by Nic Kelman
In New Orleans, you sit outside at the Café du Monde. White paint peels from the pillars around you as it would in any formerly Spanish territory. Their shadows are long across the small metal tables, long, but growing shorter. You drink chicory coffee, eat beignets that send clouds of powdered sugar into the air. You are always surprised at how many of them you can eat without feeling ill. You must always actually tell yourself to stop or you never would.
When you see her you don’t recognize her at first. Instead, you suddenly smell rose jelly, black tea. You look around but of course the Café du Monde serves neither. You smile to yourself and wonder why you think you smell those things here, now, things you have not tasted since you were in Istanbul, since the last time you saw Elena. And it is in remembering her that you recognize her. It is her across the street by the light. It is her waiting to cross Decatur.
Yes, she is wearing the same kind of oversize aviators she made famous so long ago. Yes, she is even wearing a vintage miniskirt and halter top of the kind you shot her in so many times. But she is still hard to recognize.
You watch her cross the street, watch her walk onto the Café terrace, but you do not say anything. You think she has seen you but does not recognize you. She sits near you, perhaps even at the table next to yours. Still you say nothing. What is there to say? When her coffee and beignets arrive, she takes off her sunglasses. Anyone who bothered to look would see she has been crying.
As you watch her sip her coffee, more of Istanbul comes back to you — a coffeehouse across from the Hagia Sofia dense with the violet smoke of apple tobacco and the clac-clac-clac of backgammon, the men staring at you, at her, the only woman, the shout of the muezzin coming from the mosque — more of Istanbul and the other times you saw her during those two years you were both in Europe. The time in Paris with the balcony doors open when, through the iron railing, across the street, you could make out a woman doing her ironing as you fucked her. The time in the Aegean on the deck of Sergei’s yacht when, after everyone else had gone to bed, you had to cover her mouth with the palm of your hand before she drowned out the slap of the waves against the hull. And, of course, the first time, the time you tried again just to be sure.
You were outside Barcelona. On a beach of black sand and flashing mica, a beach that looked nothing like the night sky, you took pictures of her. It was the last day of the shoot but she wore sunglasses as she had every other day. That was her thing, why people called her. That was the summer those glasses became popular. Everyone had to have them in their shoot; no one made them look as plausible as her. Hidden, her face launched dozens of summer lines. And after that last day was over, a half day, the two of you walked through the medieval part of the city. That was when you tried again. Even though she’d rebuffed your first couple of attempts, you tried again just to be sure. After all, this wasn’t just another model. This was a girl Daimon Lake had chosen to be seen with more than once. Even if she hadn’t been a model, even if she’d been ugly, you still might have tried. Those things mattered to you then. So on the steps of the old cathedral you said, “Just a minute,” and, “May I?” and you reached out with both hands and took off her sunglasses. Then you took a picture of her on the steps, in the setting sun, took a picture of her and said as you lowered the camera, “It’s a shame. It really is. A shame.” After dinner, in an armchair near your bed, she fucked you for the first time.
She puckers her face at her first sip. The coffee too bitter, she pours sugar, asks for milk. You remember her first phone call to you in Sapporo. The line kept breaking up, they weren’t as good then as now. For her it was morning, for you, night. She was calling from New York. She told you how when she’d gotten back there’d been messages for her from Daimon. How he’d asked her to go to the Oscars with him, to be his date at the Oscars. “The Oscars, Alex,” she’d said. “I hope you don’t mind,” she’d said. “I won’t sleep with him or anything.” But you knew she hadn’t told him about you.
“Be careful,” you said.
“I will,” she replied. But she thought you were talking about drugs, about red sports cars, about rape.
Then she said, “Hello? . . . Hello? . . . Something funny just happened to the line — I can’t hear you anymore . . . are you there? Alex — if you can hear me I’ll call you from L.A., OK? I’ll call you from L.A.,” she’d shouted and hung up.
