Belgian 'Humour Noir'

Dinners at Nicole’s place tend to be pretty strange maybe because they usually involve neurologists, therapists, neuro-psychiatrists, a current boyfriend, an ex-husband, and a couple tortured young souls, me included. This time I came with a +1, my friend David visiting from Jerusalem. The placement around the table was organized in such a way that Nicole’s current companion, Kenneth, a Chilean architect who hardly speaks English and despises all that is American, was sitting at the far opposite of David, and American writer of Russian Jewish descent whom I studied with in LA. The conversation immediately fused around the theme of paedophilia within the church. Everyone was speaking simultaneously about the reasons why and how someone might be brought to have sexual relationships with children. Most of the conversation ended up being fairly absurd, some might say vulgar or maybe completely inappropriate. I noticed that even though we were surrounded by doctors and intellectually proficient human beings, no real conclusion was reached. I just remember the dialogue suddenly falling into the realm of homosexuality and Nicole announcing that: “Lesbians are women who still believe in fairies and witches”, which caused a general burst of laughter and served as a wonderful transition to the blackberry pie for dessert. We soon discovered the blackberry had stained all of our teeth and tongs and the entire group briefly transformed into a bunch of 8 years old giggling about their vampire-esque purple mouths.
Kenneth who had chosen to drink wine instead of socialising that evening eventually attempted to communicate by ways of the French language and uttered a comment which was received with a slight wave of disapprobation. Being fairly experienced in the ‘Nicole gatherings’ and the generally hectic nature of its conversations, I have an especially trained ear to eavesdrop while, in this case, violently discussing the ethical concept behind Europe with my sceptical American friend. Having missed the punch line of Kenneth’s blabber, I asked him to repeat himself. After a little hesitation he said in French: “The funny thing about David, is that if we decided to kill him tonight and bury him, let’s say in our yard, no one will ever know about it!” my left eyebrow reached for the sky while my right eye directed a refrigerated glance towards the man. I turned back to David and continued the conversation as if nothing had happened. In an effort of diplomacy, Nicole said something along the lines of: “L’humour noir tout a fait belge quoi!” which I chose to ignore as well.
A little later in the car, while debriefing on our evening and on our way to another party, I described the incident to David, who had been left unaware of the exchange due to Kenneth’s rather unintelligible French. David was slightly shocked for a second then the writer in him immediately took over and he said: ‘ The worse is that he is absolutely wrong, if he did kill me and buried me in his garden, people WOULD know about it and he would be arrested in no time. Think about it…’ then proceeded to describe to me how and whom and what would’ve ensued.

Gluts & Cigarettes

There’s something absolutely charming about the turn a girls night can take. Yesterday, at Ananda’s apartment, after our ritualistic weekly chain-smoking action of the week and a particularly healthy meal, Nolwenn set up a ‘salon area’ right in the middle of the kitchen. It involved a large blue tarp, two chairs and a trashed up mirror. As Aline was cutting my hair, Ananda was filing her nails, and after adding an extra coat of bright red on hers, Nolwenn left the kitchen to come back with a mysterious little embroidered cushion. I soon discovered that this was her ‘exercise mat’ when she placed herself in a rather suggestive position, only a couple centimetres from me to do her ‘gluts work out’. After the haircuts, Nolwenn methodically gathered the remnant hair to give to a sculptor friend of hers who works essentially with skulls, nails and human hair.

Rats & Mayo

We had some of our English family for lunch this Sunday. My aunt, who is particularly fond of telling shocking stories around uptight people, described her recent experience with rodents. A couple months ago, she started realizing that a large group of rats was using the roof of her kitchen as a freeway between two houses. She went to local authorities to find out how to get rid of them. Surprisingly enough, they handed her five huge bags of rat poison without asking too many questions and basically invited her to deal with it herself. In order to have a view on the scene she threw the bags on the neighbours roof and came back around dusk to observe the mass murder. She described a pretty horrifying vision involving over a hundred rats rushing to eat up the entire contents of the bags. A couple days later, the traffic on her kitchen roof had ceased. When going back to the local authorities to find out whether there was any next step involved, a chap told her the best test was to place a piece of bread smeared with mayonnaise on her roof. If the bread was left uneaten, the rats were officially gone. Seduced by the Belgian folklore of it all, Fiona placed a ladder against the wall and reached up to the roof to place her mayonnaise-covered slice of bread and waited. The delectable dish remained untouched.

