Hot Chocolate and Cognac

I was living in a pretty little bachelor flat in the Marais. Perfect for me at the time, not long into my first real salaried work in Paris. All wooden beams, in the slightly sleazy, quaintly-named Rue des Vertus (Street of Virtues).

   That night, for no special reason, I decided that before I went to bed I had to have some hot chocolate and cognac. But could I find a café or bar that would serve me a cup of hot chocolate with a little glass of cognac? Could I fuck! Of course if I had wanted something normal like an espresso coffee with a calvados, a café-calva, I could have had that anywhere. As it was, I must have walked for close to an hour round the area and as far as Les Halles and back without finding what I wanted.

    I was going up the Rue Vieille du Temple on my way back home, and was already well past the door of one of those pretentious but discreet restaurants in which the city abounds and most of which one will never know. I didn’t know this one, and I don’t know why I turned back to try there, as I wasn’t looking for food. But as I ducked in over the threshold and aimed for the small bar-like counter to one side of the room to formulate my request (which they supplied with no problem), I saw only the woman whom, perforce, I found myself joining at the counter.

    She had heavy, long black hair, green eyes, high suede boots which were also green, and a black velvet cape. There was something animal about her. She looked like she had just stepped out of the forest.  She turned to look me straight in the eye and my stomach went light with apprehension. But a voice inside me said that if I didn’t act now and make an approach, I would forfeit my self-respect as a man. So it seemed I scarcely had a choice about it. 

    I must have said something quite banal, like would she like a drink. All I know is that I felt compelled to seize the situation, rise to the opportunity and grasp the moment or whatever. Which somehow I did.

    She soon had me in tow, taking me to a weird bistrot whose interior decor was largely in trompe l’oeil. That was the name of the establishment: Le Trompe l’Oeil. Then to some rowdy wine-bar full of students across the river at St. Michel.  I guess the mini pub-crawl gave her the chance to check me out a little.

    She asked me what I wanted. I said I thought I was like anybody else: I wanted to feel good and happy and free, and to make love. My reply must have satisfied her, because we then headed for my place.  Her name was Aude, she was the mother of two daughters and she was some kind of artist, living outside Paris. I suppose she must have been in her early thirties. But more than that I didn’t learn and didn’t ask.

    I felt heady, and it wasn’t just the alcohol. She had this musky, luxuriant jungle scent about her, a marshy dark-haired smell of damp leaves and moist earth, of mossy tufts and hidden underbrush.

    She looked so firm and smooth and cool, shiny and hard even, recumbent on my big mattress on the floor. But her body was full and luscious, like a still-fruity old wine. Heavy almost, yet pure and simple, classical.

    Under the electric light, her loose long hair shone red through the black; her rich cream-coloured skin glowed like polished ivory. Her lips were a remarkable dark purple and matched the teats of her otherwise quite modest, girlish breasts. In her dense, dark armpits and crotch I tasted a special honey from the sea.  And she was so soft and hot to the touch! Comfortably curved, her body encompassed my entire horizon, and I held it in my embrace...

    I cupped her neat round knees in my palms, feeling a mad happiness whirling through my brain. I poised to settle between her waiting thighs, my heart pumping furiously in my mouth. Then as I came, so to speak, to look her straight in the cunt, I had a moment of pure panic, the bright, ripe organ of her sex appearing before me like some alien hornéd vegetable.  I felt scared, and told her so, hesitating before the moment of penetration.

     But she said there was nothing to fear, and so I went in, closing in on her like a big ship entering into port. My passage eased before me as I glided inchingly in, and I felt the low, slow thrum of my motors beating an echo against the high walls of her harbour.

    The moment was devoid of all dimension, like I was dying, or in free fall: I was dwindling, disappearing, sinking deeper and deeper into a perfect black hole. I felt the last parts of my consciousness being drawn out of me: absorbed upon the infinite sponge of her heavenly matrix, which stood open to receive me.

    And now I felt my cock grow as if transformed into an extra limb. Like the knuckle-bones of a fist, it slipped and knocked into her, slipped and knocked, slipped and knocked, slipped and knocked.

    Gently, but with relentless regularity, I slipped and knocked the head of my penis against the firm lip of her womb. On and on and on. On and on and on. On and on and on and on and on.

    On, on, on. On, on, on.
    On. On. On.
    On. On. On; On. On. On; On. On. On.
    Developing over time into: ON! ON! ON!
    Rising gradually to OOONNN!!! OOONNN!!! OOONNN!!!
    And finally erupting: OOOOOONNNNNN!!!!!!

    We came together like that, perfectly.

    She stayed the night, or whatever was left of it. In the morning we made love again, but more hurriedly, as I had to go to work. I left her in the flat so she could take her own time. And to my happy surprise, she was still there when I returned in the early evening. She had not wanted to leave just like that, she said. She had done some drawings: slightly mysterious designs of snaps and whorls; and had tidied the bed. On hearing what work I did, she remarked how she could never bear to work in an office.

     We made love again, but she had to leave. I too: I had a rendez-vous with my mistress of some long standing, with whom I knew I was expected to make love that night. I hoped my energies would allow me to acquit myself honourably.

     I asked Aude for her telephone number, and she gave it to me.  But in the days that followed, she was never at home and never returned my calls.

    I  returned to the restaurant in the Rue Vieille du Temple, which was strictly a restaurant, not a bar, and I wondered how it was that they had served me just drinks that time. It was run by a pied noir from Tunisia, a lover of opera.

    I was a bit disappointed at first that Aude never rang back. But I soon came round to thinking that it was best that way. I have never before or since felt such an urgent desire for hot chocolate and cognac.