Celebrity Blood

2004

Part One

(May-December 2002)

Chapter 1

Julie’s Diary – May 2, 2002

This morning I found a dead seagull on the sidewalk, just in front of the entrance to my building. It’s a curious thing – it’s as rare to find a dead seagull on the sidewalks of Paris as it is common to come across a dead pigeon. Of course, lots of gulls come up the Seine Valley from the sea, but I imagine their final resting places to be more on the bow of a boat or in the muddy waters of the Seine. I don’t even live by the river – I live in Montmartre.

I’ll never know how that seagull came to be there, but today I decided to start a journal – this journal. I like to see that seagull as a kind wink from destiny. I’d like to think that the endless monotony of my life is about to come to an end. In fact, since this morning, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about a couple of lines written by Chekhov in The Seagull, when the poet Trigorin addresses Nina after the discovery of a dead gull: Nothing much, only an idea that occurred to me. An idea for a short story. A young girl grows up on the shores of a lake, as you have. She loves the lake as the gulls do, and is as happy and free as they. But a man sees her who chances to come that way, and he destroys her out of idleness, as this gull here has been destroyed.

I find myself in the exact opposite situation of Chekhov’s girl. First of all, I’m no longer a girl, but a young woman – I’m 28 – but especially because I am neither happy nor free. I don’t love anyone or anything, much less a lake. Whether it’s a man or something else that comes along suddenly in my life, I doubt that it would destroy me, and in any case, certainly not from idleness. I’m already idle. I’d like to believe that this inversion of situation is going to play out all the way to the end, that this dead seagull marks the end of my boring life and the beginning of my happy and free life – the life of Trigorin’s girl before her fatal encounter.

Julie’s Diary – May 3, 2002

I was in a very poetic mood when I started this journal yesterday. The crazy hope of a better life floated away upon dumping the dead gull unceremoniously into the garbage. When I came home from work yesterday evening, the caretaker was in the middle of an argument with half of the building’s tenants and the city garbage collectors over whose responsibility it was to get rid of the bird. The caretaker, based on the undeniable fact that the bird had died on the sidewalk, was arguing that it was the garbage men’s responsibility to take care of it. As for the garbage men, they just kept repeating to the caretaker that it was against the rules to remove a dead animal and they would have to wait for a special brigade to arrive.

Bored with their useless gabbing, I went over, grabbed the gull by a wing, and tossed it into the green containers provided by the city of Paris. The sound of their vehement protests followed me as I entered the building without turning around. I don’t understand how people can get so passionate about the body of a dead seagull. People fill up their lives with such little, insignificant things. I wish I could be like them – be able to fill up my life with trivialities like that. Without actually being less empty, at least my existence would seem a little fuller. Speaking of my existence, I wonder what I could possibly write about in this journal...

Julie’s Diary – May 21, 2002

More than anything else, this journal helps me kill some time during the long hours I spend at work. I write in my journal, enclosed in an isolated little office on the 6th floor of a big French bank. When I finished business school, for the first time in my life, I found myself face-to-face with my destiny. Up until then, I had been on what is generally referred to as Easy Street – an excellent student in high school, I received my baccalaureate in the Sciences, followed by two years of preparatory school in Paris, and then the famous École de Commerce. Business school allows you to pursue your studies without ever being passionate about anything – follow the path, stay on track, and you’ll earn a good salary all your life. Like a good little locomotive, or rather, like a good little wagon, I never asked myself any questions, and I was never bored before I arrived in this ridiculous office.

Five years ago, I was hired to manage the accounts for a new computer platform project. I was supposed to be the intermediary between the technical department and the accounting department. No matter – for months on end, I waited in vain for the project to get off the ground. It never did. I’m still waiting. And they never did fire me. I know – it’s as peculiar as a dead seagull on a Parisian sidewalk – I was forgotten right along with the computer project.

As a result, I spend my days surfing the internet, reading and daydreaming. I can’t even catch a glimpse of sky from the tiny window in my office. When I look to the left, I see a brick wall, and to the right, a closed door. In front of me is my computer and its window to the world. And behind me…I don’t know, I’ve never looked. I’ll take a glance now...A wall. A beige wall.

