The mechanics of desires | Escort, lover, friend, and today… mother

She was an escort. She is no longer. But she denies nothing. Mélodie Nelson, to whom we already owe a book on the subject (Escort2010), looks back on his time in the industry with a novel half story, half autobiography, totally assumed.

Silvia Galipeau
The Press

At the same time raw and funny literary, at times downright poetic, rambling and frankly anchored in everyday life, The mechanics of desires is not a relaxing read. It’s that the author voluntarily lets a vagueness hover here, and how many questions, about what she is looking for, who she is and where she is going, finally. But do we ever know?

“We all have multiple identities”, confirms the author, seated at La Petite Marche, rue Saint-Denis, a café where she has long had her habits. “I came here after working. […] It was my place. Out of all…”

Author, student in library science (her new “obsession”, where her “desire to be there for others finds itself differently”, as she says), mother, ex-escort, lover… “I accepted that I I had all these identities in me. And with this book, I manage to show them. “Ah! yes and “a suspicious, almost naive lover,” too, she says.

In any case transparent. Lucid. And casually, melancholic and infinitely fragile.

It gives you an idea of ​​the tone, the innuendos, shortcuts or things left unsaid that say a lot.

This is how Mélodie Nelson describes, in a deliberately non-chronological vagueness, her very young wish to be an escort (“I was in a hurry to make love, and then it was not enough, making love” ), his growing curiosity (“a void that no relationship would fill”), and then his arrival in the industry. An industry that we tend to judge, which it seeks on the contrary to demystify. She talks about her clients, her lovers, even her parents (“no, I didn’t miss anything!”). All while infusing it with several reflections and a good dose of everyday life. That of a girl who certainly embodies an absolute in terms of fantasies, but who still has to take out the trash, drinks green tea, dreams of burnt scallops, but gets paid $100 extra for sodomy. It is said.

It is also all the same a question of love, of a husband whom she did not like, then of a new lover (with whom she is still to this day, the father of her children, for more than 10 years) , for whom she came out of the industry. “I did not expect to make this decision, it was a shock. […] I felt like I was letting go of something where I was successful and where I felt good…”

From one “borderline” experience to another

The book is not chronological, as we have said, but divided into themes (my jobs, my parents, my clients). “And then there are my children who go through it all to fix my identity now. “Except that motherhood is not tackled head-on. In particular out of “modesty” and to protect his children, we understand. But it’s a shame, because Mélodie Nelson obviously has a lot to say. From an unexpected angle, of course. “To be a body. Take body. It is through physical experiences that I succeed in asserting myself, she reflects. Being an escort is very demanding, but so is being a mother. These are two borderline experiences. »

The parallels don’t end there. A body, she continues, must be taken care of, it is subject to a thousand expectations, “in the sex industry, as in motherhood”…

And she dissects it. “This book is very much a way for me to talk about my sexuality. I tried to live a free sexuality, I thought it would cure me of my sadness. It helps, but I’m still figuring out what’s good enough. […] I’m looking for something that I haven’t found, but writing gives me an option…” Just like librarianship, for that matter, or the art of “passing on knowledge that[elle n’a] not necessarily “.

As for her “mechanics of desires”, has she found it? “I understood men’s need for presence, their need for gentleness, similar to me…”, she replies.

We didn’t see that one coming.

But Mélodie Nelson did not tell us everything. “With this book, I wanted to show how sexuality allowed me to assert myself, but there are still constraints to that, and it’s unfair. Unfair that a woman’s sexuality is so targeted as something dangerous, shameful, uncomfortable, she concludes. I would like to help overcome judgments. I understand them, judgments, I had them too, but in order not to have them, you have to have access to something else. And this book is a hand stretched out towards something else. »

The mechanics of desires

Melody Nelson

Ink Castle Editions

184 pages