Episode 40 | Connoisseur of her curves

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nudity

"Carlo, please continue..." I requested, taking the chance to evade my father's touch, removing my hand to wipe the tears away. Catherine had never mentioned that episode, nor any other story about the Île du Blanchomme. Would it have been to protect me, or actually to protect themselves... that they had lied to me?

"I remember that I began to pray for Catherine..." Carlo recalled, "for all beings, and for myself, to get rid of my own fear, my lust, the confusion in my heart, mind and groin..."

May all sentient beings have happiness and its causes, 

May all sentient beings be free of suffering and its causes, 

May all sentient beings never be separated from bliss without suffering, 

May all sentient beings be in equanimity, free of bias, attachment and anger.

And my desire, so inconvenient and imperious, that dominated me even in such a delicate situation... You know Laurent, we cannot judge and classify things as plainly good or bad, and always in the same category in all situations. Because in my prudity I could not bear looking at Catherine's naked body, for it seemed I disrespected her with my eager eyes, I decided to cover her whole body with a wet sheet... It was what seemed to finally relieve her, promoting her evaporative cooling, as I had read in the manual, and she fell asleep.

That evening, a fierce storm fell on the Île du Blanchomme, opening a new season. I had watched many threatening thunder storms sweep the Apennines, but I had never had that feeling of insecurity before. Herr Weissmann's house did not offer much protection, and even closing the curtains of all rooms, they were a feeble wall against the thick rain, blowing open like sails in the wind. I guess I had felt more protected being enclosed by the high mountains, while the tiny island seemed on the verge of disappearing bellow the ocean -- and for a while it did, indeed. The soil vanished before my eyes, as waves washed across the island and crashed against the poles that sustained the house -- and I could just hope they were strong enough. For the first time, I lifted the stairs, as Armand had instructed me. There was a moment when I was helplessly wondering what do in case the house would collapse, and how to save the sick girl -- but the fury of the tempest did not last more than two hours, and again the skies cleared. Next, stars were deviously twinkling like fake testimonies -- the garden had been destroyed, rocks tumbled in the pool where the water had turned murky, and the wind had broken two tall palms and uplifted another younger one.   

All through the storm -- and for many hours more --, Catherine slept, while I ran around trying to safeguard the house against the gushes of wind and rain, but always returning to her bed to diligently reapply the wet sheet over her body -- though, in fact almost everything around her was soaking wet. The rain, that had invaded her and all rooms in the house, and the winds, had cooled the night, and I was glad that the temperature was much more agreeable for the girl on heat.

Having hanged carpets and curtains along the rail of the veranda to dry, I then washed her beautiful dress that was stained and smelling to vomit. 'Yves Saint-Laurent, have you heard of him?' she had once asked me. But even if in my Parisian years I had never learned about that couturier, nor anything else concerning fashion -- that seemed otherworldly to me --, I could notice the outstanding quality of the piece, and I washed the fine cloth very carefully, as if washing the adored young woman herself.

I cleaned the remains of her vomit that the rain had not washed away from the veranda, and in the bathroom. But it was washing her lavish dress that I saw myself finally somewhat turning into a guesthouse employee -- happily serving and taking care of the young woman, like she had wanted from the start.

I had to be room service for Catherine as well, as I'd spend many days and nights caring for her. I lived long days of tension and uncertainty, since I was not sure about providing her the proper treatment. But her condition seemed to gradually improve.

When she finally overcame the heatstroke, her skin was still in a horrible condition, and I started to care for it, never forgetting to keep her from dehydrating. 

I still remember when Catherine finally came out of unconsciousness. She suddenly opened her eyes, and when she saw me and realized the whole situation, she wept silently. Then she tried to rise from bed, and howled in pain, nearly losing consciousness again. The look of anguish in her eyes was that from a person who, being independent and self-assured, suddenly saw herself fragile, helpless and submissive, and whom, usually superior and arrogant, felt humiliated to have urinated in the sheets.

"Don't you worry..." I murmured, sweetly. "I'll take good care of you."

It was embarrassing to touch Catherine... even if, wrapped in a cloth, my fingers were not directly in contact with her... so intimately between her thighs... skimming against her moist opening... for the first time... not as a man, but as a nurse. She cried when she forced herself to get up to go to the bathroom, and again when we decided together that she could not do it, even with my aid. And she cried when she had to ask me to put a glass between her legs so she could pee without getting off bed, and cried again as I cleansed her after that.

