Hate/Love l’Histoire de Melody Nelson 2013

I have always considered L'HISTOIRE DE MELODY NELSON as one of the most provocative pop LPs of the 70s. Serge Gainsbourg's opera musically melanged JG Ballard's CRASH and LOLITA into an opera of sexual authenticity. The accompanying video is a gem with Jane Birkin playing Melody to the hilt.

I was thinking about her and wondered if Serge was a voyeur.

I googled his name and voyeurism, finding this 2006 internet entry by Melita Teale;

Why I Hate l’Histoire de Melody Nelson

Fuck Serge Gainsbourg, that fucking voyeur pedophile satyromaniac. What sort of man writes a concept album about knocking a teenager off her bike with a Rolls, giving her piggyback rides, deflowering her, and mourning her subsequent death in an aeroplane accident?

What sort of a worm of a Svengali records his young girlfriend Jane Birkin having a shockingly piggy orgasm on track six to flesh it out? Not to mention having her photographed with the most lamentable cameltoe in rock ’n’ roll history for the album cover – while she’s topless and holding a teddy.

Talk about objectification. How can he so objectify a fifteen-year-old with a line like ‘une poupée qui perd l’équilibre, la jupe retroussée sur ses pantalons blancs... (A doll who lost her balance, her skirt pushed up over her white leggings)’?

With his googly eyes and hideous looks, of course Gainsbourg would have fantasized about some poor disinterested ‘agréable petite conne’ of a virgin who would fall hard enough for him to let him take advantage of her.

And he sang on the album about as well as Leonard Cohen sings now. Except Gainsbourg actually tried to carry a tune.

Melita didn't hold back any punches, but then went on to write the following;

Why I Love l’Histoire de Melody Nelson

My god, Serge Gainsbourg made an enchantingly beautiful album about being a voyeur pedophile satyromaniac. I’m reminded of a story about Paul McCartney making a bet about being able to write a song about anything and coming up with one from Picasso’s obituary. Except it embarrasses me to compare Melody Nelson with anything that came out of Paul McCartney.

Can I recommend an album this evil? Well... I recommend it like I recommend Italian strippers or hash oil. You’ll feel dirty, but if it’s your sort of thing you’ll like it. Outside of Jane Birkin squealing there’s nothing pornographic about its sounds; the lines quoted above are the naughtiest. I don’t write that to defend the album; I write that to exclaim over how the world of longing here is all the more artful for not being solely physical.

Not one wasted word or note – they all take you right into the heart of a hard but besotted man who believes the girl he’s obsessed with is both a straightforward simpleton and an unearthly, irresistible force that he can never understand.

His voice, crappy though it is, manipulates. In the "Valse de Melody", where he carries the tune as well as he can, the seconds where it breaks and snaps show us more desire than Ang Lee managed in three boring hours about star-crossed sheep herders sniffing each other’s shirts.

And the arrangement is flawless. This being Serge Gainsbourg, the hero of French pop, and it being the '70s, he got an orchestra to use as a simple backing to his vocal crackling and to the three piece band that drives the action and the tune.

He uses the orchestra not wastefully, but as one big ambient instrument helping beautifully bury the listener in the narrator’s perturbing emotions, letting the whole thing seem like a desperate quest not just to possess but to love.

Right on Melita with the love/hate thing, because Serge Gainsbourg is too complicated to simply choose between love or hate.

Moi, je l'adore.

Peeping Tom ala Pattaya

Voyeurism is the ageless fascination for an unseen spectator to view a person performing a natural act, usually sexual. This predilection has ruined some people's lives when they've been caught by the authorities and several years ago in Pattaya an Estonian tourist was discovered taking snapshots of two Chinese women in the toilet.

One of them was fifty.

The 20 year-old screamed and the Estonian broke for freedom. 

Thais took up pursuit and he destroyed his camera, thinking the evidence would be erased, only to have the police process the pictures from the memory chip.

