Kissing Oscar Wilde

by Jade Sylvan

  I glanced at her out of the corner of my eye. She was holding the book now, and the couple watched like they were watching someone taste ice cream for the first time.

  I can’t, I said. I’d never make a move, and I’d be too nervous to sleep. I’d just lie there all night worrying if I was breathing weird. Then I’d be all stiff in the morning and probably catch the flu, and I can’t get sick now.

  Julian came in from outside, hair slightly disheveled, hands lifted as if he were clutching at air. Oh my god. He went to Emerson. We have seven mutual friends!

  Wow, I said. That’s amazing.

  He grabbed both of my shoulders, eyes burning with electric romance. I mean, what are the chances, right? We’re in fucking Dijon. Like, where they make the mustard. Like, in France. And I meet someone from Emerson fucking College. He gripped harder. He looked into my eyes like he was trying to see the back of my skull.

  I mean, he knows Casey fucking Rocheteau. Do you understand me, Jade? He let go of me and ran his hand through his hair and lifted his chin like he was presenting his best angle to a non-existent camera.

  Busy, busy, busy32, I said.

  He sighed, blowing air out through his lips at an angle that lifted his blond bangs and gazing just slightly over my head.

  He wants to come to Rome with me. There was a pause. He grabbed my shoulders again and brought his nose one inch from my nose. Jade. He. Wants. To. Come. To. Rome. With. Me.

  That’s great, I said. You were worried about being there all alone.

  I know! It’s perfect!

  He let go again and sat momentarily on Adélaïde’s empty stool. He leaned into the bar like Rock Hudson. I just really needed something like this, you know? I was about at the end of my rope, what with Amsterdam and the money and everything. If this hadn’t happened, I don’t know what I’d’ve done. I really don’t know what I’d’ve done, Jade. He stood up and checked his chin-line in the mirror behind the bar. I think he might be thirty percent crazy, he said. But sane people are boring, anyway. And besides, we’ll be in Rome, so who gives a fuck?

  Scott poked his head back in the door, smiled, and waved at us. Julian waved back.

  I’m going with him, he said, one hand on my shoulder. I’ve already told Dareka. I’ll be back at the apartment in time to catch the train tomorrow. He squeezed once, let me go, and followed Scott out the door.

  Adélaïde came back and reclaimed her seat. She listlessly pushed her rosy glass of wine toward me.

  Here, do you want this? Somebody bought it for me. I did not even ask for it.

  Thank you. I took a sip of the sweet drink. Um, no thank you, I said, and placed it back down on the bar between us.

  She rested her elbow on the bar and her chin in her palm. That guy, who your friend Julian did left with… she said.

  Yeah? Caleb said.

  I was planning to give him my number.

  Ten minutes later Lucile came back in, a whirl of awakeness.

  Come! she said, taking my wrist. Are you ready to go?

  Yes, I said. We’re exhausted.

  Oh, she said, looking slightly disappointed. Well, that is okay. We have a room for you with a bed, just like we said. You may sleep if you like, though Dareka is coming over for a bit to hang out. We won’t be too loud. Adé, will you come?

  Adélaïde looked at Caleb and me. Will you hang out? she asked.

  I won’t, said Caleb, then pointing at me, but she might.

  I nodded. I’ll hang out for a little while.

  She sighed. Okay, I will come for just a little bit.

  D’accord! said Lucile. On y va! She spun and led the way back out into the street, where we collected Dareka, and the five of us left the bar and its last lingering poets behind.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Le Corps Exquis

  Lights come up on LUCILE’S APARTMENT. Stage right, JADE and CALEB stand with their baggage in the guest bedroom in front of a small, white bed. Behind the head of the bed is a single, square window with a half-drawn white gauze curtain. Through the window, we see the glow of streetlights through mist and the silhouette of a church spire rising over flat rooftops. Stage left, LUCILE, ADELAIDE, and DAREKA sit around a coffee table with an ashtray talking while LUCILE rolls a joint.

  CALEB

  So, I don’t know if you have a side.

  What?

  JADE

  CALEB

  A side of the bed.

  JADE

  Oh, like, one I like?

  CALEB

  Yeah. Leyna usually takes the right. Right if you’re looking at the bed, not if you’re in it.

