Maybe it was only the mood I was in that night—bitter, biting, yet full of loose energy—that led me back to the queer bar, a place I’d sworn I’d never go again. By then I had no grand hopes left for love, but was propelled instead by quite another purpose: I wanted a friend. Not just any friend. I wanted thefriend, the friend who is the stuff of movies and books and love songs—the friend who sees, the friend who gets, the friend to whom you have to explain nothing and who is yours until the end of time.
All afternoon and into the gloaming, I’d been sitting in the dark, watching my screen and polishing off a bottle of screw-top rosé, precisely the kind of blissful combination my other self disapproves of. What was the deal with Tony Soprano, finally and after all? So beautiful, so angry.
Then it was time to go. On the metro, two girls sat side by side in matching floral dresses and cursed each other over tiny hands made of butterfly wings. The exit tunnel and escalator smelled like important documents burning, which is the best description of Paris as a whole that I am capable of offering.
My potential new friend was a woman I’d met on Twitter when she’d liked a picture of my cat. Cute cat, she’d commented. What’s his name?
I told her his name—yes, like the angel—and she launched into a monologue about the Holy Trinity, which is my actual favorite subject to debate. Three into one, one into three. It makes no sense, yet it makes sense. I agree, utterly and totally, this woman said. In her little photo, she wore a droopy yellow bow in her hair. Here, I remember thinking, was a person who did not play by the world’s rules.
As usual, the filmmaker and her girlfriend stood in the street outside the bar smoking the cheapest possible kind of cigarettes. They greeted me with kisses in a tired kind of way, turning their faces to mine so that only the corners of our chins touched. Once upon a time, I had caused a lot of trouble here, both emotional and physical, so I understood their loyalty.
The signs asking for donations to fund the bar’s legal fees had come down, and I wondered what this meant. The bar had opened in a disreputable neighborhood that over time had become reputable, triggering a campaign from its new neighbors to close it down for reasons of sound and sexuality. But this argument does not play out the same way in France as it would in America, I have learned, for though the French surely have their own confusions of object and symbol, they are generally unimpressed by binary thinking. It’s an immunity I am still trying to acquire.
Over my large plastic cup of good beer, I watched the butch-femme couples kiss each other with their tender fish mouths and surveyed the gaggles of androgynes in vests made from various shades of denim who occupied the couches in the graffiti-soaked back room. I had the feeling again then, the only feeling that makes my other self shut up and listen.
Once, as a teenager in Virginia, after feeling the feeling for a whole year, I drove to a shooting range/gun store and looked at the big sign. GUNS, it said, ALL SHAPES AND SIZES. My friend’s older brother worked inside, and I knew I could be successful if I wanted to be. Success, in this context, would be a lovely rectangular gun, very small and possibly silver, held to the right side of my head and fired. Did I want to? My other self was silent as I sat in the car and silent when I pulled the car back onto the two-lane, back onto I-95 and through all the miles home. The decision was mine.
According to the clock above the bathroom with pictures of cats for numbers, my potential new friend was late. I saw one girl I thought was cute, in a black denim button-up onesie—little tits, no bra—which was just the kind of garment I would like to wear but never would. By the time you got the pants on and fastened in just the right way, you’d have no energy left for the top.
Here is the thing: I had a friend once, for three years. One day it was all, Let’s write our names on a cheap gold lock and lock it to this bridge. It was I who went to the hardware store and bought the lock, but she who wrote the initials in Sharpie and plopped the little key into the water. To be fair, the lock was so cheap that the U of it kept coming out altogether, so I helped my friend jam it back in once it was around the thin iron trestle. We also wrote vows, promising to bring more joy into each other’s lives rather than less and to remind each other that we are both special and talented and destined for great things. This is a kind of marriage, I said, and it means we are together now, until the end of time. Okay, she said.
All afternoon and into the gloaming, I’d been sitting in the dark, watching my screen and polishing off a bottle of screw-top rosé, precisely the kind of blissful combination my other self disapproves of. What was the deal with Tony Soprano, finally and after all? So beautiful, so angry.
Then it was time to go. On the metro, two girls sat side by side in matching floral dresses and cursed each other over tiny hands made of butterfly wings. The exit tunnel and escalator smelled like important documents burning, which is the best description of Paris as a whole that I am capable of offering.My potential new friend was a woman I’d met on Twitter when she’d liked a picture of my cat. Cute cat, she’d commented. What’s his name?
I told her his name—yes, like the angel—and she launched into a monologue about the Holy Trinity, which is my actual favorite subject to debate. Three into one, one into three. It makes no sense, yet it makes sense. I agree, utterly and totally, this woman said. In her little photo, she wore a droopy yellow bow in her hair. Here, I remember thinking, was a person who did not play by the world’s rules.
As usual, the filmmaker and her girlfriend stood in the street outside the bar smoking the cheapest possible kind of cigarettes. They greeted me with kisses in a tired kind of way, turning their faces to mine so that only the corners of our chins touched. Once upon a time, I had caused a lot of trouble here, both emotional and physical, so I understood their loyalty.
The signs asking for donations to fund the bar’s legal fees had come down, and I wondered what this meant. The bar had opened in a disreputable neighborhood that over time had become reputable, triggering a campaign from its new neighbors to close it down for reasons of sound and sexuality. But this argument does not play out the same way in France as it would in America, I have learned, for though the French surely have their own confusions of object and symbol, they are generally unimpressed by binary thinking. It’s an immunity I am still trying to acquire.
Over my large plastic cup of good beer, I watched the butch-femme couples kiss each other with their tender fish mouths and surveyed the gaggles of androgynes in vests made from various shades of denim who occupied the couches in the graffiti-soaked back room. I had the feeling again then, the only feeling that makes my other self shut up and listen.
Once, as a teenager in Virginia, after feeling the feeling for a whole year, I drove to a shooting range/gun store and looked at the big sign. GUNS, it said, ALL SHAPES AND SIZES. My friend’s older brother worked inside, and I knew I could be successful if I wanted to be. Success, in this context, would be a lovely rectangular gun, very small and possibly silver, held to the right side of my head and fired. Did I want to? My other self was silent as I sat in the car and silent when I pulled the car back onto the two-lane, back onto I-95 and through all the miles home. The decision was mine.
According to the clock above the bathroom with pictures of cats for numbers, my potential new friend was late. I saw one girl I thought was cute, in a black denim button-up onesie—little tits, no bra—which was just the kind of garment I would like to wear but never would. By the time you got the pants on and fastened in just the right way, you’d have no energy left for the top.
Here is the thing: I had a friend once, for three years. One day it was all, Let’s write our names on a cheap gold lock and lock it to this bridge. It was I who went to the hardware store and bought the lock, but she who wrote the initials in Sharpie and plopped the little key into the water. To be fair, the lock was so cheap that the U of it kept coming out altogether, so I helped my friend jam it back in once it was around the thin iron trestle. We also wrote vows, promising to bring more joy into each other’s lives rather than less and to remind each other that we are both special and talented and destined for great things. This is a kind of marriage, I said, and it means we are together now, until the end of time. Okay, she said.
by Emma Copley Eisenberg, McSweeny's | Read more:
Image: Franz Lang
