LES MAINS NÉGATIVES
Susanna Davies-Crook
“I love anyone who will hear me screaming.”
– Les mains négatives (1978),
MARGUERITE DURAS
[FIRST]
LUKE
Les mains négatives, the hands on the caves at Lascaux, made by the ancients placing their palms against the cold stone and blowing deep hard red pigment and framing their unique silhouette – a mark making that remains long after their light has gone out and the warmth of their bodies has faded into dusk. Bea in spected the bruise. It was perfect. The shape of a hand held in time, a tone now passed. Where he was and now wasn’t, a magical marking she could carry with her for some time at least. Maybe for a week that he could be with her and away at the same time.
FOR JOUISSANCE, #4
Emma Rose Schwartz
He hadn’t replied. She’d said, “had a great night x”. Something about these bruises were collectible but not permanent, but she kept them whilst the feelings passed and the cravings diminished. Through the worst of the “I want yous” and the 3am “U ups?” that loomed the week after. It’s why she liked the blood blooms so much, suspended in her skin, the stains of angels leading her. The week after her body slowly dispersed the clots and the cum, and the man who took her face in his hands and held her chin toward him and spat. She’d wanted him to go further, to tell her what she knew and he knew and no one said. It was too far. He didn’t have the words for his actions. Just out loud she’d wanted it, “you’re nothing, you’re worthless,” would have been too honest. The words turned him off, so she asked him to hit her harder in place of language. Bruises and burst blood vessels as a performance of what was thought – a beautiful honest somatic subtext. To perform the reality of her position. For just a moment to be true.
†
[THEN]
KIT
The gallery is empty and she waits; half-cut Penelope in a midnight city. In the corner are some packing crates. By the open one rests a tray of knives. They are the small kind that open and retreat at the whim of their master, flick knives. Some more ornate than oth- ers, dark curves and hooks sprawled against the velvet cloth they came in. She’s seen them before on the marble table by his bedside. The first time she went over, she’d entered the crisp bedroom. The panelled wardrobes displayed their mirror selves, reflected the outside rather than holding. Withholding. Bea had looked at herself. Tall with pale skin and mid-length golden hair. She was pretty enough to get herself into men’s rooms but not beautiful enough to enjoy it.
She is waiting again and hears Kit’s voice tripping up the stairs. The strange desire he seemed to have to be heard beyond what the situation required, so that everyone couldn’t help but receive his slightly off-key, nasal, privately-educated projection. She hated him.
“Sorry my dear, I’ll be with you in a minute,” his cracked smile appeared, framed by the door. The sandy looks and I-own-everything demeanour would do. She suspected he in some way felt sorry for her. Landing on top of his roster for a night or two to be discarded without a word or a chat. She liked it now, the predictability of these mirror-men. Bea sought them out. The ones who would not speak. Who, on the rare occasion she got carried away and asked for a check-in would say “Oh not now babe, talking only complicates things,” in that easy way that twisted in her belly before they pulled out. They would not follow up a night with “had a great time,” or “nice to see you,” leaving her silence-bound so she would be forced into this penitent posture, knees buckled, altar-bent.
On the heavy glass coffee table there is a book. One on the Pre-Raphaelites and one on devotional painting, on the cover The Rape of Lucrece. Bea thinks of her mother. Her mother always said the worst thing about what happened was not the act but becoming a container for hatred and violence. Bea flutters the pages and they fall open at Susanna, who uses her words and talks her way out of it.
His form appears chest-first, a light, broad posture wrought in halls of power, designed to bend wills. “Ok, she’s gone.” A clasped hand at the bottom of the narrow townhouse stairs clicks the departure of the last staff member. Kit walks across the gallery and takes two heavy-based crystal-cut glasses from the shelf they share with some white spirit and a cup of drill bits.
They do not speak. A gin and tonic appears before her, unrequested. He chats easily and she lets it wash over her. The words bathe her in his self-import- ant air. It is pleasant to feel so empty in relation to his innate fullness.
