A Night in the Theatre

Copain is silent. And introspective. Demure... He seems to be searching within himself. Juliette, naked still, but no longer uncertain, no longer submissive, approaches him, stands behind him and puts her arms around his chest, and strokes it, slowly, slowly... He closes his eyes and relaxes, slowly, slowly...

We are holding our breaths. We never saw this coming. Gone is the commanding figure of Copain, the famous, towering figure; gone is diminutive figure of Juliette. They have come together in their intended constellation.

He moves her right hand to his crotch and squeezes it down. She accepts and squeezes the organ that is lurking there. She massages it through his trousers, while he starts leaning backward and entrusts himself to her arms. He moans audibly, eyes still closed. She slowly opens the zipper and fishes for his cock. Copain lets her, abandons himself to her. She finds his member, which stiffens within seconds, and milks it, slowly, deliberately, expertly... She has a plan, so it seems, as she stops when his moaning appears to indicate he is coming close.

She whispers, 'There will be more... No... there may be more, if you are a good, good boy, Sylvain...'

This is a dramatic turn-around! We are amazed! But our amazement is cut short, when she disengages herself from him, steps back -- he is stumbling to regain his balance -- and continues with, 'Frankly, I know it is you, Sylvain.

'Why don't you yourself try to recite my lines? To show me, if anything...'

He composes himself and readjusts his clothing, as they say; in more explicit, sober terms, he waits until his erection has completely subsided, tucks away his penis and closes his zipper. He wears his face like a mask for a moment until...

... Until he starts reciting, when he becomes alive again, face and body. He, this time, becomes alive... He uses all the bashfulness, resignation, hesitation of a true submissive and phrases his lines perfectly. Small, nervous, helpless gestures, an insecure posture, the hand flitting in front of his crotch and away...

QUOTE

I am going mad waiting for him. I crave him. I need his mercy.

He is my Master. He should return, no matter what made him go away, regardless of the disobedience I must have showed.

If he was simply tired of me, let him in his absence realise that he needs me too, in his own way, the way of a master.

Or is this simply another test of my subordinance to him? Then the length of his absence should be finite. My waiting should come to an end.

UNQUOTE

The acting, it is very beautifully done. Clearly, he is the author. But there is something else too. We feel his text comes from within. He ís Juliette, the role. We feel that Juliette, the actress, feels it too, in fact felt it before asking him to take his turn. His diction, his phrasing, the dynamics -- he shouts and whispers, drags and rushes - it is overpowering. A revelation. Our mouths drop open...

Not Juliette's. Her face gives off a deliberate, even considered expression. She appears to be developing a plan. But she does not push it. Instead, she merely whispers, 'Go on...'

And Sylvian goes on:

QUOTE

I have chained myself to the wall in the hallway, like he did to me so many times before. He has shown me off as a living statue and received visitors this way.

Occasionally, uninvited callers, the postman, a neighbour, have been treated to the sight of me and my proud, bare body. He never apologised to them for what they happened to see. I got the looks one might expect, of surprise, of admiration, of lust, of horror, of contempt, of pity. I did not mind. I was proud that way. His to keep and show.

UNQUOTE

He looks proud! He has withdrawn within himself and continues, in a whisper, slowly...

QUOTE

I put both of my ankles in restraints. And one wrist. The other I could not manage. I have closed the padlocks. The keys I have cast out of reach. I, the unconditional dependent, have gone for broke and shall wait for him until he returns.

UNQUOTE

He acts out the crooked postures in great detail. We see the restraints; we see him cast away the imaginary keys.

QUOTE

I cannot wait for him any longer.

UNQUOTE

He is resigned, at tether's end, low down and out... and stares vacantly into nothingness, eternally. Come what may, the ultimate consequence, the ultimate sacrifice to an absent god...

Juliette stands at a distance and does not move, for what seems an eternity, what is in fact one, two minutes. Then she approaches him, stands behind him and softly puts her hand on his shoulder.

'Sylvain, dear Sylvain... You know what you want to do...'

