Etiquette inquiète.

He was an artist, I was in love (or Quebec vs. Canada)

Par L’expatriate New Yorkaise

by Rachel Levine

tu me manques.

So go fuck yourself, jack.

Part I.

Ça parait pas, mais ça parait.

Rules for quiet revolutionaries

I hear the subway approaching down the tunnel. I am sitting on the bench at the Guy-Concordia stop, bundled in my winter coat. I have my hat pulled down over my head, my scarf still on, and my hands in my new mittens in my pockets. The platform is empty, apart from me and a man across the tracks sitting beneath a large advertisement for Fido Sans Fils. He is also bundled in his coat, his scarf knotted around his neck, his hands stuffed into his pockets. I feel a strong affinity to him. We are both waiting for the subway late at night, both wearing our winter outerwear, both sinking into ourselves, but heading in opposite directions. I finger my metro pass in my pocket to make sure it is still there. When I glance up, he is smiling in my direction. I look to my left and right. Who is he looking at? Me? I return the smile sheepishly. This is our moment. I watch him through the windows of the subway as the train pulls up to the platform, watch him as I find a seat, and then watch him as I wave gently farewell as the subway pulls away. He does the same. I will probably never see him again. I will probably never speak to him. I will probably never know anything about him.

I am on my way to see my pseudo-boyfriend Yves. I call him a pseudo-boyfriend, since he can hardly be called a friend. But we sleep curled up together a few times a week, or did, and by now and he has introduced me to most of his friends, associates, and family. But all my efforts to discuss or define our present state, let alone the future, are met with an exasperated, if not angry silence. I am not used to this kind of ambiguity. In theory, I tell myself that this is part of the experiment called life, and I should investigate with the detachment of an anthropologist. After all, I can always opt out at any time. But, in practice, I am unable to let go and am attached against my better judgment. Yves’s worldview causes me considerable discomfort. We regard everything differently: relationships, politics, religion, education, lifestyle, family, beliefs, work, nature, sports, media, friends, food, sex, dogma, art. Even his apartment is located at the end of an obscure street next to a warehouse in a Francophone neighbourhood of Montreal. I have to take the subway and a bus to get there, then walk through a hole in a fence and cross train tracks. Once a freight train sat on the tracks for three days and I had to take the long-cut around the overpass to get to and from his house to get to the bus. When I leave, he does not watch to make sure I have crossed the tracks safely. We do things differently where I come from.

My no-nonsense, all business all the time, devotees of the He’s Just Not That Into You school-of-dating friends, lambaste me for not having “the talk” with him. I nod in shameful agreement and bite my lip whenever they suggest it. The talk? We can barely talk to each other, let alone discuss matters of intimate importance. He speaks French. I speak English. The night we met, I don’t think we exchanged more than five complete sentences, including “Are you coming home with me?” Besides, as an emotional retard, the idea of having “the talk” frightens me. I would rather swallow my own needs than ask someone to meet them. Shouldn’t exclusivity and a sense of one’s importance to another be apparent on its own? If I have to inquire if these kinds of things are present, they are probably not there and I either accept the situation or I don’t. But the main reason I say nothing is that I suspect that asking – even if all I want is clarity, even if I have no intention of steering the conversation to a certain end -- would probably destroy the delicate balance of forces that allow this co-existence. I would be vulnerable and collapse. He would be pressured and bolt. And that would be that.

I have a contingency exit plan ready. This is the plan. I am going to meet someone new. I am going to stop calling him. I am going to stop emailing him. I am also going to stop returning his calls. I am going to stop answering his emails. I am just going to stop. He will not notice, or he will notice too late. One last time, he can close the door behind me when I leave his house. I will look back, saddened by my insignificance, unaware that this is the last time I will look back at his closed door. I will cross the tracks and keep going and going and going on into my new life. When he realizes that I am gone, probably forever, he will feel an emptiness and sadness equal in measure to my own. The plan has its problems. My plans are often more romantic than realistic. I have to commit to quitting. And the Parthian shot depends on the unknown in the equation: he has to feel something about me in order to feel bad that I am gone.

The present state of things could not have been predicated at the start. In fact, the story of how I met Yves is one in which I lost the battle, but won the war. I was late meeting a friend for dinner before we were to see a non-profit theatre production of an Ionesco play. When I called her to report my tardy whereabouts, she cancelled, “Nice. Really nice. Late again.” Taking advantage of this in extremis response, delivered with her typically delicate display of excessive rage and fury, I called my friend Sam to go in her place. After all, I had the tickets and a minor crush on Sam. The play seemed like the perfect venue in which to actualize it. He wasn’t home, so I left him a message and went to see the show alone.

Afterwards, I intended to purchase a monthly metro pass, my first one ever, but was short $2.25. I walked up Rue St. Laurent looking for a bank, and ran into Sam. He was heading to La Mer A Boire. He wanted to keep a low profile and since I was the only person he knew who went to places on Saint Denis and that part of town, he thought he might see me there. He had some news for me. News! As we walked together, he filled me in on the details. He wasn’t sure if the girl he had gone to dinner with earlier that night wanted to date him and he was in love. I was speechlessly disappointed. I sat beside him at the bar, nursing a beer, listening to him talk about her finer points. She was from Cote St. Luc. She preferred Fairmount bagels. She had tickets for the upcoming Arcade Fire show. I turned away and caught Yves’s eye, or he caught mine, and within the hour, we were standing next to each other. “Do you want to come home with me?” he asked. And I did.

A List of My One-Night-Stand Hook Up Rules That I Violated Because of Yves

1) Never go home with someone too cheap to buy you beer or pay for a cab.

2) No musicians. They are all sluts and dogs.

3) Do not fall asleep. Leave.

4) Do not give out your number.

