Kissing Oscar Wilde

by Jade Sylvan

  AUDIENCE

  What is it like?

  JADE

  Like Oscar Wilde in Reading Gaol.

  AUDIENCE

  No, not for Oscar Wilde or Gertrude Stein or Allen Ginsberg or Bob Dylan or Patti Smith or Arthur fucking Rimbaud. What is it like for you?

  JADE

  I don’t know if I know the difference. I dreamed of being a poet in Paris a hundred times before actually getting here, through the stories of people who did it before me or who dreamed of doing it before me. I learned about love from watching Woody Allen movies and 70s sitcoms on Nick at Nite. I don’t know if I know how to experience something for the first time.

  AUDIENCE

  Let’s put it this way. In being alone, what have you found?

  JADE

  Sometimes God. Sometimes the Absence of god.

  AUDIENCE

  You have to unpack that for us.

  JADE

  [Blows nose.] At night lately, trying to sleep without having a drink, I feel the same inside of myself and outside of myself until it almost seems like my skin could melt or is melting, and it seems like it’s that that we’re always trying to get back to as we spread out and the universe spreads out and it’s that that we’re really thinking about when we call someone late at night or scribble some silly rhyming poem about breath or carry our blankets out from our bedrooms to the sofa and try to find comfort in the discomfort and are reminded of some feeling of safety we think we had as children even though as children we all knew very well the imperfectness of our homes and that the home we’re always trying to get back to didn’t exactly ever exist, but was maybe always just the place before we were born and also after we die and also all around and within always and how this is why we travel over oceans and descend into catacombs and take drugs and dance till we drip sweat and get married and have children and write books and build cities, their stone always eroding but stronger than us, we can imagine a little at least.

  AUDIENCE

  Is that all?

  JADE

  Yes. Maybe that. Or maybe just that that thing I’d called (G/g)od was always only me all along.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  De Profundis

  It was late afternoon when we got back to Agnès’s apartment post-Sacré-Cœur, and we didn’t need to be at the Downtown Cafe until 19:00h. Agnès lived in Oberkampf, the same neighborhood where the Downtown Café was, which was where my last show was that night (Monday), which was our last night in Paris. The closest Metro station to Agnès was Menilmontant, which was one stop away from Père Lachaise. We still had time to make it back to the cemetery before sundown.

  Caleb grabbed an extra battery pack and his gloves, and I switched the gold suede coat I’d worn in Montmartre for my new velvet blazer. In the blazer’s left pocket, I placed the lipstick I’d bought in Pigalle and a folded paper copy of my poem, “Kissing Oscar Wilde.” In the blazer’s right pocket, I placed the heart-shaped rock from Gertrude Stein’s grave and ran it over and over in my hand as we walked wordlessly to the Metro station. We rode one stop wordlessly. We wordlessly walked up the steps and through the gates and read the posted map. We spoke to orient ourselves and plan our route, and then we walked in silence.

  The graveyard was emptier than it had been on Friday. We crossed paths with a few small clusters of tourists who asked us in French and then in English if we knew how to find Jim Morrison’s grave. We did not. There also may have been an odd local or two out walking a tiny dog or two through the city of tombs. I barely noticed. All I could see or think of seeing was Oscar.

  We arrived. The grave was not different. It was spotless and grey surrounded by four glass walls. The glass was smeared with makeup, saliva, and the oil of human skin. The sun was breaking through the clouds, and its golden beams slanted across our bodies and cut through the smeared glass, speckling the stone angel with cold shadow and warm light.

  No one else was around. We couldn’t even hear anyone walking through the grass or talking. The light glimmered and danced across our skin and my velvet blazer and the earth. We stood there for a few moments just watching the light move and the grave not move against the movement of the light.

  I took out my lipstick and Caleb took out his camera. I slid the sweet-scented waxy red across my mouth in two circles. I stood for a moment more while Caleb readied his stance over my left shoulder. Then I stepped forward and kissed the glass.

  I held the kiss, listening to the soft sound of Caleb’s shutter fire once, twice, three times. I held the kiss. The shutter fired a fourth and fifth time.

  Hold on, he said. Let me try from over here.

