the North Star

Lili : You didn’t know where to put it, it’s not serious. Here, they’re used to it. You leave it on the dresser, they’re used to it, that’s all. It doesn’t matter.

I would like you to stay. There’s not much traffic. It won’t bother you. These are the nights that never end. I gave you pleasure, give me time.

I’m foaming at the mouth. I like to make little pictures. I feel like it tells a better story. They’re called metaphors. I have a bit of a vocabulary.

Whores aren’t always turkeys.

The foam rises on the heart. It rises if you are not careful. A wave on the pebbles. It would be nice to give it time to sink in and disappear. The foam is a filthy thing that doesn’t look like anything. You walk, you run along the waves, you have wind in your hair.

Above all, you think you’re young.

You walk as long as it seems possible. You look at the bottom of your trousers, there are stains. You won’t be able to erase them.

So you have to talk.

It’s the silence that kills. Not the past, not the stuff that sticks to the heart. The lost smile.

The water.

The clear water that flows under the bridge. The dramas and all the rest. The foam goes to your head, it makes your hair grey. It’s a wave of the soul.

Do you understand?

You understand, I’m lost.

Oh, it’s not going to drip with sadness, I leave that to the accordions. You can put your mind at ease, put your ass on the carpet and have a smoke. Here they vacuum, the place is well kept. It won’t get your ass dirty.

Of course, you don’t have to sit on the dresser.

I just want you to listen.

Are you hesitating?

I know it’s a non-smoking establishment, but who’s gonna police it?

I don’t want to be pathetic. Passes are hard to come by, you’re a good guy. I’m not the only one. Young guys with glitter all over their pussies.

I’m old school.

I try to smell good and look clean.

I don’t like unnecessary decorations.

It’s a night like any other night.

Endless.

I’m not competing anymore. 

I was surprised you got me to come up. Sometimes I still do business on Sundays. The rest of us take a day off or go to the country.

I was surprised.

I had a doubt.

I thought you were a pervert, that I was taking a risk. That I might end up as a news item. The little section that’s taking up more and more space.

Is there nothing else going on in the world?

You were very sweet, classic, classy. I almost felt like not pretending.

Are you mad at me for saying it like that?

Pretending is protective, don’t blame me. It’s a funny job. We’re like comedians.

You have experience.

You don’t say anything.

Am I wrong?

It’s an act, like in the theatre. You have to satisfy the public.

We demand the fee beforehand, there’s no applause afterwards. We curtsy at the beginning of the show. We pack the client’s gear for the opening of the curtains.

We have learned to protect ourselves, there have been deaths. We lost smiles forever. It was a bad time. The eighties.

You pay for the big game, so you do it. We spread our thighs and light up the origin. We present the chocolates. We know you have a sweet tooth.

It’s not uncommon for it to be quick. You drop it like it’s overflowing.

An overflow.

Immediately it doesn’t belong to you. It’s as if it were already ours. That you don’t want to hear about it anymore.  A piece of mother-of-pearl abandoned on the corner of a chest of drawers. Something for the cleaning lady.

The overflow.

Don’t you have a wife in your life?

Not enough, perhaps?

Demanding, perhaps?

Who doesn’t love or who doesn’t love anymore?

Don’t you have a woman to keep you warm?

To keep warm…

We are solitudes that meet.

We sleep. Two in the same bed, but we remain alone. It can’t be explained. We caress each other, naked with our sexes at our fingertips. We touch each other, we moan for real, for fake. We make a comedy of smells, of exchanges, of sweat. But we remain alone.

You clucked like a turkey.

You looked lost.

As long as you’re listening in the room, I can believe that another day is possible. That it would be something other than a paying gig. Two solitudes together.

If you put your trousers back on. You’ll have to put them back on. You’ll leave, a quick glance at the dresser. So you don’t forget the car keys or anything else.

I know all the zips by their sound. A quick movement, always the same. That way of checking that everything is in its place. That need to feel that you’re leaving with your balls.

You’ll walk out the door with the memory of a cheap name. The one I feed to my clients.

The real one, mine, the one that was on the christening form. The one that used to nestle in my mother’s mouth. I keep it like a secret.