I woke up after a few hours. The alarm clock read 8:43 a.m. I had stayed the night. Fuck. Yves’s arm was draped over me, and I removed it as though picking off a dead spider. My mojo -- confirmed again. And -- further confirmation -- this guy was French! And a Separatist! And here I was an ex-pat American – talk about sleeping with the enemy. What was his story? He was an activist-musician or something along those lines? I sat on the side of the bed. There were no posters on the walls. His room was a mess of piled clothing and books, beer bottles and papers and cds. Did he say he was in a band? There was a guitar in his room, three guitars in fact, but no amp. I began to look for my shirt.

He woke up and said, “What are you doing?”

“I have to go home,” I said.

“Stay,” he said, “Sleep. Dors.”

“I have to go home,” I said, “I have a dog.”

“Stay,” he said again, circling his arm around my waist.

“I can’t,” I said, finding a bra under a sweater.

“Don’t you want to give me your number?” he asked me without getting out of bed.

“I guess so,” I said.

He sat up and rose to his feet with the blanket around him. He scrounged around his room, first in the nightstand by his bed, then on his desk. He wandered out of his room, closing the door behind him, and returned with a pen and paper. I wrote my number down and handed it back to him.

“Do you want my number?” he asked.

“Why not?” I responded.

He handed me a business card. A number was scrawled on it in blue pen.

“You might want to give me another one,” I said, “There’s a number on this.”

He took the card and looked at it. “It’s Videotron.” I made a motion he should flip it over. Then he said, apologetically, awkwardly, as if he’d handed me a card with a girl’s number on it. “It’s Videotron. They shut off the internet. I had to call them.”

Jesus, what was this guy thinking?

He wrote his home number on a new card, and handed it to me.

“Call me,” he said. “I’m busy, but I can make time.”

“You can call me,” I said.

I asked him to show me how to get to the bus. He followed me to the door, wrapped in the blanket, and pointed to a hole in a chain link fence. I had to duck under it, cross the tracks, walk down the street, and take a right. Then take the bus to the metro. A kiss on the lips good bye and I turned and left. I looked back just before I crossed the tracks and his door was already closed, just as if I had never even been there.

“Later, dickhead,” I thought and sprang on, going forward into a new life.

It felt good to have had sex. It felt good to be walking home with messy hair and yesterday’s clothing on. People on the subway could tell and they smiled at me. I got home, threw his card on my dresser, and fell asleep for the rest of the day. When I woke up, I picked up the phone to see if he had left a message. No calls. I felt burned. Why did I care? It wasn’t like I expected him to call. “It’s Videotron.” Right. Well, he had taken my number. Why did he do that? It ate at me for a few days. When I finally thought the situation settled and relegated it to my personal history, Yves broke the only rule I know that generally governs the one night stand. He called.

At first, it moved like electric current. I saw his band, then his secondary band, then his tertiary band but really just a side thing since they only could meet once a month. I went to his DJ nights, his political activist concerts. He took me to meet his friends from childhood, his friends from work, his friends from the bands, his friends from political activism, his friends from the bars. I went to see his friends’ bands play, went to their vernissages, went to their soirees, went to their poetry readings. He invited me to his parents for Christmas, and then New Years. His attention was focused, determined, affectionate, passionate. He watched me from across the room. Then when I was close enough to breathe on, he would touch me as if to confirm that I wasn’t an apparition. He would touch my cheek, my hair, my arm. It was so much devotion that I shrugged it off as if it were nothing, meaningless, a drop in the boundless ocean. I turned my head from his kisses, claiming that I didn’t do things like that in public.

We spent time in bars and so I drank, at first sparingly and then in increasing quantities. I was never much of a drinker. 2 pints and I was drunk on my feet. 6 and I was asleep in the coat check. Somewhere between 1 and 6 pints, I became everyone’s best girlfriend and the epicenter of fun. I stood in line for the co-ed bathroom and flirted. “We could make out,” I said to one boy, grabbing both his shoulders, “Because this is our one and only moment.” Then, when he opened his mouth to respond, I would say, “Oh no… looks like our moment is over.” People handed me their phone numbers on napkins and matchbooks or slipped them into my coat pockets. They bought me more drinks, which I drank greedily or gave away. Yves would claim me when he was done, hold my hand, and kiss me. I would yank my hand away and drink more. “Don’t interrupt,” I said. “Are you done?” he would ask. “No,” I would say, “Let me finish this.” More drinks until I was slurring my words, one eye half opened. Then, we would eat poutine at the Fameux or the all night diner in Rosemount, take a cab back to his place, and pass out at 5 a.m.

Yves wanted me to learn French. He sent me emails with expressions that I didn’t know and that weren’t in the dictionary.

“What does ‘de quesse’ mean?” I asked him later.

“What.” he said.

“De quesse?”

“I don’t understand.”

“Deeee quessssssseeeeee.”

“That’s slang,” he said. “It means ‘What are you talking about?’ It’s just ‘quesse.’ Qu’est-que c’est.”

“Oh. I am not very good at French,” I said. “I only took it in high school. We didn’t have immersion.”

“You’ll learn, you’ll learn,” he assured me. “You’ll learn and I’ll teach you.”

The subway car stops and picks up a few more people at the McGill station. A couple gets on and stands up together near the door, giggling and drunk. Every seat is free. I try not to watch them and read the advertising posters instead. Make your married friends jealous. Join Lava Life. Talk about false advertising. As the subway jolts forward, the girl falls into the boy and they start making out as he holds onto the pole. Their lips press together and she looks up into his closed eyes.

I close my eyes and listen to the stations as they are announced. They are in sequence. They are inevitable.

Part II.

Vive le Québecois libre.

In the world of the blind, the one eyed man is king.

