Kissing Oscar Wilde

by Jade Sylvan

  I had recently cut my hair from a shoulder-length Patti Smith-inspired shag to a short Dylan-esque helmet of curls. I wore a gold, suede knee-length trench I’d found at an Indiana thrift store when I was fourteen, and Julian wore a brown and cream houndstooth he’d bought in Amsterdam two days before. Ours were the only coats that weren’t black.

  There was a goofy chain restaurant called “Indiana” across from Gare de Lyon. I remembered it. I’d stood in this exact spot five years earlier, when Thade and I had met my friend Orestis just as we got in to town from Germany. All three of us were from Indiana11. Next to the restaurant, there was a small bakery where we’d grabbed strawberry tartes before heading back to Orestis’s place in the 14th Arrondissement. I expected the landmarks to be the same—Tour Eiffel, Notre-Dame, Louvre—but this was incidental constancy. My idiot feelings were mildly hurt that Paris could and would go on, business as usual, unsympathetic to any individual humans who happened to come and go.

  The leather soles of my cowboy boots slipped and slid on the smooth tile floors of the station. I bought them because Patti Smith wore cowboy boots when Caleb and I saw her in Providence and because the high arches were good for my bad knee. They were the only shoes I brought to France.

  When we finally found Caleb, he was huddled on a bench, wearing a black coat and a black hat, surrounded by three black bags. His pale face12 seemed to glow white.

  In my head I’d pictured running up and giving him a giant hug for flying across the Atlantic to hang out with me on tour, but he was buried awkwardly in his baggage and had dark circles under his eyes.

  Hey, I said.

  And he said, Hey.

  How are you?

  I couldn’t sleep on the plane at all and I came straight here from the airport. I’ve been here for five hours. I’m okay.

  Oh my god, they have places you can lock your bag up and go walk around. I told you that in my email, I thought.

  I know. It’s fine. I didn’t want to risk leaving my stuff. Or getting lost. Or something else happening. I’d rather just stay here and make sure I’m where I need to be.

  Okay. Well, I’m glad you’re here. Give me a hug.

  Okay.

  He stood up with his giant black camera bag over his shoulder and I hugged him and he hugged back. It was, like all Caleb hugs, slightly stiff and uncomfortable. Caleb was not a physically affectionate person. It was two years into our friendship before we could touch13 this much.

  This is Julian. Julian, this is Caleb.

  They shook hands, and we waited for our track to be announced on the big board in the center of the station. I repeatedly looked at my phone attempting to check my email and Facebook messages, forgetting that my 3G didn’t work in Europe. Finally, I just stood with the others in silence. It had been years since my brain had been forced to exist without constant internet access. It felt spacious. It felt like being a teenager.

  When Dijon 13:10—voie 8 lit up, we loaded up and dragged our bags to the platform. We looked at our tickets. Julian and I were seated together in car 26, and Caleb was in car 32.

  Julian said, Here, you two want to catch up, and I want to do some work anyway. Why don’t we switch tickets?

  Caleb and I said okay.

  We puzzle-pieced our bags into the already overfull luggage racks. A minute after we settled into our seats, the train started up, and I watched the city begin to move steadily behind us.

  I’d been here before, only this time it was Caleb, not Thade, sitting next to me. Now, I had new scars and tattoos and memories. Returning someplace you’ve been before is not the same as going somewhere for the first time. There should really be a separate verb for it.

  My normally severe allergies had been exacerbated by the dairy- and wheat-heavy European diet, and I started to tear up a napkin in which to blow my nose. Caleb was used to me blowing my nose all the time in public, and he didn’t even look as I blew loudly, turned the makeshift tissue over, and blew again. He pulled his hat down over his eyes, folded his arms, and went to sleep. I tucked a snotty wad of paper into my pocket and kept my eyes open, trying to notice every inch of stone and as it passed, let it go.

  I’ve never been to Paris in the summer. I only know it in monochrome—silver buildings, silver river, silver statues, silver sky. No one wears color. It almost looks like a black and white film.

