L.

[2.] Tell Me Your Name

[From here, direct address disappears, supporting my hypothesis that this writing is meant to be an organized private diary. I hold back analysis for now. -Mini. Amsterdam.]

[Paris. 1955]

I was a stranger to his God, and I have always been. Though I have often tried to be a Catholic, its ways spit me back out, though I try to like its rules. I am an old sadist who likes to stroke them with the whip. I like to say "O God help me" and "Please God" but even the boys I whip know that it is all only words to me in the end.

This morning I woke to the lips of a boy called "Romulus", so called because he is always sucking upon me, sucking upon the wolf. My eyes opened upon my half-lit bedroom, pleasing powder blues and yellow taffeta, and yet the light caused my eyes to ache a bit. I woke like this to his lips against my neck, and I grabbed him by the hair, and I tossed him away. He cried out a little whimper, like a young cat. Oh it does hurt to be roughly grabbed by the hair. I really must have better lovers. He was my waiter in a coffee shop, and perhaps university age. He sat beside me when no one was looking, because I was always coming in so late to look at him. I really am shameless, and my eyes drink handsome things though I try to look away. He said to me, his jaw smooth and his black hair in little curls on his head, casually but earnestly, "How much?" 

As is sometimes the case with young men here in Paris, this handsome, straight-edge boy assumes that because he is handsome, I am for sale. Well he was not wrong this time, and I've no interest in pride. "How much have you got?"

He shifted his chair a little closer to me then, his eyes darting around to see if anyone might come through the doors. "I have maybe 50 francs. That's all. But I'll make it worth your while."

Less than ten dollars. I looked at him with a raised eyebrow.

"Really I will," he insisted.

"Oh you know nothing about it, kitten," I said to him. "But take my extra key."

The first night, I let him do it the way that he wanted. The next night, I made him do it the way that I wanted. That second night, I looked into his soulful eyes, and the lips that wanted to suck on me like an octopus, lips that after all had not made any good on their promise to please me. And I said, "Let me tell you what you are going to do now."

So he has been kissing my shoes and cleaning my house. And to reward him, he gets what he wants with a side of slap. And it was this Romulus and a boy named "Glossia", because of his quick little tongue,  who my Dasius walked in upon, quite unannounced. He startled me, as I lay quietly, having a watch. Oh it's him I wanted in the first place. The rest are just an endless march of the same, unsatisfying nonsense. What intimacy can I have with them? Hand of Eros! I go mad.

Dasius climbed the bed, where admittedly he has slept in the past and considers his own place, and he grabbed me, pulling my hair. And we had a row. Why does he fly into these little rages? Why can't he be like another one I love and have a little fun instead? He checked these boys for marks in the places that I like to bite -- I had not been biting them!-- and they were terrified of him, pushing them and pulling on them like a monster. "What in the hell do you think you are doing?" he had shouted at me. Somehow if I bite them --so much the more intimate act!-- he is not ever pained. What is the matter with a little watch? He knows what I like. Doesn't he want me to be happy? Blustering. And yet I quail a little. Because lately I am thinking of him young.

After I revived him, all of those decades ago, he looked on me, afraid. We stayed there in the abbey. He had nightmares, and when he slept he sweat, quaking. He would not tell me what he dreamed about, and he watched me bury Aureil, two pieces far apart.