I Hope It Won’t Come to This

September already, and my thoughts turn towards autumn and what might lie ahead.

It is also a time to reflect, to take a deep breath and see out the year. Autumn is when everything changes, and this year the changes promise to be greater than most.

I am selling my apartment in the UK, although I’m told it won’t be as easy as I make it sound. There are simply too many apartments for sale. It isn’t that I’ve fallen out with Britain. I still miss its grey mornings, familiar streets, and the quiet comfort of knowing where everything is. But I seem to have spent more time away than in it, and returning now feels less like coming home than visiting a life I once expected to keep.

The apartment is full of Charlie’s absence. Every room holds some small reminder: a mug left in the wrong place, a coat I can’t bring myself to move, the shape of a shared routine that has vanished. Selling it would mean letting go of more than bricks and furniture. It would mean admitting that Charlie has disappeared from my life—and that I have been preserving a home for someone who is no longer coming back.

“Don’t worry,” says Deej. “I have a spare room where you can stay… as long as you want.”

There was a hint of desperation in his voice.

His flat is in London. I like London, but perhaps only because I have always been able to leave it behind. And Deej happens to be the untidiest person in the world. He will also want to wear all my clothes. More importantly, he knows that a month’s rent from me would cut his own rent by half. What I would pay him would still be more than I currently pay for my mortgage.

“Thanks, Deej,” I said. “That’s something to consider.”

I hope it won’t come to this.

Anyone’s Ghost

We know that Jake is going to die. We know that Jake is going to die in a car crash. We know from the beginning of Anyone’s Ghost by August Thompson that this intoxicating teenage idol is going to be a problem.

Charismatic, effortlessly cool, and deeply reckless.

We inherit Theron’s all-consuming crush.

“It took three car crashes to kill Jake,” writes Thompson, and knowing his fate we hold onto him tightly. He is fragile and precious. He is often selfish, manipulative, and deeply confused. We fall for him because, underneath his cool exterior, Jake is just as lonely and broken by depression as Theron is, chasing a sense of oblivion he can never quite outrun. 

Word came from Verona

Signora Scala’s Dutch lodger had arrived for the month of September. The young dancer was in Verona for a month, performing with a contemporary dance company at the Teatro Romano, and was supposed to be staying with Signora Bruschi’s neighbour.

There was an immediate problem.

Cola and Bianchi could hardly wait to tell me.

The boy had been in the house barely five minutes when Signora Scala came running to Signora Bruschi.

“He cannot stay,” she cried.

“Why ever not?”

She made the sign of the cross.

“È chiaramente omosessuale.”

“My mother wants to know if you will allow him to stay in your rooms,” Cola asked.

I wasn’t really in a position to say no.

“As you say in English, the boy is very camp,” said Cola.

“But he is very handsome and athletic,” Bianchi added.

The Art of Falling Asleep

“What did you think of the movie?” asked Deej.

We had found a cinema in Paris showing Pedro Almodóvar’s new film, Bitter Christmas, with English subtitles.

“What did you think of the movie?” Deej asked as we left the cinema.

“I think I need to see it again,” I said, rather sheepishly.

“Yes,” Deej agreed. “There was a lot happening, and I need to digest it all again.”

Deej stopped to take a photograph of the poster, which would soon appear on his Instagram page accompanied by some knowing comment designed to make him appear more intelligent than he actually was.

It was time for me to confess.

“That’s not what I meant. I fell asleep. When I woke up, I had absolutely no idea what was happening.”

A Face for Radio

Classical Music?

Not sure about it, if I’m honest.

But I’m prepared to change.

And I might have to learn French, too.

After stumbling across a photograph of Hippolyte Pérès, I searched for him on France Musique, the French public radio station, where he is the new co-host of its breakfast programme, Musique Matin.

At twenty-one or twenty-two, he is one of the station’s youngest presenters.

There’s an old saying that some people have a face for radio. It means, of course, that they’re pig ugly.

Not the case here.

And what a story so far.

From the age of eight, he trained in classical dance, and two years later passed the entrance examination for the Paris Opera Ballet School, where he spent four years training as a petit rat.

An injury eventually forced him to give up dancing.

At nineteen, he began presenting specialist music programmes for France Musique, while also earning academic qualifications at the Sorbonne and Sciences Po.

Easy on the eye, bubbly, and presumably someone the station hopes will appeal to a younger generation.

All very impressive.

But I still don’t understand the majority of what he says.

A Bit of Spanish

Deej and I watched another movie this week.

It was a Spanish film called Romería, in which a young woman travels to Vigo to meet the family of her biological father, who died of AIDS, as did her mother, when she was very young.

But let’s cut to the chase.

There was a hot guy in it.

Deej frowned when I mentioned this.

He calls it my ‘Halo Effect’.

Apparently, I see someone who is physically attractive and immediately assume that they are kind, intelligent, funny and trustworthy — even when there is absolutely no evidence to support any of it.

The guy in question is the Spanish singer and actor Miguel Martín de Bustamante, known simply as Mitch.

We all like a bit of Spanish inside us sometimes.

I found his Instagram page.

‘Destroy thee expected,’ it says.

There’s something raw and authentic about him. A touch of vulnerability. A certain anti-fashion aesthetic. Away from television and movies, he’s a bit of a rock star, influenced by the punk of The Sex Pistols and the glam of David Bowie.

I could mention that he was also inspired by Elvis Presley, but that rather spoils everything.

Deej called him ‘angsty’.

Which, in my eyes, only makes him more attractive.

The Taste of a Kiss

I found a scrap of paper in my notebook on which I had written the following:

“If God or whoever is above exists, I hope he saw us tonight. Because I truly believe in that magic we spoke about tonight, kept safe in rooms like ours, lost rooms around the world, between strangers or people who’ve known each other the whole life, hope that they felt the same feeling we’ve felt, the true feeling wich shakes the heavens, that belongs to everyone, the same, everywhere around the world, like colors, the taste of a kiss between two people, that hasn’t other names, just one (…) buona notte.” Good Night.

I quite like it.

Actually, I think it’s beautiful.

And I cannot claim any credit for it.

On the Cute and the Willing