Katerina
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A while back, if I remember right, my life was one long party where all hearts were open wide, where all wines kept flowing.
One evening I took Beauty in my arms - and I thought her bitter - and I insulted her.
ARTHUR RIMBAUD, A SEASON IN HELL, 1873
Los Angeles, 2017
* * *
It started with a message request on Facebook. Someone named Jente Paenbenk. No picture, no friends. A blank profile. It started again. After twenty-five years.
Do you ever think of me?
I responded:
Maybe.
And so it went.
I think of you every day.
Good.
Sometimes it is, sometimes it’s not.
That’s life, right? Sometimes it is, sometimes not.
Yes, Jay, that has certainly been the case. For both of us.
Who is this?
I want you to think of me every day.
Who is this?
I want you to think and smile and remember.
Who is this?
Think and smile and remember, Jay.
Who?
For me. Do it for me.
Paris, 1992
* * *
I’m living at rue Saint-Placide. The floor is covered with empty wine bottles and ashtrays, my mattress is on the floor in the corner. The paint on the walls has been chipped away and the windows don’t close. It’s the end of the twentieth century and we are living in what is supposed to be an advanced society. Our desires, though, our desires are the same. The same as they have been since the first day one of us stepped out of a fucking cave. Love fuck eat drink sleep. And this is what I do here, in the most beautiful, most civilized city on earth. Love fuck eat drink sleep.
Last night Louis tied a red scarf on the door handle. Louis likes Arab boys, as close to eighteen as he can find them. The scarf means stay out, though I could hear them through the door and knew without seeing the scarf. I went for a walk and bought a couple bottles of cheap wine and sat on a bench in Saint-Germain and watched pretty girls walk by and imagined what it would be like to be with them, to kiss them, make them smile or laugh, flirt with them, fuck them, fall in love with them. Some I knew would never happen. Some I knew could be mine. I sat and drank and watched and imagined until I couldn’t think and stopped remembering and I woke up under a tree on Quai Voltaire and I walked back to the apartment. The red scarf was gone.
Louis is making coffee. He thinks of himself as a philosopher, a weatherman, an astronomer, a speaker of languages, an artist. We live on a little ball, he says, a little blue ball in a minor solar system in a small galaxy in an infinite universe. Nothing I do or you do or anyone does means a goddamn thing. We should be happy and spend our days in pursuit of pleasure and pain and every form of lust and desire that exists. We should make sure our cocks are hard and our pussies are wet and our hearts are beating fast, fast, fast. But we don’t, because we’re stupid, and because we all think we’re important, that we matter, that what we do matters, so we spend our time working meaningless jobs and struggling and fighting and trying to be something or someone other than what we are, which is animals. Everyone does it, all of humanity, the whole teeming, silly, idiotic mass, everyone does it except me. I, Louis, the Prince of Saint-Placide, know better. I follow my heart and my cock, and the only things that matter to me are the things that make them sing. So listen to me, boy. And learn from me. Follow your heart and follow your cock. And remember that none of this means anything. And you will be as happy as me.
I’ve been in Paris for a month. I’m twenty-one, I came here alone, didn’t know anyone, didn’t speak a word of French, packed a bag and walked away. From my friends, my family, from America. Whatever my life was or was supposed to be is gone. I was born and raised to be part of a machine. A spoke. A little gear. An obedient cog locked in fucking place forever. Go to school, follow the rules, get a job, work save vote obey, get married buy a house have children, work save vote obey teach your children to do the same, work save vote obey, die and rot in a fucking hole in the ground. Fuck that machine. Fuck the people who built it. Fuck the people who run it. Fuck the people who choose to be a part of it. I am here, in the most beautiful, most civilized city on earth. I believe in Louis, in his crazy eyes, shaking hands, bellowing voice, in his view of the weather and the stars. I follow my heart and I follow my cock. When they want to sing, we sing. When they want to smile, we smile. When they want to dance, we dance. When they want to be broken, we break. Whatever they want, wherever they want to go, however much pleasure we find or pain, we will never work save vote obey. Fuck that machine. The only goal should be to burn it down. Light it on fire and dance in the fucking flames.
And so I go through ancient streets filled with people speaking a language I do not know seeking something that I will never find, I could call it freedom but it’s more than that, I could call it enlightenment but I want to feel more than enlightened, I could call it everything because it is everything to me, loving fucking eating drinking sleeping feeling living living living. It is everything. I want to burn that machine the fuck down. I want to live.
