Once Upon a Gangbang in Paris

Herbert Marcuse's book "Eros and Civilization" proposes a non-repressive society by attempting a synthesis of the theories of Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. He describes a utopia based on aesthetics, sensuality and play, as opposed to our current construction of civilization based on reason, production and repression. When I was a horny twenty-year-old living on a friend's couch, reading Marcuse was the closest thing I had to erotic fiction.

Marcuse outlines the relationship between erotic fulfillment and the cause of productivity, saying that instructing someone to become productive depends on the redirection of their sexual energy—so they can't be allowed sexual release, or else their drive for progress is diminished.

Which came first, my libido then a justification of free love informed by Marcuse's theory. Or the theory of sexual liberation that I then practiced by being horny, who knows? In this story, once upon a gangbang, both theory and praxis chase each like two star-crossed fuckers.

Intro music by Sam Widaman, episode music by Christopher Mathis available on bandcamp

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Transcript

So there I was in Paris, wearing my dick on my sleeve. A thick air of pheromones hovered over the city. On the three opposite street corners from where I sat, restaurant terraces had placed chairs pointing toward the street. The clientele-turned-voyeurs judged pedestrians as if at a fashion show. Or was it only me? Across the way, a lady stared at herself in the storefront window. She sprayed perfume on her neck. A man lingered on the sidewalk, smoking in a blazer. With calculated insouciance, he doffed his hat at Madame. The chivalry was not lost on her. Oh là là, she seemed to say to herself. She blushed then she stepped into a store to shop for lingerie.

In the collective consciousness, Paris is the capital of romance, a city on an eternal honeymoon. Where presidents die in the arms of mistresses while receiving fellatio. In reality, the City of Lights is an abattoir of the instincts. The urge to sleep, fight, and fuck have all been sublimated into a certain je ne sais quoi. One can yawn all day, but one can’t sleep in Paris because it's already dead with the museums and monuments that make of the city a cemetery. There are no fighting words in French. One can say, Father, I’ll bury you in a quarry, but the languid monotone of the French language is such that you’d take it for a verse of Rimbaud. The capital, full of its wining-and-dining, comes across as a foreplay free-for-all. Either that or an extensive case of blue-balls. Parisians themselves resemble the mannequins in boutiques, more focused on wearing clothes than removing them. Their private parts are smoothed over. 

Carlos, a fellow immigrant and I drank in Les Halles. It’s a gutter of a neighborhood that holds out against the general whitewash that has swept the capital. Lots of neon. Carlos, an adopted Parisian, was going on about his exploits as a swinger. That's why I had a hard-on for the Paris—in the ten years I'd been in and out of the city, it didn't live up to its reputation. True, the first time I visited I was homeless, I hadn’t expect to sleep with anyone but a cardboard box. Years later, I returned to college, and would visit the city as a penniless student. Hard to fuck on friends couches, I guess. There was the one off though. I once met a girl on the metro who invited me home. Which was better, the sex, or that I could see the Canal St Martin from her apartment, I cant say. What’s a voyage without a postcard? I expressly made eye contact with her window and the city outside as I came. In short, Paris had too often turned me into an animal. That's why I pissed on it. 

Over the past years, Carlos returned from a weekend or holiday season, and would relate details of gangbangs. Many Mondays he would limp into class in college. He would join me in the back row then hit me on the shoulder and lean in with a story.

I had a few beers in me; it was happy hour. The lemon light of street lamps reflected off the wet cobblestone. The clanking of chastity belts was about me. Ah Old Europe! Taking a large gulp of the dregs, I decided to end this social experiment in delayed gratification. I committed to visiting a swingers club with this friend of mine. 

The next day, it was unusually hot. It was a late summer afternoon. The air in the metro was tepid. I opened the doors at each stop for a fresh breath as it rattled toward la Madeleine. 

It’s a question of common sense, Carlos said as he slapped me on the back like a father figure. I drank iced rum and coke to stay cool, to play it cool.

If you want to do something you think she might not be into, ask her. Don't be surprised if she asks a question or two herself, it’s mutual. 

