Take it Like a Man
DIY- Collages-Fanzine
Take it Like a Man
Enfant, j'ai passé beaucoup de temps avec mon cousin B. qui avait 17 ans de plus que moi. Il avait habité chez mes parents quand je suis née, m'envoyait des cartes postales d'Inde en 1979 et m'a légué ses affaires quand il est mort du sida en 1995. C'était un adepte du cruising, à Paris, sur les plages, dans les backrooms. Un adepte de la came aussi, et de la fumette. Fan de musique et branché indouisme.
Quand je retrouve des diapositives d'un voyage au Portugal en 1985,
B. est là en pd flamboyant : casquette en cuir, moustache, teeshirt ultra moulé, short en jean court et ceinture en cuir. Un Cruiser. Le contraste entre les gens du pays qu'on visite et lui est plus que saisissant car B. sort aussi complètement du cadre hétéronormé que nous formons, mes parents et moi.
Le revoir tel qu'il s'affichait, juste avant qu'il n'attrape le virus du sida est très émouvant. Je ne me souvenais absolument pas des codes queer qu'il affichait. J'ai dû les absorber car je suis moi-même lesbienne et queer. De plus en plus.
Toute sa vie à Paris dans les années 80 m'est inconnue. Je le situe par rapport à d'autres mecs alors que j'étais enfant. Tout est archives, faits, statistiques, lettres, et récits, tout comme les cartes postales sont des capsules de mémoire des pays qu'il a visités, ainsi que les lettres envoyées et reçues qui creusent un portrait in absentia de B et de son époque.
Je lui invente un passé.
TAKE IT LIKE A MAN
As a child, I spent a lot of time with my cousin B. He was 17 years older than me, lived on and off at my parents and he would send me postcards from India in 1979 and elsewhere. He was a cruiser, a cottager, in Paris where he lived for a bit, on beaches in Greece, in clubs’ backrooms. He was into pot and heroin too. Absolutely devoted to punk and new wave, into Hinduism. I didn’t know any of it being so young. I inherited all of his belongings when he died of AIDS in 1995.
I recently found my father’s slides from early 80s trips to Portugal or Greece we all went on, my parents and him: B. can be seen wearing a leather cap, Mercury’s moustache, a tight crop see-through tee shirt, the smallest denim shorts possible and a thick leather belt. A flamboyant 70s gay man. A cruiser.
The contrast between his looks and attitudes and the traditional country we were visiting is even more striking because B. also transgresses the typical heteronormative family we were, my parents and me.
Seeing him as he was, just before he caught the virus is very moving. I had absolutely no recollection of the queer codes he was displaying. But I must have quietly absorbed them because I am also a lesbian transgressor in my provincial supermarket, eyed up as queer, weird while I’m choosing my breakfast cereals .
His whole life in Paris in the 80s is unknown to me. Gay guys’ behaviours in public spaces and what happened when they became infected. In this project, I put him in relation to other guys around me when I was a kid.
It's all family archives, letters and stories but also facts, statistics- just as the postcards are memory capsules of the countries he visited, so are the letters he sent and received, which paint a portrait in absentia of B.
2025