She takes a careful bite of a beignet but she did call you from Los Angeles. She called you to tell you about the dresses. Dozens of designers had been sending her couture. She could keep it if she wore it to the awards or even to any of the parties just before or after. She called you just to tell you she’d spent the last three days trying on one-offs in her hotel room, a room Daimon had paid for.
“Don’t worry about it — it’s just another slut run — that’s all,” she said. That was what her and her friends had called it when, back in high school, they’d get dressed up and ask an older man to buy them beer and cigarettes. She’d told you that the previous October, in Berlin, strolling near the Wall. Shortly before you had both agreed you felt sorry for those on the other side.
“Live by the sword . . . ,” you’d replied. You still said things like that then, still bothered trying to be clever. In the snow, near an assassinated shogun’s mausoleum, you had been photographing winter coats. She’d laughed, told you you could be so weird sometimes.
When you came in last night, you’d noticed the HMIs lighting up the Ursuline convent. The shoot must be Daimon’s, she must be traveling with him for once. She rubs her fingers quickly back and forth against her thumb. The powdered sugar. She called you a few more times. She called you to ask you if you could believe it about the paparazzi outside the restaurants, if you could believe they couldn’t get enough of her and Daimon. She called you to tell you you would never believe that someone had asked her to autograph a spread in Vogue. And, of course, she called you the day after to tell you about the television cameras and the interviews they said were broadcast worldwide, to tell you about the giant Oscar statues flanking the entrance to the auditorium and who she met at all the parties.
But that was all. She never called you after that. She never called you to tell you she had moved in to Daimon’s mansion in Malibu. She never called you to tell you he had asked her to marry him. She never called you to tell you that, the night he proposed, as she fell asleep, the taste of Cointreau and semen still in her mouth, she thought, “This must be the way they all felt, all those Queens and Princesses, this must be exactly the way they all felt.” She never called you to tell you any of that. She never called you again.
Not that it mattered to you, not that you cared. By then you’d been wise enough to also move on. By then you were in England. By then you were photographing the steps of St. Paul’s, of Westminster, of Canterbury.
She reaches into her purse, withdraws some eyedrops. She throws her head back. The wattle on her neck tightens a little but not all the way down to her sternum. Her blouse is very low cut. You’ve heard a couple things about her since then. It would have been impossible for you not to, you move in such similar circles.
An executive chef you know once said he’d seen her on the beach in Rio throwing a sandal. She was wearing a sarong and yelling, “You bastard, you fucking bastard!” She had taken the shoe off to throw it at Daimon. He backed away from her, palms held up and out in front of him. He laughed as if he’d played a practical joke on her, nothing more. She’d missed, had hit another woman sunbathing.
A producer friend of yours lives in their building on Fifth Avenue. One time he told you he came home to find something of a riot on the street side. When he asked someone what was going on they just said, “It’s raining diamonds, man, diamonds!” and returned to scouring the gutter. He found out from the doorman that Elena had thrown all her jewelry out the window. The tenants across the hall had heard her yelling at Daimon, asking him how he could expect it to mean anything to her.
And, of course, your old
assistant now does their daughter’s publicity shots. She (the daughter) can’t keep her mouth shut. She tells him how her mother won’t file for divorce because of the pre-nup, how she’d be left with nothing. No money, no contacts, no skills, no friends. She tells him how her father is paying paternity to at least three other women. She tells him how her mother is more of an employee than anything else, that she looks after her and the houses and the staff and receives a monthly allowance.
The eyedrops run down her cheeks. Her eyes remain bloodshot. And you find yourself wondering if you should have done more. After all, you knew. Perhaps you should have told her in what ways her expectations were flawed, perhaps you should have told her what kind of arrangement she was making. But as she puts the eyedrops back in her purse you decide there was, in reality, nothing more you could have done, nothing more you could have said. Because she wouldn’t have listened. After all, Daimon wasn’t the one taking advantage of her.