Out of the metro, we walked the rue Saint-Honoré. The sound of high heels behind us dotted the conversation. All movement around was foreplay. While Carlos stopped into a pharmacy to buy condoms and Viagra, I finished the rum on the street. It was two in the afternoon on a Thursday: Gang-Bang Thursday at le Bristol.

Further up the boulevard, we found our address, a nondescript building with the word sauna engraved on a gold plaque. There was also a doctor in the building, and an esthetician. To think, how many times had I walked by just such an address on all fours?  I held the door for Carlos, relieved he went in first. On the second floor, he passed forty euros through a slot in the door. We were buzzed us in. Inside it was ordinary enough, a knot of houseplants in the reception area and a bar where a few clients sipped tea. There was even enough room to add a Ping-Pong table for children. Only the whip curled above the cash register hinted at the nature of the place. 

I shadowed Carlos to the bar. His white sleeveless shirt was without sweat. Carlos and I were the same age, going on thirty, yet he was well built. Add in his receding hairline and he had ten years on me. Was it his propensity for responsibility and my lack of it? I still did not consider myself an adult, I was a grad student, and worked when necessary. Was debtless. Maybe that's why I still had a full head of hair. Or was it that I hadn't seen time pass? I used to have a wrinkle that ran around my mouth when I was tired, then, one day, I woke up and it was permanent.

 Carlos had arranged the meeting. He described the two women who were to join us. 

One is well built and the other, well, she’ll be more your size. 

I repositioned my weight on the bar. 

They’re both around forty. The type of ladies who live to get nailed several times a week. 

The bartender read a paperback. Her appearance and demeanor of a librarian buoyed my courage. I had lost my virginity to a woman more experienced than me. The pleasure in her eyes was untarnished by trepidation. Now here we were again: she gave us keys to a locker and a pair of towels. I wondered if I should take them. She perceived my hesitation and pointed down the hall. It was a long walk and I nearly tripped on my shadow at turns. 

In the locker room, I asked Carlos how much we take off. Everything, he said. Keep the towel. I turned and saw his dick and registered that it was bigger than mine. It didn’t bother me, never has. I'd show my dick to anyone interested—I was more pre-occupied by my speech than my actions or endowments. Which is what I was thinking. What would I say? Everyone talks more about sex than they have it, but when it comes to speaking while having sex, no to mention a stranger, should I say hello? 

I changed out of my jeans. I was naked, not hiding, but not flaunting. Rehearsing my lines. 

Carlos and I waddled back to the bar in towels. The bartender informed us that, no, they don’t serve booze. She offered tea or juice. We asked for water. We waited for Carlos’ friends to emerge from the dark rooms behind us. To the right of the bar was a living room with a large, flat-screen television. A few men watched the news. Towels the size of loincloths covered their crotches, lending an Edenic air to their lackadaisical motions. The president of France addressed the masses while I stood half-naked, surrounded by strangers. He had recently been outed driving a moped to visit a mistress. Swerving through the traffic at night like a salmon upriver. I felt a little something for him, if only for a moment, a true, rare, classless moment. Then I was called back to my body. The comfort of the alcohol was waning. I was nervous.

Les voilà: two women stumbled toward the bar with a guy. The women had apparently run a marathon. Their wet breasts were visible through their shirts. One D-cup, and the other a B. The bigger one was thin-lipped, short-haired, and carried her weight with grace. Her eyes were small when she smiled. Him, I immediately discounted him, naturally, but it wasn't a problem. I didn't need to look at him. 

The thin one was freckled and had long blond hair. Her brusque movements made me wonder if she didn’t practice gymnastics. She became the center of gravity of the room, but not with words. She read us and judged we should all have tea. Five mint teas, she said to the bartender. Carlos introduced me. No names were given. We were "friends." I was from "America," so many useless categories. He could've said, here is a soul, cursed with skin, who rides sin through the gloom of being both. Weren't we here to forget? Wasn't that why there were no windows? Why were there always words? I kissed their cheeks. Shook the man's hand like a nuisance. Just like the Marquis de Sade would, I thought. 

