A while back I posted a post about my friend, Fred — well, to be accurate, Fred’s more an acquaintance than a friend. Though I like him as much as many of the people I consider friends, and I see more of him than most of them, as almost every day since the summer of 2017 he has knocked on my front door, a bummed cigarette in one hand, a can of cheap German beer from Lidl in the other, and, after a few seconds of small talk — “hey uh hi how ya doing?” from him (I’m pretty sure he’s forgotten my name) and “Fred, what happened to your face?” or “Jesus, Fred, you look like shit,” or “Fred, man, why don’t you take a fucking shower?” from me — he gets straight to the point: “You got any money?”
Money. I dig in my pockets and root around in the key bowl and give him what I find, a few coins, at best a five-euro bill — who has actual, physical cash on them these days? — and he looks at it, and me, with disappointment, and disdain, and — even though over the years I’ve given him, no exaggeration, somewhere between two and three thousand euros in small handouts — disgust, as if I just handed him a turd. Then he sighs, wipes his grimy forehead with his even grimier hand, and asks, “You got a glass of wine?”
He knows I have a glass of wine. Because I’m holding one. And I know he has a beer — it’s right there, in his. So I say, “You already have a beer.” And he shrugs and guzzles it and throws the empty into the olive tree planter next to my door — C. hates it when he does this — and, after a semi-discreet burp says, “Yeah” — and then, “How about a smoke?” and I remind him that I don’t smoke — and then, sometimes, not always, he’ll say, “You got any shoes?” Or socks. Or trousers. Or in winter, a coat.
I dig around in the closet and either find something or not and then I ask him if maybe we should call his father. His father, Robert, has lots of clothes. And money. And a home. He’s a former BMW dealer, now in his eighties, lives with Fred’s sister in Picardy, a couple of hours north of Paris. Robert’s wife — Fred’s stepmother— died nine months ago and Robert has been flattened with grief since. Can’t drive because of the antidepressants. His daughter — Fred’s sister — moved back from Toronto to live with him. (Long story: Fred and his sister were born in France but moved with their mother — Ethiopian, bipolar, long-since disappeared — to Toronto when they were young. Fred worked as a roofer after dropping out of high school, got into drugs and trouble — it’s all told here — moved back to Paris to live with his Picardian BMW-dealing father, then ran away and has been living on the streets of Paris for most of the last fifteen years. He barely speaks French, has medical coverage from his father but can’t keep any papers on his person to prove it, ditto a phone, and sleeps in laundromats or in parks or on heating grates because he hates foyers and shelters — it’s all told here). His father and sister would like Fred to live with them. But Fred doesn’t want to. (Longer story, of which I don’t know all the details, but I think it comes down to, in ascending order, Fred’s mental health and substance abuse issues, his desire for personal freedom, and, at the top, Robert’s born-againism — which, I have to say, gets pretty tiring pretty quickly).
So, Fred doesn’t usually want to call his father unless he’s really desperate for cash —which he rarely seems to be — he almost always has a cigarette in one hand and a German tall boy in the other, and he always turns down my offers for food (though on occasion he will share a side of fries with me at the bar down the street, but only because it comes with a beer and, of course, my scintillating company). He’s survived half his life on the street, and while at times — often — he can look and sound pretty fucked up, he’s generally in a good mood, a self-medicated mood, of course, but a good and fairly even-keeled one most of the time; and beneath the grime and the scabs he’s a handsome young man with a gentle soul and what he calls “special powers” — “I help people, and I watch over them.” Someday, he says, he would like to have a family.
“Why don’t you go to one of the public baths?” I ask. “There’s one just over on rue de Meaux. They have free soap and shampoo.”
There are seventeen bains-douches municipaux in Paris, all dating from the nineteenth century. Free. Clean. Individual cabins. No towels, but you can drip dry.
“Yeah, I’m gonna for sure,” says Fred. “But not quite yet. I just gotta wait a bit.”
“For what?”
He laughs. Keeps laughing. Bent over with laughter.
“We should call your father. Get him to come in, bring you some clothes and some money, take you to lunch.”
At this point in the conversation Fred will look at me and smile — he has a beautiful smile — and say something along the lines of, “Uh… no, man. Maybe tomorrow? What’s tomorrow?”
“Saturday.”
“Yeah, Saturday. Or… maybe Sunday.”
Then, off he goes.
Anyway, that’s my Fred. Not his real name of course. As mentioned above, I’ve written at length about him and his situation. And about homelessness and precariousness in Paris in general. You can read about it (for free!) here. This is just an update. Because Fred has stopped knocking on my door. For now. Why?
Before I tell you…
Bang. This is what my more astute confrères and consœurs in Substackville do at this point in a post — they roll down the orange paywall. Get you half-enticed into whatever they’re on about — a recipe, a joke, some advice, the take-down of a scumbag, a new cocktail, a new writing tip, some sad story about a street person — and then hit the lever and let it drop. Bang. Outta luck till you pay the bucks.