Shifting from his long-legged perch on the edge of the leather Le Corbusier sofa, he slides next to her and chances a knee graze, a soft grip of her elbow. In the steady stream of his nothings, he draws closer until, exhausted by the slow trajectory, Bea kisses him. Pressing him back into the leather, he grasps into her and grips her waist. She hooks herself over his hard thighs, and he unclasps her bra easily, and pulls her knickers to one side so she can sink onto him. He starts to move and she meets his tempo. Pleasant enough at the shoulders, she observes as they rise and fall above and below her, she obliges as they turn her face to the wall. A strong hand splits her legs left, then right and he moves behind her faster now, her breasts against the cold of the white brick, a heat seal between the wall and his beating body.
He comes perfunctorily, then looks around for tissues. A mute man even for the genre. They climb a smaller set of stairs over to the side of the gallery, emerging onto a large open-plan room on the top floor. There is nothing in it except some framed graphic prints and a large bed with sheets obviously changed by someone else. The stark reflective surfaces, cold on her soles in the December dawn, mimic her heeled step as she echoes after him to the centre. The bedside tables are heavy block marble hewn and polished into the abstracted hourglass of a chess piece or a woman, they flatten out to the surface on which the water jug could rest.
Through a long rectangular window, stage right, the dawn has started to sing. Bea finds comfort in these words she cannot decipher but only feel. The chirrups and dances of sparrows and other small consciousness ringing in the day. The deep coos of pigeons and squarks of crows, perhaps even the odd raven midnight-loosed from the tower. An out-of- place seagull is calling and that means there’s a storm out at sea. This composition unfolds against a bed of city street cleaners and bin emptiers. A shatter of cascading glass, marking the time lost over drinks and a night, cuts through the chorus dramatically.
He lays with his back to her, an Abbey knight at rest. Ready to go home, but wasted and bone-tired, Bea climbs in next to him and seeks warmth. He does not stir but something in her wants to fuck again now that they’re here and in proximity. She reaches down, run- ning her index finger over the top of his cock tentatively. He remains prone in his faux sleep. She pushes, palm- pressed and grasping into the relaxed flesh and conjures him into being. Sensing him stir, she submerges beneath the sheet into the thick atmosphere of the bed and finds him with her lips. Time sinks into the relief of his swell- ing body, as it always does. The rhythmic occupation of her mouth and mind, a drum so present it forces all thoughts from her, pleasingly emptying into his abyssal bloom. Slowly he awakens to her touch and presses the back of her head so that she is forced to swallow and slide deeper out of space-time. Hard and present now he pulls her up to kiss him which she does, eyes closed. Breaking away, she climbs onto him and takes his neck in her too-small grip so he has to open to her, invite her in. She tightens until he pushes back and throws her off, taking her by the hips and turning her over so that all thoughts shimmer into the star-scattered void of night.
They join the layered composition, gasps and sighs, half-moaned yes, bite-stifled harder shimmer into the twilight and flutter with the birds. He comes a second time, this time inside her and as he rolls from her, she is awake. Pressing his hand between her legs, she pulls him into her and slides his hand for him as he moves inac- curately and lazily before drifting to stillness, “I forgot you don’t come,” he says as his last statement before they round this episode with sleep.
†
[EARLIER]
JAMIE
Bea leaned back against the stainless steel counter so that at his vantage point, he would notice as she unfurled her body in his direction. The heavy relaxed shoulders appeared unaware, but she had felt his gaze at her back since she walked into the crew tent, and had risen to it.
He was different from the other riggers. Dirty and big, but something else too. His arms turgid with daily use, sweat clinging in the 27-degree farm heat, and road dust pooling in the nooks. A sight, she con- sidered, that was as ancient as humanity itself. This body, these arms, hard neck and sweaty upper lip. The gentle scent of body wafted over the other larger men between them.
He was dark-haired, as she liked, and lean. His beard was just a little too long from too many days in the field without a mirror.
