At times I forget and try to take control. Try to remain unconnected, uninvolved.
Not for long. Each time, Phoenix puts his hand on my eyes, closes them gently, and says, “Shhh. Don’t do that. I’m here, Ingalls. Let go, love, let go…”
And I’m always happy to comply.
—3—
Three years. Unbelievable. Three long years, three short years. Sometimes, my old life seems like a lifetime ago. And sometimes, it seems like yesterday.
Still, there are moments when I feel like I don’t belong here. When I feel like a stranger.
No wonder. Wrong place, wrong country, wrong language, wrong continent. Wrong name, too. I’m even married, for Christ’s sake. And co-owner the Clifford Creek Ecolodge.
I’m used to my new past. My new twang. Even my new name, which is just a detail anyway. I was never much attached to my old one.
And most of the time, I have to admit that everything feels right. Everything fits like a glove. The forlorn place where we’re living. The Ecolodge. Our work. My legally wedded wife, who never sleeps in my bed. The kid we’re expecting. My lover. The extended family we’re forming, Sarah and I and Phoenix and June.
Odd that I should have ended up in this of all places. Odd, too, that for decades people would come here in desperate search of gold, clawing the soil, scraping the riverbed, hoping and hoping and hoping for that major nugget that’ll bring them riches and a new life, when something more precious than gold was stretching before and around them. This land, that is. The loneliness. Untouched nature, rough wilderness, changing seasons, an endlessly streaming river, hills and mountains virtually unlived-in, and star-spangled night skies as immense as an ocean. Back then those people brought their own misery with them. Their poverty, their tribulations, and the stink of their greed, even the names of places where in their former lives they had been just as poor and greedy and miserable.
If I were willing to ponder my life, I could even find it ironic. I thought I would continue my life as far away from Paris as possible. And here I am, some forty miles from Paris as the crow flies. This new Paris is but a shadow of the real thing, of course; today it’s even a ghost town, abandoned since the early 1910s, the shabby houses overgrown with moss and lichen and trees.
Fortunately, I’m still not given to excessive pondering when I can avoid it. Some things never change.
—4—
Three years, and I’m still learning. We all had to learn new things. June and Sarah had to learn how to trust their two husbands. They didn’t tell us their stories—we were all told not to—but I could sense the women’s wariness at the beginning. Little by little, that much-needed trust crept into our four-way relationship almost on tiptoes. And one day, Sarah, who had been so shy at first, asked us if we wanted to have children.
I still remember the scene as if it happened yesterday.
June was holding Sarah’s hand.
First, I didn’t know what to say. I was just… astonished. “Are you sure?” I asked them.
“If we find a way to do it without… you know…” Sarah blushed, her voice drifting off.
Phoenix’s smile was blinding when he gushed his answer. “Don’t worry about the how. We’ll figure it out. My answer is yes, yes, and yes. At least four children.”
That made June chuckle. “Four? At least? Are you mad? You won’t have to carry them; you won’t have to give birth to them!”
Phoenix replied, “Believe me, if I could, I would do it in the blink of an eye.”
Sarah sighed with relief. “And you, Ingalls?”
I simply nodded, too moved to utter a word.
“Any preference as to how many?” June jokingly asked.
“As many as you want to accept,” I croaked, thinking of Emma, thinking of so many missed chances of the past, hoping for all the chances still lying ahead which I was determined not to miss this time.
—5—
Phoenix has probably been the fastest learner. Maybe because his dream has come true, in a fashion. I detect traces of his innate sadness from time to time, but a gaze, a touch, a kiss always seem to be enough to remind him someone is there for him.
For me, things have been more difficult. I’m still trying to adapt. It’s not easy when you’re not used to being surrounded by people all the time. It’s even tougher when you’re not used to accepting that the people with whom you share your life love you and will support you, no matter what.
Nobody told me that was possible.
Sometimes, it gets too much for me. Sometimes an innocent touch is enough to send me reeling. I can’t help it; it’ll take time for me to heal. When I can’t take it any longer, I simply walk off for a while, climb up the steep hill behind the lodge, wander around between the trees, my steps cushioned by moss and grass and pine needles. I always stop at the top of the hill. It hasn’t got a name, which is the most beautiful thing on earth I can imagine.
From up there, I look down on the winding river, its grey waters rushing to the north, and I gaze over the hills and trees and the endlessness of our solitary refuge, and I remind himself what a lucky man I am.
I think of my sisters. My previous existence. The things that were, the things that weren’t. My daughter, who’ll never know her dad’s name, whose present and future I can only imagine. Those lives from which I’ve cut myself off completely. I’m dead to them. Which doesn’t mean I cannot secretly continue to care for them from afar, in my thoughts.