In your lonely moments, I would not like you to cum on the image of my bone structure and my real name.

I feel dirty, when I imagine someone doing it with me in mind. In the toilet, in the shower or in the paper square of a handkerchief. I feel dirty for not collecting the nacre inside, where it belongs. I understand that it’s a relief, but it gets lost in the bitterness of the ocean.

Will you remember my fancy name?

I mean when you’re in the real world. I mean when you’re in the mundane world.

Does it matter?

Do we need to know whose name we’re fucking?

It’s just a body.

I don’t know my clients’ names. I don’t want to know. A person without a name is still an animal. You can have tenderness, but it doesn’t commit you to anything. It remains distant.

You’re smart. You listen to me without flinching.

I should thank you, but it makes me sad. (You listen to me like that. It’s not right.

You should have got up and walked out, taken your cock back. Forget about the yapping old whore.

It makes you sad because you listen to me out of pity.

Are you listening to me out of pity?

You don’t move. You are silence. It’s a marble slab on your shoulders.

Silence.

Silence is marble in cemeteries.

They listen to me out of pity. They think it’s out of pity.

Curiosity.

In the spring years, they listened to me because I was funny. I wasn’t smart, but I was witty. I was fun to be around. I knew curious songs and stories. I smoked for hours, chatted with a clarinet voice.

I was a one-man jazz concert.

It was cool and relaxing, a little sexy, always nostalgic. And then I was easy. I liked it.

I let myself get caught up in it. I liked to be picked. The vanity of a pretty flower.

Can you imagine me young?

I don’t.

I remember, I remember another one.

A pretty one with soft skin, a little pearly. A body that bent under the storm, under the anger of men. A reed with the down of July. It was as if everything was healthy, alive and young. Even the pleasure was young. I don’t know what it is anymore.

Young pleasure.

It is a regret, something I will not find again. Not in the hollow of a bed. Nor in the softness of a cock. The intimate caress of a thoughtful man.

All the mechanics are worn out, I have rough sensations. To grow old is to be rough and not remember the time when it was soft.

I don’t want to look miserable. I’d like you to find some shards. Chunks in the sherbet. Lemon on my skin and in my eyes. A little sour and happy. That little clarinet music.

If you want one more time?

You paid for the night.

Talking about the youthful years, it reminds us that caresses are rare. It rekindles the sparks.

I like it when I lie on my stomach. All the weight of a man on me. I love it when the forms marry. The heat of his cock on my buttocks. His kisses on my neck, the breath in my ears. His violent hands. Vices that stretch my arms, break my shoulders. This strength of man, vain and indispensable.

You could sit next to me. I’d hold the gear for you.

We would be like an old couple.

Nothing would happen but one skin gently rubbing against the other. Without shame. Without embarrassment.

Who would see?

God is an empty bottle. Broken.

You don’t want to come.

Is it scary?

They smashed God to get their own piece. They scattered the shards on the crest of the walls. They put the shards of God between our bodies. Our needs, our pleasures, our loves.

I don’t like this way of believing. 

Fucking is beautiful. Even if it costs. Even if it scratches. Even if it’s a business. A working relationship. A contractual situation.

It’s not dirty.

Dirt comes with words. Words that are used to hurt. Words as judgments. Words that say what is right, what is wrong. Words as a weave of contempt.

I am not ashamed to let my hand wander. We must wake the little birds in the cage. Let them sing.

You have to be maternal.

You have to be a bitch.

ou are fragile.

You didn’t come right away. You weren’t showing off. It doesn’t work every time. You didn’t notice, but you checked. You slipped your hand in, you checked that it was hard. Only then were you really there.

I’m not making fun of you.

I say that because it’s touching. It’s also to acknowledge that my body is flaccid. That the attraction has been diluted. I don’t have the same desires anymore.

I could do half-price, it wouldn’t fill the waiting room.

I liked that you offered to come up. I thought it was good because it made me feel less disgusted with myself. I’ve regained some of my value.

You too are more beautiful. You have a belly that falls out in spite of you. (But) You were gentle. You were quick and didn’t insist. You took pleasure when it was there. You didn’t force it. You came, sincerely. You came without cheating, without exaggerating.