Over the clatter of plates and forks on tin and the scent of fried potato she heard his voice for the first time, strained to listen to what might have been an Irish accent, or Aussie. She imagined him at a wild beach wet from the waves and pressed against cool rock. Their plates full, Bea rejoined her crew, making her way to the dining area in the stuffy but shaded tent, and then waved past them gesticulating to the opening, to follow the loping form ahead of her into the fading sun and open air. She positioned herself directly opposite so he could not help but see her. He was eating, head down and evasive like a starving fox. The long hard days up and down the scaff will do that to a man and his hunger shuddered through her. High- vis vest soaked through in the burning heat, topless beneath, she could feel the sweat cool against his eve- ning skin, as if she were touching it. His deep worker’s tan contrasting with the neon nylon as a beacon.
He looked up twice to start with and his blue eyes flashed even at a distance. Her appetite dulled by swift desire, she flicked her eyes up and down and lingered over her plate. A slow pull into her mouth and an upward holding gaze as she ate. He watched as she slowed, happily observed and playing, changing her pace, slow and fast like a timelapse, body opening as a portal. They stayed like this, locked in. He sat back in his chair and parted his legs wide, looked her gently up and down as she splayed backwards still in his eyes. Bea watched and imagined fucking him against the sound stage, cold metal and the thud of bass, his sweat rippling over her as the sound check drifted across the fields.
Goddamn, manchild
You fucked me so good that I almost said, “I love you”
You’re fun and you’re wild
But you don’t know the half of the shit that you put
me through
Your poetry’s bad and you blame the news
But I can’t change that and I can’t change your mood
Ah-ah, oh
’Cause you’re just a man
It’s just what you do
Your head in your hands
As you colour me blue
Yeah, you’re just a man
All through and through
Your head in your hands
As you colour me blue
Blue, blue, blue
†
[LATER]
OLLIE
In the cool almost-light his overconfident stride car- ries them both to the flimsy door with the weathered plastic clasp that swings pleasingly closed after her. Flickers of the camp drift lazily in, accompanying the sounds of swaying bass and itinerant chatter. Bea notices not much has changed. Different sheets, same genre, strangely floral. A shallow brown mela- mine shelf meets her at eye height on which lingers oakmoss room spray, a thick-set cologne bottle and hair oil, below which is strewn a ravaged pack of paracetamol framed in sticky patches of day-old Jäe- germeister and small furrows of white, compressed into the woodgrain.
He doesn’t look at her and she watches his easy back as he discards his keys on the hob of the unused kitchenette. The air of festivals past cocoons them and the decor makes her feel like she is in another time, which she likes. Another dislocation, another escape route in this wing-clipped vehicle. As he sits his light but firm frame on the edge of the bed he places his hands behind his back, presses out his chest as he tilts his chin down and fixes her with an upward gaze. She is still by the door waiting for confirmation.
“Come on then.”
He stretches out his hands and she obliges, drawn into the dark heat of the room, toward the blooming bower. The costume party has given them an extra set of roles. His hazel eyes peer through deep black sockets and forehead, and silken dark feathers frame his preying gaze. The druidic twigs and wilted leaves tangled in his long hair intended to give the impression he is of the land, instead make him more a dark Jesus. In contrast her skin glows with the glitter of a fairy queen too far astray, lost in this land of shadows. She is as aroused by the dancing light of her skin as she is by his facepaint, sweat and vodka-laced mouth. When they meet at the bed she watches her thigh, in the sparkly fishnets meant for children, slide in next to his bare leg so he can grasp her by the hips and pull her against him hard.
He is hammered, and the kiss is strong, so she has no place in it and releases into the current letting her shoulders and limbs drop to his firm grasp. Relief floods her as a dammed tide so that as he takes her neck she is a dead swan drifting over familiar waters. Wired and alive in each other’s electricity the sex comes hard and predictably in the way she requires. The plot points she needs from him are not hard to achieve, pulling her face into his hand and pressing his hand to her neck. Turning over and striking his palm hard to her ass so he can’t help but inflict. These men could be trusted at least. The young- er ones talked and asked if it was OK, as if it might change the things which they’d do anyway.
