“So you try and persuade yourself that there are periods, places, opportunities that are more favorable for meeting people than others. I let my coworkers drag me along to bars and nightclubs because I was convinced that that’s what those places were for. But I suppose I was not as well cut out to be a hunter as some are . . . ”
That was precisely what a little man, scowling as he leaned against the radiator in the back of the room, was thinking. For Philippe Saint-Jean, like Denis Benitez and Yves Lehaleur, this was also the first session, and he was not at all certain that there would be a second one. To justify his presence there he had come up with several clever alibis, and he was almost disappointed when no one was interested in hearing them. He would have pleaded intellectual curiosity, he’d gotten wind of these mysterious secret meetings from his small circle of fellow thinkers. Even so, he had nearly turned around and left when he was at the door to the room for fear of exposing himself to others’ gazes: he was well known. Or at least so he thought, adding with a hint of modesty: he was relatively well known.
After his brilliant studies at university, he had obtained a PhD in sociology, then he’d ventured into ethnological research. His byline appeared frequently first in professional journals then in national dailies, but it was when he published his first book—The Memory-Mirror, or the Dream of a Collective Consciousness—that he carved out an excellent position for himself in the milieu of intellectuals. Judging from the number of laudatory reviews, he had graduated mysteriously from the rank of a sociologist to that of a philosopher. And what was more, he was an accessible philosopher, the kind a mainstream audience could understand, which meant he was a regular guest on literary forums or panel discussions requiring a seal of moral legitimacy or the type of palaver that even the lowest common denominator would be able to make sense of.
For the time being, he was trying to make sense of Denis Benitez’s confession, as someone who knows how to read into the speech of those who do not know how to speak. Philippe was impressed by the completely spontaneous way the fellow had of putting his solitude down to a conspiracy on the part of a rival clan. But Denis was adamant, he was sincere, at a complete loss, yet very rigorous as he enumerated the stages of his gradual exclusion from the realm of universal female desire.
“Then I began to rely on the people around me. I could bank on the simple notion that everyone must have a female friend who needs a companion, since I was her male equivalent.”
So Denis had publicized the erring ways of his celibacy, and he turned to his friends, who thought it might be amusing to make one couple out of two lonely hearts. And while he had not forgotten a single one of the women he met at their arranged dinner parties, what he remembered above all were the awkward moments when he could see he had failed the test, before they’d even started on dessert. There’d been the divorcée who, three days earlier, had just met someone. There’d been the embassy secretary, who’d come halfway round the world, determined to go back there for good. And the medical assistant, whose ex had just called to make up, now that she’d finally gotten over her broken heart.
As he listened, Yves Lehaleur was also wondering about this series of unfortunate coincidences, but he didn’t doubt them: he was a firm believer in adversity. Philippe Saint-Jean, on the other hand, saw them as so much equivocation on the part of a Manichean mind that lapsed on occasion into misogyny. Was such an image of The Woman really necessary in order to imagine a coalition of all of them?
“In the months that followed, I re-evaluated my selection criteria. I didn’t have the impression I was leaning toward a certain type of women, but I was ready to extend the field of possibilities, to waive any distinction on the grounds of age, looks, culture, social class or skin color. In fact, I was ready to envisage all women, absolutely all of them, but it still wasn’t enough.”
Given the utter absence of women in his life, Denis would turn around to look at any skirt that walked by, and this had become a habitual reflex, a pretext to find multiple opportunities to make himself miserable. Philippe Saint-Jean knew that there was no need to have read the Romantics or the behavioralists, it was simply a matter of common sense: the more one desires, the more the object of desire recedes; the first lesson you teach any languishing adolescent. The guy at the blackboard was making the fundamental error of trying to pin a specific nature on women, to lump them all into one category and view them as symmetrical at best and contrary at worst. So Philippe was waiting for Denis to stop blaming his bad fortune and start questioning his own behavior.
“The problem was with me, that I could see, but what was the problem? Had I changed so radically once I passed thirty?”
He had been careful to keep in shape, to watch his weight and his appearance, and only rarely did he not find time to run or swim, or to ride around Paris on his bike. Moreover, he asked the chef at the brasserie to cook up some healthy meals for him. It had even become a joke with the entire staff, Denis and his fussy food—fish, vegetables, tea, and it wasn’t just some dietary obsession but a real preference. If anything, he had become more handsome with the years, and would reach his prime at the age of fifty.
“Had I become so boring that there wasn’t a single woman crazy enough to spend an evening or a night or a lifetime by my side?”
It must be that the rites of seduction had changed over time and he had not noticed. There was no shame anymore in putting yourself on the market, promoting yourself like a product, a consumer good, dependable, and available. Once he’d summed up his basic self in a few clicks, he signed up with a few online dating sites, eager to try this new means of communication that only a year earlier had seemed pathetic. He hid nothing, did not invent any qualities he did not have, and he eventually met a few candidates who had been drawn to his scrupulously defined profile.
