Rose Sélavy Takes Manhattan

***Note: This story is based on a real series of photographs that modernist photographer Man Ray took of fellow artist Marcel Duchamp's female alter ego, Rose Sélavy, in 1921. Both artists were part of the Dada movement in New York at the time. There is no record to indicate that the two were ever lovers. The original photographs were quite sensual but not as overtly sexual as I depict them here.***

"Call me Rose"

Those were the words that Marcel Duchamp said to Man Ray the day he showed up at Man's apartment dressed as a woman.

It was a Sunday morning. Man answered the door dressed as he usually was at home, in his dirty nightshirt and slippers. And there, standing in front of him dressed to the nines in a fashionable women's coat and hat, was Marcel. Marcel wore the same expression of exuberant wit that he always did, the expression that always gave off the uncanny impression that he was smarter than everyone else around him. This time, however, the wry smile was decorated with shiny, ruby-red lipstick, and the sparkling eyes were made all the more brilliant with the addition of eyeliner and eyeshadow. Of course, Man thought to himself. If Marcel were to dress up as a woman, of course he would do it so flawlessly.

"Well, don't leave me out here in the hallway like this. I'm dying for a cup of coffee." Marcel grinned and walked into Man's apartment without waiting for him to let him in. As Marcel walked, Man noticed that his gait seemed different than it usually did. Indeed, everything about Marcel, every subtle movement of his body from his hips to his fingers, oozed femininity. This was femininity on hyperdrive, a perfect, platonic image of the Feminine incarnate.

By this time, Man was used to Marcel's eccentricities. The darling of the Dada artists' movement, Marcel Duchamp was given to enacting strange personas, often in connection with a new artistic concept. Instead of commenting on this new persona, Man simply put the coffee pot on the stove and waited for Marcel to offer some explanation.

Marcel sat down at the kitchen table and crossed his stockinged legs. "How do I look?"

"You are a modern day Venus," Man opined. "May I inquire as to the occasion?"

"Does a girl need an occasion to look nice?" Marcel batted his eyelashes seductively. Man set a cup of coffee down at the table and sat down next to Marcel, looking at him expectantly. "Alright Man," Marcel continued, "I'll tell you what I'm up to."

"Thanks, Marcel."

"I'm Rose right now, don't forget. I'm crafting an alter ego for myself. Some days I'm Marcel Duchamp. Other days I'm Rose Sélavy." Marcel stirred a spoonful of sugar into his coffee and took a deep sip, evidently seeming to think that this explanation was enough for Man to understand his intentions. As it turned out, Man understood perfectly. He and Marcel had been chatting for years about the outsized importance of artist names in the world of the art salon. Since making a splash as the superstar of the Dada movement in New York, Marcel had toyed with his own fame in his art. The logical next step was to venture back into obscurity by taking on a whole new name and persona. It all made perfect sense to Man, who had half expected Marcel to do something like this for a while.

He had not, however, been quite prepared for the exuberant mastery with which Marcel invested himself in his character. Everything about Marcel's composure seemed to be just slightly altered in order to exude an air of sensuality: the dainty way his fingers curled around the coffee mug, the way his coiffed hair fell on his shoulders, the way his eyebrows knitted themselves into a coy expression. It was as if Marcel were acting out a vision of femininity that Man had always dreamed of but had yet to find in an actual woman-a fulfillment of a platonic ideal crafted inside the male imagination and made flesh by Marcel's witchcraft.

"So this is the new bachelor pad," Marcel was saying, looking around. The little studio apartment was littered with cameras, paintbrushes, negatives, and containers of developing fluid. Man had not been expecting company, but even if he had, he doubted that he would have had the energy to clean up.

"Yep," he sighed. "She finally threw me out of the 14th street apartment."

"You're a free man!"

"I'm a fucking mess, but enough about me. Rose Sélavy is going to need some publicity, isn't she? How about letting me take some photos of you some time?" Man could see it, how he wanted the angle of the light to align with the angle of the camera-the delicate tones with which he would capture the liquid sensuality of Marcel's new persona. The thought excited his fancy, and for a moment his mind lingered on the subversive erotics of the imaginary photographs he could construct.

"You read my mind!" Marcel smiled mischievously. "You're single now! You need a new muse anyway."

