When I look at myself in the bathroom mirror, I don’t think I’m pretty. My eyebrows are straight. I ought to have two arches above my eyes, like Janet Gaynor.
It’s as if my face hasn’t yet made a choice, hasn’t finished taking shape. I tell myself that what I don’t find pretty about me will one day be someone’s beautiful. Someone who’ll love me and become my artist. Who’ll continue me. Who’ll take me from rough sketch to masterpiece, if I have a serious love affair. We’re all someone’s Michelangelo; the trouble is, we have to meet them.
Jules tells me I’m too naively sentimental, that I think like a novel.
It’s true that when I sleep with boys, I do think like a novel, but it’s not a novel that’s suitable for everyone.
I never sleep with the boy I’m actually sleeping with. The boy in my arms isn’t the one in my head. I think about someone else; more precisely, I think about many others. The scenarios change, but it can be up to five others. Five guys in my fantasy bed: that’s when I’m really on form. The kind of thing one would never do in real life; well, at any rate, not in mine.
I like the idea of love, but I get bored when I fuck. I need to let my mind wander off. One day I’ll send my pretend men packing and sleep with the boy I’m actually sleeping with.
The first time Lucien kissed Hélène, he felt a fluttering of wings under his lips. I’m waiting for the boy who’ll feel that fluttering of wings from my lips. They say that that doesn’t happen all the time. That you can spend a lifetime waiting for that fluttering.
Yesterday evening, I made love with the twenty-seven-year-old again. The one called What’s-his-name.
I have one rule I don’t break: never sleep with a guy from Milly. It would be like sleeping with a work colleague. Impossible to avoid bumping into each other every day. So, like all the others, What’s-his-name lives close to the Paradise, thirty kilometers from here. I had a second rule I didn’t break before What’s-his-name: never sleep twice with the same person. I’ve blown that one, as I’ve been sleeping with him for quite some time. I even gave him my phone number. This guy annoys me, but at the same time, I feel good with him when he’s not annoying me. Since we began sleeping together, he’s been asking me questions.
Usually, my “one-night stands” get dressed again in silence. But that said, usually, I do it in the car, seeing as I don’t have an apartment. But this particular guy has a studio. And he doesn’t budge after lovemaking. Doesn’t light a cigarette, either. He just looks at me, for a long time, then asks me a load of questions:
“What do you do for a living? And what would you like to do if you had the choice? . . . Oh yeah? No! . . . You’ll let me hear it? . . . You still live with your parents? Oh, I’m so sorry. How did it happen? So you live alone? I know your brother, by sight.”
“He’s not my brother, he’s my cousin.”
“And yet he looks like you.”
“Oh, really . . . I thought I didn’t look like anyone. Maybe it’s because our fathers were twins. Or because we grew up together. His parents were with mine in the car.”
“Wow, your life’s crazy, like some dramatic movie. Do you think about your parents?”
“Every day.”
“Do you remember them?”
“No. My memories have lost their memory.”
“So how do you think about them, then?”
“I listen to my father’s Bowie and Bashung records. For my mother, it’s Véronique Sanson and France Gall. I search for women’s smells, too. Her face cream. For a long time, I hunted for a cream that matched my memory of her, the one I can’t remember. I’ve sniffed every cream there is on earth. Even today, I still collect samples, just in case . . . I don’t know. In case her smell returns.”
It was the first time I was talking about something so personal with a quick fuck. I keep that kind of thing for Jules. Or for Jo, if I’ve really got the blues.
I’m not in love with What’s-his-name. I know that because I never think about him. With him, there’s just the present. I couldn’t say how long I’ve known him. I have no bearings in the past. And no future plans. I never say to him, see you tomorrow, see you next week, see you later, talk soon.