Bye Bye Blondie

by Virginie Despentes

  She’d thought she was over it, she’d thought like a fool that love would save her from everything, but her demons have returned full throttle. And this time they’re determined to completely destroy her.

  It’s worst of all when she’s outside. She falls into a rage at the baker’s when some old granny looks at her (she thinks) in a funny way, or in the street when a bus driver honks at her for crossing the road just in front of him, or in the post office when some woman or other starts making a fuss in a loud voice. The slightest thing and she’s off. Crazy with aggression, she goes right up to people. Because she’s tall she can loom over them and shower them with insults. And she reads in their eyes their mixed feelings: panic with a large measure of contempt.

  Then, calming down, she swears to herself she won’t do it again. But there’s some kind of internal short circuit, it’s beyond her consciousness. There’s a button that gets pressed by the slightest little frustration, and suddenly she’s screaming her head off. She is a spectator, helplessly watching her own destruction. Paris, an electric city, just accentuates her problems, amplifying her madness.

  Eric can see this from the outside and he can predict what’s going to happen. He doesn’t laugh about it anymore because of the seriousness of her outbursts these days. While she doesn’t realize it, he can predict hours ahead that she’s going to explode and make a huge scene. He sees her boiling up for it, starting to shake, turning on herself. He’s tired, tense, anxious the whole time and keeping watch. Even when she’s calm for a few days in a row, he’s waiting for it to start up again.

  THE SUN’S SHINING. She’s wearing some new shoes, fantastic ones, that make her look quite different. Beige, thin straps, high heels but not too high. Gloria looks at her silhouette in the shop windows. She can’t recognize herself. She bought these shoes just after getting her second check for the screenplay—because they’re shooting the film now. It’s fine, nice to be out of doors. People look at her differently, it’s the shoes that make all the difference, she looks good in them.

  She’s forgotten to take her Deroxat pill before leaving the apartment. She has flashes of vertigo, strange ones, nonexistent vertigo. She feels as if she’s falling, astonishingly, with the sound of synthetic cymbals clashing. Percussion and zoom, it’s not nice at all, she feels sensitive all over. Weird drug. The rest of the time it’s been quite good, for the last few weeks she’s been taking it, a sort of chemical feeling. It makes her want to talk compulsively, her nerves are both calmed down and alert. A precise, futurist kind of tension. She’s been to see a psychiatrist who, according to Eric, has helped Amandine a lot. The sister is now so completely freaked out on antidepressants that she’s been to dine with them several times. No hostility or distrust anymore in her attitude, she goes through life openmouthed, looks around at the furniture, smiling vaguely. Gloria feels somehow cheated: you can’t feel angry at someone in that state. According to her brother though, this grotesque apathy is an improvement.

  The psychiatrist is a young man, charming manner, his office is light and full of reproductions of art. The high window looks out onto a park, his bookshelves go up to the ceiling, bulging with old books. He had listened to her, absentmindedly, looking at his highly polished shoes, and diagnosed “overactive inhibition.” Gloria made him repeat this, with a frown: extra-inhibited? She likes paradoxes but this is beyond anything. The guy was quite sure of himself: “You need a little treatment.” She paid €120, and almost threw the prescription away, not wanting to have anything to do with this medicine.

  But the week after that, she’d ended up rolling on the ground in public. She was approaching the Champs-Élysées from Place de la Concorde, going through the gardens, where there are a lot of embassies, plenty of armed police, and old trees in blossom. And like acid reflux, without warning, her fury had stirred again. She called the little producer. “Hello, you bastard, I’m calling to say the future lasts a long time and you’d better drop this film, because if not, I swear to God you’ll pay me what you owe me, hear me, you filthy millionaire, or do you have too much coke up your nose that you can’t understand what I’m saying? Bad news, you scumbag, I’m going to be your personal Bin Laden till the end of your days. CAN YOU HEAR ME?” Then she had gone on her way, and the silly man had called her back, with the regretful tone of someone who has nothing to be ashamed of. “Gloria, really, I’m so sorry it didn’t work out,” as if they had been lovers. That was the point at which she started to scream, there in the sunshine, with the crowds of people passing by, spitting into her phone, which she finally hurled onto the ground, smashing it, yelling bloody murder. Then she’d rolled on the ground. A real crisis. When she was little, she didn’t do this kind of thing, but she’s certainly made up for it after thirty. On the ground, among the passersby, she lay sobbing with hate and impotence, calling out for vengeance and reparation.