During an internship that was slightly more interesting than the bank I work for now, someone told me this true story: Two employees in some French government office worked in the same room – or rather, I should say were bored in the same room. One of them was playing with a paperclip, and the other was telling his life story and trying to set the world to rights, all the while looking at his computer screen so as to look busy. Suddenly, the paperclip escaped from the clumsy fingers of our employee and came to rest in his trachea. The poor guy started to choke, but his colleague, too busy with telling his story and being absorbed in his own existence, didn’t notice. Our boy died and fell under the desk, stuck between a filing cabinet, his chair, and the two wooden panels that closed off the office from the front and side.

After about fifteen minutes, the other employee asked his colleague an important question – something like, Don’t you think we should talk to the union about it – about raising the end-of-the-year bonus? Obviously, the dead guy didn’t respond. The employee looked up from his screen and glanced over at the dead man’s desk. He didn’t see anyone and assumed that his colleague was an impolite imbecile who preferred to get a cup of coffee instead of listening. The body wasn’t found until the end of the day when a secretary came in and tripped over the unfortunate bloke when she went to set some mail down near his computer.

My day is over. I wonder how much time would pass before they found me if I met my death in this isolated little office.

Julie’s Diary – May 22, 2002

A new day to kill. Why don’t I quit this job? After all, I’ve got a good degree, I’m the perfect age, and I wouldn’t have any difficulty filling in my CV to transform these five years of boredom into an exciting, dynamic executive position. I believe once you get used to the boredom, laziness is a fault that sets in very quickly. I don’t want to work seventy hours a week for an internet start-up under some guy who tries to act nice and cool so he can seem like he’s with it. In fact, I don’t want to work at all. I’d rather be bored. Well, maybe not…I would, like so many other people, like to earn money without actually doing anything...on a beach somewhere, far away from this closed-in office.

Two years ago, I tried an experiment – the life of a bourgeoise woman from the 16th arrondissement. I went on holiday to Sardinia, to Porto Cervo – the new St Tropez, only less tacky. I met a single man, 50ish, with an unattractive physique but a much more seductive wallet. His name was George. George was going to be the President of the Chamber of Notaries or something like that. He was going to have to spend a lot of time at mundane dinners and cocktail parties, and he regretted having sacrificed his family life for the sake of his career. Read here, George wanted to have a beautiful woman on his arm that he could call his wife and show off to all his courtesans.

After a fairly short seduction – we both understood the terms of the contract perfectly well – I ended up in bed with him. The eight months that followed turned out to be very tiresome. First of all, I had to go out and buy a dozen or so tubes of gel lubricant to make George believe that the mere mention of his sexual desires could set off an intense excitement in me that I had never before experienced. The worst part came once he thought his fish was hooked and marriage was in sight.

After three months, he gave me a ring and asked me to marry him. I was delighted with his proposal – I was going to be rich! I had finally achieved my ultimate goal in life, even if – the downside – I was going to be able to buy brand name lubricant instead of generic! I cooed my acceptance.

Up until then, I had been showered with luxurious gifts and I could buy anything that caught my fancy. All I had to do was express a wish – I like that dress. – and George would get out his chequebook without hesitation. From the day George got down on his knees in front of me with his ring made of a thousand diamonds, his chequebook went on strike. If I needed to fill up the tank of the beautiful Mercedes Class A that he’d bought me, he’d give me fifty Euros in cash and not a penny more. If I wanted to make a couple of purchases, he told me to use my pocket money – that is – my salary. What’s more, it was completely unacceptable to George that I continue to work after the wedding. I agreed – it was totally unacceptable to me that I continue to be bored in a tiny, isolated office once I was married and rich, when I could be amusing myself in a giant apartment in Paris or Rome, or in a beautiful villa in Sardinia with a charming lover and a husband who was, fortunately, often away on business.

George must have discovered the tubes of lubricant, or even the lover I didn’t yet have – the marriage contract he presented me with several weeks later stipulated that I quit my job, that my expenses would be controlled by my husband through a blocked credit card, and that if we divorced within five years, I would not receive one cent of his money. Five years of lubrication was way too long. I left George.

Julie’s Diary - July 10, 2002

It’s been a long time since I’ve written in this journal. I’ve been a bit more occupied than normal – not by work, by a man. I didn’t try a new experiment like the business with George. When it’s time to shut down my computer, I go home to a more normal life – I go to the cinema, go shopping, go out with my girlfriends. Long story short, I’m having a bit of fun. Well, I’d like to believe I’m having fun. Really, I’m still always bored - the hands of my watch just go around faster. Boredom has become like a kind of lead cloak over everything. It came into my life during the long hours in the office, and now it can’t seem to find an exit.