I also think of the things I should have done and for which I will never be able to make up. Because it’s too late. Because the people concerned are dead. One man, especially. I let regret wash over me, regret and shame and a nameless longing. If only I had had the intelligence to talk to my father when there was still time, to get to know him, maybe to tell him I forgave him… If only I had also asked him for his forgiveness…
All I can do is think of him and remind myself that I’m lucky and, yes, happy, and let that warm feeling bubble up inside. Whenever I’m standing on the top of that hill and send my unrequited, nameless love into the ether, I do feel happy, happier than I’ve ever felt before. Sometimes the sun shines down on me, sometimes I’m standing there in wind and rain, sometimes everything around me is sparkling with deep snow and looks like a wonderland out of a fairy tale. The untouched beauty spread out all around me always makes him calm down.
The others respect those bouts of doubt. They know where I am, they know I’ll be back for dinner.
Kay was a bit taken aback in the beginning. She didn’t understand what was going on. Sarah told her one day that I had been prone to depression in my former life, and when I came strolling down the hill, Kay gave me a hug and whispered in my ear, “Don’t you worry, son. We got you. It’s all right.”
—6—
That night, the nightmare comes back to haunt me. I dream I’m drowning. Not the sham show we organised when we disappeared from the Rose of Athens, but really drowning. I feel my wet clothes getting heavier and heavier, pulling me down, and the waters close over my head, and I hold my breath and struggle and try to reach the surface, but the weight is just too much. The sea is churning around me, and everything is black, and down I go, down, down, down, and my lungs feel as if they would burst any moment, and I know I need to breathe, urgently, but there’s only water around me, cold, hostile water…
I wake up with a gasp.
Phoenix wakes up a second later and wraps his arms around me as he always does. I hear him whispering, “Your nightmare again?” And I feel without seeing how Phoenix’s gaze becomes sad once again. The simple knowledge that I’m the one making him sad chokes me up, so I simply nod.
Phoenix pulls me closer, presses a kiss on my nape, and strokes my skin. Then, he nestles even closer, puts his mouth against my ear and starts softly singing.
“Bülbülüm gel de dile… he sings. “S
öyle benimle bile / Sesini duyur ele / Çile bülbülüm çile, çile bülbülüm çile, çile bülbülüm…”
Phoenix has a surprisingly beautiful voice, a vibrant baritone, and the Turkish words still sound as beautiful as the first time I heard them.
I still remember what they mean. “My song bird, start talking / even sing with me / make your voice heard to strangers / Sorrow, oh my sorrow bird…”
And I do what Phoenix asks of me. I sing with him, and we both pay our tribute to the sorrow bird, which is my way, the best way I’ve found, to tell Phoenix that I love him.
About this book
This novel was born three times. In fact, the first time that the idea, vague and unformed, of creating the character of a sex-worker popped up in my mind was shortly after I had left my native country Austria and had arrived in Paris. Overwhelmed by the sheer newness and unfamiliarity of the big city, of the French customs and idiosyncrasies, I was wondering all of a sudden how my life would be if I decided to become, well, not a whore exactly, but a male escort. Don’t get me wrong—I never considered really acting out that weird fantasy of mine. It was a mere mind-experiment. I was in my early twenties back then, fairly cute, it seems (at least that’s what I was sometimes told, to my own astonishment—I never considered myself physically outstanding) and was earning very little money. 5,500 francs per month, if I’m not mistaken, which is 840 euros or 1,020 dollars. Too much to die, too little to live, as we would have said in Austria.
That’s how I came up with the character that would later become Marc Forgeron. Of course, back then, with the nonchalance and self-centredness of a youngster, I created Marc as an imaginary double of myself and not the way he is now, in this novel. This Marc Forgeron and I don’t have the same social and family background, the same experiences, the same thoughts about life. But I took notes of the clients I conjured up in my mind: archbishops and politicians and businessmen. Fame and riches through shagging, which was a truly naïve way of seeing things. I even scribbled down descriptions and situations, a bit like a puppy playing with a wooden stick. Or a future writer flexing his literary muscles.
Those notes are now lost forever, I gather, as I’ve moved several times since then, each time entrusting some of my old belongings to the municipal dustbins.
Then in 2011, I wrote a short story titled Ordinary Funeral, the basic idea of which was prompted after some friends and I had been talking about famous opening lines of novels, or rather opening lines we had memorised, for whatever reasons. I remember quoting Camus’s L’étranger because those first sentences had always intrigued me: “Aujourd’hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas.” (Albert Camus, The Outsider (UK), The Stranger (US); 1942; “My mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don’t know.”) I think I’ve never read two sentences that, despite their simplicity yet inherent oddness, stir up so many emotions in me even now.
Taking this quote as a starting point, I wrote the whole short story in a real frenzy. The plot fell into place at once, the characters arising from my mind almost organically, the aloof father, the self-centred mother, the two sisters, the main character… and his job as a luxury escort. I published it on the literary blog I was running back then (and which has been closed since then) as well as on the Literary Network Forums. On both sites, readers commented in quite positive terms.
That precious feedback pushed me to write the following chapters, which were (and still are) constructed as almost self-contained parts. Then, the process ground to a halt. In the middle of chapter 6, I was stalling. My mind was blank, I didn’t know where to go to from there. The story disappeared into a folder on my computer from which I would pull it out from time to time to reread it.
