More Italian than French both in appearance and mannerisms, he had the churlish air of a tired rockstar past his prime. I had a hard time believing someone who put so much effort into his appearance would not be self-aware enough to understand how slippery he made himself look — overcalculated yet sloppy; with the effect sometimes melting beneath his toothy smile.
The unruly row of silver ornaments dotting his fingers would have given any pirate a run for their money. They gleamed and danced as he gestured, his voice barely louder than the cheesy Heart of Glass remix playing in the dive bar he’d picked for us. He prattled on about Twombly, Tzara, Takahashi, or tzatziki — my contribution to the conversation so small that merely listening to him felt voyeuristic.
“Hello?,” a bemused smile as he called my attention.
“Hm?”
“I hope I’m not boring you,” he cooed.
I had to fight a smile: was I really being made fun of by someone who played guitar in a band called Taxidermy Fox?
“How could I be bored with such an interlocutor?” There it was again, the toothy smile. More sincere this time around. “I was merely musing on your curious choice of band name.”
“Well I didn’t pick it. I had no choice, see? The name picked me. We used to practice in my grandmother’s garage just south of Paris, where she keeps an old stuffed fox she bought at a flea market. We started bringing her to our concerts for luck; people liked her so much that we just had to honour her.”
“The grandma?” He winked at me and reached for his phone. There it was, looking about as good as you’d imagine — wide glassy eyes and haphazard bald patches, roughed up around indie concerts in and around Paris. Well, better the fox than the grandma, I thought to myself. “I’ll have to judge your merits based on the music, because the branding sure seems like it could do with a bit of polishing.”
His roaring laughter drowned disco Debbie Harris out once more, and he finished his beer in a hearty gulp.
There he is, I thought. Not so slippery after all.
“So how come you’re a shoegaze fan that has never listened to My Bloody Valentine?”
I shrugged in response, thumbing the base of my wine glass. He peered outside to the gentle rain descending onto the heart of the 11th arrondissement.
“Finish your wine. Let’s go for a smoke.” With a sleight of hand, he revealed a pack of Gauloises Blondes previously nestled in the inner pocket of his trucker jacket. I had to hold back a smile — a very on-brand choice of smokes from him. Not that I, American Spirit Yellow, had any right to judge.
The people at the bar nodded to us with a knowing smile as we passed on our way to the door. They had no idea they were witnessing the first chapter of an incredible story, but I still hold their faces perfectly intact in my memory.
***
It was the last night of January, cool and breezy. We stood under the canopy just outside the bar as J. held a cigarette between his teeth, pulling a black object out of his pocket — an iPod classic!
“No!”
“Mais oui.”
His movement as he unwrapped the earbuds from the black monolith took me back a number of years to a much simpler time. We leaned against the window of the bar as he put his arm around me — one earbud for him, one for me.
“Attends. This one. You’re going to love this one.”
***
It was a queer feeling; cigarette smoke and a tidal wave of fuzzy music on my right side, and the rest of the world on the other. A surprising number of people were walking by us on the street, but I barely noticed them as he pressed me against him, shielding me from the cold. The maelstrom of noise had us both enveloped and suspended in time, gently silencing my ever-ruminating nature.
Everything else dissolved under the rain like cotton candy. Everything but us, under the canopy and the warm light of the bar.
As I looked up to him, with his crooked nose and gentle eyes, there was nothing else in my head. Nothing existed outside our hermetically sealed universe.
– love, mia –