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I'VE DECIDED TO NAME MY SALOMÉ KIRK, AND HERE'S WHY
Somewhere after graduation and between a few extinguished university studies (which is the opposite of brilliant), I looked in the mirror and said to myself (apart from the fact that I thought I looked pretty good):
"Well then, girl, don't you think you'd be better off somewhere else than here? Tell the truth, and don't hide from it".
It doesn't sound very convincing in itself, but as I was reciting this sentence, I was pinching my cheeks and slapping myself in the face like a boxer plucking up courage to get into the ring and take on Ivan Drago. After circling the globe with my fingers, I realised that the place where I would be at my best in both winter and summer was by the sea. Not in Marseille, but a little further west. Yes, that's it, no, further. Cross the continent and drop me off here, yes, in Los Angeles.
I settled in Santa Monica for over a year, working as a waitress in various bars in Venice Beach. I even put on roller skates to serve hamburgers at drive-ins. And in the evenings, I sometimes danced in clubs with disco bands. And when there was time left over in my hectic schedule, I'd do shows on Santa Monica's 3rd Street, back flips, long somersaults, to earn a few pennies and pay the rent on the house I shared with a Brazilian and an Israeli girl. They were nice, warm, but more into Capoeira and Krav-maga. Anyway, one day when I was doing my acrobatics on the 3rd, the police came by and, for once, they arrested me and handcuffed me. They wanted to take me away on the pretext that I didn't have the right to do my show, that I needed a licence. And apart from the IV, I didn't know any others. What was worrying was that I was no longer legal, my visa having expired. But just as the cop was squeezing my head to get me into the back of his car, a guy hailed him from the other side of the street. I didn't know who he was. He was quite young, maybe twenty-five, and his eyes were as red as a Saint-Emilion. He crossed the street and approached us with the walk of a Chicano gang member. He took the policeman aside, whispered things in his ear, the two of them laughed and the young man ended up slipping an envelope or a bag into the cop's pocket, I wasn't sure, it was furtive (watch out for alliteration). Above all, I wondered if they hadn't agreed to take me to a dump and dismember me. Instead, the cop took off my handcuffs and told me to "get the fuck out of here if I didn't want to end up with my face on the ground between his shoe and the asphalt", while spitting out a gob (and a little on his shoes because he'd missed). But it didn't matter, I was free, free like Nelson Mandela, free like Kerviel.
The young man who had freed me looked at me, amused to see me so taken aback. He really had a strange look for his age, a bit of a mongrel, somewhere between a member of the Creeps and a young man from a good family who would spend his holidays in The Hamptons, jumper over his shoulders and throwing a stick at his labrador on the playa. Just as I was heading back to the car park where my motorised wreck was parked, my badly-dressed saviour called me and asked me if I didn't want him to drop me off somewhere. Then he pulled himself together and asked if he could ask me out for an drink. I stared at him for a moment, trying to gauge him, to see if he'd be capable of taking me to a gang-bang where I'd lose my virginity thirty times over. But I took the risk of following him and climbed into a state-of-the-art Ferrari topped with 4X4 tyres. It was rather ugly, low-grade tuning, but it was nevertheless surprising and I was curious to know where he would take me. I'd crossed the Atlantic for this kind of adventure.
He didn't open his mouth the whole way. He looked at me with a smile, sometimes at the road, sometimes at me, sometimes at the road, sometimes at me, but certainly not at the tree we nearly hit in the middle of the journey.
Finally we arrived at a red-brick mansion at the very top of Bel Air, where we were greeted by a man in his late fifties, with white hair slicked back and a very pronounced dimple in his chin. He looked strangely like Dave. And I didn't recognise him straight away. I think I was very impressed to arrive in such beautiful surroundings, in such a beautiful house, with people I didn't know. But his voice combined with his handsome old bobo physique finally convinced me.
