A modern day libertine, Ava Saint is a mistress and co-conspirator engaged with a select few adventurous, intelligent men and women. Some come claiming foolishly to be “made to do anything” that she desires, when force is hardly required. 
There is within today’s man a profound intolerance for the sense of humiliation which is demanded every day of our human nature and to which we submit everywhere: we submit in the office and in the street; we submit in the country. Everywhere men feel that human nature has been profoundly humiliated, and what is left of religion finally humiliates him in the face of God who, after all, is merely a hypostasis of work. I do not think one could dream of denying this nostalgia. I imagine that if we are gathered here, whatever diverse elements could be at play in the fact of the presence of everyone in this hall, it is a dominant element which has certainly determined this presence: it is the nostalgia for a life which ceases to be humiliated; it is the nostalgia for a life which ceases to be separated from what lies behind the world. It is not a question of finding behind the world something which dominates it; there is nothing behind the world which dominates man, there is nothing that can humiliate him; behind the world, behind the precise limits where we live, there is only a universe whose bursting open is incomparable, and behind the universe there is nothing.
First, they would like to see a return to lipstick, which usually costs slightly more than gloss. Second, the companies believe that in down times women will continue to splurge on lip lacquer even as they make do with last season’s dress. But do economists, and not just companies that need to move a lot of lip color, believe that lipstick sales could skyrocket as the economy tanks?
I asked him to give me the illusion that I could live without money. The woman who gave me the idea was kept herself, in the tradition one could expect. Using her looks and ability to seduce with a few dropped words and glances, she was taken care of respectably, leaving her free to pursue an advanced degree, travel as she pleased, invest in socially meaningful work. Sure, she always met me dressed impeccably and in the lounges of very pretty hotels. The champagne would always be a gift.
But would I ever be satisfied as that most conventional sort of mistress?
What would my kept life allow me? To greet the receptionist my salon, to flirt with my aesthetician (I never need to worry about distracting myself from the pain of wax when lain on her table; she’s absorbing all on her own), to be warmly recognized each time for my signature manicure, all these trappings of girlishness that even I feel somewhat indulgent for adopting as routine, to come and go as if money doesn’t exist. And I do. My pet, a sort of combined personal assistant, servant, and confidante has already attended to all the frothy details. So I may. So I don’t have to.
Divine, bent, silk. I could lounge in these for hours. (Now do I want the lingerie, or the arch of her foot?)
