This is when I started to have a life.

After my parents separated for good, I found a way to escape the second-class hotel where my family had ended. By family, I mean what was left of it: little sister, mother, and me.

I would sneak out by running down the blue corridor, without anyone from the Reception noticing. They were always busy talking. I didn’t understand what they had so much to talk about around the table.

Or if they noticed, little sister and mother, that I was about to escape, that I was already out, they’d sigh deeply and continue their conversation. No one dared raise an argument. Mother had lost control of my comings and goings since the divorce. She expected me when I was hungry, which could take a couple of days, since I was very resourceful at fourteen.

Of course, I went to school, but after school and during weekends, I was free. So, I was out. After crossing the blue veranda on my light feet, I would open the heavy blue door of our two-story building that looked like nothing from outside, just a wall of bricks repainted in blue, and I’d be out for the rest of the day.

I always took the rue Laperouse toward the sea. It was a long, unattractive, and narrow street that gave out onto the nondescript Boulevard de la République and the train station, on one side, and on the other, the high and dark brick walls of a formidable but disaffected prison. It had been replaced by an institute for some kind of social rehabilitation. Many of our clients came from there, but we never inquired what kind of rehabilitation. Most were poor, and out of hospitals that could no longer care for them. Nor could they care for themselves. To my mind, worse than losers: end-of-the-rope kind of people.

The ministry of social affairs paid my mother for the nights spent in our hotel. And when the ministry no longer paid, we had to call the police and throw them out, which was never easy and often degenerated into fights. I had to defend my mother, close and lock the door of the Réception, keep the client vociferating at her in the veranda, and call the police.

Fast I walked like there was no tomorrow, came out of rue Laperouse with a big smile on my face, passed the dirty walls and the parking spaces in our public square. Beyond the renovated prison, beyond the opulent, spacious, modern center of the city, there was the ocean, free to look at and free to dream about, always ready to lap the sand at my feet. I could go to the beach and see what the weather was like over the sea beyond our little bit of Earth. I could always imagine myself on a long journey, like some gentleman traveler inspecting the southern seas from the deck of his sailing Brick. Like some Captain Ahab searching for Moby Dick at the far ends of this world… Only, not about to lose a limb and then my young life over it.

Anyway, this is when I started to have a life.

This Saturday afternoon, I was fixing my hair in the mirror: bulging, sticking out in front like a toupee, and rigid to keep it in place, a complicated affair.

Ultimate touch of style at the moment, I had a white shirt showing a thin blue line of stitches around the corners, bought in Paris on the Grands Boulevards. I wore a tweed jacket cut like for a rich man… I went to Paris every other month to stay overnight with my father and his girlfriend. Usually, I succeeded in having him contribute to my passion for the look. He small-scale produced women’s clothing right out of an apartment two steps from Le Sentier, the fashion district, it was hard for him to refuse. He had friends on the Grands Boulevards who would give us a good price.

My pants were elephantine at the feet, tapered and adjusted tight to my thin body from the buttocks to the waist and up. They covered half my belly and were kept in place by a thin crocodile belt with a simple but super-shiny buckle. And there even was, if it was still the craze that Saturday, a pair of discreet suspenders that added to my unique outfit.

If someone had remarked, I would have agreed that I was way overdressed, and I’d by no means change a thing about it. I looked like… well, completely out of place.

But I had a good reason to dress up. I was going out that evening, far out in Normandy, with two guys somewhat older and not really my friends. Just guys to go out with. I was going to dance furiously, all night long and with all kinds of women. We were going to a renowned nightclub high on the plain, built among fields of corn and rows of apple trees, to show them, these provincial people, aspiring dandies, how to dance the latest steps which I’d learned in Paris. The disco was at about seventy kilometers from the city on the coast where I lived…

I’d been there just the week before, to that same disco, called (nobody cared to know why) L’Archiduc, and it had been some kind of adventure, let me tell you. First there was the hitchhiking, which could take time and was funny in a way hard to explain: three teens dressed in shiny, patent-leather shoes, gilded chains, stylish hairdos, toupées and suspenders… Jacques wore a gabardine like American detectives in gangster movies, and he already showed mature hairs through his open shirt.

We were not crossovers, not transsexuals — that was clear. We were effeminate if you will, but we were men.

Young men, very young in my case.

Claude was a hairdresser just out of a vocational school, where he had learned to cut and do all kinds of things to your hair. His, naturally reddish, was whitened in parts at the tips. Nothing exaggerated. He was a white man, a Normand, a local, his face full of freckles. Of the three, he was probably the most effeminate in his gestures — moved his hands demonstratively. Though he was not going after men. It was difficult to say what he was after. Except that when he opened his mouth to use local swearwords, you knew he was a young man from around here, one of the villages around town. If he could get into a woman, I mean, as soon as the girl got pregnant, he’d have to have a car parked in front of the hair parlor and an apartment upstairs. He would become just like any Normand, if he got into a woman.

Jacques also was from around here, from a small village outside town. Hitchhiking left us one day right at his doorstep, I saw the hovel where he lived and was appalled by the poverty. My mother didn’t make a fortune in the hotel, but I was a city boy. I had my own room there, always neat and clean, my sink and bidet, just to myself. I couldn’t sleep in the same room with my sister after the divorce, was given room number 9 at the Hotel Laperouse, I could sneak out incognito, while Jacques had to live among numerous siblings and parents, men and women, old and young, who spied on him, he said. They were many. I couldn’t count them in the hovel. I wasn’t even sure the floor was not pressed earth or dried mud mixed with garbage.