"I'm sure you'd make a lovely muse, Marcel. Five o'clock tomorrow night, then? I want the dusk lighting."

"It's a date. And don't forget: call me Rose."

***

The next evening, Rose took the C train south to the West 4th Street station and walked to Man's apartment in Greenwich Village. She received a few whistles and a handful of askance glances on the trip downtown, but most people did not bat an eyelid. It was New York, after all. As she walked to Man's apartment, her heels clicking on the ground, she felt unaccountably corporeal. The stockings, the wig, the undergarments-they all served as insistent reminders that she occupied a body moving through the world. Is this, she wondered, how women feel all the time?

Marcel was in there somewhere, observing everything from a comfortable passengers' seat, but he wanted Rose to take the reins tonight. How far could he take this charade? How deeply into Rose Sélavy could he delve? Rose walked up the stairs to Man's apartment and rapped on the door. Man let her in with a smile. He had cleaned himself up, evidently for the occasion of this photo shoot. His hair was combed and parted, and he wore a smart two-piece suit. Why, she wondered? In truth, Man was not sure himself why he had felt the need to dress up for the shoot, except that Rose's impeccable taste in clothing felt somewhat contagious.

"My dearest Rose, your beauty could outshine the moon," he pontificated, making a low, theatrical bow and kissing Rose's hand. His eyes shone with good-natured irony.

"Dear sir, how bold you are!" Rose responded with equal theatrical flair. "Buy me dinner first, why don't you?"

Man laughed. He led Rose to where he had set up the background for the shoot: a black curtain with a chair in front, bathed in soft, pale light from a lamp to the left. Rose took a seat, crossed her legs, and adjusted her skirts. "I'm finally finding out," she observed, "what it's like to be a model for the famous photographer, Man Ray himself!"

"Don't get too far ahead of yourself, Miss Sélavy!" Man joked, "You don't want to know what I usually do to my models, nice girl like you."

"Oh, I'm not a nice girl," said Rose, winking at Man. Man blew her a kiss, playing along with the act. Marcel was clearly quite invested in this character.

"Now, I want you to lean back in the chair a bit, but look directly at the camera, that's it." Man snapped his first photograph of Rose, who had leaned back in her chair as directed with a posture of easy, confident grace. "Good. Very good. Next I want you to angle your body to the left, but still face my camera to the right, looking over your shoulder." Rose did as she was told. Man adjusted her head with his hands so that it tilted slightly down, then he placed his hands on her shoulders to get her to release the tension she held there. Yes, good. He wanted to convey a sense of the plasticity of Rose's body, the moldability of its features. "Play with your scarf, your jewelry. I want to see you feel the textures." Man took two more photographs of Rose as she stroked the silk scarf she wore, luxuriating in its liquid texture.

Man took a step back, looking at Rose the way he always looked at his photographic subjects-staring deep into her to try and uncover the seed of what she might become through the photographic frame. "Take off your scarf and your jacket," he said. "Now uncross your legs, and stare directly into the eye of the camera, down here." As Rose followed his instructions, he knelt down in front of the chair and directed the camera upwards at her. She leaned forward, one hand grazing her rouged cheek, and stared down at the camera. There was a ferocity in her eyes, an entreating, come-hither expression that Man hoped against hope would show up in the developed photograph. "Legs apart a little bit more."

"I'm not that kind of model, sir!" Rose teased, "But just this once, maybe I'll set my morals aside." She spread her legs, not wide enough that one could see what was hidden beneath her skirt but wide enough to suggest the possibilities of what might lurk underneath.

"Good girl," Man muttered, running his hands up and down her legs to position them how he wanted them.

Suddenly, Man stopped himself. What was he doing? Was he really flirting with Marcel? Man had been close friends with Marcel for years, and he had never thought to look at him before in the way he looked at Rose now. It had never occurred to him that running his hands up and down the stockinged legs of his friend would feel so pleasurable. Man was falling into the habits he always fell into with his models-leaning into the intoxicating dominance of having a subject who would mold her body entirely according to his will. And he was not sure if he wanted to let himself go down that path with Rose Sélavy.

Rose gazed back at Man, attempting to read his expression. At what point, she wondered, had the game of flirtation ceased to be merely a game? How far would she take this drag act? "I'm not afraid to get a little dirty, Man," she said, probing.

