“Diary of a Changling”

 

Warning: Erotica and this series (of 11 pieces) probably won’t make me any friends.  In fact, I probably will lose some. Posting 6 entries today.  As a writer, the issue of self-censorship is still looming.

Ten years ago I was in a writer’s group called ERWA. (Erotica Readers and Writers Ass.)  I was a new writer and how in hell I landed there I can’t remember.  What I do remember was this group (huge) was complicated: some very good writers and some who gloried in smut.  Constantly there was the argument that ‘erotica was porn and porn was erotica’.  I didn’t buy that.  In fact, after a while, I realized that writing about lust was just a seasoning, not the whole damn meal.  I titled my first book: “A Seasoning of Lust” because of this. I left after a few years, having learned some good and some bad.  The group seemed to be more about bdsm and male dominance, and that went just so far.  I remember reading Anais Nin, who wrote erotica for a while for a client, and it was as if he was behind a curtain yelling “more smut! more smut!”.  You can do that until it you realize the limitations of such and step out to become a real writer with more notches on your belt than erotica. Some don’t though.

This is about WWII and the German occupation of Paris in the early days, and then about the French Resistance.  Not too sexy a topic, but sex is ultimately boring. As Anais Nin said.

Lady Nyo

 

DIARY OF A CHANGLING

I have started a series of stories in an epistolary form. This follows the development of a woman who begins to understand the issues of pain and its application to arousal and sex.

 

Diary Entry 1

It finally happened last night. This morning I feel a stranger in my skin. The welts from his whip will disappear soon.

I never thought it could be so! How could I crave this—torture? How could pain do this to me? Am I normal?

S___ was the one who set it up. She didn’t tell me much, just that it was ‘time’. All those conversations over tea, those events I thought she was making up. They were just lascivious stories, something a friend would tell another to wile the afternoon away. Besides, S___ was a writer, a novelist. She cultivated her imagination.

“What do you mean, ‘it’s time’?” I asked.

I remember her laughing, placing her cup on the tea table.

I quote her:

“I can smell your excitement. It gets stronger with each visit. You must not deny anything, ma cherie. You are aroused now, yes?”

S__ had smiled and said: “Your responses are obvious. You crave it.”

Ah! I can’t write anymore. My hands shake. Even now my face burns with blushes

Diary Entry 2.

I saw S. today. She smoking a stinky Gauloises and looking so chic. French women are born this way, with no efforts to be so.

She asked me how it went with MN. I struggled to answer, my hands shaking, my teacup rattling in the saucer.

I told her ‘it went well.’ How could I explain??

We made small talk for she was expecting a guest and I was leaving anyway.

But my mind recalled when MN. traced the whip handle down my back, making me shiver. I remembered his breath in my ear, the scent of him close to my skin, the cuffs on my wrists, how he stroked my flesh, warming it with his hand, cupping my breast and my ass. Dipping his hand in my wetness.

Nothing could have prepared me for that first strike. The sting was like a hornet, the pain radiating outward, making me gasp. His whip owned me with the first blow. What had I done? I wanted to scream.

Rising to leave, MN. walked in. I froze. I saw S. smile. MN. kissed her hand, and turned. I must have looked the fool.

–

Diary: June 14th, 1940 (#3)

I was looking out the window with S. and watching the Germans march past. They passed forever, seemingly endless supply of men in black boots.

S. was very nervous and puffed on her terrible Gauloises. I could have screamed but we are all bundles of nerves. She said things would radically change and we will have to ‘make do.’

I don’t know about S. though. She is well placed and has lovers in the government. She has the best brie and wine.

I can’t get back to England now, am dependent upon S. MN.disappeared this last week, but S. tells me he will be back, he is on ‘business’. What kind she doesn’t say.

He was a bit too lavish with the whip this last time, and my back and buttocks are still bruised. It is strange how these bruises have become something different to me than just examples of pain. His whip stings me, but he knows to wait and in the waiting something happens. I am resolved to find out more. Of course, this is rather outré considering what is happening outside the windows now.

I have become obsessed. Pain is the portal.

–

Diary: June 21, 1940 (#4)

MN is back. I was at S.’s and he just appeared! It’s been a week and of course I had questions, but S. warned me. Don’t ask him anything.

MN seemed tired, his face thinner, paler. But looking at him, my own gut clenching, there is little difference. Still that same full mouth, that smile which touched on a cynicism with all life, those eyes so expressive, or maybe I am so much in thrall with his power I can’t see the truth: he is just a man.

No, he is more. He is much more, now. And he knows it. There was almost an invisible thread that connected us across the room. All propriety with S. there, but when she answered the phone across the room, MN turned to me, his hand across his mouth, hiding his smile. Only his eyes danced over his hand, and it was enough for me to feel this flush of lust.

S. announced a Lieutenant Wolauf was to visit.

MN left too soon. Only a kiss on the cheek and a whispered “a demain, a demain” and he was gone.

Two cold words to warm me.

–

Diary: June 24th, 1940 (#5)

The division of France is done, and no one is happy except the Germans and Marshal Petain. S. is puffing her stinky Gauloises, nervous. I can’t stand to be around her.

Petrol is scarce, but MN took me in S’s car out to the countryside. He has use of a farmhouse and this was new for us.

The house is old, with beamed ceilings and a stone sink in the kitchen. We ate bread,. stinky cheese, drank a bottle of wine.

Upstairs in the bedroom, MN said we shouldn’t ‘waste’ the beams and tied me with ropes he brought.

Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps I am ‘getting tougher’ but he gave me more lashes than usual. I didn’t want to stop, but he was still careful.

This pain gets my attention fast, radiating outward and inward at the same time. MN stuck his hand in my crack and rubbed, cooing in my ear, whispering French nothings, soothing my tears with his breath.

We made love for the first time, MN slowly touching my body from my feet to my neck with his tongue and hands.

Why am I doing this? I have no choice.

–

Diary, June 28, 1940 (#6)

 

I was at S.’s today, telling her about our night over in the countryside.

How MN filled the woodstove with splits stacked in the kitchen, how the stove puffed and groaned and how good the three eggs I found in the old hen house tasted. I heard a rooster crow so there must be hens around. I took a chance but the eggs were fresh.

S. laughed, she seemed at ease. She said I am good for MN. He needs a diversion in his life. He needs a woman to fry him eggs in the morning. He needs a woman to warm his bed at night.

MN has never told me about his past. I thought it would come in time. There is such little chance now, with him scarce and not even S. knowing where he is from day to day.

But I do miss him, and wonder what he is up to. When I see him, I fall under his spell, and my body responds to his presence faster than my mind. My skin seems softer, my movements more languid. S. laughs when she questions me, saying all this is natural.

He is a man and I, a woman. What could be more normal?

S. and I were having our usual talk when the maid informed her the German, Lieutenant Wolflauf was downstairs.

This German is very cordial, quiet, but commanding. He kissed my hand, which I thought outrageous considering his army has just invaded Paris.

I sat and said little. S. was her usual self, elegant and unflappable, but I could tell a bit nervous.

I kept staring at his shiny black boots. They seemed more than boots, and they made me nervous for some reason. They were like mirrors into the future.

Jane Kohut-Bartels
Copyrighted, 2008

 

 

 

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Tags: "Diary of a Changling", Anais Nin, erotica, erwa, stepping out and being brazen with our writings, WWII and German occupation of Paris