At the police station he confessed to his lewd behavior. The strangest part of this story is that Pattaya is a city in which you can find scores if not hundreds of women willing to pose naked for a price. Like Luis Buunel said, "Without sin there is no pleasure."

Thankfully for the Slavic farang the matter was settled with a cash payment to the offended women and the police warned the Estonian to be a better boy in the future.

The first time I ever saw something I shouldn't was my next door neighbor changing out of her bathing suit. I was ten. It didn't feel like a sin, yet I knew this covert observation wasn't something you were supposed to pursue as a career, unless you were in the CIA and they rejected my application for employemtn in 1980.

Too many red marks for drug use and anti-American sentiment.

Personally I thought I would have been perfect for an undercover operative.

Spying on people is almost second nature.

My apartment on east 10th Street backed onto a schoolyard and across the alley was a performance space for dance. My window looked right into the changing room. Slim girls slipped out of frocks. I even saw my ex-girlfriend Ann in the dressing room. Her I showed some discretion. After all we are friends. Strangers are another thing entirely.

I do like Robbes-Grillet's 1955 novel THE VOYEUR and when I first moved to Pattaya my window overlooked a western woman's bedroom. She masturbated religiously every night. My girlfriend and I watched from our darkened room until we had seen the show too often.

Even sex gets boring unless you change the channel.

Olympic Voyeurism

Last Saturday the Old Roue visited Pattaya for a break from Bangkok. I hadn't visited Walking Street for ages and told Mam that we would only be out for a few hours. She said fine, since my libido shut down after three drinks. My son's mother kissed me in the cheek and returned to watching her Thai soap, in which the mia noi's daughter had been her father's son.

"Every one of those soaps is the same." The Old Roue was eager to visit the fleshpots of Pattaya. "Someone always ends up in the hospital unconscious and the rich man marries the good girl."

"Don't forget a lot of yelling." Ancient Thai culture was based on a respect for your betters, but these days hi-so wasn't getting the proper wai from the lo-so.

"Yes, Thais love yelling in their soaps."

"TV imitating life." We mounted our motor scooters and set off for Walking Street, the main drag for go-go bars in the Last Babylon.

When Eve bit into the apple, humankind lost its innocence and immediately the two realized that they were naked in paradise. Her nudity didn't matter to Eve, but Adam forced her to wear leaves, so the animals didn't stare at the first woman. Ever since then man has spent time and money to undo Adam's error and this evening Walking Street seemed rammed with people, although most of them were Chinese or Russian bus tourists taking in the wanton sights of Pattaya.

We hit several go gos. This was the bottom of the low season. Each bar was hurting for customers and the girls were hungry for any kind of action; long or short time. They danced with a wicked abandon in hopes of getting lucky with two old farangs.

We bought them drinks. We groped their naked bodies. We left without a promise to come back to barfine them for the night. The two of us had been patronizing go-go around the world for a combined total of 75 years and we understood the game and all its eccentricities, yet I was amazed by the Old Roue's mesmerization by the sight of a naked woman and suggested that he enter the London Olympics as a medlap-worthy voyeur.

“It sounds like an all male event.”

“Women glare instead of gawk.” I was familiar with my wife’s piercing gaze and ordered another vodka tonic. I was on my fourth and in no danger of succumbing to the temptation of the flesh.

“A withering gawk, if I remember correctly.” The Old Roue had been married back in the last century. He was now a single man in Thailand and never strayed from the path of one-night stands.

"But nothing in comparison to your concentration on a go go girl. Your eyes are as wide open as your mouth."

"You're not painting a particularly pretty picture."

"You're wrong. I'm applauding your devotion to voyeurism, although several countries might challenge your crown."

We discussed the various nations’ strengths and narrowed the medal challengers to three Asian countries. “#3 has to be the Indonesians." The Old Roue had spent a winter in Kuta. "The Bali beach boys bore holes through the bungalow walls to watch naked fat tourist chicks.”