It was all the more surprising to see Jacques on a Saturday evening. He was a proud young man, well dressed, strong and muscular, and quite handsome with his dark hair and green eyes. He’d save the group when we bumped into roughnecks and they treated us with words much worse than faggots and dick-suckers (all that in corresponding French). Hands flew up to our faces when we came out of cafés and clubs; shoes landed up a centimeter away from our chins as they took time to adjust their kicks. For them to stop, Jacques had to stand in front, show that he could dodge the kicks and kick ass if need be, and speak to these guys. He knew how to.

To get to the right ramp of highway, we had to cross the entire city looking like attractions. I’d pick up Claude first in front of his salon. He’d wait for me standing on the pavement, excessively well dressed, and making poses and exaggerated mimics… saying hello to this person and that while raising the little finger. He cut everyone’s hair in the neighborhood and knew them by their first names.

Claude was tall and had an elegance about him, the way he stood, I remember him with a cane or an umbrella, Fred Astair or Sinatra-like, pirouetting over the silver pommel, held at arm’s length. He’d rehearse a new step for the night. I also remember that he looked better when he didn’t say anything.

Then we’d pick up Jacques, standing lonely on the vast esplanade in front of the township and the Maison de la Culture.

It was a grand affair, the center of our mid-size town. Our town was Modern and French at the same time, “post-war French” I’d read somewhere, nicely proportioned, rebuilt entirely new after WWII in reinforced concrete, but well done, not too high and bleak. Large pastel-color square buildings just four stories high, whose apartments looked as spacious, well-organized as the gardens below. I would have loved to live in one endless apartment with wrap-around balcony overlooking the large avenue, and at one end, between two towers, Porte Oceane opening on the vast blue of sea and sky.

As the flamboyant sun was setting on its muffled colors, pink, pale blue, light orange, I found the grid of buildings fronting the ocean particularly pleasant.

We were three walking abreast. Around us, cars were like horses at dusk, in a hurry to go back to the stalls and eat hay. People were going back home. They certainly had no intention of bringing us three clowns a few miles closer to our destination.

Dusk is always sad.

We said nothing and just walked abreast on the comfortable promenade. Three losers, let’s face it. Granted, I knew other kinds of people. I knew low class dandies, I knew or, rather, knew about rich kids who didn’t have to make the effort to look like dandies. Before being thrown out and having to retreat to a technical college, I’d gone to the best high school in town. We’d studied Latin and even Greek, briefly. Too good in math for me. They were not smarter, though. And not happier. Far from it.

But in a different part of town, closer to the industrial zone, it was more exciting and fun. It looked rough and like it could be dangerous, but I never witnessed violence. Blacks from Africa, Haiti, Martinique, Guadeloupe spoke about their sexual prowess like the ones before had talked about the weather. What I learned is that different people are fine and when you sit close to them — if you succeed in sitting close to them — there is not much difference. The difference starts with where you belong, what kind of people. If you belong.

I’d gone also to Communist Youth meetings, far from Porte Oceane, set in warehouses, to make them look more working-class. What was said didn’t impress me. They didn’t even quote Marx or Lenin properly. Nothing was discussed.

By contrast, I’d visited the smoky backrooms of trendy cafés where rich kids played at being Trotskyites and Maoists, and joined forces against the Anarchists. That was a lot of fun. Everybody shouted at the same time. And there was always a lot to drink and eat because no one should be left out of the community. And also no one back then asked for your age, even when they could read it on your face. Not cool. Police-state. The whole bunch would have moved to the next café after making a racket. All that happened in the glamorous section of town we were crossing just now. It could not happen, of course, in the dingy part where I came from.

The beach was curved like the gigantic shell of a clam, part sand and part pebbles, and it had a deep tide, the sea going far away and leaving behind a kilometer of glistening sand. It was dominated at one end by a majestic cliff, at the foot of which but mostly on top of which lived the bourgeoisie.

For twenty minutes we’d walked on the promenade alongside the beach and the ocean while the bright red sun sank over the cliff. And then, at the foot of the cliff, we took a bus to the top of the cliff. That’s where the ramp to the high road started.

The spot was always windy and unpleasant. After an hour waiting in the drizzle, I was in a terrible mood. Jacques was more patient, more experienced. But Claude’s dance steps and his antics didn’t make us laugh anymore… and to be exposed and like radiographed naked under the glare of sweeping lights for hours! I was ashamed, personally. I could have sneaked into a hole behind the bushes, disappeared into a camouflage, become the invisible man… only to come out and turn visible again when a car stopped, open the door and sneak in.

Usually, someone finally gave us a hitch out of curiosity, to look at us up close, a colorful bunch. Except for Claude, who spoke like airheads do, we were not stupid. Jacques had been out of school for some time, but he read some, he watched movies of the spectacular kind, action movies. He went to Paris regularly. I didn’t know how he went or where he went; he didn’t have a car. At seventeen, Jacques was a curious, inquisitive guy. Point being that the two of us could animate a brisk conversation with the driver on any topic from politics to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, to American soul music, to French history from the Merovingiens to Charles de Gaulle. Even venture into a bit of recent science learned through the beautiful images of the universe you see in magazines. And all that would drive us closer to where we wanted to be. Lonely drivers are thankful for an interesting talk.

But these were locals who went from one village to the next, ten kilometers up the road.

To get to L’Archiduc would take us the evening. So much the better, it was not cool to get to a disco earlier than the crowd, and seem too eager.

How we would return home at three in the morning, we’d see. It would depend on the connections we’d make at L’Archiduc. Jacques had a way of speaking to people, and Claude would have a following of women (and perhaps men) by then.