Now she dabs at her cheeks with a handkerchief, checks her foundation in a gold compact. You look at your watch. It is almost time to go.
You finish your coffee, look at the last beignet, tell yourself not to eat it. “Let’s go,” you say to your companion.
“Awww . . . do we have to? I’m tired,” she pouts. You almost give in.
“No,” you say, “I mean, ‘yes,’ yes, we have to — the Pres-bytÈre is right over there, it’s not far. . . besides, I know this creative director, he’ll get all pissy if we don’t start when he wanted us to.” “Come on,” you add, standing up, putting a bill on the table.
She huffs but she obeys, gets up. As she bends over to pick up her bag all the men that can see her stare. Her skirt falls just short of revealing her panties. She has long legs and her hair ripples in the sun when she bends down, stands up. But her real signature is her lips. She has wonderfully full lips. “Blowjob lips” you called them when you told the creative director about her.
Your motion draws Elena’s attention. She has put away her compact and is staring at you over the cup of coffee she holds to her mouth. She is studying you, frowning. She examines the girl you’re with as if checking a fact, a number in a ledger. Your companion notices, stares back at her, but not in the same way. She seems to be looking at a creature under glass in a museum she didn’t want to visit.
Terrified, you quickly turn your back, pat your companion on her firm little ass, say, “Let’s go.” No one calls out your name as you weave your way through the tables. No one runs to catch up with you out on the sidewalk. You seem to have escaped. But just to be sure, you decide to go round the long way, via Madison. Just to be sure, you avoid walking along the railing, avoid getting any closer to her than is absolutely necessary.
At the curb, as she slips her hand into yours, as she looks first one way then the other, as she looks to see if you might jaywalk instead of waiting for the light, your companion says lightly, “God, did you see the woman next to us? Did you see that blouse?! What on earth was she thinking? She should have a little more respect. . . .”
Once, early on, I called in sick when I wasn’t sick.
Once, we rented a car for the day and drove up the Hudson Valley.
Once we looked at antiques and had lunch and went for a walk in the woods.
Once I stuck wildflowers in my nose and made you laugh.
Once, still laughing, you pushed me down on some leaves and collapsed on top of me and suddenly stopped laughing and looked very serious all of a sudden and said, “Promise me you’ll tell me if you ever stop loving me.”
Once you assumed that, at some point, I had started.
Once I said, “I promise, I promise.”
The ancient Greeks had no word for romantic love. To them, love for a thing and love for a woman were one and the same. When speaking or writing of a man’s relationship to a woman they used words that meant “owned,” “valued highly,” or “had sex with.” When Odysseus returned home, he and Penelope did not cuddle. They fucked.
Very occasionally they would employ the word “mingle” to refer to intercourse, but even then the most striking example of this is when the bones of Achilles and Patroclus are mingled together in death.
Aphrodite was not the goddess of love as is popularly believed, as we tell our children. She was the Goddess of Sex. The patron goddess of prostitutes in fact. And her son, Eros, dear little Cupid with his darling little arrows, was the god of passion.
And this is why even Sappho spoke only of longing, of pain, of sex, of people being precious to her, this is why even Sappho never used the word “love.” It didn’t exist.
The Romans were the first to suggest there may be one more kind of love. For the most part, the Latin word amare (that verb we all learned to conjugate by repeating over and over: amo, amas, amat, etc.) combined the meanings of the two Greek words eros and agape. It could be used to imply a sexual relationship between two people, self-love, the love of possessions, or the love between friends, relations, and nations. However, it does seem possible to make the argument that very occasionally it could have also implied a relationship between husband and wife that was somehow distinct from both friendship and sexual desire. But it is hard to make a solid case for this. After all, the Romans obviously did not see this kind of relationship as distinct enough to deserve its own word. In addition, if the texts of the most famous Latin “love” stories are read closely, it is clear they are not talking about anything more than intense sexual desire. Dido’s relationship with Aeneas, for example, begins with sex in a cave during a thunderstorm and is referred to as both “wild” and “improper.” Why “improper”? Because she had been previously married and the Romans, perhaps coincidentally, were also the first to introduce the concept of univira, the rule that a woman could only ever have one husband. It may also be nothing more than coincidence that the Romans colloquially employed amare to mean “be obliged to.”
