Jef Barbara - Contamination

Larmes De Crocodile

Shifting glass and neon typify the tech district of

Paris, limestone traces of the previous Montmarte subsumed by
a digital fascination as sacrilegious to the old village as
Moulin Rouge once was to the Sacr-Cur. The new builds
respect the history of these streets, their most innovative
pleasures hidden down lesser-known alleys. Somewhere in their
shadows, you hope, you'll find Vincent.
Friends said they saw it coming - said a polyamorous
relationship was trouble. You'd not been so sure. Other men
made Vincent happy, he them in return, and you were one of
them. It wasn't always easy but you smothered jealousy with
reason and charity, so his absence now feels like a cracked
phone screen, inexplicable given the relationship's history of
stronger knocks and drops. You're certain it's nothing you
did, but still you followed him to this strange fogged-window
building tucked away from the boulevards, blue and pink.
Le Bijou Mmoire.
A sweep of buzzing light admits you.

Caresses Interdites

The man behind the desk not comfortable with English, you
let your phone's built-in translator do its thing to the
company's brochure. Le Bijou Mmoire specialises in a virtual
reality therapy not unlike rubbing scarred tendons, dissolving

hard tissue back into the body. A defrag for the mind.
You have questions: yes, Vincent took the full treatment;
no, sessions are confidential; yes, bribery works; no, they've
never imported foreign operating systems; yes, they are
curious, they wouldn't be here otherwise.
So here you are in a white room with a fishbowl of sorts
over your head, wires from the rim cascading over your chest
to a tower of buttons. The man flips and flicks switches. "You
expect?" he asks.
You might not begrudge anyone happiness, but there is a
limit to your reason, your charity.
"I want answers."
Underneath the rocky bluff, another more transparent
desire: you want to see him again. That's all.
Wavelengths of Vincent's other loves filter and rebound
within the fishbowl. As your reality slow-fades into his and a
high pitched whine settles between your ears you realise you
might be looking in the wrong place.

Sbastien

Broken bottles glitter in the grit between the rails.

When the dancing crowd parts, a single spotlight at the tunnel
entrance shines all the way to the exit, boarded up and
graffitied. When Vincent reaches up to wipe the sweat from his
face you feel his hand upon your own brow - you are in his
body, you are sharing his mind. He is your possessed.
The silhouetted crowd spits out Sbastien the same way a
cash machine dispenses hundred-pound notes, crisp and

unhandled. Vincent's heart quickens and you feel it in your

own, a slippery flutter of hope. Vincent is figuring out what
of himself to share with this new person, what they themselves
will give in return. Lesson learnt tonight: Sbastien does not
dance.
It was his idea to come to the tunnel rave but all he's
done is stand in the shadows and watch the darkness jump. Even
in the intermittent spotlight he is wary of showing too much
physical affection, looking around before taking Vincent's
hand, because he cannot tell who is watching back, who he
might cut off from making themselves known. An open
relationship reshaped your edges, taking you from the corner
edge to the centre of a puzzle you couldn't see until you
started moving through it. Sbastien, though, is a corner
piece.
That's okay, Vincent thinks; Sbastien's access to wealth
is exciting and novel. But shame coats Vincent's lust, and
it's not about the money. You smell Sbastien's expensive
aftershave, you taste the memory of beer on his tongue, and
you know Vincent hasn't told him about you or any of the
others because he doesn't think Sbastien's as generous with
his love as he is with his money.
What are you against this but two out-turned pockets?
Your gut sinks; you wonder if Vincent feels it, wherever he
is.
Dancing bodies part again and the spotlight sweeps across
your vision.

Cocane Love

Hands tight on the rope, leaning back to counterbalance

the dark chandelier, Audrey winks over his shoulder to
Vincent. He's showing off. He's high. So is Vincent. This is
another part he doesn't share with you. The tectonic plates in
his mind shift to convince himself he's in love, and not just
in love with what Audrey supplies.

