Untitled Document
Misunderstanding
May 21, 2011
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Hello, are you the company "Hello, scare me"?
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Yes, sir.
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And... what exactly do your services consist of?
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Well, the idea for our company originated from reading a short story by the English humorist Chesterton, which is a chapter in his book "The Club of Odd Jobs."
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Be clearer.
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The story is delicious. It's about an English major, retired from the Indian Army, returning home one evening after dinner at his club. Suddenly, as he crosses the gate of his cottage, he's met with a volley of shotgun pellets. He dives to the ground. For fifteen minutes, he's flooded with adrenaline, barely escaping traps set by masked individuals who spring from the bushes around his cottage and fire at him. Eventually, slipping through the back door, he manages to get inside and barricade himself, more dead than alive. He grabs the only weapon he has: an old hunting rifle, and loads it with two cartridges. Suddenly, someone rings the doorbell. Holding the rifle pointed at the unknown visitor, he cautiously opens the door—and suddenly finds himself face to face with a gentleman who hands him a bill, saying, "Here, if we deduct the deposit you paid, you still owe fourteen pounds and sixteen shillings. Taxes included."
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What happens next?
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"Pardon me?" says our major, stunned. The man checks his notes and says, "You are Major Henry Simson, aren't you?" "No," replies the man in the cottage, "my name is David Simson." The man consults his file and says, "We are terribly sorry. We have the wrong address." Indeed, there is a Major Henry Simson, who served in the quartermaster corps—but he lives a few blocks away.
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The explanation?
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Well, in Chesterton's story, it was a company one could hire when bored to death, offering, for a fee, a range of thrilling experiences during pre-agreed dates. We've created a similar company in France, and we can offer adrenaline-starved people a full range of packages, priced differently, from robbery to terrorist attacks. Would you be interested?
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Yes and no. The service I'd like to request is of a different nature. You see, I have an irresistible fantasy of rape, and always have. I have a predatory temperament. Well-dressed, I attract women, but I only get aroused, only climax, when I see a flicker of terror in a woman's eyes, when she struggles, when I hear her cries of distress. All of this excites me to the highest degree, and makes me want to put my...
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I'll spare you the details...
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We did try with my wife, but she's a terrible actress. Being very wealthy, she only knew women in her circle—pleasantly perverse, I admit—but none could convincingly play the role. I, who am immensely rich, find myself in a paradoxical situation. While I could afford the so-called "escort girls" of today, the most beautiful ones, they leave me completely unmoved. If you could arrange something like this for me...
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Hmm... I think it's doable, of course with a small additional fee.
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No problem.
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Would next May work for you?
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I'll be at the Novotel hotel, in a suite, the whole month.
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Very well.
On the appointed date, the client is in his suite, and everything goes perfectly, just as planned. The actress hired by the agency plays her role flawlessly. Dressed as a humble housekeeper, she enters, pushing her cleaning cart. Immediately, he jumps on her, pins her to the floor, pulls out his... (I'll spare you the details). Terror is clearly visible in the young woman's eyes. He even has to tear her clothes off, overcome by uncontrollable excitement.
Satisfied, after regaining his composure and once the "housekeeper" has left, he calls the agency.
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I wanted to thank you. I've never felt such pleasure. Congratulate this young woman—she's an exceptional actress. It was utterly convincing. But there's one thing I didn't quite understand. After the act, she pulled out her phone and pretended to call the police. I assume you included that in the script. But it wasn't necessary, since the deed had already been done.
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Wait, let me check. Are you the Novotel client for this May? A rape fantasy?
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Yes...
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Let me check our schedule. The intervention was scheduled for the day after tomorrow...
While the Strauss-Kahn affair dominates global news coverage, overshadowing many far more important issues, I chose to treat this topic with humor.
Yet I've noticed something. While "Big Media" wallows in its own past scandals, interrogating the wife, everyone seems to have forgotten this 2010 video in which Strauss-Kahn, after attending the Tripoli summit, visits his friend Ben Ali, the Tunisian president, congratulates him as Managing Director of the International Monetary Fund "for the rigor of his management," and even goes so far as to decorate him.
- Tunisia is a model of economic management and integration *
Here is the elite that governs our world. This little man, reminiscent of another, is pitiful, wretched, grotesquely absurd. Meanwhile, our press headlines scream "Fall," "Anne Sinclair rushes to save her husband," and we endlessly debate the ins and outs of this affair, which evokes only one word: "vulgarity."
Perhaps it's always been this way. I remember once being at the same height as Le Troquer, the mustachioed President of the French Senate, driving a convertible down Boulevard Saint-Michel. It was 1959. I was a student at Supaéro, twenty-two years old, riding a Vélosolex. It was the era of the Pink Ballets scandal, which exposed a vast network of pedophilia within the French government.
Le Troquer in 1959, at the time of his conviction in the Pink Ballets affair
- Prison sentence with suspended term "considering the services rendered to the Republic"*