  JADE

  Audience right.

  CALEB

  Right.

  JADE

  I don’t think I have a side. Let me think about it. No, I don’t think I do. Do you want me to take audience right?

  CALEB

  It doesn’t matter to me.

  JADE

  Well are you like, used to audience left, or do you want to change it up?

  CALEB

  [Shakes head. Shrugs.]

  JADE

  I’ll take the right.

  CALEB

  [Turns his back to JADE and changes into pajama pants and a t-shirt] I don’t think I have any weird sleeping things. I don’t snore. I don’t kick. I take up minimal room. I usually sleep on the edge, like curled up in a little ball.

  JADE

  [Laughs.] I’m sure it’ll be fine.

  CALEB

  [Gets into bed on the audience left side and pulls up the covers.] I have to go to sleep. I’m sorry.

  JADE

  [Changes into pajamas—boxers and a Barcelona Poetry Slam t-shirt.] Why are you sorry? That’s some female-socialized bullshit. You haven’t slept in, what, twenty-four hours? You’re fucking exhausted. Don’t be sorry.

  CALEB

  I know. I’m sorry.

  We hear ADELAIDE laugh from the living room.

  JADE

  I’m going to go out with them, is that okay? I’ll be quiet when I come in.

  CALEB

  [From a huddled position in bed. We barely hear him.] That’s fine. Goodnight.

  JADE

  Thank you for coming to France with me.

  CALEB

  Sure.

  JADE crosses into the living room and lights dim on the bedroom. She takes an empty seat around the coffee table. ADELAIDE and DAREKA sit across from each other upstage, right and left, respectively. LUCILE and JADE sit across from each other downstage, right and left, respectively. ADELAIDE is holding a notebook, which she occasionally scratches something in with a mechanical pencil. When JADE sits down LUCILE passes her a joint.

  JADE

  [Passes the joint to DAREKA.] Oh, non merci. Je n’aime pas beaucoup du…pot.

  DAREKA

  [Takes the joint and passes it to ADELAIDE without taking a hit.] Moi non plus. Merci quand même. [To ADELAIDE] Qu’est-ce que c’est?

  ADELAIDE

  [Takes the joint and holds it in her left hand, holding a pen in her right.] C’est un texte pour La Nuit du Slam en mars, à Toulouse. Ils avaient choisi dix poètes de différentes villes et leur ont demandé d’écrire un grand cadavre exquis. Ma partie était très difficile. Le dernier poète ayant participé, c’était Printemps Deux Mille Quatre. [She looks at the joint and shakes her head.] J’ai dit la semaine dernière que j’allais arrêter de fumer. [She takes a small hit.] D’accord, c’est tout pour moi. [She passes the joint to LUCILE.]

  LUCILE

  [Takes the joint and takes a hit.] Donne-moi ça, laisse-moi voir. [ADELAIDE hands her the notebook.] Bien dis donc, c’est vraiment difficile.

  ADELAIDE

  [Takes the notebook back from LUCILE, looks at it, folds her pencil into it, and places it on the table.]

  DAREKA

  C’est une bonne idée. Faisons un cadavre exquis maintenant.

  LUCILE

  Oui. D’accord. Avec l’américaine! Adé, on
peut utiliser une pièce de ton carnet? [Hands the joint to JADE who passes it to DAREKA. For the rest of the scene, the joint moves counterclockwise around the circle, but the only one who drags is LUCILE.]

  ADELAIDE

  Sure. [Takes the pencil and tears a page out from her journal.] Qui veut commencer?

  LUCILE

  [Takes the pencil and paper and hands them to JADE.] Honneur à notre invitée.

  JADE

  Um. Quoi?

  DAREKA

  Do you know this game? Exquisite corpse?

  JADE

  Oh! Oué, oué, oué. Absolument. Je…used to do these at art parties in college. Je peut le commencer. [Takes the pencil and paper and starts to write.]

  DAREKA

  Est-ce que vous vous souvenez du poème de Printemps Deux Mille Quatre? Il l’a lu à Paris avec le Bon Slamaritain l’année dernière.