“#2 has to be the Indians in Goa." November 1995 had been a dream for me. "They’ll stand five feet away from a fat tourist girl show no shame at staring with a face contorted with sexual fantasies.

“#1 goes to the Pakis. But they really don’t have any occasion to practice, since no females get naked in Pakistan.”

“Just because they can’t train doesn’t mean they won’t score the gold. All the best porno store in LA are run by Pakis.”

“What about America?”

“Women in America are too fat to gawk at. Almost like you have to look at the ground rather than a woman in the mall. Plus they’re so angry.”

Yeah, It’s better to look at your shoes, which is why Americans loved strippers."

"And porno." With the religious right enforcing no sin zones throughout the nation, gawking has become a lost art in the USA. I pointed out two sailors at Heaven Above a Go Go. The nineteen year-old swabbies were drooling on their shore leave shirts.

"They haven't had enough training in gawking."

“Once a year they buy Sport Illustrated swimming issue to answer their fantasies." When I was a boy, we played with our sister's Barbie dolls and used our imaginations.

“None of those girls appeal to me." The Old Roue hadn't fucked a white woman in years and neither had I.

"I feel the same way, but then there are those girls on the internet XXX sites.”

“Don’t count. They’re not real.”

“They’re not?” Like millions of American men I didn't agree with his statement. Those women had names. They smiled and didn’t scold if I looked at them for hours. They never asked where I had been or if I had been looking at other women. They never seemed jealous. Even if I never paid for their time.

I had fallen in love with several and cried if my computer crash during our date. But the Old Roue was right. They weren’t flesh. Not on the computer and that’s why the USA will never win the gold in voyeurism.

We only live for dreams.

The All Seeing Eye Of Pattaya

In 1960 my parents moved from Maine to Boston. My mother was a devout Catholic. My father was a convert. They had six children. Public school was banned by my mother and we attended Our Lady of the Foothills for our primary school education and the salvation of our young souls. Sister Mary Goretti was my 7th Grade teacher, but nun had a strict curriculum about the mystical wonders of God. On the first day of class she told the class, "On Judgment Day everyone who ever was will be assembled before God to watch your transgressions, so be good and wear clean underwear." The last directive was for the boys. We were constructed from snails and pig tails. Later that day my best friend asked Sister Mary Goretti, "Why would God make good people watch bad things at the End of Times? Is it to see what they had been missing."

"So they can see why you're going to Hell." Sister Mary Goretti's belief in a fiery pit was unshakable, until she left the sisterhood to join a lesbian farming commune. I had shaken the fear of burning much earlier than 7th Grade, however the possibility of everyone watching your every move became a reality in the 1980s as the UK police installed CCTV throughout England to combat terrorism, football hooliganism, and the scourge of public urination.

This voyeuristic police innovation has spread to Thailand in 2007, when the Pattaya police installed CCTV systems in all the bars on Soi 6 at the expense of the owners.  The purpose of their installation is to record any wrong-doings such as drugs or illegal sex or fights.

No more blow jobs on the sofas.

Everything sexual has to happen upstairs in the shabby rooms and that covers a lot of ground.

Men thought that it was only a question of time before the 'tam-luat' televise the chambers of lust. "They want to watch."

"Why?" It was a stupid question.

"Because all men like to watch." An attractive girl at Dirty Den's replied with a smile. "You want to see me with other girl?"

"No." She and I didn't have that kind of relationship.

"Another man?"

"Definitely not."

"Good." The only reason that liked going with two women was because it cut down on the work 50%. The equation was changed when two men were in the menage a trois. No girl on Soi 6 liked to sweat that hard. Personally I've never had the slightest interest of a menage a trois with two men and one woman. especially if there's a chance of anyone else seeing a 60 year-old man naked on video.

I suppose some freak would watch it.

Not me.

Not even in the mirror.

And Sister Mary Goretti probably feels the same way too.