by Valery Saint-Garnon
(02/06/02)

Kekule's famous discovery of the structure of the benzene ring was inspired by a dream in which two snakes devoured each other's tails -- a variation on the classical ouroboros. Three years later, in Paris, Andre Guilmet's encounter with another mythical circle led to a more modest breakthrough...

Andre Guilmet leaned his velocipede against the park railings, removed his cap and mopped his brow with a large black handkerchief. He was a slight man, not yet thirty but with reddish hair that was already thinning, and the effort involved in wrestling the cumbersome machine across the park had turned his pale complexion blotchy. The spring day had turned out much warmer than expected: the morning showers had washed the Paris skies a baby blue, and now the damp yellow sand of the pathways -- some of which had stuck to the back of his tweed jacket --steamed gently in the soft clean air. Beyond the flowerbeds, refracted sunlight sparkled from the dripping evergreens.

He ran a pocket comb through his hair, and for good measure combed his rather meager mustache as well.

As his thoughts turned to Therese, he realised with some alarm that his penis had gone completely numb. Somehow the uncomfortable, strangely-shaped saddle had contrived to cut off the circulation. Happily, after a few moments, feeling began to be restored, and this was accompanied by a rather agreeable tingling sensation that obliged him to squirm with guilty embarrassment as he wished "Good day!" to two young demoiselles who happened to stroll past. To his chagrin, as they sauntered away, he heard them giggling behind their parasols.

From her second floor apartment across the street, Therese de la Rochefoucauld stood at the window and observed the progress of her lover. Dressed in severe ankle-length skirts and a tight-laced bodice, with honey blonde hair done up in a loose Teutonic bun, she was a handsome, statuesque woman, as solidly built in her way as Andre's iron velocipede.

At 37, Therese had never married and was now well past what was usually considered marriageable age. As an independent woman with adequate private means, she had naturally had her admirers, but since the accidental death of her father twenty years previously (about which she insisted she knew nothing) she had refused to allow any potential lover to touch her; and further, now that she had succeeded in regaining her virginity, she made it clear that vaginal intercourse would for ever more be out of the question, even for a lawful husband. She knew well enough that among the demimondeuses such services were easily obtainable and she was always surprised -- and each time a little more disappointed -- as one by one her suitors had lost heart in the face of this draconian stipulation. Indeed, not one of them even thought to remonstrate or argue; with Therese everyone immediately understood that this condition was not negotiable.

And now -- there was a knock at her door -- here was Andre, another gentleman suitor with a gentleman suitor's appetites...

Nodding his thanks to the concierge, Andre was shown into Therese's apartment. For a moment he was afraid that the room was empty, but then he saw her standing quietly in the shadows beside the window.

"Good morning, Therese. How happy I am to find you at home."

"Why, Monsieur Andre, you have been calling on me at this same hour every day for three weeks running. I should be pleased to think you would by now have gained some inkling of my habits."

"I should not presume to take you for granted."

"My dear sir! You are too nice. I pray you be seated."

But Andre was immediately mindful of his bruised anus, a victim of the velocipede's iron wheels and cruel lack of suspension. He remained standing, a trifle awkwardly, beside the sofa.

"Thank you. I would prefer to stand."

"Was there something in particular you wished to say to me?"

"Indeed there was -- there is. Therese...." Before he had really intended to, Andre found himself abruptly going down on one knee. "Mademoiselle! My dear Therese! I have come today to offer you my hand. In marriage."

Therese walked slowly towards him, a smile playing about her lips. Andre stammered on:

"I am not a rich man, but, I flatter myself. My skill as watchmaker is not unknown and as a junior partner to Monsieur Meyer, the industrialist...in short, I have prospects."

Therese halted immediately in front of him. Under the taut material of her skirt, the slight protuberance of her mons veneris was level with his face.

"Is it not customary to propose from closer quarters?"

He looked up at her. Smiling down at him, she unbuttoned and removed her bodice. Released from the confines of the heavy fabric, she sighed luxuriously and paused for a moment to cup her magnificent bosom in her hands. She then proceeded to unbutton her blouse.

