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Bonjour Paris,

I had two wonderful nights with you surrounded by poets before I had to fly to Aberdeen to end up sitting by the beach in my suit. No complaints but I’m feeling nostalgic and rather delicate. Invites to parties have been turned down and I’ve been experiencing waves of certainty of being the villain. At the risk of sounding pretentious I do cry over the thoughts of suffering and pain of others every now and then, out of the blue, or seemingly so, sometimes in public when I’m on the move, and I cry harder over the thoughts that I have or may have caused some of them. 

These waves got me questioning my capacity to love, or to love correctly, never mind unconditionally. I definitely didn’t have the capacity to party this weekend so I left London and took the train to Suffolk instead to join Bestie and our Rosie winding down in the country house where I am loved just the way I am. I’m away from the choppy water of the Thames and the clanking noise of the barge hitting the pontoon now, though they would have matched the current state of my inner river I wouldn’t have noticed them that much.

I went on another first date the other night and stopped to speak to a man sitting on the ground painting the front of the Soho Adult Store. He was looking scruffy so I thought he was a homeless person, now that I think about it perhaps I was wrong, perhaps he was just free. I asked him if he needed anything – I didn’t have cash or my physical bank cards on me but perhaps I could get him food or something, without looking away from his painting he told me he didn’t need anything. 

I squatted there for a bit longer, selfishly trying to process how I felt about my offer being turned down, which instantaneously, like a buraq, transported me to all the times where I felt my offer of love, or parts of myself, being turned down. As instantaneous as a buraq, I learned to shed that layer of ego once I realised it was just that. I then asked him if I could buy his painting, again without looking away from his painting he said it wasn’t finished yet. I asked him if he would usually be there, he said no. 

I was still squatting there, not wanting to give up, not wanting to give up on anyone so easily, as if trying to redeem myself for everyone I gave up on, if you could call it that, in my life. He was gentle yet dismissive he made me feel his pain, gently, or perhaps it was just my own pain I felt – eh what’s the difference! But the pain was so gentle I suspected it was love. 

A moment later, without looking at me, and without being asked, he offered me a couple of prints on folio papers. That moment I was certain it was love, connecting us instantaneously and momentarily, that the feeling was mutual. I asked him how I could contact him (I’m a clingy lover!) He told me he didn’t have social media because he was an elderly. Still not looking at me once, he wrote down his email address at the back of one of the prints. I asked him to sign and date the two prints and promise to contact him at some point, if only to pay for the prints. I asked him where he was from and he told me he was Afghani. 

Back to my first date, who was patient enough to wait for me to return but could not wait long enough to repeat telling me how hot I was so I gently ended the date early and headed to have pho without noodles at my favourite Vietnamese restaurant in Soho. 

I’ve been going on a series of first dates recently, with a goal of exhausting myself so that I’d finally stop thinking about romance. I think it’s working. I am romantically exhausted, and I’m tired of being called pretty and left behind for my intensity, and the fear it created in me. I am sitting with my gentle pain, surrounded by the gentle love of my friends, expanding my capacity to love beyond rescue and romance.

suffolk, le 1er novembre 2026

je t’embrasse !

d.o.