I get off the subway. The couple rides on, still kissing, into their future. I wait. A small crowd is waiting for one of the last trains of the night, sitting on the benches, standing against the wall, shifting on their feet, checking the subway map, pacing, unbuttoning a jacket, looking in a backpack, listening to their i-Pods and MP3 players, looking down the tunnel, looking at each other, looking in a pocket, looking at a watch, reading a book, a magazine, an old Metro newspaper, sleeping on the seats, talking in English, talking in French, talking in Arabic or Chinese, waiting, all waiting. The trains on this line are always slow. I lean against the wall, my hands in my pockets, staring at a point a few feet in front of me on the floor, and wait.

I had forgotten everything grey about the mundanely meaningless, godless commercialized ad-saturated society, slumbering on my feet through the days and drinking through the nights. I carried around my Technicolor intoxication of liquor and infatuation like a secret. I went through the façade of normal life, being manhandled and jostled by landlords and friends, family and strangers, completely outside of my body, my mind dazzled in lightness and quickness and speed. I was aware that the situation with Yves was finite – what situation isn’t? Unwilling to let myself fear the unpredictable inevitable, I banked my joy on the present and dispensed with future worry. I ignored whatever I needed to in order to maintain my present happiness. He was an artist and I was in love.

Signs of imminent demise were everywhere.

Sign # 1. Maudit les negres blancs d’Amerique. Cassandra

She sat with me that first night in the bar. A witch, a sybil, a sphinx. I noticed her opposite us, at the next table, glaring at me when Yves went to the bathroom. Where did she come from? Had she been sitting there, watching us the whole night? I smiled at her. She gave me a fierce look and said, “What are you doing with him?” “Is he your boyfriend?” I asked, because I'm not the sort of person who will squat on another woman's turf. There's enough boys to go around. She grabbed my hand and snarled, “You are just the girl of the night for him.” I laughed, “Don’t worry. He is just the boy of the night for me too.” “You should have seen what he did while you were in the bathroom,” she said to me. Hissing. “I am sure it was dirty,” I said, “At least, I hope so.” I turned away from her. A crazy. A lunatic. A kook. A shit-disturber. A religious fanatic. A moralist. A lunatic. A bum. A person out to ruin my good time. We didn’t talk again because Yves returned and asked me, “Do you want to come home with me?” And I did.

Her warning is a ten inch dagger sticking in my ribs.

Sign # 2. Heuresement, ici on parle français. Bill 101.

Yves called me up and invited me over for a movie at his house on a Friday. He was watching a Bergman film.

“There’s subtitles, right?” I asked.

“Yes, of course,” he said, as though shocked I should ask such a question.

I said, “I mean, what language are the subtitles?”

“English.”

On the way there, I stopped at a depanneur and picked up beer. It seemed like the kind of a thing a cool girl would do, and I had momentary aspirations. I didn’t know what beer to buy. Everything could hinge on this decision. I first picked Griffon Blonde, but that was a girly choice. Stella Artois? I walked through the store with the pack, but when I reached the cash, I rethought… Maybe something more local. Belle Gueule. For myself, I would have picked Alexander Keith’s.

When I rang the bell, his best friend opened the door. So much for a romantic night in. Maybe this was significant. Maybe he wanted me to be integrated into his world and get to know his best friend.

“Hey,” I said, handing him the beer.

“Salut,” his best friend responded.

I extended my hand and introduced myself. He kissed me on both cheeks, and I awkwardly let him. Then, I sat next to him on the couch and asked him, “So, what do you do?”

He responded in French. My inability to converse did not matter. He clearly understood my English and the English subtitles on the film, but only spoke to me in French. Yves did not help. After playing 15 questions, because I certainly couldn’t come up with 20 coherent ones, I sat on the couch, silently, watching the movie. Yves and his friend talked in French over my head from time to time – probably about the film -- and then animatedly whenever I left the room.

They drank all the beer.

Sign # 3. Le ciel est bleu; l’enfer est bleu aussi (c’est les autres). Heaven can wait.

In the Japanese film Afterlife, the dead select one moment from their lives – the happiest moment – and make a film of it. They re-live this moment for eternity while they forget everything else. In the film, most of the characters pick significant moments: the birth of a child or a wedding day, a graduation. One character picks the day he is waiting on a park bench to meet his girlfriend. She never shows up. Those who can’t pick a single day stay on in “purgatory” and help other people chose their moment and make films.

A few days before Christmas, Sam invited me to a holiday wine and cheese at a used bookstore on Milton. I was supposed to meet Yves later that night, after his rehearsal with his even newest band. I walked to the bookstore because it was a clear, windless relatively warm winter night and the snow was banked waist high on either side of the sidewalks. It seemed like everyone in Montreal was out. Everything glittered. Everything sparkled. I had a thousand ideas spinning in my head of what I could do with Yves later. We could go sledding or dancing or sit in a café and watch people.

As I fantasized, I warned myself that the anticipation of seeing Yves would far exceeded any reality I could experience. I didn’t care. I was too busy enjoying myself, tossing my thoughts around like a ball. I thought of the film Afterlife and empathized with the character who wanted to wait for his girlfriend for eternity.

Reality was real. The party was crowded and all the food and drink long consumed prior to my arrival. Sam never came. I picked up a copy of On the Road, bought it, and walked home. I read it on the couch and waited for Yves to show up. He came to my house, a wreck, cranky, and exhausted. “I am very tired,” he said, and sat on my couch in his coat, wringing his hands, kicking his feet back and forth. I was not angry or disappointed. How can reality compete with the perfect utopia of thought, of imagination? I am not cruel. I accept the limitations of the physical world. I told him to pick out some music, mixed him a drink, and asked him what I could do, if he wanted to see one of my DVDs or go to Blockbuster or Boite Noire.