Andre gazed upwards. The nakedness of her perfect breasts hung over him.

"But I want you to understand that there must be certain conditions."

"Yes?" Andre swallowed, his mouth dry.

"Yes." Therese indicated the sofa. "Would you be so good as to be seated?"

Andre forgot the soreness of his posterior and did as he was asked.

"I am a woman." She knelt before him and unfastened his trousers. "With desires like any woman." Her breathing quickened as, within his undergarments, the contours of Andre's substantial erection stood revealed. She reached inside his combinations and drew forth his erect and straining phallus.

"And I would want to please the man who became my husband."

She leaned forward. Caressing the twitching shaft with her hand, she took the swollen tip into her mouth.

She moved slowly, lightly. Andre emitted small groans of pleasure. His breathing grew more urgent -- but then, before he could come, with a gentle kiss, Therese withdrew her lips and knelt once more before him. Though detoured from his climax, the sight of her erect nipples caused him shudders of pleasure.

"I know many ways to please a man."

She began to stroke his shaft, slowly at first then harder and faster.

"And I will do many things." With her free hand she played with one of her nipples. "But I will never consent to vaginal intercourse."

A second before Andre came, Therese snatched his black handkerchief from his pocket and deftly used it to contain his spurting semen as he spasmed again and again...

Therese kissed his subsiding erection and retired discreetly to her place by the window. As Andre recovered, she demurely rebuttoned her blouse.

"Andre, my Andre, you must consider what I have told you. This is my sole condition, and you must agree freely to accept it if you would take me as your wife. I release you now from the obligations of your offer. But if you would return again in seven days and press your suit, then I will give you my answer."

"Therese!?..."

"Monsieur. As for today, I believe our interview is at an end."

Saturday night, and even the absinthe did not prevent Lotte from experiencing a small thrill when she saw Andre coming into the bistro. She managed to speak his name out loud, and when he turned towards her in recognition, she felt a diffuse happiness spread through her body. Bringing a bottle and a single glass, he came over to where she sat alone.

He looked somehow troubled, but to Lotte's relief, it seemed he wasn't looking for conversation. He was evidently content merely to sit with his hand carressing her thigh under cover of the table. Meanwhile he poured and drank one coup de rouge after another.

Somebody started to sing.

Before long, a group of drunken matelots launched into a rival song of their own, and the plangent notes of the first song, a ballad of unrequited love, were drowned beneath the robust stanzas of a German drinking song. Next -- inevitably -- came the Marseilleise and then an assortment of other marches, after which one of the whores sang a lewd song about a procession of farmyard animals. The song was an English one, so for most of the audience the precise meaning of the verses was lost, but everyone joined in lustily for the chorus, accompanied as it was by a bawdy charade of obscene actions that transcended the language barrier.

When the singing reverted to another lovelorn ballad, Andre became sentimental. He leaned towards Lotte, breathing huge vinous sighs into her fragrant ear and pawing at her breasts. Her glass of absinthe had stood almost empty for some time, and now Lotte judged that it was time to leave. She swallowed the very last, bitter dregs and led Andre outside.

In the alley, Lotte braced herself against a wall and hoisted her skirts as Andre leaned clumsily over her. "Ah Lotte, Lotte, my love, what am I to do?" he slurred.

"Careful of my dress," Lotte slurred back. Impatient for the fires of her fleshly desire to be kindled, she arched her back and pulled down the front of her dress. Tangling her fingers in Andre's hair, she pulled his face into her bosom. Andre had always been one of her favorites: he was practically a gentleman after all, with smoothly shaved cheeks and soft sensitive hands. The kind of man that she would one day like to marry...

She fell into a reverie. The other boys were nice too of course, but they were only workmen, or tradesmen at best. And anyway, some of them were married already. Men liked her, she knew that, but while she attracted them easily enough at night, Lotte could never understand how or why they hid from her in the day. Her conscience was clear, for she never took their money and that meant she wasn't a whore. And in any case, she worked as a milliner's shop-girl, and so surely the world could only regard her as she regarded herself: that is, as a perfectly respectable young lady. But when it came to men, she had to admit she didn't understand them at all. Ah, but men were such strange unfathomable creatures.

