé Le Tellier
The Sextine Chapel

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The stories

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About the author