Where would we eat dinner? Would we eat? Taking care of the clothes, paying entry and alcohol cost enough.

I had a way of getting a little money going at the hotel, but just a little. Sometimes my mother was busy cleaning or cooking and she let me register the clients. I had access to change in the cash register consisting of a shoebox and a notebook tucked into a drawer. Wouldn’t touch the banknotes, too conspicuous, only the monnaie jiggling now against my leg.

One thing was sure: it didn’t torment me that I robbed my mother. Since I was twelve, even before the divorce, when my father was still around and things were better for us, I’d become aware of activities that went unregistered at the Réception, and I’d lost complete faith in the family business.

I loved to go out. But hitchhiking, waiting in front of cars and being scrutinized by people in there that you can’t see. This was before the time when asking for a hitch or asking for help or anything on the road or in the streets had become synonymous with being a bum and a low-life, if not a danger to society. We were not bums. To hitchhike was okay back then and it worked, especially if you were a student or army recruit. We were neither.

That part depressed me to no end. I bitterly regretted not being in my little room, sprawled on the big two-persons bed reading a thick, intelligent book. Learning something. Reading cost nothing, nobody looks over your shoulder when you read; or in your face, for that matter. Nobody elbows you; nobody even knows what you read when you read and if you make the effort to understand.

I don’t remember the rest of the trip to L’Archiduc, except that I saw lush green fields pass by rapidly, and cows standing at a standstill in the darkness, their humid black nuzzles up, placidly looking at us pass in a flash of light and smoke. What was all the fuss about, they seemed to ask?

Old chaumières, cottages, long wooden-fences, apple trees, high bushes, wet and droopy beds of flowers. Once over the cliff, it’s a beautiful country, even in the dark.

We were in front of L’Archiduc, which didn’t look like anything from outside: repainted country warehouse immersed in wet fields of corn and surrounded by pear trees. Patchwork of planks and ready-made graffiti. But the rugged stone of the rustic fountain spurting more water under the rain looked authentically ancient. It may have been at the center of a farm or even a castle centuries ago.

Moving between Jacques and Claude, I didn’t look at the bouncer and he didn’t ask my age. You paid, were stamped on the wrist with a phosphorescent mark, and passed a sort of turnstile. Everything was painted red and black, which probably made it easier to clean the next morning. There was some attempt at kitsch. I didn’t know the word then, but that’s what I thought, looking at the sunken sofas from another age and the paintings hanging in pretentious frames, freshly gilded yet chipped to make believe they had been around for centuries…

I liked this phony décor. That’s why it was called L’Archiduc: because it pretended to be the home of an obscure aristocrat from around here who had died generations ago. Actually, what was pleasant about the place was that it didn’t even pretend to look aristocratic. The walls were half cardboard, sheet rock had been hastily painted in red and black, which bled sloppily into each other. And, anyway, the illusion of grandeur would not have lasted beyond the moment you met the regulars: local bruisers normally in leather and today in their Sunday clothes, stray dogs, lost souls, a couple of oldies, some idiots, and yet, in the mix, one could spot a sprinkle of individuals of means, Parisians condescending to partake of our provincial pleasures. Half of the clientèle were — if I were to use my Marxist vocabulary — working class and petite bourgeoisie young men and women pretending to upper-class consumption one evening a week; and the other half, have-beens years older than the three of us; grown men already too old for this game — men who should have been at home with their woman and their last born, instead of pining for fifteen year olds girls.

Lots of women. I can’t begin to describe them — most young, too young for the place (my age, some even younger!), and some real women, mature, matron-like. Maybe the youngest came with their mothers?

Truth is, as soon as we stepped in L’Archiduc that night, I felt that we three had an opening. That’s what we came for — to impress people — starting with the way we dressed, did our hair and danced. Jacques being handsome, Claude funny, and me still cute and innocent-looking, our style brought women around and the onlookers.

Right away, we three revolved at the center of a circle occupying a corner of the dancing floor. I could pirouette and do my Parisian steps while Claude and Jacques handled the women. I’d stopped practicing the piano in the midst of our problems at the hotel, but kept listening to all kinds of music, had an LP collection of blues and avant-jazz in room 9 quite extraordinary for a Frenchman of little means (I don’t need to tell you how I got these LP’s). I loved Motown and American Funk, particularly James Brown, who was all the rage just then. But I also could not forget that, the place being low class below the shiny surface, showing off ran the risk of a brutal backlash. If we impressed them too much, they’d wait for us at the exit door. That’s what happened to pretentious kids.

Jacques would have to make friends fast. He understood that. Heading toward the sunken sofas in the back alcoves, he disappeared into the crowd.

Claude was dancing non-stop, inviting girls, and buying them drinks. That’s where all his tip money went. In no time, the whole disco was aware of Claude. He knew how to make them leap. As for me, I may lose myself in the frenzy of the movement, and love it when I believe they admire my sophistication, but not for long. I am too self-conscious. I can’t help noticing that some sneer and even laugh at my youthfulness. Others would gladly punch my face in front of the girls. So, the first thing that I feel in a disco exploding with people and music is loneliness.

Since the decibels forbid to shout anything more elaborate than “pass me a drink” or “dance with me”… soon I don’t know what to do with myself.

Between dances, Claude now talks to guys on the sideline, aspiring boyfriends who want to assert their rights. But I don’t see acrimony between them. Claude is always smiling, even more so after a couple of screwdrivers. It comes naturally to him. He’s a friendly guy, down to earth. Has it easy detailing improvements to their hairdos. Amazing how interested people are about you when you speak about their hairdo.

