Deca Cama

Introduction: Deca-Camera

My name is Constance E. Moreau (yes, the irony is not lost on me), age forty-three, woman of letters and occasional woman of legs. I hold two degrees, three ex-lovers worth publishing, and a growing intolerance für emotional carbohydrates. I teach Comparative Literature at a minor but architecturally ambitious university somewhere between Heidelberg and self-delusion. I've read the Decamerone in three languages and slept in seven.

For years I had meant to honor Boccaccio—not in seminar papers or crusty footnotes, but with flesh. With motion. With tactility. But academia dulls even the brightest ache. And so my sensual homage remained theoretical—until, one day, in the wrong café and with the right amount of rosé, I had what my students might call a "transformative misreading."

*I mistook Decamerone for Deca-Camera.

A linguistic sin born from multilingual arrogance: déka (ten), and cama—the Spanish word for bed. Camera, of course, in older Italian, meant chamber, room, not photographic device. Yet in my rosé-lit mind, it became perfectly logical: ten beds. Ten lovers. Ten sacred encounters.

It was too delicious to check.

So I didn't.

Instead, I wrote a list.

Ten men.

Ten beds.

Ten variations of pleasure: in angle, in approach, in articulation.

I called it: Project Deca-Camera.

And now I had a reason.

Not the raison d'état of Boccaccio's narrators fleeing the plague, no. My epidemic was of another kind: repetition, academic dryness, fantasies that never made it past the syllabus.

But what tipped me finally into execution—not theory—was an utterly banal holiday. I stumbled upon it in an obscure corner of the internet, likely while researching the poetics of exposure in 18th-century libertine prose (or buying new sheets):

National Nude Day.

Celebrated annually.

No official location.

No dress code.

It struck me with comedic genius: why not give the Nude Day a proper intellectual backbone? Ten naked beds, under the banner of a misunderstood masterpiece. I would re-read Boccaccio not as text, but as terrain.

So I booked a quiet guesthouse on the edge of town, known for its discretion, and sent ten identical invitations to ten very different men—each previously met, tasted, or at least contemplated. I told them only this:

I am rewriting the Decamerone. Bring nothing but yourself, your willingness, and a towel.

Some replied with ellipses. Others with exclamation marks. One with a poem I still don't understand. All agreed.

I scheduled them by hour, with a break for lunch and hydration. The house had ten beds (one per room), and no mirrors unless needed. There would be no photographs, only descriptions—literary, bodily, exact.

Thus began my Deca-Camera: not ten tales told over ten days, but ten lovers told by one woman in a single day. A body of research, if you will.

An experiment in narrative tempo, insertion and rhythm.

These are my field notes.

Filed deep.

Let the scholars say what they will.

I call it structure with moisture.

And for once, I didn't footnote a thing.

* * * * *

Sonnet I: The Poet

He came with meter tucked into his coat,

Reciting Blake before he touched my waist.

He kissed in quatrains, paused mid-thrust to note

How lust, like metaphor, is best slow-paced.

His tongue, I thought, could punctuate a thigh—

It bracketed my moans in careful phrase.

He parsed my nipple with a scholar's sigh,

Then closed my book with bibliophile praise.

I asked for touch; he offered me enjambment.

He praised my hips in stanzas, sweet and slow.

His lines were long, but lacked the right momentum—

A sonnet soft, yet missing its bravado.

A poet's gift, to speak and leave me burning:

A climax lost to syntax, not to yearning.

Sonnet II: The Monk

He came with silence draped across his chest,

A vow of peace tucked deep beneath his belt.

He touched my hand as if in prayerful quest,

Then asked if guilt was something I had felt.

He murmured hymns while kissing down my thigh,

His breath a sermon, slow and strangely kind.

He begged forgiveness each time I would sigh—

Then spanked me once, to “cleanse my carnal mind.”

He tried the back, but trembled at the gate.

He lacked the staff to hold me firm ahead.

His thrust was meek, his aim a twist of fate—

And so I rode salvation's front instead.

He left in robes, still barefoot in his sin,

A halo faint, and semen on his chin.

Sonnet III: The Sculptor

He traced my curves like marble's sacred band,

Declared my breasts "a study in contour."

He shaped me gently, posed me to his hand—

A goddess carved from heat, then begged for more.

His fingers smeared with oil, they sketched a line

From hip to spine with sculptor's confidence.

He called my ass "divinely serpentine,"

And kissed each dimple like a bold pretense.

He grunted soft, then moaned as artists do,

Inspired by the swell, the damp, the gasp.

But when I clenched, demanding something true,

He praised my hips—yet lost his master grasp.

A statue I remained, proud, cool, and wet:

He traced the form, but never reached the sweat.

Sonnet IV: The Gardener

He smelled of mint, with clippings on his boots,

A man who knew the language of the soil.

He brought a pear, some figs, and summer fruits,

And said, “Desire should ripen in its toil.”