Toward the end of May, I had a lovely evening on the terrace of a café in the rue Oberkampf. I’ve known Sophie since preparatory school – she’s an attentive friend who never fails to introduce me to her husband’s new acquaintances. Sophie and her husband, Jacques, invited me out for a drink with Jacques’ new golf partner. The newcomer, thirty-ish, sort of cute, was named – well, still is named – Claude. Ever-faithful to their strategy, Sophie and Jacques abandoned us around midnight, on the pretext that the babysitter couldn’t stay much longer.

It had been months since I had met a man who I fancied, even a little bit. We exchanged contact info at bar-closing time and I allowed him to walk me home, without inviting him in. I would have slept with him on the first night, but I prefer to make the preliminaries last. I love to see the object of my desire a second, a third time, exchange emails all day and have long conversations over the phone about everything and nothing. I like the seduction game, the butterflies in my stomach at the thought of seeing him again soon, the solitary pleasure of imagining our two bodies coming together.

Claude was patient – he played the game, even though I don’t think he developed any romantic feelings for me. I passed a month and a half every bit as agreeable as the night we met. The mating dance and seduction game were well-orchestrated and enjoyable – the sex too. Nevertheless, the boredom quickly caught up with me. Once the seduction phase was over, once my body was satiated with many successive nights of tender and passionate cuddling, Claude started to bore me, even to irritate me. He started by invading my bed, forcing me to sleep on a 20-inch-wide strip of the mattress, then he started snoring and picked up the bad habit of not closing the door to the toilet behind him. Been there, done that. Exit Claude. Thanks for everything.

Julie’s Diary – August 9, 2002

I just got back from two weeks in Greece. No, I didn’t spend my time in bed surrounded by ephebes. My last entry about my adventure with Claude could make you think that... Oh, look at that! Now I’m addressing a hypothetical reader. That’s a new one.

I go to Greece almost every year. This year, I went to Mykonos, paradise of techno and homos. So I watched their magnificent bodies swaying from side to side all night long and didn’t have the right to touch any of them. Almost as exciting as any seduction game!

On rereading my account of the adventure with Claude, I realized that I have never fallen in love with a man, nor even experienced any romantic feelings that survived beyond that seduction game that I cherish so much. Men pass through my existence without stopping. If only my office hours could pass as quickly as the men in my life...

Julie’s Diary – August 16, 2002

My adventure with Claude followed by my voyeur’s holiday lifted the blanket that was suffocating me and allowed me to breathe a little bit of fresh air. It’s finished now. Boredom is once again the only sentiment I experience.

So I don’t suffocate to death, I am forced to find a bit of fresh air in the imaginary, in the books I read and the films I watch. I escape, I breathe deep for a few hours and then I come back to my aquarium...

I wonder if it’s boredom that’s suffocating me or emptiness, this emptiness of feeling. I feel nothing, if not what I call boredom. I am a spectator, watching the lives of others. I only experience something like what an author or a director has imprinted in their work. It’s pathetic. And it’s just as pathetic that whenever I start to feel suffocated, whenever I feel the need to experience some kind of emotion, I transform myself into the director of my own life. I play – I play at being in love and I piece together a seduction game that would never exist if not for my own will. I alternate between actress and spectator, without ever being real.

I barely even exist, and yet I cannot resolve myself to act like the other tenants and the caretaker of my building. I can’t resolve myself to fill up my life with trivialities to give it some semblance of meaning. It’s useless. Most people’s lives are just as empty as mine – they just don’t realize it.

Julie’s Diary – August 2, 2002

The last two weeks have been fairly tiresome. I couldn’t even work up the energy to write in this journal. I have done nothing – absolutely nothing – with my days. My supervisor has just rescued me – I have to go to London for two days. How ironic! I am admitting to being rescued by a triviality, by shifting my boredom from Paris to London! I guess I have to admit, without entirely transforming my life, trivialities at least let me breathe a little bit.

I also lied a little when I wrote that I get paid to do nothing. I have about an hour’s worth of administrative work to do each day, and I have to go to London twice a year to examine the progress of the computer platform project of the British subsidiary of the bank. Another curious thing – the project is at a standstill here in France for whatever reason, but it’s moving forward in Great Britain. I leave in two days. The Eurostar’s full – I’m going to have to fly.