  I let the kiss go and looked at its red flower print as Caleb walked around to the side of the tomb. Okay, try now, he said, positioning his camera so that it aimed at my face through the two walls of glass. I reapplied the lipstick and kissed again a few inches from the first kiss and listened to the sound of Caleb’s shutter fire and fire and pause and fire.

  I raised the hand that held the lipstick a few more inches so Caleb could fit it into the frame. He didn’t have to tell me how to move. I knew how he saw me and could almost see the shot as I kissed. He would move slightly and I would move slightly, and he would shoot and we would both slightly move again.

  This was about love, though it felt awkward. This felt awkward, though it was about love. This was false. I was kissing, yes, but I was posing. This was true. I was posing, yes, but I was kissing.

  Who was I kissing for? I felt Caleb and felt Caleb see me, and for a moment, he and I become the same person and I felt the space between us hold both of us and Oscar Wilde and Patti Smith and Arthur Rimbaud and my mother and father and Thade reading on our front porch in Bloomington and Louis pontificating on the Harvard footbridge and Marissa breathing in her inviolable teenage bed and everyone I’d ever loved and Everyone and Nothingness and Beauty and the Absence of god. My skin melted away and became the same as the glass and the tomb and the air between the glass and the tomb. I was not. I was all.

  Who was I posing for? Who was I to think anyone would want to look at me kissing the same spot a thousand—ten thousand other people had kissed? I wasn’t a movie star or even a famous writer, and Oscar Wilde had been dead for a hundred years. What did I think we were going to do with these pictures? Who did I think I was?

  Caleb took a few more pictures, and I felt him stop. He stood with a certain bored tenseness when he’d exhausted a shot. I opened my eyes and stood back and looked at him through the pane. He took one more picture and then walked back to the front of the tomb and stood behind me.

  The nearly setting sun brought slight movement to the cemetery. The tourists and dog-walkers were beginning their slow centrifugal meander. I took another look at the glass-encased monument. It didn’t feel complete, our interaction, whatever it was. I uncapped the lipstick and wrote in cursive the only word I could think of: amour. I heard Caleb take a picture. When I was finished I looked at the word across the smeared glass and was embarrassed by my lack of originality.

  The sun was gone again, and the air was cooling. Caleb looked unsatisfied. He had wanted, as I had wanted, for me to have some sort of profound moment of revelation or closure at the grave. He wanted this, I knew, because he loved me, and taking pictures was how he knew how to show it. We left Père Lachaise in silence, walking slowly side by side. It didn’t feel complete, really, or even okay, but we’d done what we came to do. It was either earnest vanity or vain earnestness. It was both vainly earnest and earnestly vain.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Les Deux Mondes

  We walked in to oily smoke spilling out of the kitchen. Agnès was frying frozen crêpes in slippers and a robe.

  Hi! I called.

  She glanced toward us for a cursory instant. Hello. How was your day?

  Um, great, I said, taking off my scarf and boots by the front door. We went to Montmartre and Sacré-Cœur.

  Ah, yes. Good good. And you have your las
t show tonight, yes? Downtown Café?

  Yes. I’m not quite sure where it is, but I can just text Dareka.

  It’s easy. A five minute walk from here. I can tell you.

  Oh okay. Are you going to come?

  She rested her plastic turner against the edge of the hot frying pan. I don’t know. Not after the way practice went last night. She picked the turner back up and scooped the crêpes up onto a plate, turned off the heat, and ran the pan under the faucet. The whole apartment filled with steam. She sat down at the kitchen table with her plate and took a bite. If I do go, I’ll go later. I need to relax for a bit and smoke. You won’t go on until at least 10 o’clock.

  While Agnès ate and smoked a joint, Caleb and I showered and changed. I wore a checked collared shirt with my MUSTACHE RIDES-pinned sweater vest and a skinny red and black plaid tie that Caleb tied for me on his neck and then placed around my neck. I topped it off with my velvet blazer.

  Agnès was draped over her sofa, trumpet-heavy jazz wailing out of the speakers in her living room, as we stood ready with my little bag of books and Caleb’s camera bag. She became briefly vertical enough to draw us a simple map showing us the way to the Downtown Café, then stretched back out again.

