Without meaning to—or perhaps she intended more of it than I could tell—she let me know what I had been unable to do for her and with her. We had never made love, and I had never gotten into a fight over her. I was the one who got beaten up, not the one who picked the fights.
* * *
My older sister decided to introduce me to one of her girlfriends. She said to me At your age, you know you really need a girlfriend and it’s true I was at the age where most of the guys in the village were dating girls in the village, and were even becoming lifelong couples, a status quickly confirmed by the birth of one or more children, which would mean they had to quit school. So my sister organized a dinner where I would meet this Sabrina. Having attained the impressive age of eighteen, Sabrina was five years older than I was, and therefore had a body that was considerably more developed than the bodies of the girls I knew at school. And you know, my sister added, this way you’ll be able to have a real good time. I replied that I liked girls who were older than me, and added specifically with curves, knowing as I said this that I was unquestionably headed toward an impossible situation, one where, once I met Sabrina, I would have to live up to this image that I was presenting to my sister and to everyone else.
* * *
The dinner in question had been set up specifically so that we could meet. Sabrina’s mother—Jasmine—was there. Jasmine was someone who hated her husband and openly declared that she couldn’t wait for him to die I don’t know exactly when he’s gonna die, but it’s taking for-fucking-ever. Once a week she visited a psychic who promised her that he was going to die of a violent illness in the very near future. I knew her for two years, and in those two years she would solemnly announce every week It’s really happening this time, my husband’s finally gonna die, I give him a month, tops. She would call up my sister and tell her Get ready for the funeral, I just went to the psychic and he’s only got seventy-two hours left to live. Most of the conversation when she ate at our house dealt with the subject of his impending and unavoidable death, and with the details of the distribution of his tiny estate.
* * *
My sister had described me to Jasmine the same way that my father would when I wasn’t around. She had told her that I was going to do really well in school and get rich. Jasmine, who wanted to see her daughter land on her feet, had quickly given her approval.
* * *
There was a ceremony in which we were formally introduced. I found myself face-to-face with my sister, Jasmine, Sabrina, and one of their other girlfriends, with all eyes on me and my anxiety as I imagined—the kind of absurd ideas that come to mind in moments like these—that Sabrina might throw her arms around me at any moment and try to kiss me. The palpable excitement that these four women were giving off matched precisely my uneasiness, an uneasiness that I tried to hide by projecting a false sense of confidence. I smiled at Sabrina and called attention to myself in any way I could, speaking about any and every topic I thought I knew something about, like, for example, World War I, which I had just studied at school, and this seemed just fine with Jasmine, who would comment on what I was saying by turning to my sister I like your little brother, I like him a lot, he’s different.
* * *
My sister, ready to try anything to make sure I hit it off with her friend, suggested as we were having a drink before dinner that I take Sabrina for a little walk. She gave me a knowing glance, as if this were something we had agreed upon earlier, and as if everything were unfolding exactly as we had planned. I responded with a similar glance, smiling slightly.
* * *
We headed down to the local park and we walked. My throat was painfully tight and dry. My heart was racing as I thought ahead to my sister’s disappointment when she would learn from Sabrina that I hadn’t been able to take any action, to act like a real guy, to flirt with her, and that I just stood there, immobile and inert, as passive—to invoke an expression my sister used and that I borrowed frequently—as a ballsack in a tar pit.
Before I was even able to get a word out, Sabrina spoke up and asked me to explain the reasons why I had wanted to get to know her. But I hadn’t wanted to; it was a lie my sister had told her. I hid my astonishment when she asked the question and managed to offer a few platitudes, that I thought she was beautiful, that she was my type; what courage I found came from the certainty I had that Sabrina would report this conversation down to its tiniest details to the other girls, who might then start to think of me as a tough guy, a real man. She kissed me. She had to bend over slightly so that our lips could meet. The embrace lasted much too long, and I felt myself suffocating, losing my footing. As we were kissing, the effort required not to run off, not to cry out in disgust, became more and more intense. I couldn’t let Sabrina see that I wanted it to be over as quickly as possible, because she could have told my sister.
* * *
We walked back up hand in hand to make the beginning of our relationship official to the other guests. My sister greeted us with satisfaction How’s it going lovebirds? and everyone else applauded. I found this behavior unseemly. I had grown up with and been shaped by these kinds of habits, these ways of behaving, and yet they had already come to seem out of place to me—habits such as those found in my family: walking around the house naked, belching at the dinner table, not washing your hands before a meal. Being attracted to boys transformed my whole relationship to the world, encouraging me to identify with values that were different from my family’s.
It was as if each clap of their hands tightened the chains between me and Sabrina, even though our relationship had barely begun.
* * *
It had been decided (I don’t really remember by whom) that we should see each other every weekend at my sister’s, and she would take us to a club on Saturday nights. At the club, I made a point of walking around with my arm around Sabrina, my latest conquest. I wanted to show the world, and myself, since I was watching everything I was doing and kept by far the closest eye on my own performance, not only that I was attracted to women, but that I was able to attract girls who were much older than I was.