Like a flight of pigeons, her fluttering thoughts came full circle to alight once more in her soft young body, which of its own volition was now straining powerfully against Andre's manhood, sliding up and down, enveloping, containing... Lotte had never developed any special techniques, but her instincts were strong and there was an odd sincerity to her lovemaking.

"Oh! Come inside me! Come inside me!" she whispered, clutching at Andre, clawing his buttocks, burying her face in his neck. Itching and writhing, deep within her, the animal urgency grew and grew. She clung desperately to her desire, squeezing, pressing herself around it, offering herself, inviting, coaxing the death-itch to explode in her body, on the very point of self-annihilation -- but before she could lose herself completely, Andre, as he always did, compulsively pulled out of her before he came, (could she not hold onto a man for even ten more seconds!), and the full-blooded cry that waited to burst forth from her belly slipped stillborn into the world in the form of a disappointed whimper.

The damp heat of her naked sex was quenched by the rush of cold night air that now occupied the place where moments before Andre's engorged member had been ravaging her. She thought of Gaston, son of the patron at the bistro: he would have stayed inside her, pushed her to the edge and sent her soaring into ecstasy. His colossal appetite would fill her; he would thrust away endlessly; he would never leave her hungry.

She grabbed Andre's hand and guided it to her wet vagina. Pressing and bumping against it so that the swollen folds of her aroused flesh tugged at her clitoris like a bell rope, her rasping breath raced in and out so fast it rattled in her throat until at last she sucked in a final gasp of air to let it out again in a low, keening moan.

"Gaston! Gaston!..."

Tears ran down her face. She clung to Andre, sobbing into his collar.

Far from being jealous, Andre felt embarrassed, as though he had taken advantage of a child. He wondered how old Lotte in fact was. He felt the vitality of the pliable young body in his arms, studied the fine wisps of blonde hair that curled down from the delicate white skin of her nape. A fallen country girl from the apple orchards of Normandy. The thought of her lost innocence excited him. Gently, experimentally, he began once more to move the hand that she still held trapped between her legs, but she immediately released him, seized his hand and covered it in kisses.

"Oh Monsieur Andre, Monsieur Andre, you are so good to me."

"Upon my word, Lotte."

"I must go now. I will never forget you and you must promise never to forget me."

She looked into his face, gave him a serious smile, squeezed his hand once more and ran off.

On his way out of the alley, just before it rejoined the boulevard, Andre passed the old whore Fifi with one of her customers. The man -- a sailor to all appearances -- was already busily poking away, and Fifi winked at Andre over his shoulder. As the seaman slobbered over one exposed breast, Fifi flaunted the other for Andre's delectation. In his loins, Andre felt the faint stirrings of desire once more, and he hesitated, half-tempted to pay for her favors after the sailor had had his turn. But the man kept grunting away steadily, and after a few moments Andre thought better of it and went off in search of another coup de rouge instead.

As he walked away, he realised with a shock that Fifi had reminded him of Therese. Such a raddled old doxy could in no way be said to resemble the refined genteel lady of whom he was enamoured, and yet there were certain elements -- the Rubenesque line of her neck, the confident almost haughty angle of her chin, the generous unabashed fullness of her breasts -- that were ripe with the same promise, that spoke of possibility, of interchangeability, of permutations... and suddenly the pieces of the puzzle slipped sideways into place: he wanted Therese, of that he was certain, and now at last his inventor's mind began to see how her unusual pre-condition might perhaps be fulfilled to the mutual satisfaction of them both.

The following Wednesday, Andre bicycled across the park and knocked at Therese's door rather earlier than usual. He was excited. His objective stood firmly in his mind's eye. All that was now lacking was a definite plan for attaining it.

He was shown into her rooms, and for once he seemed to have surprised her:

"Monsieur Andre. You see I have not yet completed my toilette. But pray come in and be seated. I shall join you in one moment. Should I ask the concierge to bring you some tea?"

"Dearest Therese, I fear I am come too early. But how good of you then to admit me."

"We are so intimate, I think, that I should hardly wish to have you wait outside."

