FUGUE

Countervailing the cultural currents of French laïcité my good friend Currado Malaspina was raised in rural Roussillon as a Manichean catholic. Taught from a very young age to abide by at least six or seven of the existing ten commandments, Malaspina's early years were defined by selective prohibitions and arbitrary taboos. One needn't therefore be a post-Freudian structuralist to appreciate the provenance of Currado's subsequent libertinage. 

To be schooled by parish deacons, cruel provincial priests and frosty eczemed nuns can prove oddly salubrious to the nascent libido. As has been pointed out by people much smarter than myself, nothing whets the thirst like drought (rien aiguise la soif comme la sécheresse).

His education was anything but sentimental but with his solid grounding in exegetical Latin, Currado became expert in grafting complex meaning to utter nonsense.

Persuading Monique Carcuela to consign herself as innocent muse was easy enough, especially when the enterprise was pitched in the fashionable artist argot of the time. Dragging her through the smutty cesspool of Malaspina's twisted choreography took a good deal more finesse.

Citing Emerson, Locke, Donne and Ram Dass was anything if not a stretch but ultimately what sealed the dirty deal was when Currado promised the ambitious Carcuela that an introduction to his third cousin, Henri-Georges Clouzot, was imminent. That he wasn't even remotely related to the famous filmmaker never occurred to Currado as much of an obstacle.

And so together, with quill in hand, Carcuela and Currado went on to reenact in excruciating detail each charlie-horsed leaf of Vatsyayana's vaunted Kama Sutra.

... while adding a few charming variations of their own.