‘You don’t have a home until you leave it and then, when you have left it, you never can go back.’

Raymond Voinquel - Le prisonnier à la rose, projet pour le parfum Bandit, de Piguet, 1943 ©Ministère de la Culture

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 blond 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.

‘You think,’ he persisted, 'that my life is shameful because my encounters are. And they are. But you should ask yourself why they are.’
'Why are they—shameful?’ I asked him.
'Because there is no affection in them, and no joy. It’s like putting an electric plug in a dead socket. Touch, but no contact. All touch, but no contact and no light.’

Jacques followed my look. 'He is very fond of you,’ he said, 'already. But this doesn’t make you happy or proud, as it should. It makes you frightened and ashamed. Why?’
'I don’t understand him,’ I said at last. I don’t know what his friendship means; I don’t know what he means by friendship.’
Jacques laughed. 'You don’t know what he means by friendship but you have the feeling it may not be safe. You are afraid it may change you. What kind of friendship have you had?’
I said nothing.
'Or for that matter,’ he continued, 'what kind of love affairs?’
I was silent for so long that he teased me, saying, 'Come out, come out, wherever you are! ’
And I grinned, feeling chilled.
'Love him,’ said Jacques, with vehemence, 'love him and let him love you. Do you think anything else under heaven really matters? And how long, at the best, can it last? since you are both men and still have everywhere to go? Only five minutes, I assure you, only five minutes, and most of that, hélas! in the dark. And if you think of them as dirty, then they will be dirty— they will be dirty because you will be giving nothing, you will be despising your flesh and his. But you can make your time together anything but dirty; you can give each other something which will make both of you better—forever—if you will not be ashamed, if you will only not play it safe.’ He paused, watching me, and then looked down to his cognac. 'You play it safe long enough,’ he said, in a different tone, 'and you’ll end up trapped in your own dirty body, forever and forever and forever—like me.’

I was in a terrible confusion. Sometimes I thought, but this is your life. Stop fighting it. Stop fighting. Or I thought, but I am happy. And he loves me. I am safe. Sometimes, when he was not near me, I thought, I will never let him touch me again. Then, when he touched me, I thought, it doesn’t matter, it is only the body, it will soon be over. When it was over, I lay in the dark and listened to his breathing and dreamed of the touch of hands, of Giovanni’s hands, or anybody’s hands, hands which would have the power to crush me and make me whole again.

'You want to leave Giovanni because he makes you stink. You want to despise Giovanni because he is not afraid of the stink of love. You want to kill him in the name of all your lying little moralities. And you - you are immoral. ’

Inside me something locked. 'I—I cannot have a life with you,’ I said.
'But you can have a life with Hella. With that moon-faced little girl who thinks babies come out of cabbages—or frigidaires, I am not acquainted with the mythology of your country. You can have a life with her.’
'Yes,’ I said, wearily, I can have a life with her.’ I stood up. I was shaking. 'What kind of life can we have in this room?—this filthy little room. What kind of life can two men have together, anyway? […] But I’m a man,’ I cried, 'a man! What do you think can happen between us?’
'You know very well,’ said Giovanni slowly, 'what can happen between us. It is for that reason you are leaving me.’

I will not forget the last time he looked at me. The morning light filled the room, reminding me of so many mornings and of the morning I had first come there. Giovanni sat on the bed, completely naked, holding a glass of cognac between his hands. His body was dead white, his face was wet and grey. I was at the door with my suitcase. With my hand on the knob, I looked at him. Then I wanted to beg him to forgive me. But this would have been too great a confession; any yielding at that moment would have locked me forever in that room with him. And in a way this was exactly what I wanted. I felt a tremor go through me, like the beginning of an earthquake, and felt, for an instant, that I was drowning in his eyes. His body, which I had come to know so well, glowed in the light and charged and thickened the air between us. Then something opened in my brain, a secret, noiseless door swung open, frightening me: it had not occurred to me until that instant that, in fleeing from his body, I confirmed and perpetuated his body’s power over me. Now, as though I had been branded, his body was burned into my mind, into my dreams. And all this time he did not take his eyes from me. He seemed to find my face more transparent than a shop window. He did not smile, he was neither grave, nor vindictive, nor sad; he was still. He was waiting, I think, for me to cross that space and take him in my arms again—waiting, as one waits at a deathbed for the miracle one dare not disbelieve, which will not happen. I had to get out of there for my face showed too much, the war in my body was dragging me down. My feet refused to carry me over to him again. The wind of my life was blowing me away.

James Baldwin - Giovanni’s Room (Signet Books-1956)