met Régis. It seems that, while I was away, a dear friend of mine had fixed them up.
I was suddenly furious and couldn’t drop the subject. I railed and railed against the dear friend: “When I think he ate my food, drank my drink, all the while plotting to marry you offto a millionaire in order to advance his own miserable little interests….”
“Let me remind you that Régis’s money means nothing to me. No, what I like is his good humor, his sincerity, his discretion. It was hard for me to be known as your lover—your homosexuality is too evident. Régis is very discreet.”
“What rubbish,” I would say a few days later when Jean-Loup repeated the remark about Régis’s discretion. “He’s famous for surrounding himself with aunties who discuss the price of lace the livelong day.”
“Ah,” Jean-Loup replied, reassured, “you’ve been filled in, I see”
(“Tu t’en renseignes”).
All sparkling and droll, except a terrible sickness, like an infection caused by the prick of a diamond brooch, had set in. When I realized that I would never be able to abandon myself again to Jean-Loup’s perverse needs, when I thought that Régis was enjoying the marriage with him I’d reconciled myself never to know, when I saw the serenity with which Jean-Loup now “assumed” his homosexuality, I felt myself sinking, but genuinely sinking, as though I really were falling, and my face had a permanently hot blush. I described this feeling of falling and heat to Paul. “That’s jealousy,” he said. “You’re jealous.” That must be it, I thought, I who had never been jealous before. If I had behaved so generously with earlier loves lost it was because I had never before been consumed by a passion this feverish.
Jealousy, yes, it was jealousy, and never before had I so wanted to hurt someone I loved, and that humiliated me further. A member of the playpen dined at Régis’s
hôtel particulier.
“They hold hands all the time,” she said. “I was agreeably surprised by Régis, a charming man. The house is more a museum than a house. Jean-Loup kept calling the butler for more champagne, and we almost burst out laughing. It was like a dream.”
Every detail fed my rancor—Régis’s charm, wealth, looks (“Not handsome but attractive”).
Everything.
Paul had a photographic memory, and, during the hours spent together in the car in Morocco, he recited page after page of Racine or Ronsard or Sir Philip Sidney. He also continued the story of his life. I wanted to know every detail—the bloody scenes on the steps of the disco, the recourse to dangerous drugs, so despised by the clenched-jaw cocaine set. I wanted to hear that he credited his lover with saving him from being a junkie, a drunk and a thug. “He was the one who got me back into school.”
“A master, I see,” I thought.
“School
master.”
“Now I study Cicéron and prepare my
maîtrise
, but then I was just an animal, a disoriented bull—I’d even gotten into beating up fags down by the Seine at dawn when I was really drunk.”
He gave me a story he had written. It was Hellenistic in tone, precious and edgy, flirting with the diffuse lushness of a Pre-Raphaelite prose, rich but bleached, like a tapestry left out in the sun. I suppose he must have had in mind Mallarmé’s “Afternoon of a Faun,” but Paul’s story was more touching, less cold, more comprehensible. That such a story could never be published in the minimalist, plain-speaking 1980s seemed never to have occurred to him. Could it be that housed in such a massive body he had no need for indirect proofs of power and accomplishment? Or was he so sure of his taste that recognition scarcely interested him at all?
The story is slow to name its characters, but begins with a woman who turns out to be Athena. She discovers a flute and how to get music out of it, but her sisters, seeing her puffing away, laugh at the face she’s making. Athena throwsthe flute down and in a rage
I was suddenly furious and couldn’t drop the subject. I railed and railed against the dear friend: “When I think he ate my food, drank my drink, all the while plotting to marry you offto a millionaire in order to advance his own miserable little interests….”
“Let me remind you that Régis’s money means nothing to me. No, what I like is his good humor, his sincerity, his discretion. It was hard for me to be known as your lover—your homosexuality is too evident. Régis is very discreet.”
“What rubbish,” I would say a few days later when Jean-Loup repeated the remark about Régis’s discretion. “He’s famous for surrounding himself with aunties who discuss the price of lace the livelong day.”
“Ah,” Jean-Loup replied, reassured, “you’ve been filled in, I see”
(“Tu t’en renseignes”).
All sparkling and droll, except a terrible sickness, like an infection caused by the prick of a diamond brooch, had set in. When I realized that I would never be able to abandon myself again to Jean-Loup’s perverse needs, when I thought that Régis was enjoying the marriage with him I’d reconciled myself never to know, when I saw the serenity with which Jean-Loup now “assumed” his homosexuality, I felt myself sinking, but genuinely sinking, as though I really were falling, and my face had a permanently hot blush. I described this feeling of falling and heat to Paul. “That’s jealousy,” he said. “You’re jealous.” That must be it, I thought, I who had never been jealous before. If I had behaved so generously with earlier loves lost it was because I had never before been consumed by a passion this feverish.
Jealousy, yes, it was jealousy, and never before had I so wanted to hurt someone I loved, and that humiliated me further. A member of the playpen dined at Régis’s
hôtel particulier.
“They hold hands all the time,” she said. “I was agreeably surprised by Régis, a charming man. The house is more a museum than a house. Jean-Loup kept calling the butler for more champagne, and we almost burst out laughing. It was like a dream.”
Every detail fed my rancor—Régis’s charm, wealth, looks (“Not handsome but attractive”).
Everything.
Paul had a photographic memory, and, during the hours spent together in the car in Morocco, he recited page after page of Racine or Ronsard or Sir Philip Sidney. He also continued the story of his life. I wanted to know every detail—the bloody scenes on the steps of the disco, the recourse to dangerous drugs, so despised by the clenched-jaw cocaine set. I wanted to hear that he credited his lover with saving him from being a junkie, a drunk and a thug. “He was the one who got me back into school.”
“A master, I see,” I thought.
“School
master.”
“Now I study Cicéron and prepare my
maîtrise
, but then I was just an animal, a disoriented bull—I’d even gotten into beating up fags down by the Seine at dawn when I was really drunk.”
He gave me a story he had written. It was Hellenistic in tone, precious and edgy, flirting with the diffuse lushness of a Pre-Raphaelite prose, rich but bleached, like a tapestry left out in the sun. I suppose he must have had in mind Mallarmé’s “Afternoon of a Faun,” but Paul’s story was more touching, less cold, more comprehensible. That such a story could never be published in the minimalist, plain-speaking 1980s seemed never to have occurred to him. Could it be that housed in such a massive body he had no need for indirect proofs of power and accomplishment? Or was he so sure of his taste that recognition scarcely interested him at all?
The story is slow to name its characters, but begins with a woman who turns out to be Athena. She discovers a flute and how to get music out of it, but her sisters, seeing her puffing away, laugh at the face she’s making. Athena throwsthe flute down and in a rage
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