  Chapter Ten

  An Ideal Husband

  The first time I saw Caleb I was dressed as a boy. Caleb was a girl then, and her name was Carrie. I was sixteen, so she must have been seventeen. I had a haircut that my mom called “pixy” and my Drama Club friends called “butch.” I was wearing my brother’s carpenter jeans and polo shirt and my own Doc Marten boots. I’d smashed down my C-cup breasts with a sports bra and kept slouching to try to disguise them as pecks.

  Marissa and I were in the theater department of one of Indianapolis’s Catholic high schools, Cathedral, which was not our high school. We were waiting backstage for her friend Mary to finish a tech rehearsal. When she finally came back to meet us, Carrie was with her. Mary was about five-two and athletic-looking, with deep olive skin and My So-Called Life bottle-burgundy hair. She wore a black tank top with bright green bra straps showing. She had a real nose ring. Carrie was just as short, with pale skin and white-red hair. She was dressed more like I was, except she wasn’t trying to hide her breasts, and they were bigger than mine anyway. I would’ve called Carrie’s haircut “butch” and Mary’s haircut “pixy.” Mary talked a lot, but Carrie hardly said two words. I’ve told Caleb about this encounter several times but he doesn’t remember it.

  The next week at school Marissa told me Mary thought I was cute. She’d asked Marissa to pass along her phone number. I left the torn piece of green-inked paper on my dresser for a month before I finally threw it away. Then I started to wear platform sandals and grow out my hair.

  Three years later, during my freshman year in college, I saw Carrie perform at a drag show in the lobby of my dorm. I remembered her pale skin and white-red hair from the Cathedral theater. Carrie’s drag name was Caleb King. Later, when Carrie Colvard became Caleb Cole, he changed his drag name to Owen14 King.

  I saw Caleb again at a friend’s birthday party late in the summer before I turned twenty-three. I was staying in Bloomington an extra year after I graduated, working at a women’s shelter, going to therapy for Depression and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, trying to write a novel, and waiting for Thade to finish his final year of school. Caleb had a faux-hawk and sideburns and was wearing a plain red t-shirt. I was in a slightly hipsterfied stage of femme-ness, with short, dyed-black hair, a black lace tank top, and high heels.

  I remembered Caleb from the drag show and from Cathedral. He was sitting across the beige living room of Sarah, a Queen Bee lesbian theology student cum stripper who called herself the “Main Gay” of Bloomington, at a party consisting of mostly women and trans men, vodka and cranberry juice, a late-night order of cheese bread with garlic butter dipping sauce cooling on the coffee table, and a barely audible episode of Xena: Warrior Princess on the television. I can’t explain how I knew he was important just sitting there. Most words I use to describe it sound mystical, but it wasn’t. There have been a few people in my life I’ve known were going to be important to me just by looking at them. Caleb was one. That’s all.

  He made some witty joke, I remember, and I laughed, and at some point we started talking. Caleb was not a photographer then. He hadn’t even thought of becoming a photographer. He had dropped out of a Master’s program in Sociology and was working as a writing tutor at IU while Leyna finished her Master’s Degree in Marketing. When I met him, Caleb called himself a writer. We talked enough to discover that both of us were working on novels. Mine was about vampire lesbian strippers. His was about his mother’s death.

  I asked him if he’d like to be novel-writing-buddies, and he said yes, so we started talking about art. That fall, though, he abandoned his novel and decided to try his
hand at visual art instead. He used some of the money his mother had left him to buy some nice camera equipment and began taking pictures of his friends—Leyna, Sarah, Thade, me.

  Around that winter, we started talking about Art with a big “A.” By that spring, Caleb knew he was going to go to photography school in Boston, and Thade knew he didn’t want to go to Boston. Caleb’s and my friendship immediately intensified, since for all we knew, come September, we’d be hundreds of miles away from one another. I cut my hair into a faux-hawk to look like more like him. I started wearing pants with collared shirts and vests, partially because I was really into Bob Dylan circa 1966 and partially because Caleb said he liked how I looked in them.

  That summer we both quit our jobs so we could spend more time together making art. We would pass long afternoons in each other’s living rooms mod podging collages on the carpet. We started using the word Love about each other. Before September, when he left for Boston with Leyna and I left for Europe with Thade, Caleb and I got married.

