Our room becomes invaded by another party! There are only four of them, three men and a woman. Catacomb aficionados are 85% male and 70% under the age of twenty-five, a demographic Antoine fits into neatly. This group is older. Jade begins harassing them immediately for hashish and, I’m told, for sex. Actually she demands that one of the gentlemen rape her. Jade is so aggressive in the pursuit of her desires she scandalizes even these kids, which is not easy. At her house a long bamboo stick dangles from the ceiling, and sketches of bound women hang on the walls. At Christmas dinner she warns me that she intends to be obnoxious with me, and I worry about what this means, but she drinks too much and falls asleep on a futon before anything occurs. Generally she is sweet, and sort of maternal, cooking pots beef and carrots for everyone and making numerous bowls of chocolate mousse during my stay.
These people have ruined our ambiance. I like thinking that we are the only people in the entire catacombs, and even if it’s not true I don’t want to cross paths with the others. It suggests that the maze is not so very big, our trespasses less transgressive. We’ll encounter two more groups before leaving, both mostly males with one or two females, and pattern that annoys Judy. I remind her that it’s essentially the same ratio as our own gang. Yeah, but everyone here is female-bodied, she says.
We pass by a small cave that has plastic flowers jammed into every nook and cranny, plus patches of astro turf sprouting more fake blossoms carpeting the ground. The Hall of Femmes! Judy announces proudly, like she made it. Judy did sculpt a goddess onto the wall in a nearby room, where the mud becomes so thick your feet sink into it and give you a little slide, like you could tip over and find yourself face down in the muck. Visitors enjoy taking handfuls of the mud, piling it on the walls, and making sculptures with it. I’ll show you mine, Antoine says. His smile is so fucking cute I want to slam his face into the mud. His sculpture is perhaps a demon, perhaps the devil himself or also maybe just a goat. It has a long bony face and curving horns and is cool and sinister. The mud seems to have blackened along some parts of it, as if its been charred. In other spots moisture formed a gauzy gray beard that looks like mold. Judy’s goddess has mostly tumbled from the stone, though an abstract vagina remains. There are other forms clotting the walls, and in the center, a giant man fashioned from wire and plaster. It’s body, circled with strips of stiff gauze, makes me think of a trans chest wrapped in an ace bandage. There’s a little winter hat plopped on its head. A cheerful skull and crossbones mural adorns one wall, the stone beneath it gilded and marked with a big diamond. There’s a surprising lack of base or offensive images down here—no giant cocks or pussies or boobs, the sort of stuff humans tend to draw on walls when no one’s looking. Judy’s vagina comes closest, but it’s a sacred goddess pussy, so it’s different. The one slur we spot is a word for faggot, etched into a hallway ceiling. We would have overlooked it completely if Judy hadn’t glanced up and caught it. What does it mean? Someone who gets fucked in the ass, she says, then gets academic. A passive sodomite.
We retire to an area known as The Beach, so those who partake can partake of some MDMA. The Beach is the widest chamber we visit on this trip, large and gratified, like someone’s basement rec room. There is a pile of rocks dotted with candles in the center, and the far end is lined with a wide sitting area and painted with a giant copy of Hokusai’s Great Wave, the wooden boat caught in the frothing curl. Antoine arranges lines atop his French passport, hunched by the rock pile so he can see. Killer rips a check from his checkbook. A Drug Deal In The Catacombs, I title the moment. But no, he begins tearing it into strips and handing out the shreds, so that everyone can have their own paper straws to snort with. It’s more hygienic. Most everyone is doing the MDMA. Now that the moment has arrived, I’m relieved to find myself uninterested. Antoine is concerned that I will be bored to death, hanging out in the dark with a bunch of drugged-out people whose language I don’t speak, but he underestimates the exotic appeal of the entire environment. I’m in the catacombs! I’m in Paris! I like hanging out listening to the lilt and sway of everyone speaking, especially the French pfffff, the stylish shot of air sent through the top lip to demonstrate an annoyance spectrum ranging from resigned irritation to disgusted fury, depending on the curl of the lip and the fierceness of the pfffff. It’s oddly relaxing to not be able to participate in conversation, to just space out to the sound. At home I can’t shut up, I exhaust myself.