  When she got home, she looked for the prescription.

  ERIC IS KEEPING her at arm’s length, he’s exhausted. You can see it in his face when he’s on TV, his features are looking drawn, he’s less amiable with his guests. Amandine’s threat—“I warn you, don’t hurt him”—ridiculously goes round and round in her head, with intolerable clairvoyance. She swears this isn’t going to last, she’ll turn back into the girl he came looking for back in Nancy, the one who helped him to be happy.

  The first month on Deroxat had come as a long liberation. It’s so effective and soothing that she sleeps ten hours a night and another two in the afternoon, and she’s dropping with tiredness by midnight. She’s steadily losing concentration, that’s obvious. Whatever the subject, she can’t feel interest in it for more than five minutes. The outbursts of anger and the unhealthy obsessions have gone, everything is sliding away. She’s not really there at all, she feels heavy. In no mood to crack jokes. So this way, she thinks regretfully, I’m not going to find my GSOH again. She’s sure that before all this she really had a sense of humor. She wonders what’s become of it.

  IN MONTMARTRE, THE police are patrolling and there are armed soldiers in the streets, because of the terrorist threat. In a bar where for once there’s a mixture of classes, races, and ages, she’s waiting for Michel, who’s in Paris for two days. He’s staying at a friend’s apartment with his beloved, up on the hill. The January sales are on, everyone’s wearing nice new clothes. A woman is leaning over her buggy, sweet as sugar to her baby, but bitching away at her man. A guy with a felt-tip in hand is looking through the small ads in Le Figaro, spread on the table in front of him. A teenager in a pink Puffa jacket is chattering into her phone. Gloria tries to control the paranoid attack she feels rising. No, it isn’t the typical calm before a big storm, but she smoked a joint before coming out, already in the metro she was feeling on edge.

  He arrives at last. She’s glad to see Michel. To come face to face with him again in a bar, in a working-class district, playing with the cardboard beer coaster, is a source of comfort to Gloria. He hasn’t changed too much. A little neater and tidier perhaps. His clothes have had nodding acquaintance with an iron. He looks in better form, more lively.

  As soon as he joins her at the table, he says cheerfully: “Paris suits you. You’ve changed, know that? Even over the phone I could tell, your intonation has changed, and the way you move. If anyone had told me . . .”

  And yes, she has noticed by the way people look at her that she’s changed. She’d been treated as a snob the other day by some tramps, three of them drinking on a bench. She hadn’t replied when they’d asked her for money, so they’d laughed at her: “Oh, perhaps the duchess has better things to do!” She’d turned around, genuinely puzzled, to answer back, but the biggest of them had said, “On your way, rich bitch,” in exactly the tone she might have used to say it herself. She’d gone on her way, in some distress.

  Michel watches the passing girls over her shoulder. He says, “I’ve always adored Paris.”

  “So, what’s it like in Lyon?”

  “More co
ncerts than in Nancy. More pretty girls.”

  “Things okay between you and madame?”

  “She wants to be a mother.”

  “Ah, well, normal . . .”

  “Yeah, I’m in favor. Not going to spend my whole life ducking out of responsibility. But sure, it freaks me out a bit. Mainly because of getting some work. We’re living off money from her parents at the moment, so, having a kid . . .”

  Gloria says nothing. She can see in advance that the new mother’s not going to stay with him. He’s too hardcore, too irreparable. A year goes by and it’s one too many, then it’s like you’ve got a tattoo—no way back. And Michel has collected plenty of these years that are one too many. Too late, my boy, we’ve been playing away too long, and now we’ve had it.

  It’s been months since she sat for hours drinking in an old-fashioned bar. She’s missed it. She warms up, feels herself reviving.

