Michel Houellebecq, Cleopatra 2000 (2002)
An English translation of 'Cléopâtre 2000', in Lanzarote et autres textes (Librio, 2002).
A naturist and libertine resort of European renown, Le Cap-d'Agde naturally has several nightclubs designed to cater for the pleasures of 'non-conformist' couples. Within the camp itself, you'll find Le Pharaon, l’Absolu, Le Cléopâtre and Le Glamour. Within a radius of a few kilometres are l’Extasia, Le Paradisio, Le Château and Le Feeling.
Defining the study conditions. Between the residences of Heliopolis and Port-Venus, the Port-Nature complex occupies a central position. At the intersection of the two branches of the L formed by the buildings are the Deutsches Eck (restaurant, brasserie) on one side and the Cleopatra on the other. The oldest swingers disco in Cape Town, it is also one of the most respected (it has never, for example, been tempted by the hope of a fleeting profit to open up to single men). When you go there, you can be sure of avoiding the fashionable effects of a recent opening; year after year, you are dealing with a faithful barometer of the atmosphere in the swingers' milieu.
Every summer, the naturist resort of Cap-d'Agde welcomes 300,000 visitors, two-thirds of whom, according to a survey by Connexions magazine, can be classified as "modern couples". The peak season is usually during the first half of August. Even if, as Nils says, "we don't deny ourselves anything, it's a party every night" (the couple from Düsseldorf interviewed by the magazine spend an average of thirty-five thousand francs every summer for a two-week stay), Saturday evenings, as in all French towns, are particularly busy.
The protocol is as follows: first Saturday in August, at the Cleopatra, at midnight (the restaurant opens at 11pm). I'll be accompanied by Marie-Pierre, my wife (always the same one). The observable variations can therefore be attributed to historical developments, to my state of mind, or to both (without being able to totally exclude the intervention of a chance factor, even if I have tried to minimise it by rigorously defining the protocols).
Saturday 2nd August 1997. Around fifty couples in room 1 (room 2, which had been set up identically, was virtually deserted). Very risqué outfits on the dance floor; some touching (the couples dance side by side; sometimes a man takes the initiative to caress his neighbour's buttocks; she responds, or not, by caressing his buttocks and sex). The actual sexual acts (fellatio, masturbation, coitus) take place on the benches surrounding the dance floor. There are quite a few of these, and they are indeed exchanged. The basic hierarchies, however, are respected: the young and beautiful have sex (a lot) with other young and beautiful people; the old and ugly have sex (much less) with other old and ugly people. My wife and I are in the average category, so we have a moderate amount of fun with other average people. Still, it was a good evening. After a few friendly words, she turned round and lifted her skirt; she wasn't wearing anything underneath. I put it on straight away; her pussy was soft, very wet. She smiles as she pulls away, her long curly hair dancing along her face. Marie-Pierre kneels down to suck her husband's cock. They both come from Béziers for the evening; we exchange addresses.
Saturday 1st August 1998. In room 1, the atmosphere seems unchanged. Room 2 has been fitted with several video monitors showing pornographic films. People are there, sitting on the benches, stunned in front of the monitors (big tits, big cocks, gorgeous chicks and guys); the passivity is total. Marie-Pierre jerks me off, I lick her pussy; the couple next to us remain inert, their eyes glued to the screen. We're in the same age bracket, but we don't have the courage to make a move. We get dressed slowly, resigned. We return to Room 1. Something seems to have hardened since last year. A young couple are making love on the dance floor; the man has long curly blond hair, his stomach is flat and muscular. The woman is brunette, her skin matt. He takes her from behind, her perfectly round buttocks raised high, the arch of her loins magnificent. A man in his fifties approaches and tries to touch her, but she brusquely pushes him away. The other couples remained at a distance, forming a circle three metres from the young men. The man withdraws for a moment, his sex briefly bathed in a burst of violet light; then he starts to penetrate the woman again, at a faster pace; the strobe light plays on his hard-working abdominal muscles. I go and sit down on a bench. Next to us, a couple in their sixties from Germany; the man is scruffy and flabby. The woman is wearing latex panties, but her meat is sticking out everywhere; she has a distraught look on her face: they're probably close to retirement. She puts a hand on her husband's sex, without succeeding in reviving him; then they finish their beer. We set off again fairly quickly.
Saturday 7th August 1999. About the same number of couples. In room 2 the video monitors have disappeared, but a large bed has been installed. A Dutch couple invites us to join them; the surface of the mattress is elastic and red. Over the previous weeks, I'd been training myself to control my pubbo-coccygiens muscles, so I managed to penetrate Marie-Pierre and Anna one after the other and bring them to orgasm without ejaculating myself, which gave me great pleasure. After her orgasm, Anna sucked me gently; Marie-Pierre and Peter exchanged restaurant addresses. I take a quick shower. When I get out of the shower I see a small, hermetically sealed cubicle with round holes in the walls, eighty centimetres above the floor. I understood immediately, pressed myself against one of the walls, closed my eyes and inserted my sex into the hole. For a few seconds nothing happened, I felt myself getting hard in the atmosphere. Then a hand is placed on me and infinitely soft lips close over my glans. The sensation of pleasure is unbelievably violent and I'm on the verge of screaming and coming. Sensing the danger, the hand and mouth withdraw. I can't help it, I quickly bend down to look inside the booth: a blonde in her twenties, with an angelic face, in a black leather bikini, is already leaning towards another cock. I regret my attitude and get up; I've decided to play the game to the end. For two hours, I remained glued to the wall, in a state of happy anticipation. From time to time, hands and mouths will come to take care of my sex. They will be more or less gentle, their caresses more or less skilful; but I'll never know who they belong to, whether their owner is young and pretty, ugly or obese; I'll even think (but the idea won't occur to me until late the next afternoon) that some of them might have belonged to men. Marie-Pierre and I were among the last to leave, around five o'clock in the morning; we walked slowly, the night was soft, I held her by the waist; our brains were already busy working out wonderful memories.
I'll be going to the Cleopatra next year, around midnight on a Saturday, which will be 5 August 2000. I don't know yet how things will evolve, it's hard to say. There may be glory holes, dark rooms where people make love without choosing each other, abandoned to the flow of their tactile perceptions. On the contrary, there may be big-screen videos, mirrors, rooms where couples dance and make love side by side, concentrated, narcissistic, definitively unattainable. Basically, I'm not very optimistic: swinging seems to me to have very little chance of survival today, the times don't lend themselves to it. At least the Cleopatra is still open to all couples, regardless of age; but more and more clubs on the Côte d'Azur are closing their doors to the over-fifties. I'll show my identity card if I have to, I'll play the game, I'll obey the rules. Fifty years, yes; I have about ten years left to enjoy it. It's a lot, and it's not much; I have no choice.
P.-S.: I didn't go back to Le Cléopâtre in 2000, but only at the beginning of August 2001; the place had been transformed into a faggot's club.