Your cock is crumpled, velvet with too many folds. Velvet anyway.

I think I see beauty where others look away.

The street has become too hard. Like the rest of the world.

We used to be a family.

We used to be.

(It’s true) There were bad kids, rotten kids. They played with knives under the girls’ noses. They looked like pimps. Manners too. They hit to show who was boss. They hit the girls, sometimes for no reason.

In the end, they took care of us. They had gestures, other gestures.

They were bastards with honour.

We all have bosses.

Tender gestures.

It wasn’t an ideal world. (But) there was life.

You’ve got a boss too, haven’t you?

You’re still silent.

Pimps are real bastards. But honour. A code, as it were.

Now they’re off my back. I’m not worth much anymore. It’s not that they don’t care. They let me get supplements. They let me do the dirty work without taking their pledges. They know they have to leave a little air. A little oxygen.

What’s left of my ass is a little retirement capital.

I invest it whenever I can. It doesn’t weigh much, it’s a distraction.

I can afford knick-knacks, movies and soft skin cream. I’m not going to end up a countess in a champagne bath. I can only afford a little sparkling wine now and then. I dream about travelling on magazines.

I wanted to go to Japan.

I heard that the girls there are geishas. Ladies. They make music for you and whisper poems.

Your senses are all over the place. You don’t know where the pleasure comes from. Then you die, every time you die.

I told myself I would have known. I would have learned to be a geisha. I would have been the white geisha. I would have known how to powder my nose, how to make my eyelashes jet.

I’ve never seen jet lashes. For real.

Have you ever seen it?

It’s so black it’s like the void between the stars. It’s a stone for making ornaments. A jet necklace. A jet tiara.

Imagine a Japanese woman.

These walls that become doors. These walls that are transparencies. This music that is a mystery. This partition that opens, this woman who appears. Squatting, lost in a dress like no other.

I thought things that don’t exist didn’t exist.

Do you understand me?

(There are) things, they tell you. It’s so beautiful that you’re sure, it’s sleeping at the bottom of an ocean. Nobody can see it.

Almost.

You tell yourself that only the lantern fish see it. The big, disfigured fish that carry a lamp in front of them. The big fish that sleep a thousand thousand meters below the surface.

To see beauty, you have to go deep.

Get lost in shreds of darkness. There is no beauty without darkness. We didn’t know they existed either.

The lantern fish

The wind had had time to draw the sand on the beaches. And to start again, and to start again.

One day, we went down in a submarine. A bathyscaphe.

I told you, I have a vocabulary. 

Then we knew they existed. Lanternfish. In a Paris Match. A black and white photo.

On the other page, it was a little monkey in colour. A brass band costume, gold buttons. A red suit.

I don’t remember the year.

I remember the other page because of the monkey.

I still had straw in my hooves. I read everything I could get my hands on. Paris Match, magazines.

Books.

It made me laugh.

Laughter is sometimes admiration or jealousy. It’s rarely contempt.

I was innocent. I was curious. It’s a bit the same thing.

I was doing a kimono act with a fan. Like an artist.

On the fan was drawn a big wave. Before it fell again. White, blue, brown. A crest like thousands of hands to catch you. To submerge you, to caress you.

I was hiding behind it. I pretended to be exotic. I could ask for more.

I had put a picture of Mount Fuji. With a pin, towards the square of the mirror. I liked to pretend to be Japanese.

I received a postcard.

A customer remembered.

He had sent it to the café on the street with my junk name on it. They knew how to find me, I was popular. I have it in my wallet.

You want to see it?

Maybe it’s better not to see it. The colours have faded. It looks sad. (But) It’s not.

I didn’t have the life of Fantine Cosette’s mother. Les Misérables. I’ve read Victor Hugo. I told you, I have a vocabulary.

Those who think well.

I mean those who received their minds in a school believe that our life is misery.

It’s not true.

First of all, because I liked to make love.

Fucking a whore, you think she’s always pushing herself. That she has no feelings. That she is a rag that you pull and tear. Fucking is a job.

Don’t you ever have fun at work?

You argue with your colleagues. You make fun of the boss.

On the quiet.

Bosses, pimps. Big deal.

