A Place I've Never Been (10 page)

I met Laurent the second night I went to that disco. A fight had broken out somewhere across the dance floor, and the ripples of movement threw us literally into each other's arms. Laughing, we just stayed there. It was a glorious, easy meeting. Laurent was twenty, a literature student at Nanterre, son of an Italian mother and a French father, and the birthdate carved on the gold chain around his neck was a lie. “Why?” I asked him that night, while we lay naked and sweating in my big bed, in the heat of the night, and I, at least, in the heat of love. He explained that his mother was already two months pregnant when she married his father, and that they had had to lie to the Italian relatives about the birthday to avoid a
scandale
. He didn't mind because it meant he had two birthdays a year—one in France and another, two months later, in Italy. Except that he rarely saw the
Italian relatives. His father, whom he hated, who drove a silver “Bay-Em-Double-vay,” had left his mother for her cousin. His mother had not been the same since; he had had to move home with her, to take care of her. He also had to babysit his own
petite cousine
, Marianne, every morning at nine, and therefore couldn't spend the night. (This seemed to be the ultimate, consequential point of the saga.) I said that was fine. I was ready to agree to just about anything.

From the moment I let Laurent out the door, in the early hours of the morning, I was jubilant with love for him—for his long, dark eyelashes, his slightly contemptuous mouth, his odd insistence on wearing only white socks. (
“Non, ce n'est pas les Français,”
he explained when I asked him,
“c'est seulement moi.”
) Like most Europeans, he was uncircumcised—the only uncircumcised lover I have ever had. That small flap of skin, long removed from me in some deeply historical
bris
, was the embodiment of our difference. It fascinated me, and my fascination chafed poor Laurent, who couldn't understand what the big deal was—I, the American, was the one who was altered,
pas normal
, after all. I pulled at it, played with it, curious and delighted, until he made me stop.
“Tu me fais mal,”
he protested. Craig's eyes would have lit up.

But Craig was nowhere near, and I was in a limited way happy. My love affair with Laurent was simple and regular, a series of afternoons, one blending into the other. Around eleven-thirty in the morning, after finishing with
la petite Marianne
, he would arrive at my apartment, and I would feed him lunch. Then we would make love, perfunctorily, for an hour or so. Then we would take a walk to his car, and he would drive me for a while through the suburbs of Paris—Choisy-le-Roi, Vincennes, Clamart, Pantin. He classified these suburbs as either
pas beau, beau
, or
joli
, adjectives which
seemed to have more to do with class than aesthetics. I was inept at understanding the distinctions.
“Neuilly est joli, n'est-ce pas?”
I'd ask him, as we drove down tree-lined avenues, past big, imposing houses.
“Non, c'est beau.” “Clamart, c'est aussi beau, n'estce pas?” “Non, c'est joli.”
Eventually I'd give up, and Laurent, frustrated by my intransigence, would drop me off at my apartment before going off to his job. All night he sold Walkmans in a Parisian “drugstore,” a giant, futuristic shopping mall of red Formica and chrome that featured at its heart a seventy-foot wall on which sixty-four televisions played rock videos simultaneously. This huge and garish place is the sentimental center of my memories of that summer, for I used to go there often in the evenings to visit Laurent, unable to resist his company, though I feared he might grow tired of me. Then I'd stand under the light of the videos, pretending not to know him, while he explained to someone the advantages of Aiwa over Sony. When he wasn't with a customer, we'd talk, or (more aptly) he'd play with one of the little credit-card-sized calculators he had in his display case, and I'd stare at him. But I couldn't stay at the drugstore forever. After twenty minutes or so, fearful of rousing the suspicions of the ash-blond woman who was in charge of Laurent, I'd bid him adieu, and he'd wink at me before returning to his work. That wink meant everything to me. It meant my life. Powered by it, I might walk for miles afterwards down the Rue de Rivoli, along the Seine, across the brilliant bridges to the Latin Quarter, filled in summer with joyous young Americans singing in the streets, eating take-out couscous, smiling and laughing just to be there. Often friends from college were among their number. We'd wave across the street as casually as if we were seeing each other in New York. It astonishes me to think how many miles I must have charted that summer, zigzagging aimlessly across the
Parisian night for love of Laurent. It was almost enough, walking like that, wanting him. That wink was almost enough.