Los Angeles, 2017
* * *
My grass is green. I can see the ocean from some of the windows and a yellow haze above glittering steel towers from the others. There are trees and birds and a swimming pool. Three cars in the garage, two children in bedrooms, a wife who sleeps next to me. My mortgage is paid on time every month, as are the rest of the bills that arrive. A housekeeper is here every day, and men who take care of the lawn and the trees and the pool and pick up the dogshit our family pet leaves everywhere. I have a little barn, or cottage, or studio, whatever you want to call it, on the back of our property, away from the house, away from the noise, away from people, away from the world. I spend my days in that little building in front of a computer, listening to music and watching TV, reading books and playing video games, sometimes working, supposedly doing things that matter, that are important, that people want to read and that other people give me money to produce. They give me stupid amounts of money. I do what they want and give them what they pay me for and I hate myself. And when I stop long enough to think about what I’m doing and how I got where I am and how much I have and how much I’ve wasted, when I think about how lost I feel every second of every day, how completely fucking lost I am and I feel, I want to buy a gun and blow my fucking brains out. But I’m not brave enough for that. So I walk through my grass and I stare at my trees and I listen to the birds and I look at the ocean and the skyscrapers and I smile for my children and I sleep next to my wife and I pay my bills and I do my work. And I hate myself. Every single minute of every single day. Hate myself.
Paris, 1992
* * *
Open the door.
Step outside.
Life is waiting.
Sex and love and books and art. The sun rising or setting. Laughter and music. A quiet place to sit. To read or think or watch the day go by. Or not. To walk. Amidst the chaos, the people, the noise. A car horn. A motorcycle. People talking. Bells on doors as they open and close. A couple fighting, a baby crying. Walk or dance or skip or run, do whatever you want to do, go wherever you want to go. You can find something magnificent or terrible or nothing at all. Ecstasy or hea
rtbreak. Adventure or boredom. Open the fucking door.
Life is waiting.
Step.
My day always starts the same way. I go to the bakery. Whether I wake up at home, or in an alley, or a park, in someone else’s apartment or on someone else’s floor or bed or bathtub, I go to the bakery. It’s on the ground floor of the building where I live, directly below the apartment that Louis and I share. It’s a standard French bakery, a boulangerie as the French say with their beautiful words, and they have one on every block. They sell bread at the boulangerie, though in France bread is more than bread. It’s life, it’s spirit, it’s blood, it’s identity, it’s art. Every French I know takes their bread seriously, like Americans take their guns, or Christians take their prayers. They argue over who makes the best baguette, the best pastries, the best pain au chocolat, what time of day is best to buy the bread, if it should be eaten warm or cooled, what kind of butter to put on it and how much, if one could survive on bread alone. If you’re ever with a French and you don’t have anything to talk about, just bring up bread. They’ll tell you how good it is in Paris, and that the bread everywhere else is terrible. And for whatever the reason, they’re right, the bread is better in Paris. It tastes better smells better feels better looks better. When you break a piece off, it sounds better. I eat baguette bread every day, and most days it’s all I eat. Five francs, which is about a dollar, and I don’t have to worry about food. I can spend my money on more important things, books or pens or cigarettes or coffee or wine, sometimes flowers for old ladies or random beautiful girls I see walking down the street. The old ladies always smile, sometimes the girls do. Sometimes they just turn and walk away. It’s a simple idiotic thing to do. Give flowers to someone you don’t know. Whatever happens, it’s money well spent.
The bakery below me has a simple blue sign and a simple steel counter and cases with fancy pastries and bins behind filled with the various forms of bread. You can see the ovens and tables behind the bins, the flour, the dough, the rollers, the organized chaos that produces the goods. An old French couple owns the bakery. I imagine they got it from one of their parents, who got it from their parents, who got it from their parents, and on and on back to the Gauls with butter in their hair. The couple is there every day, the old couple, they open at dawn and close at 5 p.m. The husband does the baking, the wife runs the cash register, they wear matching white aprons with trim the same color blue as the sign outside. They smile at the customers, exchange pleasantries and laughs with regulars, sell them baguettes, croissants, pain au chocolat, hand them things that have names I don’t know and can’t pronounce, fancy French concoctions that taste delicious and cost almost nothing. They do not like me, despite the fact that I am here every day. I enter, wait in line, say hello and ask for a baguette in French with my shitty French accent, hand them the five francs. The woman does not say hello to me, or acknowledge me in any way, aside from taking my money and handing me a baguette. Sometimes I wave at the man, who either scowls or looks away. As far as I know, and have seen, I’m the only American who buys bread from them, and I assume that’s why they don’t like me. Generally I’ve found, despite the French reputation for hating Americans, that if you attempt to speak French, and you’re not an asshole, the French are cool. They’re aloof and distant and cold and somewhat rude, and they will let you know if you’re doing something stupid, but they’re that way with everyone, including each other. There is a directness I appreciate, a lack of bullshit. Be cool, the French are cool. If you’re a dick, expect it back.
The bakers, though, the cute little old people in their white aprons with blue trim who sell me my bread, they do hate Americans. Or maybe just this American. Most days I make the transaction as simple and painless as possible. Order the bread hand over the money take the bread walk. Some days, however, I try to speak to them, ask them questions about politics, if they’re fans of Paris Saint-Germain, if they prefer Manet or Monet, if they’ve read Victor Hugo and Gustave Flaubert and if so, who they prefer, if they’ve ever challenged other local bakers to a baguette showdown. No matter what I say, they ignore me. Dismiss my every word. Sometimes the other customers laugh, sometimes they turn away, uncomfortable and embarrassed. Whatever happens, I hand over the money take the bread walk.