"I...I don't..." Man trailed off, attempting to articulate what he wanted to ask. Finally, he decided to break character. "What's the end game here, Marcel?"

For a moment, Rose's affected mannerisms were dropped, and it was Marcel speaking again. "I don't know, Man. But you're feeling what I'm feeling, right? I never realized that posing for a photograph would feel so...erotic. Just this once, let's give those art salon folks a scandal to write home about."

His eyes-her eyes?-gleamed with that submissive greed that Man always found so intoxicating in women, an expression of deep, eager trust that put Man at ease and made him feel as if he could do anything. He had never thought he would see such an expression on Marcel's face before, but somehow it made perfect sense to see it on Rose's face. There it was, all out in the open: she wanted him, and much to his surprise, he found that he wanted her.

Fuck it, thought Man. He grinned. "Okay," he said. "Let's cause a fuckin' scandal. Tell me this, Rose: am I allowed to be a little rough with you?"

"Yes," Rose breathed. "Please."

"Alright. You asked for it," he told her, beginning to undo his belt. "Put your hands behind your back." Rose obeyed unquestioningly, eyes gleaming with anticipation, and Man fastened his belt tightly around her wrists, tying them together behind her back. He watched as Rose adjusted her posture, getting used to the discomfort of the confines, and he snapped a quick photograph of her struggle. "How do you feel?"

Rose drew in a deep breath. "Ready for anything," she said.

Man walked in a slow circle around her, deciding what he wanted to do next. His next move, he decided, would be to constrict Rose's movements a bit more. He fetched several more belts from his closet. He wrapped a belt around each of Rose's ankles, tying them to the legs of the chair. Then he took the last belt and looped it around her neck. He tightened the belt, stopping Rose's breathing for a moment, then loosened it a hair to allow her to draw in a labored breath. She looked up at him, staring straight into his eyes with determination. Man tightened the belt again, then loosened it and hooked it into place like a collar around Rose's neck.

"The sight of this will really make the prudes squirm," he pronounced, adjusting the lamp to illuminate Rose's body more fully and snapping a picture from a side angle. "Seeing the great Marcel Duchamp looking so powerless."

"Have mercy on me, sir!" Rose teased, grinning.

"Not a chance," Man winked. He ran his hands up and down the length of her chest, feeling the solidity of the flesh and muscles underneath. His hands traveled down her legs, taking in their texture underneath the stockings. "I want a picture of you trying to close your legs," he said. Rose adjusted her legs so that the knees almost touched, but the restraints around her ankles prevented her from closing them completely. It was this tension that Man captured with a quick snap of the camera as Rose tried unsuccessfully to preserve a fleeting semblance of dignity.

Man fetched a small pair of scissors, and with a quick, decisive motion, cut a small nick in Rose's blouse and ripped the fabric apart at the neck, leaving a foot-long gash in the garment. Rose gasped. Man laughed. He cut two tears in her skirt and arranged the fabric so that each of her legs were exposed. Then he went at her rayon stockings with his hands, tearing wide gashes in them and exposing the flesh of her thighs. Rose let out a low moan as she felt the facades of her persona coming undone. Man clutched the flesh of her legs possessively. He took up his camera and captured several photographs of the body in its tattered clothing. The rips in the clothing cast shadows on Rose's skin, appearing as dark singularities-gaps, gashes, deep and vulnerable.

He wrapped a hand around the belt that collared her neck, pulling it upward and making Rose tilt her head up toward him. She stared up at him with those sparkling makeupped eyes. Her eyelids were dark with eyeshadow, her eyebrows neatly penciled over, and her lips a deep, immaculate red. Chuckling to himself, Man took his thumb and smudged the makeup on her left eye, smearing it to the side. She let out a whimper as he did so. Man paid no heed. He smudged the makeup on her right eye just as he had her left, then he did the same to her lips. The lipstick blotted her cheek with an insistent, invasive red; it looked like a gash in the side of her face, an incision into the aesthetic perfection she had worked so carefully to craft.

He brought the camera to his eyes and directed it downward at Rose's face, close up so that every inky imperfection in her makeup was visible. He took two photographs, one from above and the other in profile. "I told you I'd rough you up a little," he said, running his hands over her scalp underneath the wig. He adjusted the wig so that it lay askew atop her head. Much as he appreciated Rose's flawless feminine beauty, he found a perverse pleasure in unmaking her femininity-scattering it, forcing her to scrounge around dusty corners to find its remnants.