Laurent had been to America only once, when he was fourteen. His parents had sent him to New York, where he was to meet an aunt who lived in Washington, but the aunt's son was in a car accident and she couldn't come. For a week he had stayed alone at the Waldorf-Astoria, a little French boy who didn't speak English, instructed by his mother to avoid at all costs the subways, the streets, the world. These days, when the meanderings of my life take me to the giant, glittering lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria, I sometimes think I see him, in his French schoolboy's suit, hiding behind a giant ficus, or cautiously fingering magazines in the gift shop. I imagine him running down the halls, or pacing the confines of his four-walled room, or sitting on the big bed, entranced by the babbling cartoon creatures inhabiting his television.

Craig is by nature a suburbanite. He grew up in Westport, Connecticut, where his father is a prominent dermatologist and the first Jew ever admitted to the country club. One evening in college he embarrassed me by getting into a long argument with a girl from Mount Kisco on the ridiculous subject of which was a better suburb—Mount Kisco or Westport. On the way back to our dorm, I berated him. “Jesus, Craig,” I said, “I can't believe you'd stoop so low as to argue about a subject as ridiculous as who grew up in a better suburb.” But he didn't care. “She's crazy,” he insisted. “Mount Kisco doesn't compare to Westport. I'm not arguing about it because I have a stake in it, only because it's true. Westport is much nicer—the houses are much farther apart, and the people, they're just classier, better-looking and with higher-up positions. Mount Kisco's where
you go on the way to Westport.”

Suburbs mattered to Craig. He apparently saw no implicit contradiction in their mattering to him at the same moment that he was, say, being given a blowjob by a law student in one of the infamous library men's rooms, or offering me a list of call numbers that would point to the library's hidden stashes of pornography. But Craig has never been given much to introspection. He is blessed by a remarkable clarity of vision, which allows him to see through the levels, the aboves and belows, that plague the rest of us. There are no contradictions in his world; nothing is profane, but then again, nothing is sacred.

He was in Europe, that same summer as me, on his parents' money, on a last big bash before law school. In Paris I'd get postcards from Ibiza, from Barcelona, where he'd had his passport stolen, from Florence (this one showing a close-up of the
David
's genitalia), and he would talk about Nils, Rutger, and especially Nino, whom he'd met in the men's room at the train station. I enjoyed his postcards. They provided a much-needed connection with my old life, my pre-Paris self. Things were not going well with Laurent, who, it had taken me only a few days to learn, lived in a state of continuous and deep depression. He would arrive afternoons in my apartment, silent, and land in the armchair, where for hours, his eyes lowered, he would read the Tintin books I kept around to improve my French, and sometimes watch
Les Quatres Fantastiques
on television. The candy-colored cartoon adventures of Tintin, androgynous boy reporter, kept him busy until it was nearly time for him to go to work, at which point I would nudge my way into his lap and say, “
Qu'est-ce que c'est?
I want to help you.” But all he would tell me was that he was depressed because he was losing his car. His aunt, who owned it, was taking
it back, and now he would have to ride the train in to work every day, and take a cab back late at night. I suggested he might stay with me, and he shook his head. “
La petite Marianne
,” he reminded me. Of course.
La petite Marianne
.

I think now that in continually begging Laurent to tell me what was worrying him, it was I who pushed him away. My assumption that “talking about it” or “opening up” was the only way for him to feel better was very American, and probably misguided. And of course, my motives were not, as I imagined, entirely unselfish, for at the heart of all that badgering was a deep fear that he did not love me, and that that was why he held back from me, refused to tell me what was wrong. Now I look back on Laurent's life in those days, and I see he probably wasn't hiding things from me. He probably really was depressed because he was losing his car, though that was only the tip of the iceberg. His fragile mother depended on him totally, his father was nowhere to be seen, his future, as a literature student at a second-rate university, was not rosy. It is quite possible, I see now, that in his sadness it was comforting for him simply to be in my presence, my warm apartment on a late afternoon, reading Tintin books, drinking tea. But I wasn't content to offer him just that. I wanted him to notice me. I wanted to be his cure. I wish I'd known that then; I might not have driven him off.

