They Were Not Gay. Part II
Continued from here — “Ils n’étaient pas gay — They Were Not Gay. Part I”
‘T’hey said, ‘She’s not gonna come back,’ but I knew you would,’ says Nico.
I join Nico, Fabrece, and all of them at the bar. We are taking up pretty much all the space inside. They are chatting to each other and the two bartenders in a language that I don’t understand. At one point the German guy and Fabrece bang their beers on the counter and sing, both having placed their left hand on the chest.
I admit to not having picked up any French yet, and Fabrece steps in to give me a lesson.
“Oh la la, girl, imagine, you are seeing a boy. He is tall, dark, and handsome. His parents adore you, and sex is great. One day he sends you a text message ‘I’m in love with somebody else. It’s over.’ You delete his number, and say C’est la vie. This is life. Got it?”
I nod affirmatively, and we drink some more.
“Another example. Nikola meets a beautiful American girl. Did I say she is beautiful, kind, and sweet? His parents love her, and sex is great? It’s just that perfect. One day Nikola takes a shower because he loves being clean. He’s taking a nice, long shower. He comes out to a hundred missed calls and realizes that his dream girl is batshit crazy. What does Nikola do? He blocks her number and says C’ est comme ça. It is what it is. Got it?” I nod and down my glass.
‘How old are you?’ Fabrece asks. I’m 28, and what about him. ‘I’d rather not say,’ he says, coyly. I proceed to tell him how men, like good wine, get only better with age (to a certain point). I want to look smart and savvy, and compassionate. ‘Oh, you make me blush,’ Fabrece looks flattered. He pretend fans himself with a flirty hand gesture.
‘You dance amazing,’ I scream. I’m just so very excited to be finally having an adventure and partying in Paris.
‘Me?’ he blushes again, in a flirty way. ‘No,’ he points to Nikola. ‘He is a dancer. I’m a videographer. I just picked up a few moves.’ His eyes light up as he kisses Nikola on the cheek. He leans in and picks an eyelash from Nico’s cheek. ‘We are childhood friends,’ he says. He picks a long hair (mine) from Nico’s knee. He kisses Nikola on the shoulder. I go ‘Awww,’ but he laughs, ‘Oh, no… I’m kidding. We met two month ago at a summer camp in Switzerland. He was the mime. I mean he was a videographer, too, but he also taught miming classes. Miming is huge in Paris. Anyways. He took pictures. I did video. We made so much money in Switzerland,’ he grins. ‘But oui, we are like childhood friends.’ Fabrece scoops Nikola and kisses him gently on the brim of his fedora. He pats him affectionately on the back. ‘They are gay’, I think. ‘They MUST be.’ ‘FOR SURE,’ Nikola says in response to the childhood friends statement. ‘Nikola is a good guy,’ Fabrece says, like he is trying to sell me something. ‘I’m in Paris for two days. I’m going back to Cambodia. Nico is going to Saint Martin next Sunday, so we went out tonight and met here.’
He gets up to talk to others. In a very poorly thought through attempt to joke, I tell Nikola that Fabrece’s name sounds like an air freshener brand in US. ‘It’s funny but’, that’s how I start the sentiment. Fortunately, he does not take offense. We dance a little until Nikola tells the bartender to “put the music my friends like.”
What happens next is a few things. Nikola teaches me miming. We do a bit of burlesque. We do a bit of hip hop. Nikola does a bit of popping and locking. Fabrece struts around like he is in a drag ball. Nikola dances with the Southern girl. I fall off the stool, but Nikola catches me. We dance some more. He taps, he pirouette-s, he attempts to lift me in the air but I may not be ready for this so I sort of sway my hips to the music awkwardly. ‘Ooh, sexy girl,’ Fabrece reacts. We start a staring contest with Nikola. We mime around a bit with the essential mime expressions — happy, angry, sad. I stare into his smallish wide set round hazel ‘surprised’ eyes and frown my eyebrows. He stares into my squinty ‘sad’ eyes, and growls — ‘anger’. It’s fun, and we are all over the place, and there’s no space at all for the new customers, when they walk in and walk out with the confused smiles. Bartenders seem like they are used to it. I realize that this might not be the first time they do this. It’s a comfortable environment of some sort of a celebration of I don’t even know what. I perch on a stool with my camera. My new friends end up using the entire space of the bar between the back wall and the door as the catwalk, strutting back and forth, like it’s a vogue ball. They point their jazz hands in my viewfinder. It looks like an elaborate dance sequence from a Broadway musical. They continue dancing together like it’s Cabaret de Paris. Suddenly the lights go up, the music stops. The bartenders command ‘Alles’. They kick us all out and close the shop.
‘What does the girl want?’ Nikola asks when we are on the street. ‘Dance,’ I am predictable. ‘Where are you taking me?’ ‘It’s here, it’s here,’ Fabrece says as we walk higher and higher up the hill to what I learned later was Place Du Tertre. It’s a tourist spot, but at night it’s deserted and scary. I start to panic a little. I’m alone with the two strangers. But there is a small bar there. It’s still open, but the owner turns us down. The “dance soreé” that Fabrece remembered being there a couple years ago is no longer in business. Just like we went up the steep stairs few minutes ago, we turn around and start to come down. They linger on top of the staircase that I seemingly saw in a bunch of stock photos of Paris because they want to smoke. I reach into my backpack for my camera and take a shot of Nikola balancing on the railing. His feet are in the air. Fabrece is reaching for his lips as he holds him to light up his cigarette from Nikola’s. ‘They are so gay,’ I think. “Iconic,” I also think reviewing the shot of two men balancing on top of the staircase, cigarette kissing each other. ‘They are definitely gay,’ I mumble to myself as I put my camera away. We come down the stairs on another street that takes a very steep turn down, typical of Montmartre. We start running downhill, when we suddenly encounter a lone petite figure. A girl is quickly walking up in the dark. Our steps scare her. Her eyes get wider. Of course, they can’t pass her without striking a convo. “A cigarette?”, Nikola asks if she has one to spare.
‘Qui,’ she says. Her voice sounds like a big fat NO, but she shares a few from her pack, nevertheless, and quickly disappears.
They light up their cigarettes as we make our way down. At one point Nikola yells ‘Oui’ mocking her attitude. Fabrece picks it up. I yell it out, too. It feels amazing to just be running down the hill and screaming. We hop, we stumble, and we scream in three different voices, ‘Oui!’ ‘Oui’ ‘Oui’. I attempt to mimic the dance I saw them do earlier. ‘She’s pretty good, huh?’ says Fabrece to Nico. ‘Oui,’ nods Nikola. ‘Artsy girl,’ he says. I definitely feel some sort of a romantic promise coming my way. ‘But they are gay, right?’ I brush it off as I run down the hill alongside these two strangers, thinking about how this is vastly different from the Montmartre tour I took earlier that week.
TO BE CONTINUED…
