This is the first in a series of stories which will focus on Julian. It's my first shot at erotic fiction--and, actually, my first shot at any kind of fiction since high school. I welcome any comments or critiques--keeping in mind, please, that I'm a sensitive young lad. :) Oh--and thanks to Louis Malle for the subtitles to these pieces.
The thing was that it was all so boring.
What was supposed to be the city of culture and couture (and love! Julian sneered) had turned out a maze of cafés crammed with disaffected youths who wore their angst with a glare and a cigarette. Right now, just at the next table, a lanky brunette inhaled deeply on her Gauloise and breathed out into a cloud of chatter. "Il y avait ce mec Alexandre au disco hier soir et je l'ai vu quelques fois..."
Again. Boring. Dulled, bland, smooth. Why did every woman in Paris wear that boycropped hair?
It wasn't so much that Julian thought himself superior to the Parisians he'd met--no, that wasn't it at all. Maybe just frustrated and resentful that he couldn't share in their banter. Two months ago Julian had stepped off the plane at Orly and found Paris sealed in by the heat of dirt and shops and throngs of people. And cafés. And since then his stay had comprised a few moderately amusing trips out with his American friends, endless evenings working alone amidst books and papers, and hardly a single authentic relationship with the French. That lanky smoker at the next table--call her Marie, say, or perhaps Thérèse--what was it about her that was so forbidding? Something about the impatient eyes of the French--those steely eyes that fix on you and then dart away, as though you couldn't possibly be worth another moment of time. Or maybe it was the way that woman swallowed the smoke she inhaled, as though she would devour you just as hungrily as she sucked on her Gauloise.
The brunette took the cigarette and hurled the smoke towards Julian. "Qu'est-ce que tu veux, hein? Va t'en!" His eyes softened and turned away, glancing back down to the stacks of Foucault and Derrida he'd brought with him.
Julian ran his hands through the strands of his dark hair and sighed. He closed his eyes and, stretching to his full 5'9", replayed last night's evening in the café, when a young father had taken his son--8 or 9 maybe, sort of slight--for an ice cream. "Chocolat," the boy had proclaimed proudly. Julian had pretended to immerse himself in his reading while stealing quick glances over the side of the textbook at the delicate little gosse and his weary father. Julian had been struck by the man's intense calm--the set jaw, the force of the torso and the arms, the quick hands that gripped his pen and ran it along the notepaper. Firm, authoritative. The white dress shirt that had lost its starch and loosened tie suggested businessman--perhaps lawyer.
The boy had begun to plead for another ice cream. "Non," the father had said, simply and with the strength of a look at his son. Julian had hoped secretly the boy would disturb his father's work. And he did. Whines, pleading desires, until the man slammed his pen down and held his palm to his son.
"Tu veux être battu? Je te promis une fessée si tu continues."
Une fessée! A spanking! The words Julian had hoped for, followed only by the hope that the man would finally put his son across those defined knees. What would he spank like? Would he pull down the trousers, and maybe the underwear too? Would he lecture and yell, or would that steely, calm manner offer a firm, quiet beating? Would the child have to count? Did the raised palm suggest a hand spanking, or would the man perhaps double over the thick black belt that the boy stared toward? Studying had never been so fascinating.
And, sure enough, not five minutes later the boy's rocking knocked the ice cream onto the father's pad with a muted splat. The boy's surprise at the accident became a wide-eyed, silent look at his father. A spanking, certainly. What was it the man had said? Something like, "You'll count every single one of them."
The boy's eyes had brimmed with fat tears. "Cul nu?" he asked, without argument. Julian gasped. Bare?
"Cul nu," the man responded with a firm, grim nod of the head.
And with that the pair was off, father's hand resting ominously on his son's bum, as if partly to hurry him along and partly to remind him what would happen at home.
