from The Sexual Life of Catherine M.

“I was carried away by the conviction that I rejoiced in extraordinary freedom. To fuck above and beyond any sense of disgust was not just a way of lowering yourself, it was, in a diametrically opposite move, to raise yourself above all prejudice.”

***

“People also think that darkness protects them. But for some people, me included, it simultaneously opens the space around them up to infinity by making it limitless…In fact, you hardly ever find complete darkness, and people actually usually prefer the vagueness of half-light. I myself would like total blackout because I could then experience the pleasure of sinking into a sea of undifferentiated flesh. On the other hand, I know how to make the most of harsh light, too, because the initial blindness and inability to identity its source dissolve and blur the frontiers of the body. In other words, I am not afraid of being glimpsed unaware because my body is but a mingling part of the air around it and the continuum of other bodies connected to it. I therefore can’t even consider that anyone is looking in from the outside. "

***

“To establish a mercenary relationship, you have to navigate an exchange of words or at least signals, the sort of complicity that forms the basis for all conversations and which would have seemed, to me, closely related to the preliminaries of seduction that I avoided. In both cases, in order to keep your side of the deal, you have to take into account your partner’s attitudes and responses. Now, even at the first contact, I knew how to focus on the body. It is just when I have found my bearings with the body, as it were, when the grain of skin and its particularly pigmentation have become familiar to me, or I have learned to adjust my own body to it, that my attention could focus on the person himself, often to form a sincere and lasting friendship.