After the party
Friday evening was the company’s Christmas party. As every year, the celebration was generous. Cocktail dinner and plenty of alcohol. Laughter is not just easy like that, the happiness of working together really exists, I think, within Spiria.
Beyond the party, what I love above all, and even with a certain regret that I will describe later, is the dialogue, intimacy or confidentiality that, as you can guess, takes place after soaking your lips even briefly in a glass.
In a very short time, complete parts of a life can be revealed to you candidly, and it is perhaps because I am told that my heart is in the right place that people do not hesitate to talk to me. That Friday, then, this guy have told me this, that other that. I can’t, I don’t want to reveal anything. They were not such great secrets, either, and if they had to be repeated in other circumstances, they would seem to be only manifestations of ordinary life. The interest is elsewhere, for me. It resides in collusion. In the noise of a drunken evening, someone talks about their life. Will he remember what was entrusted? Maybe not.
I do, though.
Sometimes I think I would have liked to be a priest, a psychologist, to hear people’s lives. As a writer, I already open my ears wide. I observe in the shadows. I don’t say much about myself. At least, I say less. I think I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut.
Would I really have liked to be a priest for that? Or a psychologist? Honestly, no. There is a regret or rather a concern, yes. Have I learned to keep quiet because I have nothing more to say about myself? Nor do I write "real" books, "real stories".
Isn’t a person who listens a little shy? That Friday, I did not this one that when he spoke to me, I had a deep desire to stick to him, not for ephemeral sexual pleasure, but only to taste his existence. I didn’t tell that other one how sweet I thought she was either. Why don’t we say these things? Because they’re ridiculous or because they’re too precious?
I saw other employees during this party who also seemed to be talking about confidences. Was I dreaming? I saw the sad look on one of them’s faces. Seen with all the noise and the silent distance that separated us, that she was crying inside. Maybe I just invented it the way I like to do it. I have seen others touch each other with the pleasure of being well together, dancing and forgetting each other a little, soaked in wine or scotch. I know that people are happy to work for this company and the alcohol offered is not the cause. They are people who simply know how to dance.
On my side, I don’t dance anymore. I can understand those who walk through bars in search of carnival and theatrical drugs of truth untied from reason. In 1982, I wrote in cafés, looking at people, because I felt the pain of love, you know, that kind of wound that resonates for a long time, because it is the first and it traces the shadow of happiness to follow.
So I like these occasions too infrequent for me, which, apart from the writing I share here, allows me to draw the passion that drives us all to live. Or is it really life for everyone? So many questions that arise trying to answer only one!
The next day, and even the day after that, without my hangover, I had in my mind the bitter taste that silence had returned. I have looked, as I do daily, at the InstaEmpty portraits, crying out in masked sincerity, of people who depict their ethyl life or the humble life they cherish and share candidly as algorithms decide what the next advertisement will be before their eyes.
No, it’s not just alcohol that creates this drift. The mind is well able to get drunk alone hoping for hope and survive to the end of the world.
In fact, today, Sunday afternoon, I baked my bread, I told that to the whole planet Internet who sent me his likes. I saw the face of a handsome man. I told him the light looked good on him. I also saw that my sisters were chatting in a private channel, showing what they were planning for the holidays. Christmas dinner is difficult to prepare these days with all these allergies that have appeared from nowhere!
Where are we going, my God, you my silent virtual neighbour, do you want to tell me?
Here, I’ll call my parents. I will always need their kindness and truths. And I didn’t take a drop of alcohol to say that.
