Intimate Big Events
1
I love going to IN events. There are always so many people (and never enough free food) that you could hardly remember anybody’s name at the end. Those events are perfectly indulging for that reason, except of course once in a long while you meet one of those who you cannot forget.
One week after the monthly official event on the boat with that embarrassing astrology robot, I found myself reflecting what that guy called Henry said:
“In Paris people are either flirting or brooding and there’s a fine line between the two.”
It’s been a while I didn’t hear anything so… refined. I used to harbor a dream of becoming a writer - I likely still do but I don’t sense it that much any more (what are dreams anyway?). I reckoned Henry was gay or bisexual upon the first sight and I still think so. I wonder if we all emit some sort of smell or air which tells people things we hate to say out loud. Like a stink that scares away the wrong people - that would be convenient wouldn’t it? Like me, do I smell like “I am newly divorced and not in a hurry to get marry again in fact not even eager to date”? I wonder how many people could smell it?
In the case of Henry he carried an air that screamed “I am kinda gay and I am happy about it but I would be very upset if that’s a problem for you so be careful”. I had a very pleasant conversation with Henry. He reminded me a very dear friend I had back in college. In fact now that I think of it I have no idea how we felt off, Morgan and I, and where she went. Everything seemed to back off in my memory since I started dating Theo the third year of college. Theo was a beautiful young man of French and Italian descent. I used to tell Morgan to me the Italian men are the sexiest and the French the most romantic.
“Which one would you pick?” She would ask.
“Both. Why settle for less?” I would answer.
That was some girly fantasy based on movie watching, novel reading, and gossiping. I felt comfortable telling Morgan anything and everything. I think I even told her I had a wet dream once about a girl from high school. Only once.
She didn’t say anything memorable. But that’s what I loved about her. She was like the land for me, absorbing all the shocks and jolts I pass down from an overly active mind fueled by youthful hormone.
But why on earth would Henry remind me of Morgan? They bear no resemblance. Except the kind of things we would talk about. With Morgan I was the sensitive and brooding one. We both wanted to live in France but I was the one who made it here. And hell how I am not proud of it. Marrying to a man you met only one month before and moving home across Atlantics sounds like either a suicide or a lottery. Or both. I wonder where that girl has gone… that girl that Morgan brought out in me… so spoiled, offensive, wounded, insatiable. Theo was the man trying to sooth me with all the meek love he had. I used him, used and dumped. How is Theo doing now? I hope he found someone good for him. He’s the type who always needs a girl, a woman to follow. Not that he’s weak or can’t do things on his own. He simply loves to stick around the girl he loves. Even if she’s deep in shit, or especially so. I for one didn’t make life easy for him.
So that evening at the IN event Henry and I we were chatting about our impressions of various places, before we landed on Paris and London. He’s from the south of England and had lived in London for the last seven years, visiting Paris for an indefinite amount of time, not even sure temporary or permanent. Looking for a change, or forced by a change. I got it. I didn’t need to ask, sensing he could easily lose his delicate graceful balance if probed. I felt I have known him for a long time, though I knew almost nothing about him. He wore a flannel shirt and a pair of classic denim jeans, which didn’t stop the well calculated small-town dapperness from leaking through, from the pale skin out the sleeve all the way through the long fingers, from the smooth neck out the collar. I saw that his civilized constraint was not ruined by seven years of living in that diabolic London. How long will he keep it all together?
They had that damn astrology robot standing in the middle of the hall. The organizer of that IN event, a professional psychologist by the way, hired an astrologer to entertain us. That title “Find Your True Love - Astrology Evening” in the announcement of that event scared away the same amount of people as it attracted. Many people have irritated love or hate reaction towards astrology, the rest would say they don’t believe it with a scornful expression and play along. The astrologer came with a robot, which was in fact a small screen attached to a long leg to stand on the floor. And the robot turned out to be doing all of the work that evening. We were invited to put our birth information in that robot with a small screen face and a leg, and wait for the robot to make the match for us based on our birth date and time and place. I couldn’t believe how many people were lining up to put their birth data in that robot, all of them swore they don’t believe astrology at all, "of course not”. At its peak there seemed to be at least seventy or eighty people in the hall. At the end the crucial moment came, after being rebooted seven times, the exhausted robot gave only the five best matches, which disappointed most. What about the rights of the less perfect matches? Where’s equality? To make the matter worse, three of the five matches contained pseudo names - Lady Noodles, Hulk, are the ones I remember. Most people started leaving at that moment.
While people were putting in their birth information I came across this guy called Henry, who was one of the few gentle men who spoke a decent English there. And he never asked me why I was here and what I do in life so we went ahead conversing in good humor. Usually at IN most people do a short self-introduction providing a list of answers to a supposed interrogation, no, to make it easier for the other people to get to know you, but in my case these pieces information usually create more misunderstandings than understandings. So I skipped it wherever I could. Henry was new to IN so he didn’t do that. For him all is fresh and interesting in Paris. How exciting life is when you move into a new country. You focus on the adventure guided by the excitements generated from curiosity.
Until, at some point the past catches up with you. Oh it always does, at the most unexpected moment in the most unexpected ways. Like I would never expect to be thinking about Morgan because I cannot forget Henry.
(End of Chapter 1)
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