haute couture.

[the boulevard]

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S?BASTIEN ARMEL

a mystery in the making

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((you can find me at ie couture from now on, just so you know.))

[the boulevard]

Oh god, I think I'm the only straight man in this entire fucking godforesaken place. Me. The artist !slash! The fashion designer !slash! The singer song writer !slash! whatever occupation that will never enable any women to think much more than "He must have a nice boyfriend." I just like the metro look, thank you. I like to be well groomed -- that doesn't mean I like to suck cock. God.

Maybe it's an epidemic. All these homosexual males... not a woman amongst them that isn't butch or troubled or tied down by some deep dark past.

...but I guess this is the place to be if you've got a big secret to hide, isn't it? Christ, at least my secret isn't hidden so deep in the closet that it's finding Christmas presents. (I stole that line from someone. I think it's funny. I'm not original anymore.) At least my secret has all of those classic subplots and suspense stops --

At least my secret is still unfolding.

But I swear to God, if another homosexual tries to pick me up at that bar again I might drink myself into a oblivion and give up. I just hope this isn't all a hint. I really don't want to turn gay -- even though I hear it's not so much a choice as a hardwired biological preference, but whatever. I don't want to do it to or be done by any men.

It's really hard to be a coniving womanizer when there aren't any women to decieve. I guess that's my whole point. I may or may not need to relocate.

[the boulevard]

The best part of this shithole of a day, so far, was when he stuck the apartment key into it's little hole and opened the door only to be greeted by Gloria's gardenia perfume and not Gloria herself. She always wore gardenia, that was the very first thing he ever noticed about her and the only reason he noticed was because it had been right after he buried his grandmother (yeah, he picks his chicks up in the funeral home) and that flower aroma, the death flower, was lingering in his nostrils. They were outside, smoking a cigarette, and he commented on how it followed him and she made the bold statement that she was the one following him -- her and her perfume, she said she found it soothing. He figured a lot of people found death soothing and didn't much question her choices after that.

Here he was two years later thinking about that day. More about Gloria than dearly departed Nana, but if Nan had seen this girl's legs she would have understood. Not that his Nana was a lesbian or anything, but she appreciated fine beauty.

Gloria was the epitome of a fine beauty. Like a wine, only the cliche became so fervently overused that Sebastien was inclined to scoff whenever a friend said that to him. He always bit back about their ignorance and went on to make more meaningful analogies or sometimes he said nothing at all. But everyone knew how green-eyed Sebastien got. Especially since Gloria was better than wine. She was better than any liquor, any drug --

That was why that white note sitting up on the deep mahogany mantle was so unappealing to his tastebuds when he finally spotted it. That was the source of this gardenia perfume; not Gloria herself.

You suffocate me, Sebastien. I don't want to be a housewife, I want to move on. I left you everything, I only took my clothes that I bought and you can sell the rest.

Maybe I'll come back to you someday.

That was the best part, even now, even two years after the incident. Maybe I'll come back to you someday -- and why would she be so arrogant and sure that he would take her back should she choose to come? He must have spoiled her with the expensive shoes and fancy vacations. He must have splurged too much and made her feel like the most important thing in his life. Too bad that she was.

Gloria was the whole problem, Gloria was the reason he couldn't be intimate anymore, Gloria was the reason he chose to spend every Friday night with a different girl on some new designer drug.

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But his therapist said it was time to start over and he supposed the old man was right. Why not? He hoped fate had had it's amusement and all of the sadistic bitches with gardenia perfume would stay well out of his future -- he knew Gloria wouldn't be around to fuck it up.

[the boulevard]

When he quit smoking, he started drinking. It seemed like the natural progression of things, or the way it should be if it wasn't. Replace one addiction with another, right? His morals were a little skewed, so why not his convictions?

...but then he started smoking again and decided that he was probably going to lose a limb, for penance. That's what God does, God smites people for things like this. Not murder, oh no, but if you smoke you get cancer and if you drink, your liver dies then you die yellow and alone. So he was going to be twenty five in a month and after that he was going to start turning yellow and slowly suffocate to death. Maybe for another sixty years, even, until he was eighty-something and alone still. Solitude didn't bother him though. He'd been alone before, most of his life. He'd be alone now and he'd die alone. Even if there was somebody in the room with him, he was going to die alone.

"You can't count on anyone, you know?" That was his life's motto and people always told him that it was fucked up. He didn't think it was. "It doesn't matter how altruistic somebody is, they're still in this for themselves. I hope you aren't that naive -- I mean, fuck off if you are, because everybody is looking for something even if they're doing it quietly."

[the boulevard]

"I don't want to see her today. Not today..." Sebastien was smoking in the sunroom, watching the ringlets waft lazily toward the ceiling. "Maybe tomorrow, I will. Just not today."

He looked like the black spot of death in his sister's feng shui house and it was fitting; he wanted to kill the chi and it's muted yellows and greens instead of harnessing it. Instead of looking couture casual from head to toe, he looked tired. The rings around his eyes offset the pallid looking face and the dark blues and blacks that he had layed on did nothing but wash him and his greasy looking hair out.