Another recommendation in the manual was to apply moisturizer, and despite having remembered that coconut lotion given by the natives to Armand, who actually had wanted to apply it on me, I delayed taking that other step. Simply for not wanting to touch Catherine without her consent... but since she could not bend over nor stretch her body without feeling too much pain, she agreed that I apply the lotion on her body.

She noticed my embarrassment before her nakedness -- and so much greater than her own discomfort it was, that it actually reassured her, and she started feeling safe under my hands. According to Catherine's own words a few years later, she was able to see in my eyes and gestures how 'very pure' I was -- and a virgin, too, she had identified.

"You're doing well, merci." She encouraged me, as I ineptly but gently moved my hands on her body. My peasant hands, recently roughened by the work in the garden, were like sandpaper in contrast to her delicate skin. They must have felt awful, and that was one reason to avoid the most intimate, sensitive areas like her breasts, between her thighs, the buttocks -- the other reason being my shyness.

As I ran my fingers over her body with great care, I secretly delighted in not only being able to finally touch her, but also in how my touch, astonishingly enough, seemed to please the girl.

"Oui, c'est bon..." Her voice trembled as she tried to encourage me. I had already noticed her smooth skin aroused by goose bumps, the fine golden hair on her thighs and forearms all erect, after my fingers had rubbed them. But I did not know whether she was reacting to my touch or to the temperature of the cool lotion, in contrast to her warm skin.

I tried to control myself when I was with her, but sometimes, when I went to the kitchen, I gave in to my desire. As I would leave our massage sessions, my shorts dripping pre-cum, I masturbated wildly on the farthest corner of the veranda, closing my eyes to be filled with all the lovely details from her body, visual and now tactile as well. I kept telling myself that this relief would help me avoid embarrassing erections in her presence, when my main concern should be to help relieve her pain -- with those same hands I used to satisfy myself.

I had become a connoisseur of her curves, and when I was away from the bedroom, my hands could perfectly recreate her body in the air, to the slightest details, like her eleven moles. I sensed that, when I took hold of a brush to paint again, my strokes would forever have changed after having caressed Catherine -- I just couldn't have guessed that it would take so long to go back to my easel.

When she slept, basically I took care of the garden, which depended on me as much as the young woman did -- and there was so much to be redone after the storm. But for many days I did not work. Not because I could not -- I did not want to. I dedicated myself to Catherine, only. I slept on the floor of Armand's bedroom, on the carpet at the foot of the bed where she rested, or sometimes when it was too hot, in the veranda.

It was also on the veranda in front of her room that I took my meals, and I resumed my meditation sessions right there on the carpet next to her bed. For many days I didn't paint because the easel on the beach was too far away from the room, and I didn't want to risk not listening when she called me -- and I just thought it not worthwhile bringing my easel upstairs. And I didn't paint the walls because the smell of the paint made her sick, even more than the coconut smell of the moisturizing lotion -- and of course, I did not want to have that stink of paint on my hands, risking she would ask me to stop rubbing her just because of their strong smell.

I felt that between Catherine and me there was an increase in that same tension that I could recognize from the first few days spent with Armand on the island -- and that had diminished only with his coming out, when the sincerity of our friendship had been reestablished, to a greater level, even.

But with Catherine my tension was higher, because I feared that, at her condition having ​​improved, she might decide to leave the island. The boat would be arriving any day now, and my tension grew at each new dawn. That boat seemed to come to end cycles, and none of them lasted more than a week -- Armand's permanence on the island, and Catherine's too. I felt gloomy -- no longer did I want to be left alone, not again. And I thought that maybe my distress now was equivalent only to Armand's anguish, who had had hopes and expectations until the very morning he left. 

But now it was me in his role, desiring Catherine and watching the days go by without any realization; emptiness and despair growing in me.

A new season, that I could not name, had arrived, and cooled the weather. Though it rained lightly every afternoon, storms rode by only in the distance. Armand had already informed me that the Île du Blanchomme had been chosen for a Portal Island also because it was safer than others, being located on a 'dry corridor', along which storms swept by -- but hardly ever hit the island, that was usually blessed only with the outskirts of the rain. 

