Dolorosa Soror Read Free Page A

positively seen her digestive system assimilate the new juices, gorging itself on male proteins.
     
    Chapter II
    October
    “Flo? Are you free tonight?"
    "I don't like it when people call me Flo" I say.
    But of course I was free—liberated, even. For a week I had been feeling loosed from my cage; gone was my straitjacket of infancy and anguish, and I was free from the sugar of sentimentality, and ready to love him. Free and yet a slave.1
    "So, are you free?"
"Yes," I say.
"Good. Meet me at ten o'clock tonight in front of the entrance to the Jardin des Plantes, at the traffic circle at the Austerlitz exit—where the bus stop is, you know? Oh! There's one thing: I want you to wear a pair of pants and a sweatshirt. The most boyish possible. Nothing else. No panties, no bra. And slick back your hair with gel."
    With my hair parted on the side, I could have been mistaken for Julie Andrews's twin brother in Victor, Victoria. (Once in drag, everyone belongs to the same family.) I gazed at myself in the mirror. Should I anticipate his desire, play to what he seemed to want? Among my theater accessories, I found a small, fine mustache I had used before to play Feydeau. Easy to glue on. Glance in the mirror: I would be by for the prettiest street rogue out that night.
    He takes me by the hand, kisses my fingertips tenderly. "You are perfect," he says. "Perfect."
He leads me along. We cross the traffic circle diagonally.
    Cars are rare at that hour. We descend to the banks of the Seine by way of a metal footbridge at the Quai d'Austerlitz.
    It is gloomy in the semi-subterranean parking lot by the edge of the water, deserted at this hour. The only lights—from the Right Bank and the large office buildings of Bercy—are cut off by the shadows cast by the large concrete pillars. As you progress toward the back, the shadows multiply and grow and darkness triumphs. But you get used to it.
    Suddenly he seems to know where he is going, though he keeps the slow strolling pace habitual to him.
    The darkness is peopled with sighs.
"There's a lot of action tonight," he says softly.
Sometimes the brief, white radiance of a body pressed against a pillar, with a darker shadow gripping the body's back. A brief light, the flame of a cigarette lighter: a guy is smoking, alone, leaning against a wall. J. P. takes my hand and we stop without making a sound.
"Look," he murmurs.
Useless injunction. I am no more than a gaze.
    Two young people—they appear to me really very young— pass in front of us, hesitate an instant, then finally head towards the big solitary guy dragging placidly on his cigarette.
    They approach him, exchange several muffled words. The guy offers them a cigarette; one of them accepts. At the flare of the cigarette lighter, I see my first impression was right: this kid is just barely an adult. His cheeks, more polished than mine, are covered with that slight down which, though not yet a beard, makes the skin velvety. The guy extinguishes his lighter, leaves his hand suspended in the air for an instant, and then caresses the young man's beardless cheek.
    We watch them talk without hearing them. Suddenly the man pulls one of the younger guys to him and kisses him, crushing his mouth. At the same time he puts his hand on the guy's’ inner thigh.
    The other kid leans over and opens the pants of the guy still glued to the pillar.
    The two young men slide to their knees and each in his turn begins to peck, lick, nibble, and suck the object of their delights.
    The guy calmly lights another cigarette. He might be about thirty-five or forty years old. A hardened Mediterranean type. Very short hair. A mustache. In gay terms, a clone.
    This lasts the time it takes for him to finish his cigarette without hurrying, Then he throws away the butt, which falls in a long parabola in the dark parking garage. He grasps one of the two guys by the neck, raising him up to him.
    The other takes advantage of this by sucking the whole of the