Jeffrey Michael Anderson

“There were the usual paunchy, bespectacled gentlemen with avid, sometimes despairing eyes, the usual knife-blade lean, tight trousered boys. One could never be sure, as concerns these latter, whether they were after money or blood or love. They moved about the bar incessantly, cadging cigarettes and drinks, with something behind they eyes at once terribly vulnerable and terribly hard. There were, of course, les folles, always dressed in the most improbable combinations, screaming like parrots the details of their latest love-affairs - their love-affairs always seemed to be hilarious. Occasionally one would swoop in, quite late in the evening, to convey the news that he - but they always called each other "she”- had just spent time with a celebrated movie star, or boxer. Then all the others close in on this newcomer and they looked like a peacock garden and sounded like a barnyard. I always found it difficult to believe that they ever went to bed with anybody for a man who wanted a woman would certainly have rather had a real one and a man who wanted a man would certainly not want one of THEM. Perhaps, indeed, that was why they screamed so loud. There was the boy who worked all day, it was said, in the post-office, who came out at night wearing makeup and earrings and with his heavy blonde hair piled high. Sometimes he actually wore a skirt and high heels. He usually stood alone unless Guillaume walked over to tease him. People said that he was very nice but I confess that his utter grotesqueness made me uneasy, perhaps in the same way that the sight of monkeys eating their own excrement turns some people’s stomachs. They might not mind so much if monkeys did not - so grotesquely - resemble human beings.“