* * *
Jasmine would bring Sabrina over to my sister’s before we left for the club. She lived in a nearby village. As soon as she arrived, Jasmine would start by covering me with compliments. She said I was special, intelligent, that I would get her daughter to continue her education and earn lots of money. Sabrina wanted to become a midwife. She was different from the other girls in the village, most of whom wanted to become hairdressers, medical secretaries, salesclerks, teachers if they were a bit more ambitious, or else be stay-at-home moms.
Sabrina’s wish to study medicine provoked reactions of both amusement and scorn.
Listen to the stories that bimbo Sabrina tells about herself, thinking she’s all special and better than the rest of us. Over time she gradually lowered her sights, just as my sister had done, from wanting to be a surgeon, to a general practitioner, then a nurse, then a nurse’s aide, and then finally a home-care assistant (making sure people took their medicine and wiping old people’s asses, my mother’s job).
Disgust
After a night at the club I would sleep at my parents’ house and Sabrina would spend the night at my sister’s. We would agree to meet up the next morning to go for a walk through the village streets and meet up with my buddies at the bus stop, where they would be drinking before heading off to watch the Sunday soccer match.
After one of these nights at the club, my sister suggested that I sleep over at her house. Jasmine was coming to pick up Sabrina that night because they were going on vacation, so Sabrina couldn’t spend the night, and my sister didn’t want to be alone; she hated that and said it made her afraid. Of course, I agreed to her suggestion. I loved spending the night away from home: I felt ashamed of my parents’ house because of its decrepit facade, an
d I hated my cold, damp room, which leaked on rainy days.
The window shutter had come loose in a violent storm one day and as it was yanked off it had shattered the window. After I told him (a long time after, since I told him the window was broken every day for weeks), my father put a piece of cardboard up to cover the hole left by the broken pane. He made a point of reassuring me Don’t worry, it’s just until I have time to buy a pane of glass, it’s temporary, it won’t be like that forever. But he never fixed it.
The piece of cardboard would quickly get soaked with water. It was always having to be replaced. Yet no matter how attentive I was, how carefully I replaced the cardboard, water would get into my room. Dampness climbed up the walls, covered the cement floor, got into the wooden bed frames.
I slept on the top bunk above my sister, preferring to sleep in the upper bed so that I would be the one who got to climb up the small ladder. The bed would creak as I climbed up, but noises like that were to be expected, they didn’t worry me, we knew they were because of the damp.
One night after I had climbed up as usual—with no indication that something was about to happen, the bed didn’t squeak any more than normal—as I was stretching out, I felt the bed give way beneath my weight. The dampness had slowly caused the slats to deteriorate and, weakened, they finally broke. I landed three feet down, on top of my sister. She was injured by the broken slats. From that day forward my bed, no matter what repairs my father made, frequently collapsed onto my sister’s.
* * *
So I was happy that she invited me to sleep over at her place, in her newly renovated little apartment.
* * *
We went out to the club, just as we’d been doing the past few weekends.
When we got home, my sister announced that she had to go meet a friend. It was at this moment that I understood what was happening, first of all because her story made no sense (why go meet a friend at five in the morning, when you were exhausted and had just gotten home from a club, and all the streetlights in the village were out?), but also because she kept winking at me to let me know that she was lying. She added That way you and Sabrina can both stay here, and, you know, her mom can just pick her up tomorrow, which would save Jasmine from having to take the car out late at night in order to pick up her daughter and take her home; moreover, and more important, the two of us could sleep together in my sister’s bed while she was at her girlfriend’s house. Sabrina made next to no effort to hide the fact that she was in on this plan of my sister’s, and even unpacked a few toiletries from her bag. Everyone knew what was up. I was the only one who had been left in the dark.
Once more I was a prisoner, terrified at the idea of spending the night with Sabrina, but caught in a situation where it was impossible for me to say anything, since any word could have destroyed my image. I knew what she expected from a night with me—given the difference in our ages and the more and more explicit references she had been making to the fact that we weren’t yet having sex.
I winked back at my sister.
She left.
Sabrina and I went to bed—and I can no longer recall how I arranged things in order to speak to her as little as possible, to see as little as possible of her between the moment my sister left and the moment we got into bed. I kissed her with that vague sense of disgust that kissing always made me feel. I turned my back to her and rolled as far away from her as I could, finding myself at the edge of the bed, ready to fall out.