  Once she’s had plenty to drink, she tries to explain to Michel why it’s complicated being with Eric, but out of context, it’s hard work making herself understood.

  “He loves money to the point . . . well almost of veneration.”

  “Isn’t that pretty normal? Otherwise it’s hard to live in the city, especially Paris. Since he makes plenty. What’s the problem? He doesn’t make you do the same as him,” Michel replies expansively. Adding: “And you never wondered why you don’t admire him for that?”

  “No, never. Everything’s difficult with him. Going out in the streets, a big deal, everyone recognizes him. It wears me out in the end. Like a bad joke.”

  “Well, watch out this time, don’t spoil it.”

  “I want it to work out. But I’m not getting there. I can’t stand his sister, although I can see she’s classy and she needs him, that’s normal too . . . but I don’t have anyone here. I’m like a kite that’s lost its string. It’s scary.”

  She drops her head, tears in her eyes. Michel grips her hand in his, comes to sit alongside her, and puts an arm around her shoulders. He remarks: “You’re a bit of a ball-breaker, you know. And it’s like you really dig putting yourself through it, don’t you?”

  “I’m not doing it on purpose. I just don’t fit in. I can’t manage to fit into their world.”

  “Even in Nancy you were like that.”

  “Yeah, you’re right, I’m not happy anywhere. I’d probably do well to end it right now, but I don’t want to die. I just want to kill everyone else, it’s different.”

  “I know, I’ve known you a long time. With most people, it just passes in the end. You get older, you’ve got less energy to destroy yourself. So you calm down and there you are, but in your case . . . Why don’t you write another screenplay, since you sold the first one?”

  She bursts into tears, he’s embarrassed. So much so that it gets to be funny and she laughs out loud. She doesn’t explain to him why his remark has touched on her sorest point. It would be a waste of time. She knows that to anyone from the outside, it’s incomprehensible. She orders her fifth beer. The Deroxat allows her to drink more alcohol without collapsing. As for her liver . . . They discuss antidepressants, amphetamines, and codeine. The bar’s closing, and they stagger along the pavement. She feels absolutely great. Michel waits with her till a taxi deigns to stop, and his presence is familiar, reassuring.

  She thanks him effusively: “It’s been a long time since I had such a good evening, a normal one, like that. It really did me good to see you.”

  Finally a taxi pulls over and picks her up, and she waves her hand to him as it moves off.

  She winds down the window and puts her head out, letting the air blow her hair as they drive. Sighing. What the fuck is she doing in a city like this, returning to an apartment that isn’t home, has nothing to do with her? In a life that isn’t like hers, but now that she’s in it, she knows that what went before doesn’t suit her either.

  She’s lost her links to her old world, but she has never felt close to the one she’s in now. She’s torn in different directions, at a loss.

  HARDLY IS SHE back home—determined that things will be fine, that she isn’t going to go crazy again—than she hears herself begin to scream. She rolls on the floor in front of him, she starts hitting herself. He’s used to it, takes her in his arms, calms her down. There isn’t any sign of love in his gestures now, just a resigned habit. It’s as if he’s wounded. She doesn’t want to make him feel like that. So she screams even louder.

  Later, deep into the night, she wakes up bursting with rage. Against him, against the world he’s in, against the people he sees, against all that money, against herself, against Michel, against the little producer, against Amandine. But essentially, against herself. She gets up and starts to hurl plates against the wall. One by one, she breaks a whole pile of plates, making a racket. Sobbing. Eric doesn’t even get up. She goes across the floor, barefoot, thinking she’ll walk on them. But at the last minute she sees herself and realizes it’s just to punish him for not coming to console her. So she calms down. Once more, shame, regret, the feeling of everything getting away from her. She goes to fetch a dustpan and brush and sweeps up the fragments of the plates. Without cutting herself. She’s tired enough to go back to bed and drop off to sleep.

