Saturday, October 9, 2021

Anaïs Nin's LITTLE BIRDS: Highbrow Schoolgirl & Teen Erotica

Here's Amazon's description of Anaïs Nin's Little Birds:

From the beach towns of Normandy to the streets of New Orleans, these thirteen vignettes introduce us to a covetous French painter, a sleepless wanderer of the night, a guitar-playing gypsy, and a host of others who yearn for and dive into the turbulent depths of romantic experience.

Little Birds is not only the title of the book, but "Little Birds" is the title of the first erotic story where Manuel, a poor artist and exhibitionist, used little birds to attract schoolgirls to his apartment. 

Manuel and Thérèse, his trapeze artist wife, found an apartment with light for painting and with a terrace that was across the street from a school. Coincidentally, the schoolgirls had recess in the yard below Manuel's terrace. Consequently: 

"He was taken with a slight trembling, like that of a man anticipating great pleasures."

"He looked down for a moment at the little girls playing, watching their legs under the fluttering skirts. How they fell upon each other in games, how their hair flew behind as they ran! Their tiny breasts were already beginning to show in their very plumpness."

"The schoolyard was animated. To Manuel it was an orgy of legs and very short skirts, which revealed white panties during games. He was growing feverish, standing there among his birds [...]"

To attract the nymphets, Manuel filled the terrace with "birds of every kind and called, "Why don't you come up and see?"

"[F]our little girls of all sizes-one with long blond hair [...]" accepted Manuel's invitation. And while the schoolgirls were admiring the birds, Manuel went to "pee". 

"He left the door of the toilet open so that they could see him. Only one of them, the shy one, turned her face and fixed her eyes on him. Manuel had his back to the girls but looked over his shoulder too see if they were watching him. When he noticed the shy girl, with the enormous eyes, she glanced away."

On the subsequent, and presumably last, visit of the schoolgirls, Manuel donned a kimono.

"Manuel stood behind the girls. Suddenly his kimono opened, and when he found himself touching long blond hair, he lost his head. Instead of wrapping his kimono, he opened it wider, and as the girls turned they all saw him standing there in a trance, his big penis erect, pointing at them. They all took fright, like little birds, and ran away."

"Runaway", the last story in Little Birds, is very similar to Henry Miller's In Quiet Days in Clichy, where Joey and Carl, both writers, shared an apartment Clichy, France. Carl brought home Colette, a fifteen-year-old runaway:

Carl said, "[...] I brought a girl home with me --- a waif. She can't be more than fourteen. I just gave her a lay. Did you hear me? I hope I didn't knock her up. She's a virgin."

And a number of the other erotic stories in Little Birds is peppered with nympholopsy. For example, in "Two Sisters", Dorothy and Edna were from a well-to-do family in Maryland: 

"[...] their father, with his eyes wet and brilliant, liked to take the girls on his knees, slip his hand under their little dresses and caress them."

In "A [16-year-old] Model", a nude model shared that she gets shivers when men look at her:

"I love it. Ever since I was a little girl I liked taking off my clothes. I liked to see how people looked at me. I used to take off my clothes at parties, as soon as people were a little drunk. I liked showing my body. Now I can't wait to take them off. I enjoy being looked at. It gives me pleasure. I get shivers of pleasure right down my back when men look at me."

And in "Saffron", the reader is introduced to Fay:

"Fay had been born in New Orleans. When she was sixteen she was courted by a man of forty whom she had always liked for his aristocracy and distinction." 

Of Anaïs Nin, Newsweek opined: "One of contemporary literature's most important writers."

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