Philippe Saint-Jean suspected that another series of fiascos lay ahead; if the fellow had only known how to see them coming, he could have spared himself many a lonely moment.
“They’d seen my photo, they knew about my job, how much I earn, whether I believe in God or not, whether I was up for a long-term relationship or not: how could there be any nasty surprises?”
While Yves Lehaleur was still wondering why the man seemed to labor under such a strange curse, Philippe Saint-Jean saw beyond the specific case to the syndrome of a more universal disarray among men. It had even become the bread and butter of a few essayists he knew: rampant cynicism affected even love relationships, modern men had lost their bearings, women had legitimately reclaimed their rights after millennia of servitude. What Philippe found fascinating about Denis Benitez’s account was the totally indecent way he described his ordeal, as if he were some veritable Christ figure on the path of the cross, already doomed to be crucified.
“One evening when I felt I’d really touched bottom I called all my exes one after the other.”
It was a ludicrous effort, bound to fail, nothing short of a bad joke, and yet he took out his old notebook and picked up the receiver, and didn’t miss out a single one of the girls he’d slept with. After all, he and Véronique had split on good terms. And Hélène must have forgotten about their quarrels by now. Mona had surely forgiven him. Maybe Nadège wasn’t married after all, or maybe she was already bored. Not to mention a few more, further back in time but who, with a bit of luck, might be going through the same rough patch as he was. In hopes of a minor miracle, he’d come up with a very simple opening line: Hey, it’s Denis, Denis Benitez, remember me? And he hoped to conclude with: Hey, why don’t you come have lunch one day at my brasserie? Alas, not a single one took him up on his offer, and some of them explained why, not without irony. Ever since that sad visit to the land of his lost loves—who were determined to remain lost—his speculations about women had become charged with anger and bitterness.
“And then you reach a point where your doubt begins to gnaw away at you. You go from one certainty to the next, a
nd every idea and its contrary is just as good as the next one, so in the end you can’t even understand how you can function. One morning I was convinced I was being too direct and too offhand. I wasn’t giving them time to feel their desire, as if every gesture I made, every word I said was in order to get them into bed or, worse yet, into city hall. So it made me think: how would anyone not run away from a guy like me? Then just the opposite, that very same evening, I saw myself as incurably indecisive, lost in some procrastinating behavior from a bygone era, when you know that women like men who are enterprising and forthright. So again I had to think: how would anyone not run away from a guy like me?”
The very next morning, still more doubts came to banish the earlier ones, and so on down the line, until they all disappeared in the light of his utter dejection. Denis could see the specter of resignation looming, and he decided to ask for help.
“I went and saw a therapist. Someone had to help me get things in perspective, and maybe they could give me a key.”
Yves Lehaleur shrugged at the word “therapist.” Anything that began with the prefix psy inspired instinctive mistrust. In his opinion, why should one person be more gifted than the next guy at reading into another man’s soul? All those psy people were just charlatans who’d figured out that offering an attentive ear to another person’s woes was a rare commodity you could charge a lot for here on earth. When he had told his entourage that he needed a divorce, and quick, some of them had urged him to speak to a specialist before making such a drastic decision. Yves had told them to mind their own business: if someone needed a therapist it was his bitch of a wife, not him.
Philippe Saint-Jean, on the other hand, thought that Denis was rather courageous. Having gone through it himself many years earlier, he knew how difficult it could be to ring at a therapist’s door and entrust a stranger with one’s dysfunctional self. In his milieu, it was almost a rite of passage for anyone who presumed to penetrate the mysteries of the human mind and its hidden meanings. To avoid psychoanalysis would have been tantamount to professional misconduct. Nowadays, his friends who were in treatment far outnumbered those who weren’t.
“He listened patiently, then offered to help me get the wheels of seduction rolling again. Three sessions later I was surprised to find myself telling him a childhood memory, the exact moment when I realized just how fallible my parents were, after they . . . forgot me at a friend’s house one boozy evening. I dug deep in my memory and was able to describe the event as if it were straight out of a horror film: the distraught mother, the guilt-stricken father promising me a miniature car if I stopped crying right that minute. I could hear myself telling the shrink, I even remember the model! A Dinky Toys Facel Vega, gray with a hard top, they brought it out in 1960, and I wondered if this were the right way to get my wheels of seduction going again.”
Denis struggled to find his words, and for a moment everyone thought he had finished. In fact, this part of his testimony seemed less pertinent to him than the conclusion; as if this were an official announcement, there was something he had told neither friend nor brother nor psychoanalyst and which he was about to share with a hundred strangers.
“After five years of drifting and humiliation, where I was incapable of understanding why the entire female gender had deserted me, I had to accept the explanation I would have preferred to avoid: a conspiracy theory. As unlikely as it may seem, they have decided to assuage their age-old desire for revenge on me.”
A ripple of astonishment went through the audience; those who had been attending the Thursday meetings for a long time had heard all sorts of fantasies, but they always bore in mind that new ones could surface at any time. Yves Lehaleur, with his neophyte’s gaze, looked around him and met the eyes of his nearest neighbor, Philippe Saint-Jean, as much a neophyte as he was.