I don’t do this and never will. Hexagon is free and always will be. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want — nay, crave! — your money. I very much do. Because I have to pay my bills. And my staff. Researcher, editor, community manager, pollster, trend forecaster, AI prompt engineer, life coach, etiquette guide, motivational trainer, reality manager, grief counsellor, hair and makeup, tech, hangers-on, yes and no men. You think this stuff writes itself? You think I write it?
OK, no. I mean, yes, I write it and yes I want crave lust and pine after your fiver a month but that’s not why I stopped telling my Fred story. I stopped because I wanted to ask you for something else. But first I wanted — want! — to thank you for reading Hexagon. If you’re a free subscriber, thank you thank you. If you’re a paid subscriber, thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you thank you and, well, wow, thank you.
When I started this newsletter, a little over a year ago, I had stopped all journalistic writing. Quit my contributing editor gig. Stopped pitching stories. Two book projects were moribund. The pandemic had sidelined a play, a comedy called Coronation Chicken, which had nice runs in Paris and Copenhagen and was being prepped for London; the cast and director got busy elsewhere; I dropped the ball. Three commissioned scripts — two feature-length fiction films and a six-part series — were stuck with producers unable to secure financing. Another promising series — a comedy-caper about the art world — was dropped after a second round of rewrites. Before that, yet another series, about a young, naive American woman who moves to Paris to work for a fashion company, got “Emily-ed” out of existence by the Darren Starr franchise. Another play, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, which begins with a typewriting monkey and the Bard in a kind of Krapp’s Last Tape/Act without Words homage and ends with a scene composed by an AI chatbot, got snuffed by ChatGPT and Bing becoming everyday fodder for half the writers on every platform known to man.
I felt like I was done. Washed up. Old.
Now? After a year of Substack? What do I feel? Besides a year older?
Grateful. Your support means the world to me. It allows me to keep doing this work which, while it is indeed work, I enjoy immensely. It has rekindled my love for writing. It lets me experiment, take risks, try out new ideas. I would love to be able to concentrate even more of my writing energies on it — but, as mentioned, there are those damn bills, and the ever-expanding staff and yes, it’s work all the same. Requiring focus and attention. And a belief that it’s not totally boring crap that nobody gives two shits about.
The support you give encourages me not to think this. And to continue. So. Thank you.
Anyhow, here’s my ask: If you enjoy reading Hexagon, would you mind inviting some of your friends to subscribe and read with us? Substack has just launched this new referral incentive thingy, which they want me to send to all my subscribers: “If you refer friends, you will receive benefits that give you special access to Hexagon.”
Note: It’s not my idea, it’s Substack’s. And if I don’t do it — and if it doesn’t get results pretty darn fast — there will be hell to pay. Sure, Substack comes across all supportive and “creative”-friendly — “a new economic engine for culture that lets independent writers and podcasters publish directly to their audience and get paid through subscriptions.” But in reality, it’s an insidious corporate cult that makes Glengarry Glen Ross look like summer camp, an elementary-school cake sale, or a paper drive.
Here’s the Substack official bumpf (don’t get suckered in by the positive spin):
Refer friends to Hexagon!
Show your support by sharing Hexagon and earn rewards for your referrals!
“How to participate:
1. Share Hexagon. When you use the referral link below, or the “Share” button on any post, you'll get credit for any new subscribers. Simply send the link in a text, email, or share it on social media with friends.
2. Earn benefits. When more friends use your referral link to subscribe (free or paid), you’ll receive special benefits.
Get a 1-month comp for 3 referrals
Get a 3-month comp for 5 referrals
Get a 6-month comp for 25 referrals
Benefits? For whom? OK, me again. I feel compelled to butt in here because the referral “benefits” listed above won’t really work with my pay-or-don’t-pay-but please-pay system. So why don’t you make up your own? Like, for 3 referrals, sure, you can have a 1-month comp (which seems — 5 euros? — super cheap to me) or, I don’t know, a special shout-out on Hexagon? Or I’ll write you a haiku, or a Facebook post. Or give you the name and address of the best kebab in Paris. For five referrals? You tell me. Steak-Frites or a sonnet? An e-mail to your boss explaining why you can’t work Monday? For 25 referrals? Jeez Louise. I’ll ghost-write your memoirs and tell you how to make Lièvre à la royale. Or a contest! How’s this: Whoever gets Hexagon the most referrals wins my top-secret list of the best restaurants, bars, and brasseries in Paris. Local places, authentic places, inexpensive places, expensive places that are worth the expense, super-exclusive pop-up spots, vegetarian places, meat places, fish and seafood places, places off the Tik Tok trail not yet written up and destroyed by the NYT and Trip Advisor and Time Out and Le Fooding and all the online listmakers and tastemakers…
Back to the Substack bumpf:
Back to me: I don’t know what the leaderboard is or what will happen if you visit it. Proceed with caution.
Back to the Substack bumpf:
“To learn more, check out Substack’s FAQ.
Thank you for helping get the word out about Hexagon!”
Back to Fred. Why isn’t he knocking on my door?