"I am your grateful servant, Mademoiselle."

She answered Andre's gallant bow with a smile and a modest downward glance, and then withdrew to her boudoir.

Andre sat. He waited. After thirty seconds he stood again and began pacing. What could she be doing? To his inexpert eyes, her toilette had seemed perfect; she was as properly dressed as he had ever seen her. He tried to imagine what final sartorial flourish she might be adding. He endeavored to construct urbane compliments that he might employ to good effect when she returned...

His impatience overmastered him.

He strode across the room to the door of her bedroom.

"Therese?" No answer. He knocked discreetly. "Therese?"

Silence.

He looked about him apprehensively, almost fearfully, as if some trap were about to be sprung. He was acutely aware of the pulse in his neck that fed the hot blood to his crimson ears.

He knocked once more and forthwith entered her room.

Therese with perfect composure was sitting fully dressed upon the edge of her bed. She smiled at him coquettishly.

"Monsieur, you are so bold," she murmured.

He went to her. Pausing only to hurriedly press her hand to his ardent lips, he turned her around.

"Oh Monsieur!"

Therese knelt at the foot of the bed with her face buried in the coverlet and her glorious bottom presented to him in unambiguous invitation.

Starting from her ankles, Andre slid his hands upwards, gathering and lifting her skirts as he went, his arms filling with crumpled folds of the severely tailored broadcloth as, like a snowplow, he swept her legs clear of the layers of dark material and exposed the long white frilly pantaloons that softly barred him from the firm smooth fleshly shapes within.

Andre gasped, almost wept for joy as he reverently removed her underwear and Therese's rear was revealed before him, naked and undefended.

Therese moved one hand over her vagina, partly to prevent Andre from entering her there, and also partly for her own self-gratification.

Andre shed his trousers in an instant. Overbrimming with wonderment and desire, he placed his hands on her buttocks and eased himself towards her. The tip of his penis nudged insistently at her anus. Therese reached behind her and pulled at one cheek while Andre pushed at the other. Therese breathed in and consciously relaxed and in a moment Andre was inside her.

Andre moved tentatively at first, afraid of being expelled, but while intimate secretions lubricated his exploratory thrusts, her tight sphincter locked around the base of his glans whenever he came too close to leaving her altogether. Sliding, slipping, gliding, he worked his way further in. Therese's anal muscles squeezed him, bringing back redoubled memories of her strong fingers circled around his cock.

Therese groaned and pushed against him, massaging her sex with increasing intensity. She climaxed once as Andre kept pumping, feeling that he could last forever.

Inside her! Her flesh bumping against his! Penetration of a kind he had never experienced before, and with the woman who was to become his wife!

He watched his prick as it slid in and out of her: a fat smeared rod moving like a greased piston, like a machine, her anus like a starfish, like a cog on a shaft -- like a sprocket -- like a sprocket! Yes! And with a chain such as Vaucanson had used, connected to another, smaller gear on the rear wheel! Spinning pumping turning grinding, the radiating spokes a blur of motion, ratcheting deeper faster harder--

"Therese! Marry me! Be my bicycle!"

Perhaps he had not said the word aloud -- perhaps in reality he had said "wife!" But Therese was already shouting her reply. "Yes yes yes yes!"

He came deep inside her. Therese convulsed repeatedly in a meteor storm of minor climaxes, gripping his spurting member as wave after shuddering wave broke powerfully over them both, until at last they lay exhausted together upon the further shores of passion, spent and satisfied and in each others' arms.

[Historical footnote: The private diaries of Therese de la Rochefoucauld suggest that her engagement to Andre Guilmet, which was never publicly acknowledged by either party, was tacitly discontinued two weeks later. Therese died childless and unmarried in her 83rd year, shortly after the outbreak of World War One.

In addition to the chain-driven bicycle, Andre Guilmet also left the world an unpublished "autobiography," the bulk of which is written somewhat in the style of de Sade's "Justine," and consists of a detailed catalog of his sexual conquests interlarded with commentary on a variety of engineering feats and problems of the day.]

Our permanent collection of erotic stories