Carlos had his hands on the thin one’s breasts. The thin woman, the man, and Carlos chatted. I watched for cues as to what to do. Carlos slapped the Thinner One’s ass. I brushed up against the Bigger One’s back. I touched her shoulder, I muttered something. Total banalities, always the weather. Told her things she already knew. She asked about my accent. I repeated that I was American.

"Nobody's perfect," I added. 

 She made a reference to the Monroe Doctrine, about Carlos being from Chile and me from America. Was she insinuating she was going to fuck the Western Hemisphere? She went way beyond hello, I thought, but I was too focused on our bodies to reply. Her nipples, with her on the barstool and me standing, were at the height of my mouth. How the words did get in the way. I thought of the word baroque, then Rococo, thought of a suggestive Fragonard painting, but I had no joke for a retort. I had no idea what I was doing, and thirty-odd seconds dragged. 

The Bigger One looked at us and said, Let’s go? Carlos and I concurred. The Thinner One and her partner, the man, said that they would sit this one out. I nodded farewell to the Thinner One, but she was busy with a finger under her sarong. In the hall, Carlos smacked the Bigger One’s ass. We passed closed doors behind which whales were mating. I followed the two shapes before me to an empty room.

The first room was the size of a jail cell. It had a bed. It had a steel-bar door. In the center was a three-meter wooden cross, but instead of nails, it had foot and hand straps. It lorded over the scene, looked down on it. There was something Catholic, some sexual reference I was missing, and I was grateful for it. Getting here was hard enough without guilt. I pussyfooted around the cross and waited for the others to start. The door slammed behind me. The acrid smell of my nervous sweat reached my nose. In the corner was a strange chair shaped like a W. Carlos tapped on it, signaling for the Bigger One to lie down. She climbed on and in it. Said nothing. She resembled a rocking horse with her holes in the air. She still said nothing. For once. It was quiet for a moment, as if every word was only preliminaries. It began. 

Carlos dropped his towel and mounted her from behind. I followed suit.  I put my cock near her face, which was at perfect height, the height of my cock. She made a sound as if to say, oh, how pleasant, a cock. She took it in her mouth. With the Viagra, I had a mercurial hard-on within seconds. I took her head by her short hair. I looked down at myself and saw the incredible symbiotic relationship. Like birds that clean crocodile teeth. Like the fish that swam in sharks’ gills. It was that simple—no words, no games, no ceremony. How most animals fucked, I imagined. It was like having a pet. She wore a leather collar, which I gripped as my toes curled.

After five minutes passed, Carlos and I switched positions. I felt a sense of transcendence to stand naked with him, searching for the fountain of youth. In the place of no words. 

I walked behind the Bigger One and sized her up. I was intimidated by her dimensions alone, that and the fact that she must have had a percentage of the city pass through her. She had already cited the Monroe Doctrine in reference to her cunt. That, I thought, made her cunt grand, presidential even. So it was with a virginal admiration that I regarded her holes. Not having used condoms for a few years, I fumbled. With my left hand, I held myself hard and with the other, I tried to open the package. I slipped it in from behind, but with the condom, I went limp in half a minute. I stood there, her large ass in front of me while Carlos got head, and I fawned over my dick to get hard again. I was distracted by the cross while I jerked off, disgusted by Christian symbolism. It's cheap, easy, all too readily available. But if I looked at it ironically, or maybe from an angle. Directly to my right, I saw two hands come through the steel-bar door. Beggars’ hands that trembled in their greed to reach the Bigger One's vagina. It was but inches too far out of their reach. They each got one knuckle in. I turned my waning cock away, not enough to make it look intentional. I tried to get hard. Seeing that the Bigger One liked the fingers from just about anyone, I pushed my thumb into her there, and two fingers here. She moaned.

