Vanessa Duries - The Classmate

From that moment on, she ceased to be really conscious of what they did to her. She wasn’t simply above the scene as it happened, enjoying the spectacle of the detached body that had the air of being her own. No, she was within her own internal torment, in that shame that overflowed, the

certainty that only her obedience was appreciated. She was only a hole, a garbage dump–a Kleenex for the garbage to vent their mechanical orgasms.

She was nothing but her own grief, the immense grief of being alone, abandoned, more alone than she had ever been: because she knew, suddenly, with a certain blinding knowledge that the sex was only a dead-end; that the loveless acts belonged more to instinct than to eroticism, and that he was already looking elsewhere. She had been groomed, for a year and a half, by and for sex. She had thought that she was nothing more than that–a dog that could only aspire to be be humiliated and beaten...And then a voice grew in her, the voice of stories for children and adventure stories for adolescents: “Love me...”

She is soiled by the rejection of her roots, her culture, her family. She thought, like Gide, “Family I hate you!”without realizing that what she screamed in silence was really “Family, I hate myself!” and that self-loathing defined everything.

It wasn’t simply that she was no longer a virgin—a cultural and ethnic taboo—but that she did everything that the most used-up and compliant whores did. She had become abhorrent in the eyes of her own father—and soon the idea that her father had suddenly opened the door and seen his daughter impaled at the end of a queue, nailed to a cross, marked with the whip from shoulders to heels, being lead to an orgasm...

...bound to a butcher block placed in the center of the basement. She is lying on her stomach on the old piece of eroded wood...She cries.

She realizes suddenly that she has passed the stage of adolescent rebellion She is beyond saving, even. But who could love her now? What man, upon seeing her whipped, gashes on her ass, her asshole open like a door, her breasts striated from the blows of the whip, would dare tell her, “I love you, I love you and I will love you...”

She burst into tears.

...bound to the butcher block. The men have left. Master Damien himself has disappeared.

Towards morning, she again heard heavy steps descend the staircase.

Then the voice of Damien: “Fuck her, she’s yours...” Two men entered her immediately: one in her cunt, the other in her mouth. As she didn’t suck, he held her by the temples and fucked her mouth like you would force an ass.

From the smell, she thought he was African. Their cries, that they couldn’t hold back, “ah the whore, she’s really good, this slut...” “Hey, can I fuck her ass, Boss?”convinced her that they were both black.

The man who was in her mouth ejaculated a thick, pasty cum. “God that was good, ” he concluded, as he buttoned himself up, “I’ve still got to finish my route.” It was then that she realized that she had been handed over to the neighborhood’s trash collectors.

Chapter Two

A tramontane wind overwhelmed the university campus. V*** was late and wanted to run towards Lecture Hall B where the first class in English literature would be held. But the wind was like a wall, and she could only advance by taking small steps, her head leaning forward against the gusts.

The lecture hall was full. There were no seats and many students were even sitting on the steps. V*** imitated them, taking out, as best she could, a thick pad and pen, and waited. The brouhaha was intolerable. She threw a glance to the right and to the left. She could only see rows of shoes. She raised her eyes. The girl sitting to her right must be very big, because she had not managed to tuck her long legs under the plank of the desk. She held them together at an angle, her knees at the height of V***’s face. She rapidly crossed and uncrossed her legs. V*** smiled. The girl had a very cool white skirt. She looked at her. She only saw a refined profile, very fine, a little like the head of a swan, a sublime neck, the line of her shoulders showed an extraordinary purity. “She can’t be real,” she thought, “she’s stepped out of a novel.”

The bustle in the back ceased suddenly and V*** turned her attention towards the stage. The professor had just come in—a man between two ages, as would befit a permanent student, a little grey around the temples, glasses like half-moons perched down on his nose, an aquiline profile, hollow cheeks, and as she must have noticed from hearing his first phrase, a curiously metallic voice, mocking and cocky.

—There’s a lot of you, he said.

He looked over them all with a certain authority that ended in dominating them, given that he was down below.

—There’s still time to change careers, he continued. Chinese, perhaps?

Or quantum physics?

There was some servile laughter. V*** was becoming impatient. But she reflected that there are thirty-six thousand ways of breaking the ice.

—I would like to propose something, if I could, the professor continued.

A way of obtaining your university course credit without even having to be present—without having to take any tests, or any other measures. And one that will permit me to empty this lecture hall.

There were murmurs of interest. The comedian had his public. Nothing like promising them the moon.

He went to the blackboard, picked up a piece of white chalk and wrote, in a weak hand, hardly legible,

Once below a time, I was a child...

Then he turned back towards his audience.

—It’s a verse from Dylan Thomas, the greatest Welsh poet of the century

—one of the greatest poets of the century. The beginning of a poem. Now, pay attention: I offer full credit to whoever provides me with a satisfactory translation of this verse. But if you cannot by next class, you will remain here until the end of the semester, and you will take hundreds of pages of notes and you will sweat through English literature.

He smiled.

—That’s the deal, he added.

—My name is Lauren, the stunning blonde said.

She had bumped into V*** in the confusion at the end of class. They each excused themselves at the same time, using the same words. They laughed, and decided to invite each other to a chocolate at the university cafeteria. V***, keeping in mind social niceties, could not detach the spirit from the perspective seen from between the tapered thighs of her classmate,

that glimpse of a little white panty, so cute, and the very pure line of her pussy. “What would she think if she knew that my Master had prohibited me from even wearing a thong? After he had me pierced with the rings, even wispy fabric is a discomfort. And what would she think if she saw my ass?”

The session at Master Damien’s had taken place just five days before.

V*** had just started to scar. The deepest gouges would still bleed if she stayed too long in the shower. The hot water softened the skin and the scabs; the wounds would reopen. “What would she say if I told her that I had been whipped, fucked and assfucked for an entire night? I am sure that she is a virgin…”

But there wasn’t time to ask her the question. The young girl was splendid, but with a bewitching beauty—bewitching under her uniform skirt, under her sensible skirt, her tousled hair. As if she had never been out and about.

Pens in hand, they tried to find an adequate translation for the verse by Dylan Thomas. They could see the inversion, the “Once below a time”

instead of the archetypal “Once upon”: the “I was” instead of the classic,

“there was” but how to render his intent?

—It’s as if he’s saying he comes from a buried time, —Lauren said. She had a Northern accent and at first V*** thought that she had said “tie.” —