IN EUROPE!!
Thus far, in all my travels in Boston and London, I have not had such a singular striking encounter than with that of Francesco Pierre Delacroix, the flaxen haired Piano tuner with whom I have begun to share my nightly drink in the bar (next to) the hotel Moncreux Benweux Bianca.
I met him at a train station off the coast of Madrid. I was with some throwaway friends of mine, some Jennifer and Stacey, sorority girls who happened to be Italian like myself and thus were allowed along for the ride. And while I was en route to meet a high school friend of mine whom, under other circumstances, I would be unsure to wave hello to on the street, and yet in this case my liferaft of American-Washingtonian nouveau riche culture, my heart sang for the man I saw with his longtime half-sister, the exceedingly French Emilia.
Emilia stood barely five foot four, with a beauty-marked tear forever confirming her Parisian birth. She wears those light, tan colored flowery sundresses that look like fading photographs. Francesco was in his suit, a dark brown, the only suit he owns, a novice shoesalesman look, a Spaniard really, and was waving goodbye to the father they shared, a low-ranking treasurer who claims descent from Burt Lancaster. I told Emilia the part about her dress like the photograph and that went from there. Soon we were in their topless automobile, laughing like old friends, sans my shitty friends, and they took me to their tent. An old-style canvas tent, the kind Meryl Streep and Robert Redford used to help imperialize Africa, complete with full dining set, white linen included, in the middle of the French wilderness. I was sad the day Emilia left for Milan to visit her wealthy, aging boyfriend, Juan val Jeane,
who not incidentally pays for her education at the Moreau Truffant school of art. The reports of a growing nazi lesbian population there are grossly exaggerated. I had just begun to idolize her.
Alone with Francesco, we began to talk about many things, bagels among them, how were they made? What does a bagel taste like in a land not robust with jews, and who makes them and why, who invented them, our wives will be like this bagel, and so on. But yes mostly the basics of bagels. Francesco was most interested in the flavor of the yeast. All would be quiet, and then suddenly Fran would leap from the tent in nothing but a hastily knit travel shawl and a cheap coral lariat, ripping bagels and croissants from the special carrying bag we designated and thrusting his tongue through the bagel’s welcoming, womb-like central hole. Here was a man no yeast could deny. If the sexual tension between us was rising at the nude lunches in which we, Francesco and I, were living in a post-apocalyptic world in which the pastries allotted to us were all that was left, and that, even so, each lunchtime we would throw life to the wind and live only in that moment, that magical naked lunch that Francesco and I share, and consumed our weeks worth of hard, stale, crunchy, infinitely delicious rolls and bagelings in that one meal, then it definitely reached its peak when the apocalyptic world dissolved to reveal Francesco and I delivering unto to each other frantic, four-minute handjobs that gloriously ended in the releasing of Fran’s pet doves Jules and Jim. He meant very little to me at that time.
On a particularly disasterously naked lunch, Emilia returned with a friend of hers, a Russian heiress who spoke only tagalog and complained of living in a hostel with a chorus composed of Asian men, which, her own fault, was in Chinatown. Walking in at the absolute worst possible moment, the heiress, Grushenka, fainted at the sight of two beautiful and bodied adonises, one dark and one light, to suit either fancy; and woke up not remembering where she was and who any of us, including Emilia, were ever were. By then I was wrapped in Francesco’s dressing robe, a thin cloth seemingly made from the same beam from whence was crafted the dress in which I first gazed upon Emilia. Emilia eased my reddened cheeks with her sly smile and eyes that laughed with us, perhaps predicting as much would happen, but certainly wondering what had happened to all the bread. Francesco, on the other hand, was sullen and would not speak to me for a few days, embarrassed and willing to blame me, a mostly random lover, for his own folly of timing.
The four of us drove home in an automobile of a very different sort, pausing only to return Grushenka.
I would miss Emilia very much, but yes, the highlight of my European travels, and yes all my travels really, the most striking, is when I began to share a drink with Francesco a short four weeks later at the bar (next to) the hotel Moncreux Benweux Bianca. Sharing drinks and a laugh, Francesco giggling at his own haughty, intolerant nature, and then me ultimately killing him with a naughtily placed arsenic and a quick bed drop into the nest of a lovely Phillipino prostitute I had met named Juan. You would think Latin women would know by now to slow down on naming boys Juan.
