THE JULIEN PROJECT

1

My life is a desert of interest. Everything I had imagined to accomplish before my thirtieth birthday hasn’t come true. My love life is nothing. My professional life, a disaster. My private life, uh… None!

I’m twenty-nine years and three hundred and sixty-four days old. In other words, I’ll be thirty in a few hours. It’s time for me to take a sad picture.

For the record, I’m going to tell you about my birth. I had the good idea to be born on January 22 at the stroke of one minute past midnight. So, in a few minutes… you get it, I’ll be entering the world of thirty, without friends, without parents, without lovers, with only this cheap bottle of wine that I bought for company.

From a young age, Mom loved to tell me about my birth. She had gone to the maternity ward because my due date had arrived along with contractions. Once there, she still had to wait several hours for me to make up my mind show the tip of my little nose. You have to believe that I was very warm in her stomach and that I had no desire to leave it. The mere idea of coming into the world must (already) frighten me.

At the time, ultrasounds weren’t very reliable and my parents expected to see a little boy appear that they had decided to name Julien. After long hours of hard work, I ended up cooperating. It was about time I discovered the outdoors and relieved Mom, who didn’t know how to push anymore and who, according to what she says, was on the verge of having a heart attack.

At one minute past midnight, when the doctor said, “Congratulations, she’s a little girl. What do you want to call her?”, My father, who was quietly behind my mother watching the show from afar, went from green to white before falling over. My mother, barely conscious because exhausted from such a long delivery, looked around to make sure that no other woman had been able to deliver by her side and that the babies hadn’t gotten mixed up. After a few seconds during which I was hovering above her without her holding out her arms to me, Mom ended up muttering while grabbing me:

“Bah… It must be a little boy, doctor!”

“Well, no, madam, she’s a little girl,” added the doctor, a bit sarcastic. “There’s no doubt. Look how pretty she is! So, what will her name be?”

My father, who was struggling to regain his senses, got up slowly with the help of a nurse. He ended up saying timidly: “Julie. Her first name is Julie.”

So, my name is Julie. I’m the oldest daughter of the family. Two years later, there was Sylvia and two more years later, Cecilia. After three pissers, as my father likes to call us jokingly, my mother got angry. She said she would have her tubes tied if my father insisted on having another child, just to tempt the long-awaited boy. It was without appeal. There was therefore no other child in the family.

My sisters and I received a very classic education and, against all odds, an indescribable love even though we were only girls and that each time they had hoped to welcome a little boy. My father is very proud of what we have become even though, of the three of us, I’m the least intellectual, the least married, the least mother, the least everything. As for my mother, she’s a devoted, adorable woman and therefore overprotective, even stifling.

At eighteen, I decided to cut the cord. I was fed up with my little sisters. There was nothing I could do without having them around my skirt. I wanted to live alone, to get away from the family cocoon. I dreamed of adventures, especially that of discovering s*x. It was therefore natural that I moved in with Grandma Louise, my paternal grandmother. Okay, I see you’re thinking. There’s a big difference between living with your grandmother and having a life of debauchery, but when I told my parents my decision to leave home, they laughed a lot at first. The young girl that I was, frail, docile and obedient, couldn’t possibly decide to leave like that, anywhere, without resources, without having finished her studies, without permission! So, to satisfy my needs for independence, because deep down I was a good girl and they wanted to please me, they suggested that I live with Grandma.

The weekend after my eighteenth birthday, I moved in with Grandma Louise. Living with my grandmother was the most traumatic experience of my life. My grandfather had passed away fifteen years earlier. Rest in peace! I have very few memories, of course. As Grandma Louise was almost seventy, I thought I was dealing with a laid-back granny, knitting for her future great-grandchildren who would soon be given to her. Grandma Louise didn’t handle knitting, at all! She was rather a follower of the new technology of the time: the Teletext. Maybe you don’t know what a Teletext is? Don’t panic, it’s okay if you’re under twenty-five. Teletext: a system for the delivery of information to a user in a computer-like format on the television. Well, in short, this is the Internet before the Internet!

Thanks to this little toy that was Teletext TV, Grandma Louise saw many men, also widowers most often. Grandma Louise wasn’t a normal grandma. In addition, her s*x life was much more interesting than mine and it’s especially because of this that my stay with her was traumatic. Noone in the family knew about her hobby; if it can be called that. I was quickly taken into her confidence and, frankly, I didn’t know how to react. First, it made me laugh a lot. I had a great granny, young in her head, dynamic in her body, sparkling, adorable, kind, and modern! And then, very quickly, I started to worry about her. Our roles have been reversed. She was the uncontrollable teenager and I played the overly reasonable adult. I felt responsible for her. As soon as she told me about a future meeting and was getting ready to go out, I told her:

“Granny, are you going out tonight? Who with this time, John?”

“Which John, my darling? John number one, number two or number three?” she said most seriously.

“Ah, because there are several John’s, Grandma! It doesn’t matter. Be careful, that’s all!”

“If it can reassure you, my Julie, here’s his phone number, in case. But don’t worry, honey. I’ll be back for the stroke of midnight.”

