Later I would know some real workers — heavily tattooed, hair worn in ponytails, motorcycle-riding, manga-reading, and pill-popping — and I realized … - Edmund White

He’d had a few sordid gay experiences. He’d wrestled with an obese neighbour boy in Clermont-Ferrand when he was fourteen and last year had been approached in the Clermont-Ferrand train station loo by an obscene old man who’d removed his dentures, wagged his tongue, and pointed to his open, pulsing mouth.

He’d lived so much of his life for sexual love, which was a filthy thing, really, all that saliva and semen and anal smears, filthy! Much better to live alone and watch TV in bed or talk to Pierre-Georges as he was in his bed and watching the same movie. Both of them spotlessly clean.

Americans consider the sidewalk an anonymous backstage space, whereas for the French it is the stage itself.