The end is nigh. The end is nigh. Ground control to Major Tom?

Without warning, he didn’t call. One day, I shrugged off. Then two, then three, then a week… then I was panicked. The awareness of absence, of nothingness, of finality rang loud in my ears. It was like winning the lotto, only to be a told a week later that there’d been some mistake. I didn’t tell anyone, confused and tormented by the situation -- to have been so beloved and then to fall from grace. I did what I always did when faced with a crisis: I fell apart. I slept a lot, did little, and mostly felt sick and sad, drifting through rooms. I would pick up the phone from time to time and will him to call. My superstitions rituals proved useless.

Another few days came and went.

I gave up. Or perhaps, I realized and accepted that it was over, that I was as cold and naked and alone as before. I lay on my back on my bed and stared out my window at the Farine Five Roses sign and the rooftops of Montreal that spread down and across the river. Everything was as it always had been. Another person was out there for me, perhaps under one of those rooftops or elsewhere in the big world. I recited to myself my favorite lines of Herodotus, “All human fortune is a wheel.” I got up, looked in the mirror, and told myself that tomorrow and all other days would come and they were mine to decide how to spend them happy or sad… I did all these things, all these tokens of submission and acquiescence, and then, almost a month after the silence started, as if on cue, he called again, chipper and chatting as though he had never disappeared.

When faced with the return of an absent lover, a choice needs to be made. For those who feel nothing, the decision is irrelevant. But, suffering showed me my true self. I was in possession of a deep and ill-deserved attachment. My choice would be a declaration of myself to myself. Would I be hard, strong, determined, Protestant, with a clear sense of right and wrong, dividing the world in the simple good and evil, black and white, mit mir oder gegen mich? Or, was I soft and malleable, a gentle and patient spirit, always forgiving, accepting of the grey shades of human nature, keeping company with voleurs et putains, lying down with dogs, willing to swallow oceans of grief because I had my eye on the greater good of the group?

I made the decision instantly. I would not quit. But, I was too proud to reveal how he’d shaken me and how hard I’d slipped. I was going to pretend it was all okay, and then maybe it really would all be okay. So, I let him back into ma vie, smiling warmly, as if his disappearance were as normal as the daily newspaper.

I am self-protecting. I am no martyred saint or helpless damsel in distress. In order to remain centered and free of agonizing, I took precautions.

I wrote out rules and taped them next to my computer.

Maitre chez nous

Rule 1: There is no committed situation until one of you declares that there is one.

Rule 2: You will not declare one.

Rule 3: So, until he declares that there is a situation, you are a free agent and can do as you please.

Corollary # 1: Free agency is rather boring if you have no one to direct it towards.

Of course, I wanted to ask him where the time went. Had he met a new girl of the night? Where was she now? Had she always been in his life? Had she gotten bored with him? Annoyed? Or maybe she was the regular feature of his life, and I was just a distraction. If so, why hadn’t he told me? I wanted to ask him these questions, but could never find the time or the words. And when I had both the time and the words, I realized that the answer didn’t matter and I did not need to ask. I was going to stick around to the end anyway. Things had changed and I changed with them.

I went alone to a concert for a band from Toronto. I stood near the bar by the entrance and smiled at the lead singer when he walked past. He came over immediately and leaned against the wall with his hand over my head. I am the queen of England. I am the goddess. I am a chalice containing the brew of everlasting life, or at least a night of making a man feel like a man./p>

“Do you want a drink?” he asked.

“I’d love one,” I said.

He bounded off and came back with two beers and handed me one.

“This is my last drink for a few weeks,” I said.

“This is my last drink for a few hours,” he said.

“I might reconsider,” I added.

“Are you alone?” he asked me.

“Yeah,” I said, “I like to travel lightly.”

He smiled, “Me too, I travel lightly.”

“Except for your amp,” I said. “Looks like you’re compensating for something.”

He laughed again, “Yeah, a bad sound guy. So, how do you like the show?”

Well, I hated it, but he was cute. “You guys are amazing. I’m so impressed.”

“What are you doing after the show?”

In my head, I responded, “You.” Free agency is rather boring if you have no one to direct it towards. Could I temporarily forget Yves long enough to close my eyes and think of England? Drat. I was thinking about him already. Crisse, colisse, tabernac. Crisse, colisse… Keep drinking… Then I rephrased the question to myself: What would Yves do in the same situation?

“I’m keeping my options open,” I said, “Why?”

“I thought maybe you’d want to come and hang out. Maybe get some food like that poutine stuff or you know see the inside of my hotel room. It’s a schwanky joint. It has two Queen sized beds. Maybe you can sleep in one of them.”

“Or both of them,” I said.

“Or both of them,” he repeated, dazzled.

“How good is the soap they give you? I like high quality stuff.”

He started to laugh. “I bring my own.”

“Aveda?”

He laughed again.

“You won’t remember the shampoo when I get through with you,” he said.

“Intriguing. Count me in.”

“I’ll find you after the show,” he said and skipped off to play the second set.

Friday. I went to Yves’s and watched documentaries while he drank. We sat on the couch. We made out. We went to bed together, but we did not have sex. He fell asleep with his arm around me. Something was wrong, but I didn’t know how to ask him or what to ask him. Why didn’t we have sex this time? Was he onto me? Would he even care? Was something wrong with me? Was he having sex with other people? How many? I was wide awake. I had stopped drinking for a few days and being sober was sobering. The situation seemed stark and unbalanced. Did Yves even like me? This seemed like the most important question and one for which I had the least understanding. Why didn’t I bring a book? I picked up his copy of L’ Étranger and started to read. Reading French was always tiresome because I had to pay close attention. There were gaps in my vocabulary. A whole sentence, if not a whole paragraph, could go missing over a single small specific word. I left the book face down beside his bed, open to page 25 when I fell asleep.

