submit is to want to lose oneself. I’m talking about consent. We can lose ourselves through religion, alcohol, sex, drugs, political fanaticism, or love.
Why would a woman want to lose herself in love?
In short, why would she want to fall?
Because it’s fun? Oh yes, it’s fun.
Or because it offers her respite from the pressures of the meritocracy?
The meritocracy demands that she alone is responsible—for her successes, yes. But also for her failures. Falling is a way of avoiding failure—or success.
Falling is a form of submission.
The modern woman senses that in order to win a man’s love, she must deny her capability and regress.
Marge had left her copy of Stephanie’s book under the table. It was signed:
Dear Marge,
Sending you love from my (rightful?) place of exile. It’s cold here but the sistahood can’t get me from all the way across the Atlantic. I’m sorry again—if it’s right for me to say sorry?
In solidarity, as ever,
Steph
I stroked the dust jacket, hoping to absorb the gravitas contained in those pages by the power of touch alone.
I was sitting on the front step of the closed Barclays next to Leicester Square station, working my way through a family-size bucket of fried chicken, which I had purchased from the fake KFC across the road.
A bachelorette party wearing angel wings and devil horns staggered out of the all-night pizza place, clutching a long train of torn white netting. Fiona! Fiona! they chanted. Fiona grabbed a man wearing a pin-striped shirt who seemed to be attached to the bachelorette party and shoved her clenched fist down the front of his trousers. He groped under her tube top. Her friends began to sing: Puuuuuurrrfect! The old Eddi Reader song. The man walked away.
Rickshaws carrying cargos of people fucked out of their brains swerved dangerously close to the night buses that swelled with yet more people cramming kebabs into their mouths, letting their sleeping heads knock against the windows on the upper deck, missing the view of this splendid city.
“Do you know, there is no direct translation for jouissance in English?” Toad Man was saying to me over martinis in the bar.
I had taken a night bus from Leicester Square to the ASH Hotel, which was situated between the City and the East district, combining money with creativity in an ideal cocktail of dynamic penthouse suites, stellar service, and conceptual art, according to the brochure that I was reading intently.
“I like to think of myself as French in spirit,” he went on. “Even though I’m English with only the faintest tinge of Scot.” He chortled and rubbed his belly. “So to sit with a French woman in the flesh is something of a minor miracle for me.”
“Minor?”
“Oh, they are hard to find in London. The French tend to stick together and close ranks. Unless I were to lurk outside the gates of the Lycée!”
“No, I mean why is it only a minor miracle? To find me?”
“Do forgive me! A major one! Salud!”
We clinked glasses; mine was already empty.
I sucked the olive on its stick. I stopped sucking it when I saw what Toad Man’s eyes were doing to my mouth. That tongue appeared. I crossed my legs. Then I uncrossed them. I rattled the cocktail stick against my teeth.
There was a long silence.
“But we don’t even know each other’s names!” I said with a laugh. I let my eyelids droop, seductively.
“Are you sleepy, dear?”
I opened my eyes as wide as possible. “No.”
“James.” He extended his hand. It was warm and soft.
“I’m Camille.”
“How erotic.”
“Yeah. My mother named me after my father’s courtesan. She was a chorus girl at the Moulin Rouge. She could kick her legs up extremely high.”
“And what does your mother do?”
“She . . . bakes croissants. But she was, like, photographed by Man Ray and all the surrealists back in the day.”
“Back in the day? As in the 1920s day?”
“Yeah,” I said. “She’s very old.” I gestured to the bartender for another drink. He was about my age. There was a dish of spicy green balls on the bar; I was crunching them at record speed. “Hm,” I said. “Japanese, I think. Try one?”
James shook his head. “What do you look for in a man?”
New drinks arrived. I said thanks to the bartender but he averted his eyes.
“I don’t look for anything.” I paused. “Do you know the song ‘I’ll Be Your Mirror’ by Velvet Underground? Yeah, I’m looking for that. The lyric goes something like, ‘when you think the night has taken over your mind and inside you’re unkind and twisted, I’ll show you that you’re not.’ I mean, I’m looking for a man who can see that I’m not horrible even if I act horrible sometimes.”
“So you’re looking for a punching bag?”
“No. That’s not what I meant.”
“Some men are very threatened by female strength.” He stared at my thighs.
“I know.”
“Some men are appalled by the idea of performing cunnilingus ad nauseam. They regard the vulva as a Venus flytrap, designed to eat them alive.”
I downed the martini. Now I was getting really drunk. I put my hand on James’s shoulder and said: “What I love about you is that you’ve got a lot of progressive ideas about women. I love that about you.” I gave him a kiss on the cheek.
He acted quickly; his face jerked to the left and he tried to get that tongue in my mouth. I pulled back.
He looked sad, so I said: “But how rude of me! I haven’t asked you what you do?”
“I am in the pussy business.”
“Oh? That’s not what I meant.” I was slurring. “I mean—this is for free.” I opened my arms wide. “I am here for free. Because I like you.”
“Why, thank you, my wild orchid.” He touched the tip of my nose. “I like you too.”
“And I’m lonely.”
He pulled a BlackBerry out of his waistcoat pocket. “Look.” He showed me a picture. It was a cat with orange eyes and blue-gray