Because two weeks ago Fred, beer in one hand, smoke in the other, knocked on my door and I opened it, and he said, “Hey uh how ya doing?” and I said, “Fred, what the fuck happened to your face?”
Because he had gashes and bruises on his face, which was smeared with even more grime than usual.
“Oh, it’s ok, there was the guy, he just… he came up behind me and sucker-punched me. But I’m fine. It looks worse than it is.”
“It looks terrible.”
So did the rest of him. He was wearing a full-length black quilted coat — like something out of that Pharrell Williams Louis Vuitton fashion show on the Pont Neuf the other day but covered in black scuzzy smut — and the now-ripped and flapping blue Nikes I gave him two pairs of shoes ago — the ones that a week after I gave them to him, he told me, “Man, I hate these fucking shoes! They scare the shit out of me.”
“What’s so scary about them?” I asked. “They’re Nike Zoom Fly 3s.”
“I can’t even fucking look at them!” he shouted, looking straight at them.
So this time I asked, “Why are you still wearing those shoes? What happened to the other pair I gave you?” A couple of weeks before, my last running shoes, black Nike Zoom Span 3s, barely three months old.
He shrugged. “I don’t know man, “he said, looking down at the blue Nike Zoom Fly 3s. He shrugged again. “These are fine.”
“And that coat? You must be boiling.”
His eyes brightened. “Yeah but I’m not wearing anything underneath!”
He showed me.
“This way, I don’t get any bedbugs,” he said.
That’s when I lowered the boom.
“Look, Fred, you have to stop coming around for awhile.”
“Why man?”
“Because we’re gonna be out of town all summer (Ed. sheep-sitting in Brittany1) and there will be people staying here and if you knock on the door the way you do (Ed. he taps on it with a fingernail while humming a creepy singsong) dressed in that coat, with nothing on underneath, you’ll scare the bejesus out of them.”
“Ah.”
Ah.
“So, listen, here’s the deal. I’ll give you twenty euros now—”
I held up a twenty-euro bill, and faster than Caine snatched the pebble from Sifu, it was clutched in his non-beer-holding hand.
“— and every two weeks I’ll leave money for you at the bar (Ed. where the author and Fred eat frites and drink beer). And if you don't knock on the door all summer — not once —”
“No problem, I got it, don’t knock —”
“—I’ll get a hold of your dad and get him to give me a big chunk of money for you.”
“Alright, sounds good man. Thanks.”
“Thank you.”
We shook hands. Looked each other in the eye. Smiled.
“You got a beer?” he asked.
“You have a beer,” I answered.
Guzzle, toss, semi-discreet burp.
“How about a smoke?”
“I don’t smoke, Fred.”
“Right.”
“You wanna get some fries?”
“Nah, I’m good.”
“Ok, so what’s the deal?” I asked.
“What deal?”
“The deal you and I just made.”
He looked puzzled.
“About the money. And the front door.”
“Oh right! No problem, man. I got it.”
“All summer, Fred.”
“All summer, right. Till when?”
“September.”
“Right… what’s uh —
— It’s June, Fred. Mid-June.”
“Ok, no problem, man.”
And off he went.
Thanks again for reading Hexagon. I really do appreciate your support. And keep scrolling, there’s more.
Here, one last time, is that earlier post about Fred…
And here’s another untitled post:
Actually, this is “ritual post”, made in the early twentieth century or sometime before, and most likely made by a Dahomey person in Benin. Posts like these were placed in front of fields to encourage fertility. We don’t know who made it or who it belonged to — there is an ancestral coin at the top of it, but whose ancestor it is has never been identified.
We don’t know more about it because when it was taken, the takers just took it. And hundreds more like it.
So who does it belong to now? It was put up for auction in Cannes two years ago. I’m not sure what price it sold for — its estimated price was 700-1,000 euros — or whether it sold at all (the auction results were “non-communiqué”).
In 2021, France returned 26 works to Benin looted in the 19th century from the royal treasures of the kingdom of Dahomey by French colonial troops, and until then kept at the Musée du quai Branly. Many more remain in France, and countless others in collections in Europe and around the world. Why? Whose objects are they?
Key questions, which my good friend the curator and writer Clementine Deliss, more than anyone, in various forums and books, has most passionately addressed. Particularly the issues around the provenance, ownership, and, most urgently, the need to return these types of plundered objects; second, the racist underpinnings of museology; and third, the function and value of the museum today — do they have to be shopping-mall emporia where people mindlessly gorge on culture till they can’t see or think straight, or could they be more like universities, where people study and learn?
Please watch this excellent video.
In other Hexagon news, a piece I wrote here about my dog, Ringo, a miniature wire-haired dachshund of exceptional intelligence, patience and Rin-Tin-Tin-like levels of life-saving skills and training, got into Trouble. You can download the pdf below.
Or order the hardcopy here.
That’s it! Back to the sheep and the goat. Thanks for reading and supporting me. Don’t forget to refer a friend. Or even better, send them all gift subscriptions!