I came late to one of Yves’s shows and stood with my roommate in the back. After the show, Yves came over and asked me if I saw his whole set.

“Seven songs,” I said.

“We played 13.”

“Oh,” I said, “Lucky 13. Well, how did it go? Was it a good show?”

“No,” he said, “The sound guy is terrible. Et chui fatigué.”

“Me too,” I said.

“Do you want a sip of my beer?” he asked. I took a sip and handed it back to him.

“So what’s up with tonight?” I asked.

“You know me. I go with the flow,” he said. Then he walked off to the end of the bar and started talking to another girl. She was thin and pretty. He wrang his hands together, thoroughly engrossed in the conversation. He didn’t look tired from my perspective. In fact, he looked quite on his game.

My roommate tapped me on the shoulder, “That was weird. He didn’t even say hello to me.”

“I don’t think he said hello to me either."

“You need nerves of steel to deal with him. Is he always like this?”

“I don’t know,” I said, “I’m usually kind of drunk.”

She didn’t say anything and we stood there, both watching him talk to the girl. After a minute, my roommate said, “I’m going home. I’ll see you later,” and she left.

I was alone, watching Yves chat up another girl. How did they know each other? Was he picking her up? Was she one of his other girlfriends? Were they just friends? I couldn’t stand there and watch. It was making me queasy. He wouldn’t pick someone else up in front of me – that was too much, no matter what he did on our off nights. At least, I didn’t think he’d pick someone up in front of me. I didn’t know what code of ethics governed his life, his way of being, his behaviour and choices.

I approached Yves, “I don’t want to interrupt anything. If I am, let me know and I’ll get out of here.”

“One more beer,” he said, “And we can go.”

One beer. One beer lasts a long time when you're not drinking any beer. I looked around for someone to talk to. I sat back down on the divan. A man from the bar noticed me and came over. “Ca va?” he asked. He handed me his business card. I read it, turning it over and over in my hands. It was for Videotron. I asked him what he did for the company, where he was from, what he liked most in Montreal. He oversaw a team of programmers, came from Trois Rivieres, and liked the patios in the summer. He was a good man, a good person, a decent person, upstanding, kind, and lonely. I was bored. I thought about a goldfish swimming back and forth in a fishbowl. He was talking about his first mortgage when Yves walked by and tapped me on the shoulder. “I’m ready,” Yves said and we left. We took a cab to his place. On the way, he said, “I haven’t seen her for a long time. We went to CEGEP together.” I rediscovered the business card the next day on the subway home in my pocket and threw it onto the tracks.

The next morning, Yves asked me what I meant by “interrupting anything.” It was a chance to clear things up, but I was paralyzed. I wanted to tell him that standing on shaky ground was starting to mess up my head. I needed some guidance, some clarity. But, of course, I didn’t want him to know that I cared. I didn’t want him to know that I had invested in him. I covered my face with the blanket. “I don’t want to talk about it now.” I was too embarrassed to admit I was jealous. I was too vulnerable to reveal my vulnerabilities.

I went out by myself during the week again to see a local band play at a local venue. A boy probably 10 years younger than me and somewhat drunk smiled at me and I smiled back. When he was close enough, he threw his arm around me.

“I want to marry you,” he said.

“Right now?” I asked.

“Right now,” he said.

“I don’t think I can,” I said.

“Why not?”

“Someone always gets hurt when there’s a marriage.”

“Do you want to have sex with me?” he asked.

“Yes,” I say.

“Did you just say yes? I can’t believe you said yes,” he said. He made the sign of the cross on his chest, kissed his hand, and raised it to heaven.

“Neither can I,” I said.

“My apartment is really small,” he said.

“That’s okay.”

“I’m kinda embarrassed.”

“Maybe you should be.”

I went back to his one room apartment. He had a mattress on the floor and one dirty dish in the sink. I washed it. He offered me beer, but I made myself tea in the microwave and sat on his mattress. He was nervous and didn’t know what to say to me. He sat next to me and put his hand on my thigh. Then he put his hand on my cheek and turned my face towards his. We started to kiss. He was sloppy. I thought about Yves and missed him. Why wasn’t I kissing Yves instead?

I left while he slept. I put on my hat and walked to the subway, only to discover one of my mittens was missing, probably left behind, a casualty, a POW. Over the past few weeks, I had lost a watch, a sock, a hat, a scarf, sunglasses, and now a mitten. I would have to buy a new pair. My mittenless hand felt cold and numb. I felt guilty and dirty. Why? I wasn’t betraying anyone. I stuffed both hands into my pockets and stared at the ground a few feet ahead of me as I walked. Yves was free, unattached, available. What’s good for the gander is good for the goose, they say. But I didn’t like it. Being a free agent didn’t feel free. I found myself suppressing natural and involuntary reactions. I felt pangs of jealousy and I didn’t know what to do with them. I didn’t enjoy having sex with strangers when what I really wanted was a consistent relationship. My suffering persisted in spite of my attempted precautionary measures. I was angry and depressed. I walked around Montreal feeling twisted and enraged inside, gritting my teeth, swearing a litany of Quebecois curses: tabernac, crisse, ciboire, colisse. Ostie de tabernac. Vas te faire foutre. Tu es un paysant. Tu es un bete commun.

The experiment was over.

Part III.

C'est vrai, c'est vrai qu'on a été battus, au fond, par quoi? Par l'argent puis des votes ethniques, essentiellement.

Break In Case of Emergency.