She came over to me to kiss some more. She took my hands and placed them on her breasts, then she slipped hers into my pants. She started playing with my penis, which remained flaccid. I was unable to simulate being aroused. I tried to think of something else so that I could get an erection and so that Sabrina would be reassured, but the harder I concentrated, the more improbable and distant any arousal seemed. She kept on, persevering with that small piece of flesh, as of yet barely surrounded by a light haze of blond pubic hair; she massaged and twisted it in every possible direction. At first I imagined making love to her, Sabrina, even while knowing there was no way such an image would get me hard. Then I imagined men’s bodies pressing up against mine, muscled and hairy bodies colliding with mine, three, even four massive and brutal men. I thought of men holding down my arms so I couldn’t move and then penetrating me with their dicks one by one, covering my mouth with their hands to keep me from making any noise. Men who would have pierced and torn at my body as if it were no more than a fragile piece of paper. I imagined the two boys, the tall redhead and the short one with the hunched back, making me grab their dicks, first with my hands, then with my lips, and finally with my tongue. I dreamed that they kept on spitting in my face, hitting me, and insulting me faggot, fruit as they stuck their dicks in my mouth, not one by one but both together, suffocating me, almost making me vomit.
Nothing did any good. Every time Sabrina touched my skin it reminded me of the truth of what was happening, of her woman’s body and my detestation of it. I pretended to have a sudden and severe asthma attack. I said that I had to go right home to my parents’ house, that I was having an asthma attack, and that it was possible, as my grandmother’s recent death had shown, that it really was possible to die from such an attack.
* * *
The next day I broke up with Sabrina. She wept when I told her, but I remained cold as ice.
A First Attempt at Flight
With Sabrina I had failed, losing the battle between my desire to become a tough guy and the desire of my own body, which was pushing me toward men, which is to say pushing me away from my family, away from the whole village. And yet I didn’t want to give up, so I continued repeating to myself that obsessive phrase, Today I’m gonna be a tough guy. My failure with Sabrina made me redouble my efforts. I took care to make my voice deeper, still deeper. I kept my hands immobilized in my pockets whenever I spoke, so I wouldn’t wave them around. Following the night that had revealed to me more clearly than ever the impossibility of my becoming aroused by a woman’s body, I took a more serious interest in soccer than ever before. I began watching it on television and memorized the names of all the players on the French team. I watched wrestling as well, just like my brothers and my father. I made my hatred of gay people ever more explicit in order to deflect suspicion.
* * *
It must have been toward the end of my last year in middle school. There was another boy, even more effeminate than I was, and people called him Trout Lips. I hated him because he didn’t share in my suffering, he didn’t seem interested in sharing it, he never made any effort to get to know me. Yet mixed with this hatred was a sense of closeness, of finally having someone around me who was like me. I was fascinated by him and on a few occasions I had tried to go up to him (but only when he was alone in the library, because I couldn’t be seen talking to him). He kept his distance.
One day he was being loud in a hallway where a large group of students had gathered, and I called out Shut the fuck up faggot. All the students laughed. Everyone looked at him and looked at me. I had managed, for the moment of an insult shouted in a hallway, to transfer my shame to him.
* * *
As the months went by, following the two boys’ departure for high school, their disappearance from the middle school, and thanks to all the energy I put into my efforts to be a tough guy, insults grew rare, both at school and at home. But the rarer they became, the more violent they felt, the more difficult each one was to endure, leaving me feeling melancholy for days, or even weeks. Although they were less frequent, the insults continued for a long time despite my furious effort to be more masculine, because they were based not on how I appeared then but on the way I had been perceived for years and that was well established in people’s minds.
* * *
Running away was my only chance, it was all I had left.
I’ve wanted to show here that my flight was not the result of
a project that I had had in mind for a long time, as if I were some kind of a creature struggling for freedom, as if I had always wanted to escape, but rather that escape was the only option left to me after a series of defeated attempts to change who I was. Flight was at first something I experienced as a kind of failure, something to which I resigned myself. Back then, to succeed would have meant being like everyone else. But I had tried everything.
* * *
I didn’t know how to go about it. I had to learn. People talk as if what makes it hard to run away is that you feel homesick, or that you are attached to people or to other aspects of your life, but no one mentions that it can be hard to do because you simply don’t know how to do it. At first my attempts were clumsy and ridiculous.
* * *
My parents were grilling some meat in the backyard shortly after I had broken up with Laura. I headed off to my room, coming up with a plan to leave. My father had just said something cruel to me because I had refused to look after the barbecue coals, for fear of burning myself You really are a pussy. In my room I gathered up some belongings and threw them into a backpack. I had decided to run away forever. I was never coming back.
My little brother came in. He was young, maybe five years old, probably less. He asked me what I was doing and I told him I was leaving for good, hoping that he would go, as he usually did, and tell my parents what I had said. But he didn’t budge. He just stood there, without moving. So I tried again, repeating myself, varying my intonation in an effort to make him understand that I was doing something that was forbidden. I’m leaving. I’m going away forever. He didn’t understand. I tried yet again. Still no reaction. In the end, I made him an offer I knew he wouldn’t refuse. I offered to give him some candy (some treats was what I said) if he would tell on me. He left the room. I heard his footsteps fading away, and his voice crying Daddy, Daddy. I left the house at a run, slamming the door behind me so that my father would hear and understand that my little brother was telling the truth.
The End of Eddy Page 12
