The Possibility of an Island Read Free Page A

only remember,” she continued with a sigh, “that men have balls. Women are aware that men have a cock, arguably they are all too aware, because ever since men were reduced to the status of a sexual object, women have been literally obsessed with their cocks; but when they make love they forget, nine times out of ten, that the balls are a sensitive zone. Whether it’s for masturbation, penetration, or a blow job, you must, from time to time, put your hand on the man’s balls, either to lightly caress them, or to apply greater pressure, and soon you’ll realize that they are more or less hard. There you go. That’s all.”
    It must have been five in the morning, and I had just come inside her, and things were good, really good, everything was comforting and tender, and I was feeling as though I was on the threshold of a happy phase in my life, when I noticed, for no particular reason, the bedroom’s decor—I remember that at that moment the moonlight was falling on an engraving of a rhinoceros, an old engraving, of the kind you find in animal encyclopedias of the nineteenth century.
    “Do you like my place?”
    “Yes. You’ve got taste.”
    “Are you surprised I’ve got taste, since I work for a shitty magazine?”
    I could tell it was going to be hard to hide my thoughts from her. This remark, curiously, filled me with a certain joy; I suppose that is one of the signs of true love.
    “I’m well paid…You know, often, that’s enough reason to take a job.”
    “How much?”
    “Fifty thousand euros a month.”
    “That’s a lot; but at the moment I earn more.”
    “That’s to be expected. You’re a gladiator, in the middle of the arena. It’s no surprise you’re well paid: you risk your neck, you can fall at any moment.”
    “Ah…”
    There, I wasn’t completely in agreement; I remember feeling joy again. It’s good to be in perfect harmony, to agree on every subject, in the first instance it is even indispensable; but it is also good to have small differences of opinion, if only to be able to resolve them through gentle discussion.
    “I suppose you must have slept with a lot of girls who came to your shows…,” she continued.
    “A few, yes.”
    Not as many as that, in reality: there had perhaps been fifty, or a hundred at the absolute maximum; but I refrained from articulating that the night we had just spent together was far and away the best; I felt that she knew it. Not through boastfulness, or exaggerated vanity: simply through intuition, through an understanding of human relations; through an accurate appreciation, also, of her own erotic value.
    “If girls are sexually attracted to guys who get up on stage,” she continued, “it’s not simply that they are seeking fame; it’s also that they feel an individual who gets up on stage risks his neck, because the public is a big dangerous animal that can annihilate its creation, hunt it down, and force it to flee, booed off in shame. The reward these girls can offer to the guy who risks his neck by going on stage is their body; it’s exactly the same thing with a gladiator, or a matador. It would be stupid to imagine that these primitive mechanisms have disappeared; I know them, I use them, I earn my living from them. I understand exactly the erotic attraction of the rugby player, the rock star, the theater actor, or the racing driver: all this follows ancient patterns, with small variations according to fashion or epoch. A good magazine for young girls is one that knows how to anticipate—subtly—these variations.”
    I thought for well over a minute; I had to make her understand my point of view. It was important, or maybe not—let’s just say I wanted to make her understand.
    “You’re completely right…,” I said. “Except that, in my case, I’m not risking anything.”
    “Why?”
    She had sat up in bed and was looking at me with surprise.
    “Because, even if the public suddenly felt like getting rid of me, it couldn’t;