Benoit
Ari Mazur
I was cleaning out my ashtray, dumping out its contents that had become a strange congealed goop made up of cigarette butts and rainwater, into my flowerpots. It was a scorchingly hot day in Montreal. I’d been unable to do much of anything other than think about chain smoking. My portable AC unit had stopped working the week prior. I’d been sitting nearly naked rubbing ice cubes over my body. From my balcony, I could hear a protest making its way down Mont Royal avenue. There was an eerie feeling to the cacophony of drums and shouted slogans, something about rent prices, something about not being Legault’s bitch. The disjointed low hum of crescendoing drums reminded me of Haka dancers. I thanked God I hadn’t smoked a joint before coming outside, otherwise I would have assumed the city was under siege by percussion majors. I wondered if the rent hikes were going to affect me. They probably wouldn’t, my landlord had kind eyes. I felt like a traitor to my civic duty by not even bothering to step out onto the street to witness the protests firsthand. I was scared of the drumming. Up here I was safe, trapped on my ivory tower balcony. If my rent went up I would have to leave my little studio behind, clogged ashtray and busted AC unit and all, and face the drummers. I prayed my kind-eyed landlord would relent. If I had to leave my apartment I’d have to stop sleeping with Benoit, my neighbour’s eighteen year old French nephew who’d come over for the summer for an experience of a lifetime in dirty, old Quebec before starting university in the Fall. Almost comically taut and tan, he looked straight out of an Eric Rohmer film. We met on the fire escape weeks prior, when I’d poked my head out calling out for my cat, also named Benoit, and he thought I’d been yelling for him.
He’d been wearing linen shorts and nothing else.
“Euh, ello? You call for me?”
He had one of the thickest French accents I’d ever heard. It both repulsed and amused me. I juggled the decision of whether to reply to him in French and put him at ease or to hear him continue to fight his way through every word.
“Hello. Um, no. I’m looking for my cat,” I said in a clear and concise English that is reserved strictly for speaking to immigrants and the hard of hearing. “Chat,” I added, for good measure.
“Ah! Your cat has same name as me!”
Since then I’d wake up from my afternoon naps to clumsily constructed WhatsApp messages parsed with far too many emojis requesting to see me later in the evening. I would often make him the only meal I knew how to prepare. Tomato sandwiches. Several tomato slices and olive oil on rye, with just a pinch of kosher salt. I liked to watch him scarf them down as though he hadn’t just eaten a three-course dinner next door. I’d forgotten how much teenage boys could eat. Benoit, though, seemed miles away from the socially-awkward, effete guys I’d known in high school.
About a week into knowing Benoit I admitted to him that I could, in fact, speak French, and our conversations went from insufferable to something nearing pleasant. He liked to put down Canada in the obnoxious way that only a teenager can, parroting things he’d heard from his parents, or maybe from a right-leaning podcast. With any other foreigner I’d have gone to bat for this godforsaken country but it was hard to argue with the endearing sense of boyish self-assurance Benoit radiated. He said nothing of substance. I more watched his mouth move, and listened to none of it. Watching him talk, impassioned about God knows what, gave me a sense of wonder about the world. I wanted to squeeze him, this man at the precipice of the rest of his life. I wanted to syphon the jouissance from him.
I decided, against the natural order of things, to text him first, on that unbearably hot afternoon. The air was damp. “Only this part of the world gets this humid,” the cashier at my dep would tell me everytime it got above thirty celsius, “the type of humid that gets inside your bones.” In that moment, I chose to believe him. The protests quieted down and I could hear the low buzz of the early dinner crowd start to fill the streets. I watched an ant crawl up and down my balcony post, while I waited for a text back. These were the ants I was used to, slender, breakable, tiny matte black things. Not the gargantuan pretenders I’d been seeing around, seemingly some type of mutant, distant relative that made me viscerally uncomfortable whenever I’d come across one. Who’s to blame for the giant ants? Climate change, no doubt. Maybe I could organise a protest.
My phone buzzed. Benoit wanted to see me. He said now would be preferable to later. The urgency was unusual.
“Why now?” I texted back in English.
He sent back a slew of exclamation points. And then another.
I told him he could come over. I heard the screen door of my neighbour’s apartment slide open and there he was, wearing nothing but pinstripe shorts with a sauce stain on the waistband. I watched his thin, tan legs climb over the barrier separating our two balconies. He looked visibly anxious. He stood awkwardly in front of me for a good minute and said nothing.
“Hello,” I finally said. “You can sit down, you know.”
I indicated the other chair. He glanced at it but he didn’t move. And then, an outpouring. He was in love. With me, of all people. Now that the summer was nearing its end, he couldn’t bear going back to France. He had a plan. He was going to defer university and live in Montreal. He loved it here. Maybe he could even move in with me? He wouldn’t be able to contribute to the rent very much, but he’d look for jobs and then maybe he could help out. His aunt knew a friend who needed a receptionist at her hot yoga studio. Maybe he could do that? And then apply for school here?
I stopped him. I couldn’t let him go on forever.
“It gets very cold here in the winter. You’d hate it.”
He assured me he wouldn’t hate it. He was dying to see snow.
“I hate it. Everyone hates it.”
He looked crestfallen.
“Benoit,” I said.
His expression brightened.
“There are way too many French people here already. You have to go back to France.” He said nothing. He slumped into the other chair.
“Come on. Do you want me to make you a tomato sandwich?”
He nodded.
As I got up to go back inside my apartment, my cat slunk out through a hole in the screen door. He rubbed up against Benoit’s legs. From inside, I watched the boy pick up the cat, press his face into his fur, and hold him tightly.