  The walk took somewhat longer than five minutes, as I frequently had to stop and readjust my left knee. Caleb was used to this stop-andgo and simply walked when I walked and stopped when I stopped.

  I realized half a block from the venue that we hadn’t eaten since before Montmartre. Are you hungry? I said. Do you need food?

  I’ll be okay, said Caleb.

  The Downtown Café was a mid-to-upscale bar with tall, dark wood chairs and tables. The stage was in front of the large windows that overlooked the street, busy even on a Monday with hip foot traffic.

  Dareka was already there when we arrived, standing the center of a small cluster of beautiful, pale Parisian poets, gesturing with a half-full bottle of Coca-Cola. When he saw us, he waved me over. I walked over and we bisou’d and he put his hand on my shoulder and introduced me to all of the French poets and we all bisou’d and I learned all of their names and forgot all of their names.

  Then Dareka led me over to the stage, where a tall, slender man in a golf-cap was standing.

  This is Clément, AKA the Good Slamaritan. He is my partner in running this venue.

  Nice to meet you, said Clément.

  Nice to meet you.

  We shook hands and bisou’d. Clément didn’t look much like the other venue organizers, who were all aged somewhere between mid-twenties and mid-thirties. Clément was well over forty, with thinning, dark grey hair and a clean-shaven face, slim and large-nosed with big deep pools of eyes. His English was flawless, and his expressive face was calm and kind.

  Caleb was suddenly standing behind me. Jade, he said.

  I turned. Yeah?

  He gestured to the wall behind him. Look who’s here. I looked. Adélaïde was sitting behind a long table along the wall, Humphrey Bogart hat and all.

  For a moment, I didn’t move. She smiled big and waved when she saw us. This was real. She was here. We went over to where she was sitting and I bisou’d her and even Caleb bisou’d her.

  Thank you so much for coming! I said. I’d forgotten you’d even be in Paris for this. I would have invited you if I’d remembered.

  I came up last night, she said. I was excitated when I saw you would be here. My friend apartment I’m staying is not so far.

  She was holding a box of cookies in her lap and a pen in her hand, a paper notebook opened on the table in front of her along with a wadded up tissue. Next to the notebook was a full shopping bag with a small bunch of bananas on top. She offered us each a cookie, and we ate them. Then she offered us each a banana, and we ate them, too.

  My mother sent this with me, she said. She is afraid I will starve to death in the city, apparently.

  Thank you, I said. We didn’t get to eat dinner. We’ve been running around all day.

  You did not eat? Oh here, have more biscuits. She opened the box of cookies and set them out on the table. I’m excitated to see you perform again, she said. Caleb and I both took more cookies and started to eat.

  And you, she said, leaning into Caleb. I looked on your website of your photograph. She placed her hand on his forearm. I hope you understand, I am in love.

  Caleb blushed and shrugged, covering his chewing mouth with his hand. I felt pricks of jealousy rise from between my shoulder blades and up my spine. I did not like or want the jealousy, and I couldn’t tell to which direction, if any, it was directed or attached. I told it to quiet down, and it quieted down. I sat down on the other side of Adélaïde so that she was in between me and Caleb.

  What did you do today so you were too busy to eat? she asked.

  I swallowed my third cookie. Caleb and I went to Père Lachaise to visit Oscar Wilde.

  Her eyes widened. Oscar Wilde? He’s one of my favorites in English. In Dublin there is a statue of him. I have in my computer a picture of me kissing his nose.

  Aw, I said. That’s so sweet.

  Yes, only I was there with my gay friend. He kissed him too… only in another place.

  Caleb laughed. Awesome.

  Yes. She shrugged. I wanted to show that picture to my mother, though.

  Are you going to perform? I asked.

  I don’t know, she said. I think maybe I will just watch tonight. To see how the writing is here. Maybe then I will perform next week. Do you know what you will do?

  I guess just the same poems I’ve been doing, I said.

  Will you do the one which rhymed?

  “On Breathing?” Yes, I’ll do “On Breathing.”

  Ah, good.

  There was a pause, and I felt like I needed to blow my nose. I reached into my right pocket for a tissue, and instead found Gertrude Stein’s rock heart. Then I remembered the lipstick and poem in my left pocket.