The subway comes and I get on with the crowd. I ride to Yves’ stop and walk to the exit for the bus. Only five minutes wait. I play a game in my head. If these were the only people left on earth, who would I have sex with? Then I assess each one. I don’t like his shirt and tattoo. He is going bald. Too young, old, ugly, tedious, uninspired, dirty. The game is most fun when I eliminate every man, and must pick the lesser of two evils. This time, though, I find someone who easily trumps the competition. He is leaning against a pole, reading Jack Kerouac’s Sur La Route. He looks up from his book and catches me staring. I turn away, embarrassed.

Yves lived a principled life. He was an artist, an atheist, an activist, a separatist, a Marxist or a socialist (I couldn't tell), an existentialist, an anti-capitalist, an anti-globalist, an anti-federalist, and vegitarian (a legumist). He was no armchairist or soap box speaker of convenience. He didn’t have a car, a cell phone, or a collection of useless but status-defining gadgetry unless it was related to the production and recording of music. He never went shopping for food or clothes. He was not interested in sensual pleasures or physical activity. He was unimpressed with people who were seduced by these kinds of trappings. He gave time and energy to all his causes, whether organizing a petition or arguing with a stranger in a bar. He spoke with the conviction and faith of a true believer about his utopia. In the same breath, he disparaged the tunnel vision and stupidity of Catholics and the Church. I once tried to point out that faith came in all flavours, but he shut me down, appealing to the cool indisputability of logic and reason. Or, in other words, I was a heretic if I deviated from his orthodoxy. He disapproved or disliked nearly everyone in secret, confiding in me a litany of grievances: unreliable, lazy, loud, stupid, insufferable, hypocritical, boring. I kept my mouth shut and played agreeable. Those who set their aim on higher goals always think they are justified when they trample on others en route.

We spoke in English most of the time because he was better at English than I was at French. At night, he was too tired to struggle for the words and he slipped in and out of French. He was impatient. When I interrupted him with one of my typical non-sequiturs, he responded with a snarky complaint, “It pisses me off when you do that.” I stood silent, stunned, agape as though he’d slapped me across the face. He continued, “I am the one speaking English to you. It pisses me off when you make fun of me.” I had trouble responding and the words took a moment to come out, “I’m not making fun of you. I would never do that.” I did a readjustment in my head and tried to calculate the unknowns in the equation. How much of what I said went AWOL? How much was misconstrued? How much did he pretend to understand? More than I realized, apparently. I had forgotten, yet again, that even though I journeyed into his realm and his world, he was extending himself for me in his own way. Perhaps uncomfortably. I sympathized with the predicament; speaking French was akin to losing the whole of my education from third grade through graduate school. The difference was that when I begged him to speak more slowly, he said, “I already am.”

“I think I stay with Yves because I like learning French,” I told my roommate. “It’s like a trial by fire and I go to places I would never go otherwise.”

“You know you could take a course in French or go back to French immersion.”

“It’s more than that,” I said. “There’s a whole other cultural world I am cut off from. It’s fun to touch that even if I don’t understand it.”

“Salut! Yves! Ca va?” a woman said, grabbing his arm as we passed her on Rue Mt. Royal.

“Ouais… Chui occupé…” he said and launched into a discussion of his latest project.

A typical situation. I stood silently next to him, like a heavy bag set to one side. She brushed her hair out of her eyes with one hand and sparkled. She was beautiful with big long lashed eyes, long full lips, a perfect petite figure, chic haircut, chic neck scarf, chic round toed flat shoes. Yves wrang his hands nervously. No one introduced themselves. No one attempted to speak to me. No one asked me if I could follow the conversation or if I had an opinion. But, I refused to shut down or zone out. I stayed alert. I repeated their words inside my head. I could follow conversations about topics I understood with some ease: music, literature, arts. I had more difficulty when it turned to friends, work, or politics. I listened anyway. I was building a vocabulary of phrases that repeated over and over again. N’importe quoi. Tsé. Y’a ben. Pis.

Afterwards, he said, “I should have introduced you.” Yves usually introduced me to the men, but never to the women.

“Quitte pas. I don’t care about things like that.”

As we walked along, he chirped about Serge Gainsbourgh, Thomas Ferein, Mononc Serge and a person in his band who owed him money for the studio that month. I thought about the woman. Surely I would share her fate. One day, he would just disappear, evaporate from my life without warning, declaration, or statement, suddenly occupied with other things. Instead of resurfacing after a week, he would be gone. We might pass each other on the street. Our conversation would be similar in content, in concern. Or perhaps we would just nod hello from afar because I didn’t want or need the pretense of obtaining acknowledgment from past connection. Shallow pleasantries are too painful an altitude after certain heights.

I left Yves’s early in the morning. I didn’t want to stay over anymore. I wanted to be home. As I was getting dressed, I saw evidence of my presence amidst the ruins of his room. L’ Étranger was still beside his bed, turned to page 25. My missing scarf was on his desk. A ticket from a place we went dancing was on top of a pile of papers. Did he think of me when he saw these things? Did he ever think of me? Was he sentimental or just sloppy? I took my scarf and left.

Leaving a relationship is tricky. Some people get it right the first time. Some people take several false starts.

I resolved not to speak to Yves. I wanted to see if he would call me if I didn’t call him. I figured if four days passed and he didn’t call me, I would face defeat and accept that he wasn’t into it and let it go. Like all addictions, the worst of it would be over after two days. I also resolved that I needed to give the appearance of being busier and to stop being so available. I vowed not pick up the phone in case he called. I was going to let every call go to voice mail.

By 3 p.m. on the second day, I was wound up and distraught. He hadn’t called and we’d been in contact more or less every day. What to do? What to do? I crawled into bed and tried to nap. I lay on my back and stared at the ceiling. Then I picked up Burrough’s Naked Lunch and started to read. The book made me sick.

The phone rang. Don’t get it. I picked it up.

“Hello?” I said.

“Salut,” said Yves. “Ca va. It’s me.”

