i guess it started quite innocently.
by innocently, i mean with a beautiful cashmere sweater, soft and buttery, like a hug. sacai.
i was doing good, really. i was working a lot, sleeping nicely, eating oranges.
okay maybe i was starting to drink steadily, regularly, every night. maybe i was smoking more than i used to, more than i would have liked, and waking up to emails of shopping receipts from purchases online i don’t remember making the night before. but overall, good. really.
sometimes the best of god’s gifts arrive by the shattering of all the window panes, writes paulo coelho in brida, and that’s exactly how i felt like when i met mister 75006.
although! although, now, in retrospect, i’m not fully sure if he was the best of god’s gifts, and honestly, that day, was less a meeting and more a transaction. i was writing at home when the sweater i ordered from his vinted profile came, handed by a dhl guy.
…but is to stumble upon certain parts of a person the same as meeting them?
that day was much like today, me on a computer, trying to write. open the door, sign the paper, place it by the desk, forgotten. forgotten until the next lapse of thought, or for when a writer looks away from a blank page and tries to find a reason, any reason, to put off writing.
i slice open the package and am met (interesting word choice) with a strong scent. musky, after-shavey, manly man scent. the next thing i know, the sweater was on my face, and i was on the bed, touching myself.
it was well into my twenties when i realized that maybe, i have an addictive personality. that’s exactly what it sounds like: a heightened tendency for someone to develop addictions.
a friend who has been going to a therapist three times a week for the past seven years has this clever way of injecting psychoanalysis into regular conversations. i guess he sees it as a gift for someone who doesn’t have the coins nor the guts to march himself to the shrink’s office.
“i think,” he tells me, smoking his vogue, “that you love to suffer. and that all this circus that you do, turning away from good guys to chase bad ones, all the blackouts, and the wasted afternoons is sabotage, because deep inside you think you don’t deserve to be happy.”
anyway, back to my bed.
i check mister 75006 vinted profile. there’s a black and white picture of him walking out of a helicopter (!) with sunglasses, a white shirt strained with his musculature (!!) slightly unbuttoned to hint a generous hairyness (!!!!!), and a tiny smile under a full beard. i keep smelling his sweater, smelling him. i imagine his arms around me, me holding onto them, feel them bulk up in tension while, elsewhere, his beard tickles me.
scent is powerful. moving. certain fragrances remind me of certain periods in my life.
black opium reminds me of snobby pr girls from manila. chanel no 5, your mom. lazy sunday morning brings me back to the year i was drunk all summer by the seine with my friend luthfi.
la femme prada, crisp and powdery, reminds me of cold winter mornings. it was also the scent i wore when i first met you.
few days passed and the scent disappeared, the cashmere sweater was less and less his and more and more mine. i wanted more.
i took you to my favorite church, the one with the nice fountain. and i wish i didn’t because you broke my heart.
the next day, mister 75006 posted a pair of acne studios socks. they looked new but i was willing to take the risk. i bought them.
i guess it’s the first time i’m really thinking about addictions. i’ve always thought i was fine mainly because of two things i’ve heard from two different people.
a brazilian lady in her 50s who looks amazing for her age, tells me, “cigarettes, booze, drugs, sex, everyone has something, if not, you’re not living. you should stop worrying and just enjoy a little bit. you’re good,” she smiles at me before finishing: “but of course everything in moderation.”
also, oscar wilde: “the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.”
but really, i’m fine. my accounts are in order. i’m flossing almost every night. i’ve only killed 3 of the 8 plants you left here.
must be rich hearing it from someone sniffing a random stranger’s hand-me-downs, but still, all things considered, i’m fine.
the socks came. they smell like christmas. mint condition, never been worn. i fold them neatly and tuck them into my drawer.
don’t flatter yourself. i still like that church. some things are bigger than heartbreaks. and the pigeons, the infinite water, the banker with the loosened tie having afterwork drinks, that young redhead frowning on a battered copy of verlaine, the old couple silently sitting together, all this is bigger than you. it’s still my fountain.
i nibble on a croissant, disassemble the dhl box. but just as i was putting it to the bin, i give a second look at the sticker. a return address. antoine monmarché. 73 rue de seine 75006. christmas.
everything in moderation. sounds like good advice, except for one gaping loophole. it assumes that everyone has self-control.
imagine never craving a cigarette. imagine knowing exactly when you want it, with a rocky drink at night, or with coffee in the morning. and not anytime, not anywhere else.
for a cigarette to be just a cigarette. a pleasure. and not tiny sticks reminding you of your fallibility.
