KINKY CLUB
“It’s as if, all your life, you keep surprising yourself by
finding yourself in this or that place, not knowing why you’re there, or
even how you got there. I am here. It’s me who’s here, and not
someone else.”
Joyce Carol Oates.
The weight, the richness, the value of a place lies less in the place itself
than in those who inhabit it. But first, how did we get there?
By extricating ourselves from the tarmac of ordinary life. Once you cross the
unassuming little door, you leave one world behind
, you embrace another, you fall in love with it. You know this as
you descend the few steps that lead to the cellar, from which
come moans, cries, laughter, or nothing—but
in the barely dimmed light,
you see having shed their outer garments. It's in the street
that we dress up. Not at the KINKY. Yes, we left the "old man"
outside. Here, where everything revolves around punishment, we left
punishment behind the door. Here, if we must suffer, it's for
a reason. And if punishing is what interests you, punish, we
'll be grateful!
The value of a place lies in the value of those who bring it to life—everyone
knows that. Here on this island, it's Stephanie and Alex who are taking on that role.
I'll start with Alex, because it will take longer for Stephanie.
ALEX
A good-natured giant straight out of a Grimm's fairy tale. He embodies the Weight of Grace,
with his graceful movements. Not effeminate: graceful. His
long beard is reminiscent of the movies, back when films
were silent, in black and white, and could take place in the office
of Dr. Caligari. Stark chiaroscuro,
torture racks, rings, St. Andrew's crosses… I could go on, I wouldn't want to.
Two
steps away from fatigue. Everyone, once again, knows this. Except that
it all depends. And depends on who's holding you. Alex is a master craftsman, and
a master of his craft: rope, knot, kinbaku – a Japanese art practiced here
by the most seductive of men. And quite strong, I must say! All
enveloped in a muscular softness. You feel the urge to be taken
in his arms, his chest as a haven, or something like
that. Alex, from behind his glasses, sizes you up, and takes a drag
on his e-cigarette to rest from the effort. Because he needs
to rest too! Alex is a worker. On the job! Tying,
untying, over-tying… Seized, restrained by him, your limbs –
arms, legs… will rise at his discretion – a strange,
restrained freedom. Painful too! You exert your weight and
gravity pulls, always downwards. What downwards?... From this in-
between where you levitate, you no longer quite know. You sway
between floor and ceiling. A kind of cosmonaut, a
deep-sea diver, but without a diving suit and naked. You see those eyes
around you scrutinizing you, wondering how far this form
of weightlessness will take you—inside yourself, of course! But
how, by what means?... Alex's voice, even as he
twists you and moves you from standing to the most
uncomfortable positions, is always soft and calm, like
the kisses he places on the shoulders of the beautiful girls, their necks,
their divine hips, asking them if they're okay, if he can
continue... Of course he can continue! They're crazy about him!
I'm crazy about...
STEPHANIE
Stephanie, a compact beauty. Unaffected. No shapewear or high
heels. You could pass her on the subway and it would be her, the same
woman, difficult to look at because her beauty is so captivating. Without
doing anything—just being beautiful. How is that possible?… We
're not at KINKY to ask ourselves these kinds of questions. We rely
on what we see, and what we see is Stephanie. So,
silence. I even wonder how I can presume to write
about her! Writing must truly be a
sacred thing in itself, to dare to use it to serve Stephanie. It takes audacity.
three minutes
just to speak to her—even though she's the most
amiable of hostesses! Nothing to frighten or discourage you,
quite the opposite, a cheerful disposition… but wait until you see her
working on this or that—she hits hard, drills, digs… But just like
that, as if without thinking, with the ardor of a young colt: “Hey,
let's try this, just to see!”… She runs around her garden, her
meadow, we are nothing in her presence. The space seems larger
around her, infinite—because she takes up space, her body absorbs it,
she becomes space itself. We are quite happy to have our place in that
space. We could be anything, her rug, her chair, her
toilet, the glass she's holding. We'd like to make her laugh,
tell her stories, to amuse her. But me, my sense of humor,
in front of Stéphanie?!… You must be joking! I'm even losing the art of
speaking, so much does silence seem to be the rule—another
sacred thing. So, KINKY is this infinite space around
Stéphanie. And I repeat: to access this Milky Way, all we
had to do was go through a small door, in a lovely neighborhood
, by the way, with lots of friendly people drinking beers on
café terraces, even when it's cold. But I'm waiting
for it to get warm… to feel Stéphanie's feet better.
Since she's willing. Which seems incredible to me. The
first time I asked her, I even wonder if
it was really me speaking, what language I was speaking—she must have
understood, though, since she said yes. It even seemed
natural for her to grant me that, coming from her… Anyway,
the best thing to do when talking about Stéphanie is to efface yourself, to do
as Flaubert said: don't talk about yourself. Stéphanie seems
to see everything. Naturally creased eyelids—funny,
humorously creased. Sparkling eyes. Stéphanie is full
of humor. Her whole being is humor. Intelligence. That's
where her beauty is unstoppable and overwhelms you. Intelligence right down to
her toes, shaped as if to perfection—as if she
herself had decided on the form that her toes, the sole, the instep
, her heels should have. Possible? I don't know. It's
all a mystery—not just with Stéphanie! But with Stéphanie in
particular. One day, we should examine Stéphanie's feet more closely
, not to smell them, lick them, massage them, but to
4.
Opening all the Littré and Robert dictionaries—those that never lie—
for the sole purpose of studying them, of learning them. And to
paint them, I believe we would need Delacroix, his fury for painting,
his frenzy of gesture, his ardor to expose beauty by blending form
with soul, without us ultimately knowing where the form ends and the soul begins…
Stephanie's feet
occupy in space I can do is try to get closer. Stephanie the
divine, however, is not ethereal; she is of the Earth. Feet
on the ground. Benevolent. But also a Watchdog of her surroundings,
she fists, whips, and mummifies, as if it were a natural thing to do as
long as one wants it, for oneself. And it's true, seen from the
space she inhabits, it's perfectly natural: the farmyard
where she plays, with the joy of a little girl running,
stick in hand, after her pigs. But be warned, it's
understood that in any situation involving
Stephanie, only one of you has reason to be worried—you.
Because there's real pleasure in cunning and malice, and yes, in
the very act of making others suffer. And Stephanie does
n't seem to lack this worldview. Cunning, too.
One of her many strings to her bow. For the intelligence she
possesses also feeds on cunning—Homer made cunning
the defining quality of intelligence, its tool. At least, that's what
appears beneath Stephanie's delicately slanted eyelids.
That's all I know about it… And that her mouth is also thin and
shaped by humor. Like her eyes. Even when repeating the
same words, worn out for many—we don't have an
inexhaustible lexicon—well, each word that comes out of her mouth is
like a new one. It's new. It comes from her, from her great beauty
in the present moment. Thin and classically shaped, her lips, without
us knowing, like with the Mona Lisa, if it's to joke or to say: here,
before me, you are exclusively before me. Nothing behind, nothing
in front. And even if it lasts only a moment, this injunction, thanks
to Stéphanie, becomes an eternity. So, by crossing the threshold of the KINKY, we buy ourselves
a slice of eternity. It's not bad, it's
enormous… But I'll stop because I'm going to bore you, inevitably talking about
myself, and as Flaubert said…
