by Anita Heiss
‘She sounds great.’ I looked at Sorina, who nodded. ‘And this is the kind of support we want long-term. Do you know her?’ I asked Canelle.
‘I know someone who knows her. I think we can at least get an introduction. Do you have some bags with you today?’ Canelle looked at Sorina.
Sorina tipped her collection of bags out on the table. She was so excited about what she’d just heard.
Canelle looked impressed at the different styles in front of her. ‘Then, today we will go to the non-tourist banlieue art scene in La Seine-Saint-Denis, which is also the most impoverished banlieue. They have set up an association in order to offer a platform to local artists and help them display their creations. I think this is where we shall start.’
Once we had arrived in La Seine-Saint-Denis, I was impressed by the arts and crafts being created as part of employment programs but the sight of burnt-out vehicles and people living in poverty made me sad. It reminded me of communities back home but also my own sense of privilege in the life I had in Canberra and even in Paris. By the time we left the area, Sorina had been granted a space for three months to sell her bags. It was all systems go.
As we caught the Metro back later that afternoon, I think we all felt a sense of relief. I was making lists in my head regarding emails to the girls about setting up a Facebook page, designing business cards and coordinating the machine and materials. Canelle listened to her iPod while reading emails on her BlackBerry and Sorina sketched new bags in a notebook.
‘Libby, next weekend is Nuit Blanche,’ Sorina said, without looking up.
‘Nuit Blanche?’ I said, with less of the accent than it really required.
‘It is a celebration where museums, art galleries and other cultural institutions are opened to the public, free of charge.’ Sorina seemed proud of the city that wanted to kick her out. ‘It’s good for families especially.’
‘What a great idea!’ I got my Moleskine and made a note to check it out. It would be even more professional development I could write up in my report when I went back. And more to make the girls envious about.
Canelle watched me writing in my book and took her earplugs out.
‘Ah, you know the best thing about Nuit Blanche is that the city becomes a de facto art gallery with designated space for installations and a whole range of performances across art forms,’ Canelle’s voice sounded excited as she spoke.
‘Most of our museums and galleries are already free in Australia, but a joint effort across art forms over one weekend is something that we could do in Canberra for sure, and perhaps the NAG could coordinate it.’ I’d add it to my debrief when I got back home.
I thought about Ames over the next few days, and I also thought about the sex. It wasn’t natural to go for lengths of time without it, or so I’d read once in a glossy magazine in the doctor’s surgery.
I started to think about my health and how I should be considering the benefits of sex to me physically, beyond the pleasure of orgasms. I knew sex helped to relieve stress and I was finding the language barrier at work somewhat stressful. It also helped burn calories and I’d been consuming far more carbs in Paris than I ever did back home. Sex also helped build up the immune system and although I had travel insurance, I really couldn’t afford to get sick, so sex was also preventative medicine.
After five days of internal debating, I decided that sex with Ames again was absolutely necessary for my health and wellbeing. It was Thursday, and with Nuit Blanche approaching, I had the perfect excuse for asking Ames to be my guide.
I sent him a text:
Ames texted back:
Ames’ text made me smile, and made me hot. I was keen to get naked with him again and couldn’t believe how much being in Paris had changed my view of men over the past weeks. The universe was being kind to me it seemed, after my mistakes in recent years, and I was grateful.
I met Ames at his flat on Saturday evening to explore ‘his city’. But all we did was explore each other, beginning with a long soak in his deep cast-iron bath with clawed feet.
He then read me poetry in French and English while he sat in his living room in the nude. I didn’t understand most of what he recited but I loved the sound of his voice. When he read to me it reminded me of Linda in the movie Woman Times Seven.
He propped himself up against the black bedhead in the bedroom and I just listened for hours. He wanted me nude as well, but I couldn’t bring myself to be completely naked, although I liked the feeling of freedom in being without clothes just for the sake of it. I was more modest though and draped a pashmina across my shoulders, explaining that there was a chill coming in from under the door.
I had a copy of Kath Walker’s We Are Going in my bag to read on the train, and I asked him to read it to me as well. I made him dress for that reading, out of respect for the late activist.
Ames wrote a lot of his own poetry: love poems, environmental poems, poems about social responsibility and disadvantage. But when he didn’t find his own words adequate enough, he told me he recited the words of Maximilien de Robespierre.
‘We need another revolution. We need another Robespierre,’ Ames said, standing to attention as if he was the incorruptible revolutionary himself. He was naked, his penis standing to attention also, and he looked serious and sexy at the same time.
I knew he wasn’t the One – thanks to Andy I no longer believed in the One – and I certainly hadn’t gone to Paris to meet someone I didn’t believe even existed, but I was happy to just sit and watch and enjoy Ames’ nude oration.
‘Society is obliged to secure the subsistence of all its members!’ he proclaimed. ‘Providing the necessary help against poverty is a duty of the rich towards the poor.’ He walked across the room as if he was on a stage and I was the crowd. ‘The wretchedness of citizens is nothing other than the crime of government.’
He stood still, and I wasn’t sure if he was waiting for me to applaud or not, so I did. Then I stood up, took off my pashmina and stood naked with him. We were revealed revolutionaries. It felt wonderful.