The world was upside down. I didn’t understand a thing. How could a grandma in her seventies have a more eventful life than an eighteen-year-old girl? I was trying to understand. I questioned her a lot. I wanted to know how boys worked. In response, she often said to me: “My little Julie, don’t worry! One day, you’ll come to understand men!”

After a few months, it was clear that being housemates was a fiasco. I dropped out of college. I hadn’t met true love either (despite Granny’s wise advice to get started with Teletext). Given all these failures, my parents demanded my immediate return home without my being able to challenge this decision.

After I left, Grandma Louise continued to have a lot of fun.

Four years later, Grandma died in her sleep. She died on one of her dates. This suitor, John (don’t ask me what number, I don’t know) had to explain to my parents how Grandma ended up in his bed. He told them that he had known Grandma for several years, that he had met her during a muscle-building class for seniors and on that evening, after the session, he had kindly offered her rest and a herbal tea at his place. The reality was a little different. On the day of Grandma’s funeral, when people paraded to give me their sincere condolences, John whispered in my ear that he had deeply loved my grandmother and that he thanked the heavens every day for putting her in his path. This revelation made me burst into laughter as simultaneously tears rolled down my cheeks. My laughter was uncontrollable and only the incendiary gaze of my father succeeded in putting an end to it. Ah… Blessed be Grandma!

Yes, blessed be Grandma! Thanks to her death, I was able to get her apartment and settle in with my first true lover, Arnold. I was twenty-three. Before that, my sisters had given me a hard time. The youngest, Sylvia, had lost her virginity before me, with Jeremy, her husband today. They’re married and are living a fairy tale, it seems. They have two adorable children, a six-year-old boy named Lucas and a two-year-old girl named Louise, in memory of our dear grandmother. If only she knew that behind this classic name hides a future hottie… Uh, forgive me! That’s a bit strong, I agree, but what do you expect, it’s bitterness. Lately, I’ve been cultivating the art of being bitter. Yes, especially since my dear sister told us last Christmas that she was expecting another child for the summer. “Since we already have the choice of the king, we don’t wish to know the s*x. It’ll be a surprise!” She told us happily between two bites of turkey and chestnuts.

I might as well tell you that it was the worst Christmas of my life. All eyes were on me in the hope that good news about my love life would enhance this meal already rich in emotions. Cecilia, the youngest, had returned from Europe to introduce Bryan to us and at the same time tell us that they had decided to get married as soon as possible. I don’t know if it’s a marriage of love even if their attitude suggests it; like they eat while holding hands, call each other darling all the time, and don’t leave each other even when one has to go to the bathroom... so much so that it was almost impossible for me to speak with my sister, who, I must admit, I miss a lot since she left for Europe. My throat was tight with so many emotions, I couldn’t get a word out. Our reunion, the sincere smiles of my loved ones and the joy of my nephews failed to alleviate the immense sadness that swelled my heart. Anyway… A nightmare, that meal.

“To my health!” I said to myself as I drank my first drink dry as if it could erase my sorrow. Ah… men! Why are those who cross my path all idiots? As far as I can remember, my lovers have been incomprehensible. In kindergarten, Liam pretended to love me and would come and kick me to show me his affection. In elementary school, Nicolas kissed me on the cheek and, two minutes later, kissed Christelle on the mouth. I never understood anything about boys.

I grab my cell phone to scroll through the contacts. I only have this to do on the night of my birthday. It’s pitiful. I stop on Arnold. What’s he still doing in my contacts? Earlier, I mentioned my first lover, Arnold. This is him! Well, Arnold, he was kind, sweet, super in love and yet, one day, when I got home a little early from college because one of my teachers was away, I found him in bed with our neighbour's daughter, barely eighteen. She had supposedly come to get some flour to bake a cake. Well, you know what? There was flour everywhere except in her cake because she never came home with it, the b***h! I don’t know what happened to make the flour litter the ground. Well, I have my little idea anyway. I was so scandalized that I kicked him out. How could Arnold have betrayed me like this, after several months of almost total happiness? He scampered off like a rabbit and never set foot in the apartment again. First disillusionment.

This time, I’m removing his phone number from my directory. The mourning has been over for a long time. Next!

Michael, no comment! Delete.

Owen? Who’s that? Deleted!

Anthony: a failed act in Arnold’s time. Married, two children, it’s high time to erase him too.

Gregory. Ah… Greg. If I hadn’t rejected his advances, we might still be together today... Well, if he hadn’t immediately thrown himself on the next girl, following my first refusal, which was just a test to judge his perseverance. Ah, men, always in a hurry!

The next contact isn’t even worth talking about. Come on, okay, let’s talk about it but quickly. Andrew. Met at Sylvia’s wedding, he was Jeremy’s best man, his best childhood friend.