Days went by and I watched Catherine's health clearly improving. But I did not feel proud of myself. Though she still complained from pain and her skin was far from their normal, delicate appearance and texture, I felt guilt when I did not celebrate the fact that she was again able to stand up, and once a day walk to the bathroom. I no longer had to put the bowl between her thighs, and though we did not have to go through that embarrassing moment any more, I have to confess I felt disheartened at her progresses.

One afternoon, we heard an engine's noise approaching the island.

"Is it the boat?" she asked, rising slightly from the bed, where she had been resting.

"I think so..." I had also heard it, and the flock of seagulls preceding the boat, but hadn't mentioned in case it went unnoticed for her. "But I think you are not in conditions to leave..." I murmured. I know, what an irony, thinking that previously I had wanted to throw her out of the island, and I smiled internally. "Unless you think you should go to a hospital..." I had to suggest it, against my will, but knowing it was my duty. 

"I don't think I could get on that boat..." She smiled, with a grimace. She still felt very sick and was often nauseated without having nearly eaten. "Can you host me for another week here?" Suddenly, she seemed worried. "Do you think the natives will come for us? Why are they making so much noise?"

"No, they won't." I calmed her, feeling calmer myself with her response. "They usually are noisy. And nosy..." I laughed. "But not so much as to come upstairs, I think. They must be delivering more provisions, or whatever Armand has ordered."

"Won't you go down to the beach to check?" She delivered an ironic smile. "Will you be hiding here, like on the afternoon of my arrival?" she asked, humorously blinking at me. "And what if new guests have arrived?" she laughed.

"One more reason to stay hidden..." I was delighted with her ​​laughter, the first I heard since her arrival. "...here with you."

And that's how Catherine's stay on the Île du Blanchomme started prolonging for more than a week.

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Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.

Episode 39 | Everything harmed her

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I tried preparing a rather simple, fresh lunch, again thinking on my grandfather's sensible recipes, and trying to add a touch of elegance and daring with Armand's spices.

It mustn't have been that bad, for Catherine ate as much as she could. She had an amazing appetite for a such a petite girl -- and I wondered if she had caught a worm that she was also feeding in her stomach, haha. At least some kind of food poisoning she must have had, because despite having thanked me and discreetly praised my lunch, she was again to vomit in the afternoon.

I thought we were having another remarkable conversation, for like Armand and me she had also been an habitué at the Cinématèque Française. We shared impressions about many movies, but after a while she stopped listening to me. She seemed to be shivering, and I started getting really worried, remembering my own illness, that had interrupted my self-imposed exile in the old factory and made ​​me face the world again... And hadn't I just then found a letter from Armand in the mail... And because I had to go to the hospital was I now living on the Île du Blanchomme... Maybe I should thank the rats and rusty cans for my present good fortune? Had they led me to the lovely young woman before me? A sickness was a blessing in disguise?, I wondered.

I had had a good intuition the other night when I thought Catherine had been suffering from sunstroke. But my intuitions were to no avail when she began to actually feel ill.

During lunch I noticed how she had turned red from all those hours under the sun, and I realized that she was getting sick, though trying to keep her pretentious -- or true? -- friendly smile, listening with polite interest while I was discoursing passionately about... Art, of course.

"Are you feeling ill?" I finally asked, when I thought she might fall from the chair at any moment, from shivering so much. How could she have been cold under that tropical sun?

That question was the sign for her to get up and run to the bathroom... that she did not reach in time, puking on the veranda in front of Armand's room. She then moved on to the toilet, where again I heard her vomit.

I did not wish to interrupt Carlo's narrative, but I had been guessing something for some time now, and it was making ​​me suffer.

"Was my mother bulimic, Carlo?" This was a night of revelations for me, old lies were falling down defeated, and perhaps Catherine's diet, that had kept her with a flawless body at fifty eight years old, had a different, more sinister nature.

"Oh no!" Carlo gave the shortest of laughs, since laughing was not very appropriate at that stage in the story. "That's a disturb no one talked about, back then... Your mother has always had a very delicate constitution. She was thoroughly urban, and life in that tropical part of the world... the food, the water, the sun, the temperature, the insects, the boats, the tides, the moon... and even I..." Carlo smiled sadly. "Everything harmed her health."

