Frédéric Beigbeder - Holiday in a Coma & Love Lasts Three Years - two novels by Frédéric Beigbeder

*

Although tonight he is spoiled for choice. Marc’s coffee table groans under the weight of possibilities: a performance at a gallery opening on the rue des Beaux-Arts (the painter is scheduled to cut off both hands at around 9 p.m.), a dinner at the Arc in honour of the half-brother of Lenny Kravitz’s bassist’s best friend, a fancy-dress ball in the old Renault factory at Issy-les-Moulineaux to launch a new perfume (Assembly Line by Chanel), a private concert by the hot new English band (The John Lennons) at La Cigale, a themed party at Denise’s on the ‘Heterosexual Lesbians as Leather Queens in Drag’ and a rave at the Élysée Palace. In spite of everything, Marc knows that all over the city, the question of the moment is: ‘Are you going to Shit tonight?’ (The uninitiated who misunderstands risks betraying not only his ignorance but a personal incontinence problem.)

Marc poses in front of the bathroom mirror. Tonight he’s going to kiss girls he hasn’t been introduced to. He’s going to sleep with people he’s never met, people he hasn’t previously had fifteen intimate dinners with.

He’s impressing nobody, especially not himself. Deep down, he knows he wants the same thing all his friends want: to fall in love again.

He grabs a white shirt and a navy blue tie with white polka dots, he shaves quickly, douses himself with eau de toilette, howls in pain and leaves the flat. He refuses to panic.

He thinks: ‘Mythify everything because everything is mythic. Things, places, dates, people are all potential legends, you just have to find the right myth. Everyone who lived in Paris in 1940 will eventually be a character in a Patrick Modiano novel. Anyone who set foot in a London pub in 1965 will have slept with Mick Jagger. When you get down to it, being a legend is easy: you just have to wait your turn. Carnaby Street, the Hamptons, Greenwich Village, le Lac d’Aiguebelette, the Faubourg Saint-Germain, Goa, Guéthary, le Paradou, Mustique, Phuket: it doesn’t matter if you’re bored shitless at the time, and twenty years from now you can brag that you were there. Time is a sacrament. Sick and tired of your life? Hang in there and you’ll be a legend.’ Walking gives Marc some peculiar ideas.

The toughest problem is managing to be mythic and alive at the same time . Joss Dumoulin might have pulled it off.

Does a living legend keep his hands in his pockets? Does he wear a cashmere scarf? Does he agree to spend ‘a night at Shit’?

Marc checks to make sure he has no signal on his mobile. No, not a single bar. There’s no need to worry, then. It’s perfectly normal that his phone isn’t ringing. Marc will be uncontactable for another six yards.

There was a time when he went out every night, and not just for professional reasons. Sometimes he’d run into a certain Jocelyn du Moulin (oh yes, that’s what he was called back in the day; the ‘du’ which indicates he’s part of the old French aristocracy is something he only dropped recently: now he’s pseudo-working class).

The weather is fine so Marc starts singing ‘Singing in the Rain’. It’s still better than humming ‘Le Lundi au Soleil’ when it’s raining (especially given that it’s Friday.)

Paris is a film set mock-up. Marc Marronnier wishes that it was all really made of pasteboard. He prefers the fake Pont Neuf, the one Leos Carax had built in the middle of nowhere, to the real one that Christo wrapped. He wishes that this whole city were deliberately fake instead of pretending to be real. It’s too beautiful to be real! He wishes the shadowy figures he can see behind the curtains were cardboard cut-outs moved by a system of electric pulleys. Unfortunately, the Seine is full of liquid water, the buildings are made of dressed stone and the passers-by he encounters are not paid extras. The special effects are elsewhere, better hidden.

Marc has been seeing fewer people recently. He’s selective. It’s something called ‘getting old’. He loathes it, even though it appears to be a commonplace phenomenon.

Tonight, he will pick up girls. Why isn’t he gay? It’s pretty surprising, given the decadent circles he hangs out in, his so-called creative work and his taste for provocation. But that’s just it: that’s where the shoe pinches. He thinks being gay nowadays is too conformist. It’s the easy way out. Besides, he loathes hairy people.

We might as well face facts: Marronnier is the sort of guy who wears polka-dot ties and picks up girls.

Once upon a time there was him and the rest of the world. Just a guy wandering down the boulevard Malesherbes. Desperately banal, i.e. unique. That’s him heading to the party of the year. Do you recognise him? He’s got nothing better to do. He’s an unforgivable optimist. (Though it must be said the pigs never pull him over and ask for his papers.) He heads towards the festivities with complete impunity. ‘The Festivity is what is waited for, what is expected.’ (Roland Barthes, Fragments of a Lover’s Discourse .)

‘Shut the fuck up, you legendary stiff,’ grumbles Marronnier. ‘Wait long enough, you’ll ALWAYS get run over by a dry-cleaning van.’

A few steps later, Marc changes his mind. ‘Actually, Barthes is right. All I ever do is wait and I’m ashamed of it. At sixteen I wanted to take on the world, I wanted to be a rock star, or be a great writer, or be president of France, or die young. But here I am at twenty-seven, already resigned to my fate, rock is too complicated, cinema too elitist, great writers too dead, France too corrupt and nowadays I want to die as old as possible.’

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