You take advantage of holiday days. A factory, an office, a hospital, it’s not much different from being a hooker.

We all have our bids. We’re girlfriends, there are customers.

It’s the market, a small summer day, the sound of the fountain. The yellow light of June. We do your business, then we wash up. It smells like lavender eau de toilette.

Maybe we’re just kidding ourselves to believe that this isn’t a shitty life?

You don’t tell yourself stories?

To pass the pill.

It would be so unfair if we didn’t love each other. If we didn’t love ourselves a little. If we didn’t give ourselves the satisfaction of a job well done. There would be too much grey in the blue.

Are you listening to me?

You’re patient.

I like patient men.

I could never go to Japan. It’s far away and I don’t speak the language. Japan is beautiful, but it’s far from everything.

That’s OK.

I can play the clarinet. I’ve had other things.

With a girlfriend, we went on holiday. It was nice to sleep with a girlfriend. It made you smile.

I saw that.

It changed me. It’s other caresses. That’s what you think. We followed the road north in a small car. A « veeva ».

We drove along the roads of Europe to the place where the tarmac becomes a track and the night never comes on. There is no night in the north.

Do you know that?

It’s an opaque haze, you don’t know where to sleep. It’s a molasses. Those who work the streets up there never see the night. No darkness to close the eyes.

Maybe it’s less dangerous?

In winter it’s different. The day remains dormant. The polar winds spread green filaments across the sky. So many old spider webs. It’s too cold to survey.

You don’t do well treading in the ice.

Have you travelled?

The silence sticks to your teeth.

You don’t want to get wet?

You’re right. Listen, don’t give yourself away. To get along with the life of the world. Like behind glass. There’s no risk.

It’s like on TV.

I say everything.

I talk because it overflows. I don’t blame anyone. I liked making love, I’ve already told you that. I liked being what I was. I was not ashamed to open my thighs. I didn’t have to force myself. I was not ashamed to suck cock. I found it beautiful.

Some people don’t like it. It’s not in their values. Values.

God, morals, civilisation. That’s stuff to imprison yourself in. Walls to scratch the other. Walls to lower. You think you’re a guard on the watchtower.

Just because you lock your cock in a locker and throw away the key doesn’t make you any better.

You refuse the pleasures. (Then) you become bitter and you smear the blue with grey. It’s mediocre.

At first I thought it was overflowing because it was sad. It overflows because I’m angry. Angry at this life that didn’t let me do it. Angry because I’m seen as a slut.

I am a slut.

So what?

I gave love. I gave sex, pleasure. I gave out fantasy, pride, orgasm. I lifted the tails of flaccid men. Made pimply men proud. I have watered snails that have been deprived of rain for a thousand years.

The word love, it is flayed in the mouth of the well-turned spirits when one speaks about ass. The ass, it hurts their penis. They catch a hot piss in the soul. They dream of putting us back on the right track with mercy. They promise hell. They would burn us for having fucked too much.

Their hearts are so dry that with one look they dry up the beauty of life. They raise dust, let the ashes of fires fall.

Honest men and women judge.

You have to believe you are honest to claim to judge. When you are a judge, you condemn. It is irremediable.

They’d better fuck more often.

Orgasm is a door to grace. It’s a surrender. Whether you’re male or female, you understand that it’s fragile. It’s hanging by a thread.

When it happens. You see in your eye an aurora borealis that fades, disappears. A miracle that escapes.

A whole body abandons itself. Who for a second is as innocent as a child.

(And) Suddenly, the body becomes the body again with its sweat and its heat. With regret. With gratitude. All mixed up.

To make love is to learn not to judge. Every whore in the world knows this.

To make love, even if it’s a transaction, is to accept what is most intimate about the other.

I have slept with dirty men, deformed men, unhappy men. Men who had strange needs, men to whom violence was necessary. Men who submitted, who stooped, who crawled, who drank my piss as if from a spring of eternal youth. They were looking for a shudder. They were in torment for feeling alive. 

I never despised them.

They were lost.

Simply beautiful. A different kind of beauty.

You, you are classic. You didn’t go for the bizarre. You just needed a little sparkle.

I’m nostalgic. I’ve grown old. That goes hand in hand.