  Chapter Eleven

  Poetesse Dijonaise

  Different regions in France have specific etiquette around the number of cheek-bisous you’re supposed to give female friends when you say hello and goodbye. The general rule is the more rural you get, the more kisses. In bustling Paris, you just do two, one for each cheek. In Paris also it’s young and hip for guys, gay or straight, to greet close guy friends with bisous. When I saw this happen I thought it was cool and kind of hot. In Normandy, they do four, and saying hello or goodbye to a large group of friends can take several minutes. In the mid-sized, Gothic college town of Dijon, it’s three.

  There was just enough mist to pixilate the light around the Dijon streetlamps. To our right, a dim boulangerie sheltered a group of boisterous students from the January chill. Julian and Caleb hunched under the weight of their luggage while I texted a girl named Lucile who was supposed to pick us up. We had dragged our bags around the entire circumference of the train station because of a miscommunication caused by two hotels of the same name within walking distance of one another. I was limping and getting cranky because of the pain in my left leg. It always hurt worse when it was wet outside, and I’d been dragging my own bag because everyone was equally cranky with hunger and I felt bad asking Julian to do it again.

  Two girls appeared out of the haze, one riding the other piggy-back. They both smile-laughed as the bottom one strutted up the sidewalk. Both were in their early-to-mid-twenties and conspicuously pretty, with Renaissance-painting figures and near-phosphorescent skin. When they were about twenty meters away, the top one pointed at us, and the bewitching bicephalus strode in our direction.

  As they approached, the top one hopped off without waiting for the bottom one to slow down, both still smile-laughing. The one who’d been on top had sienna skin with a tight mass of curly, dark hair. The one who’d been on bottom had milky skin with straight blond hair tied back in a ponytail and glasses with thick, green plastic frames.

  The top one stuck out her hand to me and said, Hello, I’m Brigitte.

  I shook her hand. Salut, Brigitte. Je m’appelle Jade.

  Hello, Jade, said Brigitte.

  Then the bottom one stuck out her hand to Julian and said, Hello, I’m Lucile, and Julian shook her hand and said, Hi, I’m Julian.

  Hello, Julian, said Lucile.

  Hello, Julian, said Brigitte.

  They both looked at Caleb, and he said, with Anglophonic pronunciation, Sa-loo. Je m’appelle Caleb.

  Lucile and Brigitte looked at one another, then back at Caleb. Kale? asked Brigitte.

  Caleb blushed. Caleb, he repeated, Cay-leb.

  Cay-lem? said Lucile.

  Caleb makes a certain face when he doesn’t know what to say. He looks at me and then down to one side and sort of grimaces with half his mouth. He made that face and shrugged.

  Caleb, I said as clearly as I could. Il s’appelle Caleb.

  Caleb? she said, looking at him.

  Wee, he said.

  Ah, très bien. Bonsoir, Caleb.

  Bon swar.

  D’accord, on y va! said Lucile. Est-ce que c’est ton bagage?

  Oué, I said. She took the handle of my suitcase and started dragging it toward the parking lot.

  In the car, Brigitte and Lucile spoke to each other in French in the front seat while the three Americans sat in the back. Brigitte looked over her shoulder and said something too fast and complicated for me to understand. She tried again and when I made a confused face, she said, You are hungry?

  Oh, yeah. I mean, oué. On a faim. Right guys?

  Julian and Caleb nodded.

  What would you like to eat? Lucile said, glancing back through the rearview mirror.

  I don’t care, as long as it’s fast and cheap, said Julian, leaning against the window.

  Kebabs? said Brigitte.

  Sure. He made an exasperated hand gesture that was obviously meant to be seen while looking like it wasn’t meant to be seen.

  Lucile said something else to Brigitte that I didn’t catch.

  Oh yes, said Brigitte. Dareka a dit que vous voulez acheter du vin?

  Er, pardon? Plus lentement, s’il te-plait?

  Brigitte looked at Lucile.

  One of you would like to search for some wine?

  Oh! Oui, I said. C’est vrai. C’est moi!

  I turned to Caleb and Julian. I mentioned to Dareka that Burgundy was my favorite type of wine. I guess he told them that.