"I was monitoring her from outside the room, listening to her crying after she had stopped vomiting..." my worries dismissed, we drifted back to the Île du Blanchomme, "And since after some time she hadn't come out of the bathroom, and everything was so quiet, I decided to check how she was..."

I found her lying unconscious on the bathroom floor, next to the toilet. She was soaked in her vomit, and when I tried to clean it from her, I noticed how she shivered at the touch of a cloth dipped in cold water -- and if I had been still thinking of food poisoning, from that moment on I was convinced of a heatstroke.

But I had never taken care of anyone sick before. My grandfather had never been sick, apart from an occasional flu -- he used to say himself that he would die healthy. As for Armand, I had accompanied him once to a private clinic of a friend of his father, some famous doctor, where he was treated for an inflammation in the lungs.

I was nearly desperate as I tried to recall what cares I had received at the hospital in Paris, and that was when I remembered a first aids book and a box of medicines that Armand had shown me in his office. It was the one room in the house that I rarely entered, since the only thing in there for me was the radio, that I had been unable to use. I tried to turn it on again, randomly pressing this and that button, but I don't know if it had to warm up or what, and again I gave up. I resented being so inapt at technological stuff. But even if it had worked, what then? I would be screaming for help, hoping someone would send an helicopter to the Île? Grow up, Carlo, -- I remember telling to myself -- this is the time. Someone depends on you.

And only then, glancing around the room in dismay, did I realize that Catherine had been in the office already, leaving her notebooks, pens and two novels on my friend's desk. It seemed like another outrageous invasion to me -- but who cared, when there was an emergency going on? At that moment, I was more mad at myself than I could ever be at the sick girl.

There was a manual on tropical diseases provided by the Colonial government, dating from Herr Weissmann's time, but I figured that orientations on how to treat heatstroke should not have changed with the decades....

Removing Catherine from the bathroom was my first problem -- when I tried to lift her, she cried in pain. I felt like I was violating her when I nevertheless lifted her in my arms and carried her to bed, despite her painful groans. I felt genuine tenderness with her in my arms, like I had never felt before. Despite her smelling to vomit and the sweat on her skin, I wanted to keep on holding her in my arms. But it was the wrong moment for romantic impulses, I knew -- I had to read the manual, my only adviser in that situation.

Her skin was almost purple and she was sweating profusely -- which was a good sign according to the manual, because it meant her sweating had not been affected -- but what worried me were the chills that made her squirm, and her state of consciousness, semi-consciousness or unconsciousness, that I could not quite determine. According to the manual, if the person presented an altered state of consciousness, she should be taken urgently to the hospital... that lied nine hours away at least, had the boat been there.

I tried not to panic.

One of the recommendations was placing the affected person in a cold bath -- but I had just brought her from the bathroom, and I thought it would be cruel to move her again. I then adopted the second best recommended method, which was to put cool, wet rags on her skin, at the back of her neck, on her groin, and her armpits. And I was supposed to mist and fan her to promote evaporative cooling.

 For hours, I moved between the bathroom sink and Armand's bed, drenching the floor along the way and also the mattress, while trying to cool Catherine's body. She struggled, and no matter how gently I placed a wet cloth on her skin, it seemed to cause her an unbearable pain and shock. I also gave her water to sip slowly, to counteract dehydration. And I started watching for the girl in her delirious state.

One of the recommended procedures, however, troubled me -- it was removing the clothes of the person with heatstroke, to help in the cooling process. I decided I would not do that, because no matter how much panic I felt in that situation, another bestial part of me still watched Catherine's exposed breasts. My criminal gaze kept falling repeatedly over the bikini tan lines on her burnt skin... Although there was nothing sensual about the situation, yet one continuous tingle seemed to live in my groin.

But night was falling, and Catherine still struggled in her delirious state, not showing much improvement in her condition. It seemed to me she was somehow trying to get rid of the clothes herself... So I decided to help her. Promising myself to behave like a monk, I undressed her. She had taken her bikini off before having lunch, and I found her completely naked under her fancy and now stained dress...

How utterly beautiful she were, I thought. Yet, it crossed my mind how helplessly weakened a sick person is, totally dependent and not able to defend oneself, and how in this situation someone with bad intentions might take advantage and abuse... Suddenly, I felt that, at that exact moment, the sick and helpless people around the world were being abused, so many of them at that very moment... at this very moment, for it is happening now, do you realize it, Laurent? All around the world indeed... as I watched Catherine's lovely naked body, bare before my eyes for the first time. At the same time that I was filled with compassion for the sick, I felt those demanding sensations in my groin...