Left alone, I wondered why I was there. I wished some incomprehensible device could sweep me off of my feet and transport me to my bed like in the comics, instantly. And the sidelong glance of the bartender cleaning in front of me while I perched uncomfortably on the high stool didn’t help. I showed my fluorescent mark and ordered a screwdriver, free, and then another, which I paid, adding a generous tip. Years away from 21, and still, nobody asked back then as long as you paid.

That’s when the evening swung into something different. A few stools away, sitting where the bar made an elbow, I noticed that a group of guys and girls had been looking in my direction and laughing. Although in the noise the last thing you wanted to do was whisper, they covered their mouths and whispered to themselves when I looked at them. As though they sat in a bubble of silence they should respect. It didn’t last and I didn’t make anything of it. I was hoping Jacques and Claude would come back and the three of us would dance again at the center of attraction.

Out of the crowd a girl, maybe sixteen, seventeen — her face had no age, but her body was young — asked me to dance and resolutely took my hand. Just then Sex Machine was on and it was hard to refuse. In fact, let’s be honest, I was very grateful that she had noticed me, although I didn’t feel in the least attracted to her. She was my height, with a strong frame, tiny breasts, and a big ass. And her face was not tender, not young-looking. It showed hardship… I was not sure what she wanted with me.

Anyway, we danced and she was graceful on the dance floor. Her toughness worked well with James Brown. She rubbed that big ass of hers against me as we grinded to the funky tune, and I must say that I felt ready for anything as long as she told me what to do, where, and didn’t look straight at me with this face that couldn’t smile.

As we left the dance floor hand in hand, I was afraid that some has-been or would-be boyfriend would materialize out of the crowd and find pretext for a quarrel. They loved to do that, rednecks and frustrated lumpen proletariat hopefuls. But nobody claimed Jeannette, apparently.

She took me straight to the alcoves and I didn’t resist. There we made out. On the sofa it helped that it was dark. We could touch, she let my hand go inside her pants, and I liked what hairy thing my fingers got into. My experience with women was rather limited. In basements, in the courtyard at school, bedrooms during parties… I had touched the pubic hair of a few girls, and found a way to sneak a finger in. But I had not yet had what you call sex.

This could be remedied by Jeannette, who made no bones about keeping me hard as a mule. Yet she didn’t move, and I didn’t know how to introduce the idea that we could go somewhere more intimate… upstairs? It was known that L’Archiduc rented rooms by the hour right under the roof of the renovated warehouse, and I was curious to see that side of the disco, even independently of Jeannette.

When she finally stood up and told me we could go somewhere more… adequate, she mumbled and I followed, but we didn’t go in the direction of the rooms upstairs — we sneaked outside by some back door. I really didn’t like the idea because outside meant the cold and the rain… without mentioning the car lights in the darkness.

We were in the cornfield, or rather next to the cornfield. In the back of the warehouse. The rain had stopped, actually, but everything was wet, grass, stems, the heads of corn higher than us. What added to my confusion is that she insisted to stay in the open, right under the exterior lights of L’Archiduc, in order not to get her nice pants wet. She opened my fly and got it out like that, my back against the fire exit door and in view of an opaque and dirty window protected by metal bars.

It was impossible to tell if someone was not looking at us through the chinks in the wood, between planks, or standing behind the opaque window.

Suddenly it felt edgy. I was very uncomfortable…

Truth be told, I had completely lost my sexual appetite the moment we went outside. It was the cold and the wet. It was the silence of nature, the pitch-black sky, the piquant air…It was her rudeness and her big ass. And the worst, of course, was that we were exposed. Anybody could crack open the exit door and get a good peek at us, surprise us. Detail me, my thing outside half-limp…

She went on her knees, crouched and sucked and put on it all the saliva she could muster. It didn’t help… I looked at her, her handful of fuzzy red hair that I should have grabbed and handled like a man, strongly, to make her do what I wanted… I thought about tapping her gently on the shoulder, to say something tender, or just appropriate, like “Please, let’s go back inside, let’s do it inside, baby, I’m cold…”

But I couldn’t find, not only the tender feeling in me for her — I had no feeling for her — but the chutzpah, the balls to tell her anything. I stood there, stupid and hopeless, my thing soft in her mouth, my balls out in the cold, my whole body timid and retracted under her rough touch and the glare of the lights.

At the end, she went kind of frustrated and angry, made a grimace, sighed heavily, like, well, if you can’t do it, why do I bother? She was not saying anything, but… She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and spat in it, though there was nothing to spit.

And then I saw someone at the door…. There were eyes observing us, dark silhouettes obscured the opaque window.

She rapidly readjusted her corsage and I zipped my fly and followed her inside the disco by the same back door, discreet and different from the exit door. But I was petrified, convinced they would jump on me inside the door and leave me bleeding on the gravel, like I’d seen a guy or two end up the other Saturday, white shirts stained by nosebleed, mucus on their tweed jacket… The knees of pressed pants caked with mud. Guys older and stronger than me. Back then, I’d been cozy inside the disco, protected by the crowd of those who can see without being seen.

While Jeannette opened the back door, I thought about running outside, gathered my strength — but where? Where to? I had no car, no access to any vehicle… Walk through the cornfield, or rather next to it. Follow the border until there is a village. Years as a scout had taught me that constant path goes somewhere. But at midnight, nothing is opened in a village.

I didn’t run, instinctively rounded the shoulders and prepared for the worst as I went through the door after Jeannette, who didn’t look back at me once and disappeared into the crowd. Better not follow her, forget this incident.

