America. Группа авторов
remember that I liked the idea of starting in Illinois.
Chicago: my first encounter with the United States. That was twenty-five years ago. I’d gone to visit a French friend who had settled down there, doing odd jobs to earn a living and hoping one day to work in the movies (he should have chosen LA, and even in LA, his chances would have been minuscule). He lived in a tiny apartment in the Loop, next to an elevated subway line. His windows shook when the train went by. The screeching of the wheels was shrill to my ears. Those first few days, it took me hours to fall asleep, despite the jet lag. And what’s more, the city was having a horrible heat wave. The temperature was over one hundred degrees every day. On television, they even went so far as asking people not to use their ovens. That shocked me.
In short, I thought it would be good to go back there for the first time in a quarter of a century. Even if it’s always a little strange to confront your memories with reality. Dangerous too.
Suddenly I remember: S. came back with: “In that case, let’s drive from north to south, starting from the Midwest and finishing in the Deep South.” “Agreed,” I said. Without hesitating. Without thinking about it. Here we go.
But first, we had to get into the country. That meant an eight-hour flight and getting through border security at the airport. S. and I went up together to the official, a poker-faced young man who immediately looked at us suspiciously for a long time. I want to believe that neither our sexual orientation (presumed) nor the age difference between us (obvious) was the cause of that look; that it was, in fact, simply an occupational hazard. But then, the verdict was delivered: I was allowed into the United States with no more red tape. But S. was instructed to report to the Immigration Office for questioning. It was pointless to ask why this difference in our treatment: S. has a last name that sounds Arabic, I don’t. I muse on the fact that the terrorists have won. They have transformed some people into suspects and made others suspicious. At Immigration and Customs, all you need to do is look at the people waiting to go through in-depth interrogation to confirm this: they all look more or less alike.
One hour and a dose of humiliation later, we climb into a taxi. During the ride, images from my first stay come back to me. The first one is a memory from the banks of Lake Michigan: a lake so vast that I thought I was at the edge of the sea as I basked on the beach. And when I turned around to look behind me, I saw a row of tall, elegant buildings. I also remember, but less clearly, Grant Park: its green grass, so very green that it looked almost artificial, especially under the burning, harsh sunlight.
But reality puts an end to my daydreams: on the radio, they are talking about Donald Trump, who is celebrating his first six months in the White House. Celebrating is, in fact, quite a grand word, since almost everyone watching him agrees that his track record is extraordinarily limited. Not a single law voted on. Decrees rejected. International agreements condemned. Backtracking, disappointments, defeats. A low popularity rate. He alone bellows out improbable victories through tweets that become more and more surreal—nearly a thousand of them since he took office! The driver, who is surreptitiously looking at us in his rearview mirror, calls out: “He cracks me up; what do you think?” We smile without replying, not sure we can tell which side he’s leaning toward and too tired to get into a political debate.
We also know that the outrageous White House Press Secretary, Sean Spicer, has just resigned. He must no longer have gotten away with saying everything and then the opposite, giving opinions while being sure of nothing, being refuted after having been encouraged, defending the indefensible, relentlessly attacking journalists, the very same people who sat opposite him in the press briefing room. We’re almost relieved for him.
We drop our bags off at an apartment we’ve rented in the River North neighborhood, at the intersection of Orleans Street and Oak Street, before heading out almost immediately to take in the city. One look and I can see that it has changed since I was young: more skyscrapers have sprung up; architectural innovations have produced a few spectacular examples, some fantastic, some quirky, with rooftop gardens just about everywhere, former factories now housing lofts. In short, I have (undoubtedly) aged, and Chicago has rejuvenated.
I also notice that the police presence has heightened to bring back a sense of security that had lapsed for a while. In the past, crime movies were filmed here: now, it’s mainly romantic comedies or science fiction movies because, in both cases, the setting is appropriate.
The Sears Tower has been renamed: it’s now called the Willis Tower and can no longer proudly proclaim to be the tallest building in America. As for Grant Park, it now connects with Millennium Park, which houses contemporary works of art, such as the famous Cloud Gate, an enormous, mirror-like sculpture made of stainless steel, designed by Anish Kapoor, that looks more like a giant bean than the door to the clouds that I imagined.
Nevertheless, Chicago has not changed completely from top to bottom: it remains the vibrant, cosmopolitan city I once knew. The multicultural neighborhoods are still there, the subway lines still produce a formidable racket above our heads along the rusty metal tracks, and the license plates on the cars continue to remind us that this is truly “the Land of Lincoln.” Culture is visible everywhere, including on the backs of buses, where I am surprised to find an ad for the real estate company domu.com, along with a quote from Sarah Bernhardt, who toured here in 1905 and 1912, that reads: “I adore Chicago. It is the pulse of America.”
A little to the north, in Boystown, about one hundred yards from the lake, the atmosphere is always picturesque and the night life wild. This is where the gay community has been gathering for more than thirty years. It’s impossible to miss it: the rainbow-colored columns show the way for any lost sheep. At the Sidetrack Bar, young men sometimes lose their virginity and find their identity in one night. In conservative America, steeped in religion, where family is more important than anything, this brazen oasis is considered something of a miracle, and holding our drinks, we weave our way through it. At Replay, Chris, an athletic thirty-something, confirms this: “The victory of that asshole Trump hasn’t changed a thing: we’re having a good time here, just like before. People haven’t changed the way they see us. And if they started to look at us sideways, we’d tell them to go fuck themselves!” And he raises his middle finger, laughing, while Gloria Gaynor belts out “I Will Survive.” It’s true: who would have believed that Trump would one day win that damn election?
We stayed in the area for a few days, intoxicated by its vitality, soaking in its creativity, yet knowing perfectly well that the next part of our journey would probably be very different. In short, we were gathering the strength we would need to head into battle.
One morning, after picking up a rental car, we headed out to Cincinnati, our next stop, but first we had to cross Indiana. To me, Indiana is first and foremost the state where James Dean was born. I love that wild, inconsolable, and amazing young man so much that I wrote a book about him. To do that, at the time, I surveyed the places he had lived—Santa Monica with its palm trees, Hollywood with its illusions, the sidewalks of New York, and even Cholame, California, where he died while driving to Salinas—but I had never been to Indiana. So I had to imagine the terrible winters and unbearable summers in Marion, the town where he was born, had to imagine him as a child playing in the snow or running until he was out of breath in the fields scorched by the sun. I had imagined that it was a difficult, harsh place. Today, I see it for myself. Corn growing as far as the eye can see, haystacks by the dozens, hills full of greenery, a few wind turbines to break the monotony. Sometimes you don’t see a single house for miles, and when you finally do, it is almost always flying an American flag. You have to like silence, solitude, God, and country to live here. Some faces are craggy, prematurely old. The people from here are nicknamed Hoosiers, which means hillbillies or rednecks. (But they’re the ones who gave America its new vice president. Mike Pence was the governor of this state: “a Christian, a conservative, and a Republican, in that order,” is how he describes himself. And the way things are going, he probably won’t stay content with the vice presidency.)
As I was saying, I hadn’t visited Fairmount, where Jimmy grew up, and where he’s buried. This time, the temptation was too great: we would make a detour. The town honors its idol in its own way, with a sign, a statue, and a “historical museum,” a somewhat pompous name for the small building with red walls we