Julian had spent the night last night dreaming about the spanking, what had happened, how the angry red handprints had looked on the white flesh. Here in Paris there didn't seem to be the same kind of spanking stigma as in America. Christ! Julian hadn't even seen much public mention of spanking in Atlanta, and that was in the South! No, in America admitting to spanking your children (or worse, getting spanked yourself) carried with it a horrible shame of archaic brutality, abandoned as a natural casualty of upward mobility. Spanking was for lower class louts and kinky perverts. Julian's two older brothers often teased him with memories of their father's sturdy paddle suspended in the hall closet, but by the time Julian was big enough to fit snugly over his father's knee, cultural aspiration had won out over immediate discipline. Julian's childhood was peppered not by spanking but by the constant (and hushed) threat of spanking, and so every time that Julian broke a rule, the consequence seemed to be two fused ideas: the fact of corporal humiliation bound to a sure transgression of social class. On one of the few occasions that his dad actually did spank him, when Julian had sworn at his fifth grade teacher and been suspended, every stroke of the paddle had felt like the sharp sting of cultural inferiority.
But this little Parisian boy was the third or fourth in a matter of weeks whom Julian had seen promised a spanking at this very café, and there was something safe and insular and warm about the firm fact of a spanking within that alienating Parisian culture. As he gathered his textbooks into his backpack and collected together his sheath of scrawled notes, Julian put a fistful of change onto the table and watched the anonymous father and son recede into the distance together. Rising slowly and ambling along after them, towards the métro that would take him back to the apartment he'd subletted in the 13ième Arondissement, Julian became conscious of feeling acutely and quietly alone--alone as an American in Paris, alone as an aspiring intellectual amidst undergrads who were using the semester abroad to drink and _f_u_c_k_, and alone as...well, as a fag, Julian guessed. That is the word for it, isn't it? As a fag.
The very word sent Julian into a sort of glum self-pity that lasted through the hot, sticky métro ride, the walk back to the apartment, the climb up to the fourth floor, and the exhausted collapse onto his bed. Was this semester--this semester alone, alone, alone--just a clip of what fags did for their entire lives? Really, if he was being honest with himself, Julian knew he'd been gay since he was very young. Nine or ten, even. And that suspicion had slipped into him so naturally, being so sure that his parents' docile suburban life with children as the badge of their gleaming happiness was not what he would choose--or could choose. He just sort of evaporated from his family portraits for years--still did, really. But Julian found himself at a point at which he knew just how profoundly he was still trapped by his own naïveté.
He yawned, arching his back and staring blankly at the ceiling. He'd always heard about Atlanta as a gay enclave. But his occasional trips down into the city for a movie or a lecture never hinted at any homo_s_e_x_ual culture to which he could gain access. A culture that was penetrable in some way, Julian thought. There was something so sadly confined and mysteriously protective about being gay. Would this aloneness be part of him his entire life, from the age of twenty until his death? Was this what waited for him for the next sixty years?
"Non!"
The sound from across the wall seemed to come like a quick, sharp answer.
A crack! and another plaintive, pleading "Non!" Muffled, but unmistakable. Another whack. Angry yelling and more pleading--from a boy, a boy who must have been thirteen or fourteen perhaps. Another whack. And another.
Julian curled into an S in his bed and listened silently to the diffuse noises of the spanking.
"Michel! S'il te plaît Michel!"
"Ca sera dix de plus si tu bouges de cette position. Jacques. Tu comprends."
Stifled tears. A flat sound of wood hitting flesh. "Aïeee! Oui, Michel."
Whack. Whack. Slow, steady, methodical. Whack. Whack. Whack.
Firm, definitive sounds punctuated only by muffled whimpers from Michel's companion. Son? Michel's voice sounded young through the hollow walls. Brother, maybe? Cousin? Or, um, boyfriend?
Julian rubbed his eyes. He should be sleeping--or, really, making his way through his Foucault reading for the seminar on Thursday. But it didn't matter anyway. He'd be drowned out by a sea of speeding French voices that wouldn't slow for Julian to piece the foreign syllables together.
The spanking in the next room had paused. He heard crying and soft whispers about a "deuxième partie." A second half.