But they didn’t let me forget. As soon as I was on the dance floor, again there was a group of guys and girls looking at me exactly like they had done at the bar, but much worse — whispering, covering their mouths ostensibly, laughing at whatever step I made, mocking, mimicking me in an outrageous way, no doubt for my inability to perform outside…

They seem to be aware. They looked at me like they knew.

I retreated toward the bar and the group followed me there, sitting again where the bar made an elbow. Was it exactly the same group of individuals as before the, how to call it, outing? I couldn’t tell. Jeannette was not among them.

Just then someone leaned over me to order a drink from the bartender, and while waiting for it, the man said in his teeth, without looking at me: “So, you can’t do it to a woman, hey? You can’t even have a woman do it to you… You’re not the first, notice. Long line before you. Maybe, you prefer with men? You’d like to suck my dick or me to suck yours? Whatever you prefer.”

I couldn’t believe my ears, that is, I heard what he said, but I couldn’t believe these words were said so matter of fact. They came from a mature man, fortyish, who didn’t look in my direction, didn’t express any urge or even any curiosity or interest for me. Seemed to be following a routine, almost an obligation.

He was not aggressive, didn’t interpose his face when I backed off and made as though a friend was looking for me, and jumped off the stool to leave. Okay then, didn’t feel humiliated in the least. He had this fatigued gesture, as though the outcome didn’t matter one way or the other. I should forget, he was just offering, you know, no hurt feelings.

I wished Jacques would come back from the sofas and the alcoves. What was he doing? Come to think of it, I’d not seen him reclining on a sofa with his company when I was there with Jeannette. Unless there was a level, a floor full of sofas and alcoves I was not privy to, some other dimension deeper inside the disco. And then, I had the crazy suspicion: what if Jacques was also part of the scheme — and Claude? Had they not pulled the rug from under my feet the moment we were at L’Archiduc?

Was I drunk? I was starting to see that Claude smiled in my direction when his head popped out of the crowd. He looked for sure embarrassed when he came back for a break among us, lonely men hanging at the bar. Claude found a way not to look and not to speak to me. He ordered a drink and spoke to his dance partner in an undertone, leaning on the bar to speak in her ear, pressing his body on her and kissing her outrageously.

The girl made an effort not to look in my direction either, though she would glance at me whenever I looked down at my drink.

It was unbearable. I had to speak to Jacques. As calmly as I could, without giving my enemies the impression that I was panicking, I looked for him all over the place, wherever I could go, and that’s when I became aware of a whole system of doors that didn’t let you in or out — closed doors that could access rooms, an apartment perhaps inside the disco if they were not barricaded, camouflaged, painted in red and black like the walls and sealed off.

I turned around once more, and there he was, Jacques, at the far end of the bar, muttering a curt hello to me when I got closer, while with his other hand he made a curt gesture to have me understand that he was busy, and that I had to wait before speaking to him. He was exasperated with me.

Jacques had used a surprisingly harsh tone of voice towards me while directing a nonchalant attitude and a soft word toward everyone else, as if I was the one, the only one creating problems in the entire disco. Then, walking to the far end of the bar, Jacques talked to a tall man who was dressed as good as a Parisian, and from time to time they’d look at me sideways like Claude did, disapprovingly.

When I finally talked to him by walking straight to him as he was about to leave the bar, Jacques had no patience for me. He didn’t understand why I said that he had disappeared for two hours. Was I drunk? He had been at this end of the bar all along, he said, speaking to the Rouennais whose name was Etienne Jussieu, a man well into his twenties, head of a small gang of pretentious wannabes from the industrious city of Rouen. Etienne Jussieu was infamous at L’Archiduc.

He was the one who’d left a guy on the gravel outside last Saturday. Nobody would have dared come between this Rouennais and the poor bleeding guy, and certainly not me — this not because Etienne Jussieu was such a champion all by himself, but because the Jussieu brothers had lots of friends. You had to let him take the upper hand if he fought you, or else others would jump on you, stronger than him.

This stint outside with Jeannette, the set-up, my discomfiture, their mockery — I was sure that all of it had been orchestrated, concocted, if not by Jacques, Claude, and the Jussieu brothers, at least with their complicity.

But why was Jacques against me? And why were Claude, and the Rouennais? What did I ever do to these guys? I scratched my head to remember the details of what’d happened last Saturday night, if I’d done anything risky, brash or incriminating the first time I’d been to L’Archiduc. I knew I had somehow. But the event was confused, blurry. Not shameful, not at all, improbable, glorious. Only, better left behind. And that’s that. It happened. It was great.

Let see. In my innocence I’d danced with several girls, kissed several, touched several, and, come to think — yes, a woman, not a girl, a mature woman. Not like Jeannette, who had no age. Sylvie was clearly thirty-something, beautiful, perfumed, and not that cheap cologne, jewelry on her, not plastic… I’d complimented her on the cut of her skirt and how the assorted tiny jacket suited her so well. Indeed, she was slightly plump, one might call her voluptuous, so the transparent jacket let little to the imagination. Sylvie had let me get close to her in a corner. I was a joke for her, she played with me like with a toy. Kept laughing at my serious remarks. I made a complete fool of myself by talking politics to her, thinking my advanced knowledge would seduce her. Right wing and left wing. The endless string of failed social Revolutions in France and elsewhere. “And it’s even worse when these Revolutions succeed,” I added. She laughed. “So young and so tragic already,” she said. We spoke in each other ears, our warm breaths caressing one another. I loved her neck, her round shoulders, the generous breast bursting through the silk… She wore a funny necklace and bracelets, like real artistic stuff, and she had class, nice high-heel shoes like you see on fancy women shopping Boulevard Saint- Germain. And then, abruptly, she’d gone to the bathroom and I’d even seen her walking back toward me with a smile and two glasses in her hands, when she disappeared.