It’s common to say that you can meet the man of your life at a wedding, so I believed in it and I put some effort into it. I liked him, Andy! I liked him right away. The alcohol helped, I wasn’t subtle. At the first opportunity, I dragged him into the men’s washroom where there was only one lockable cubicle. Looking back, I should have favoured another place, the car, the woods, the cellar, what do I know? Anyway, I don’t know why the toilets. Well, it turns out that I hadn’t had s*x with any man since Arnold and that, damn it, I was in need, I must admit. Our fun lasted three minutes and fifty-five seconds, which was enough to make me climb the walls considering my abstinence during the previous thirteen months. It was great, we had been discreet and I was convinced that no one had noticed. Except… when we got out of the only cubicle, my father was waiting outside the door, holding his stomach. Yes, you read that right: my father! In his eyes, I read a big disappointment. He didn’t say a word. Despite my stammering alcoholic idiocy, I found no plausible justification. His urge to do, uh… you know… faded. He left the room and disappeared. Andrew was seized with violent nausea. I didn’t know if it was because of the overflow of champagne, the effort he hardly made to give me pleasure in these tiny toilets or the annoyance of being caught red-handed by the father of the daughter, sister of the bride, in short... By mutual agreement, we decided that it was better to never see each other again. What stupidity! We didn’t talk to each other for the whole evening. Never again, in fact… How sad! What the hell was going on in his head? He never tried to see me again or even just call. I harassed Jeremy to get his phone number to be able to identify him immediately the day he called me, something that never happened. I don’t understand a thing about men.

After Andrew, devastated by my sentimental desert, I registered on a dating site. From up there, Grandma Louise encouraged me. Internet having brilliantly replaced the Teletext, it could only work!

Come on, another glass of wine to Andrew’s health!

I continue to look at the phone numbers in my directory. I come to John (Grandma). Maybe even the John, the one with whom she died, the one at the funeral. I’ll keep it! We never know. I might check in with him someday. Ah… The next one is called Luc!

Luc is my third lover. Our relationship lasted a month and a half. Why so short? Well, I’ll tell you, but before that, I have to tell you how we got to know each other. I had an appointment with an Internet user following a conversation on one of these sites, I don’t remember which one, because at one point, I was on several sites at the same time. When I arrived at the restaurant where we had an appointment, Luc was sitting at a table, all alone. It looked like I was mistaken about my date, whose nickname was Fat sentimental. When I approached his table, I said:

“Is it you?”

“Uh... Yes, probably,” he replied, hesitating a little.

“Oh, damn! Nice to meet you, I’m Julie2010, but you can call me Julie!” I say, proud of my natural sense of humour.

I saw his puzzled look, but at the time, I didn’t try to understand. We spent the evening laughing. We were hyper-connected, for example, he was finishing my sentences and I was finishing his; the kind of stuff that makes you think it’s the right one, finally!

Now and then he glanced at his watch, at his phone, then at the restaurant door. At one point he received a text, slipped off to the bathroom and came back with a happy face. It was only a few days later that he explained to me that he had the wrong restaurant, that I wasn’t the girl with whom he had a date but that he had been delighted to be wrong because he liked my brilliant spontaneity. We laughed a lot! I was disillusioned at breakfast, a month and a half later, when he revealed to me that he was a fan of camembert dipped in coffee. I wasn’t! I found his breath sometimes questionable, but when I finally could link that with the morning camembert… It was too much! The Fat Sentimental didn’t quite understand the reason for our breakup. I showed enormous cowardice in making him believe that I would soon transfer to Brazil and that no long-term relationship was possible. He didn’t insist. The endpoint of number three. Well worth another toast:

“To Luc whose mouth smelled of goat!” I say bellowing in my apartment.

I get rude with alcohol. I have to excuse myself. This little wine isn’t bad… I try to decipher its name on the label but my eyesight is blurred.

I continue scrolling through the phone numbers and land on Paul for a moment. Paul, he’s my boss, he’s a business manager. I’m only his assistant. I hate him. He smirks all the time among the women in the office. Single, he collects girls. On Monday morning, when he summons me to his office for the morning briefing, he can’t help telling me about his weekend dates, the girls he brought home, or even more so, the budget he spent to woo those same girls, in short, I hate him! He represents everything I hate in humans with a capital H! He’s sexy on the outside but so ugly inside that, oh no, never! I’ll never be able to date a guy like him!

“Do you hear, big yucky?!” I said to the phone as if Paul could have taken part in the conversation. “You think you’re handsome?! Well, you are but also you’re ugly! Inside, you’re hideous! Do you think you impress me? You’re a poor boss, with your “my little Julie” here, “my little Julie” there! Do you think you’re going to make me your four o’clock? Argh… I’m sure you have a very small tool! No one will want you because you’re mean, and bad, and dumb, and ugly, even if you are so sexy, umm…”

Gurgling! I finish the bottle before resuming my monologue:

“Monday, if you tell me about your weekend antics, well, I’ll split you open with the letter opener! Do you hear, Paul?! It’s because of guys like you that girls like me prefer to be alone!” I said, starting to cry wearily from the alcohol.

My gaze falls on the hour. That’s it, it’s one minute past midnight! It’s my birthday! Quick! Quick! I grab a used candle that I place on a cupcake found in the back of my cupboard. I light it, I brandish the cupcake in the air as a priest does with the cup of Christ at communion, and stammer my wish unlike any other: “I want to understand men!” Before blowing on my ridiculous makeshift birthday cake.

Then everything turns black.