Relief washed over me. Fuck. Tabernac.

“Hey, Yves, I was just thinking of you,” I said.

“I am very busy this week,” he said, “Maybe I can call you on Friday after rehearsal. We can get together.”

“Sounds good,” I said. “Call me Friday.”

“I am rehearsing with my band until 8. Or maybe 9.”

“Okay, call me then.”

I was going to have to find a stronger raison de finir.

“I called you yesterday,” I said, “Where have you been?”

“Ah, I’m busy,” he said. “You know me. I have so many projects. I am collaborating with a friend to make the documentary about the Quebec city protest. I have four bands now. I am rehearsing every day.”

“Do you ever say no to anything?”

“When other people tell me they were up so late, until 11:30… that’s not late.”

“I think other people are busy too, but they just prioritize differently.”

“What do you mean?”

Silence.

I regretted saying anything. He did not sound pleased.

“They focus on different things. They clean and do, you know, ordinary mundane things.” I said.

“What do you mean?” he asked again.

I hated explaining myself because I couldn’t tell if he was offended or if he just didn’t understand what I was saying. “Your apartment is chaotic.”

“What do you mean?”

In my mind, it was a factual statement, a generous one. It wasn't the apartment that was just chaotic. It was his life, but the apartment was less elusive. It was easy to see the chaos there. Everything was dusty, every corner webby. The bathroom garbage hadn't been changed in at least a month. His floor was covered with his clothing and he just wore the same things over and over again, never washing them, or if he did, they just went to the floor. The kitchen had about 500 beer bottles in it waiting to be recycled. Everything had holes -- the walls, the ceiling, the cabinets, even the microwave, which he never used, but still. The last person to do the dishes was me and that was some time before we split up at some point earlier. But, by the time I could figure out all the elements that led to my assessment, the moment had passed. He snapped me out of my thought, asking “Are you there?”

“Yeah,” I said, after a pause.

I resolved a second time to leave. I thought that in order to stop, I would get out of town and visit my brother in Boston for a week when my roommate was away on vacation. When I left, I didn’t call or email him. I just packed a bag, put the dog in a kennel, and drove to Boston. When I came back, there was a message on the phone from Yves, asking me where I was. I saved the message and went about my day. So far so good. At night, though, I was unable to focus. I tried to write, but found myself staring at the computer for an hour. I tried to read, watch a movie, play guitar, exercise, call a friend. I finally walked out to a local bar around the corner. A counterful of burdened grey men and anorexic yellow women turned to look at me when I walked in the door. I didn’t get a drink or talk to anyone. After an hour, I came home and listened to his message again. It sounded sincere.

I called him.

“I called you,” he said, “Where have you been?”

“Busy. Don’t you have a show this weekend?”

“I have a show on Saturday,” he said.

“Can I come?” I asked.

“Why do you ask me that?” he said. “It is a public thing. Anyone can go.”

“Well, I don’t want to interfere with your modus operandi,” I said, “If you’re going to pick up chicks or anything.”

He laughed. He told me where and what time.

We’d not seen each other in over a week and I was nervous. Another round of Russian roulette. I’d either find relief in his sweetness and light or find my brains spattered against the back wall of the bathroom from his neglect and seething annoyance. I studied myself in the mirror and tried to adjust my ill-tempered hair and perfect my make-up. Futile. I would never be a beautiful French girl. I would never be the coolest person in the room. I would never be a free-spirited libertine. I would never be anyone other than myself. I’m not sure if it mattered anyway.

The first thing I did at the show was walk to the bar and get a drink. How long had it been? Yves didn’t see me come in. He was talking to a friend. I finished the drink, and ordered another. Halfway through, my anxiety melted off. Yves saw me and waved. I nodded. Then he came over.

“How come you didn’t come and say hello?” he asked me, “Are you avoiding me?”

I was envious of the simple access he had to difficult questions.

“No,” I said, “I just wanted to sit at the bar.”

He sat next to me and leaned in close, then brushed my hair away from my face.

“I had a good trip,” I said. He didn’t even ask me about it, and I wanted to hold back the details and create some mystery of where the week had gone, but didn’t and couldn’t. I told him everything.

“I always have a song in my head,” he told me, “But I am not a good guitarist.”

“What?” I asked.

“I am not a very good guitarist,” he said. “I don’t practice scales or do exercises.”

“But you’re always writing music,” I said.

“I am practicing more now,” he said, “Because I want to go forward.”

The third time I tried to leave, I met someone on-line and we met up for coffee. I ended up buying him a beer. We sat for hours in an artsy café in Mile End, talking easily, effortlessly, incessantly. He asked me questions about myself, about my life, about who I was and where I was going. I was uncommitted, hesitant until he began to describe the sounds made by the freight trains backing up and switching lanes on the tracks outside his apartment. Then, I wanted to know everything about him. He told me about his adventures escaping forest fires in BC as he drove across Canada in a yellow school bus with his ex-girlfriend. Then he told me about the pastel buildings of Prague and their street vendors. I went home, adrift, dreamily, enchanted, charmed, singing his praises. When I touched down again, I realized not only was I enamoured, but this could be my way out of the complicated and miserable situation with Yves. Surely this new boy liked me too from the way he spoke to me, looked at me, questioned me. I was happy for the first time in months and the rage in me subsided.

But then days passed and he didn’t call.

Three Simple Rules For Figuring Out How Your Date Went While Maintaining Dignity

1) A person who doesn’t call usually has a reason.

2) Don’t bother to figure out this reason because the outcome is the same.

3) Buck up, little camper.

