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Sex novel "La Maison": As turning on as a broken neon tube

2020-09-21T16:47:11.285Z


The French author Emma Becker worked in a Berlin brothel for more than two years. In her book, she describes the workplace as a cozy place - until a psychopathic client comes along.


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Author Becker: "You just think I'm a whore, but I'm also a writer, and one day I'll write a book about everything"

Photo: Joel Saget / AFP

The French are fat and have clammy hands.

He is inexperienced in bed, Justine struggles with him.

When it comes to cunnilingus, he is as emotionless as if he were working on a workbench.

When orgasm he finally - divine providence?

- gets, he makes no sound.

When he puts on his gray underpants after 60 minutes, she vacillates between pity and contempt for her compatriot.

Ignorance in bed can also be painful.

For her third novel "La Maison", Emma Becker herself worked in Berlin in the brothel for two and a half years.

The brothel, called "La Maison" in the novel, actually has a different name.

Becker's "stage name," as she puts it, was actually Justine.

Her novel is auto-fiction, the main character clearly bears traits of the author, on the other hand she has changed a few things with her customers and colleagues so that in the end no one recognizes herself.

Even the embarrassing Frenchman is likely to be a mix of different suitors.

The scene about tortured cunnilingus is hilarious, by the way - like some of the 31-year-old's novels.

The issue of prostitution divides the social debate.

Anyone expecting an exposé book about pimps, violence and abuse will be disappointed.

"La Maison" is a rather cozy place where the clients are mostly civilized and the whores show solidarity with one another.

"I was in good hands there, like in a big family, and was able to make a living from my income," says Becker.

"I seldom felt like a victim, but was respected by most of the customers."

She talks about wet labia as naturally as others do about dishwasher tablets

In the book, she does not hide the fact that, with her French origins, she was treated as a little star in the Berlin brothel.

On the cover you can see her as a sensual woman, in the interview she wears bottle-green overall, no jewelry and little make-up.

She talks about penetration and wet labia as naturally as other people talk about dishwasher tablets.

In France, "La Maison" caused a sensation last year, not only because of the subject, but because it is quite sophisticated from a literary point of view.

Becker even won several prizes.

However, the novel has also provoked.

Feminists accused the author of playing down a profession in which violence and exploitation are the order of the day.

Emma Becker is annoyed by such allegations.

"Of course there is all of this. In my book I also talked about another brothel, where the working conditions are much worse than in 'La Maison'. But I didn't stay there long. All in all, my experience in the job was positive. "

And still: There are some scenes in the book where you get cold anger while reading.

There is the suitor, obviously a psychopath, who dreams of having sex with minors and wants to see Justine as a very young girl who cannot resist him.

The man clamps her under him, slaps her, hits her, grabs her by the throat, pulls her hair.

Until he finally lets go of her and meekly apologizes.

How do you endure something like that, why did she continue anyway?

"I really wanted to get to know the milieu from within"

Emma Becker

"That was terrible, I was totally angry, felt humiliated," says Becker.

"At the same time I armored myself inside and thought: You just think I'm a whore, but I'm also a writer, and one day I'll write a book about everything."

She often worked with such mental tricks to get distance.

Likewise when she acted lust for her suitors.

She then imagined she was an actress in a play.

How does a young woman from the Paris area who comes from a middle-class background - her father an entrepreneur, her mother a psychologist - become a whore?

Who went to a Catholic high school and studied literature at the Sorbonne?

Emma Becker - Becker is her stage name, in reality her name is Durand - says she was interested in eroticism at an early age and devoured the sex scenes in the novels from her parents' library.

The uptight atmosphere in the high school annoyed and provoked her.

"We had to dress very modestly, and it was always suggested to us that we as women are a challenge for men. Sex was hardly talked about in biology lessons. But I wanted to know more."

In 2013 Emma Becker moved to Berlin, she knew the city because one of her aunts lived there.

"I found Paris suffocating, too narrow, too expensive," she says.

She spoke German fairly, from school and because her German grandmother had bothered her with the language.

She learned the rest in the brothel.

In Berlin, the author wrote her second novel about a young woman who has a much older lover.

She herself also had relationships with older men who were "father figures" for her, as she says.

She experienced her own father as shy and withdrawn, he was "a mystery".

Interesting too

Sex club performance for women: "Ideally, they go out hotter than they came in" A conversation by Carola Padtberg

The idea for "La Maison" came to her when she was walking past a brothel in Berlin.

"I always wanted to know what sex feels like as a job, what happens in a whore's head. But I didn't want to do journalistic research, I wanted to really get to know the milieu from the inside out. 

Emma Becker, the mother of an almost four-year-old son, has accepted occasional collisions with her private life.

When she started at "La Maison" she was solo.

After meeting her boyfriend a few months later, he wasn't exactly thrilled, but accepted it.

Even if she didn't necessarily feel like intimacy after a long day at work.

Emma Becker worked on her book for four years.

The author knew the relevant books that reflect the milieu, such as Émile Zola's "Nana" or the writings of Georges Bataille.

Although "La Maison" is long, it is an astonishingly good book with sensitive portraits of the whores and their customers.

Becker repeatedly describes her own service in the book with undisguised humor.

For example, when she makes fun of one of her suitors, an embarrassed Canadian with a "timid erection": The man turns her on like a broken neon tube.

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Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2020-09-21

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