I looked in the mirror. (And) For the first time I saw myself. I really saw myself.

Before, I saw myself as a woman. A woman who touched the icy glass of the mirror. Not very clean and wearing make-up. She caressed her reflection. A face, heavy breasts and skin like silk spread over the back of an armrest. I saw what I imagined I was.

To grow old is to be hit in the gums with lucidity.

To grow old is to abandon the image for the reality.

I saw myself. What it is like to lose the sand in your eyes.

I am in a new age. I am not downcast. I am not sad, either.

(But) It’s not a Fourteenth of July ball.

I told you, I feel rough.

You accosted me. You asked: how much?

You said to come up. That you would pay the price without question. That you would pay for a night, even if you only stayed an hour, a minute, a second.

The good you’ve done me. Saying that. For wanting to fuck me.

That made my skin less rough.

You’re not young, you’re not old. You’re at the age where you know how to do it right.

(But) you’re still flexible.

I should pay you back. (But) It’s you who would look like a gigolo. I’m not sure you like it. 

That idea.

You’re like all men, you have your pride.

Was it the first time?

With a whore, I mean.

You’ve got thoughtful gestures. You held the door and I walked past. Those are gestures you get when you live with someone you love.

Is it a woman?

A girlfriend?

An intermittent regular?

I hope she holds you tenderly. I hope you have this chance to be two.

It’s cool water in summer. You pass your hand, the fingers turn blue. And you pass your hand again because it feels good.

I had my part of the holiday, I told you.

A torrent, the spinning water and glittering reflections. A face, clear water. She drove very badly. The ‘vee’ was often in the middle of the road. We were honked at. It made you laugh. We brushed against those on the other side.

We shouted: « Together, whatever happens!

We are ridiculous sometimes. There were swerves. She always ended up catching the car.

In extremis.

We found a line on which we had the impression of flying like a long-distance plane. Without any pitfalls. Like two white wings ploughing through the sky. An ephemeral foam.

I was lucky.

I had the taste of different caresses. The happiness of a head resting on my shoulder. The happiness of a smell that became intoxicating. The happiness of a long hair a little dirty because of the endless summer days. The happiness of an almost maternal breast. The smile of a friend.

Her face, her clear water.

The sound of the engine, the dusty track, the smile, the water.

The time when you ride. It is eternal.

The look goes from one thing to another and back again.

The sound of the engine, the dusty track, the face.

The rain fell, a curtain. It announced the end.

The end of time. Closure of the parenthesis. We went back to work.

It was in the eighties. I mustn’t talk about that. You would be afraid. You’d think there was still something going on. I got through it. There’s no point in being afraid.

That’s what’ll get me killed.

I like the smell of tobacco. Even with yellow fingers. It’s not very distinguished.

You see how time flies. You’re still here waiting.

If you want once more.

All skins have different smells. The young ones smell of crushed grass. Hot grass, stones left in the sun. They are clumsy, make believe they know everything. They have the gestures of emperors. A conquering nakedness that he walks between the bathroom tiles and the foot of the bed. An uncontrolled eagerness.

They are naive and kind.

They look like penguins on an ice floe.

All skins have different smells. With age, they become bitter. Sweat turns into saltpetre. Old men are scrolls. All the things they have experienced want to show themselves one last time before they disappear.

They are a page to write on. There is no more room, everything is already written. They want more.

In bed, they break like reeds that are too dry, they are sorry for their aridity. They mockingly regret the dried-up river.

They have educations that make them stand straight and dignified. In tightly cut clothes.

They leave.

I will soon be in the time of the scrolls. The skin is already yellow in places.

I want people to know that a whore is not a nobody. It should also be written.

The flesh did not only come. The skin was not only scratched. I didn’t just moan. I cannot disappear. I have not just been thighs offered. I was so much more than that.

More than that.

I started working in the street with the street lights and the metal bridge where the train passes. Where the cars turn around and roll over the dust on the side of the road.

The passes were made on the back benches.

A car park in a clearing with a patch of sky between the trees.

The men had manners, they came with clean trousers and well polished pipes.

They had respect.

I was beautiful.

They called me: The North Star.