Copain sleepwalks to where he has left her dress to dry. He looks at it, without seeing, carefully picks it up, walks back to her. He holds out the dress and lets her step into it, raises it and zips it up. She is in control now. Copain is now Juliette, the servant-submissive.

He now stands still in front of her and awaits her commands. She smiles like a mother does to an amusingly naughty child and repeats, still softly, without emphasis,

'Sylvain... You know what you want to do...'

Do we know what she means? Are we shocked when he starts to disrobe? Indeed, we could not have foreseen this an hour ago, when she entered the theatre as a washed-up child and he commanded her left and right, degraded her, made her undress, show her intimate areas and lower herself doing that. But disrobing is what he does and we realise, after a moment's reflection and us drawing in a good lungful of breath: how could he not disrobe?

He takes off his black jacket, eyes on the ground, and hangs it neatly over the back of the nearest chair. The black tie is untied and goes the same way, neatly. His patent leather shoes -- he kneels down to remove them, first the right and then the left. He places them neatly side by side underneath the chair. Doesn't touch his -- black -- socks yet -- strange... Is he a shirt-first or a trousers-first man? It's the trousers that go first, as he calmly undoes the belt and the zipper, lowers the pair down below his knees and steps out of them, right foot first. He places them orderly on top of the jacket and tie. We cannot see his underpants yet, as the black linen shirt is long, nor any hint at what his sex is like. That is to change, as his shirt is next. He starts unbuttoning it from the top. First, we see a black vest appear, and a bit of sprouting chest hair at the neckline. When he has undone the bottom button, he takes a breath that must go to deep within himself, he is hardly conscious, and drops the shirt off his shoulders. There he stands, a less than commanding figure, dressed down in black vest, boxers and socks. Another deep breath and he bends over, lifts his right leg and takes off his sock. His left leg follows. Bare feet. His vest, and he reveals the hairy chest we recently started anticipating. His underpants, off and away - and the commanding and notoriously difficult Sylvain Copain-Auzières stands naked before his actress, cock at half-mast, as if awaiting her orders. On the stage of a playhouse.

But she gives no order. Nothing moves for another minute or two.

Then he sinks down on his knees and inches to right in front of her. We hear him breathing deeply in and out (He must be smelling her, being so close. Would she be excited?) He lifts the hem of her dress, deeply inhales again, produces his tongue and dives in -- he serves her cunnilingus, plainly: goes down on her.

What do we see? A world-famous, cerebral theatre director kneels in front of a previously promising, currently stalling actress, who arrived an hour ago totally flustered and was coaxed to get naked pretty soon after, whom he has bossed around the stage left and right -- here he knees at her feet and eats her out. Naked. She lets him.

Is she enjoying her power? Is she calculating? In any case, she lets him. She stands like a beautiful statue, legs apart, arms by her sides, but slightly separate from her body, palms of her hands spread open, head tilted backward, eyes closed -- his head shielded by her dress, thus in contact with her smells and warmth. A beautiful statue, a picture of female sensuality.

He shows he knows his way around a woman. So, if he has been a woman-eater, notoriously, he has learnt to sensitively service one. His tongue is velvet, as it slowly circulates around Juliette's flower of flesh. The centre of its journey is woman's sexual centre, the clitoris, which takes little time to shed its hood. But indulgence is overindulgence, so the tongue removes itself from the centre, travels the highways and byways of Juliette's cunt, the folds between the labia minora and majora, giving the slightest slaps against the wrinkly minora, teasing them, barely biting the juicy majora, tipping the clit for a moment and, oh, straying brief instances beyond the strict perimeter of the cunt, via the perineum to the anus with its faintly savoury flavour -- traveling this circuit round after round at varying speed, with delicate variations, the byways before the highways, the tipping before the teasing, the biting a touch softer, the slapping a tad harder, throwing an occasional mini-bite to the clit -- oh, so gently! And all the while the flower of flesh, its Bartholin's glands, secrete the lubricating fluids and self-flood Juliette's -- the actress' -- vagina. Divine irrigation.