He cupped my breasts like blossoms in his hand,

Then kissed my stem with horticultural grace.

He said my cleft was "soft, uncharted land,"

And dug with care into my shaded place.

He plowed me slow, then faster with the rain,

Our moans like bees that buzzed between the beds.

He came like spring exploding after strain,

With rosebuds blooming red across my spreads.

He left me strewn in petals, flushed and bare:

A garden undone, wild roots in disrepair.

Sonnet V: The Violinist

He entered with a bow and nervous grin,

His case in hand, his fingers lean and fast.

He tuned my sighs like strings upon my skin,

And swore each note of mine would be his last.

He stroked me slow, then trembled in crescendo,

A fugue of licks and awkward syncopation.

He bit my neck with trembling allegretto—

A fiddler lost in faulty modulation.

His finger work was skilled, yet unrefined,

Too frantic for the tempo of my thighs.

I cued a rest, then moaned in double-time,

While he mistook my gasps for lullabies.

He came in bursts, three measures off the theme:

A soloist who missed the chambered dream.

Sonnet VI: The Pilot

He swaggered in with goggles round his neck,

His voice all thrust, his smile all afterburn.

He said, "You like it fast?"—I said, "What the heck,"

And watched his flight path steepen at the turn.

He charted routes across my inner thigh,

Mapped pressure zones with every touch and lick.

But altitude deceived—he flew too high,

And landed short, his touchdown far too quick.

He climbed again, then stalled without a plan,

Declared my runway “slick with morning dew.”

I begged him slow, but he’s a jet-set man—

And overshot the gates before he knew.

He left me dazed, still buckled to the bed:

A flight delayed, though turbulence was red.

Sonnet VII: Le Chef

He brought a tray of oysters, figs, and cream,

Declared, "Tonight, your body is the feast."

He simmered kisses, stirred me in a dream,

Then basted me in hunger unreleased.

He whispered spice between each tender bite,

With saffron hands he parted cloth and sigh.

He served me raw, then tasted me by night,

A tongue like flame, a palate trained and sly.

He flipped me twice, then seasoned with delight,

His tempo rising like a buttered flare.

But just as I grew hot with molten might,

He finished fast, then slumped into his chair.

He left the plate, still steaming at the core:

A banquet spoiled by rushing to the door.

Sonnet VIII: The Historian

He quoted Caesar as he stroked my chest,

And spoke of Sparta pressed between my thighs.

He traced my flanks like maps once dispossessed,

Then lectured me on Rome as I let cries.

He called my nipples “sites of civil war,”

And moaned of Carthage lost in every lick.

His fingers tried to date what came before,

But missed the moment—history moves quick.

He paused to footnote each erotic move,

A tangled scroll where touch should be direct.

He climaxed citing Hegel—thus to prove

That dialectics end in dialect.

I came alone, while he explained the Greeks:

A climax stalled by centuries of geeks.

Sonnet IX: The Fireman

He burst in bold with hoses on his back,

Declared me "code red" from the very start.

He ripped my shirt—no time to talk or slack—

And blew his siren straight into my heart.

His hands were rough, yet quick to soothe and cool,

He sprayed me down, then stoked me into flame.

He muttered, "Ma'am, this blaze won’t play by rules,"

Then plunged in deep—too fierce to name.

He flipped me fast and pressed against the wall,

Said, "Safety check!" and entered from behind.

It burned like sin, yet I moaned through it all—

A smoke-filled ride that melted every line.

He left a puddle steaming at my feet:

His gear still hot, my sheets in full retreat.

Sonnet X: The Philosopher

He entered slow, with Plato on his tongue,

And kissed me like a man debating fate.

He said, “Desire’s the cave from which we’re hung,”

Then touched my soul—and missed my clit by eight.

He pondered breasts as metaphors for truth,

And traced my spine in circles of regret.

He murmured, “Being is a form of youth,”

While I lay still, not quite aroused—not yet.

He paused to quote Rousseau mid-thrusting spree,

Declared my moan “a dialectic sound.”

He climaxed with a groan on Hume’s decree,

Then asked if I’d been moved by what he’d found.

I said, “Your logic’s firm, but lacks the scream.”

He left to write—a thesis on the dream.

Encore: The Woman

She came like wine, like dusk in silken bloom,

A curve of lips that knew just how to dare.

She kissed my breasts beneath a crescent moon,

Then traced my spine and breathed electric air.

No metaphor, no stammered lines or fail,

No talk of Rome or Freud or dialects—

Just tongue and hand and pulse that would not pale,

Her moans like sonnets sung in sweaty treks.

She flipped me slow, and pressed her cheek to mine,

Her fingers whispered deeper than the rest.

I screamed—not thoughts, but feeling, raw, divine—

A climax spun from honey, salt, and jest.

Forget Boccaccio’s men, all pant and jest—

I found the one bed that outshone the rest.