  ADELAIDE

  Oui! C’était un poème excellent. Mon ami qui n’aime pas la poésie l’a entendu, et après il m’a demandé ‘Qu’est-ce que c’était ce poème de ce type? Je pense qu’il s’appelle Septembre Deux Mille Sept.’

  JADE

  [Folds the top edge of the paper backwards and hands it to DAREKA.] I’d love to meet this guy. Spring 2004. Or at least hear his poetry.

  DAREKA

  Je voudrais vraiment entendre de nouveau ce poème. [Lays the corpse on the table to read JADE’s last line. Looks back to JADE, surprised.] In French? Wow. I am impressed.

  JADE

  Oui. Nous sommes en France, et le cadavre exquis est un chose français, n’est-ce pas?

  DAREKA

  It is good. I’m impressed.

  LUCILE

  I have it! Spring 2004’s poem. He mailed it to me written on the back of a child’s drawing. [She places the nub of the joint on the ashtray and exits.]

  DAREKA

  [Folds the top of the paper back and hands it to ADELAIDE. For the rest of the scene, the corpse moves around the circle counterclockwise, each poet writing two lines and folding the paper back so only one line is visible before passing it on.] Adé? You are next?

  LUCILE

  [Reenters holding a large piece of paper with a colorful, crude finger-painting on its back.] Voici le texte. Ecoutez.

  As LUCILE reads Printemps Deux Mille Quatre’s poem, stage lights fade. A spotlight appears center stage. JADE rises and walks into it. LUCILE’s voice continues to be heard, softly, as JADE speaks.

  JADE

  Holy fuck. I wish my fourteen-year-old self could see this. She wouldn’t believe it and at the same time would be completely unsurprised. I’m in France to perform poetry. I’m sitting in a hash-smoke-filled parlor writing an exquisite corpse with three beautiful French poets at 3AM. This is it. I am now the thing I always wanted to be.

  AUDIENCE

  Art thou not still imitating?

  JADE

  Yes, sure. But that’s part of why humans invented recorded language in the first place, isn’t it? So they could pass down archetypes and ways of being so other people would be able to see and learn a lot of different ways of being without having to figure them all out themselves.

  AUDIENCE

  Dost thou not wish to be at all original?

  JADE

  I don’t know if that’s possible. There’s too much information everywhere. Everyone’s too aware of what’s come before.

  AUDIENCE

  Dost thou believest we exist? Doth thou believest we art watching thee right now?

  JADE

  I honestly don’t know. Not really. At least not literally. But I feel like there’s something inside of me or outside of me that’s witnessing all of this, and I have felt that since I’ve had an idea of myself at all. It’s probably the way I was raised. I was introduced to most life situations through sitcoms with studio audiences and old movies and books. My role models were all celebrities I knew through paparazzi and editorials, or they were fictional characters. I was the God-eye watching their stories. Then as I got older, God became flesh, and I started living the stories myself, but life, to me, was still a story to be witnessed.

  AUDIENCE

  What wantest thou?

  JADE

  What do you mean?

  AUDIENCE

  Why doeth any of this? Wherefore dost thou not just sitteth at home watching television and livest through the stories of others as all of thy high school friends art content to do?

  JADE

  I guess I’m fucked up.

  AUDIENCE

  Thou art not fucked-up. Nor art thou special. Thou art just like everyone else. Now, telleth us, what wantest thou?

  JADE

  To connect with people. Like I’m doing now with you. To be fully human and have people see me be human and see their own humanity by seeing me see mine.

  AUDIENCE

  And thou believest thou art by traipsing through France reading poetry?

  JADE

  I don’t know, but this feels more like that than anything else I’ve done in my whole life.

  AUDIENCE

  Wherefore?

  JADE

  Because in art we see ourselves in others. Because art can’t exist in a vacuum. It needs at least one viewer. As soon as you add in another person, the art changes. It becomes part the artist, part the other person.

  It’s like le cadavre exquis. We only see part of what the last artist intended. The rest is all our own extrapolation. Then it keeps going and going until it’s alive on its own, without any of us. It’s like sex. Or love. It exists between two people and is the relationship between two people, but it also becomes its own thing that’s bigger and more universal than either or both of them. When you create something with another artist or with an audience, that’s procreation. That’s childbirth.

