Is it odd that I think
about Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec from time to time? Henri, the brilliant, but
biologically and psychologically troubled, French post-impressionist painter,
who I imagined must have been as uncomfortable out in society, alone, as I can
be at times. Henri was a dwarf. I don’t know what my excuse would be. In my
head, I create imagined scenes of his isolation. Inside the cabaret, fin de siècle Paris, the opening of the
Moulin Rouge. Henri’s posters are what drew the crowd to this nightspot. They
put the red windmill on the map, so to say. But in my meditations, Henri is
left alone.
Henri Raymond de
Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa was born in 1864, in the South of France to an
aristocratic household; his last name being a gift from the towns his relatives
were the counts of. Also, Henri was born from aristocratic familial breeding
traditions; his physical afflictions being a gift from the history of
inter-nobility European marriages. His grandmothers were sisters. This
pragmatic and perilous desire for “pure blood” and strengthened family alliances
produced homozygosis in poor Henri. His torso was normal size but his legs remained
child-sized. This set of crossed genetics also bestowed upon Henri, gigantic genitals.
Unable to engage in the activities of other young, aristocratic, French males,
Henri immersed himself in art. He fled to Paris to study art. Drawn to bohemian
Montmartre, he met his first prostitute, Marie-Charlotte, apparently hired by
his friends. Around this time, the Moulin Rouge opened and hired Henri to make
its promotional prints. Henri always had a seat reserved for him there, and his
paintings adorned the new walls. He painted all of the dancers of the Moulin
Rouge. His work was shown in the Independent Artists’ Salon. But demons
manifested in Henri. His alcoholism pulled him to new depths, aided by the
deterioration of a rumored syphilis infection. In 1899, his mother had poor
Henri institutionalized. Two years later, Henri had passed. Aged 36 years.
I imagine Henri
sitting at his reserved seat. Women who may be working, women who may be kept,
comparing curls in the corners. They never see poor Henri. He sees them. Above
the rim of his glass, lifted by tiny hands to his tiny lips, perched high atop
his seat. His cane has fallen to the floor. Henri does not want to ask anyone
for help. He would rather remain invisible tonight, and deny the aristocratic
attention others often crave. Henri is taking mental photographs, perhaps to
recreate in his masterpiece, At the
Moulin Rouge, later.
I, too, have sat
alone at a bar. But this has produced few masterpieces of my own. I spent one
night alone in Chicago, just to have spent one night alone in Chicago, amidst a
cross-country trip and stumbled along the streets downtown, full of deep-dish
pizza and Budweiser, until I found myself in a piano bar. It was crowded for a
Wednesday night. I settled in at the bar, ordered another bottle of Budweiser
and turned around on the stool to swallow the surroundings better.
People are
strange, when you’re a stranger. The regulars lined up at the bar, swaying upon
their stools, adjacent to me. I overhear their dark and lonely conversations,
attempts to hide the same loneliness we are all plagued by at times. Others seated
in their guarded groups, facing each other around tabletops, their backs to everyone
else. All across this place. Some groups of only guys, with hungry eyes wading
through the room like lost sharks. There are a few groups of only girls, who
know that they are being watched from seven possible directions,
simultaneously. The heterogeneous groups, men and women together, are having the most fun, laughing at something, when they are not drinking.
Waitresses weave between, balancing drinks and bar food on the moon-shaped
platters they hold out, above and away from their heads on their way to
coalesce at the end of the bar area, to flirt and being flirted with by the inattentive
bartenders, who have left me waiting for another beer.
It is really just
like any other bar I have been to in my life, alone or accompanied by friends.
But tonight I am the stranger. I don’t know these people. I will never know
these people. What on Earth could I possibly have to say to anyone here? Or
they to me? I found myself quoting Kerouac, “I had nothing to offer to anybody
except my own confusion.” It probably came from reading On the Road, too many times in my younger, more impressionable
years.
Two pianos, empty
for the moment, sit back to back upon a small stage waiting to be played. It is
only a matter of time before the rollicking and dueling pianos will flood the
whole bar, and the poly-symphonic singing of the trained professionals at the
pianos and the drunken coeds at the tables will bellow and wail the clichéd
lyrics of all the clichéd songs you hear at any piano bar. Let everyone else
sing every tired verse of “American Pie”,
and “Piano Man.” They are the
type of songs should only be sung when you’re part of a group, anyway.
In this bar, on this night, invisible, I stole the scenes I will recreate later.
My mind wandered back to At the Moulin-Rouge,
its diagonal composition and, glowing, grotesque faces. Figures in black seated
around worn, wooden lacquered tables take turns leaning in and laughing. Men
beneath black chimney pot hats, black beards, black frock coats. Women, black
from ornate collars to pointy shoes, rest under Victorian plumes. They cradle
glasses of cognac and glasses of absinthe in their black velvet gloved palms.
The gaslights, centered in each table, cast a ghost green glow, illuminating
chins and nostrils. Each group, across this cabaret, engrossed in its own
conversation as the accordion dances through the air, mingling with clove and
perfume. Each group, oblivious to the existence of every other group.
Their little tribal circles. The stories they share. The
color of their jewelry, the glistening of their hair. Someone laughs loudest.
Someone has always had too much. Sometimes, it is Henri who had too much. One
too many tremblement de terre. He is
the life of the cabaret. He is the only source of natural light in this place.
The women surround him and play with his tiny ears. Twirl his miniature mustache.
Pinch his thighs, just above the knee. They whisper together, rumors about his
immense and distorted genitals. His legs dance in staccato steps, Three legs,
counting the cane, rapping and tapping upon the floor as he stumbles beneath
the frills and ruffles of can-can dresses and can-can kicks. Henri is dancing.
They say he will never die. Mad with alcohol and syphilis. Cursed by the
conditions of old aristocratic inbreeding traditions. They say he will never
die.
But on the night when he only wanted to
disappear, Henri watches from his roost at the bar. Behind his glass. Capturing
the night and its sway, and storing it somewhere far away. Sometime later he
will paint this night, and carefully place himself in the scene, behind a group
in the cabaret. Right in my line of sight as I raise my glass and remain
invisible.