I was hard again. I shooed away the groping hands. I saddled up. It was so much more than I bargained for. Her backside in the W-chair was the size of a continent. It was like land masses colliding. To be inside her making pre-speech patterns like a caveman, it was like history coming full circle. It resembled Pangaea—Carlos, a distant landmass, was tanned with the melanin of the Southern Hemisphere. From him spread the black hair of her head and the white skin of her back, landlocked between us.

With the wordlessness of it and lack of foreplay, we were undoing the original error of taking sex for anything other than a food of sorts. Carlos and the Bigger One communicated through groans. Through the centuries, humanity refined a whole language geared toward the opposite sex. We invented pick-up lines. We seduced one another with the words security and loyalty and the greatest hypnotist’s trick, the two-word phrase I do. As if we could, through defeating solitude, defeat time. By eating waffles and chocolate in Paris. 

It was a Stone Age error that we left our caves and never returned to the simplicity of grunting sex, of snorting sex, of fucking sex.

Then, as I fucked, as much in theory as in practice, I considered the religions that codified sexuality. Ever since I, who was baptized Methodist, read stolen Playboys in alleyways, I had wanted to do exactly this. As I pumped the Bigger One, I pictured Epicurus licking his mother’s spoon. I contemplated Don Juan, who wooed women of all ages and stations. I relished the idea that over a decade after reading Herbert Marcuse and his academic study of the erogenous zone, I finally put theory into practice. His theory was my erogenous zone as I grasped her thighs. I was swimming. My eyes blurred. I saw the empty wooden cross in the room and considered the Marquis de Sade. I came in her.  

Nobody cared about the words now. We left the cross and the jail-cell behind and scouted for a different room. We passed a room as dark as a cave. The only visible object it held was a white man on a wooden bench in the vague light of a television screen. He stroked himself. 

I tried not to stare although it was cinematic. It was his intentionality. The room was absent of everything, even ornaments. The man was one. Harmonious is the adjective. 

Three men, walking single file, plodded behind us. I tried not to act surprised. What else would come out of the woodwork, I wondered? As we entered the next room, I shut the door on them.

The second room was painted red. Black leather couches ran the length of the wall. There were paper towels, hand sanitizer, and a lube dispenser fixed to the wall. It smelled of rubbers and KY jelly. Of other's folies. 

The Bigger One centered herself on the couch. I didn’t find her terribly attractive but she sucked dick like a vacuum, so I let Carlos go behind her. Before she put me into her mouth, she went to speak, but she was overcome by Carlos behind her. She lowered her head. 

With her below us, we passed a vial of poppers—a stimulant that shoots blood to your dick and brain—back and forth until our eyes crossed. At one point, I blacked out and all I saw was red, and her ass a foot higher than her head. The shapes behind my eyes were amoebic. The word Pangea came to mind. 

Cramps ran from my toes up to my thighs as I felt the heart-attack orgasm coming on. I shook them out. Can I cum in your mouth? I asked. She took my cock out of her mouth, I prefer you didn’t, she said. I have a sore throat at the moment. You can cum here. She calmly offered her breasts. I tried to calmly cum on them, but soon realized I could make whatever face I wanted. I did. I came, maskless, my face screwed up into a thousand others.

There was a knock on the door. Occupied, Carlos said. He told me while he changed condoms that with a knock on the door, you could invite others to join in. A few minutes passed. Again, a man’s voice came from the other side of the door. The Bigger One recognized the man, and here he waddled in, a forty-year-old in a bathrobe. He was unremarkable. I wouldn’t have remembered him if I hadn’t seen him thrust himself into the Bigger One’s mouth. He was talkative and said a slew of nasty shit to her to which she agreed in sighs—about how wasn’t he god’s gift to her mouth. About how great he was to give her his cock. It carried like a therapy session between his cock and her mouth. I’m sure he would’ve asked her to show him with her hands how much she liked that, but she had her hands full of me. He disrobed like a boxer getting in the ring and took her from behind. He was the caveman of my theory, returning to roost. 

I hadn't thought of Paris for an hour. It was a miracle to transcend that which holds you. I could’ve been anywhere, meaning I was everywhere. 