The euphoria of feeling desired by Ames and being in tune with him politically, while also feeling sexually liberated in the city of Paris, fed me emotionally and physically, although I knew I was nowhere near ever falling in love again, not after my bad luck.
I was excited about my new sex life when I emailed the girls back home, attaching the photo of Ames and me from our first meeting.
Lauren emailed back first:
Denise emailed:
Caro emailed:
‘Coffee, mademoiselle.’ Dom presented me with a cup at his kitchen table while Romeo sniffed around my ankles.
To appease both Dom and Catherine, I had a cuppa with them once a week before work. That way I could assure them that I was not only alive, but that I was happy and healthy and eating properly.
And they often asked for an update on Sorina and her business. Catherine almost always had some more material – deep coloured satins, a variety of crushed velvets and linen. She once even had some electric-blue lurex and black spandex for me, and when I enquired where she got them, she just laughed. I was convinced she went out and bought it.
‘You are smiling a lot more these days, Libby,’ Catherine said, with a cheeky glint in her eye. ‘I used to smile like that when I first met my Dom.’
‘Don’t you still smile like that, my love?’ Dom pretended to be hurt.
‘Of course I do, darling.’
Catherine and Dom had the most romantic groove I’d ever seen. As a child, I was too young to notice the looks that Mum and Dad threw each other, and being around Catherine and Dom made me appreciate the real love and respect between two people who share a life and almost a lifetime together.
‘We are already sad that you are going to be leaving us, Libby, we like having you in our building,’ Dom said, putting his arm around my shoulder in an awkward half-hug.
‘I like being here, and already know I will be sad to leave. I’ve s
pent more time with you both drinking coffee than I’ve spent with my own mother in the past few years. It’s because of you that I don’t feel homesick.’
‘Oh, I think there is someone else who stops you being homesick also,’ Catherine smiled.
They could sense that there was a particular spring in my step and that I dodged any romance-related question. I imagined that being without a daughter themselves, they would be happy for me to marry locally and fill the daughterly void in their lives. Of course, my own mother would have something to say about that.
Over the next few weeks I enjoyed hanging out with Ames. We walked around the Place de la Concorde and the Tuileries Gardens and it was so cold I had to buy a hat made in Taiwan sold to me by an African. We also checked out the Latin Quarter on the Left Bank, the academic hub of the city. We took our time going through bookshops and record stores and drinking coffee among students and professors.
We walked hand-in-hand along rue de la Huchette in the heart of the Latin Quarter to a royal palace built in the thirteenth century, and the Exchange Bridge built in the fourteenth century. In whitefella terms, Paris was old.
Ames took me to the house where Ernest Hemingway lived in the 1930s and I just relished all the culture I was absorbing with a hot Frenchman wrapped around me the whole time.
This was my new life. On top of the romantic strolls, I was enjoying my routine of a café au lait and un pain au chocolat every morning on the way to work. The nights I didn’t see Ames, I’d go to the fromagerie and have my cheese baguette and wine for dinner. Sometimes I’d just grab my favourite trois-fromage quiche, ganache and Coca-Cola Light to balance the diet. It was my standard, especially if I was in a rush and couldn’t be bothered cooking.
I was getting more and more acquainted with the city and the language every day. I started to feel like a true local with my fabulous job in the arts, ongoing lessons in history and culture and the best diet in the world. Then there was Ames: who needed love when you could just have intelligent conversation and great sex?
One night in August, Canelle and I were on our way to the opening of an exhibition of photographs of Australia by French photographers. It was a collaboration between the musée and the Australian embassy.
As we walked down quai Branly, I realised it was the first time I’d been invited there since the flirty call from Jake a month before. In fact, it dawned on me as we arrived that Jake and I never did speak after that night because all my official embassy contact had been with Judith Marks.
My mind wandered back to the embassy itself. I was looking forward to checking out the interior of the building, having seen it from the outside numerous times. The architect was Harry Seidler, well-known back home for buildings like Australia Square in Sydney and QV1 in Perth.
We entered the front doors on rue Jean Rey and were met by an Australian security guard as we put our bags on the conveyor belt. It was such an unassuming entrance to an important place. I liked the guard’s friendliness and his Australian accent; it reminded me of life back at the NAG.
We had our names checked off by the staff at the desk and were directed into the large exhibition space. Men wore suits and women wore designer shoes and looked effortlessly glamorous. Even the Aussie women dressed with a sense of Parisian glam.
The opening was different to exhibitions back home – it wasn’t necessarily more cultured or ‘civilised’, but the crowd were definitely more self-controlled than at some of the openings we had at the NAG and other galleries around Australia. There were no cheers of excitement at the reunion of artists or families or past colleagues, like we often saw when Blackfellas from across the country would attend our openings, where the joy of reconnection added to the success of the event.
The French may have been more refined but I wasn’t convinced they were actually more fun than we were. I wondered how many of those attending were embassy staff and expats.
‘I feel a little strange here,’ I whispered to Canelle.
‘Why? These are your people.’