Made no sense. She’d changed her mind about having drinks with me? And kissing a kid like me, and touching… I didn’t think much of it, on the spot. It was good while it lasted. More than good. Astonishing. No way with someone like Sylvie to make it last, anyway. Although she could afford to, of course, it would have been unthinkable for her to bring me upstairs. She could be my mother!

But why not, though? I must say, seeing her with “our” drinks, for a second, it’d looked like everything was possible. Even the unimaginable.

But then, she’d disappeared. And Jacques and Claude also, around me, came and went and disappeared. The Rouennais had a tendency to disappear and re-appear suddenly. And the group that laughed at me, these also came and went.

They were not constantly in my face, fortunately. These goings-on gave me the creeps, but they also raised my curiosity, anger and jealousy. Where did they all go when they were not whispering about me in front of me? Did they all meet somewhere to speak openly about me and laugh?

Afraid of being caught, mocked, and worse, I decided nevertheless to inspect the camouflaged doors in both toilet rooms and bathrooms. They were at opposite ends of the disco. The bathroom next to the backdoor I had taken with Jeannette was less populated, more discreet. I sat on the toilet seat and inspected the wooden wall behind me. When I knocked, it did sound flimsy and hollow. It would take very little to remove one paneling and get to the other side — but why would I do that?

If I were in a movie pursuing a mystery, an abominable secret, in a quest for justice, I would remove the paneling. Also perhaps, if I were a pampered and reckless fourteen- year-old bored and craving adventure, and jealous about people having fun at his expense.

Yet even if there were apartments inside L’Archiduc hidden to most clients, which I didn’t doubt, and Jacques and Claude and the Rouennais were in the know and complotted in there in the company of my tormentors, did I need to find out? Was it wise to bump into them? You had to be invited. You had to be received indoors. Probably the Rouennais had been duly invited and, therefore, Jacques, for being friend with the Rouennais. But who invited the Rouennais in the first place? The boss, the owner of L’Archiduc, naturally.

I really had to visit the bathroom. Once in the cubicle, after taking a leak and flushing, I looked for the way to get inside.

And then I undid one paneling without the least difficulty. The nails were loose, they’d been removed many times. The question was, once removed, what do you do with the paneling so that it does not publicize your trespass and leave behind a gaping hole?

Readjusting the paneling to the wall from the inside put me instantly in the dark. For a minute, breathing hard, I had to accommodate to the tenebrous and cavernous-sounding surroundings. The deafening sound of the music, conjugated with the mass of treading feet, was muffled but still pronounced inside, resonating like the distant tremor of a herd of buffalos running on the prairie, in contrast with the immediate silence surrounding me.

Progressively, I made out the parquet floor, same as in the dancing hall but dilapidated. I made out the walls, not painted in red and black, not painted at all. It felt like a large attic or the basement of an ancient castle, once upon a time grand and beautiful, long ago. Piles of things littered the uneven floor: yellow newspapers, discarded furniture, incomprehensible devices, entire music systems of past eras, and on the walls, I could distinguish wall papers reminiscent of the successive décors the disco had gone through. All the past incarnations of L’Archiduc torn, ripped, left to rot on the floor, yet preserved. Capharnaüm came to my mind, a word that kids normally learn in Hebrew schools or at Catechism. I’d never gone to Hebrew school or Catechism.

Stacked and preserved for some unknow reason, but not taken care of, all dusty and decrepit. And nonetheless, I was to realize, inside there was everything you might need for comfort and much more. Tons of things. Too many things. But for whom? Hard to tell if someone was in there, given that I only saw one large hall whose attendant rooms and remote corners were out of reach beyond the mountains of things stacked up to the ceiling.

Since there was no easy way for me to move farther inside, should I not simply retreat and forget about the whole thing? Should I not put back the paneling, and re-enter the normal if unpleasant circle of things? I was about to go back when my concern about further progressing inside dissipated. There clearly were lower grounds ahead, the floor slanted into a depression crossing straight through the hall, and in the far corner at the end there now came to me the halo of a light.

Going slowly for fear I should bump into something and make a racket, I progressed gingerly on this uneven path. If there was someone near that light, as it seemed there was, I didn’t want to aggravate my case by smashing the gadget dearest to that someone. Most protruding objects in metal, brick, stone or cement, I walked on and used as springboard to avoid those in plastic or carton, and if a complaint arose from under my sole, a squeak or crackling sound, I hoped it was hard to detect in the din, the drumming. After all, it wasn’t me who had thrown the thing to the floor. Nonetheless, as I just said, dainty objects in glass or porcelain, sheets of thin metal, lace-work, delicate frame, I avoided and walked around or over whenever balance allowed.

Soon, there came a clearing, an inhabitable space where almost nothing was strewn on the floor. Here, on the contrary, excellent furniture had been put to create an elegant living-room, at once old and homy, not unfriendly at all, comfortable, almost welcoming. On the low table I saw chiseled glasses, bottles of alcohol and a thick crystal flask full of a rich liquor deserving of a duke or a count…

As I approached the end of the clearing, I saw a full glass of this thick liquor in each hand of a middle-aged man — strong, dark-skinned like an Italian, thick-necked and bearing a massive gold chain. He was well-dressed in dark blue flannel pants and wore a double-breasted suede jacket of a singular sheen. Presently, he was offering a full glass to a woman sunk into a stylish ruby leather armchair. I saw her hair, black, full, well cut… but couldn’t make out her face, hidden by the foot of an overwrought lamp. Until, one more step — it was Sylvie. Anxiety froze the life in me…