He tries to look into her red-rimmed, large pupilled eyes as he shudders and she feels him jolt inside her as she professionally pulls him close, avoids his gaze, and gasps into his ear.
†
[AFTER]
JAMIE
Wet creeps down her thigh sharp against the cold as she stumbles out of his caravan. He’d not bothered to walk her home. The 6am dawn looms cold as a finger down her throat forcing cool mist to expel in clouds that shimmer in her hallucinogenic morning. “I don’t want this to be a thing,” he had said after she’d slipped her fingers out of his ass and he’d laid back covered in himself, spent and bored. She’d rolled her eyes into the pillow and waited for first light.
The riggers are already awake. She watches them as she passes through the dew-strewn field, droplets spangled across the carpet of cool. He will be with her now, in her body for days, and she knows this will signal to the others, to the riggers maybe as they shimmy up and down their ropes to the speaker stacks like spiders. She wonders what would happen if she stopped here with no one else around, made herself available to them, stripped naked and cold and asked for warmth and nothingness. For a deep and eternal absence as they passed her body back and forth between their arms and hard flesh. They slow as she passes, and the lowest spider catches her eye. Dark as dawn, he winks.
†
[NOW]
DANI
The cabin is cool and smells of body masked by sage and familiar detergent. Dani has left a candle burning, despite the many times Bea has discouraged this. For now it throws its warmth onto the walls of their half-lit temporary bedroom so that Bea can kick off her boots, take off her dress and peel her wet pants down to leave them in a pile as she climbs in next to the warm, slow ribs rising and falling in the skin-dawn. The single bed and utilitarian mattress cover creak under her heavy cold legs.
“How was the rest of the party?” Dani murmurs in her softness, turning to bury her delicate jaw into Bea’s neck, wrapping her hands around her waist so they press against each other, serpent-limbed in the caress of the bed. Bea tucks a curl that has thrown itself against the wet of Dani’s lip and been stranded there back out and behind her ear. The familiar turn of her lip over the tooth that crossed at her canine stirs Bea to pause and drink in this balm against the night.
“Fun, stayed there the whole time.”
A half smile dances on the radiant face as the familiar touch breaks over Bea. Dani presses the entirety of herself through her palms and into the pale freckle-dotted valley of her lower stomach.
“Danced with that girl.”
The dark curls move down pressing Bea onto her back and parting her legs, violet eyes passing over her as a map. Dani finds her destination kissing deeper and harder. Lifting her forefinger to her mouth, lip curled above, tongue gently playing with the sensations, she hovers above Bea’s chest.
“You taste like him.”
Wisps of breath still thick with morning ebb across Bea’s breasts leaving sparkling goosebumps in their wake. Kneeling over her, Dani’s skin refracts love as a rite. Through the broken blind a stream of light flows over her shoulder, dappling the first rays of sun waiting to warm into life. Eddies of dark hair pool in the nape of her neck as she rises and falls back down between her legs and Bea strokes the silk cool of her head arching her neck and moaning sincerely for the first time that night.
“He came over after you left, I can’t help it! I think it’s the neck tattoo or something... you should have stayed.”
“All yours.”
“Ours.”
“I wish you’d hung out, would have made it more fun.”
“Tell me about him.”
“Now?”
Dani was moving slowly in the exact way Bea had never found a way back from.
“Which bit do you want?”
“From when I left.”
Dani’s fingers moved slow and deep, Bea’s hips rising and falling in this moment for her alone.
“On the dancefloor under the tower Lee made, beneath the DJ, some of the paper seaweed got wrapped in his hair so I picked it out and...then...”
“Yes,” Dani edged closer to place her ear by Bea’s mouth and lay her whole weight on top of her, safe and reassuring as sleep.
“We made out on the dancefloor loads then he took my hand and we went to his caravan.”
“Same as last time? With the Cath Kidston sheets and room spray?” she giggles.
