Sex and terrorism inform a trilogy of novels two decades in the making.
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I lie on a narrow twin bed in a Paris hotel. Through the open window, there are indistinct voices, the low rumble of cars, distant sirens. Bjork’s kinetic Hyperballad wafts in from another room. It is summer in the 10th arrondissement near Place de la République. Across from me, on his own bed, a beautiful boy reaches out his hand, inviting me to join him. It is 1995, I’m 24 and my life is about to irrevocably change.
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Behind me was America and its smothering morality, a string of shitty boyfriends, a file cabinet full of abandoned novels, short stories and poems. There was something about being abroad, out of comfort zones, six hours ahead of what I would soon realize was my “former life,” that liberated my voice and sexuality. For years I had read about writers and artists moving to Paris to explore their creativity and find a simpatico community. There was, apparently, something about the air, light and energy that seemed to infuse these expatriates with inspiration.
London and Paris would change how I think about sex and my sexuality. The men I encountered broke down barriers that I had put up, out of fear and my own lack of body image and self-esteem.
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My first novel began as a poem written in that Paris hotel room. It would then transform into a screenplay that Jodie Foster’s now defunct production company would call a “beautifully written, but expensive art film.” As the 90s ended, my agent suggested transforming the script into a novel. That’s when Conquering Venus was truly fleshed out. I’d spent the previous five years traveling back and forth to London and Paris for “research,” to soak up more of the locales and—frankly—the open-minded, easygoing sex.
I’d never been hit on or picked up more than when I was in London. In the public toilet at Oxford Circus, I was cruised by a guy with supermodel looks who turned out to be a Russian tourist who knew very little English, but we didn’t need words when he pulled me into a stall and bolted the door. Sex was the common language and I was getting the full immersion.
On another trip, I found myself having sex on a park bench at midnight in Paris, so exposed and yet incredibly intimate, even as strangers walked past, some pausing to watch. From a cybercafé near Luxembourg Gardens, I was summoned to an apartment in Montmartre and met at the door by a young man so shockingly beautiful that I suddenly felt as nervous and anxiety-ridden as a teenager. We wouldn’t even make it to the bedroom, stripping each other in the foyer and tumbling around on our coats and clothes.
London and Paris would change how I think about sex and my sexuality. The men I encountered broke down barriers that I had put up, out of fear and my own lack of body image and self-esteem. They were less concerned about my looks and more about my passion and I discovered I had much to give.
The sex would be interspersed with fear and concerns for my own safety, not at the hands of these lovers, but the threats of terrorism that seemed to nip at my heels every time I set foot in Europe. On that first trip in 95, the Eurostar train I was traveling on passed over a bomb that failed to explode. A few weeks after I left, terrorists detonated a bomb on a metro train. In the winter of 96, I arrived in London as the IRA blew up a bus in the West End. On another trip, I was evacuated from an Underground station, almost crushed being swept back up an escalator. Just last year, the terrorist attacks in Paris happened practically on the doorstep of what I call “my corner” of the City of Light.
But these divergent characters and scenarios were what two decades of personal and artistic exploration had given to me.
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All of these moments – the exhilarating rush of sex with strangers and the eerie dread of terrorism – would find their way into my Venus Trilogy of novels. My main protagonist, Martin Paige, would become the surrogate for all these adventures as Conquering Venus begat Remain In Light and finally Leaving Paris.
It wasn’t my intention to take 20 years to get this sprawling literary mystery to readers. Agents and publishers didn’t know what to make of Martin’s central relationship with Parisian widow Irène Laureux, an older woman with connections to underworld crime and searching for the shadowy government figures who murdered her husband. One agent suggested Martin should be straight and Irène should be a young, femme fatale. Another balked at the graphic sex scenes in Remain In Light (there’s a pretty steamy one in the car park at Charles De Gaulle Airport in Leaving Paris, too) between Martin and Christian, the young hustler who becomes his lover. Gay sex, old women, terrorism, Alice Through the Looking-Glass doses of synchronicity and magical realism – the publishing world had no idea what to do with these books.
But these divergent characters and scenarios were what two decades of personal and artistic exploration had given to me. I found both my fiction and poetic voice—which aren’t very dissimilar, I’m told —and it’s the best money I didn’t really have to spend that I’ve ever spent. Even now, with the trilogy complete, I’m planning more trips abroad and, although I’m 20 years older, I’m still interested in exploring my sexual and artistic boundaries. I just renewed my passport for another decade. Amsterdam sounds like a good place to start. And so does Berlin. And Havana. And Bogota. It’s better to travel.
Leaving Paris and the other two novels in The Venus Trilogy are available now from Sibling Rivalry Press.
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Photo: GettyImages