This One is Ours

by Kate O'Donnell

  We walk back to the apartment, and I know I’m being quiet but I’m thinking about what Delphine and Jean-Michel have said. When we get home, I ask Delphine, ‘Have you heard of the Situationists?’

  ‘That sounds familiar,’ she replies.

  We look up the Situationists on her phone. While she scrolls down with her thumb, I watch her face all focused and serious (I wonder if I’ve ever looked that serious). Olivier and Delphine would make such a handsome couple. Why does my mind go there? I feel jealous even thinking about it. I know she thinks he is just a rich kid. But he cares so much about art and people, and he is so interested in life – I just don’t feel like she should write him off like that.

  This is where my brain wanders while Delphine researches twentieth-century philosophy. I am a tiny bit ashamed of myself.

  ‘So,’ she says, looking up from her phone, but hovering her pointer finger over the screen like marking her spot on a page. ‘It looks like the Situationists were social radicals from the sixties. Mostly avant-garde artists. They believed that capitalism and capitalist greed were destroying everyday life – franchement, I agree – and they came up with ways to subvert it. Through art and political pamphlets. It says that they were inspired by the Surrealist and Dada artistic movements. Ah, but of course. This is May ’68 – I’ve seen these posters.’

  Léon calls out something from the kitchen in fast French that I don’t fully catch. I must have looked oblivious because Delphine calls back, ‘Speak slower, papa.’

  He comes into the room. ‘Who was inspired by Dada and Surrealism?’ he says, speaking slower but still in French.

  ‘The Situationists,’ I say, giving it my best pronunciation. Les situationnists.

  Léon lays a hand across his cheek thoughtfully. ‘I remember the Situationists. This philosophy was an enormous influence on the Atelier Populaire during ’68.’ He points to Delphine’s phone. ‘All these posters came out of the Atelier. The students occupied l’École des Beaux-Arts after the government closed the universities during the strike.’

  I imagine an occupation of our art room, all us students in a furious explosion of creativity and desire for change. It’s a very good daydream seed, which I sow away for later.

  Léon perches on the arm of the couch. ‘And Guy Debord. He said TV, the media, the government, capitalism – all these things have made humans victims of “the Spectacle”. A cycle of wanting and consuming not because of need or even desire, but in order to look as though you were successful.’

  ‘This feels familiar,’ says Delphine, and she puts on a chirpy voice and makes a face: ‘Hashtag Instalife!’

  ‘I feel like from its name, “the Spectacle” should be a good thing?’ I say. It sounds so positive.

  ‘So, how do they propose we break out of the Spectacle?’ asks Delphine. The way she says it, the tone of her voice, her tight, wound-up posture like she’s an animal ready to leap away at the whisper of a predator – make it sound like she is taking up a challenge.

  I wear my most confident outfit in order to trick my brain into feeling the correct feeling.

  Will I meet you at the atelier? I text to Olivier.

  Oui, d’ac is his entire reply. Yes, okay. So short and sweet. I’d hoped for more enthusiasm.

  It is almost a cliché of a set-up when we arrive for the life drawing class. The easels are arranged in a circle around a chair and a low, padded ottoman. Véronique is talking to a woman in a silky robe by the corner. You can tell they know each other by the easiness between them; they both look relaxed and are speaking in low tones.

  ‘Bonjour,’ I say to Fatima and give bises. ‘Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour. Bonjour.’ (You have to say hello to everyone here otherwise you belong on the top step of rudeness.)

  I do not feel relaxed. And it gets worse when Olivier arrives. I haven’t seen him since The Kiss. My lips tingle with the memory of being on his lips. He has a delicate cream-coloured scarf knotted around his neck, looking like he has just stepped out of a Romantic painting. He just wears his jeans so well. My heart races.

  He smiles and comes over to me and, somehow, he is able to be natural and calm. We give les bises and I worry my legs will give way beneath me. But I’m steadied by the way his hand lingers on the small of my back. I interpret this as his acknowledgement things have changed between us.