  AUDIENCE

  Stop fingerfucking thyself and telleth us what thou wantest.

  JADE

  To feel like I matter. Like all of it matters. To feel like somebody sees me and understands. To feel like it’s not just some cold, mechanical accident that I was born, that I can say words with my mouth, that I see other people with my eyes, or that I touch them with my hands and skin.

  AUDIENCE

  Stop trying to be poetic. Say what you mean. What do you want?

  JADE

  Not to be alone.

  House lights fade, as well as all stage lights except for one bright white spotlight on JADE. The spotlight dims steadily for one full minute until the entire house is black.

  END SCENE, END ACT I

  INTERMISSION

  Chapter Seventeen

  What We Wrote

  Le Cadavre

  Si la plus petite personne reste chez lui, et avec toutes les fleurs dans le monde on se donne rendez-vous dans son sofa pour se faire un bain de racine en jouant au bridge, avant de se plonger dans Molière, qui aime tellement çà, ce libertin qui se justifie par son art amer, et par les remparts qui l’entourent. Chaque mot le guide en NEWS TIME ou en GARAMON, une calligraphie très simple, comme le point ou l’ocean touche la plage. Mais quand on choisit d’écrire sur des pétales avec de l’encre en pollen, on n’obtient pas grand chose, mais au moins çà sent bon. Comme quand tu croques dans du savon. Ta bouche fait des bulles, et çà te pique la langue, et tu finis par tout recracher. Tu me balances ici ces infamités. Pour qui te prends tu? Pourquoi tu es si aggresifs? Calme toi, temporise toi. Le monde n’est pas si mauvais. Toutes les personnes que tu aimes, t’aiment aussi.

  * * *

  The Corpse

  (translation)

  If the smallest person stays at home by himself, and with all the flowers in the world we rendezvous on his couch for a root bath while playing bridge before diving into Molière, who likes it so much—that libertine justifying himself through his bitter art, and the ramparts around him. Each word guides him in TIMES NEW ROMAN or in GARAMOND, a very simple calligraphy, like the point where the ocean touches the beach. We use pollen ink to write on petals. We
never get much, but at least it smells good. When you bite into soap, your mouth foams, your tongue stings, and you end up spitting all of it out. Now you’re just throwing infamies. Who do you think you are? Why so aggressive? Slow down, calm yourself. The world isn’t so bad. All the people you love love you back.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Jade is a Jade is a Jade is a Jade

  I picked Jade because it meant jade. If I’d picked something like Lennon or Shakespeare that would have been a statement. Elvis Costello did this and it worked for him, but that’s because he does what he does. I do what I do and wanted a name that was what it was.

  Sylvan was a slant rhyme with Dylan (who was a hero) but it meant what it meant. Jade and Sylvan were both English words for real things. Jade—a rock and a color. Sylvan—something in/of the forest. One noun and one adjective, or maybe two adjectives. In the phonebook (when there were phonebooks), it would be Sylvan, Jade, and would mean a rock in/of the forest. In normal American order, individual to family, my name was a green forest. Nothing more or less romantic than that.

  But then there’s jade—talismans, idols, exotic half-nude beauties in veils, ancient China. There’s sylvan—wood elves, saddhus, girls in fairytale rape parables. When I tell people my name or hear it spoken, it still feels heavy and clunky, associations flying everywhere. If I could have chosen a name that meant nothing—without the connotations of Nothing—I would have.

  In French, Jade means jade. In the English-speaking United States, the name Jade is uncommon enough to intrigue, but not so uncommon that it takes strangers more than a couple of repetitions to hear it when meeting a Jade. In France, it’s one of the names they print on souvenir keychains of pink Tour Eiffels. When I learned how to pronounce it in French (soft j, flat a, afterthought of e, dipthong after hard d), I only needed to say it once before people nodded and said Enchanté(e), Jade.

  I liked the word queer because it meant unique and started with a q (what word starts with q?) and felt lighter than bisexual. It didn’t have the word “sexual” in it for one thing. It didn’t carry a hundred sexy sociopathic film villains in the spaces between its syllables.

  When I told my mom I called myself queer, she said in her generation “queer” was like saying “fag.” I explained reclamation and she nodded and said, That’s nice. I just won’t say it.