Anaïs Nin - Delta of Venus

Women very often pursue him, but he is like a woman and needs to believe himself in love. Although a beautiful woman can excite him, if he does not feel some kind of love, he is impotent.

It is strange how the character of a person is reflected in the sexual act. If one is nervous, timid, uneasy, fearful, the sexual act is the same. If one is relaxed, the sexual act is enjoyable. Hans’s penis never softens, so he takes his time, with a sureness about it. He installs himself inside of his pleasure as he installs himself inside of the present moment, to enjoy calmly, completely, to the last drop. Marcel is more uneasy, restless. I feel even when his penis is hard that he is anxious to show his power and that he is hurrying, driven by fear that his strength will not last.

Last night after reading some of Hans’s writing, his sensual scenes, I raised my arms over my head. I felt my satin pants slipping a little at the waist. I felt my belly and sex so alive. In the dark Hans and I threw ourselves into a prolonged orgy. I felt that I was taking all the women he had taken, everything that his fingers had touched, all the tongues, all the sexes he had smelled, every word he had uttered about sex, all this I took inside of me, like an orgy of remembered scenes, a whole world of orgasms and fevers.

Marcel and I were lying together on his couch. In the semidarkness of the room he was talking about erotic fantasies he had and how difficult it was to satisfy them. He had always wanted a woman to wear a lot of petticoats and he would lie underneath and look. He remembered that is what he did with his first nurse and, pretending to play, had looked up her skirts. This first stirring of the erotic feeling had remained with him.

So I said, ‘But I’ll do it. Let’s do all the things we ever wanted to do or have done to us. We have the whole night. There are so many objects here that we can use. You have costumes too. I’ll dress up for you.’

‘Oh, will you?’ said Marcel. ‘I’ll do anything you want, anything you ask me to do.’

‘First get me the costumes. You have peasant skirts there that I can wear. We will begin with your fantasies. We won’t stop until we have realized them all. Now, let me dress.’

I went to the other room, put on various skirts he had brought from Greece and Spain, one on top of another. Marcel was lying on the floor. I came into his room. He was flushed with pleasure when he saw me. I sat on the edge of his bed.

‘Now stand up,’ said Marcel.

I stood up. He lay on the floor and he looked up between my legs, under the skirts. He spread them a little with his hands. I stood still with my legs apart. Marcel’s looking up at me excited me, so that very slowly I began to dance as I had seen the Arab women do, right over Marcel’s face, slowly shaking my hips, so that he could see my sex moving between the skirts. I danced and moved and turned, and he kept looking and panting with pleasure. Then he could not contain himself, pulled me down right over his face, and began biting and kissing me. I stopped him after a while: ‘Don’t make me come, keep it.’

I left him and for his next fantasy I returned naked wearing his black felt boots. Then Marcel wanted me to be cruel. ‘Please be cruel,’ he begged.

All naked, in the high black boots, I began to order him to do humiliating things. I said, ‘Go out and bring me a handsome man. I want him to take me in front of you.’

‘That I won’t do,’ said Marcel.

‘I order you to. You said you would do anything I asked you.’

Marcel got up and went downstairs. He came back about half an hour later with a neighbor of his, a very handsome Russian. Marcel was pale; he could see that I liked the Russian. He had told him what we were doing. The Russian looked at me and smiled. 1 did not need to arouse him. When he walked toward me, he was already roused by the black boots and the nakedness. I not only gave myself to the Russian but I whispered to him, ‘Make it last, please make it last.’

Marcel was suffering. I was enjoying the Russian, who was big and powerful and who could hold out for a long time. As Marcel watched us, he took his penis out of his pants, and it was erect. When I felt the orgasm coming in unison with the Russian’s, Marcel wanted to put his penis in my mouth but I would not let him. I said, ‘You must keep it for later. I have other things to ask you. I won’t let you come!’ The Russian was taking his pleasure. After the orgasm he stayed inside and wanted more, but I moved away. He said, ‘I wish you would let me watch.’

Marcel objected. We let him go. He thanked me, very ironically and feverishly. He would have liked to stay with us.

Marcel fell at my feet. ‘That was cruel. You know that I love you. That was very cruel.’

‘But it made you passionate, didn’t it, it made you passionate.’

‘Yes, but it hurt me too, I would not have done that to you.’

‘I did not ask you to be cruel to me, did I? When people are cruel to me it makes me cold, but you wanted it, it excited you.’

‘What do you want now?’

‘I like to be made love to while looking out of the window,’ I said, ‘while people are looking at me. I want you to take me from behind, and I want nobody to be able to see what we are doing. I like the secrecy of it.’

I stood by the window. People could look into the room from other houses, and Marcel took me as I stood there. I did not show one sign of excitement, but I was enjoying him. He was panting and could scarcely control himself, as I kept saying, ‘Quietly, Marcel, do it quietly so that nobody will know.’ People saw us, but they thought we were just standing there looking at the street. But we were enjoying an orgasm, as couples do in doorways and under bridges at night all over Paris.

We were tired. We closed the window. We rested for a little while. We began to talk in the dark, dreaming and remembering.

‘A few hours ago, Marcel, I entered the subway at the rush hour, which I rarely do. I was pushed by the waves of people, jammed, and stood there. Suddenly I remembered a subway adventure Alraune told me about, when she was convinced that Hans had taken advantage of the crowdedness to caress a woman. At the very same moment, I felt a hand very lightly touch my dress, as if by accident. My coat was open, my dress thin, and this hand was brushing lightly through my dress just at the tip of my sex. I did not move away. The man in front of me was so tall that I could not see his face. I did not want to look up. I was not sure it was he, I did not want to know who it was. The hand caressed the dress, then very lightly it increased its pressure, feeling for the sex. I made a very slight movement to raise the sex toward the fingers. The fingers became firmer, following the shape of the lips deftly, lightly. I felt a wave of pleasure. As a lurch of the subway pushed us together I pressed against the whole hand, and he made a bolder gesture, gripping the lips of the sex. Now I was frenzied with pleasure, I felt the orgasm approaching, I rubbed against the hand, imperceptibly. The hand seemed to feel what I felt and continued its caress until I came. The orgasm shook my body. The subway stopped and a river of people pushed out. The man disappeared.’

War is declared. Women are weeping in the streets. The very first night there was a black-out. We had seen rehearsals of this, but the real black-out was quite different. The rehearsals had been gay. Now Paris was serious. The streets were absolutely black. Here and there a tiny blue or green or red watch light, small and dim, like the little ikon lights in Russian churches. All the windows were covered with black cloth. The café windows were covered or painted in dark blue. It was a soft September night. Because of the darkness it seemed even softer. There was something very strange in the atmosphere – an expectancy, a suspense.