Oh, alas, we cannot observe this action in detail. Copain's head and Juliette's dress obscure our view. But if we get close and listen well, we can hear his licking, slobbering sounds, as he takes her up and away. Because away and up he does take her -- within six, seven, eight minutes (who is counting?) he takes her to a condition, which transforms her into a tremor, and another and..., where all of her body shakes and shudders, her mouth opens and lets out a primeval groan and her arms open to all of the world, gods and demons. The point comes when her hands, first lifting the hem of her dress, grab his hair and utters a fierce animal cry. Then pushes him away.

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QUOTE

MASTER, no - MISTRESS: "You are mine, are you not? Mine to possess, mine to share, mine even to reject and to give away, even if that would break my own heart? You are objectively mine, are you not?"

JULIETTE, played by Sylvain, to the audience: My face grows pale at the thought of him, no - her giving me away. I gave myself to her, because I was hers, because I wanted to demonstrate my dependency, to show her that I was tied to her, in hopes of tying her to me in return. She, the stronger of us two, could henceforth have me at her disposal and have me satisfy her every whim. But not give me away - my greatest fear!

JULIETTE, to the MISTRESS: "I am yours, my dearest master, no - mistress, unconditionally, but I cannot consent to your giving me away. I would be nothing! I cannot consent to being nothing, a thing I'd loath. I'd hate myself if you'd give me away. "

JULIETTE, played by Sylvain, to the audience: The next moment - tears in my eyes and a burning cheek, as she has slapped me in the face.

MISTRESS: "Unconditionally! Don't you tell me what to do. I am the one that sets the conditions. I'll be your mistress unconditionally or I won't be your mistress at all. I'd leave. You should be satisfied to know that I own you and would love you, even if I gave you away. Do you understand?"

JULIETTE, to the MISTRESS: "Yes, yes," I sob as I fall on my knees at his feet, "forgive me."

JULIETTE, to the audience: He strokes my hair pensively, for a good while. This fails to calm me down. I anxiously wait.

MISTRESS: "I will try to forgive you. I hope I can. But you have rocked the foundations of our relationship."

JULIETTE, to the audience: Giving me away - no! But could it be that she is not giving me away? That she is merely testing how far she could go, what I would accept? But I have failed and "have rocked the foundations of our relationship." It sounds so ominous. I am frightened.

UNQUOTE

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EPILOGUE

Juliette, the actress, gets the role. That is, a different role in an entirely rewritten play. She plays the role of Sylvain, the Master, no - Mistress. And she does not get to be naked. (Had she begun to crave a nude role? Or did she remain, perhaps, the consummate professional, craving only to do what the role under consideration required?) The fact is that in the event she is dressed in a black suit, black shirt, black tie and black shoes. Yes, men's attire. Well, tailored. Hair plaited, Scandinavian style, stern. (We secretly regret that she is not nude throughout, but she is for a bit, so we count our losses and consider ourselves blessed.) There is only one other role, that of Juliette. That role is played by the man, who is also the director and writer, Sylvain Copain-Auzières. Him playing a role again, for the first time in about a dozen years, excited the theatre world. The commentators are truly excited about the fact that he plays the role of a woman and that he plays it nude. He has never played nude and never a woman. His reputation, rightly or wrongly, has made a bully out of him, that is, in the circles of his fiercest critics. Among his admirers, this is phrased as demanding, of either sex, but especially of women, but in any case, demanding with justification. Remember the times we live in, where the tide appears to be with women. Some critics praise his courage to do penance for his bullying of women. And his humility, for appearing naked, with lipstick, make-up and wig, without (visible) body hair. Yes, critics are united in their assessment that he made for a convincing woman, though for differing reasons. Some condemn him for confirming himself as the self-serving wimp, some praise him for confirming that he really, really understands women. The first category wondered why he did not have his dick cut off, the second found him convincing, notwithstanding the penis. Universal is the praise for Juliette, the actress. And if you ask us, she deserves it. She is a towering presence in "Attendant sans Défense" (Helplessly Waiting) and is truly considered to be back with a vengeance. She is considered a new role model for a sexy woman, in a proud, mature sort of way. Post #MeToo. Sexy woman 2.0.

The showbiz rags spread rumours that they are together now. The nature of their relationship is shrouded in mystery.

THE HAPPY END