Chapter 72 Bundle

I went up north, ready to scour all the ports on the Baltic. I ended up in Hamburg. In the evening, I wandered in Sankt Pauli. Girls in their windows, boxed in tackiness, with an air of decent housewives displaying their asses. Not one worth fucking, but men were there, strolling about, eyeing them. My God, they looked like first communicants walking slowly to the altar to receive the host! Monumental hard-ons because that one shakes her tits under their noses and they imagine themselves stuffing their pricks in the holy of holies! You bet they haven’t grown one inch since the time when, as adolescents, they shut themselves in the toilet to jerk off out of sight of their mommy’s eyes! Men’s desire disgusts me. It was certainly not in those alleyways with no dark corners, where the gaudy pink neons filter, that I was going to meet the man from Albuquerque. It was down to the wharves I had to go . . . I hung about between the angular shadows of the container stacks waiting to be loaded. I moved toward the ship I thought was the most rotten, an old tub with the look of a rusty scrap heap. I took the gangway that hadn’t been lifted, a useless precaution anyway. Where could they go, the crew, those poor guys with no papers, with no money? I hadn’t walked three steps onto the deck when a voice came out of the shadows to stop me. “What the hell are you doing here?” I answered: “I’m looking for men.” “Men. What for?” “For fucking.” I heard him sneer and saw him come toward me. I thought he must be the captain. “You’re in the wrong place. Do you know what the men down there look like? For three weeks, since we berthed, their wages haven’t arrived. There’s nothing to take here, fuck off!” “You’ve got it wrong. I’m the one who pays.” He grabbed me by the sleeve, and there I was, in what must have been the steward’s room. He and I sat in front of a glass of bad whiskey. “So then, you are the one who pays? Tell me more.” I told the captain the woman I had been before, before knowing myself, before knowing who I was. I talked about the deceased lover who had taught me to understand who I was. I told him about my taste for filth and abjection. That what would seem a descent to hell in the eyes of the uninitiated was for me the path to the absolute. That I was not crazy. That I had chosen and that I had to go all the way, till the end of what I had decided to accomplish. And that it was for that reason I was looking for the man from Albuquerque. The captain remained silent for a moment before blurting out: “Port Sudan, in a month’s time.” He showed me how to gain access to the holds. As I went in, I had difficulty discerning the dozen men sleeping on the bare floor. I slipped between them. The heat was stifling. The first body my hand encountered was half-naked and sweaty. I touched the damp torso and the sleeper woke up, muttering in an incomprehensible tongue. I quieted him by placing my mouth on his. His breath was repugnant and my tongue plunged into a cesspool. At the same time I undressed and lay down on top of him. I became an undulating reptile. My belly rubbed against his and when I felt the hard swollen penis, I undid the man’s sarong and, opening my thighs, I violently forced his penis inside me. There was a long moan, like a powerful note on the barely audible chords of the breath of the other sleeping sailors. My movements became more rapid, more violent, to make the man cry louder and wake up his companions. The first to wake up lit a hurricane lamp and moved closer. I beckoned him to come even closer. I undid the belt that held up his rough cotton trousers, I took his penis in my mouth. I started to suck him as if I was going to draw out the substance in his balls. The one I was riding let out an anguished rattle and I felt he was coming with all the power of a male deprived of women for ages.