New life

What a wreck, what a glory.

Marseille, le "oui, mais" des Français, Nice, je t'attendrai sur la plage; back in London, Highgate Hero the Highgate zero, late night with offie swill and my favorite fag stag in that disgusting park on Whitechapel High Street; graduation, with honours I dare add; Germany, Munich, gay strikeout, Klenze my hero, Berlin or Brooklyn-on-Spree, slutty green women's shorts and pastéis de nata on the Kastanienallee, Tanja and Philip and more more more (how do you like it, how do you like it), the Badeschiff, a wasted night in Hamburg, Kassel, MODERNITY LIFE EDUCATION, Frankfurt, "You've done so much for a community that neither of us is a part of," Muenster, bike woes, rain woes, Lufthansa woes, a giant hole in the ground signed Bruce Nauman, Cologne, Charlotte Posenenske, bachelor machines, get me the fuck out of this country; London again, my disaster of an ex-boyfriend, my disaster of a non-boyfriend, my own disastrousness; and, more generally, "Je suis un homme" or "Kiss&Cry" on my new Blackberry while walking across London Bridge, or the 26 bus to the National for Saint Joan or Philistines, or the glory of living on Wimbledon Common and the misery of living in Regent's Park; and on to infinity.

Really, it feels like infinity: I've got August blues.

Today at 2:20 I submitted my thesis. Two days early. I'm now, assuming that I don't fail, a master of arts. Nice birthday gift. When I bumped into a friend in Russell Square and realized that I had nowhere to be, no responsibilities, no deadlines, it was mildly disappointing but mostly a thrill.

Off to Marseille tomorrow, and thank God: I haven't been to the sea in almost two years.

Ten days to go, and my thesis pretty much doesn't exist yet. I have five precepts written on a page taped above my desk:

• Who's number one?
• Désirs d'écrire
• Fake it 'til you make it
• Precisely according to its design
• So don't make me say it

And today's nugget of wisdom, from my old adviser: "Stop pretending to subvert commodification by demonstrating what everyone knows—that capital is everywhere."

Blame my silence on my thesis, but I had to post this, one of the most brilliant images I've ever seen. Dow Jones, you're going down.

2:09 PM Tom: it's going to be a pretty stressful few weeks, but soon over

If money were no object, which five luxury items would you rush right out and buy? 
Submitted by lorilyn.

Let me start with a little disquisition on shopping. Obviously the last public activity remaining, and thank God for that--do you know that I've been to Hyde Park exactly once in the nine months I've lived here, yet I shudder to think of the times I've gone up the escalators at Selfridges, down them at Harvey Nicks. There is a little movie, a remake, set in London called What a Girl Wants in which the American girl, who has come here to meet her long-lost Tory toff father, feels oppressed by all the shopping: big silk gowns, diamonds as big as the Ritz. (At one point she says to her evil stepsister, without any malice, "You're couture, I'm vintage.") Her scruffier love interest understands her plight, tells her that she has to "be herself." Which, of course, she can only do by going off and shopping for more things. I think that they go to Portobello, but it might have been Camden. Certainly wasn't Spitalfields, because if it were I would be talking about this movie to everyone who ever came to my house.

Anyway. My list is going to stick to "luxury items," for if money were truly no object I would probably put it towards things that this question wasn't meant to elicit: a Paul Rudolph house, a giant Christopher Wool, regular flights to Miami and Rio and Tokyo, several first editions, a houseboy. But, limiting myself to those items that one can buy without too much forenotice:

1. A razor-sharp suit, grey or navy, I'm not sure which. Black I have handled. From where? Don't say Dior--I have a pair of killer sneakers from them but a Dior suit, it seems to me, makes you look like a Hasidic Jew. I might say Bruno Pieters, but that's a bit femme. I'm not sure. Perhaps from a legitimate tailor. In the debate between English and Italian tailoring I have always heretically backed the French, and wouldn't it be lovely to roll up at Charvet and throw down some demands (well, more for shirts, I guess). Yet, at my tender age, I have trouble getting tailors to do what I ask. "It is not supposed to fit like a blue jean!" said one Italian to me. On the contrary, dearest, that's precisely what I want.
2. And another one, this one a little slacker, beige, and in something nice and summery: probably not linen, maybe a nice supple cotton.
   
3. A set of luggage from Goyard. In particular, I'd like one hard trunk, a pair of soft bags for lighter traveling (there are times, you know, when you prefer to carry your own bag), an attaché case, and a few assorted leather goods: wallet, credit card holder, portfolio, condom case.
4. A few dozen box sets of all the great classical composers: the only stuff worth buying on CD these days. Obviously something to play them on too, but in my current transient state I'm not investing.
5. And some fabulous pastries and chocolates, shipped from all my favorite places: Gugelhupf and Sachertorte from Vienna, macaroons from Paris, green tea-flavored chocolate from Le Chocolat de H in Tokyo, and, from H&H on 44th Street between 11th and the West Side Highway, a dozen poppy seed bagels.