"What is it Laurent? Why are you crying?" Carlo interrupted the story.

Those were tears I could not restrain nor explain, and I had been glad that my father was so engrossed in his story, imagining that he would not notice.

"It's nothing... It's just that... thinking about my mom so sick and in pain, and seeing you so lost and unprepared..." And while that actually sensitized me, there was something worse... a thought had entered my mind crawling from my darkest fears... it invaded me... the awful truth that my parents had hidden from me... "You were both so young..." I could see Carlo... taking advantage of Catherine, and I had been born... from an abuse! That would explain so many things in my life... my karma.

"That was just a training..." Carlo smiled tenderly, and in an instant his sincere sweetness liberated me from my fears, "...for the times when you got sick, my son. Caring for an adult is demanding and complicated, but caring for a sick baby, a baby crying in pain..." Carlo was sad again. "... it's heartbreaking!" He reached across the table and gently squeezed my hand. "Please do not cry, Laurent, or I'll cry too!"

next episode

Episode 34 | Not yet your mother

previous episode

nudity and sex

"In the broad silence, I could hear the girl vomiting in the bathroom. And also crying, angrily, and I think even cursing... She kept flushing the toilet, repeatedly, and I thought I should have warned her about how it was crucial to save water on the island..." And I realized that Carlo had, without warning, returned to the Île du Blanchomme, to the evening of Catherine's arrival. "I waited for everything to become again quiet, and as she did not return to the beach, I went upstairs to look for her in the house."

I found her sitting at one of the tables that Armand had placed on the veranda, around a small lounge which he called the Music Room, where he kept his guitar and the stereo. It was the only room in the house that actually resembled a hostel, with the four tables creating a small eating environment, a bit like a charming Parisian bistro -- and it was there that the girl had sat. She should have found the matches, because she had lit a candle, and under that gentle light, for the first time I thought she looked beautiful in her fancy dress, which bared her back.

I brought her some juice I had prepared that afternoon, thinking she might like to drink something to get rid of the vomit's taste in her mouth -- I didn't mention that to her, of course -- and as an apology for my previous rudeness.

"Merci." she said, when I handed her the glass with juice. Inadvertently I glanced at her generous décolleté dress, and I caught a glimpse of her breasts under the loose fabric. But luckily, she seemed oblivious at my indiscretion. "I hate boats!" And then she was telling me how sick she had been since coming to the islands, having to use boats to get around, and I realized that she too was trying to apologize for her bad temper. "I have once been on a cruise ship, and I also felt sick, but these tiny little boats here... They are dreadful! And worst of all was travelling to this island!"

I tried to tell her the probable reason for the sea being rougher around the Île du Blanchomme were the dangerous currents encircling it, but she did not seem to want to listen to it, and just cut me off.

"Juice?" she grinned, having drunk half a glass until finally realizing what she was drinking. "Don't you have anything stronger?" And she clarified it as I looked at her blankly. "Are you sure that you understand French? Have you ever been to France?" But she did not want to hear my reply. "Don't you have wine? Or anything alcoholic? I need to recharge my energies..."

I laughed. Not at the request properly, and of course not at the fact that she was feeling weak, but at the absurdity of thinking that there could be wine on a tiny island lost in the Indian Ocean.

"Sure!" I told her wryly. "I'll bring you our wine list..." I added.

But she didn't listen to the irony in my remark -- it seemed my Italian accent was affecting her understanding of my French --, and I saw she took me seriously, for she was happy with the offer. She only understood it was a joke when I did not leave her side. I laughed again.

She was immediately offended, and again I saw her mood worsen.

She was furious at me as she jumped from the chair, her anger exploding. 

The girl had a delicate constitution and looked fragile, her figure so slim and petite -- her arms were so thin that it looked like they could break with that emotional burst. In contrast to her round breasts, that I found myself watching, and which were not too full but so well made, ​​like those from a Greek classical statue. In her outbursts, her frailty transformed into recklessness. 

It is her way of imposing herself, I thought.

"How rude you are!" she cried, full of scorn. "If you intend to host civilized beings, how can you not have wine? What kind of hole is this hostel? Mon Dieu, how long will I have to wait to get out of here?" She snorted.