“Same.”
“And?”
Dani rolls off of her and snuggles so they are wrapped side by side, Bea’s fingers inside her and mouth at her ear. She spreads Dani’s knees and pulls the nearest toward her, opens her into morning.
“We got to his and did some body lines.”
Dani laughs and snarls her face in a gesture of mock disapproval Bea always enjoys.
“Then I took off his jeans and went down on him.”
“Does he still have a great dick?”
“Mmmhmm... I sucked him off until he almost came and then he pulled me back onto the bed and went down on me.”
Bea was moving her hands inside Dani and over her tits and playing with her nipples, pinching them and flicking them so that Dani starts to flush in the way that means it’s easy to see when she’s turned on.
“Like this,” Dani turns to face Bea and kisses her, traces her path down Bea’s chest and then spreads her legs and looks up at her.
“No babe, you know not like that.”
“Tell me.”
Bea took her through each touch; they both came hard at the moment that he had. Dani rolled her over and wrapped her arms around Bea from behind, kissing her neck and drifting back into light sniffs and the low tread of sleep, which Bea joined in step.
†
[BACK]
DANI AGAIN
They come hard into each other and split the day like rock. “Are you sure you want to go?” she looks at Bea beneath her dark gaze, swelled with concern. “It’s not deep, I can be in a room with him and I have to write the review or we don’t get paid and I can’t support your Champagne Socialism.” Dani beams a mock apol- ogy and Bea reflects her, holds her chin and kisses her forehead softly leaving a snail’s tender silver footprint between Dani’s eyebrows.
They alight in the centre of town. Bea climbs the one-time familiar stairs with Dani shadowed in her wake. The room is full of people and the knives are in the wall.
The throng obscures him at first, but his tall- ness bobs above the heads and chatter. Empty frames hang on the walls waiting for meaning. She wonders if he always chooses art that reflects his inner landscape, and whether the artist knows they are being used to fill him up. Dani is gliding, as she does, wearing vintage and setting herself apart. Bea watches her meander through their friends and acquaintances and for a moment can’t believe she is allowed to love her.
After some time Kit sidles over, meek and apol- ogetic but wanting to in some way show he recognises them. He goes about his performance and takes her upper elbow to demonstrate a point and she reflexes away. She hated this grip. It reminds her, so she lets it hang between them, this call and response. Dani has joined and listens to him, beaming in her way and nod- ding intently, laughing intoxicatingly. He eventually leaves, and Bea turns away from him, rolling her eyes andsignallingtoDanithatit’stimetohead.“Thatman is a waste of a white T shirt,” Dani says as they tumble back into night.
FOR MJ
Editor’s Note
The Collector
The erotic works of Anaïs Nin started out as a freelance job. To support their bohemian lifestyles, Nin and her writer friends earned a dollar a page writing pornography for an anonymous client. The writers hated The Collector, as they called him, for his repeated instructions to “Concentrate on sex. Leave out the poetry”. The Collector seeks to pay homage to writers, like Nin, who explored the erotic, the taboo and the connection between jouissance and the creative process. It also honours their chosen, but much maligned, genre. By commissioning erotic short fiction from our favourite female writers, we aim to build a never growing collection of provocative stories that spark conversation, debate, and creativity. Writers like Nin and Anne Desclos felt they had to publish their work anonymously or under pseudonyms, but the writers in this collection have dared to put their names to their works of erotica.
There’s nothing more difficult than combining beautiful writing with erotic content, but each of these writers did, in their own distinctive style. To our surprise, as this project progressed, we found ourselves channelling the Collector, issuing notes asking for more eroticism, more sensuality, more (and dirtier) sex. We think writers still need patrons. Someone to publish their work, someone to pay them for their time and talent, someone to show their words to readers and to provide them a safe space in which to take risks and indulge themselves creatively. For all hisfaults (and ours) Anaïs Nin’s anonymous Collector did just this – we hope we have too.
Sarah Kathryn Cleaver
Editor,
Jouissance