Here I am on the Eurostar back from Paris—my fourth time there since I moved to London, and the longest by far, over two weeks. I can’t say that I really did much. I didn’t have a single great meal, not one. I went to the theater with my father, but just the Comédie-Française and only as a matter of course. I saw a few exhibitions, it is true: my father loved the Praxiteles show. And I had my first real studio visit, except that it wasn’t a studio, it was an apartment.

Yet I had a fucking blast in Paris and my happiness there seems all out of proportion with the manner in which I actually spent my time. For example, a few days this fortnight I sat for an hour or two at Point Ephémère on the canal and used this computer, talking to a friend or two on Gmail or just reading the newspaper. It was fabulous. More fabulous than whatever your equivalent is in London? What equivalent? Paris, it’s funny but hardly surprising, is a brilliant place to do nothing.

And, with the election in the background of everything, doing nothing had a charge that made it seems so much more important. On the 90-second walk from Jaurès metro station to Point Ephémère you pass at least eighty campaign posters (2/3 Ségolène, a lot of Olivier Besancenot, and it’s worth remembering that the name of the metro station isn’t irrelevant, Sarkozy having elegized Jaurès 17 times in one speech). I went to a PS rally the Tuesday before the first round, really just for a T-shirt, at which Bertrand Delanoë spoke.

And on election day? On election day I stood on the Rue de Solférino for almost eight hours. I had an early-evening beer and read Le Monde (I had already finished Le Journal du Dimanche) on the corner of St-Germain and then made a friend or two as we watched the giant television and early results come in. Lots of cheering, lots and lots of press. On my little Comme des Garçons shirt two stickers, Mouvement des Jeunes Socialistes and the very handsome one with a blue sky and Helvetica. I spoke to a lovely militante for a few hours, tried not to cheer “Ségolène présidente!” because it’s not my election, got lectured by a seventysomething Martiniquan on the importance of Cahier d’un rétour au pays natal, and had a blast.

I left around 10—stopped before the Pont de Solférino by a honeymooning American couple who asked me about the war on terror and, naturally, supported Barack Obama—but went back at 11:30 or so, right when a hoarse François Hollande arrived and worked us up. We danced (not me, I guess, my attempts to cruise PSers a big failure; the one I chatted up was straight, a DSK supporter, and kind of poor) until the candidate arrived. It was like Nicole Kidman had showed up: flash bulbs, crazed fans. “J’appelle toutes les forces de la jeunesse,” that’s a phrase I remember, and, finally, “En avant!” Then it was over, and I installed myself on a window railing to watch her get in her car. Nicole Kidman, or maybe it was like Ceausescu. I got a nice cameraphone video, saw her smile, and joined the hundred or so kids who ran after her car going in the wrong direction down the boulevard. I don’t want to cast a judgment on whether it was cool or pathetic, but it was surely worthwhile and will supply me with English-language stories for decades.

I suppose that my great discovery of this fortnight was at the end of a long, long night. Jeanne and I had failed to get inside the opening of Airs de Paris despite our invitation and decided not to spend two hours in the sweltering glass hall. Followed at least four hours of wine at Le Fusil, when we were finally joined by four men, including the vituperative Stéphane, with whom I had a long talk about how much he hated me when we first met and loved me now, and the dreamy Jean-Marc, my dream of a floppy-haired chain-smoking straight French boy (a photographer, what else). At two they took me to this killer Marais bar, or really restaurant with the tables pushed to the sides, and it was delightful. Not as smoky as you’d expect, and dead serious—a real alcoholic’s place, as Stéphane described it. At 3ish a crowd broke out in “Tous les garçons et les filles,” and later on as it got sparser an Irish-sounded woman belted song after song. The four of us sat on the steps and I tried to get Jean-Marc to get to talk about sex with me (all he would say is that he certainly fucks more than I do), and when I got into bed, alone, at 4:30 I decided that my year in Europe was not a failure.

On Sunday I undertook, with Cornelia, a serious walk: from the Thames all the way north to Hampstead. It was glorious. Bumped into Max and his boyfriend at Kenwood House, home of the famous Rembrandt self-portrait with circles. And while Cornelia had already made my day with such a glorious outing, what made it truly unforgettable was her reaction upon eating her first Chipwich: she demanded a second.

And yesterday I had a drink with a guy. Who knows, who knows.

As for today, it's 60 degrees and I'm wasting the day talking to you. Off to meet Lauren, back from New York, and to stay outside.

Whatever disappointments Nick has caused in my life, he's really good for me; he's a big factor in my newfound love of London. Up before nine this morning I grabbed coffee from Pat Val and we walked over London Bridge to Borough Market. We scurried around and took too many samples (brownies, sausages) but I came away with pecorino from one of the Italian cheese stores, tagliatelle from the pasta woman, some bananas, nice mâche, and, as ever, some Poilâne bread. By now it was only 11, so Nick and I had a glass of wine before his brother and soon-to-be-sister-in-law turned up, at which point we had another. Then lunch, at which we had a few more. Four glasses of wine before 4pm shouldn't be a regular practice, but in present company it made for an ideal Saturday afternoon.