Introduction Moule III

We followed the direction of her finger and discovered the object of her amazement. The title read ‘The Scream’. Usually, one could have thought that it related to a horror movie. But the situation was unequivocal: the law had been relaxed, true, but advertising pictures were still forbidden and the titles, in large letters, with caption such as “first prize awarded at the Copenhagen Adult Film Festival”, were the single artefacts authorised outside the projection room.

‘Shall we go in?… I have never seen a porn film before!’ Souad, a girl of Algerian origin, five foot five, with black hair, black eyes and doll-like porcelain pale skin, with huge charms, exclaimed. At university, she would often start up debates and life seemed to be for her a permanent adventure. She was bold, yet not libertine. She was the true leader of our little group.

          I wondered what the other guys would say… We stared at each other and, cautiously, remained silent, waiting for a lady to second Souad’s proposition, so that we would not appear more one-track-minded than we actually were.

‘Come on!’ Edith said. ‘I would like to see what a nude film is like. It must be fun!’ She was a middle distance runner, with long brown hair, the face of a Greek Olympic champion, breasts like apples from Normandy and long muscular legs. She was not the leading party like Souad, but more like dormant waters, ready to explode after the first skirmish…

The count was right, three girls had expressed the wish of entering, the boys in the group had all the excuses in the world to follow respectfully… We therefore queued at the till, got our ticket and made our way with anticipation to the dark room. Everyone was loosening up, thinking that for once we would not do our best to look inspired while sitting through three hours of an interminable Japanese boring film, trying to remember would-be intellectual quotes in order to bedazzle the audience during the long-awaited for meal that would inevitably take place thereafter in a questionable quality restaurant… Everyone was happy… except … me…

We entered the large room, when complete silence reigned, like in Parliament when the problem of personal income of the people’s representatives is put under scrutiny… The cinema was three-quarters filled, mostly men, on their own. A few couples that would start the foreplay obviously aroused by the action on the screen. The usherette took us to a row that could accommodate all of us. Sébastien went in first, to the far end, Sonia and Catherine followed. The characters on the screen were talking in American, with subtitles, not that it really mattered since the spectators had not bought their tickets to brush up on their knowledge of the language of Shakespeare… Milène went to sit next to Catherine. I wanted to let the whole group sit first, with me close to the aisle between the rows, but Souad and Edith decided otherwise.

‘Don’t you move away! You will sit between the both of us!’ Souad said jokingly. We had often crossed swords over hectic debates at University and a certain familiarity had grown between the three of us. Still, I was ill at ease…

          After a few seconds, we were all seated. On the screen, two middle-aged ladies were discussing how boring their lives were and examining what they could do to brighten up their afternoon. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, they started to kiss, darting out their tongues so that the camera could make enlarged shots of their tongues intertwined. They went on to remove each other’s garments. Souad said:

‘I hope that they will not stay on their own too long!’

‘I would like to see a man with his big organ’ Edith added.

‘Or two!” Milène exclaimed.

So far, none of the guys had dared commenting. The ladies were in charge and we tacitly observed diplomatic silence, perhaps hoping that they would get aroused to the extent of really letting their hair down later on....