In any case, I was very happy when Craig finally came to visit, that summer, because it meant I would have something to occupy my time other than my worrisome thoughts about Laurent. It was late July by then, and the prospect of August, when Paris empties itself of its native population and becomes a desiccated land of closed shops, wandered by aimless foreigners, was almost sufficiently unappealing to send me back to business school. In ten days Laurent would quit his job and take off to the seaside with his mother.
There was no mention of my possibly going with him, though I would have gladly done so, and could imagine with relish staying by myself in a little pension near the big, elegant hotel where Laurent and his mother went every year, going for tea and sitting near them on the outdoor promenade, watching them, waiting for Laurent's wink. There would be secret rendezvous, long walks on beaches—but it was all a dream. Laurent would have been furious if I'd shown up.

And so I was happily looking forward to Craig, to the stories I knew he'd tell, the sexual exploits he'd so willingly narrate, and in such great detail. I met his train at the Gare de Lyon. There he was, on schedule, in alpine shorts and Harvard T-shirt, the big ubiquitous backpack stooping him over. We embraced, and took the métro back to my apartment. He looked tired, thin. He had lost his traveler's checks in Milan, he explained, had had his wallet stolen in Venice. He had also wasted a lot of money renting double rooms at exorbitant prices just for himself, and was worried that his parents wouldn't agree to wire him more. I tried to sympathize, but it seemed somehow fitting that he should now be suffering the consequences of his irresponsibility. Stingy with anyone else, he was rapacious in spending his parents' money on himself—a trait I have observed often in firstborn sons of Jewish families. (I myself was the second-born son, and live frugally to this day.)

We went out, that night, for dinner, to a Vietnamese restaurant I liked and ate in often, and Craig started to tell me about his trip—the beaches at Ibiza, the bars in Amsterdam. “It's been fun,” he concluded. “Everything's been pretty good, except this one bad thing happened.”

“What was that?” I asked.

“Well, I was raped in Madrid.”

Delicately he wrapped a spring roll in a sprig of mint and popped it in his mouth.

“What?” I said.

“Just what I told you. I was raped in Madrid.”

I put down my fork. “Craig,” I said. “Come on. What do you mean, ‘raped'?”

“Forcibly taken. Fucked against my will. What better definition do you want?”

He took a swig of water.

I sat back in my chair. As often happens to me when I'm struck speechless, a lewd, involuntary smile pulled apart my lips. I tried to suppress it.

“How did it happen?” I asked, as casually as I could.

“The usual way,” he said, and laughed. “I was walking down the street, cruising a little bit, and this guy said ‘
Hola
' to me. He was cute, young. I said ‘
Hola
' back. Well, to make a long story short, we ended up back at his apartment. He spoke a little English, and he explained to me that he was in a big hurry. Then there was a knock on the door and this other guy walked in. They talked very quickly in Spanish, and he told me to get undressed. I didn't much want to do it anymore, but I took off my clothes—”

“Why?” I interrupted.

He shrugged. “Once you've gone that far it's hard not to,” he said. “Anyway, as far as I could gather, he and his friend were arguing over whether the friend would have sex with us or just watch. After a while I stopped trying to understand and just sat down on the bed. It didn't take me too long to figure out the guy was married and that was why he was in such a hurry. I could tell from all the woman's things around the apartment.

“Anyway, they finally decided the friend would just watch. The first guy—the one
who said
‘Hola'
—saw I was naked and he took off his clothes and then—Well, I tried to explain I only did certain things, ‘safe sex' and all, but he didn't listen to me. He just jumped me. He was very strong, and the worst thing was, he really smelled. He hadn't washed for a long time, he was really disgusting.” Craig leaned closer to me. “You know,” he said, “that I don't get fucked. I don't like it and I won't do it. And I kept trying to tell him this, but he just wouldn't listen to me. I don't think he meant to force me. I think he just thought I was playing games and that I was really enjoying it. I mean, he didn't hit me or anything, though he held my wrists behind my back for a while. But then he stopped.”