Open the door.
Step outside.
Life is waiting.
And so I walk. With no destination, no plan, nothing to do. Nowhere to be and no one to meet. There is no better city in the world to walk in than Paris. On every block there is food and wine and art and beauty. The buildings all soft white or deep gray. High windows on every floor. Single twelve-foot wooden doors with discreet numbers embedded into stone. The streets are crowded. There’s no grid and they move and turn as they please. The Grands Boulevards dominate the city. Les Champs-Élysées with its wide sidewalks and giant cafés and lights, the Times Square of Paris, contained by the Arc de Triomphe on one side and place de la Concorde on the other. Saint-Denis with its criminals and whores, openly hawking their wares and their bodies, dead during daylight but when the sun drops it pulses with sex and danger, desire and violence. Montparnasse with intellectuals and academics endlessly debating and smoking, taking three hours to drink a coffee. Haussmann and its department stores and old ladies with fancy hats and handbags that cost more than a house. Beaumarchais, Filles du Calvaire, Temple, Saint-Martin. Clichy with the ghosts of Picasso, Dalí, Modigliani, and van Gogh. Saint-Germain, where Hemingway and Fitzgerald drank and fought and pissed themselves. I walk and I look and I listen. I sit on benches outside of cathedrals. I lie in the grass of parks. I drift through museums and watch people as much as I stare at the art. I think and I dream. I carry a small notebook made of thick brown paper bound with string, a pen, whatever book I’m reading, a pack of cigarettes and a lighter, a small wad of bills in my back pocket. I sit in cafés and write, drink coffee, read. I go to bars in the morning and have a drink, I have wine for lunch, cocktails to celebrate the arrival of the afternoon. I look through the stacks of bookstores, even though most of the books are in French and I can’t read them. I look at the names on the spines, the words on the pages, smell the paper, feel the weight of them. I walk and my mind wanders and I dream. I dream of art and food. Enough money to have as much of whatever I want whenever I want. I dream of an endless supply of wine and cocaine, of sex and having it with almost every woman I see. I stand outside of restaurants and read the menus in the windows. I look at pictures in the magazines at the newsstand. Sometimes I just stop and stare at a building, imagine it being built, its history, the lives of the people who live in it, the pain they feel, the joy, the struggles they have, the occasional triumph and relentless failure. I walk and I wander and I dream. More than anything, I dream of love, crazy crazy mad love. Not the love of rings and white dresses and churches, but of lust and insanity, the love where you can’t stop touching, kissing, licking, sucking, and fucking. The love that breaks hearts, starts wars, ruins lives, the love that sears itself into your soul, that you can feel every time your heart beats, that scorches your memory and comes back to you whenever you’re alone and it’s quiet and the world falls away, the love that still hurts, that makes you sit and stare at the floor and wonder what the fuck happened and why. I dream of crazy crazy mad love the kind that starts with a look, with eyes that meet, a smile, a touch, a laugh, a kiss. The kind of love that hurts and makes you love the pain, makes you want the pain, makes you yearn for the fucking pain, keeps you awake until the sun rises, stirs you while you’re still asleep. The kind of love you can feel with every step you take, every word you speak, every breath, every movement, is part of every thought you have every minute of the day. Love that overwhelms. That justifies our existence. That provides proof we are here for a reason. That either confirms the existence of God and divinity, or renders it utterly meaningless. Love that makes life more than just whatever we know and see and feel. That elevates it. Love for which so many words have been spoken and written and
read and cried and screamed and sung and sobbed, but is beyond any real description of it. I’ve known much in my short, silly, unstable, sometimes wonderful sometimes brutal always reckless wreck of a life, but I’ve never known love. Crazy crazy mad love. Fear and pain, insecurity, rage, occasional joy, fleeting peace, they are all friends of mine. Kindness and familial love have always come my way. Disdain, contempt, and rage are constant companions. But never love.
So I open the door.
Step outside.
Walk.
Think.
Read.
Write.
Sit.
Watch.
Drink.
Eat bread.
Dream.
Life is waiting.
Life and love.
Life.
Love.
Los Angeles, 2017
* * *
Two weeks later, another message. I respond. And so it goes.
How is your heart, Jay?
Beating.
Not singing.
Not for years.
It used to sing so beautifully. A bit off-key, but loud and with such joy.
It’s silent and black now.
It was always black, but there were stars in that blackness. Big bright beautiful stars.
Just black now. And silent. No stars.
I read you’re married, children?
Where did you read that?
A magazine, I think. Or maybe I saw it on TV.
Ah yes, magazines and TV.
True?
Yes.
I never thought you would be.
Neither did I.
What happened?
I met someone I wanted to marry.