I met him at a train station off the coast of Madrid. I was with some throwaway friends of mine, some Jennifer and Stacey, sorority girls who happened to be Italian like myself and thus were allowed along for the ride. And while I was en route to meet a high school friend of mine whom, under other circumstances, I would be unsure to wave hello to on the street, and yet in this case my liferaft of American-Washingtonian nouveau riche culture, my heart sang for the man I saw with his longtime half-sister, the exceedingly French Emilia.
Emilia stood barely five foot four, with a beauty-marked tear forever confirming her Parisian birth. She wears those light, tan colored flowery sundresses that look like fading photographs. Francesco was in his suit, a dark brown, the only suit he owns, a novice shoesalesman look, a Spaniard really, and was waving goodbye to the father they shared, a low-ranking treasurer who claims descent from Burt Lancaster. I told Emilia the part about her dress like the photograph and that went from there. Soon we were in their topless automobile, laughing like old friends, sans my shitty friends, and they took me to their tent. An old-style canvas tent, the kind Meryl Streep and Robert Redford used to help imperialize Africa, complete with full dining set, white linen included, in the middle of the French wilderness. I was sad the day Emilia left for Milan to visit her wealthy, aging boyfriend, Juan val Jeane,
who not incidentally pays for her education at the Moreau Truffant school of art. The reports of a growing nazi lesbian population there are grossly exaggerated. I had just begun to idolize her.
Alone with Francesco, we began to talk about many things, bagels among them, how were they made? What does a bagel taste like in a land not robust with jews, and who makes them and why, who invented them, our wives will be like this bagel, and so on. But yes mostly the basics of bagels. Francesco was most interested in the flavor of the yeast. All would be quiet, and then suddenly Fran would leap from the tent in nothing but a hastily knit travel shawl and a cheap coral lariat, ripping bagels and croissants from the special carrying bag we designated and thrusting his tongue through the bagel’s welcoming, womb-like central hole. Here was a man no yeast could deny. If the sexual tension between us was rising at the nude lunches in which we, Francesco and I, were living in a post-apocalyptic world in which the pastries allotted to us were all that was left, and that, even so, each lunchtime we would throw life to the wind and live only in that moment, that magical naked lunch that Francesco and I share, and consumed our weeks worth of hard, stale, crunchy, infinitely delicious rolls and bagelings in that one meal, then it definitely reached its peak when the apocalyptic world dissolved to reveal Francesco and I delivering unto to each other frantic, four-minute handjobs that gloriously ended in the releasing of Fran’s pet doves Jules and Jim. He meant very little to me at that time.
On a particularly disasterously naked lunch, Emilia returned with a friend of hers, a Russian heiress who spoke only tagalog and complained of living in a hostel with a chorus composed of Asian men, which, her own fault, was in Chinatown. Walking in at the absolute worst possible moment, the heiress, Grushenka, fainted at the sight of two beautiful and bodied adonises, one dark and one light, to suit either fancy; and woke up not remembering where she was and who any of us, including Emilia, were ever were. By then I was wrapped in Francesco’s dressing robe, a thin cloth seemingly made from the same beam from whence was crafted the dress in which I first gazed upon Emilia. Emilia eased my reddened cheeks with her sly smile and eyes that laughed with us, perhaps predicting as much would happen, but certainly wondering what had happened to all the bread. Francesco, on the other hand, was sullen and would not speak to me for a few days, embarrassed and willing to blame me, a mostly random lover, for his own folly of timing.
The four of us drove home in an automobile of a very different sort, pausing only to return Grushenka.
I would miss Emilia very much, but yes, the highlight of my European travels, and yes all my travels really, the most striking, is when I began to share a drink with Francesco a short four weeks later at the bar (next to) the hotel Moncreux Benweux Bianca. Sharing drinks and a laugh, Francesco giggling at his own haughty, intolerant nature, and then me ultimately killing him with a naughtily placed arsenic and a quick bed drop into the nest of a lovely Phillipino prostitute I had met named Juan. You would think Latin women would know by now to slow down on naming boys Juan.