the tone of his reply. But by the time it arrived it was out of date.
I lost my virginity on the 25th May 1968 (is it odd to remember the date? Most women remember theirs). You’ll want to hear the details. Hell, I wouldn’t mind hearing the details again; I don’t come out of this part all that badly.
It was only our third night out together.
I think that deserves a paragraph to itself. At the time it was a matter of quaint pride to me, as if I’d actually planned it that way. I hadn’t, of course.
The pre-bed stuff was almost completely non-verbal, though probably not for the same reason on each side. We’d been to the flicks again: an oldie this time, Les Liaisons Dangereuses , the Vadim modern-dress version with Jeanne Moreau and (to our joint delight), lurking sardonically in the shadows, Boris Vian.
When we came out I mentioned, in a formally casual way, the stock of calvados at my place. Its proximity was known.
The flat was as I’d left it, which means as I’d half-arranged it. Reasonably tidy, but not obsessive either way. Books lying open as if in use (some of them were – all the best lies have an alloy of truth). Lighting low and from the corners – forobvious reasons, but also in case some eager, treacherous spot had come into bud during the course of the film. Glasses put away, but rewashed first, and rinsed not dried, so that the calvados wouldn’t have to be drained through its usual bobbing scum of tea-towel.
As we walked in, I casually tossed my jacket on to the armchair, so that when I invited Annick to sit down she would probably choose the sofa (she’d hardly go for the bed, despite its daytime disguise under an Indian coverlet and heap of cushions). If I was going to make a courting lunge at some stage, I didn’t want to get smacked in the belly by the arm of the chair. These thoughts weren’t really as brutal as they sound; they rented space in my mind in a provisional, hesitant way, and their tenancy made me feel slightly guilty. But I was thinking in the future conditional rather than the plain future; it’s the tense which minimises responsibility.
So there we were, me in the chair, she on the sofa; sitting, sipping and looking. There was no gramophone in the flat; ‘Shall we play the fruit machine?’ seemed inappropriate. So we looked. I kept on not quite thinking of things to say. I wondered for a minute or two whether l’amour libre was the right translation for free love; and I’m glad I never found an answer.
Does one always think, on such occasions, that the other person is much more at ease than you are? In this case, as far as I was actively thinking about Annick, I assumed that, given her better command of the local language she would, if she had anything she wanted to say, speak. She didn’t; I didn’t; and what gradually emerged was something different in quality from a mere extended pause in the conversation. It was agreed silence, combined with total concentration on the other person; the result was more erotic than I knew was possible. The force of this silence came from its spontaneity. Subsequently, if ever I’ve tried to re-create the effect, it’s always failed.
We were, perhaps, six feet apart, and fully dressed, but the subtlety and strength of our erotic interchange were greater than much I subsequently came to know in the hurried, fiercer world of naked hand-to-hand. It wasn’t the sort of rough eye-gazingwhich passes for foreplay in the cinema. We started, admittedly, with each other’s eyes and face, but soon strayed, if always returning. Each ocular foray into a new area produced a new scurry of excitement; each twitch of muscle, each flicker at the corner of the mouth, each shift of the fingers across the face had a particular, tender, and, as it seemed at the time, unambiguous significance.
We stayed like that for at least an hour, and afterwards we went to bed. It was a surprise. I won’t say a disappointment, because it was too
I lost my virginity on the 25th May 1968 (is it odd to remember the date? Most women remember theirs). You’ll want to hear the details. Hell, I wouldn’t mind hearing the details again; I don’t come out of this part all that badly.
It was only our third night out together.
I think that deserves a paragraph to itself. At the time it was a matter of quaint pride to me, as if I’d actually planned it that way. I hadn’t, of course.
The pre-bed stuff was almost completely non-verbal, though probably not for the same reason on each side. We’d been to the flicks again: an oldie this time, Les Liaisons Dangereuses , the Vadim modern-dress version with Jeanne Moreau and (to our joint delight), lurking sardonically in the shadows, Boris Vian.
When we came out I mentioned, in a formally casual way, the stock of calvados at my place. Its proximity was known.
The flat was as I’d left it, which means as I’d half-arranged it. Reasonably tidy, but not obsessive either way. Books lying open as if in use (some of them were – all the best lies have an alloy of truth). Lighting low and from the corners – forobvious reasons, but also in case some eager, treacherous spot had come into bud during the course of the film. Glasses put away, but rewashed first, and rinsed not dried, so that the calvados wouldn’t have to be drained through its usual bobbing scum of tea-towel.
As we walked in, I casually tossed my jacket on to the armchair, so that when I invited Annick to sit down she would probably choose the sofa (she’d hardly go for the bed, despite its daytime disguise under an Indian coverlet and heap of cushions). If I was going to make a courting lunge at some stage, I didn’t want to get smacked in the belly by the arm of the chair. These thoughts weren’t really as brutal as they sound; they rented space in my mind in a provisional, hesitant way, and their tenancy made me feel slightly guilty. But I was thinking in the future conditional rather than the plain future; it’s the tense which minimises responsibility.
So there we were, me in the chair, she on the sofa; sitting, sipping and looking. There was no gramophone in the flat; ‘Shall we play the fruit machine?’ seemed inappropriate. So we looked. I kept on not quite thinking of things to say. I wondered for a minute or two whether l’amour libre was the right translation for free love; and I’m glad I never found an answer.
Does one always think, on such occasions, that the other person is much more at ease than you are? In this case, as far as I was actively thinking about Annick, I assumed that, given her better command of the local language she would, if she had anything she wanted to say, speak. She didn’t; I didn’t; and what gradually emerged was something different in quality from a mere extended pause in the conversation. It was agreed silence, combined with total concentration on the other person; the result was more erotic than I knew was possible. The force of this silence came from its spontaneity. Subsequently, if ever I’ve tried to re-create the effect, it’s always failed.
We were, perhaps, six feet apart, and fully dressed, but the subtlety and strength of our erotic interchange were greater than much I subsequently came to know in the hurried, fiercer world of naked hand-to-hand. It wasn’t the sort of rough eye-gazingwhich passes for foreplay in the cinema. We started, admittedly, with each other’s eyes and face, but soon strayed, if always returning. Each ocular foray into a new area produced a new scurry of excitement; each twitch of muscle, each flicker at the corner of the mouth, each shift of the fingers across the face had a particular, tender, and, as it seemed at the time, unambiguous significance.
We stayed like that for at least an hour, and afterwards we went to bed. It was a surprise. I won’t say a disappointment, because it was too
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