The world is slow like

treacle and you feel his quickbeat heart overlapping your own.
A skeleton staff presides over the Tristam's empty lobby
of red leather and chrome: leaning over the lowered chandelier
the night concierge unscrews several bulbs, artisan coils
frayed and black inside glass domes. The barman idles by the
piano, tripping up and down the scales with a sleep-deprived
grace. This place is too far out of town, Vincent thinks, to
be such a cliche. It's why no one stays here, why Audrey
adores it; They can get as fucked as they like and they won't
be asked to leave.
You hate this. Where is your Vincent?
Your Vincent - the possessive is embarrassing, weren't
the two of you beyond that? It's not as if he hid from you who
else he loved, but the long mornings, lazy afternoons, quiet
daytrips to dunebanked beaches, you'd thought they were still
moments, lighthouses in the storm - not burnouts and
comedowns.
Concierge thumbs up, barman flicks the switch; let there
be light. From behind one set of eyes the two of you watch
Audrey's back muscles work under his wine-stained shirt as he
and the concierge pull the chandelier higher, higher, higher.
A shared halo hoisted back to heaven.

Flight 777

"Fix my skirt for me, sugar."

Vincent's hands tug nylon out of Margherita Slice's
tights.
"No, no, no, like this."
Margherita's hands stuff the skirt back in, deeper. Her
dressing room mirror an intermediary, she looks at Vincent, a
dumb pet who doesn't know any better. Vincent enjoys the
performance, lets the shade glance off him like mirrorball
reflections, but you urge him to rip the tinfoil wig and white
pilot's hat from Margherita's head, turn the queen back into
Gerard, a risk analyst from Ipswitch.
Vincent does no such thing.
You root in his mind for the off switch to the
simulation. Were he to sense this hate inside him, an alien
presence, if he met you now for the first time - he'd turn
away. The force of the desire warps the dressing room so that
the ceiling bows and flexes upwards like a bubble. You can
hear a voice saying something in French, but you don't
understand. The words blend with the compre as he welcomes
Margherita to the stage. She plants a fat and sticky kiss on
Vincent's cheek, and as she pulls away you see pixellation
around the corners of her eyes. She launches into her grim
act: lip synching to black box recordings.
More French. The entire midsection of Margherita Slice
scrapes to the left in a rainbow of glitch, digital innards
spilling a cool white glow across the pillow of your bed.

Les Homosexuelles

In the chill of a winter sunrise the back of your own

head is impossible and familiar, a cheap green-screen effect,
or a photo of the dark side of the moon. Under the duvet
Vincent's left hand runs up your back and along your neck. You
expect to feel his fingers on your body but you only feel your
body on his fingers. He tugs your earlobe.
You remember that, from the last time you woke up
together. Have these all been memories of last encounters?
Then you - the remembered you - rolls over to face
Vincent.
Your entire face snags on some digital point, smearing a
swatch of flesh tones across the orb of your skull. Your
lagging face smiles, teeth showing through jaggy hair. One eye
slides down onto the pillow in a puddle of pixels. You scream
to be let out but Vincent's lips say "Hey, gorgeous." He moves
to kiss the glitching ogre.
And here's the thing: his heart beats slow.
The background whine, that tinnitus pitch, is gone. You'd
thought it was part of the simulation but it was within
Vincent all along, until now. He is calm. He is calm and you
are the reason, and you're also the reason he's going to
leave. He's reached a conclusion you don't agree with: you are
ambitious with your affection but you are not so good at
sharing, and you deserve better, and he has to get away before
he hurts you. He'll miss the others, but they won't care as
much.

You'd say something to change his mind but your tongue

fills Vincent's mouth while your own mouth ghosts up the
wallpaper. You'd say something but your tongue fills Vincent's
wallpaper while your mouth fills up the ghost. Your mouth
tongues ghosts while your wallpaper owns Vincent.
"Monsieur," says the tech guy, his voice with you inside
Vincent, "The feed, it is, uh, is giffing. Is corrupting. We
must take you back."
Vincent rolls the lump of pixels that once was your body
back over to the far end of the bed and falls asleep.

Charlotte Et Le Piano

"The nearest exit may be behind you."