Given the heat, we agreed to take a shower. We ran into the Thinner One in the hall, and she joined us. The boxer dropped off somewhere in the dark. 

We took a cold shower, the four of us. Several strangers were there, wearing no masks. The miniature bathroom tiles were white like baby teeth. In between running my face under the water, I saw a black dick for the first time. It wasn’t brown like an Isabelline horse, but dark like a black elephant trunk. The man hit on the Thinner One with censorable filth, all while saying vous to her, the polite form of address in French. The Thinner One had trouble hearing. The black guy repeated himself, each time louder. I’d like to get in your backside, he yelled as he soaped his dick. He called her mademoiselle. There were a total of five guys in the showers. We orbited the Thinner One. If the scene would’ve happened in the streets, you would think to call the police, but we weren’t on the street—it was no-holes barred Thursday at the Bristol. Wordlessly walking away, Carlos returned to the red-painted room with the black leather couches, the Thinner One and me trailing. 

Two weeks earlier, I had been talking to a cute woman. She repeatedly mocked a mutual friend, referring to him as anal. She spoke with a thick German accent, and the word anal came out of her mouth in this slow way, as if she were savoring it. Annnaal, she would say. I couldn’t concentrate on our conversation and instead had the urge to bend her over. An old friend who swore by anal sex once told me that it was, quote, ‘a palace of pleasures back there.’ I’ve tried it a few times and never particularly enjoyed it. But there I was, the Thinner One in front of me with her hands tied behind her back and I thought it was…fitting. 

I stood over her, her face in the pillow. I placed my fingers on her clit and I pushed myself into her ass. She moaned as if it were coming from her core. On all fours she spoke in tongues. I took a pull from the poppers and my head, the size of the Hindenburg, heated with blood and exploded. I was all the way in her. She wailed low and I understood—with swinging there is none of the bullshit of looking to score. It cuts through the fake-faced dates, the restaurant prostitution, and the pang of regret when you roll off a woman or leave her crying on a curb. Or she does the same to you. 

Transcendence isn’t the correct word, immanence is. The spirit of the room permeated the material world. I came in her and almost passed out.

Sexuality is an amorphous creature; it’s best to seize on it via analogy. Bear with me. There’s a game one finds in arcades called Whac-A-Mole where the heads of rodents emerge from a dozen holes. The object of the game is to hit them as soon as they appear. You hit one here, and it reappears there. You hit one there, and it reappears here. That is the nature of sexuality. You preach abstinence, and your children have children out of wedlock. You tell your children that sex out of wedlock is a sin, and your son goes and humps his boyhood friend. You prize your daughter’s virginity, she takes it in the ass. Priests molest little boys. Whac-A-Mole. 

We showered again. We dried off again. We walked the dimly lit hallway to the bar again. The flat-screen television in the reception area relayed images of the Middle East. Women walked in burkas. I thought back to sexually frustrated youth harassing unaccompanied women in multiple Muslim countries I had visited. I considered the sacrosanct virginity of unmarried women. Over the low sound of the television, I heard the snap of whips and the slaps on bare flesh in the adjoining rooms. The news was about the civil war in Syria.

I ordered a glass of water at the bar. I was dehydrated and dry as a bone. The Bigger One returned with the Thinner One’s partner. He said that he must leave, but not before he took the decorative whip from behind the bar and lashed the Thinner One. She appeared to like it. He reiterated that, as a sub, she was his property. He passed her off to Carlos. Take care of her, he said and whipped her a last time. Not knowing the etiquette, I asked him if I could go with his woman and Carlos. The man said that it was Carlos’s choice. Carlos nodded.

The patron, after reclaiming the whip for the decor, warned us that we had thirty minutes before closing time. I looked at the clock. It was five in the evening. All across Paris, adults were swimming laps, playing squash, or sweating to the oldies. Mothers and fathers were picking up children from school, picking up a few things from the store. The metros would be full of bodies barreling through the holes of the city. 

Carlos and I counted our remaining condoms. Four for me and two for him. I handed him two of mine. There was a coin-sized bloodstain on Carlos’s towel. I never asked him about it. 

