The 1980s are 30 years in the past. Few people remember those years. I tell stories and the listeners think that I’m lying about jumping off cliffs or nearly making love with Darryl Hannah or even about watching bears eat garbage at the dump in Maine. I wonder if they are right, but my memory is spot on about many things like how a Paris friend and his girlfriend would leave the Bains-Douches or Helium high on heroin.

Guilhomme was a cold-wave musician. His chubby copine was a sex club dancer with orange hair and skin as white as chalk. They made a good couple. He was gay and Claudine was asexual. Neither had money, so every night they would scale the high stone walls of the Pere LaChaise Cemetery. Their squat was a hundred meters from the grave of Jim Morrison, but very close to the plinth of hieroglyphist Jean-François Champollion.

“Mssr Les Doors attracts too much of the wrong crowd. It’s quieter at our squat.” Guilhomme and Claudine shared a subterranean tomb with the remains of a familie bien-connu during the 19th Century. Obscurity allowed the couple to live in relative splendor.

“Bien sur, we have to keep an eye open for grave robbers. They hunt for the bodies of the newly dead. Normally taking only the head, since it’s easier to hide in a bag than a corpse. Bodies are 5000 new francs and heads are 3000. Facile for transport.”

“I hear the ghouls at night.” Claudine shivered at the mention of grave-robbers.

“They are quieter than the Satan worshippers.” Guilhomme painted a tapestry of crimson sacrifices surrounded by bones of the long-dead. His lead singer Eric was squeamish at the sight of blood and tolerated Guilhomme for his talent at the keyboards. Their crow-black band never possessed a name. A model/friend from LA suggested Les Mortes. Guilhomme loved that, but then he resembled a untombed cadaver. He brandished a long stiletto. “I will cut them first.”

“They are no fools.” Claudine knew the limits of Guilhomme’s protection. Their sojourn in Pere Lachaise lasted a summer. The cold stone walls of the crypt offered excellent comfort during the hot season. Autumn brought the damp and junkies hate the wet.

I admired Guilhomme for his adventure. He’s still alive. So is Eric and the model from LA. I am too. Leeza considered Guilhomme a freak and Eric agreed although for different reasons, “Anyway we will all sleep in a grave one of these days, at least Guillaume can say “alive”: I know how it is ! But I agree with Leza he’s freak but for some other reasons.”

Eric wouldn’t confess how.

Some secrets are better left to the grave.

Especially about those that live in the Earth.

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http://www.mangozeen.com/2010/03/30/new-york/the-exterminating-angel-of-passaich-bet-of-crazy.htm