Out of the darkness backwards walks Margherita Slice,
leaving slivers of herself in the air. They twitch to the
hollow beat of only a few reversed claps. Her tinfoil wig
stays facing forwards when she spins to face you; when
undresses, starting with the heels, it floats six inches above
her head.
"I bombed so hard. Don't bother telling me otherwise. Air
masks will drop from the overhead compartments. Too soon? It
was too soon. Cabin prepare for landing."
She untucks her skirt from her fishnets but Vincent
stuffs it back in again, and she flashes him shade, and her
face freezes. The dressing room projection bulges against the
invisible fishbowl. "Non," you hear on the other side. "C'est
coinc"
The pause affords you time to study Margherita's

expression. There is a secret smile under the scorn. Vincent

is, to her, a guard dog, a canary brought down a mine. When
she takes everything off and becomes Gerard, uncomfortable in
her own skin, Vincent calls her Maggie. You feel in him the
pride of protection. Despite everything, you feel pride too,
for him. He sustains the act, a constant applause.
"Pan-pan, pan-pan, pan-pan," says Margherita. "Unsure of
position."
The chandelier falls through the ceiling like a 747.

Homme Universel

The weight of all those lightbulbs pulls Audrey off his

feet, but two inches in the air he lags. After five seconds he
rises two more. The upward movement presses his white shirt
down onto his shoulders, but only his shoulders - the rest has
yet to feel the tug of gravity. Another stutter upwards and
the fabric rolls down his arms and chest like an oil painting
given life.
Vincent feels just as sluggish as the simulation. The
hotel lobby lights sting his eyes, his nose is running and his
muscles ache. He took too much again, the grit of it a psychic
exfoliation.
Suspended, Audrey winks, and winks, and winks. "You must
hate me," he quavers, "doing this to you."
"No," says Vincent, and you know it's true. On those
occasions when your hangovers synchronise, or those weeks when
you're ill, passing the same bugs back and forth, and the cost
of being alive is a throbbing, a throbbing, a throbbing -

sometimes you love Vincent most when you are nothing but two
useless bodies holding each other together.
That's what Vincent shares with Audrey: allowance and
recovery, something as simple as transaction and balance.
As his fluttering torso ascends to the ceiling Audrey's
legs disconnect from his body, but he doesn't seem to mind.
They kick their way down into a sea of broken bottles.

Wild Boys

"Even so, don't stop."

Sbastien's knife-sleek car faces the tunnel mouth.
Leaning against the driver door he reaches through the window
and flicks the headlights into life. Vincent's shadow
stretches out in front of you across the tracks and the
night's debris: crushed cans, discarded clothes, whole chunks
of dead pixels.
"There's no music."
Vincent dips his hips slow, raises his hands in the air.
You have no choice but to be carried through the movements,
each twist or thrust stirring bruised artefacts out of the
night air.
"Dance for me."
"How do I apologise?"
Vincent's afraid his generous heart might have a price,
that a number might seal up all the ventricles, chambers and
pumps he's grown since your agreement to open up your
relationship, but Sbastien was never looking for a love to
let.

He floats backwards towards you, stray vectors rising off

his body like steam. Vincent takes his hands and pulls him
back into the rave, dancers coded out of darkness to press and
grope under the railway arches.
Sbastien was looking for a love he couldn't buy, and
here you are, plural. His smile, when it shows, is a perfect
fractal.

Turn On

Blue screen, white text, warped and bloated on the inside

of the fishbowl:
erreur de systme
rpc_s_invalide_liaison
1769 (0x6E9)
mtadonne-incohrente
HEURISTIC_DOMMAGES_POSSIBLES
9018 (0x233A)
SXS_ROOT_DPENDANCE_MANIFESTE_NON_INSTALL
avorter / refaire / chouer

I Have A Friend

It's dark when Le Bijou Mmoire kicks you out, but

Montmarte MK2 doesn't need sleep, and neither do you. Neon
arrows point you under awnings into bars where the people
stand close and drink slowly and talk, talk, talk. You don't
understand a word, but a glance alone is a language in itself.
You could love everyone in this aloof city if they let you,

and you are open to it, to the musical number at the end of
the show where everyone, heroes and villains alike, get to be
part of the chorus.
It's all very French; of course Vincent came here. But
he's been resident for three months, long enough to find
someone new, if he's looking. Territory will already be
marked, inside and out.
An open relationship, you'd expected, would stretch you
thin, make you love less if more often, but on the way out of
Vincent's simulation the opposite had come to pass - in
returning his desires to him so too had yours been regifted
and, in a way, increased. Against such generosity reason is
useless, and charity's plain insulting. It's not about
sharing, or hiding, or revealing selves. you get that now.
Better, perhaps, to start something of your own.
"Puis-je vous offrir un verre?"
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