I was too far inside to regress rapidly. In fact, they should’ve seen me advancing all along. I was almost standing in front of them, visible in all my modest height and at a talking distance. But they seemed too engrossed in each other, infatuated by what they said, living in their own bubble of space and time. I didn’t understand how one could talk normally in such a noise, but it didn’t appear to affect them at all, they were talking in confidence, intimately, like a woman and a man talk when they have been together forever. They were at home, and too consumed by their own problems to notice whatever came from another realm, another sphere…

I had the feeling that I could continue walking and reach them, even interpose my presence between them, and they would merely talk over my shoulders or through me. And this, even though another suspicion, crazier than the previous one, told me that it was me they were talking about, me they were concerned about, my case they were discussing, rehashing, and gently quarreling about. What I’d done was at the heart of their discussion. Only what I had done to Sylvie. I myself didn’t count. My little person was not relevant.

The kissing of Sylvie last week was the matter. Sylvie letting herself be caressed and kissed, Sylvie engaging and inviting me to kiss her down her neck and the exposed part of her breast, that mattered also, but less. And it goes crazier even: I had the suspicion that an entire week had passed while their argument concerning my kissing Sylvie did not abate. And fueled by new distinctions and considerations, it could continue — no reason to stop. Not so much because of the kissing and the passion put in it from both sides (which, it seemed to me, should have been the issue), but as a pretext for his accusations, a convenient reason to harp on her, and for her to counter and defend herself. The strangest thing was that they seemed to greatly enjoy this gentle squabbling and aggravate or complicate it with every word… As though the life and survival of their couple depended on it.

I waited half-way inside their makeshift living-room, despondent like a baby who witnesses for the first time a dispute between his parents; he knows it’s about him, he feels in his stomach it’s something wrong he did without catching the meaning of any of the words that are bandied about and fly past him. Feeling I was still outside even though I was inside, hoping to discover what they were really so involved and agitated about, I stood there and gawked, I must say, rather stupidly. It couldn’t have been our kisses with Sylvie, not only. It couldn’t have been something which I had tended to forget, something which was luckily not mentioned, her holding me tight in the dark of the alcove, tight but not too tight, lovingly and efficiently enough to make me come in her fist through my pants. Couldn’t have been that, since it was not mentioned.

And out of the blue, from patches of paneling that were removed and replaced as swiftly as one pours water in a glass or put sugar in his coffee, out of the disco sparkling for a second with stroboscopic lights and phosphorescent smoke, there materialized Jacques and Claude; and not from the same door, from two separate entry-points in the walls.

Past the amazement, I certainly didn’t want to continue playing the novice and ask questions. Nothing that extraordinary, I told myself, remove the wall-paneling and you necessarily get into another room inside the first room.

It was a bit better with them this time. They acknowledged me right away, but kept sending me sidelong looks like they had done at the bar when I didn’t look at them. That’s all I was capable of, mistakes bigger than me. Consequently, they were afraid of my making things worse if they put me in the know. That was the reason why they had not told me of this insider space, that’s all. No big deal. No reason to build conspiracy theories.

At least, I thought, I do exist for my friends. I wanted to get closer to them, starting with Jacques, who didn’t squarely refuse to talk to me, but didn’t encourage it either. Patience — the time will come. It was clear that I shouldn’t force anything. It was not in my power, nor in nobody’s, actually, to change what was in store, what was coming to me, and deservedly. Same anxious feeling you may have experienced in nightmarish dreams where circumstances are established in your back and finish by exploding in your face no matter what.

Again, it was not said, but it was understood that Jacques needed to unwind after all the efforts he had made on my behalf. I was the burden everyone had to carry, the problem they had to deal with. He asked for a Calvados. The boss interrupted his ongoing debate with Sylvie (that’s how much power Jacques had around here), went to his mini bar and poured him an antique Calvados… The bottle looked like nothing special, but I could read the label: 27 Ans d’Age.

In response to my questioning his recalcitrant attitude towards me, Jacques reluctantly admitted that he was “all sore” at me. “Sick to the stomach, old pal (mon vieux),” he said. My kissing Sylvie had almost ruined his standing at L’Archiduc, and to start with, his nascent friendship with Etienne le Rouennais. It’s because of me that, instead of enjoying himself, Jacques had had to spend the evening running back and forth, in and out, so as to calm the boss and make him all kinds of promises.

“Promises?” I asked.

“Well, said Jacques, we’ll talk about this later. “For now we’re trying our best to save your skin, and it’s not easy…”

I felt sorry. I felt like sympathizing with him and asking him to excuse me and not give up on me so soon. I didn’t know kissing Sylvie would be such a big story.

“You didn’t know she was the boss’s wife?”

“No, I didn’t know she was the boss’s wife! I didn’t know until now that the owner lived inside L’Archiduc!”

“If you knew nothing,” he then said shrewdly and with a circular look at the capharnaum around, “then why are you here?”

I didn’t know what to answer. I was nailed to the vibrating floor.

There was no discussing the fact that I had done something wrong. The details of my kissing an unknown but more than willing woman, younger than the owner, but older than me, was not a topic one could think of addressing in the presence of Jacques, Claude, the boss, and his wife. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even dare to address the boss directly, let alone Sylvie. I had the sense of not belonging to the same sphere, how to explain, same density of being, same capsule of time-space. Maybe if I shouted loud enough… but what for? To tell him what? Ask for his pardon for passionately kissing his very loving and effective wife? That would have been the worst affront.