"You can't avoid her forever, Sebastien." At thirty five, his sister was more like his mother than his own mother had ever been. Actually, she was only his half sister; related by father from a different marriage, but they were closer than any full blooded relatives could be.

"Yes, I can." He was being childish and as soon as the words left his mouth, he was anticipating her saying something obnoxious to him.

"You can also jump off of a bridge, but that isn't going to change the fac that you and Gloria have a daughter and you need to see her!" Arianne didn't understand how delicate the subject was with him.

Here he was, a twenty five year old flake who had the worst ex-girlfriend in the history of the universe and baby girl to remember her by.

"Gloria wanted you to take care of her, Sebastien... you know it's the right thing to do."

"I'm twenty five years old and I can hardly support myself. How am I supposed to take care of a kid? I can't. I don't want to see her, I just want to sign the fucking papers." Sebastien's head lulled against his palm and he had to rub the tears out of his eyes. "What was she thinking? Why--"

"Sebastien, she didn't mean to get herself killed. Things happen for a reason and if you don't want to take care of this baby, I will. John and I will..." This had all become very complicated, very quickly. "She'll never have to know -- you can just be Uncle Sebastien." The prospect was an interesting one, but this decision wasn't going to come lightly.

"I have to think about this, Ari. I don't know if I can do this." Suddenly feeling older than his years, he got to his feet and stretched his spine and wondered how people ever made it through life without problems and drama like his.

"Well... you don't have to do it alone, Sebastien. That's all that I'm saying."

For the first time, he looked at his sister as more than just a nag; she was a friend. "Thank you."

[the boulevard]

Bleeding back into existence from his self-induced cocoon, Sebastien found that it was harder to smile, harder to feel and think. The only thing on his mind was a two year old that he hadn't had the courage to lay eyes on yet, that his sister desperately wanted to take care of.

Sometimes it felt like the whole world was out to get him. Here he came for recovery, for an end to the madness in his life, and he was left in broken shambles -- but somebody had so accurately pointed out that maybe this was what he needed to do. Maybe this was his new beginning, it just hadn't come the way he'd imagined it would. There were choices waiting to be made all around him; life altering, Earth moving choices. They wouldn't wait forever, not the way he could.

His hands were sore from the hours he'd spent wringing them out, trying to make a decision seep from the pores. In the end, Sebastien grew up. He realized the difference between right and wrong, he realized that taking the child was going to be what he had to do. One side of him was screaming. This was going to ruin his social life, this was going to ruin his entire career. A child. A dead woman. A heartwrenching story to tell. All there would be from hereonin was tears and pity parties, he knew that. But it wasn't fair to let the little girl grow up without her father. The other side of him was screaming to let her go. He wasn't mature enough for this, he wasn't going to be able to raise her properly, he was going to irrevocably fuck up a perfectly innocent little being.

But maybe all soon-to-be parents felt that way. It was time to give this a shot.

<center>Marisol Amrel



God, she's going to look just like her mother...

The ever-present, even in death, Gloria.
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And it was definitely time to let the past go...

[the boulevard]

How can so much happen so fast?

This is the most horrible thought in the world, but... it won't go away. I wasn't sure it was going to happen, but it did. I fell in love with Marisol. I mean, I'm glad I'm her father. I'm glad I get to watch her grow up, I feel so priveleged that I get to be part of her life experience and I will not irrevocably fuck her up like my mother did to me. I wasn't sure if I could do it, I wasn't sure if I would be able to help guide and mold her into a beautiful person -- I wasn't sure I would even be able to love her the way a father truly loves his daughter, I didn't think I had the capacity. But I did. I do. I'm grateful. She's going to make me a better person and I don't see what else I could possibly need in life.

On the other hand, I met a girl. I met a girl at the bar and I'm infatuated with well beyond a reasonable sanity. She's different. She's odd, she's eccentric, she smiles a lot, she seems like she wants to make sure I'm okay -- she seems like she wants to take care of me and I want her to. I don't like that. Well, I do. But, I don't. I will see how this develops.

Isn't it funny, though? I never though I'd get out of the Farm alive and here I am, a beautiful three year on my shoulders and a woman in my life that I really want to get to know better. (Even if she has no idea.)

Maybe there's a plan for me afterall.

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[our decadency]

"Maybe if everything didn't change so fucking fast I wouldn't have such a problem with it."

This was becoming his explaination, his mantra in the past months, for the behaviour he had begun to exhibit. It wasn't like him to stay out all night drinking (for days at a time, even) and it wasn't like him to give up a fight so easily.

But actually, he argued, if they knew him at all then they would know that all of this behaviour was exactly like him. It may not have been in tune with the person that many people had met, the one who was a loving father and all around genuinely kind man. But the truth of the matter was that Marisol, his daughter, was the only reason he had become that way in the first place and now that she wasn't with him anymore, he had no reason to be kind or sober. Her grandparents, Gloria's parents, had taken custody of her because Sebastien had no parental rights to begin with. He has signed them away to his sister and his bitch sister thought it was in the child's best interest to be raised in a "stable home."

Sebastien couldn't understand why everybody thought he was such an horribly unstable person, but him. He'd provided a wonderful home for her in the months they'd spent together.

"Maybe you should get some help, Sebastien..."
"Mind your own business."

Without his heart, what was the point?

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