  ‘Have you ever done a life drawing class?’ I ask him, attempting to be natural and calm too.

  ‘But of course,’ he replies, in a way that makes me feel like I am weird for not having taken one before.

  I go to explain that we just hadn’t got to it yet at school back home, but Amandine calls Olivier over and then he is gone. I am left alone to set my station up: pencils, charcoal stick, drink bottle by my feet. I already need to wee from nerves.

  I feel young and stupid and inexperienced. I hate that I am comparing nudity to sex. I know you can have one without the other. My brain KNOWS nudity is natural and nothing to be ashamed of. But the prospect of drawing someone naked makes me think of ME being naked. I haven’t been naked in front of anybody since I was a little kid taking baths with my sister. And that was an entirely different situation.

  I’d always felt like a prude during PE at school when we’d get changed – I’d always put my shorts on underneath my dress and do the complicated dance of pulling my bathers on underneath my t-shirt.

  The model laughs, throwing her head back a little, making her long brown hair bounce. I feel very nervous about being in a room with my classmates and all of us staring at a naked woman for two hours. Especially now that I have been kissed. That I have kissed someone. And he is here. I feel so tense I want to cry.

  ‘Hello, class,’ says Véronique. ‘Take your places.’

  Over the next couple of hours I draw carefully, observing each part of the model’s body in detail and with attention. I am relieved to realise that it doesn’t feel pervy. I don’t feel like I am judging her or laying a (fe)male gaze on her.

  I am observing and re-creating her body in terms of its shape, its beauty, in a way: the aesthetic beauty of a curve here and a shadow there. I’m not analysing her body in terms of its sexual beauty.

  Very quickly I feel embarrassed I was ever nervous or afraid of this.

  I wonder what I’d look like if someone sketched me naked, even though I’m trying not to let my mind think what it is thinking. I refuse to let my mind drift towards a certain person in the room (well, almost refuse), let alone my gaze.

  It is only later that day, after the class, when I am at home and looking at my sketches, that I take in her body. By then she is no longer the person I’d been observing in the classroom, not the human we’d been introduced to, who we thanked as she put her robe on once the two hours were up.

  She’s now become a series of sketches. I think in some ways I’d mentally put myself in the drawings. I always thought I was weird for having one boob bigger than the other, but now I wonder if everything is, in fact, normal. Everything is, in fact, beautiful.

  I feel alive, I feel uncomfortable, I feel like I understand what desire is for the first time.

  It is a coming home to my own body.

  Maybe it’s because of the life drawing class. Or maybe it’s because I used six muscles I never knew I had while helping Delphine dig a new patch at the community garden. Maybe it’s part of adapting to a new city. Whatever it is, I feel more comfortable in my body than ever, more aware of its potential.

  Paris starts to feel familiar too; it feels friendly in a way it hasn’t before now. When I arrive back at the house, the smell of coffee, laundry detergent, and even the musty elevator, envelops me and welcomes me home. The lift still clangs, and the hallways are dingy, but I like the way each apartment has its own style of decoration – sometimes a little wooden sign or an interesting welcome mat. There are prams and scooters by some
of the doors and my mind goes spinning thinking about all the people who live inside.

  My bedroom feels like it belongs to me, not like a borrowed Ikea room – there are clean clothes someone has folded and put on the chair for me; my pink blowsy scarf from the op shop back home across my bed; my pile of paper offcuts from Véronique ready for new drawings on the desk.

  Olivier said to meet him at the Place des Vosges. Not far from the Rive Droite, in the Marais district. It is the oldest public square in Paris – possibly even Europe.

  The Place des Vosges is a beautiful park – a square surrounded by terrace houses with red-brick patterns on their façades.

  ‘They’re all matching,’ I comment.

  ‘Most of Paris matches this way,’ Olivier says casually (as if I hadn’t noticed this about the city already! It’s just that I continue to be impressed by it!). ‘It’s beautiful, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh, it is,’ I agree. I look up at a lamppost and enjoy the way it curls around so pleasingly – its lamplight dangling off the post like a fancy earring.

