Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Camille Laurens

he couldn’t do any of those things. He couldn’t bear being on his own and, because I lived in Paris, I couldn’t go see him very often (I sometimes think that was the main reason he finally moved out to the country: to make it difficult for me to see him), so he offered to put Chris up. Marguerite Duras wrote something about that, about the fact that men really like being among men, do you see what I mean, there’s a sort of laziness, a lack of interest in women— too different, too tiring. Women require an effort that they don’t feel like making, not long term anyway. Except for fucking, I guess. They bolster each other with their mutual virility, they don’t want a woman inside their heads or right in front of their faces. I imagine Joe was also thinking he could resuscitate his younger days, start over. He could never deal with the idea of growing old. In his own mind he was still eighteen, he fantasized about very young girls, minors, virgins— did you know that the combination of “teen” and “sex” is the most common Google search in the world?— well, basically, he thought you could keep playing the same film over and over. That ’s what they did, anyway. Chris moved in with Joe, like in the good old days. I’d never met Chris in the flesh. Joe had told me a few things about him, that was all. I think he didn’t want me to meet him: he hid it well but Joe was extremely jealous, he was always frightened of losing what he had, including what he didn’t want. If he’d lost something

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