I stayed over at Yves’s, but couldn’t sleep. I sat by the window in his room that overlooked the train tracks. Yves told me about the history of these tracks and the Canadian railway in one of his separatist monologues. In the red and white wash of history, the railway was a symbol of the heroic push to unify Canada coast to coast. “The country is based on a scandal,” Yves said. BC demanded the railway in order to join with Canada instead of being annexed to the United States. Those involved probably wanted the railroad to support their own business interests in the west. American-sympathizer Hugh Allan bribed the government into awarding him the first contract.

I watched two freight trains pass, both moving from east to west, perhaps from Halifax to Vancouver, each taking at least fifteen minutes to go by. Each one was a long string of freight cars linked in haphazard variations: uncovered and covered hoppers, reefers, lumber cars, tank cars, box cars, empty flatbeds and flatbeds loaded high with cargo, sometimes piggybacked three containers high. The cars bore the logos of shipping companies from around the world: CP Rail, CN, AG, Westinghouse. Graffiti from a hundred different hands covered a few. The trains continued on and I could hear the sound of the road barriers coming down to block car traffic at an intersection in the distance.

I weighed the situation with Yves in my head. Judgment. Was it necessary? Weren’t things evident already? The die was cast. The Egyptian god of the dead weighed my life. The feather was lighter than my heart. I had to unburden. I had to advance. I wanted to go forward too. In my head, I practiced the conversation. I tried different versions, considered different responses. I couldn’t predicate his response. I was afraid of what he might say. I would be vulnerable. He would bolt. That would be that. I had to accept what was coming.

I pretended to be asleep when he went to shower, and collected my thoughts in order to lay down the first words. When he came back into the room, I was brave. I said, “Can I ask you something?”

“What is wrong?” he asked me, “I have never seen you so serious. You look so serious.”

“We need to talk… and it is hard. I am not good at this.”

“What?” he asked. “We can talk about anything, whenever you like.”

I looked at my hands.

He sat down on the bed next to me, then he lay back and sighed,“Do you want to see someone else?”

“No,” I said, and then lied, “I haven’t carried on with anyone since I met you.”

“What?” he asked.

“Is this a serious thing?” I asked. I didn't know what to ask.

He said, “I am tired.”

“All those girls you’re talking to. I mean, how important am I? Are you seeing all those other people?”

No answer.

Was he evading the question? Had I said the wrong thing?

“Don't worry about it. The answer isn’t that important,” I said. If it isn’t that important, then why did I ask?

Yves said nothing.

You should ask him again. Why don’t you stand up for yourself? Why don’t you tell him enough is enough.

I didn’t ask again. I couldn’t. I felt vulnerable and I collapsed.

No answer was the answer.

I didn’t want the uncomfortable silence to continue. I accepted his answer as it was. No answer was the answer. No answer meant that I meant nothing.

At home, my roommate was in the shower. She yelled out to me, “How was Yves’s?”

I didn’t respond.

When she came out, she asked, “You look so serious.”

“I just asked Yves about where things stand.”

“What happened? What did he say?”

“He didn’t answer me.”

“You should have pressed him for it.”

“I couldn’t.”

“That’s fucked up,” she said.

“Tell me about it.”

Yves disappears after asking him about our situation. As predicted. I am despondent, but resign myself to the fact it is over. Ultimately, I had to be true to myself and ask. I had to conclude the experiment, assess the results, publish the report. I had to establish the rules that governed the system, even if doing so brought about its destruction. Because in essence, I am not an artist, just a non-conformist. I need rules in order to break them with reckless abandon, even if I am punished by them, even if it means I have to revise them all the time, even if I am often wrong. Things evolve and I evolve with them. I buy myself a new pair of mittens to try and cheer myself up. I pick a bright colour – fuscia – since it matches my boots and my hat, but not my coat.

Sunday afternoon, Yves calls. He is cheery. He doesn’t even mention our last conversation. “I have a movie about Walmart,” he says, “You should see it. Walmart is bad. They are destroying the economy. And they sell this movie at Walmart. You will like it. I think you will like it.”

“I don’t shop at Walmart,” I say, “I boycott them because they closed a store that unionized in Quebec somewhere.”

“Yes, Jonquiere. That is the one.”

“What are you doing right now?”

“I have rehearsal.” he says.

“Do you want me to come over after,” I ask.

“Okay,” he says.

It is 1 a.m. when I leave. It is late at night. I will likely catch the last subway.

On the bus, Mr. Kerouac Sur La Route, sits down in the seat next to me. He is listening to an iPod. I can not look at him because I am embarrassed for sizing him up sexually. He smells faintly of shampoo. I want to touch him, but don’t. I listen to the conversation taking place in the seat behind me. Two women are speaking French and I understand the gist of it.

“The girl I work with is never there.”

“The one who gets sick leave.”

“Yes, she says it is her medication for depression. She says it makes her tired and the doctors are always adjusting it.”

“I think she is taking advantage.”

“A little.”

“It’s only a problem if you have to pick up her work.”

“I pick up her work and it is a problem. I can’t do my work if I am doing her work.”

“Why don’t you say anything?”

“We all live in the same world and it is good to be compassionate.”

Mr. Kerouac Sur La Route gets off the bus. I shift into his empty seat, which is warm from his body heat and still smells of his shampoo. I stare out the window and watch the storefronts of Montreal go past. The parks and the trees, the cars and the sidewalks, the patisseries, the bars, the depanneurs, the epiceries, the salons, the restaurants, the fruiteries, the buanderies, the bronzages, the guichets, the cafes, the boutiques, the wind, the leaves, the melting snow, the couples, the singles, the signs, the graffiti, the salt in the street, the birds, the cats, the posters, the mailboxes, the garbage cans, the stairways, the bricks, the doorways, the streetlights, the bicycles, the trucks, the police cars, the streets, the houses, the apartments, everyone and everything in Montreal asleep and awake.

I do not even notice when I miss my stop.

©2006 Rachel Levine