“Every time one of you, gentlemen, commits a crime of sexism, discrimination, loutishness, harassment, misogyny, domestic tyranny, or brutality, I’m the one who has to take the consequences.”
It was not enough for those women to ignore him, they had to have their revenge as well. Denis was being made to pay for all they had suffered at the hands of men since the dawn of time. To make sure he understood that he needed them more than they needed him, they had spread the word, and he could take his fine virility and stick it wherever he liked.
“I feel certain I have been chosen to inform you, this very evening, and to warn you: you will be next.”
Philippe Saint-Jean had already diagnosed a subtle form of paranoia, but he hadn’t been expecting this theory of a martyr sacrificed on the altar of deposed masculinity. With prototypes like this one among the brotherhood, there was a good chance he would be a frequent visitor. As for Yves Lehaleur, he would rethink his rejection of psychoanalysis, if it were to prove useful to someone like Denis Benitez.
Denis went to sit back down in the last row, where he was greeted with a discreet smile from his neighbors, Yves Lehaleur and Philippe Saint-Jean, both of whom were astonished by his performance, admiring not only his nerve but above all his outrageous imagination. Their expressions told him they had heard what he had to say.
Yves was tempted to climb up on the podium and come out with everything he had on his mind, too—if guys like Denis were allowed in, there was no reason why he, Yves, should have any hang-ups about telling his story. But it was getting late and he would have to keep his anger for another week. As for Philippe Saint-Jean, he would need another session before he could make up his mind about something he now viewed as a social phenomenon. He was curious about this group therapy without a therapist, this astonishing all-male confessional, this occult congregation you could adhere to without any co-optation or initiation rites or preliminary enquiry. He had come there fully prepared to pass judgment or share some savory sarcasm with his entourage. But in fact he had just witnessed a rare moment of tolerance, of the kind you could not label in any way, or subject to even the most woolly dogma. What he did not yet know was the real reason for his presence here. His intellectual curiosity had been satisfied, and it probably wouldn’t take long for his true motivation to surface, one of these Thursday evenings. Philippe was inhabited by absence, and nothing could explain away the pain—and he was someone who was greatly in need of meaningful explanations.
Before they all left the room, they were informed that the next meeting would be held in the same place. Some of them would not come back. Others would. Between now and then, life could go on.
2
Some men like to undress a woman with a single gaze; Denis Benitez indulged in a far more presumptuous pastime. He could wrench the hidden truth from every woman who passed him in the street. Since in their eyes he no longer existed, since he was no longer a physical presence in their world, he had discovered that he had a talent for invisibility which allowed him to brush by women like a ghost, to spy on them and steal their secrets.
Crossing a median strip on the edge of the Place de la Nation, a female figure suddenly appeared: white flowered dress, her expression that of a mother for whom it has all gone too fast.
Another woman climbing into a taxi: blonde, thirtysomething, slightly, but disarmingly cross-eyed, ready to proclaim her independence to whoever will listen.
With experience he had reached a point where not a single woman in his path was spared, and he only took their age, looks, or clothing into consideration if they provided a serious clue.
A jogger, all in a sweat, resting on a bench: very dark eyes, slightly plump, full of a tenderness that no one returns.
In her newspaper kiosk: thirty-five-year-old adolescent, displaying her breasts like medals.
Or that one, in thigh boots and suede: straight, slow, blasé shadows under her eyes, she dreams more of laughter than of sex.
The saleswoman smoking outside her boutique: haughty, classy, no one knows the operating instructions, not even she herself.
The girl
climbing onto her scooter: badly dressed, strict eyeglasses, ready to fall in love with a man as if he were the last one on earth.
And that one, standing next to her fiancé, who’s as arrogant as she is: very modern, ready to elbow her way, and later she’ll say to her grandchildren, If only I’d known.
Or that one: pregnant, lovely smooth skin, she knows who she can share her joy with, but not her fears.
Or that one: tourist from the north, husband walking way ahead, she’s sorry she isn’t out exploring Paris with her girlfriends.
And that tall girl: innocent, thirty-odd, looks self-conscious in her matronly blouse, burdened by complexes that will cause her to waste twenty years.
As he weaned himself off women, Denis discovered in himself an extraordinary male intuition. But this activity—obsessive, dangerous—was wearing him out, and to no good purpose; it merely fueled his bitterness. Just before seven o’clock he hurried toward the gate of the lycée that had been left open, found the same classroom as the week before, and nodded to Yves Lehaleur and Philippe Saint-Jean in the last row.
Yves had seen enough the previous week to feel confident: tonight was the night. He waited for the audience to fall silent, raised his hand, then headed up to the blackboard like the good pupil he’d never had the time to become.
“I’ll probably babble and repeat myself, so I’d like to apologize in advance. I will begin by telling you about my life the way it used to be. To be exact, my life before the fourth of November of last year.”