  ‘When it is no longer winter, the trees are very green around the park,’ he says.

  ‘You can see the green starting to come through a bit,’ I say. I turn a circle on the spot, to take in the whole square – park, road, matching rows of houses on all four sides. ‘I wonder if any of the people who live here sometimes forget which house is theirs?’

  ‘Well, Victor Hugo lived up there,’ says Olivier, pointing.

  I follow his gesture with my eyes. I know I should know who Victor Hugo is. But to be honest, I don’t know what anything is when I’m looking at Olivier. His smile, his lips, his very being, bamboozles me.

  ‘But can you be sure it was that one?’ I ask, after a moment’s awkward pause. I grin, Cheshire Cat style, so he knows I’m making a joke.

  He laughs a little (he is not much of a laugher) and lowers his arm, putting it around my shoulders as we walk on. I love the feeling of his arm around me, the way I fit in so snug. Is that how you know someone is right for you? When you fit together like puzzle pieces?

  ‘Victor Hugo wrote Les Mis,’ I say, remembering. ‘Les Misérables. I know it. Well, I’ve seen the movie.’

  Olivier has an amused look on his face. Probably laughing at my pronunciation. Fortunately, I have decided not to get worried about that anymore. Les mizzerables? Les miseraaaables?

  There are wooden benches all around the park and we sit on one, and I gaze around at the wanderers, the tourists, the older people having an afternoon outing in the crisp sunshine. It feels like spring might truly be coming to stay. I like the crunch of gravel from people walking and the sound of the fountain.

  ‘Have you started working on your pieces for the exhibition?’ Olivier asks, taking out his notebook.

  ‘Sort of,’ I say. It feels too early to tell. It feels too early to know if my scraps of ideas (my Panic Maps, my doodles of life and walking in Paris) will come out well enough to use. Over the past few weeks my personal brand of little art has started to seem … too little. Too disconnected from this big world I’m realising I’m part of. What does it mean when I see a tiny beautiful thing? Just because something is nice to look at, does that mean it’s worthy of the looking? How can it become a piece of artwork that’s meaningful enough and interesting enough?

  Olivier doesn’t press for more information, but he makes some sketches – a forest scene, of gloomy shadows and tall, somewhat overbearing trees. The detail he creates from out of nowhere is astonishing. I envy his talent.

  While he sketches, I prowl about and snap photos of the jardin.

  I notice that Olivier has put his notebook down and has his phone out, pointed at me. I take a photo of him taking a photo of me. Or at least I try to photograph him, but he covers his face with his hand (a classic Crow move, I actually feel quite nostalgic at the sight of it) and says, ‘Arrête, arrête.’ Stop, stop.

  Then he pulls me onto his lap. (His lap!) Oh, my giddy heart.

  As though they have a mind of their own, my hands move to stroke the nape of his neck, and I run my fingers through his hair, all soft and curly. He leans into my touch like a cat nuzzling. I dip my head down and kiss his lips.

  We sink into the kiss and for a moment I’m above my own body, floating above the Place des Vosges, looking down at a hopeful artist-in-training wearing an op-shop corduroy pinafore and a floral blouse, kissing an exquisitely beautiful French boy with curls like Louis Garrel. This couldn’t be more perfect than if I had painted the scene myself.

  I have always wondered when you decide to break off a kiss. I still don’t know what the rule is, but it seems as though when you’re kissing someone and you really like them and you realise they actually like you too, then whenever you stop kissing is just a pause before the next kiss.

  ‘What are you doing now?’ he asks. ‘Can you come and eat?’

  ‘Yes, I think so,’ I reply. Inside I am both What is eating? and still floating, and also Heck yes! and trying not to drop my phone. ‘Where will we go?’ I start to feel precarious on his lap, self-conscious. It feels intimate in a way I’m not sure about yet.

  He kisses me again. ‘It’s a surprise. Just you and me.’