‘Actually they’re not my people. My people are Blackfellas. It’s just a little staid for me,’ I said, to the disgust of a snooty French woman who looked at me disapprovingly.
Canelle saw her and smiled. ‘I’ll get us a drink,’ she said, ‘and then people will seem much more fun to you, oui?’
‘Oui,’ I laughed, loving Canelle’s approach to the world even more.
She walked off, leaving me alone.
My feet were aching from the blinged slingbacks I’d raced out to buy in Montparnasse at lunchtime to feel more glamorous at the event. I spotted a free seat and walked over as elegantly as possible and sat down.
As Canelle chatted to other musée staff who had just arrived, I watched and tried to guess who everyone was. One man looked like a diplomat. I watched him greet a woman I assumed was his wife. They kissed the French way – a light kiss barely touching each cheek – and then they smooched on the mouth. I felt like a smooch on the mouth too. Ames came to mind and I got a tingle in my knickers. I breathed in deeply.
‘Hi Libby.’ Judith Marks caught me off guard.
‘Judith, hello, how are you?’ I stood up, noticing immediately her chocolate streaks had gone burgundy and were quite striking in her now slightly longer blonde bob.
‘Didn’t mean to startle you,’ Judith said matter-of-factly, ‘but I just want to let you know that my boss Jake Ross is keen to meet with you.’ She grabbed a prawn from a passing platter, also matter-of-factly. ‘Do you mind giving me a bell to line up a time for a meeting?’
‘Sure thing,’ I said. ‘I’ll give you a call tomorrow.’
‘Thanks,’ Judith was already one foot out of the conversation circle. ‘I’ve just spotted a regular being annoying to one of our visitors, I better go save them. Speak soon,’ she said, and walked off with purpose in her stride.
‘Here you go.’ Canelle had finally returned from the bar and handed me a glass of bubbly. ‘Stand there,’ she said, positioning me so she could see something on the other side of the room.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked with a wriggle.
‘There is a tall, very handsome man in a dark jacket, wearing thin dark-framed glasses, behind you.’
‘You are outrageous, Canelle. You’re worse than a Frenchman in terms of flirting and perving.’
‘Worse than?’ Canelle sounded offended. ‘That makes it sound bad. Flirting and perving, as you summarise it, is a good thing, so I would consider myself to be, let’s say, as good as a Frenchman.’
I laughed. She certainly was as good as any Frenchman, and five times better at it than any Aussie bloke I’d met.
‘He has dimples, and a warm smile.’ Canelle was perving, grinning and talking to me at the same time.
‘Let me look.’ I tried to turn but she stopped me aggressively.
‘You don’t need to see him: it is the man with the nice derrière from Nomad’s. The one you don’t want to talk to, remember? Never mind anyway, you will not get a chance to talk: he is surrounded by hot young women.’
‘He is the first secretary and I have to work with him,’ I said dismissively. My mind was on Ames – Jake Ross could have all the young women he wanted for all I cared.
‘Is this a big crowd, you think? I mean for a city of eleven million people?’ I was desperate to change the topic from men to almost anything else.
‘It’s big enough, why?’ Canelle was confused.
‘We’ve had bigger openings for solo exhibitions at the NAG, that’s all.’
‘Yes, Elizabeth, but there are dozens of openings in Paris tonight and film premières and so on.’
Canelle was making the point that in Canberra there wasn’t a lot to compete with. She was right, so I didn’t argue.
I continued to scan the room. ‘Everyone is dressed incredibly well, expensively well.’
‘So are you,’ Canelle said, affirming me. ‘This is new, oui?’ She touched the fabric on my frock. I had on an uncha
racteristically soft knee-length pink-and-black spiral print dress and a black glass heart choker I’d bought in the Marais.
‘Oui, it’s from a small boutique on rue du Bosquet. I am branching out from my block colours,’ I said, impressed with the evolution of my wardrobe since arriving. ‘Anyhow, let’s see the exhibition before the speeches start.’ I motioned Canelle into the main area.
We walked through the space of winding white walls with colour photographs that moved from landscapes to people from all walks of life in Australia. I was getting increasingly homesick as I took in photo after photo, including some shots of Koori kids in Sydney. I passed small groups of people discussing each print: the sunrise at Bondi, the sunset in Broome, the drought-stricken countryside, the busy harbour, the tickertape parade for returning Olympians, the life that I left in Australia.
I spotted Jake as I was looking at the photographs. This time, I was about to go over, when I saw him shaking hands with what I assumed were dignitaries. I watched him sweep them gently through the room, introducing them to guests. I found myself staring. He looked very professional and there were no young women in sight, and no other Blackfellas. I suddenly found myself missing Lauren. I got my phone out to text her:
As I pressed ‘send’, I remembered how expensive it was to text home and how rude it must have looked texting during opening night. I turned my phone off.
It was time for the Australian ambassador to open the exhibition. He introduced some of the photographers in attendance and talked about the relationship between the embassy and the musée. I struggled to hear him as the crowd around me spoke the whole time. I couldn’t believe the level of disrespect for a speaker, let alone the Australian ambassador.
‘People are so rude,’ I whispered to Canelle motioning to a group talking in front of us.