Nothing But a Star

by Jeremy Reed

  broken by angles of his sleeves.

  Frank was disinformation for five years,

  the outlaw expelled from our class

  for hanging out in a toilet

  beside the grungy docks, his pockets stashed

  with money and a piece of blue tulle

  he’d sampled for a shirt.

  The shock of recognition startled me

  into simultaneous alert,

  our shared secret coming up seamlessly,

  as though we’d met again to find in each

  a fugitive identity;

  a brief, unspoken way to make things clear

  between us—and he’d lost his way—

  back home and working in a menswear store

  and me just passing through, the light

  transparent as a blond Chablis poured

  and left for contemplation in a glass.

  AGAINST NATURE

  A libretto by Jeremy Reed for Marc Almond

  Against Nature

  Against Nature, a libretto based on the seminally decadent novel À rebours by J.-K. Huysmans, tells the story of Des Esseintes, the last of his line, a disillusioned, solitary and wealthy aesthete, who, having exhausted a deviant vocabulary of sensory pleasures, decides to leave Paris and retire with his elderly servants to a house designed for him at Fontenay.

  Disgusted with humanity, acutely refined, phobic and neurotic, and having hosting a farewell dinner party in which all the food served is black, Des Esseintes, a middle-aged sensualist and debauchee, retires to a customised house with an interior built like a ship’s cabin to engage in a life devoted to saturating himself in artificial pleasures.

  Our libretto charts the existential crisis leading to Des Esseintes’ decision to withdraw from society, his fundamental boredom with what life offers and his list of obsessive fetishes involving a sensory attachment to old books, the invention of perfumes, an excessive love of flowers and jewels—he has a jeweller create an accessorised gold jewel-studded carapace for his pet tortoise—imaginary travel, a sexual relationship with a schoolboy picked up at random, old pots, musical instruments and expensive liquors poured out of bottles that play musical tunes when uncapped.

  Deeply influenced by the writings of Baudelaire and Poe and saturated in their opium-wasted melancholy, Des Esseintes devises imaginary journeys to London, going as far as the docks and eating an English breakfast to substitute for making the physical journey. Eventually, made both nervously and physically ill from his unnatural state of reclusion, and his exhaustive inner burn-out—from feeding on memories, but barely able to take sustenance—he takes medical advice and reluctantly returns to Paris, where the novel and our libretto ends, with Des Esseintes facing an unknown future and the possibility of his death in a city changed out of all recognition where he is now a stranger.

  Ennui

  I was born with bad blood

  from a mad mother’s genes

  my moody teens ruined

  by contempt and disdain

  I took refuge in boredom

  old books and the dead

  listened out the slow rain

  in a red satin bed

  Death swallowed the father

  I’d rather forget

  my mother’s pet toy-boy

  used nail varnish on a rat

  I visited brothels

  a rebel a punk

  found no pleasure in women

  used junk and got drunk.

  A dandy and aesthete

  syphilitic neurotic

  I kept to myself

  and read Poe in the attic

  I was born with bad genes

  all my teens kept apart

  in a big empty chateau

  as cold as my heart

  In my solitary sex

  I played virtuoso

  bored with backrooms and bars

  brothels and bordellos

  I burnt money so fast

  my past went up in smoke

  and sold off my assets

  before I went broke

  I moved out to Fontenay

  to be with myself

  on a blue misty day

  and put my looks on the shelf

  with rare books and my past

  as the last of my line

  and reinvented my madness

  with a deep ruby shine

  I was born with bad blood

  from a mad mother’s genes

  my moody teens ruined

  by contempt and disdain

  I built a house like a ship

  with a green light and red

  and drank absinthe and pastis

  in a red satin bed

  Indigo and Orange

  Indigo and orange, as colours representative of dark and sunny moods, are the dominant colours used by Des Esseintes to theme his ship’s cabin in the house at Fontenay, and so form the basis of his imaginary travels. He even has a burner in the room diffusing the smells of petrol and tar as a stimulus to believing he is voyaging on the high seas. The song brings the room’s interior alive as the refuge for his obsessions, and recounts his sexual attraction to slaves, his love of flowers, and his pet tortoise having a gold carapace.