Julie’s Diary – August 27, 2002

I just bought a new book – Goethe’s Faust. This little book will keep me busy during my trip – or at least I hope it will.

Julie’s Diary – September 2, 2002

I spent two delicious days in London last Wednesday and Thursday – I didn’t even need to open Faust.

My airplane wasn’t coming. Violent storms had blown in to the Paris area on the morning of my departure and all the flights were delayed. I sat down in Terminal 1 of Charles de Gaulle airport and was just opening my book when a laptop case violently collided with it and sent it flying three yards away. The person holding the guilty laptop case excused himself in an indeterminable language – a mix of French, English and Italian – and hurried over to pick it up before I even had time to see his face. My protests over such an unprovoked act of violence never made it past my lips. I had before me a veritable Latin angel, looking all young and good enough to eat. Are you French? I’m sorry, I think I missed my connection, I need to go check, sorry, and before I could even say a word, the angel had disappeared.

It didn’t take long for him to come back, reassured. Are you taking the flight to London? he asked me. I responded in the affirmative and he sat down beside me. I was afraid I’d missed my connection. I’m just coming from Naples and my flight was late. It’s my first time flying. I mumbled a few reassuring words, and like a good Italian who couldn’t stop himself from talking about nothing, he decided to pursue the conversation. I closed my book to put it away. My adventure with Claude was starting to seem far away, and I hadn’t touched the under-18 category since I became an adult, out of respect for the legislation about corrupting minors.

It only took me a few minutes to discover that Milo – that’s the name of my young angel – had received his bac in June, that he came from Sorrento, a small city near the Bay of Naples, and that he was going to London to study computer engineering at Imperial College. Milo had just turned 18, so I was not about to commit the first infraction of my life. I was almost relieved. It was his clumsy-puppy behaviour that clued me in to his age – physically he looks older. He’s tall and thin, but not gangly like most adolescents. His very round, large, hazelnut eyes that were surrounded by long black lashes lit up as soon as he brought up a subject he was passionate about. And he seemed to be passionate about everything! His little rounded nose flattened out ever so slightly when he smiled, without ruining the perfect equilibrium of his face. His olive, well-tanned skin accented his luscious lips that seemed so soft and smooth and just begging to be kissed. Thick, silky black hair cascaded to his shoulders and irresistibly attracted my hands. For once, I didn’t want to play a seduction game with Milo – I wanted him right away, to be consumed immediately, without moderation.

But in order to consume Milo immediately, he would also need to want to consume me immediately. That was not going to be the case. Of course, Milo had sat down beside me of his own free will and engaged me in conversation – generally tangible proof that a man is interested in a woman. Men are very stingy with words and are never so chatty as when they’re on a mission to get laid.

I explained to Milo, without dwelling on it, that I work for a bank and that I was on a business trip to London for two days. Milo started asking me thousands of questions about London, and my answers only sparked a new volley of questions. By the time the questions about London finally died out, the plane had landed and taken off again. When we boarded, I changed places with another passenger so I could sit by my beautiful angel – he was set on keeping his seat because he had taken the precaution of asking for a seat at the back of the plane where the chances of survival in case of a crash were significantly greater. And Milo values life more than anything else.

The volley of questions about London eventually ceased. I didn’t write "finally ceased," because Milo’s curiosity and euphoria were contagious. I felt better than ever. I was once again a spectator – feeding on Milo’s emotions and enjoying the present moment without worrying about the return to reality that was sure to follow.

Milo is fascinated by computer science…well, more than that, in fact. He’s a hacker, a code breaker. During the flight, he took his computer out of the case and undertook familiarizing me with the latest video game. Video games have never interested me, and I prompted him to tell me how his passion was born. He started very young, around the age of 12. Fascinated by networks, he first tried to get into databases or high-security sites. At 15, he got into the US Air Force site, which was worth an indictment and a trial. He got away from his adventure without a conviction because he hadn’t destroyed or modified the US Air Force data. Milo likes challenges. He likes to open doors, to get himself into forbidden places, but he abhors theft or destruction. I have just met the Robin Hood of computer hackers. In spite of his misadventures, he knew that he couldn’t give up his passion and he decided to make it his career. His goal: work to protect business’ data and fight against piracy. Milo is not even Robin Hood – he’s Elliot Ness!