Julian's mind spun out of control. He ached to go next door and see what was happening. But how could he? What would he say? This was a private moment between Michel and this other boy, this Jacques. What could he do?
As the splat! of the wood bled into his room again, a sudden surge of risk pulled Julian up from the bed and pushed him towards the door. His mind was blank. Whack. What would he say? Whack. What would he say? Whack. He tried to stop his feet from moving towards the door, his hands from pulling at the knob, but he felt powerless. Whack. Whack. His body hurled him through the door and his hand came up slowly to give a timid knock.
The silence felt heavy and sharp.
"Qui est-ce?" said a voice in the room eventually, with a texture of cold irritation.
"C'est...ummm...it's...er...je m'appelle Julian..."
The door swung open.
Julian clutched one hand in the other and shifted, the strands of hair slipping delicately across his face. On the other side of the door, backlit by a dim lamp and his left arm slung up against the door frame, stood the boy Julian took to be Michel, filling the doorframe half-casually and half-protectively. He must have been twenty-five or twenty-six, sharp, angular lines running up the considerable length of his body and converging in clean, crisp cheekbones. Julian's eyes swung rapidly over Michel's solid form, but whichever bodyline his eyes traced inevitably led back to those stunning cheekbones--and a pair of firm, not unkind watercolor blue eyes waiting for Julian to catch his breath.
"Puis-je vous aider? Que voulez-vous?"
"Je...je m'excuse...j'habite dans la chambre à côté de la vôtre...je voulais travailler mais..." Julian's eyes rippled along the length of Michel's bicep and forearm to the small wooden paddle that Michel grasped in his right hand.
"You're American, non?"
And le voilà: that classic French impulse to reply in English whenever a foreign accent butchered the native tongue. Normally the shift in language would have annoyed Julian, but he accepted the gesture gratefully.
"Yeah, right. American. I...I was trying to study next door, but these walls in the apartment, and the sound...I...well."
Michel's face snapped into a wide grin. "The sound, yes. I'm sorry." Michel glanced over his right shoulder and Julian glimpsed a young boy's cherry red bottom in the corner of the room. "My brother has earned himself a...qu'est-ce qu'on dit...a spanking?"
"Um, yes. A spanking."
"Ah, oui, a spanking. He needs a spanking. Hein, Jacques?"
"Oui, Michel," came a whimper from the far end of the room.
"I, I was just trying to work." Julian didn't know what else to say.
"Yes, yes, of course. Can you give me five minutes, my friend? Jacques and I will finish our work quickly so you can do yours. C'est promis." Another grin punctuated the sentence.
"Er, yes. Fine. Um, thank you."
Julian swiveled around and by the time he had walked the four or five steps to his room Michel's door had swung shut and he heard muffled whispers. Julian paused a moment in the hall, and then as he slipped his key into the lock, a deafening crack! ran a shock through his body.
"Aïeee!"
Julian regained his composure and quickly slipped into his room and shut the door. He pulled a Marlboro from the half-empty soft pack on his desk and leaned against the wall. He fumbled for his lighter and ran its flame along the cigarette in the darkness of the room. Julian smoked in rhythm with the spanking next door.
Inhale. Whack! "Aïeee!" Exhale. Pause. Inhale. Whack!
Julian had smoked about three-quarters of the cigarette, not having moved an inch from just inside his tiny Parisian "studio." Suddenly the spanking stopped. He heard more whispers and there was a long pause and what he thought was "je t'aime." Julian thought he could discern a refrigerator door open and close. He stayed still.
Julian heard a door open and creak shut. There was a knock at his door. Julian's stillness made him feel frozen, stuck to that spot, unmoved and immovable.
Another knock.
Julian reached out for the door, steadying his hands. He twisted the knob and opened it. Michel stood there, sweating lightly and grinning back that same grin.
"Hi. Sorry for the noise. I was wanting to apologize. Jacques apologizes, too. He's sorry. Very sorry."
Julian couldn't help but smile weakly at Michel's little joke. He went to speak but found he didn't have any words to offer.
