It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer or the baker

On his 17th birthday, Philippe’s father gives him a Porsche 911, expecting that he will get his driver’s license before summer. Philippe walks past the garage every day, looking longingly at the car while he takes lessons from a local driving instructor, passes every one of the theoretical tests and counts down the days till his practical test. The car is tended to by their butler in the meantime, Philippe watching him waxing the bonnet and polishing up the chrome. It’s a fine car.

By one point, one, Philippe flunks his practical.

He passes his second attempt, of course, but his father is very disappointed and almost returns the car to the salesman, until Philippe’s mother begs him to consider the boy, he needs a means of transportation. So, Philippe receives the keys for the car and invites one of his friends, Charles, over for the initiation drive. They drive far into the forest outside City and make out for an hour before driving aimlessly around the city afterwards, just to make sure someone sees them and can place them accordingly.

It's a good car. It’s a young man’s dream, but no man is young forever.


~*~


It’s when they have decided to marry that Philippe realizes they should get a new car. A Porsche is fine for a single guy to cruise the streets in, but for a respectable couple? He exchanges the car at a used car dealer to a white BMW 320i that’s both big enough to grant them comfort and with enough horsepower to make travelling to France every other week easy enough.

Violette is very impressed with the car and asks him to take her on a drive through the countryside. They drive to Barrault Manor and make out in the old barn where his mother gave birth to him. They don’t go all the way, naturally, as they’ve agreed to wait until marriage, but they’re still blushing and a bit out of breath as he slips the key into the ignition, and they return to City under a starry, October night sky.

He thinks about the old Porsche while the silence settles around them, saying nothing about it. He thinks about the kind of life he led while he had it. BMW is a sturdy brand; this one will last him many years to come.


~*~


Once Marie-Claude has been born, they soon find themselves needing a roomier vehicle. Philippe sells the at this point rather old BMW and invests in a Nissan Pathfinder SE which is a butt-ugly car, truly, but very usable and adapted to their specific needs. It’ll be a comfortable ride to and from the manor, various family trips with friends to the countryside or cross-border vacations. It’s a family car.

Philippe has a family now.

Besides, he has his own ministry-issued car, more pleasing to the eye, that he uses for work. No one will have to actually see him drive the poor Nissan, abused and hated by his daughter, but necessary for the life they lead. The ministry-issue is a black Audi A4, tinted windows and very comfortable leather seats that makes working when his chauffeur takes the wheel an enjoyable affair. As long as he’s got such work perks to fall back on, the Nissan can stay, he won’t complain.

You don’t get lemonade without squeezing a lot of lemons, after all.


~*~


Along with his comfortable top-floor offices, the ministry-issued car goes when they lose the elections that year. To compensate, he buys a fashionable, expensive Mercedes-Benz E350 that he actually doesn’t use all that much, because Marie-Claude fabulises about the environment and about social injustice, so he starts taking the tram to appease her. To show a good example.

She, of course, is not so easily appeased. Especially not since Violette just drives the car instead.

Philippe has no opinion about the car, about any car, really, since he parted ways with the Porsche back in the day. They’re just means of transportation and being many things, Luxembourg is also very small, you can for the most part walk anywhere.

And anywhere beyond that? Planes do exist, no matter what Marie-Claude might have of objections to that notion.

How times have changed.

He remembers the late 70’s, the early 80’s where resistance could land you in prison at worst, gatherings of the kind that Rosa Luxembourg lobbies for these days were unheard of. Well, unless you lived in San Francisco, presumably, the Americans always did things a little bit differently.

Philippe watches the Pride Parade as much as anyone, meaning that there is hardly anywhere you might look if you want to avoid seeing it on display. The crowds pass right under his window at the Place Guillaume II, the music blaring, and the voices insistent.

Should anyone wish to put these people in prison, you might want to wish them ‘good luck’.

Yes, indeed, times have changed.

It was because his mother had the horses, six Selle Français, that his father employed the Ferrari family at the manor. The mother helped cooking and cleaning at the estate, while her husband and her oldest son were in charge of the stables. When Philippe spent his summer holidays at home, he and Antonio, the Ferrari couple’s youngest son, would borrow the horses and go on daytrips to the Belgian border, eating on Philippe’s father’s tab at the expensive gourmet inns there. He got in a lot of trouble for that. They didn’t do it again, but they rode around the nearby towns and villages, staying close to the Sauer. The summer greenery was lush and heavy and the horses wanted to stretch their legs, so they had to temper them somewhat.

