AFTER EACH SESSION OF LOVEMAKING, DURING WHICH G. feasted on my body like a starving man, the two of us would lie in the calm of his studio, surrounded by so many hundreds of books it made me dizzy. He would hold me in his arms like a newborn baby, run his hands through my disheveled hair, call me his “beloved child,” his “beautiful schoolgirl,” and softly recount the long history of illicit love affairs between young girls and middle-aged men.

I now had a private tutor entirely dedicated to my education. The extent of his cultural knowledge was mesmerizing, and my admiration was, if possible, increasing, even if the reality was that the lessons I received after school were always very specifically oriented.

“Are you aware that in ancient times, the sexual initiation of young people by adults was not only encouraged, it was considered a duty? Even as late as the nineteenth century—little Virginia was only thirteen when she married Edgar Allan Poe, did you know that? And when I think about all those respectable parents reading Alice in Wonderland to their children before bed, without having the faintest idea of who Lewis Carroll was, it makes me want to howl with laughter. He was obsessed with photography, it was quite compulsive, he took hundreds of photographs of little girls, including the real Alice, the love of his life, who inspired his masterpiece. Have you ever seen them?”

In a large book of photography prominently displayed on his shelves, he showed me the erotic pictures that Irina Ionesco had taken of her daughter Eva when she was just eight years old, her legs spread, dressed only in black stockings that ended mid-thigh, her gorgeous doll-like face made up like a prostitute. (He omitted to tell me that her mother subsequently lost custody of Eva and that, aged thirteen, she was placed with social services.)

Another time, he ranted about Americans, mired in sexual frustration, persecuting poor Roman Polanski and trying to stop him from making films.

“They’re such puritans, they insist on conflating everything. That girl who claims she was raped was manipulated by people who were jealous of his success. It’s obvious she consented. And what about David Hamilton—do you think all his models would have offered themselves up to the lens of his camera if they hadn’t had one thing on their minds? You’d have to be absurdly naïve to believe such a thing.”

The litany of examples was endless. Faced with so many similarly edifying examples, how could I disagree? A fourteen-year-old girl has the right and the liberty to love whom she wants. I understood the lesson very well. And even better, I had become a muse.