So I'd arrived at the home of Michael 'Fucking' Douglas. The guy who'd given me such a thrill in Basic Instinct, In Romancing The Stone, Falling Down, Wall Street and The Fugitive (even though it wasn't him in it). Well, there he was, standing on his doorstep, dressed in a white linen suit, with the dwarf from Fantasy Island at his side, holding a tray with a family of Daiquiris on it.
Michael 'Fucking' Douglas immediately put me at ease by handing me a refreshing drink. He told me in French that he loved France, Charles de Gaulle, Philippe de Villiers and that his first girlfriend was a Frenchie.
Once he'd finished his story, which he ended on the benefits of French kissing, and put his hand on my back, he invited me into the living room, where I discovered a whole host of guests dressed for a gala evening. There were stars from TV, film and Silicon Valley. There was the head of Yahoo, the head of Lycos, the chick from Caramail, the guy from MySpace. A gathering of bigwigs in which I didn't quite fit in. A thought that slipped my mind as I finished my second cocktail. In the space of a moment I'd gone from a cop's car to the home of a super-star.
The man who had brought me here suggested that we get out of the way, go to his outbuilding, as he called it. Now that he had shown his credentials, I was no longer worried about him. So I followed him to the end of the vast garden where what looked like a keepers' cottage actually stood. But a football club goalkeeper's house. It was outrageous, sumptuous, breathtaking.
So the guy told me to make myself comfortable, to make myself at home and asked me if I smoked hookah. I didn't really know what it was but I was willing to give it a go. I'd never tried it, but now that the spectre of gang rape in a wasteland had faded and I was at Michael 'Fucking' Douglas's place, I gave in and tried his amazing blend of tobacco and kebab flavour.
In fact, the guy who got me out of the cop's clutches was none other than Michael 'Fucking' Douglas's son, Cameron. I'd only vaguely heard of him through the tabloids. But I had to admit that the little guy was rather nice, thoughtful and well-behaved. He didn't say much, though, and I put that down to shyness. I felt good with him and with this hookah, he said, there was no need to add anything. But my head was starting to spin. It wasn't an unpleasant sensation, especially when he started doing his monkey and sea lion imitations. He'd smeared grease all over his body and was gliding across the marble floor of the house, squealing like a seal and clapping his hands as if they were flippers. And I was laughing like a whale as I shoved sardine fillets down his throat. That's when I wondered if there wasn't something other than kebab in his hookah. But after that, I didn't care, I felt safe here. After all, I was at Michael 'Fucking' Douglas's place, so I wasn't risking anything other than having a laugh and possibly taking a dip in a pool full of Ruinart.
Once Cameron had finished showing me the whole menagerie of the Vincennes zoo, he invited me back to Michael 'Fucking' Douglas's main house.
No one was there, all the wildlife had disappeared. Night had fallen and it must have been close to 9pm. Time for me to beat it, as I had to work the next morning. But Cameron insisted that I stay for a quick dinner, something small, so that I wouldn't leave hungry. He was right, his hookah flavor kebab had done me in. So he invited me into the dining room where I sat down around a wooden table the size of a tennis court.
And that's when he arrived. He, the great, the only, the first, the instigator, Kirk 'Motherfucking' Douglas. He was not very young at the time, in his 90s, but he was still Spartacus and I could see his pecs still firm under his powder pink shirt. I, the little waitress in the seedy, disreputable bars, was sitting with the whole Douglas gang. The only thing missing was Pierre. Although I'm not sure he was really family. It was very friendly. Michael served me saveloy salad and told me some of his filming stories, and his wife Catherine never left my glass empty, filling it with Francis F. Coppola wine. I have to admit that they received me like a daughter-in-law, and it was at this very moment when this far-fetched idea crossed my mind that Kirk approached me and said this:
- Michael and I enjoyed you very much. We're delighted that Cameron has chosen you. You make a great couple. You're going to make me beautiful great-grandchildren so I can regenerate with the cells from their umbilical cords. I'm going to look great. Just like in my best days, on "Paths of Glory".