"Look," Michel continued, his precise, quick French voice stretched suddenly into a practiced American drawl. "I sure do apologize about the noise. Neighbor, I'd feel better about the _d_a_m_n_ed inconvenience if you'd let me buy you a drink."
From behind his back Michel pulled his arm (his spanking arm! Julian realized) and revealed two bottles of Orangina, which he rattled gently. Julian's diluted smile broadened into a bright grin that matched Michel's. What was it that had made him grin? Michel's immediate and easy friendship? The charming little reference to one of Julian's favorite movies? Julian giggled nervously and stepped away from the door to invite Michel inside.
He went to speak, but before he could say a word, the ash from his cigarette slipped from the tip and across the front of his loose white tee-shirt.
"Careful!" Michel exclaimed. In a moment he had dropped the bottles onto the bed and whisked Julian's cigarette from his hand into the ashtray that perched on the edge of Julian's nighttable. Michel moved with such precision that he had disposed of the cigarette before Julian even realized. The next thing Julian knew, Michel's hands were holding his back and brushing the ash from the front of his shirt with efficient speed. The hands were not exactly sensual, Julian noticed, but soft and deft. They shared a quick, calm glance. Brushing the hair back from his eyes, Julian broke the silence.
"You're all right, Charlie. You're all right," he quoted back, grinning.
Michel laughed softly. "Ahhh! You know it! "Barton Fink" is brilliant."
"How could I not know it? The Coen Bros. rock," Julian stated plainly, regaining his confidence for the first time since arriving in Paris. "I'll show you the life of the mind, I'll show you the life of the mind!"
The two laughed and Julian flopped onto the bed, his anxiety dissolving in the presence of that gleaming grin and those clear blue eyes. Michel walked casually from the door frame to Julian's desk, where he pulled the chair out and fell wearily into it, tossing Julian a bottle of the French soda.
"I was worshipping the Coen Bros. for awhile after I saw that movie," Michel smiled.
"Yeah! My God."
"I actually wrote my final paper on the Coen Bros. a couple years ago. I went to New York to study film for a year at Columbia."
"I was going to ask--your English is excellent."
"Thank you, uh...oh, I am terribly embarrassed. What is your name?"
They both giggled at having disposed so unconsciously of formalities.
"Hi, I'm Julian." Julian leaned out towards Michel offering his arm.
Michel slipped his arm out from under his black button-down, where he'd been rubbing his shoulder, and grasped Julian's arm, briefly but firmly. "Michel."
"Yes, I...I heard from across the wall."
Michel smiled slyly. "Yes, the...the, euhhh, what do you call it?"
"The spanking."
"Spanking, yes. That was my brother, Jacques. He needed a spanking. He is staying with me for the weekend for my parents are on holiday in Nantes. Perhaps you will meet him later?"
"Um, yes. Why--or, why, if you don't mind me asking--did you need to spank him?"
"He stole one of my books. One of my school books--he wanted me to stop studying and play with him. So he took it and threw it away in the dumpster downstairs. It's ruined. I cannot read from it. I thought he needed a spanking, non? Would you have been spanked for this?"
"I...well." Julian swallowed a large gulp of Orangina. "What book was it?"
"Foucault. History of _s_e_x_uality, Volume One. I'm following a course on Derrida and Foucault."
"That makes things easier," Julian smiled. He fished the book out of his bag, dropped against the wall where he'd been standing. "I'm in the same course."
"Really?! Non! Where do you sit?"
"By the stairwell in the back."
"I have not seen you before. I sit in the front and there are so many people," Michel said in slightly stilted English. Julian handed the book to Michel, who accepted it with an easy, appreciative smile. He held up the book in gratitude. "Thank you. Perhaps we may go to class together on Thursday," Michel said, sipping steadily between smiles.
"Yeah. I'd like that."
"Are you a philosophy student in America?"
"Yeah, philosophy. I'm at Haverford, but I grew up in Atlanta. No one seems to have heard of Haverford here."
