PASSIONS OF PARIS.
We seek the streets of Paris, said Claudette, the lights and sights whirl our minds and souls. Albertine clings to my arm, her words in my ears, her tongue promising things that the dark holds and kindles. We lounge in the cafés and bars; drink the wines and coffees; eat the meals with our finicky fingers; make love in the bed of the Passion d'hôtel. Men chat us up, seek our favours, want to deflower; the nights are our fields, the streets our paradise; the men leave us to our lone walks, our wanton ways. My papa would saunter the streets like a lost soul; his half-sighted eyes would bruise my mama’s flesh with the tainted touch, with the loose words, the poxed penis. My mama held her séances in the back room with the curtains drawn; the long dead would speak in the ears; the knocking wood, the moving glass would bring her brother to her side from his muddy trench, where he was blown dead and wide. Albertine loves Monet: the art, the colours, the beauty of the paint; her finger runs the course of brush marks, on the art, the line of figures, the shape of colour with her eyes. I kiss her lips with the heat of passion; l hold her close as a shadow’s shape; I seek her dark spaces, her sexy depths. The Sacre Coeur is our nightly haunt; our childhood God lingers in each cold stone and colored glass; the mass and the Crucified feed our lostness; our salvation seeping. Her brother sought her bed and spoiled her childhood; her papa drank the nights like a dark sponge; her mama in her moody darks, beat her with the cooking spoon or the copper stick. Albertine stands by the window and counts the stars; the moon mocks her with its cheesy smile; the city’s lights sing to her mind and soul. We are the sisters of the streets; our wanderings are noticed by the wanton men; the theatres, the opera, the gardens, the playgrounds of our lusts and love. We know the secrets of the flesh; know the passions of our lust; we lay abed gazing at each other in each other’s eyes, brushing away the hair from eyes; running a finger along the skin; tongue on tongue; sense the bed’s cloth on naked backs, the warmth, the heat; the kisses touch; the finger’s feel; the whispered words. My papa’s grave is crowded with weeds, the stone fading, his name almost lost; my mama sits deranged in an asylum bed, her world spinning away from our common sphere. Albertine loves the arts; the artist’s realm; the smell of paint, the touch of oils on her skin. She licks my ear in her passion’s drive; her tongue wanders my flesh, wets my sex to the heights of heaven and hell. We walk arm in arm, hand in hand, the tut-tutting follows us as we pass, the curses touch the hems of dresses, the pointed words sharpen on our skins. We sip the wines on street cafés; drench ourselves in our nightly baths, drown our bodies in each other’s passion and love our crucified god in our own lost fashion.