We cut back through the labyrinthian hallways, escorting the Thinner One, past the oceans of mating whales. 

We entered the darkest room, the hole-in-the-wall from earlier. The white man still sat on the wooden bench, masturbating. I spied the three men who had followed us from room to room. I had shut the door on them. They sat, masturbating. The only light in the room came from a flat-screen TV. Instead of war, it showed porn, and lit up the wall of Plato’s Cave. A sliver of cum gleamed on the floor in the corner.

Carlos walked the Thinner One past me on all fours. He commanded her to sit in front of the original masturbator. She obeyed. Carlos told her to suck the man off. I took a seat and observed the man pull the Thinner One’s long blond hair back and slide into her. I stroked myself to stay hard, the Viagra working miracles at the touch. I glanced between the porn on screen and the live porn before me. I had ever masturbated in public before, but there’s a first time for everything—a stranger’s ass, four orgasms in an afternoon, gang-bangs. 

New to group sex, I was out of shape and stayed on the bench. I kept hard, in case I wanted to jump in. I became a voyeur. The Thinner One was on top for a minute with all her holes filled. Then she was on her knees. The black man from earlier rolled a condom down his trunk. He carried it like a burden. He pushed himself into her ass, all the way. I opened my eyes wide to adjust to the dark. She moaned between gags, and I thought she would burst with all the men in her. I said nothing, thinking that she knew what she was doing and knowing that I had no idea what I was doing. There I was with my dick in my hand, in a dark room in a foreign country with five other men, watching a woman be defiled by her own volition. I watched while I masturbated, which was strange, because I realized that I was also being watched by another man. I panicked. I didn’t want to stop masturbating because I thought it would make me look like I was a newbie. So I continued stroking myself. 

I watched the stranger, throat deep in the Thinner One, as he stared at me. I masturbated. If I looked away to the television, I would have appeared uncomfortable. I didn’t want to appear uncomfortable. I smiled at him while I masturbated, while his dick disappeared in the Thinner One’s mouth. I smiled at him a big, smiley, stupid smile. 

All the things I purported to be: a romantic and dogmatic crusader for the theories surrounding free love, were shattered. His gaze cut into me. He said to me with his gaze, I know who you are with your dick in your hand. You think that you’ve read a few books. You act as if you’re only here to bear witness to what you consider a freak show. You think that it is best to study in the proximity of freaks, and you’re probably right. But not for the reasons you believe. Because you’re not studying, and you’re not an intellectual. You use theories as justifications. You’ll fuck anything to forget yourself, but you can’t. You’re like the rest of us—a pervert at heart, except you hide behind philosophy to hide that fact. Solely concerned with instant gratification, with well-oiled theoretical systems dating back to the sexual revolution, you’re mereley a man of your times. 

I came into my towel by watching, finally pegged for what I was.

In the locker room the five of us, the stragglers of Gang-Bang Thursday, got dressed. Our conversation began to fill with trivialities. The black man mentioned the heat. We donned our masks. The Thinner One thanked us all. I asked her name. She said it was Marie. I said, thank you, Marie, and then I said goodbye.

I stumbled out the exit. In the waiting room, I caught a glimpse of a framed poster of Keith Haring’s art. There were little red men with bent dicks and expression marks over their heads. It was a childlike representation of sexuality, back when one got a hard-on and rammed it into any teddy bear in reach. Before theory and before the words. It was kids’ idea of sex, or the patrons of Gang-Bang Thursday at the Bristol. No bed in the middle of the master bedroom. No jealousy or ownership. As I descended the stairs to the street, I remembered that Keith Haring died of AIDS. I reminded myself that I needed to get checked.

Outside, the men in the coats still smoked, but their faces were softer. The women, groomed like peacocks, waltzed the boulevard. Their beauty, for the first time, had nothing to do with me. I had tapped the fountain of youth. Evening came. I crossed over the Seine, limping from the cramps. Overhead, cunts in the cloud formations blotted out the theory I had previously read into the city.