I met Philippe Toussaint at the Tibourin, a nightclub in Charleville-Mézières, in 1985.
He was leaning on his elbows at the bar. And me, I was a bartender. I was doing several casual jobs by lying about my age. A friend at the hostel I lived in had doctored my papers to make me old enough.
I looked ageless. I could have been fourteen as easily as twenty-five. I only ever wore jeans and T-shirts, had short hair, and piercings everywhere. Even in my nose. I was slight, and I put smoky shadow around my eyes to give myself a Nina Hagen look. I’d just left school. I was no good at reading or writing. But I could count. I’d already lived several lives and my one aim was to work to pay my own rent, to leave the hostel as soon as possible. After that, I would see.
In 1985, the only thing that was straight about me was my teeth. Throughout my childhood, I’d had this obsession with having lovely white teeth like the girls in the magazines. When child-welfare workers visited my foster homes and asked me if I needed anything, I always requested an appointment with the dentist, as if my future, my whole life, would depend on the smile I had.
I didn’t have any friends who were girls—I looked too much like a boy. I’d been close with a few surrogate sisters, but the continual separations, the changes of foster home, had killed me. Never become attached. I told myself that having a shaved head would protect me, give me the heart and guts of a boy. So, girls avoided me. I’d already slept with boys, to be like everyone else, but it was no big deal, I was disappointed. It wasn’t really my thing. I did it to allay suspicion, or get clothes, a gram of dope, entrance to somewhere, a hand that would hold mine. I preferred the love in the children’s stories, the ones I’d never been told. “They got married and had many, many, many . . . ”
Leaning on his elbows at the bar, Philippe Toussaint was watching his friends bopping on the dance floor while sipping a whiskey-and-Coke with no ice. He had the face of an angel. Like the singer Michel Berger, but in color. Long blond curls, blue eyes, fair skin, aquiline nose, mouth like a strawberry . . . ready to eat, a lovely ripe, July strawberry. He wore jeans, a white T-shirt, and a black-leather biker jacket. He was tall, well built, perfect. The moment I saw him, my heart went “boum,” as my imaginary uncle-by-marriage, Charles Trenet, sings. With me, Philippe Toussaint would get everything for free, even his glasses of whiskey-and-Coke.
He didn’t need to do a thing to get to kiss the pretty blondes that hovered around him. Like flies circling a piece of meat. Philippe Toussaint appeared not to give a damn about anything. He went with the flow. He didn’t have to lift a finger to get what he wanted, apart from raising his glass to his lips from time to time, between two fluorescent kisses.
He had his back to me. All I could see of him were the blond curls that turned from green to red to blue under the revolving lights. My eyes had been lingering on his hair for a good hour. Occasionally, he would lean towards the mouth of a girl as she whispered something in his ear, and I would study his perfect profile.
And then he spun around to the bar and his eyes landed on me, never to let go. From that moment on, I became his favorite toy.
At first, I thought his interest in me was down to the free shots of alcohol I poured into his glass. When serving him, I made sure he couldn’t see my bitten nails, just my white and perfectly straight teeth. I thought he looked like he came from a good family. To me, apart from the youths at the hostel, everyone looked like they came from a good family.
There was a traffic jam of girls behind him. Like at a tollbooth on the Highway of the Sun at the start of the holidays. But he continued to ogle me, eyes full of desire. I leaned against the bar, facing him, to be sure that it really was me he was looking at. I popped a straw in his glass. I looked up. It really was me.
I said to him: “Would you like something else to drink?” I didn’t hear his reply. I moved closer to him, shouting, “Sorry?” He said, “You,” to me, in my ear.
I poured myself a glass of bourbon behind the boss’s back. After a mouthful, I stopped blushing, after two I felt good, after three I was bold as brass. I went back over to his ear and replied, “After my shift, we could have a drink together.”
He smiled. His teeth were like mine, white and straight.
I reckoned my life was going to change when Philippe Toussaint moved his arm across the bar, lightly to touch mine. I felt my skin tighten, like it had a premonition. He was ten years older than me. That age difference gave him stature. I felt like a butterfly gazing at a star.