  Eric’s starting to crack up more and more often, and yells back at her. That’s like a trigger: shout louder too! And then it degenerates. One February afternoon, when the sun is shining, he punches her full in the face, in a fit of desperation. She falls over backward, still surprised and outraged that men can pack so much energy into bodies that don’t look so big. Then she screams, hoping to make him feel guilty, as he shrugs his shoulders: “Can’t you see what a total asshole you are?”

  The honeymoon’s over. The last remark leads straight to the same old recriminations.

  “Listen, Blondie, thirty times a day you shout at me for having money and giving it to you. Thirty times a day. If it’s so horrible, why don’t you just get out? I can’t stand being yelled at anymore.”

  Exactly the words she’s been waiting to hear, all this time: get out. Hearing them, she throws herself on her back, and bangs her head repeatedly on the floor. Eric leaves the room, and puts on the loudspeakers next door.

  He pays extra attention, these days, to everything he says. It has gradually come over him. He chooses his words, his arguments. To try and avoid starting her off again. He doesn’t insist now on her coming out with him to dinners or soirees. He’s too afraid she’ll make a real scene, a scandal that’ll turn out badly. Or kill herself in the middle of a dinner party. He hardly goes anywhere himself, she’s gradually extinguishing him. She knows that people are gossiping about this, in his circle, saying that he’s finished. Because of her. The crazy woman. They did warn him. Everyone feels sorry for them. It makes her mad with rage to hear echoes of this. Because it is only too fucking true.

  She doesn’t have the courage to walk out. She says she doesn’t know where she could go. And it’s hard for him too to give up the lovely dream they had. So he waits. Perhaps he’s still hoping it can get back to “the way it was.” As with any addicts, they kid themselves that it’s possible to start over. Just like junkies who keep searching in vain for the kick they got from their first hit, but now can only experience the exorbitant demands of their habit.

  THAT EVENING, IT’S cold outside, absolutely freezing. It’s the beginning of the weekend, Eric has come home, and she is shouting at him before he’s closed the door. He says nothing for a moment, then goes to open the windows wide, spreads his arms, and it’s his turn to start yelling at the top of his voice.

  “Look at all the good you’ve done me. You never stop moaning, you’re a burden, the only fucking thing I’ve done wrong is to fall for you and to love going to bed with you, the only fucking thing, do you hear me, bitch? You’re scared of everything, all the time, the only thing you’ve got any energy for is to get on my back, and apart from that, you’re a deadly, toxic ball-breaker. So what exactly do you want?”


  His arms outstretched, he’s yelling like a lost soul. She replies nastily, through gritted teeth, in a trial of strength, to show she’s not impressed.

  “So sorry to be unhappy, I see that it isn’t the fashion among the pricks who make TV shows to have feelings. You’re obviously not the sort to let emotions enter into anything.”

  He’s crouched down beside her, head in hands and groaning. She remains hard and full of hate, but seeing him so destroyed, so battered, and his eyes in torment because, after giving all his love to a woman, he can’t make her happy, she is wounded to the core at having done this to him. In return. Giving all her love to a man and only managing to make him end up groaning and rolling on the floor. And it had been such a great love story only a little while ago. She attacks again, she knows she should stop, but she attacks.

  “Would it suit you better if I did the same as your sister? Lobotomize myself, to stop you thinking? Is that your idea of how life should really be? Run away and bury yourself alive so as not to disturb anyone else?”

  “Gloria, stop it, I can’t stand anymore of this.”

  She doesn’t like his tone or the new calm expression with which he says this. Now that she knows it’s imminent, she’s terrified that he’s going to leave her and yet that doesn’t calm her down. On the contrary.

  He stands up, every one of his movements is slow, as if premeditated and heavy. “Your pain, the only thing that counts around here, you’ve got a monopoly on it, you’re the only one who’s really suffering, is that it? I don’t know why anyone would feel sorry for you, since you never try to escape from it. From your identity, your pain. That’s all there is. If you didn’t have it, you’d be lost, you’d have nothing at all.”

  She has been trying to lose all his esteem, his affection, his love, and when it happens, it hits her so hard in the pit of her stomach—it’s agony. If she had any sense of humor left, she’d make herself laugh. But she’s punctured, empty, and her cloud is vanishing inside the hole.