I wasn’t thinking about conventional tourism when I studied the map of Paris for the first time years ago. It was July and I was in the French capital to spend a year doing an internship at a multinational company. In addition to discovering a new city, what really interested me during that summer was making the most of every minute with my boyfriend before our relationship would become a long-distance one in September when he was planning to start a new job in London.
We were fans of sex in public places. It was something that allowed us to escape the monotony of sex in our single beds in our student halls of residence back in the UK. I also loved the spontaneity of it. For example, often, when we met for a coffee on campus, as soon as we took the last sip from our cups, we went in search of empty classrooms – or any other available area – where we could have sex. The risk of being caught increased my arousal even though it definitely wasn’t something we desired. My boyfriend became my partner in crime. So, when I looked at the map of Paris, I was imagining that this new city represented new opportunities for our sexual pursuits.
We lived in a small studio in Le Marais, and he was my housekeeper while I worked. My days in the office were long and tiring because learning a new job and doing everything in another language was mentally exhausting. Then, at night, I rushed home, longing to see the man I had missed so much all day. When I arrived on my street, I looked up at my balcony and my boyfriend was always there, popping his head out the window and waiting for me with a big smile. As soon as I got through the door, he greeted me with a kiss and a hug as if we hadn’t seen each other in a long time even though it had only been a few hours.
I took off my office clothes straight away because I was hot and eager to shower. I used to leave them on the floor, knowing that when I came out of the shower, my boyfriend would have picked them up. At first, he found it amusing, but soon enough, my messiness was the cause of many trivial arguments because the tiny studio apartment where we lived soon became a mess. I can’t deny that this exchange of traditional gender roles was a huge turn-on for me, although I knew it was a temporary situation. Despite my messy nature, I knew that I was contributing my fair share to our short-term coliving situation since I was the one paying the rent and bills.
Every night, after freshening up and after some welcome-home sex, he cooked dinner. While we ate delicious home-cooked vegetarian food and drank French wine, he proudly told me how difficult it was to source all the ingredients. We went to bed very late, so it’s no wonder that the long days in the office were a challenge.
When the weekend finally arrived, I was eager to sleep in, snuggle up in bed with my boyfriend, without alarms, and spend the day together in my new city. With the map of Paris in hand, we created our own version of ‘sexual tourism’, because instead of looking for museums, monuments and typical tourist attractions, we looked for open green spaces because each one represented a new possibility for sex in public places.
I remember our trips on the Parisian metro when we were en route to our chosen destination of the day. Although we looked like just another couple of tourists in the crowd, it was exciting to know that this was not the case at all. When we arrived, we had a picnic, and then I sat on top of him, facing him with my legs wrapped around him. We kissed, and when I felt he was hard, I lifted my skirt and guided his penis inside me, as discreetly as possible as our bodies rocked together and I contracted and relaxed my vaginal muscles against him rhythmically, hoping that no one would notice what we were up to.
In these circumstances, coming was impossible. Besides, an orgasm wasn’t the objective. It was more about the foreplay because when we got home, we were always dying to finish what we had started outdoors. Our public play objective was to symbolically bless another part of Paris and tick off the green places on the map.
Our greatest achievement, undoubtedly, was having sex on the Champs de Mars, in front of the Eiffel Tower, during the day, in front of hundreds of tourists. Not only because it is possibly the most well-known monument in the world but also because its phallic shape seemed like a great erection pointing towards the sky while I mounted another, real one on the ground.
When we had ticked off almost all the possibilities on the map of Paris, I felt a mixture of satisfaction and sadness, because this inevitably meant the end of the summer. The day my boyfriend left, I went back home after work as usual but, this time, there was no one waiting for me with a smile on the balcony.
Once inside the apartment, I threw myself on the bed that still smelled of him and I noticed an envelope under the pillow. I opened it immediately and found a map of London with question marks on all the green spaces… I smiled as I imagined all the things we could get up to in Hyde Park, Green Park, Soho Square and all the other potential landmarks in London so that we could continue with our very own version of sexual tourism.