I realized that the only room for maneuver was about the severity of the punishment. Opinions varied in this respect. Sylvie was in favor of a well-worded reprimand, no more — a sort of slap on the wrist. She insisted that I was a child who never had had bad intentions, who perhaps needed a little more “love, yes love, real love, fondness, tenderness” in a world that had been visibly harsh and disorienting to me. The boss, on the other hand, was for a severe beating outside and no word whatsoever of reprimand, pardon or justification, while Claude, who agreed with a beating and no pardon or justification, insisted that I should be able to walk afterward and come back home in one piece…

Good thing I had friends. Thank you, Claude, no, really. I knew you’d make me pay for the little I’ve thought of you.

The most amazing was that the argument between the boss and his wife went on and on, nourished by all kinds of subtle considerations. What kind of punishment, how many blows, which blows, where on my body, how painful and lethal? They went on and on, and I would have liked to help Sylvie help me the best she could and convince her husband to spare me, on account of my extreme youth, not of our having merely kissed and touched superficially and quite indirectly. Unfortunately, I could see that she weakened, she lowered the chin in defeat, and the boss sat erect and proud on his brown leather couch and smoked his cigar and drank his Calvados smiling at success. But, then, at the apex of their rhetorical flourish, the situation transformed and it was Sylvie who gained the upper hand, scored points and established a clear line of defense in my favor. The boss sat despondent and, discouraged, no longer drank his Calvados. The dead tip of his cigar fell on a pile of ashes. Of course, all this is my impression of what was going on, since you could hardly hear a distinct word in the din.

When would this confrontation end?

Established was that I was to get a beating and that was that.

“Everybody gets a beating,” whispered Jacques in my direction. Claude added, “that way you’re not a baby anymore… You know how to behave.”

I wondered whether Jacques and Claude had received similar beating before. They probably had. When was that? Before my time? For how long had they come to L’Archiduc? Last time had not been their first time. They were habitués, received by the boss and his wife in their inner sanctum.

It was understood that Claude and Jacques had obtained to mitigate the consequences of my blunder and that I should be thankful and humbly kiss their hands…

Claude, Jacques, and I walked slowly away from the boss and his wife arguing about my error, we removed the paneling in a spot behind the bar that Jacques knew about. To materialize out of nowhere and stand up inside the bar made me feel part of the inner circle. From now on, I belonged when at L’Archiduc. No secret hidden from me, no stone unturned.

From there, we disappeared into the crowd, each going his own way. I didn’t whine or cry or anything like that. I only asked my so-called friends when it would happen. They didn’t know.

The one option left was to show courage in the face of unavoidable adversity. In the next hour, even though I gave the impression that I was dancing like before, I no longer tried to kiss girls. I prepared my mental for the shower of blows. I tried to anticipate the pain, cringed inside, imagined covering my balls with one hand, my face with the other. I was going on the gravel outside in a fetus position.

Things never happen the way you imagined. First, it didn’t happen outside on the gravel, thank god. It was late, around three in the morning. Between the backdoor exit and the bathroom, just when I intended to go to the bathroom for a good reason, I found myself surrounded. Words like “faggot… bugger… dick-sucker” were hurled at me, the usual. Right away shoes were flying, I received a smack on my face… fists landed on my ears, which buzzed like never before. And then, not sure from what, I felt a stinging heat on the nape of my neck.

Later, it appeared that someone had used a belt and that I had peed in my pants.

Someone else was saying, while spitting in my face: “So you can’t get it up for a woman, fag?”

What woman was he referring to, Jeannette or Sylvie? Not the moment to say anything.

They reached me on my legs, my knees, in the belly, everywhere on my ass… but nothing earth-shattering. I didn’t hear the crack of breaking bones. My nose was not even bleeding. And when I went like a fetus on the floor, more for good measure than for the danger, they seemed taken aback and hardly kicked me. There was no compulsion to hurt me as hard as they could. Even Jussieu le Rouannais, who led the attack, was not of one mind about this beating. You could tell he hesitated and didn’t put his strength in the blows. I could see at floor level through my fingers that the boss and Sylvie were not on hand, nor even looking through chinks from the removed or replaced paneling. They were still at it, arguing while drinking of that exquisite liquor, and that’s why Jussieu and his cohort didn’t put on a real show. They were still discussing my fate and it was not clear to him what decision, if any, had been reached.

Not to embarrass in any way the Rouennais, give him carte blanche, Claude and Jacques had diplomatically taken the exit door. Meanwhile my two “friends” were outside the disco taking in the fresh air with a couple of girls from Rouen!

They had washed their hands of me while protecting their reputation… I hated them.

Claude and Jacques were smoking cigarettes and joking with the girls, who avoided looking at the blood on my shirt, my suspenders hanging like I was some kind of punk, shiny shoes unlaced and no longer so shiny. The discomfiture of my hairdo, flattened toupee hanging like it was postiche. I bled from various surface wounds, nothing alarming. I limped but could walk; they didn’t have to support me. One of the girls wet her handkerchief at the ancient fountain and, while cleaning me, cried over me like I was her baby brother.

“So young and already so hurt,” she said. I couldn’t hear very well, there was an echo in my ears since I’d been stunned, but I liked the tone, half-serious, cajoling. She kept repeating that she found me so delicate, innocent and cute…

And so intelligent. She could detect it in my philosophical attitude.

The other girl had an older brother with a car waiting for us in the parking lot.

I was pampered all through the trip, and neither Claude nor Jacques, nor even the brother expressed anger or jealousy when, to soothe the pain on my lips, I thirstily kissed one of the girls and then put a brash hand under the skirt of the other. These are the privileges of the young who’s just gone through fire. He is allowed to handle things like a man, for a short while.