When our plane landed in London, my head stayed in the clouds. Or rather, in a storm cloud, because I was burning with two desires – the desire to continue listening to Milo, watching him, and feeding on his passions, and the desire to possess him physically. I wanted to satisfy both of my desires, which did not seem at all incompatible to me – far from it.

Imperial College is in South Kensington, in the western part of London, and I had to go to Canary Wharf, in the east. We had landed at Heathrow, and South Kensington was on my way. I proposed that Milo and I share a taxi, and he accepted. It was raining cats and dogs on the United Kingdom’s capital, and I thought Milo’s morale would plummet. Not at all. He was content to feel the rain on his face – it rains so little in Sorrento. He even dreamed of a cold and snowy Christmas.

In the back of the cab, once we were on the M4 motorway, Milo began to bubble over with excitement well before we arrived in the centre of London. He has not only been bitten by the computer bug – he also loves the cinema. I was delighted when he asked me if we could detour by Pinewood Studios. Finally, we had something in common. The cinema could always feed our conversation when Milo finally calmed himself down. I refused the detour on the pretext that the studios were already behind us. Which was true – the famous studios were northwest of Heathrow and we would have had to backtrack. I informed Milo that Pinewood was not open to the public, which is also true. Milo sulked and pouted for a few minutes before pushing his hair back and shooting me a mischievous glance. No big deal. One door closes, another one opens, he said joyfully.

Several minutes later, he addressed me again, this time to ask if the sign marked Chelsea corresponded to the London neighbourhood that was home to the football team of the same name. I had already decided to respond to all his questions and all his desires, not to go to Canary Wharf and to spend my two days in London with him. On the road that led to Stamford Bridge, I filled Milo in on my desire to show him around London, or anything he wanted, before my departure the following day. By way of response, he placed a tender kiss on my lips.

Chapter 2

The kiss that I placed on Julie’s lips was well-deserved. I had not stopped talking for more than three hours. I had quickly gotten the impression that Julie didn’t want to talk about herself, but she seemed to take pleasure in listening to me. As soon as I broached a subject that didn’t interest her, she steered the conversation in a different direction. The proposition that she made me on the road to Stamford Bridge surprised me a little, but didn’t catch me entirely off guard. Julie seemed to be attracted to me, but I didn’t understand exactly what she was looking for. In any case, I didn’t really care whether or not I understood Julie – I had never liked to be alone, and Julie was pleasant company; I liked to make love, and Julie was a seductive woman.

I arrived at Charles de Gaulle airport on Wednesday, August 28, 2002. After accidentally knocking Julie’s book out of her hands, I lied to her – I had flown many times with my parents, and I already knew that I hadn’t missed my connection for London. Around the age of 14, I had become aware that girls, and later on women, seemed to ardently desire the adolescent boy that I was. At the time, I was 18 years old and knew that women liked to play the initiators and the protectors. When I turned toward Julie to return her book, I played my habitual role of a young man a bit lost in the world of adults. Julie was seductive – I already said that – with her long legs that appeared below the skirt of her Chanel suit, her tiny waist and her perfect breasts on which rested a few locks of long chestnut hair. Her almond eyes were almost the same colour as her silky hair. Her features were fine and regular, and her little nose that turned up ever-so-slightly gave her a mischievous air. She was not wearing a ring. I decided to sit down next to her and strike up a conversation in the hopes of seducing her, if only so as not to continue my travels all alone. "With a little bit of luck, I thought to myself, she lives in London and I could see her again."

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Milo, your narrator, that passionate and enthusiastic being that Julie has just described to you. Before continuing the story of our arrival at Stamford Bridge, I’d like to add a bit of information that Julie omitted – the fact that I spoke to Julie in French, the language that would, much later, allow us to communicate without being understood by Stuart Shelby. Even though my native language is Italian, I am perfectly fluent in both English and French. English because I absolutely needed it to pursue my passion for computer science, and French because my parents insisted that I be able to speak this language that was so close to my own. I loved life, and I bit into it with enthusiasm – sometimes too much – and sometimes I ended up biting off more than I could chew.

I was born in Naples on August 21, 1984, and up until that day in 2002, I had always lived in Sorrento, a city nestled between a mountain and a high, steep cliff that overlooks the always-calm waters of the Bay of Naples. Like all Italian boys, from the age of four, I had always wanted to be a professional footballer, but I was detoured from that path several years later by the arrival of a 486BX33 PC in my house. It was my father’s idea to buy that machine, but soon after, I