My ritual

One hundred fifty-six? One hundred fifty-seven, perhaps? A little more, a little less, who knows. As the evenings pass, I have more and more trouble counting it. Somewhere on one of my neurons, a new mental path has been created. Even among the most disturbing activities, habits are formed. I got tired of the shabby little bars, their dusty pianos, and their boorish and bitter customers, flattened by despair.

Of all the globetrotters on this planet, I am probably the least fulfilled one. Sleeping in a different department, state, country or region every night is not necessarily a chance. At thirty-six, I already feel like an end-of-career truck driver riding through rainy and infinite lands, wondering what would happen first: his retirement, or the delivery of his load?

For me, there is no question of retirement or loading, since it's not my job. In fact, I do not have a job. There is no need to have a lucrative activity when you've made a fortune during youth. My father ran a major cosmetics company. The high number of braindead dolls and a clumsy fall on the stairs made me hit a huge bonanza a few years ago. Unlike many people, I had no idea what I could do with such amounts of money. I just pushed the door of a car dealership to buy myself a pickup.

Since then, I'm only riding according to my desires. The first thing I had to do was to leave the filthy rat hole where I came from. From Magadan, with my foolproof machine, I snuck through the Russian Far East, traveling thousands of kilometers of gravel. Under a gray sky and rain reminding me the tears of an angry god, I wandered in the dead landscapes served by the Kolyma highway. Two weeks later, I could see the gates of Europe through my windshield. Thus began the life of a notorious debauchee: I was going to sleep after all sorts of wanderings related to games of chance, drugs and the pleasures that a woman of low virtue knows how to provide to a lonely traveler like me. 

I'm not completely stupid, so I quickly took into consideration the fact that this wallet that was emptying visibly was not replenished. Instead of looking for a job that would allow me to satisfy my luxurious needs forever, like anyone with an ounce of honesty would, I decided to lower my standards of life, so that this crazy adventure lasts a little longer, and so that the end, that is to say the complete emptying of my pockets, is less brutal and therefore less difficult to bear.

Every day, the rubber of my tires makes contact with the bitumen of motorways and national roads of the old continent. I never have a clearly defined destination, I just stop where I like, when the bitterness of my loneliness behind the wheel is too much to fit. In the midst of horn sounds, warnings displayed on large LED panels and traffic jams around large cities, I dream in my smoky cockpit. The fog of my cigarettes goes perfectly with the mechanical noises that surround me, and which compensate for the absence of car radio in my vehicle.

Sometimes, in these cities where the nocturnal lights form an astonishing pointillist painting, I meet some people. In large discreet but charming houses, with floral patterned carpet walls, I surrender to my weaknesses with a rare complacency. When the sun has set, the party begins. The girls sit at our side, pretend to be interested in our conversations, and, dressed in red and black lingerie, take us to the rooms upstairs. Baroque music serves as a soundtrack all night long. On the ground floor, some gentlemen, between two fucks, play cards while enjoying an excellent glass of bourbon directly imported from Kentucky. Houses of this kind are often run by old ladies with long libertine lives. Over the decades, accordion tunes and waves of soldiers in garrison, they have seen their sexual powers become extraordinary, and satisfy whole generations. After a life of day-to-day adventures, romantic crossovers in the countryside and melancholic weekend passions, these women who do not belong to anyone have become the mistresses of the circuit that saw them bloom, perpetuating the noble tradition of these houses of pleasure.

Although I must recognize that these little erotic stopovers have always put me in a good mood, my nights are now very different. For more than five months now, I have been engaged in an unusual routine, which ends my daily journeys in crushing silence. Tired of white lines on the tar, eyes reddened by exhaustion, I rush to the parking lot of the first hotel and hasten to book a room.

For the hundred and fifty-eighth time, the cold iron of the gun barrel paralyzes my mouth. Head down, eyes closed, sitting on my bed, the trigger under my finger, I think about my day. As on a videotape, I watch again every moment spent, every meter traveled in my vehicle. Every night, the findings are exactly the same. I can see, in my introspection, regret and self-contempt devastating me as the seconds pass.

What should I do now? Why all this pretending? Will I ever reach the destination I am looking for? Does it even exist? When the answers to these questions arise, I will have the courage to pull the trigger. I'm searching, plowing my brain until I have a headache, but nothing works. To think calmly is something that I have become incapable of. Finding a solution is beyond my reach, while I can clearly see my failures. Nathalie's name comes to mind.

A hundred and fifty-eight days ago exactly, my life was on a turning point. As usual, I was meeting the cuties of the area where I parked. It was near Arras, in an unofficial establishment called "La Rivière". The place being uncomfortable, I took my thirty-minute lover in an adjacent street. At this precise moment, our two destinies mingled, and their end was sealed. It was absolute love at first sight. Nothing mattered anymore. My heart trembled mechanically when I saw how well she greeted my thrusts, with what docility she accepted the kicks and spittle. It couldn't end like this. The idea of depriving me of such a company was unbearable. A few minutes later, asleep by chloroform, Nathalie was tied up in the trunk of my pickup. Since then, she's always followed me. I love her and I feed her. Yet each evening, in my hotel room, from my window overlooking the parking lot, I wonder: "Is it time to give up?"

(2017)