Anaïs Nin - Delta of Venus

I never knew in what disguise he was coming to see me. If he had an identity, it was the identity of changing, of being anything; it was the identity of the actor for whom there is a continual drama.

He had said to me, ‘I will come some day.’

Now he lay on the bed looking at the painted ceiling of the houseboat. He felt the cover of the bed with his hands. He looked out the window at the river.

‘I like to come here, to the barge,’ he said. ‘It lulls me. The river is like a drug. What I suffer from seems unreal when I come here.’

It was raining on the roof of the houseboat. At five o’clock Paris always has a current of eroticism in the air. Is it because it is the hour when lovers meet, the five to seven of all French novels? Never at night, it would seem, for all the women are married and free only at ‘tea time’, the great alibi. At five I always felt shivers of sensuality, shared with the sensual Paris. As soon as the light faded, it seemed to me that every woman I saw was running to meet her lover, that every man was running to meet his mistress.

When he leaves me, Marcel kisses me on the cheek. His beard touches me like a caress. This kiss on the cheek which is meant to ′ be a brother’s is charged with intensity.

We had dinner together. I suggested we go dancing. We went to the Bal Nègre. Immediately Marcel was paralyzed. He was afraid of dancing. He was afraid to touch me. I tried to lure him into the dance, but he would not dance. He was awkward. He was afraid. When he finally held me in his arms he was trembling, and I was enjoying the havoc I caused. I felt a joy at being near to him. I felt a joy in the tall slenderness of his body.

I said, ‘Are you sad? Do you want to leave?’

‘I’m not sad, but I’m blocked. My whole past seems to stop me. I can’t let go. This music is so savage. I feel as if I can inhale but not exhale. I’m just constrained, unnatural.’

I did not ask him to dance any more. I danced with a Negro.

When we left then in the cool night, Marcel was talking about the knots, the fears, the paralysis in him. I felt, the miracle has not happened. I will free him by a miracle, not by words, not directly, not with the words I used for the sick ones. What he suffers I know. I suffered it once. But I know the free Marcel. I want Marcel free.

But when he came to the houseboat and saw Hans there, when he saw Gustavo arriving at midnight and staying on after he left, Marcel got jealous. I saw his blue eyes grow dark. When he kissed me goodnight, he stared at Gustavo with anger.

He said to me, ‘Come out with me for a moment.’

I left the houseboat and walked with him along the dark quays. Once we were alone, he leaned over and kissed me passionately, furiously, his full, big mouth drinking mine. I offered my mouth again.

‘When will you come to see me?’ he asked.

‘Tomorrow, Marcel, tomorrow I will come to see you.’

When I arrived at his place he had dressed himself in his Lapland costume to surprise me. It was like a Russian dress, and he wore a fur hat and high black felt boots, which reached almost to his hips.

His room was like a traveler’s den, full of objects from all over the world. The walls were covered with red rugs, the bed was covered with animal furs. The place was close, intimate, voluptuous like the rooms of an opium dream. The furs, the deep-red walls, the objects, like the fetishes of an African priest – everything was violently erotic. I wanted to lie naked on the furs, to be taken there lying on this animal smell, caressed by the fur.

I stood there in the red room, and Marcel undressed me. He held my naked waist in his hands. He eagerly explored my body with his hands. He felt the strong fullness of my hips.

‘For the first time, a real woman,’ he said. ‘So many have come here, but for the first time here is a real woman, someone I can worship.’

As I lay on the bed it seemed to me that the smell and feel of the fur and the bestiality of Marcel were combined. Jealousy had broken his timidity. He was like an animal, hungry for every sensation, for every way of knowing me. He kissed me eagerly, he bit my lips. He lay in the animal furs, kissing my breasts, feeling my legs, my sex, my buttocks. Then in the half-light he moved up over me, shoving his penis in my mouth. I felt my teeth catching on it as he pushed it in and out, but he liked it. He was watching and caressing me, his hands all over my body, his fingers everywhere seeking to know me completely, to hold me.

I threw my legs up over his shoulder, high, so that he could plunge into me and see it at the same time. He wanted to see everything. He wanted to see how the penis went in and came out glistening and firm, big. I held myself up on my two fists so as to offer my sex more and more to his thrusts. Then he turned me over and lay over me like a dog, pushing his penis in from behind, with his hands cupping my breasts, caressing me and pushing me at the same time. He was untiring. He would not come. I was waiting to have the orgasm with him, but he postponed and postponed it. He wanted to linger, to feel my body forever, to be endlessly excited. I was growing tired and I cried out, ‘Come now, Marcel, come now.’ He began then to push violently, moving with me into the wild rising peak of the orgasm, and then I cried out, and he came almost at the same time. We fell back among the furs, released.

We lay in half-darkness, surrounded by strange forms – sleighs, boots, spoons from Russia, crystals, sea shells. There were erotic Chinese pictures on the walls. But everything, even a piece of lava from Krakatoa, even the bottle of sand from the Dead Sea, had a quality of erotic suggestion.

‘You have the right rhythm for me,’ Marcel said. ‘Women are usually too quick for me. I get into a panic about it. They take their pleasure and then I am afraid to go in. They do not give me time to feel them, to know them, to reach them, and I go crazy after they leave thinking about their nakedness and how I have not had my pleasure. But you are slow. You are like me.’

As I dressed we stood by the fireplace, talking. Marcel slipped his hand under my skirt and began caressing me again. We were suddenly blind again with desire. I stood there with my eyes closed, feeling his hand, moving upon it. He gripped my ass with his hard, peasant grip, and I thought we were going to roll down on the bed again, but instead he said, ‘Lift up your dress.’

I leaned against the wall, moving my body up against his. He put his head between my legs, seizing my buttocks in his hands, tonguing my sex, sucking and licking until I was wet again. Then he took his penis out and took me there against the wall. His penis hard and erect like a drill, pushing, pushing, thrusting up into me while I was all wet and dissolved in his passion.

I enjoy making love with Gustavo more than with Marcel, because he has no timidities, no fears, no nervousness. He falls into a dream, we hypnotize each other with caresses. I touch his neck and pass my fingers through his black hair. I caress his belly, his legs, his hips. When I touch his back from neck to buttocks his body begins to shiver with pleasure. Like a woman, he likes caresses. His sex stirs. I don’t touch it until it begins to leap. Then he gasps with pleasure. I take it all in my hand, hold it firmly, and press it up and down. Or else I touch the tip of it with my tongue, and then he moves it in and out of my mouth. Sometimes he comes in my mouth and I swallow the sperm. Other times it is he who begins the caresses. My moisture comes easily, his fingers are so warm and knowing. Sometimes I am so excited that I feel the orgasm at the mere touch of his finger. When he feels me throbbing and palpitating, it excites him. He does not wait for the orgasm to finish, he pushes his penis in as if to feel the last contractions of it. His penis fills me completely, it is just made for me, so that he can slide easily. I close my inner lips around his penis and suck him inwardly. Sometimes the penis is larger than at other times and seems charged with electricity, and then the pleasure is immense, protracted. The orgasm never ends.