  ‘I remember you saying you have never had escargots,’ Olivier says, as we sit down at a table near the window.

  I try to take everything in. The marble-topped table, the bottle of fizzy water – plain eau gazeuse – the waiters in white shirts and black pants swooshing around like they have the dance moves memorised.

  ‘So tell me more about your project for the exhibition,’ he says.

  ‘I’ve been thinking about trying to make a piece or a series of pieces about my trip here, and all the places I’ve been in Paris during my exchange. I’m not sure how I want it to look yet though.’

  Olivier laughs when I make mistakes, but he pulls me back into French when I switch to English.

  Before I came to Paris, Hana said as a joke that having a French lover would be the best way to learn the language. ‘My baby is too young for a lover,’ Mum had scolded her. ‘Don’t put ideas in her head.’

  I don’t feel too young now. I have travelled across the world, and here I am, sitting opposite a boy (almost a man) on a date in a French café, after dark, about to eat escargots. I did have to text my host family to let them know I wouldn’t be home for dinner, but they’d just replied, ‘No problem (pas de problème) – until later.’

  He talks for a surprisingly long time about the new paintbrushes he wants to buy (I’ve committed most of the vocabulary for art supplies to memory by now: un pinceau), and I sip my fizzy water and feel amused but also somehow impressed at his dedication to paintbrushes.

  ‘We walked past the Museum of European Photography on the way here,’ he says.

  ‘I didn’t notice,’ I confess.

  ‘There was an exhibition of JR’s work that I saw there last year. It was very interesting. We should go to the next exhibition there,’ says Olivier. ‘I would love to take you.’

  A photography exhibition with Olivier! ‘I would like that.’

  ‘Have you heard of JR? He is a street artist. Makes large-scale photographic installations.’

  ‘Yeah, I have,’ I say, and I thank Crow for dragging me along to weird documentaries at the Cinema Nova. ‘Did you see the film he made with Agnès Varda?’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. We smile at each other. Isn’t it wonderful to have things in common?

  The waiter brings our food over – an earthenware terracotta dish sizzlingly hot, with a strong garlic aroma steaming from it.

  I look down at my plate, not entirely sure how to approach the meal. I take the opportunity to watch as Olivier starts eating, using his little fork to pop the escargot out of its shell. I’m reminded of the oysters.

  ‘So many little forks in French cuisine,�
�� I say.

  ‘Ceci n’est pas une fourchette,’ replies Olivier, pretending to puff on his fork like it’s Magritte’s pipe.

  The joke and the moment are surreal. I can’t believe this is my first real date. I don’t feel like I can tell him that.

  ‘I can’t believe I’m about to eat a snail,’ I say instead, smiling. ‘What is my life?’ I add, in English.

  To be honest, while the garlic makes me think delicious!, the snails are chewy and rubbery and just a step too weird on my tongue.

  ‘Remind me, when do you go home to Australia?’

  My heart sinks. I am going to have to go home to Australia! Of course I knew this. But now I realise that whatever it is we’re starting here will have to end.

  ‘At the end of May,’ I reply. I want to say: I don’t want to go. But I don’t want to scare him. I feel strung out, like I am tuned too tight.

  ‘There’s still a long time until May.’

  Crow

  I’m impressed you ate the snails.

  Sofie

  I had to – it would have been

  so rude otherwise.

  And at least you BOTH had

  garlic breath.

  The garlic kisses were pretty good.

  Gran’s making garlic bread tonight …

  Mum’s in town.

  You ok with that???

  Yeah. It’ll be fine. Maybe I’ll hang

  the garlic round my neck.

  XXXX

  – Overnight chats with Crow

  In Sciences Économiques et Sociales (my Economics and Social Science class) we are studying how we create and measure wealth. We are also supposed to be learning how we become ‘social actors’. I am still a little unclear on the meaning. It is reassuring when I finally just sit back in class and let the words and conversations wash over me.

  ‘Did you understand?’ asks the teacher from time to time.