I was taking the fast train home and there was a seat open in a half empty cabin.

A strange man sitting across from me. He had the eyes of someone in a lot of anguish and yet too tired to move. His face was solid and wide, like the curved end of a paddle, and he wore a grey and white jacket. At first I really did not pay much attention to him. I had a lot of work on my hands and was worrying about something. Then, and this is what happens when a wagon is half bare, I started to find myself unable to control myself. I stared at my opposite passenger. His eyes were glassy and his mouth half open. Shudder.

After a short moment, still looking straight in front of him with that strange expression of glazed mania, he started to brush his nose a little. The brushing continued and descended into fondling. I was beginning to wonder if he something he was trying to get out. It’s terrible to watch someone fiddling with their nose when the thing you dread, the thing you most want to see, is for them to stick the finger right up. And then he did it. The finger went right in, the index, and came out. Still staring in front of him, maybe studiously avoiding my glance, he rubbed it between his index and thumb and moved his hand between his fat thighs. There, the hand disappeared and, I’m guessing, rubbed itself against the seat.

And then he did it again. And this time the finger went it deep, plunging, scraping. Still, scarcely a glance in my direction. Suddenly, he uses his right hand to fumble in his jacket pocket. So now we have one finger up his nose and the other shakily moving inside his jacket. Just when I thought I couldn’t take it any longer, he pulled out a plum. At the same time a canteloupe rolled out from his side. He held the plum in his one hand, and slowly pulled the finger out of his nose and did the same wiping gesture on the chair.

__________________________

Walking down the street around Tolbiac, the towers that rise out of the distance are suddenly close. They were concrete and tall, rising over the brightly lit basketball courts. The air smelled of autumn but the lushness of the concrete garden made you think of the Asian tropics. You round the corner, climb the hard grey steps, and suddenly you’re in a wide apartment complex, replete with geometric tiling and corrugated cement roofs. You take the elevator, through the brown seventies glassed in elevator and end up on the 29th floor. The view of south west Paris is before you, but you feel as if you’ve just been in a set for Clockwork Orange.

It all started a bit early on, some time after noon when I was walking down the street on the way to the supermarket. Standing near the corner, next to a metal grill fence, was a rather fat older man with no teeth, his lips sucked back and bloated from bad dentures. He held, in his upturned hand, what I thought to be a bag containing crumbs. All along the grill were pigeons. Oddly enough, though, they didn’t seem to be fluttering around him in search of food. They just all seemed to be looking at him. As I got closer I noticed there was something red inside of the bag. In fact the bag was not a bag but a long piece of crumpled paper. The red things was longish, so I assumed they were sausages. Probably merguez. But then I finally got up next to him and saw what it was. It was the underside of a long beef tongue.

Later on, I was trotting further down the hill on my way to a bar, when I spotted two men lying down in front of a Casino supermarket. They were lolling about next to a shopping cart. Inside the shopping cart were what I thought to be dirty clothes. There was cardboard blocking half the cart. As I got closer, I realised that there weren’t clothes inside the cart but something furry. Almost coming up to it, it was not a coat, or anything like that, but four very young puppies in a state of catatonia. There was nothing written on the sign.

Finally, I turned on the television much later in the evening, and came across a television show where a man was gamboling with his pigs. He seemed to make much a fuss about where they slept and how his sty was a bucolic eden. I went to the bathroom and when I came out, he was chopping off the leg from the body.

I might need glasses.

Saturday night: nothing says chic like Carambar bonbons after a great dinner. Their wrappers really have the worst jokes in them. For example…

Dilemma 1
Would you rather have gum between your fingers or mayonnaise between your bumcheeks?

or even better…

Q: Why do the Chinese use chopsticks?
A: No idea.

or, my personal favourite…

Q: What is written inside Italian buses?
A: Don’t talk to the bus driver. His hands are occupied.

The Louvre may be my Tiffany’s, but the Pompidou is my coffee. Whenever I need a slight jolt, a little kick in the pants, I run off to the Pompidou and wander. The beauty of living in a city where there is just so much art is that you can treat it like your own private collection, picking what to see and not being bothered with everything. So, privileged with the Pantagruel of hangovers, I dressed up chic and went to the Pompidou.

Usually, I hunt out the Matisses, the Rothkos, and then just whatevers, but today I was floored. Floored with seconds of entering the gallery. There was simply this stunning painting and I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It was Untitled XX by Willem de Kooning. De Kooning is maligned in art history for his brutal and some say misogynistic depictions of women. I really don’t care. This painting is raw, powerful, the type of image that halts you with its magnificence, its boldness, it sheer play on colour, composition, all pointing to a rare rare gift in pure image making. This has nothing to do with irony, or wit, or borrowed power. This painting is its own source of power. This is why painting exists in the first place. Because it is something unbreakable into words. It is an essential knowing.

Contrary to popular opinion, gay karaoke wasn’t just made for men to meet other men by crooning love tunes. Garaoke is, in this person’s humble opinion, the antidote to a wounded heart. What’s not to like when all your best GBs are in the house, splurging on liquor, and singing La Vie en Rose like it’s meant to be sung (in a threesome). Of course, besides the hilarity, there were moments of sinful pleasure. Yup. I’m talking about singing Bonnie Tyler’s best song with the dashing Rhino himself.

I must have been out of my wits to pick that song but to be honest, I had just plain forgotten most of the lyrics. But suddenly, halfway through the song, I realized that every single word was my story. The second realization was that it was totally bearable with my lovely friends beside me. With Rhino by my side, nothing could stop us. Just have to wait now for our recording date.

Happy Birthday Micke!