MAÏA’S SEX FICTION
What do sex toys think? Who will free the small penises? How do you write a politically flawless porn movie? Because some questions don’t (yet!) have an answer, the wisest course is to invent them. This summer, the columnist of “La Matinale” Maïa Mazaurette approaches sex from its fictional side.
Ladies and gentlemen, my non-binaries, good evening. First of all, I would like to thank you for inviting me to speak this evening on this stage of the august theater of Saint-Firmin-sur-Loire. It’s a huge honour. Of course, I can’t claim that I’ve always dreamed of giving a TEDx talk: being born fourteen millennia ago, I don’t utter the word “always” lightly, unlike you mortals.
I have been asked this evening, as an antediluvian entity, to answer a question that greatly agitates contemporary France: was sex better before? Boomers think so, and guess what, their intuition is correct, even if their reasoning is dead wrong. Indeed, dear creatures, sex was better before.
For starters, sex was better before the mechanisms of reproduction were discovered. In the tribe where I was born, we fornicated when we could, as we could, come what may. We did have a few rituals, a few beliefs, but in the corner of the Caucasus where I come from, we were far from having invented hot water and even further from having invented the Kama-sutra. It was the time of innocence: not very interesting, not very hygienic (in relation to the lack of hot water), but funny.
I allow myself a big leap forward (because I wanted to do a TEDx conference, not a colloquium at the Collège de France) to confirm that sex was also better in ancient Greece. Each perversion, each fulgurance, each desire could be excused by recourse to such and such a divinity. I slept there with men, women, of all conditions and of all ages. On this subject, I can assure you that a
In the 18th century, we slept divinely
And what about the transition to monotheism? The invention of the feeling of guilt remains, even today, one of my best erotic memories: whereas my partners offered themselves until then without personal torments – as long as no pregnancy or no scandal came to disturb our business -, I quickly felt the wind turn. The women gave in only after months of dithering, convinced that their god was watching us even in the bedroom (or the pile of hay), while the men yielded to me with even more shame, mortified that they were of their inclinations. For me, the transgression added to the carnal pleasure: creatures who sincerely believed in the flames of hell were ready to risk their souls there in exchange for a few minutes with me. How could I not be flattered?
It was when the Marquis de Sade began to write his catalogs of punishments that Judeo-Christian logic found its apotheosis: unable to escape the sufferings of guilt, the Western world decided to submit to it absolutely. A growing percentage of my lovers and mistresses wanted to be abused, and I, of course, was in an ideal position to accede to their demands. I had more than thirteen millennia of violence behind me, real or symbolic, physical or moral, brutal or ritualized, so many areas in which I excelled. During the Enlightenment, shadow creatures became sex rock stars. I loved the 18th century. From boudoirs to salons, under mountains of lace, one slept divinely there.
Not that the 19th century was left out! On the one hand, the figure of the vampire was entering popular culture (considerably facilitating my erotic encounters), on the other hand, many psychologically tortured and far too emotional young people were discovering the feeling of love, in the modern sense of the term. Ah, the invention of love marriage! Great surges of the heart! Fiery declarations, Madame Bovary, Goethe, Lord Byron! It usually ended in suicide but in the meantime, frankly, it was great. What surprises me the most, in retrospect, is that no social rigidity managed to contain the bubbling of the erotic pressure cooker.
It is therefore time, now, to approach modernity. Oh, I suspect you didn’t pay 25 euros for the seat to hear me rant about the mysteries of Eleusis. You want me to talk about you – I owe you the courtesy, since you’ve been talking about vampires for decades.
So let’s move on to the Roaring Twenties (overpriced) to go directly to May 68, the pill, abortion, and all these inventions allowing everyone (and everyone) to live their sexuality freely. It was progress – no immortal will claim otherwise. But in my opinion, this progress has led to a considerable setback: humanity has almost lost, in a few decades, all the virtuosity it had previously shown in avoiding reproduction. Practices have refocused around penetration. For me, who had spent millennia reveling in the inventiveness of my lovers, never short of a surprising knack or a daring appetizer, it was a clear regression.
Brilliant, this invention of sex toys!
So if I had to pick a pinnacle of the 20th century, from my selfish point of view, I’d rather put it in the 1990s (I should point out that vampires can’t get HIV). Indeed, seventy years after F. W. Murnau’s repugnant Nosferatu, Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire finally made my condition desirable, while restoring an important truth: You may be eternal, but you still take showers, thank you very much.
So let me tell you that when Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt were cast as the lead characters, we were a bunch of immortals, including ghouls and wraiths, sabering a maiden or two. Because in the end, dear audience, here we touch on the crux of the problem that I am responsible for elucidating: the best time for sex is when you feel desired and accepted in your integrity.
For the past few years, I would go so far as to say that I have begun a real renaissance. The fantasy of human immortality is only becoming clearer, and even if it goes through rudimentary expedients such as transhumanism or cosmetic surgery, I do not despair of one day finding companions who are a little more lasting than through the past.
Since I made my story public, I have always had an army of millennials under my window, ready to cajole me for a good bite. Don’t worry, I stubbornly refuse: today’s humans already don’t know how to spend thirty seconds without looking at their notifications on their smartphone, what would they do with eternity? If you can’t get bored, it’s better to avoid a career like mine.
Finally, I would like to say that despite the delights of the past, the sexuality of contemporary France does not fare badly at all. If, as I divulged in the introduction, the sex was indeed better before, it is not a question of practices. Not even opportunities, or pleasures. Brilliant, this invention of sex toys!
No, if sex was better before, it is above all because of the relentlessness that your compatriots show in maintaining the nostalgia for a “sexuality before” that they never knew. This persistence in denigrating the present, in literally sulking its pleasure, does not honor your erotic culture, but I can only rejoice in it. As a creature of evil, I feast on the suffering of humans. If you want to eternally torture yourself for being born in the wrong era, please keep going: not only will I be born stronger every night, but I can give more TEDx talks. Thank you for listening to me, I wish you a very, very good night.
Find here all the chronicles of Maïa Mazaurette in “La Matinale”
