The Erotic Potential of my Wife Read Free Page B

moustache full of vitality. We do not know exactly at what moment the damage took place that led Bernard to be marked by his father’s moustache for the rest of his life. He prayed to no longer be smooth-cheeked, and sanctified his first hairs. When his face had the honour of accommodating a dignified moustache, he felt himself become a man, become his father, become heroic. He had relaxed with age, and wasn’t angry upon noticing a certain virgin terrain on his sons’ upper lips; each lived the life of hair he chose. Bernard thought that all men had become beardless, and that it was a mark of our modern society. He liked to repeat that ‘
we live in the least moustache epoch there is
.’ ‘Our society cuts the hair, it is pure exhibitionism!’ he shouted. And always, after these rants, he would return to his intimate thoughts, encumbered by nothing.
    During his uneventful adolescence, Hector regularly visited his brother. He sought advice from him to better understand their parents. Ernest told him that there was no user guide, apart from ‘maybe making Mum believe you love her soup’. He should not hesitate to resort to the little respected domain of the sycophant when he wanted to go to a sleepover. (‘I think I will need to take a thermos of your soup, Mummy.’) Except that Hector had no friends, at least not friends that would invite him to sleep over.
    His relationships were limited to trading cards in the playground. No sooner had he reached eight years old that his reputation as a formidable collector was established. Thus, Hector asked for advice from his brother, and very quickly this brother became his mentor. It is not that he wanted to be like him, but he was like him. More precisely, he looked at his life telling himself that it would perhaps belong to him. Everything relied on this ‘perhaps’, because in truth his future was a blur to him, it was a paparazzi’s shot.
    Ernest was a big dull man who had married a short rather exciting redhead. Hector was thirteen when he met his brother’s future wife, and he dreamed that she would take charge of his sexual education. He didn’t realise that our lives had become twentieth-century novels; the epoch of the epic deflowerings of the nineteenth century had ended. He masturbated wildly, thinking of Justine, until the wedding day. Family – there was something sacred in that idea. A short time later, Justine gave birth to little Lucie. When her parents were working, he often babysat the little girl, and played dolls with her. He could not believe that he was someone’s uncle. And faced with that child, he was unable to conduct a perfectly normal life; in the face of innocence, we see the life that we are not living.
    Hector had studied law without being very dedicated. Nothing interested him apart from making collections. (If only collecting could be a career!) He was hired as an assistant in his brother’s firm, but since he had not graduated, this post risked being the pinnacle of his career. In a way, this was a relief, as he then would avoid the anxieties of career planning and, even more of a relief, the office politics of all these lawyers with teeth that needed filing. He had noticed that success always comes with beauty; certain female lawyers had breasts and legs that would ensure them magnificent appeals. Hector would shrink in his chair when they passed next to him; of course this was useless, because even if he’d been two metres tall they still wouldn’t have noticed him. In any case, women only interested him in the obscurity of his bedroom a few minutes a day. He sometimes cheated on his masturbation by going to see a prostitute, but this did not have much importance for him. During all these years, women were resting in the back-room of his excitement. 1 He would look at them, admire them, but did not desire them. Well, let’s be frank, when Hector believed he did not desire women, he actually believed that he could not arouse