Platform
small, strange, cleft organ. She didn't have much pubic hair, she was about the same age as me; her name was Martine. For a long time, she stood with her thighs apart, holding her panties to one side so I could look, but when I tried to move my hand toward it, she got scared and ran off. It all seemed very recent to me; I didn't feel that I had changed much. My enthusiasm for pussy had not waned; in fact, I saw in it one of my few remaining recognizable, fully human qualities. As for the rest, I didn't really know anymore.

    A short while after we had boarded the bus again, Sôn spoke. We were now heading toward our accommodation for the night, which, she was keen to emphasize, was of exceptional quality. No TV, no video. No electricity; candles. No bathroom; the river. No mattresses; mats. Absolutely back to nature. Back to nature, I mentally noted, seemed to consist principally of privations; the ecologists from the Jura (who, I had discovered on the train—against my will—were called Éric and Sylvie) were drooling with excitement. "French cuisine tonight," concluded Sôn for no apparent reason. "We now eat Thai. Small restaurant too, beside river."
    The place was charming. Trees shaded the tables. Near the entrance was a sunlit pool full of turtles and frogs. I watched the frogs for a long time, once again struck by the extraordinary abundance of life in the tropics. White fish swam between two pools. On the surface were water lilies and water fleas. Insects settled steadily on the water lilies. Turtles observed all this with a placidity characteristic of their species.
    Sôn came to let me know that the meal had begun. I walked toward the dining room by the river. They had laid two tables for six, and all the places were taken. I glanced around me, a little panicked, but René quickly came to my rescue. "No problem! Come and join our table!" he called generously. "We can add another place on the end." So I sat at what was apparently the established couples table: the ecologists from the Jura, the naturopaths—who, I now discovered, answered to Albert and Suzanne—and the two ex-pork-butcher senior citizens. This arrangement, I quickly came to believe, was not based on any real affinity but on the urgent situation that presented itself when they were shown to the tables, at which time the couples had instinctively banded together. All in all, lunch was nothing more than a dress rehearsal.
    The conversation first moved to the subject of massage, a subject that seemed dear to the naturopaths. The previous evening, Albert and Suzanne had forsaken traditional dance to enjoy an excellent back massage. René smiled a lewd smile; Albert's expression quickly let him know that his attitude was completely inappropriate. Traditional Thai massage, he thundered, had nothing whatever to do with who knows what kind of practices; it was the expression of a centuries-old, perhaps millennia-old, civilization and, as it happened, was completely consistent with Chinese teachings on the points of acupuncture. They practiced it themselves at their office in Montbéliard, without, naturally, attaining the dexterity of Thai practitioners. Therefore, the night before, they had had, he concluded, an excellent lesson. Éric and Sylvie listened, fascinated. René coughed slightly in embarrassment, as it was true that the Montbéliard couple did not, in fact, exude even the slightest impression of lewdness. Who could possibly ever have proposed the idea that France was the country of debauchery and libertinage ? France was a sinister country, utterly sinister and bureaucratic.
    "I had a back massage too, but the girl finished on my balls," I interrupted without much conviction. Since I was chewing cashew nuts at the time, no one heard, with the exception of Sylvie, who shot me a horrified look. I took a mouthful of beer and looked her straight in the eyes, not in the least embarrassed. Was this girl even capable of correctly handling a cock?

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