So the word “love” that we use today we did not get from Latin or Greek, but from Anglo-Saxon. It first appeared in the ninth century and, as far as can be understood today, seems to have been used to mean “the care one feels for something precious that one already owns,” as distinguished from “lust” (also from Anglo-Saxon) which meant “the desire for something precious that one does not already own.” Thus both love and lust could be felt equally for gems, horses, or women, and in equal fashion.
In English, then, “love” first came to refer to a relationship between two people, as opposed to between a person and a thing, because of Christian doctrine. As time progressed, the word was taken up as the translation of the Latin amare in its context of “goodwill between men.”
Subsequent and consequent to this, during the age of chivalry, once Christian morality had gained a firm foothold and sex outside of wedlock was considered a sin, “love” became employed as the euphemism for sex. A writer could refer to the “love” between an unwedded man and woman (or two men or two women) without fear of reprisal. Not so an explicit reference to sexual intercourse out of wedlock, a situation that would not change for over half a millennium. Hence Malory speaks of Lancelot’s “love” for Guinevere despite the fact that the relationship he actually describes seems to amount to little more than the odd fumbling rut in the back stairwells of Camelot.
“Love” can be said to have finally assumed its modern sense in Elizabethan times. And who’s to say if this meaning would have endured so long were it not for Shakespeare’s popularization of that meaning. Shakespeare, whose work has been translated into as many languages as the Bible. Shakespeare, who was, after all, writing for his queen.
So believe me when I tell you love is the printing press and the arcade version of Centipede. Believe me when I tell you that, at the very best, love is a brand-new thing.
Because no matter how often we cancel the trip, say, “No, you guys go on, I’m just going to relax at the lodge,” decide to do something quiet instead, no matter how often we can’t find the energy for other things, we always h
ave the energy to fuck them. Whenever we have an opportunity to fuck them, the energy finds us.
The global sex slave trade grosses more annually than the global drug trade.
You’ve only ever had one experience that far surpassed your expectations even though it was the one experience you always imagined (just like every other straight man you’ve ever known) would be far better than any other.
It wasn’t the first time you tasted Beluga caviar.
It wasn’t the first time you dove the Great Barrier Reef.
It wasn’t the first time you held the first unique codex in your collection.
It wasn’t even the first time you paid two hookers to have sex with you and each other all at the same time.
It was the time back when you had been dating a bisexual girl for quite some time so you felt close to her, knew her quite well, intimately even, and you took her and an old girlfriend of hers out to dinner and just like one of those stories in Penthouse the three of you ended up in bed together. Except it wasn’t like one of those stories in Penthouse. It was better. It was, in fact, the only thing you’ve ever known for which there was no “like” or even “a little bit like,” for which there was no “you know how you feel when.” It was the only thing you’ve ever known for which there were no words at all. It was the only experience you’ve ever had during which your mind was blank throughout, during which you thought nothing throughout. Nothing. During which, throughout, you simply existed, or, perhaps, ceased to exist.
“‘. . . I first left Hellas, the land of fair women, running from the hatred of Ormenos’ son Amyntor, my father; who hated me for the sake of a fair-haired mistress. For he made love to her himself, and dishonoured his own wife, my mother; who was forever taking my knees and entreating me to lie with this mistress instead so that she would hate the old man. I was persuaded and did it; and my father when he heard of it straightway called down his curses, and invoked against me the dreaded furies that I might never have any son born of my seed . . . so that it was you, godlike Achilleus, I made my own child, so that some day you might keep hard affliction from me.”’ — Phoenix, Iliad 9:447