imagine never knowing withdrawal, never trembling, never tasting crystal in your mouth, years after you last smoked it.
imagine turning down a puff, or refusing another drink because “you’ve had enough”
imagine walking past the bathroom and seeing, in the corner of your eye, an innocent bottle of cough syrup on the counter. imagine seeing the brown sugary liquid of it and not feel a swell in your heart.
it’s a beautiful day in paris. i sit on a café opposite the mister’s building, eyeing everyone coming in and out of it, hoping that one of them would be him. i’m reading the new yorker from 8 months ago that i stole from the asian hair salon. i may or may not be wearing a trench coat and big sunglasses.
three cafés allongés and eight cigarettes later, still nothing. i pay for my bill and head home.
they say the main problem with addicts is that they fixate on things. they disappear completely into that high. and this goes for everything, a joint, a hobby, a film, a person.
and if that were true, why couldn’t i fixate on things that are good for me instead?
i look out my velux window, onto the zinc roofs of my neighbors. the sky is oranged by the setting sun. pinked, too, around the edges. i feel like drinking, so i do. i chug a few vodka red bulls.
(but if i’m being honest, i didn’t have any red bulls at home.)
and no, if i’m being honest, i don’t think i was addicted to you.
4 to 5 drinks is to float, buoyed, in a hazy pink and orange dream.
8 to 9 drinks is to jump, face first, hurtling straight down to the concrete.
can you imagine someone addicted to celery? or, i don’t know, cleaning?
don’t you think it’s strange that i am the loneliest i’ve ever been but, in a cruel twist, also in my most beautiful?
i feel so hopeless so i think of the most logical thing i could do in this space and time and i do it. i go to mister 75006 vinted profile, and i order a powder blue dries van noten shirt, villebrequin shorts with turtles printed on them, and a bunch of gray hanes t-shirt. a warm cloud descends over me and i feel overjoyed.
except there are people addicted to cleaning. i’m pretty sure it’s a form of ocd. and that isn’t good either. too much of a good thing isn’t good.
walt whitman, i sing the body electric: “was it doubted that those who corrupt their own bodies conceal themselves? / and if those who defile the living are as bad as they who defile the dead?”
because addiction is chaos. it’s excess.
in the morning, i check my phone and get a message from, you guessed it, my banker asking me to call her.
but! also! from mister 75006!!
“and if the body does not do fully as much as the soul?”
in french, he writes me: hello, you seem to like my stuff! and since you’re also in paris, it might be easier for you to come and pick up the pieces. that way we can save on shipping costs and i can show you things i haven’t put up on my profile yet.”
i scream into my pillow, before rushing to the toilet, the taste of last night’s vodka is pungent on my throat as i vomit.
“and if the body were not the soul, what is the soul?”
and yes maybe i was too lonely to love. too hesitant. but you didn’t have to be so mean.
can you believe the distance we covered? from that fated day when his cashmere sweater arrived up to here, today, standing on his apartment door, my balenciaga tracks heavy on his welcome rug. i ring on the bell and feel my heart beat on my throat.
the door opens and i am welcomed by an elegant, middle-aged woman, who smiles at me and says: “laluna08, it’s you? come in.”
i walk into a grand living room and stumble into piles of clothes, shoes, neckties, jewelry, swimwear, towels, each piece individually wrapped in a ziploc.
you know, there’s this video on pornhub i keep watching because the top looks just like you. same glasses, same hairy chest, same smile.
“if you see anything you like, you tell me,” the lady says in a soothing voice, and then asks me if i wanted some coffee or tea. i glance over the glass of red wine on the side table, glance back at her, and smile. “du vin alors,” she grins back before disappearing into the kitchen.
except pornhub guy seems kinder, but also, strangely, more in charge in bed.
“i think you might be expecting my husband, i never changed his profile, since he had a few loyal clients,” she says, sipping on her saint emilion, a distant look on her face, broken only by a slight nod toward my direction, “like you.”
you know those types of lonely women who would go into stores and talk you to death just because they are so sad, so alone in their lives, they needed this pretext for some human interaction.
they’re not here for another hermès carré, they’re here so she can talk about her cat’s waning appetite as of late, and that, maybe, maybe, this handsome seller dressed in an impeccably cut suit, paid to paddle luxury goods, would smile at her and make her day, in the few minutes of this transaction.
well, she’s that kind of woman. i think.
i wish you met me a bit later, you know, when i was really, really good. and then it might have worked.
“yes,” she starts, swirling her wine, her third one since i got here, “he passed away a few months ago. it happened so fast, it came as a shock. how can someone be here one day, and then gone the next?”
i think it’s funny how i keep using the word transaction.
i think it might be useful to note that she was also asian. cambodian. dark and lonesome and tall like a dream. she could be my older sister. she could be an older me.