Indigeste is back

This evening, at Antoine and Alice’s place, the table was littered with bottom line red wine and a couple bottles of Gordon’s Gin. While discussing ‘Indigeste’s future, it appeared that I had forgotten to underline the key detail of Antoine’s intervention in the next performance. The hood of the raincoat that is worn under the heat light over the course of an extended amount of time will have to be fastened tightly around Antoine’s face. The punch point resides in the untying of the hood which should create a sort of cascade of sweat on Antoine’s face. Rehearsals have officially started ten days ago. Antoine is currently composing a rather graphic song describing the encounter between a cock and a cunt. To the question: Is the song written from the point of view of the cock or the cunt? Antoine stayed vague which accentuated the thrilling suspense of it all.

Belgian Vandalism

I was memorising the slightly obnoxious sugary needs of a group of three stopping by for their ‘gouter’ when an elegantly dressed man came into the restaurant and asked me whether I knew that someone was stealing beer cases from our storage space. I couldn’t help but laugh, it seems natural yet completely counter productive to steal a number of heavy cases of beer from a Belgian restaurant. The man didn’t seem as entertained as I was and pointed urgently towards a homeless guy steadily yet fairly slowly pushing a shopping cart full of ‘Jupiler’ cases in the not-so-far distance. I eventually ran upstairs to ask Arian, a rather insecure Algerian with a very studied attitude, to save the day. Since he is rather cold and distant and I was feeling maternal that afternoon, I picked him to be the ‘hero of the day’. The elegantly dressed man and him didn’t have to run much to catch up with the poor dude. I had to swing by the kitchen and missed most of the action. When inquiring about the outcome of the situation, Arian answered: “Ben, j’ai juste tout recuperer, qu’est-ce tu veux faire?”. He was right, there’s something wrong about reprimanding a homeless man trying to get a couple euros against a bunch of empty bottles.

Baby Talk

I work with this chap, Lio, who’s a tall guy with a conceptually shaven head & beard and a couple piercings. He bets on football games and horse races. He’s adorable but if you don’t know him he looks like someone you wouldn’t want to provoke. During a downtime of the day, this other dude comes over, a fat guy with huge hands who appears to work in another restaurant nearby. I eavesdrop on their conversation, since sorting out dishes doesn’t ask for the deepest concentration. I hear them chat about their babies, both firsts for them. I was pretty astonished by the turn that took the exchange, soon enough they were talking about what his or his paediatrician advised nutrition wise and here they were, passionately claiming the merits of organic vegetables and specific oils to nurture their beloved offspring. Soon enough they were exchanging addresses of markets and shops and it was adorable, cause clearly they weren’t vegan hipsters, they had never eaten organic food in their lives, they were just deeply concerned daddies. I had a silent cute attack.

Zievereer Finance guys

‘Ca c’est vraiment des zievereer quoi!’ says Lio about three bankers sharing croissants and expressos this morning. ‘Zievereer’ is a Brussels expression that defines blabbermouths. Two of the chaps are flemish, the other one is francophone, they are chatting quite loudly in a mix of dutch and Americanized financial English. I catch glimpses of their obnoxious dialogue: “I don’t care WHAT you do with the money afterwards, HOW you want to share it, YOU figure it out’ followed by loud laughter and a couple sips on organic apple juice. ‘We need so&so from Goldman Sacks, get such&such from Barclays, 10 Mil I tell you!!’ more yelling and laughing ‘125 000! In the pocket, like THAT!’ more sniggering. In the meantime, I’m serving a 75 year old couple, starring at each other with large smiles. When apologizing for the wait, the woman looks at me with a sort of peaceful kindness and says: “Ne vous inquietez pas pour nous mademoiselle’. Both their faces are illuminated with love and I can’t help but think that they have something that the ‘Zievereer’ will never get to trade.

Traumatizing wigs

I went to meet my friend Aline in some sordid hairdresser school in a particularly non-descript industrial area of Brussels. Aline is a brilliant and talented scenographer who loves learning and has always cut hair so there she is, ‘studying’ with a friend of hers and mostly a large group of total losers. There was something sort of alarming about this particular student, a pregnant woman with crazy eyes and a terrible 70s short pageboy haircut practising on an auburn wig. She was struggling to recreate her blond dreadfulness of a haircut on this innocent wig, then proceeded to blow-dry the wig which soon resulted in a burnt smell. There were a couple of reactions in the room, most of which I imagined said things like: ’Man what’s that burnt smell, turn it down!’, I say I assume, because the classes were given in Dutch. Anyway, crazy preggars totally denied everything and just changed blowdryers. I felt sorry for the wig.