  Actually, I have this one, too, I said, pulling out the folded sheet of paper. It’s not in the books I brought. It’s brand new. I wrote it right before I left. It’s about Oscar Wilde and how they cleaned his grave of all the kiss marks.

  I handed her the poem and she began to read. I wasn’t sure if it was too dense for someone whose native language wasn’t English, but she seemed to make her way though it without too much trouble.

  She pointed to the line, “I worry I’ve outlived the romantics,” and said, Thank you for writing this. I have felt this so many times.

  The night began. The audience was a tightly-packed crowd of about fifty. A medley of local writers performed a piece apiece. Several, including Clément, performed hip-hop, others recited inciting, dramatic monologues, and others read quiet, delicate poems off trembling sheets of paper. Dareka performed a rhyming piece accompanied by a short, mohawked girl on an accordion. Shortly before my set, Agnès showed up, transforming the whole crowd into an impromptu beatbox as she freestyle rapped.

  Caleb stood behind the mostly-seated crowd to shoot my set. I performed “Plates,” followed by Dareka’s reading of “Assiettes” in French. It was not quite The Magic, but the audience was perfectly quiet and I could feel they were with me. I read “Kissing Oscar Wilde” in English, but most of it was lost on the crowd. I ended with “On Breathing,” performed in English clearly and rhythmically. At the end of my set, the room was silent for several seconds. Then, the audience stood up to applaud.

  Merci, I said. Merci beaucoup. Je vous aime. Vraiment. Vous êtes fantastiques. Merci bien.

  I sat back down next to Adélaïde, body vibrating. Caleb sat on the other side of me so that I was sandwiched in between them. We sat like this for the last third of the show. Adélaïde took Caleb’s camera (which I’d never seen anyone try to do before) and took pictures of me and Caleb. She took several before she set the camera down and gave me a thin Italian paper notebook55. It was blank inside, and its cover was printed with bright red flowers. I gave her56 the paper copy of “Kissing Oscar Wilde.” I blew
my nose, and she blew her nose. Caleb took his camera back and took pictures of me and Adélaïde. In one, she doesn’t know her picture’s being taken, and she’s smiling. In another, she knows her picture’s being taken, and she’s grimacing like a kabuki mask.

  Half of me imagined what would happen if I kissed Adélaïde or if Adélaïde kissed me. What if we stumbled back clutching hands to the room where she was staying and fell onto her bed in a tangle of breathless limbs? What if I missed my flight the next morning? What if we wrote to one another across continents for months, peeling back layer after layer of personality until we each revealed that hollow space where she and I were the same and therefore not alone? What if, at last, we decided that we couldn’t bear to be apart for another instant, and we flew to one another and got married57 right away in Massachusetts and in France so we could split our time between the countries and I could write and she could act and we could bake bread and keep small dogs and hold fantastic artist salons like Gertrude Stein and Alice.

  Adélaïde scrolled through the images on Caleb’s camera and laughed her fox bark laugh. Over her shoulder, I saw one she’d taken. A rare picture of Caleb and me in frame together58. For an instant, I tried to imagine what our friendship would look like if it weren’t for Patti Smith. Would he be here now taking pictures? Would he have started taking pictures of me at all?

  I looked back at Adélaïde in her Casablanca hat. I hardly knew anything about this person. I didn’t want to try to pull her into a film or graft her onto the skeleton of some idealized icon. I didn’t even know if she was queer at all. When she lifted her gaze from the camera, she smiled at me with that one, asymmetrical dimple. If there was a moment to ask if I could kiss her, which I’m not sure if there was, this would have been it. Instead, I smiled back silently. That was all.

  After the show, someone bought me a cordial glass full of a local, anise-flavored liqueur, which I sipped. It made me immediately sleepy.

  I said goodbye to Adélaïde with three bisous and one hug. I may have lingered ever so slightly as my lips met the soft of her cheek or as we pressed our bodies into one another. I may have wanted, for one final flash, that fantastic, literary romance. For that I blame the liqueur, or the poetry, or Paris. Before she left she wrote down her address. Caleb told her he would mail her a plastic camera, and I told her I would send her a copy of Just Kids. She disappeared in time to catch the last train. I watched her walk away, a slender, hunched silhouette lit by streetlights and neon. I let this moment be perfect.