Until this summer, when all of sudden my inspiration came back, and I decided to give the book another go. Some scenes needed to be rewritten, some characters to be refined, but all in all, it was an exciting, exhilarating journey where Marc led me to the ending you have just read.
I think few readers have noticed that for parts of the story I have recycled other writings of mine that have already been published elsewhere (mainly in my short story collection Small Portions). For the sake of honesty, I admit that I have used bits and descriptions for the chapter taking place in Turkey, twisting and reshaping them for the purpose of this book. The same is true for some other, short passages taking place in Paris.
Some of the places described in this novel are pure inventions. That’s namely true for the Turkish tourist resort of Hiçbiryerde, which doesn’t exist (by the way, hiç bir yerde means “nowhere” in Turkish, or at least that’s what online dictionaries say).
Most places, however, exist, and I have visited them: from Nogent-sur-Seine and Châlons-en-Champagne to Charleville-Mézières, from locations in Paris to the Tunisian island of Djerba. For those who like to go to unusual places, I would like to point out that the treehouse settlement in Turkey and the beach nearby exist, too: Olympus Beach, to the west of Antalya. Alas, when I look at online maps today—we’re in the middle of a pandemic, so that’s all the travelling I can currently do—I realise the place must have changed and must have been “domesticated” and transformed into much more of a tourist resort than back when I visited it. It was still savage, forlorn, a secret, flower-powery spot for the young and careless. It was just as I have described it in this book.
For the record, I also took the liberty of using the real names of newspapers and magazines to give the story a realistic framework. The articles are pure inventions, once again, and I take the sole responsibility for their content and tone.
Talking of frameworks, the story is set in 2011. This can be explained by the year when I wrote the short story I mentioned before, and which would become the first chapter.
Internationally speaking 2011 turned out to be an interesting year. Just remember: the tsunami and nuclear accident in Japan shocked the whole world (I haven’t mentioned them in this book); the Tunisian Revolution (the “Jasmine Revolution”), which had started the previous year, saw its first victory with long-time president cum dictator Ben Ali fleeing the country; the Egyptian revolt led to the flight of another dictator, president Mubarak; revolts started in Bahrein, Libya, Syria, and Morocco; the Americans, French, and British launched a military intervention in Libya; IMF-director Dominique Strauss-Kahn was imprisoned in New York, accused of having sexually attacked a hotel employee; social unrest led to protests in Spain, copied by countless other countries… These are but a few important headlines of that year, or at least of the period covered by this book (roughly from April to August).
This made an interesting background for Marc’s story.
I hope you enjoyed reading the book as much as I enjoyed writing it.
Many thanks to my almost-husband (why almost? Long story…) for being so indulgent with me. Even if I sometimes spend more time with my imaginary friends, whether they’re called Marc, Kerem, Damien, Nikos, Stefano, or Raphaël, than with him, at the end of the day, he knows I’ll always come back to him. And he is always waiting for me with the patience born out of love.
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Did you like this book? Would you mind leaving a comment on your blog, on Amazon, Goodreads, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media? Not only would I be exceedingly pleased to read your feedback, but these comments are the only means for us self-published writers to spread the word about our writing. A heartfelt thanks to all who are kind enough to let others know this book exists.
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http://livresgay.fr
Other Books by the author
In English
Novels
Till Death Do Us Part (Poireaut & Di Angeli Book 1)
The Stuffed Coffin (Damien Drechsler’s Investigations Book 1)
Twenty-five: poetry 3.0
the solid and thoughtful cow: poetry 2.0
and somewhere under: poetry 1.0
Short stories
Small Portions
Miss Otis Regrets
En Français
Romans
Jusqu’à ce que la mort nous sépare (Poireaut & Di Angeli, tome 1)
Le cercueil farci (Les enquêtes de Damien Drechsler, tome 1)
Nouvelles
Petites portions
Traductions commentées
Dans ma forêt natale: Tome 2 - Curieux de la vie (de Peter Rosegger)
Dans ma forêt natale: Tome I - Gamin dans la forêt (de Peter Rosegger)
Auf Deutsch
Romane
Bis dass der Tod uns scheidet (Poireaut & Di Angeli 1)
Der gespickte Sarg (Damien Drechsler ermittelt 1)
Kurzgeschichten
Kleine Portionen
Kommentierte Literatur
Waldheimat (Kommentierte Ausgabe): 1. Band – Das Waldbauernbübel
* * *
1
The député (or deputy, delegate) is a member of the lower legislative house (Assemblée nationale or National Assembly) of the French bicameral Parliament, the upper house being the Sénat (Senate; its members are called sénateurs).
2
Annie Girardot (25 October 1931 – 28 February 2011) was a three-time César Award winning French actress. She often played strong-willed, independent, hard-working, and often lonely women, imbuing her characters with an earthiness and reality that endeared her to women undergoing similar daily struggles.
3
The French word for uncle is “oncle”, but the more familiar form “tonton” is often used, especially by children (for an aunt or “tante”, children would say “tatie” or “tata”).
4
Petit Futé (founded 1976) is a series of French travel guides. The term “petit futé” means “little wily one”, and the imprint’s logo is a (wily) fox.
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