"I must look a mess," Rose observed in a low tone.

"You do," Man concurred. "A beautiful, sensual mess." He held her head in his hands and leaned down to kiss her on the forehead. As he leaned down, however, he changed his mind about the intended location of the kiss. Rose's lips looked so enticing in their vulnerability, so red and deep and unabridged, that he decided he must taste them. He took possession of her lips with his own lips, curving around them and taking in their texture, the conflicting qualities of malleability and strength they exuded. He straightened himself up. "I'm going to slap you around a bit now, is that okay?"

"Yes"

"Good." He delivered a precise blow to her left cheek with the back of his hand, leaving a visible patch of red across it. She drew a sharp breath in and closed her eyes, but she did not cry out. She stared at Man with wide eyes, daring him to test her endurance. He slapped her chest along the tear in the garment, then her legs. Again he struck her legs, then again, hard, on the same spot as before. She let out an involuntary whimper as his hand came down again on her thigh, squirming in her seat against the restraints. "You're not going anywhere," he told her, holding her in place by her neck and giving her three more even, methodical blows to the thigh. Her breaths came deep and quick now as she tried to breathe through the pain. One blow, two blows, three blows came down on her leg again, and each blow made Rose lose herself a bit more to the animal impulse to cry out and wriggle away. But there was nowhere to wriggle. Man's steady, unrelenting administering of pain left her no escape.

"Aaahh!" She cried out finally, unable to contain herself. It was a deep cry, a man's cry, Marcel Duchamp's cry, but she did not care. In answer, Man gave her one last biting blow to the cheek. Rose lowered her head, subdued.

Man wanted to capture the moment before it passed, and he hurried to turn on a second lamp. He pointed it directly at Rose's face. The bright, unforgiving light illuminated all its imperfections: the smudged makeup, the reddened cheek where she'd been slapped, the dominated expression. One did not have to see the restraints or the tattered women's clothing to sense the erotics of this photograph; it was raw powerlessness that Man had captured, a deep and gratifying submission.

Man took a step back. What now? If he had reached this point with any of his previous models, the logical next step would have been to have sex with her. He would have untied the belts that bound her, thrown her onto the bed, and thrust himself inside of her. Did he want to do the same with Rose? There was the small matter, of course, that it was illegal. Officially, sodomy was a felony, but Man knew that, alone in his apartment, he and Rose were not very likely to be caught. Still, the prospect of fucking Rose just as he would fuck any other woman seemed like a waste of an opportunity; if he were going to have his way with a woman endowed with the gifts of male anatomy, why not take advantage of it?

Rose waited patiently for Man's next move. She felt serene, invested entirely in the deep thrill of submission that coursed through her veins. How had she never before thought to explore the impulse to submit, she wondered? Why had it taken a woman's dress and wig for the idea to seem possible?

Man set down the camera. "That's enough photographs for now," he said. "No more distractions." With two hands, he slid Rose's skirt a few inches down her legs, exposing her erection. She grinned at him sheepishly, the evidence of her arousal on open display between her legs. Man looked at it with curiosity. He had seen other men's genitals before, in the showers back at school, but he had never observed an erect penis so closely, and he had certainly never seen one whose erection he had caused. There was a power in the knowledge that this cock was, in a sense, of his making; he had brought it up to its throbbing state with every expression of dominance he had laid upon Rose.

He spat on his hand and began to stroke Rose's cock, up and down, just as he would with his own. He took in the texture, the fleshy foreskin, the solidity underneath. Rose let out a deep moan as Man stroked. She began to move her hips up and down involuntarily. Yes, Man thought to himself, tightening his grip and increasing the speed of his strokes. He took hold of the belt around Rose's neck and clutched it tightly, constricting her breathing. As she drew in labored breaths, Rose felt as if there was something building up inside her that longed for release-doubly so, as breath built up in her chest and an orgasm brewed deep in her core.

"Come for me," Man whispered. "I won't let go of this belt until you do." He tightened the belt still more, choking Rose, who stared up at him in wide-eyed concentration. The orgasm was upon her, she was so close, tingling from her neck to her groin. Yes, yes, that was it, here it was, yes!