"Maybe a week..." I replied calmly, without stepping into her ​​anger. "...at least!" I confess I felt a certain pleasure in torturing her with that disheartening information. "I'm not sure how often the boat comes around the island, but I think it never takes more than ten days to return..."

"How come you don't know? Don't you live here?" She moaned. "Ten days? You must be kidding! I need to wait that long for that damn boat? At this hole... with you?" She emphasized the 'you', making it clear that my company was worse than the uncivilized island and the dreadful boat. "Where are the other guests? Is there anyone more educated here that I can talk to?"

"No guests! I've said it before... this is not a hostel..." I said it gently, but it was as if I had punched the girl, who leaned over her own body, moaning, and walked towards the couch at the Music Room, where she collapsed.

"Can I help you? Do you want more juice?" I did not know what to do, I did not know what to say, I did not know how to behave in such a situation, but I guessed I should try. "Haven't you been overexposed to the sun on the beach, this afternoon?" I had noticed her skin was so pale and delicate, and it seemed to me to be overly pinkish, as if she had been assaulted by an army of sun rays. "It could be a heatstroke, and drinking water probably helps..."

"No!" She groaned, and gestured me to back away from her. "I want to be alone!" She fidgeted on the couch, restlessly. "Is the ground of the island moving?"

"No, of course not..." Her ideas were so ridiculous, but I tried not to laugh, and instead empathize with her suffering. "You could still be feeling the rocking of the boat..."

"Damned boats..." she whispered, and it seemed to me that in a couple more minutes she fell deeply asleep. 

I went to the kitchen to wash the dishes of the day, and I had to smile as I saw the lipstick mark on the girl's glass. Did I place my own lips on it, before washing the glass? I don't remember if I did it that first night already, but I certainly did it afterwards...

When I returned to the Music Room, she was sound asleep. Against my will, against my education, I again glanced at her breasts... and more intently this time, since I knew I wasn't being observed. From the way her body was twisted, I could see the edge of one of her nipples appearing under the fabric -- and I almost felt vertigo from the overwhelming wave of desire that invaded and dominated me. I had to run away from the room, confused, not to act brutally against the asleep, helpless girl.

I went down to the beach, as far as I could from that girl. What was that?!? Lust burst in me more violently than anything else I had ever felt, an urge like nothing I had experienced before... If I had stayed a moment longer beside that couch, watching the sleeping girl, I could not have stopped my hand from touching her... and not only grabbing her breasts, feeling her nipples... Next, I could have thrown myself on top of her, and maybe...

Maybe... I would had been conceived! I could not help but think.

I was a little embarrassed from the way Carlo was telling me his story, including such intimate confessions. But at the same time I was fascinated with the possibility to acknowledge my own conception... I guess many children have that curiosity about the occasion of their conception, and as a teenager I had once asked Catherine about it. Shamelessly, she had told me a story I now discovered had been thoroughly made up, about their romantic encounter in a fancy resort in Punaouilo -- and I was about to discover the truth.

"There haven't been many women in my life..." Carlo pondered. "From my mother, I remember very little. And when I moved in with my grandfather, he was already a widower. I think I took from him a certain asceticism, and my celibacy never bothered me. In my teenage years in the Apennines there was nothing sexually exciting -- the animals having intercourse and procreating, yes, but that did not arouse any desire in me, to try it myself. Moreover, sometimes we had some guys helping on the farm, but until Armand's heartfelt confession I had never thought of having sex with another man."

Parisian women astounded me, and I simply dismissed, them thinking they were meant for guys like Armand. To my eyes, they were voluptuous, sophisticated, intellectual, all full of attitudes and style -- even the waitresses and shop assistants seemed like untouchable queens to me. I could blush when I recalled them, especially at the Cinematéque, engaging in long, passionate kisses with their boyfriends. And I never considered having one for me -- I had to struggle to survive in Paris, make good use of my time to get the best training possible, and try to somehow establish myself in the city. Most of the times, despite Armand's generosity and hospitality, I felt like a transplanted tree striving to grow roots, against all odds, in foreign soil.  