Philippe was 14 that summer, Antonio two years older, though they treated each other like equals, regardless of Philippe’s family looking down their noses at the friendship.

One day, as they’d passed through Esch and were trekking in the fields up north, Antonio had said, let’s go swim in the river, in his dark voice with the guttural Italian accent that made his German a bit feisty to listen to. Philippe had shrugged and turned his horse around, taking it down towards the Sauer, to the place where they knew the riverbanks were sandy and welcoming. They’d been many times before, usually by bike. Tying the horses to each their tree trunk, giving them enough free rein to eat some grass, they kicked off their clothes and ran for the water, Antonio shoving Philippe back with one, big hand on his shoulder, gaining enough momentum to jump head-first in ahead of him. Philippe was right at his heels, though.

Philippe was always right at his heels.

Afterwards, they lay side by side on their dry clothes on the riverbank, the sun harsh and scorching above their heads, Antonio shielding his eyes with one hand, dipping his toes in the water lazily. Pesciolino blu, giù, giù, giù, nel mare se ne va, he sang under his breath. He had a nice voice for singing. Philippe didn’t understand the words, though. He had trouble enough with English in school.

Well, three languages are more than enough to get by, his father always exclaimed when he complained about his English homework, in a way that didn’t mean ‘don’t worry about it’, but rather it meant, ‘fuck the English’. Not that fucking the English would necessarily get Philippe better grades, he felt fairly sure. He hadn’t fucked anyone in his life yet.

About to ask what the song way about, Philippe fell silent when Antonio rolled onto his side, halfway leaning in over his upper body, shielding him from the sun like that. They looked at each other for a few, tense moments, then Antonio reached up and ruffled his hair, making Philippe exclaim loudly and try to wave his hand off. It made him laugh. Antonio still just looked at him.

“We have the same name,” he suddenly said, softly.

“No, we don’t,” Philippe kept laughing.

“Your middle name’s Antoine. That’s the French version of Antonio.”

A pause. Philippe blinked, “I hadn’t thought about that.”

“There’s a rule, you have to kiss people who carry a version of your name,” Antonio insisted.

No, there’s not, Philippe wanted to say, you’re just making that up, but he couldn’t find any good reasons why Antonio would invent such a thing, just to kiss him. They were both boys, boys didn’t…

“So, if you meet a girl called Filippa, you have to kiss her,” Antonio continued before Philippe could make up a satisfactory answer.

“I don’t want to kiss a girl called Filippa.”

“But you do want to kiss a girl, right?”

Another pause, longer. “Of course. This is a stupid game, let’s go back.” Philippe was about to sit up, but Antonio grabbed him by the shoulders and squashed him down against the carpet of t-shirts and trousers. Their faces were very close now. He couldn’t really breathe and not because of how Antonio held him. Or maybe exactly because of that.

“I have to kiss you first.”

“No, you don’t, it’s stupid, stop being stupid -”

Antonio kissed him. Right on the mouth. Pressed in against him and Philippe could feel his exhalations like huffs of heat over his lips and he suddenly realised, neither of them were dressed in any way and all that heat was going straight down, when he wasn’t wearing pants to… hide… Antonio pushed his tongue past his lips, opening him up and it was wet and kind of messy, but Philippe also really liked it and parts of him definitely liked it more than others.

He squirmed, tried to get away, while at the same time he didn’t want it to end. Antonio didn’t let go, he kept going, he kept going and Philippe was going to… he needed… to…

He sat up, all but banging his head into Antonio’s face and biting his tongue off, but he just needed it to end, not to continue, to stop, stop, stop. Quickly scrambling to his feet, trying to conceal his boner and failing, he dressed wordlessly and without looking at the older boy even once. “Let’s go back,” he said. His t-shirt was clinging hotly to his back. It smelled of his sweat and of Antonio’s. “No more stupid games.”

“It’s not just a game,” Antonio replied, getting up as well and getting dressed. Philippe noticed he was at least half-hard, before he tugged himself into his pants, then his trousers. “It’s just a rule that applies to some of us, okay?”

“Not okay,” Philippe muttered, stalking up to his horse and getting into the saddle without any real elegance. His balls hurt.

After a moment, Antonio shook his head and got onto his own horse. He kicked it into a trot towards the main road further up through the clearing, before yelling over one shoulder, like a warning almost, “maybe not okay, but that’s how it is anyway!”

Still tasting him on his lips, Philippe pretended not to hear.