A600AASS Day 2 - Poitiers to Agen
15.10.22
333 Km
“Emovare”, said the physiotherapist, in Dutch-accented English. “It’s the Latin root of the word “emotion”. It means “to move”. And what we need to help you do is let your emotions move through you. Because of these terrible events, they’ve become blocked”.
It was the concluding conversation of a session in which she’d placed warm, weighted blankets on my belly and feet and asked me to visualise my pelvic floor and my diaphragm moving in sync with one another.
That was Thursday.
This morning — Saturday — I managed to get the CD changer working in the 600, my old Mercedes. When I left London, I got rid of over 100 CDs, holding on to the 11 that were truly meaningful to me. I loaded them in the changer’s magazine and set off for Agen.
The Velvet Rope by Janet Jackson came out in 1997, the same year I lived in France. I listened to it on repeat, drawn in by its transgressive sexuality and Janet’s openness towards gay love.
I recall taking a train from my parents’ friends in the suburbs to the centre of Paris. There was this beautiful, sweeping curve in the line that caused the train to tilt. As the sun streamed in the windows, my body pressed down in to the seat, just like that moment before a plane takes off.
The song Free Xone, with its free-style funk and Archie Bell & the Drells sample, is that corner in music, is that feeling of embodied exhilaration. If I hadn’t been driving when it came on this morning, I would have shook myself loose with the joy I felt at hearing it again, and remembering that curve, and that exhilaration.
The Velvet Rope also addressed the thrills and challenges of online dating. On Empty, Janet sings:
Is this a new way to love
Never face to face, is it enough
Does it really count or am I a fool
So tell me, please, am I wasting my time
Although I wouldn’t be online until 1998, as I said on Twitter the other day:
I was queer online for years before I could be queer IRL. Queer online worlds saved my life by giving me a sense that another, authentic life was possible.
But this morning, when Janet sang:
(When I close my eyes)
I can see your face
(When I lick my lips)
I can taste your smile
(When I see your name)
My heart starts to race
(If I can't read your thoughts)
Then I feel empty
the loneliness of that time overwhelmed me. The emotions started to move. I managed to let go for a kilometre or two.
By this afternoon, I was locked down tight.
At some point, I might attempt a mechanical explanation of what’s happened to the engine in the 600. Suffice it to say it’s probably deeply, deeply fucked, in a borderline catastrophic way.
A couple of hours earlier, I’d been happily planning with Chris how we’d extend our trip back to Amsterdam, using the car to stop off at places we’ve always wanted to go, or had never thought of until we saw them on the map. Tonight, it’s been all I could do to work out how to get to Léon by Monday so we can start walking.
I’m beyond describing the disappointment I feel. But the thing that scares me the most is that that sense of emotion is gone.
I feel empty.
Post script: I’m having a fair bit of trouble with the image formatting workflow on my iPad. If anyone feels inclined to tell me whether they’re loading ok and at a vaguely reasonable size, I’m all ears!