Returning to the house, I thought I'd take a cold shower to calm myself. But that was not what happened at the bathroom, and for the first time since coming to the island, I jerked off. Not even the smell of her vomit still lingering in the bathroom turned me off. I stroked myself feeling a guilty pleasure all the time -- for I was finally wasting the sexual energy I had been diligently accumulating and transforming into vital and spiritual energy, like I had studied in that book about Indian philosophies. And I felt even more guilty for being so aware of the girl's presence in the house... and in my mind... and the fact that she was the reason why I was wildly touching myself like that... and when I came, I was thinking of her bared nipple and how it would have tasted in my mouth...

I had not known how to deal with women, and less did I know how to deal with my own lust.

I had learned from the masters of India that lust was the chief enslaver of human beings -- and since I had never really felt it before, I had considered myself naturally free of it. I took myself for the one remarkable exception to all beings. 

Until that evening on the Île du Blanchomme.

It was a tremendous explosion, or as if the walls of a huge dam had collapsed  -- and I could no longer contain the force of the waters of my desire. Neither wanted I.

"I went to sleep, and after having fidgeted in my bed for a few minutes, again I masturbated..." Carlo suddenly looked at me, as if returning from the Île du Blanchomme. "Am I embarrassing you, son? You know, I was in my early twenties, and a virgin... Now that I am older this seems so far away... almost a curiosity... and so unlikely to have happened. That strong lust... I was guiltily masturbating in my room, aware of being separated only by a tiny wall from the girl sleeping on the couch, whom I evoked in my wild fantasies... Was she real, or was she just an image? Her presence was real, but what she performed in my mind..." Carlo shrugged, dismissing those recollections. "That girl, Laurent, was not yet your mother... And as I furiously jerked off I was thinking of Armand, too, and equally feeling guilty, and confused..." 

Carlo gulped, and the continued. "I was as tormented as I had been the previous night, but it was a different kind of suffering -- instead of nightmares, I was fully awake and aroused by an imperative lust, which I did not seem to want to get rid of... In my mind, I could understand how enslaving it was, but those bodily sensations were so addictive good, so intensely pleasurable... And I gave in, again I gave in to it and masturbated until I exploded and was left drained..."

I eventually fell asleep, exhausted.

I woke up a few hours later, before dawn, again with a hard-on -- and needing to go to the bathroom to pee.

Since Armand had been gone, instead of using the corridor, I had taken to crossing his room, which was next to mine, to get to the bathroom, adjoining his.

I stopped halfway.

The girl must have woken up in the middle of the night, and having left the Music Room, wandered through the house without my noticing it -- but had she seen me, lying naked and hard on my bed?  She had found Armand's bedroom and taken hold of his big, comfortable bed.

For a moment I was just confused and baffled. But next I was furious with her, for she had occupied my friend's bed with such ease, something that I had been unable to do even in his absence. I almost kicked her out of that room, such was my indignation at her disrespecting the bed where I had experienced so many emotions and special feelings and sensations with Armand. Of course, to her it had been just an available bed in the hostel, not a love nest...

 But I did not wake her up in my rage, only because my demanding hard-on humiliated me... and I cautiously turned back, returning to my room.

Once back there, though separated by a single wall, my fury and indignation quickly vanished to give in to lust -- and while servicing my raging hard-on and watching dawn breaking, I fantasized about both Armand and Catherine, and I was now inside him, then I was in her, and in my thoughts I could not distinguish whom I was with, riding that bed that now united and mingled their bodies into one gender-less body, confusing them in my mind.

I saluted dawn with another big spurt in several ropes that I aimed at my body, so that I didn't have to clean the room afterwards. And all covered with sperm I went down to the beach to bathe in the sea, so as to cleanse myself and to calm down.

For another day in a row I did not meditate in the morning. I did try to sit, but the problem was no longer just calming my mind... since my thoughts kept going back to the girl, my body was no longer like a safe and stable mountain to which I'd bring back my wandering mind. The solid mountain had turned into a blazing volcano.

 So I just sat there, feeling the breeze on my naked body, watching the sun rise, and then I swam as long as I could, against the currents, trying to tire myself and pacify my desire. 

I felt I was losing it... but what was it? My freedom, probably. My privacy, surely. My peace of mind, of course. I was finally, essentially losing myself, as painful and pleasurable and definite as it could be!

next episode

Author's note: having been imported from a former version of the story, some of the comments below are dated previous to this post. Once the plot has not been altered, just the pagination, I am keeping them since they are very dear and precious to me.