“in the first days, i would go to his closet, smell his clothes and weep,” she says, looking down on the feathery berbère carpet on the floor. “and weep.”
“grief could be sweet, you know. the same way it’s fun to pick on scabs and see fresh blood again. it’s invigorating,” she laughs, spacing out, “but it doesn’t do any good.” she looks at me straight in the eyes and says: “it does not help with healing.”
i guess it could also be useful if i confess that you know, i saw you. i was in my favorite flower shop, in the same block where i live. i saw you. passing by, the same grave face, same unsmiling mouth under a perfectly generous beard. and on your tail, a younger asian boy. with red hair. holding your hand. i saw you. i put the pink peonies back in the vase, and asked to buy a few succulents on the wall instead.
“a friend forwarded an article to me, from madame figaro,” she shares, rolling her eyes. “quelles conneries, franchement. it read, advice for widows, sleep on his side of the bed, so you woudn’t feel the empty space beside you.”
you said you didn’t like cacti because they kept good luck out of the house with their pricks. but when i googled, it said that they are actually quite protective, their spines trained outwards, vigilant against any looming threats.
“to be fair, it worked for a while, and then i got inventive. i took out his clothes, and laid it on his side of the bed. it helped,” she gives me a broad smile, and i flash it back. i mean, that’s kinda funny. and kinda genius. sad and mental, sure, but genius nonetheless.
but if i have the threats coming from the outside covered, how do i field the ones coming from within?
“and then, i took it a step further,” she darkens, spots my empty glass and pours more wine into it. “i started hiring men. i would ask them to put his clothes, go to our bed, and hold me.” it was the height of summer, and a fat fly buzzes across my face, but save for that it was all quiet.
there were two problems.
1) when a new person wears the clothes, his scent eventually wears off
and 2) no one is ever really him
you know how when you want to stop smoking but you have a lot of cigarettes left? and the only way you know you would stop is when you go through all of it and never buy again? so you smoke and smoke, because the faster you burn through them, the sooner you could quit.
i think this was the lady’s way of quitting. she’s chopping up the pieces and sending it to whoever would take them.
do you remember that one time, in bed, i was very drunk (i mean i always was) and i blurted out i love you. there was a frozen millisecond, you didn’t say anything, and kept kissing my neck?
she asks if i wanted more to drink and for the first time that afternoon, i speak: “it’s getting late, i think i might have to go.”
“of course, hold on,” she says, takes a paper bag and starts filling it with random shirts, button-downs, sweaters, then looking at me from head to toe, calculating. “no wonder you kept buying his tops, none of his pants would have fitted you,” she exclaims, smiling while shaking her head, still packing.
do you remember that time when you accidentally said that you loved me? “your skin is so soft,” you whispered to me, “i love you.”
“sorry! i mean, your skin! i love your skin.” you had a steady hand on the soft of my back and i was breathing, sighing on your right ear.
“et voilà,” she tells me, handing me an ikea blue bag filled with clothes. she leads me to the door.
not counting the fact that i was apparently getting off of a dead man, i’m doing good. there is an art dealer in dubai who bought a poem i wrote and he’s turning it into a neon light wall installation.
he didn’t pay me but still, i’m international. i’m doing good.
“thank you so much,” i tell her, again on the welcome rug, hesitating, before i give her a kiss on the right cheek, and then on the left.
one time, in the bus, a hefty monsieur plops down on the seat next to me. within seconds, i get a whiff of his perfume. terre d’hermès. i am transported back to a dark room, drugged, the man raping me had the same scent. i push the button, get down on the next stop, and throw up in a bin next to palais de justice.
and yet life continues.
carry light things as if they were heavy, and heavy things as if they were light, instructs a japanese teamaster.
“irene,” she tells me, after the life story comes her name, “come by any time”
i nod and i smile, and she closes the door on my face. my hands are trembling, holding the heavy ikea bag.
and then i run, ignoring the empty elevator sleeping on the same floor, i run downstairs, out to the streets. turning right, running still, trying to remember.
trying to remember how to run. to run like someone was waiting for me. to run like i knew where i was going.
because i did. towards the seine, a blue silver vein flowing through the heart of this city.
i stand there at the banks of an ancient river. i throw the bag in and was disappointed that the splash it made was not as loud as i imagined.
i kneel, put my head on the ground, and feel the blood rush onto my face, onto my brain, slowly coloring the insides of my eyelids all red.
i need another drink.
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