Healthy BS

Every so often this guy comes to the restaurant and orders a double ‘fresh orange juice’, then another, then sometimes a third one. That’s all he has. He comes after working out and it is pretty clear that he has gone through some chimo treatments recently. This man smiles a lot, perhaps a little too much. After his many 7 euros glasses, he usually says: “Y’a rien a faire, après ces jus, je me sens requinque! Ca doit etre toute cette vitamine C!” (basically saying he’s a new man after those shots because of all the vitamin C). I don’t have the heart to tell him that orange juice looses pretty much all of its vitamin potential after 15min from being pressed and that what he is drinking is already eight hours old.

Objects get frequent flyer miles too

I just received my shipment from Houston. In the first box I opened, I found my friend Elkahna’s jacket. The jacket went from Montreal to Los Angeles, where it was forgotten, then was packed in my move to Houston, got on a boat to Antwerp and has now spent 24h in Brussels before getting on a plane back to Montreal with a Swiss friend of mine who is composing music for Elkahna’s sister. 3 years have passed by, I’m not entirely sure the jacket will still be in fashion, although Montreal tends to be aesthetically fairly tolerant.

Needy Americans

I have accepted to replace a co-worker who is a little sick today. Half an hour before the end of my shift, a ridiculous amount of clients comes in to get their 4:30pm sugar fix. A rather large African-American woman wearing the expected grey sweatpants comes in and asks for tea in a painful French. I’m in a rush and answer a: “oui tout de suite”. As I’m running to the next table to take a new order, she adds: “Est ce que vous avez du earl grey?”, to which I say “Oui, bien sur, un Earl Grey donc…’. As I head towards the next table she says ; “Et du citron ? vous avez du citron ?”, I’m starting to get a little annoyed but respond very promptly : “Oui, donc un the citron ?’” she seems to be done, but the moment I turn my back she asks again : “et du miel ? vous avez du miel ?”. At this point, it is fairly clear that she is starting to get on my nerves, I say : “oui, du miel, on en a, je vous amene ca.” She now seems to understand how annoying she has been and pronounces a small: “Je suis desolee” to which I answer a large: “It’s FINE !!”. Her entire face lights up and as I serve her the bloody Earl Grey with honey and lemon, she says: ”Thank you sweety”.

Indigeste

In Brussels at Alice & Antoine’s apartment. We are about 20 seated around a large wooden table exhibiting a constellation of many bottles of Jupiler. Antoine, Alice, Ann and I discuss starting a band, none of us are musicians, the idea is to rehearse as little as possible in order to remain bad. This concept is pushed as far as making our rehearsals the actual concerts. We plan on asking 3 euros per person to come see us play. When I ask whether we should up the ticket prices to 5, Antoine explains to me that 3 keeps us in the ‘alternative-punk’ category. We all agree. Antoine suggests adding a performance art component to the band, he proposes to wear some sort of heavy duty rain coat and sit under a heat lamp during the course of the happening. As we discuss similar propositions, it becomes evident that the band should be named ‘Indigeste’. Our mascot would be a bleeding rabbit and ‘Indigeste’ would be written on a banner with the same rabbit’s puke. Anne says she wishes someone would be writing all of this down. I mentally am.

Ballet Gertrude

In Paris at Maggie’s apartment. We manage to drink close to an entire bottle of vodka while casually chatting about recent traumatizing events in Maggie’s life. The phone rings, another dancer, Nico, is on the phone, I start insisting for him to join us. Maggie suggests to pay for his cab ride. We are both drunk and everything sounds like a good idea. Nico eventually appears. In the meantime, I have discovered that Maggie’s fridge is a major French cliché and solely consists in a bottle of Laurent Perrier, camembert and ham. We snack on all the deliciousness and spare the champagne to continue the vodka binge.

Nico arrives and we officially down the bottle. They discuss calling up for drugs. I just sit there, feeling happily dizzy, I retreat into passiveness since I’m drunk and broke. Unsuccessful in their efforts, we all decide to get some sleep. An hour or so later, Maggie wakes me up by pulling the covers off the bed, they have drugs and they want to share. I stumble reluctantly to the sitting room. They offer me a line of coke and some Brittany speciality involving meringue and pralines mysteriously mixed together into quaint micro pyramids. Soon enough we are all high and Maggie comes up with the idea of choreographing a grotesque ballet involving her and Gertrude. She stands up and starts dancing an interpretation of dust and hands me a broom. The idea of mixing Gertrude’s heavy handedness and Maggie’s grace engraves a huge smile on my face.