  Indigo and Orange

  My fetish was black hashish

  my walls bound in morocco,

  a rococo interior

  I themed marine colours

  I had tiger-skin rugs

  an anchor and oil burner

  dispensing petrol and tar

  to smell like a harbour

  Indigo and orange

  I chose for my décor

  a sad tone and a sunny

  to light my interior

  I lived mostly by night

  a samovar on a coffin

  and the bright purple waters

  of my inky aquarium

  Sometimes a black slave

  arrived with the price

  carved into his skin

  of an exotic vice

  Indigo and orange

  strange contrasting two;

  one made me feel sunny

  the other sad and blue

  My starbursts of rare flowers

  hot showers of pink lilies

  and leopard-spot orchids

  sharpened my memories

  of sleek harems and boys

  served like toys with Chateau Petrus

  dark red as the blood

  of my god Heliogabalus

  Indigo and orange

  the two colours grew

  into my needs

  that were sunny and blue

  I kept a pet tortoise

  with a jewel-studded gold shell

  a cold sun on the carpet

  a lapidary fireball

  and grew sensually bored

  with all natural things

  and studied my image

  in a fistful of rings

  Indigo and orange

  I chose for my décor

  a sad tone and a sunny

  to light my interior

  Flowers and Cannibals

  The song narrates Des Esseintes’ obsession with rare tropical flowers such as caladiums, orchids, bearded iris and fly-catchers and in particular a flesh-eating plant, quite literally a botanical carnivore. Flowers also remind Des Esseintes of human sexual diseases and skin blemishes, as well as being a source of human comfort and indoors beauty.

  Flowers and Cannibals

  I wanted black flowers

  that glowered like a sewer

  and red lilies with spots

  like the ones on my liver

  and fleshy caladiums

  raw eruptive sorts

  that arrived looking sleazy

  like lowlife escorts

  Des Esseintes Des Esseintes

  bored by it all

  had a flesh-eating plant

  a tropical cannibal

  I wanted throaty artichokes

  orchids like volcanoes

  white bear
ded iris

  with mauve painted toes

  I pampered fly-catchers

  carnivorous flowers

  that fed on red meat

  not on hot hissy showers

  Des Esseintes Des Esseintes

  bored by it all

  had a flesh-eating plant

  a tropical cannibal

  I liked perverse species

  sexless as a gamine

  mean things from China

  like an opium dream

  some looked syphilitic

  or hexed by voodoo

  or sexed up by the colour

  of a violent tattoo

  Des Esseintes Des Esseintes

  bored by it all

  had a flesh-eating plant

  a tropical cannibal

  I wanted flowers to express

  everything that I’d lost

  my removal from life

  at such a punitive cost

  their luxurious excess

  of exuberant scent

  taught me that in sadness

  there’s also content

  I needed rogue flowers

  to compensate for my state

  most things in life always

  come too early or late

  I had it all big and small

  and it all slipped away

  like these flowers that I nurture

  that slowly decay

  Uranian Blues

  The androgynous figure of Miss Urania, who Des Esseintes suspects is a male circus artist in drag, but who turns out to be a cheap whore of indeterminate sexuality, is linked in this song to the fictional character Mother Fist, the subject of Marc Almond’s anthemic song of that name. The disappointment engendered by the encounter deepens Des Esseintes’ realisation that he has reached a state in which only extreme forms of artificially induced pleasures can satisfy his senses.