  We have a friend who is just finished at her work, said Lucile. She will take you, if you like.

  The buildings were all centuries-old stone, hardly any taller than two or three stories. We drove through the light drizzle for only a few minutes before Lucile pulled onto a side street and parked. The three Americans followed the French girls out of the car and into a chic bistro with high tables and black lacquer chairs that could have been in Harvard Square except for everything being in French.

  It was about 19:00h, and the restaurant was about half-full, mostly with people drinking wine. I was getting lightheaded from hunger and started to read the menu that was written in chalk on a blackboard above the bar.

  When I looked back toward Caleb to ask if he knew what “andouillette” was, there was a tall, chestnut-haired young woman standing beside him. She looked like a cross between Milla Jovovich, Audrey Hepburn, and Snow White, with pale skin and the lightest splash of freckles across her nose and cheeks.

  Lucile was standing to my right. She must have said something, but I didn’t hear her speak. After a period of silence during which I stared stupidly at the girl in front of me, Caleb said, I think she said we can either go with her and Brigitte and get food, or we can go with Adélaïde and look for some wine.

  Adélaïde smiled, one dimple asymmetrically accenting perfect, makeup-less features.

  Can we go with Adélaïde? I said, looking at Caleb.

  Caleb shrugged and made that face. Sure.

  I turned to Lucile. On va aller avec Adélaïde. Est-ce que c’est d’accord?

  She said, Ouais, absolument, followed by a long, facial-expression-heavy string of rapid French.

  Adélaïde raised her dark eyebrows. D’accord, she said in a rich, smoky voice. Attendez un moment. Il faut que je pointe. She looked right at me and winked before turning on her toes to disappear.

  Lucile motioned for us to follow her outside where Brigitte was standing by the car smoking home-rolled cigarettes with Julian.

  Caleb and I are going to go wine shopping with Lucile’s friend, I said. I think you can come with us or go with Lucile and Brigitte.

  Julian took a drag and pushed the damp flaxen hair back from his forehead as if he were being filmed. I don’t care what I do as long as I get something to eat and a shower. I’m famished, I’m filthy, and I still stink of Amsterdam.

  I did my best to work out with Lucile and Brigitte between my expressionist French and their Hollywood English that Julian was going to go with them, and Ca
leb, Adélaïde, and I would meet them later at the venue and that it was okay for us to leave our baggage in their car. I gave them each a copy of the chapbook I’d made for the tour—five of my poems in both English and French. They both said, in English, Thank you.

  Adélaïde walked toward us in a black trench coat, black fedora, and cowboy boots. Her hair cascaded from under the hat and fell like a thick cape just around her shoulders.

  Ready? she said.

  Yes! I said. I mean, oui. On y va.

  I bisou’d Lucile and Brigitte and then they bisou’d an off-guard, nervous Caleb and took off with Julian, red taillights glowing in the mist.

  So you want to buy some wine? Adélaïde said, rising slightly on her toes with the inflection of her sentence.

  Oué. Peut être. Si c’est bon.

  She brought an index finger to her lips, then snapped her fingers. Yes, I know just the shop. We followed her purposed pace down damp side streets until we came to a well-lit thoroughfare. Late-adolescents were everywhere grabbing kebabs and pastries before heading off to their evening plans. It was just like the main street of my and Caleb’s college town grafted onto toits bourguignons15 instead of Indiana limestone.

  The wine shop was a small boutique with a middle-aged male clerk whom Adélaïde greeted with small-town familiarity. We stood in front of a rack of Burgundy wine, the three of us in a row in order of height, Adélaïde to me down to Caleb.

  What type of wine do you like? she asked. White? Red?

  Rouge, I said. Et pas très cher.

  She brought her finger to her lips again, then extended it toward a bottle at eyelevel.

  This one is not bad, she said, with a tiny shrug. Thirteen euros is not the best price, but the wine is good. As well, we could go to a supermarket if this is too expensive. The wine there will be cheap.

  I picked up the bottle and turned it over in my hands. I only had carry-on luggage with me, which meant I couldn’t fly any bottles home, and Caleb didn’t really drink.