"I have not either, I apologize. But my friend," Michel asked, his grin faded to a curious look, his eyebrows furrowed in confusion, "you did not answer my question."
"Which question, Michel?" Julian stalled.
"Would your father have spanked you for Jacques' disobedience?"
The topic knotted Julian's stomach and tightened his nerves that had just relaxed. But he found himself answering Michel--desiring to answer Michel, who sat, calmly, absently tapping the golden curls of his hair with an index finger.
"Probably not. He would have threatened it. I...would have deserved it."
Michel raised an eyebrow, as though half-amusement and half-intrigue had stirred his expression.
"Your father did not spank you often, Julian?"
"No, not really. Much less than my older brothers would have liked. Or, maybe," Julian said, taking a deep breath, "not nearly as much as I needed it." Julian laughed nervously, delicately, but he was drowned out by Michel's hearty, knowing chuckle.
"Every boy needs a good spanking. My father used to say that to us often," Michel replied, his blue eyes twinkling. Julian shifted uncomfortably. Silence filled the room--not the hollow emptiness from before, but more of a pregnant, waiting silence. The silence before...something.
Michel cleared his throat and gestured toward the pack of cigarettes tossed onto Julian's desk. "So, my friend, do you have une amie who kisses you between those cigarettes?"
Julian smiled weakly. "Uhhh, no. No girlfriend. I, well, see, it's that I'm...I..."
"Me too." Michel's reply was definitive, firm, punctuated by a wry grin.
The pair lapsed into silence and Julian glanced away. What had Michel meant by that? Him too what? Did he mean "me neither"--no girlfriend? Or was the "me too" deliberate--like all of Michel's actions seemed to be--an allusion to whatever absence Julian had made reference? But how could he have known that homo_s_e_x_uality was on the other end of that swallowed sentence? Did he know? Michel couldn't be...could he? This grinning, in-control French boy-man still massaging his sore shoulder and occasionally rubbing at the stubble on his chin?
"Well. I must go check on Jacques, my friend." Michel finished the last of his Orangina and stood, placing the bottle on the desk next to the pack of cigarettes. His eyes fell on the pack and he turned to Julian, who stood facing Michel.
"You really must be more careful with your cigarettes," Michel said, his full lips unsmiling but his eyes dancing lightly. "I should spank you for your carelessness." He broke into another of his endless grins and gave Julian a quick hug.
"Er, yes," said Julian, his breath now quick and fast. This was the moment. Did he dare? "Um, you...you should."
Michel pulled away and looked at Julian, his eyes soft and calm. He smiled, lightly this time, almost sweetly. He hugged Julian to him again, this time in a full-body embrace that left Julian to slip so easily into those taut arms. Then he gradually became aware of Michel's right arm slipping away from his back and rising in the air.
SLAP!
Michel's hand crashed down onto the seat of Julian's Levis. It didn't hurt so much as feel--a sharp tingle. SLAP! The tingle increased and Michel's left arm brushed over Julian's back softly. SLAP! The feeling broadened into a steady sensation of pain. Julian scrunched his face but remained silent. He looked up at Michel, who met his gaze, paused, and raised his open palm again. SLAP! SLAP! Julian cried out slightly and exhaled, hard. Pause.
Julian stared at Michel for what felt like a long time. Michel ran his fingers down Julian's face gently, softly, and then suddenly he shifted his gaze away. Now it was Michel who seemed nervous, uncomfortable. "I must check on Jacques," he said, his eyes glued to the floor. He picked up the Foucault book from the bed and glanced again at Julian.
"Thanks for the book. I will come by about an hour before class on Thursday. Um, bye." Michel kissed Julian's cheek quickly and before Julian could say a word his door had closed shut, Michel vanished.
Julian went to the mirror nailed to the back of his door. He paused quietly in the dark, staring at the shadow his reflection made in the mirror, and his mouth seemed to form the words with such ease, with such promise.
"I'm gay. I'm gay. I am."
On deck: Part Two: "A Very Private Affair"