  Uranian Blues

  I’m awake half the night

  with my pills and delusions

  illusions like stage fright

  night sweats and confusion

  at a quarter to three

  Miss Urania’s in my head

  I think she’s a he

  in my red satin bed

  She’s a cheap circus artist

  Miss Urania with a twist

  in a rhinestone tiara

  like my old friend Mother Fist

  At a quarter to four

  I pour absinthe and gin

  there’s a knock at the door

  and my man lets him in

  Miss Urania’s androgynous

  both a he and a she

  a sexually ambiguous

  debauchee’s fantasy

  She’s a cheap circus artist

  Miss Urania with a twist

  her lipstick and slap

  like my old friend Mother Fist

  At a quarter past four

  I still don’t know her name

  if she’s same-sex attracted

  or a whore on the game

  she’s a shape-shifting clown

  on the town and the make

  and her sexual credentials

  are either way fake

  She’s a cheap circus artist

  Miss Urania with a twist

  like a lemon slice in gin

  and my old friend Mother Fist

  With my dandified taste

  I wasted my life

  no lovers or friends

  no boyfriends or wife

  I had dinner with panthers

  in a violet cravat

  now Urania’s my poison

  I turn her down flat

  She’s a cheap trapeze artist

  a jackal on the make

  and her sexual credentials

  are either way fake

  At seven I sleep

  in a deep druggy trance

  in which sailors and demons

  and red tigers dance

  When I wake up I’m dazed

  deluded and bored

  with nothing resolved

  and nothing restored

  A Delinquent Treat

  In ‘A Delinquent Treat’, Des Esseintes picks up at random a delinquent schoolboy on the Avenue de Latour-Maubourg. This scene in Huysmans’ novel is one of the first openly described gay sexual encounters in modern fiction. Lonely and looking for sexual stimulus, Des Esseintes forms a brief relationship with the boy in which social inequality, age difference and a mutually shared mistrust lead to its eventual dissolution. In the song, Des Esseintes reflects on the sadness of being forced into a predatory role, because of age, when emotionally he has so much to offer.

  A Delinquent Treat

  I picked up on the street

  as a treat a delinquent

  a caprice of the moment

  a naive criminal teen

  with a mean look and a book

  in his hand, a black suit

  so tight that it hurt

  and a mouth that was cute

  In the Avenue de Latour-Maubourg

  I met a dark-haired reprobate

  he was ruin I knew it

  but my sort of date

  pernicious malicious

  incurably vain

  the sort who thinks tenderness

  means inflicting pain

  He had blue liquid eyes

  and a schoolboy’s appeal

  acting younger and older

  than I knew he could feel

  he was ruin I knew it

  capricious and vicious

  but my sort of date

  when you’re lonely and curious

  And it’s sad when you’re old

  and there’s gold in your heart

  to be forced to act out

  a predatory part

  If I’m always the loser

  there’s no winner at all

  in this unequal exchange

  like a stain on a wall

  In the Avenue de Latour-Maubourg

  I met a friend and was scared

  it would end as it started

  doing things I’d never dared

  and it’s sad when you’re old

  and there’s gold in your heart

  to be forced to act out

  a predatory part

  We exchanged what we did

  in a brief fling, an affair

  he was insolent, diffident,

  kept correcting his hair

  and then it was over

  like a flower that dies

  leaving residual petals

  in a room full of lies

  Frangipani

  In keeping with his cultivation of sensual pleasures, Des Esseintes, an expert on scent and the ingredients in perfumes, experiments by making his own, and in particular has a love of frangipani, a scent that pervades his house and ultimately reminds him by sensory associations of what he has really lost and what remains irretrievably elusive—youth.

  Frangipani

  The scent was invasive

  pervasive as frangipani

  on a rainy afternoon

  listening to castrati

  and for my amusement

  I mixed up ingredients

  to capture the rapture

  of an elusive scent

  I love frangipani

  it’s like hara-kiri

  cutting through the senses

  with brutal intimacy

  cool frangipani

  I add iris and cassia

  to my black China tea

  tweak amber and musk

  jasmine and patchouli

  making scent an event

  in my blue solitude

  that brims like a jewel

  with a bittersweet mood

  I love frangipani

  it’s like hara-kiri

  cutting through the senses

  with brutal intimacy

  cool frangipani

  The scent that I mix

  smells of sex and sweet-pea

  orange
and lavender

  and the black China sea

  sandalwood and cedar

  piss and poetry

  jonquil and lilac

  and bits of memory

  I love frangipani

  it’s like hara-kiri

  cutting through the senses

  with brutal intimacy

  cool frangipani

  The scent that I need

  resists every tincture

  no matter the strains

  I add to the mixture

  It’s youth I want back

  the smell of a beach

  tangy with pine

  and sticky ripe peach

  I love frangipani

  it’s like hara-kiri

  cutting through the senses

  with brutal intimacy

  cool frangipani

  It’s youth I want back

  the hormonal chutzpah

  I lack in mid-life

  smoking a carved hookah

  It’s the smell I relive

  by the river in rain

  elusive as pleasure

  and bitter as pain

  I love frangipani

  it’s like hara-kiri

  cutting the senses

  with brutal intimacy

  cool frangipani

  Foggy Harbour Days

  Encouraged by his reading of Dickens’ novels and his familiarity with the city through guides and street maps, Des Esseintes makes preparations to visit London. Arriving at a dockside restaurant, the Bodega, with a huge quantity of trunks and eating an English breakfast, together with sampling a variety of British drinks, he decides that tasting the food and imagining Dickens’ London is sufficient compensation for not making the journey and returns home.

  Foggy Harbour Days

  Neurotically phobic

  wearing purple silk socks,

  I dosed up on Dickens

  and went down to the docks

  a guide book in my hand

  on London at its best

  prepared in my head