I wanted to say to him: "Listen, Kirky, with all due respect to you, Spartacus, don't get carried away. I didn't come here to get married, I came here to have a laugh, or at the very least to smoke hookah. But Kirky, don't get worked up. I had to start drinking herbal tea.
Unfortunately Michael 'Fucking' Douglas stood up and made a toast announcing my union with his son. I'm what? Me? Marrying a drug addict? No way Michael, are you taking the piss? Catherine Zeta something turned on the stereo to play the wedding march. Spartacus got up with his walker and invited me to walk beside him as if to rehearse our arrival at the altar. I'm well brought up, so I didn't dare say anything, especially as I could see things were getting out of hand and Cameron was looking at me with the eyes of a man possessed.
I felt like a goose and that he was going to gobble me up like he hadn't eaten all year, he was terrifying. And the more it went on, the more his hookah was having an effect on me, I was wobbling on my feet. So, in a last-ditch effort before my eyes blurred and my legs gave out, I ran towards the big front door, all I had to do was push it open, then climb over the entrance gate and I'd be out of there. I was well on my way, except that at the time, Michael 'Motherfucker' was still very athletic and he slammed me hard to the ground like a pancake suzette. My head bounced back and I lost a tooth on the $100,000 a square metre marble of their lobby. I was stunned by the violence of the shock and by the outrageously inappropriate behaviour of a man who was reputed to be so courteous. Although he was being treated for sex addiction, I didn't think he was capable of this on a woman.
I looked like Catherine Ringer now without my front tooth. I naively told myself that this was my chance, that Cameron would never want to marry a toothless woman. But nobody seemed to mind. They went on rehearsing our wedding as if everything was normal. As if my father and Michael 'motherfucker' had engineered an arranged marriage that was not at all convenient for me. So I was stuck in this cuckoo's nest with no one to get me out. They all had to be on crack, even Kirky, which was the last straw at his age, but that's why he could hold it together so well. He invited me to sit on his lap and slipped almonds into my mouth as if I were a little bird.
On the other side of the table I could see Michael busy making phone calls to his friends in the biz, while Catherine was busy contacting caterers, haute-couture houses and beauty clinics to make sure she looked her best for the dance. Meanwhile, I still had Cameron staring at me without blinking. I imagined his tongue hanging out, or worse. I had an uncontrollable panic attack which increased my strength tenfold, and I tried one last time to set sail to escape from this wonderful family, but my efforts were thwarted once again by a huge blow from a club on the top of my head, which instantly plunged me into a deep coma from which I had to wake up before the fact.
They'd taken advantage of my loss of consciousness to marry me off to Cameron. And not quietly, no. But with great fanfare. Which I found out when I woke up, bound hand and foot on a huge armchair. They'd put me in front of a huge TV so I could watch the wedding video. It looked like it had been a success, sumptuous, a real princess wedding. Jodie Foster, Sharon Stone and David Fincher came to greet me while I was fast asleep. There was also a wonderful band and the director of the wedding film was no less than Paul Verhoeven. It was a bit shaky, but I have to admit that he still had some under his belt.
I was the Douglas' bright-eyed captive and, over time, I learnt to accept this and to be patient. Until one day in 2009, when the police came to take Cameron away and lock him up in a high-security prison for trafficking who knows what drugs.
It was then that I was able to set sail, leave California, the United States, return to my country and my bed, where I woke up in the middle of the afternoon with a raging migraine and an anthology headache. Only to realise in the end that all this had been dreamt up in my mind during a long, tortuous dream, probably brought on by the massive intake of 333, Kirk Douglas's favourite cocktail, especially during the filming of Vikings, part of which took place in France. So for one evening I wanted to put myself in his shoes and taste what he liked best. I believe above all, not only in the forces of the spirit, but also that his beverage had totally possessed me to the point where I imagined he had become my grandfather, my Grandpa Kirky.