Starting in 1984 the construction of IM Pei’s pyramid blocked the courtyard access to the Louvre Museum, leaving the ancient palace of the Bourbon kings mostly to art historians and a few tourists, however I had discovered that the museum possessed a second entrance on the Quai du Louvre and regularly wandered the museum’s desolate corridors to admire its vast collection famed for the Venus de Milo and Mona Lisa. Leonardo da Vinci's portrait of a quixotic woman was surrounded by a small crowd. Every other gallery in the Louvre had been empty. Maybe forty people gathered before the painting. I didn't get it and turned to leave. I didn't like crowds.
To the left lay an ancient white marble statue on a graying marble mattress of a prone naked woman with her back to me. A robe haphazardly wrapped around ankles. A left foot dangled in the air. Knees swiveled to heighten her buttocks' fullness. A few chips marred by her back. Another chipped her right shoulder. Her hair coiffed like a tame Medusa and her eyes blind as stone. Her face was at peace. I read the placard.
Le Borghese Hermaphroditus.
Hermaphroditus
Hermaphrodite.
My Catholic high school had us read Bullfinch's Mythology. The word's etymology originated from the union of the Greek gods Hermes and Aphrodite. I rounded the near-perfect statue to discover this succubus possessed a penis and breasts. A few more scars to her left arm. I saw not a hint of a vagina. I thought the model to have been a a young transvestite. My friend back in New York, Dove, was one. The guards watched the Mona Lisa. The Hermaphrodite garnered no attention from the tourists. Her body lay as an invitation. I had to touch the marble. My right palm slid across the stone thigh. Thousands of years ago the sculptor had created her from stone like Pygmalion had done so for Galatea as told by Ovid. I had also read his Metamorphoses in high school. Latin was my first second language. The first word we learned was amo. I love.
This statue had seduced men throughout the centuries. The placard explained that the Hermaphroditus had been found buried under the Diocletian Baths until its disinterment in 1618. The Borghese family possessed le Hermaphroditus, until the sleeping beauty had been sold to the Bourbon in the late-18th Century.
I took away my hand. No one had seen me. I left the Louvre in love with a treasure, who could never love me. It was alright. For me there was no love more faithful than unrequited love.
I learned through reading that Lady Townsend was said by Horace Walpole to have remarked, upon viewing his bronze copy of the sleeping hermaphrodite, that "it is the only happy couple she ever saw."
At that time I was employed as the Bains-Douches’ psychionomiste or doorman. The bains-Douches was the coolest boite-de-nuit in Paris along with le Privilege under thLa Palace disco. My friend Alabama Tony tended bar at Paris’ only Mexican restaurant. We threw a football in the cour or courtyard off Rue de Vielle Temple. The chestnut tree in the corner restricted our range and the cobblestones were murder on our feet. Still the French clientele were charmed by our re-enactment of Joe Namath and Don Maynard in Super Bowl III, especially after a menage a trois of margaritas. Young American models flocked to le Studio on Rue du Temple. The restaurant was a grand success and at night’s Alabama Tony played Lynard Skynard and Blue Cheer on his guitar to homesick Southern models, who loved the long-haired redneck for being Alabama Tony in a city of Yves and Jacques.
“You came all the way from Birmingham to hang out with girls from below the Mason-Dixon line?”
“Hold your horns, a pretty girl is a pretty girl, but even prettier with a drawl.”
“Can’t argue with you about that.” I was having an affair with his sister, a blonde army sergeant stationed in Germany. I had a thing for women in a uniform. After hearing about the Louvre’s desolation, Tony said, “I’d like to go with y’all.”
“You like Art?”
“Not even as a name for a boy, but I’d love to chunk a football in the Louvre, if it’s empty as you says.” Tony had a good arm and I was fast on my feet. The Studio’s touch football team had beaten every expat squad this side of the Seine. Tony strummed the opening chords of FREEBIRD.
“Maybe three people in each gallery.”
“Guards.”
“Few.”
“Then let’s do it.”
Next day the two of us entered the Louvre with a pigskin in Alabama Tony’s backpack. We climbed to the second-floor galleries overlooking the Seine the river. The afternoon sun glowed through unwashed windows the height of a three-story building. Epic paintings scaled the walls to the vaulted ceilings.
“The king used to live here? Pretty darned big palace.” Tony was impressed by the regal surroundings.
“Until 1682 when the Sun King moved to Versailles.”
“Louis Fourteen, right?” The City of Light had worked its magic on the redneck. He loved its history, as would anyone from Mobile, Alabama.
“One and the same and the palace stored their art collection until the Revolution.”
“Damn, the rich were rich back then and the poor were poor. Same as now.” “Except none of them had indoor plumbing and the upper-classes had to shit in a bucket same as the hoi polloi.”
“A bas le Roi.” Tony tugged out the football. No one else was in the long hall and he waved his left hand “Go long for the lower classes.”
I sprinted down the wooden floor and caught the long spiral around a secondary Delacroix. We were a little careful with our passes. These paintings were worth millions. A group of Japanese tourists appeared in the distance and Tony stashed the football.
“What y’all know about this ‘art’?”
“A little.” I had taken Art Appreciation 101 at university.
“Then give me a tour.”
“Okay.”
I introduced the Davids, Vermeers, George de la Tours, artifacts from ancient civilizations and royal jewelry learned from listening to the group guides during my previous visits and said, “Actually there is only one piece here I love.”
“The Mona Lisa?”
“Over-rated. But not far from it. When we get there, I’ll show you.”
I guided him to the Mona Lisa. Gawking foreign visitors stood before Leonardo’s masterpiece, which was considered the most famous painting in the world. The great artist’s muse Salai had sold the painting to Francis I for 4000 ecrus of gold, but we had not come here to see La Joconda and I told him, “Turn your head to the right.”
Tony swung his gaze to a reclining marble naked figure on a buttoned mattress.
“The Sleeping Hermaphroditus.”
“Hermaphrodite? I heard of them, but thought they were mythical like mermaids.”
“They exist. Both as man and a woman."
“You ever meet one?”
“At a carnival in Maine a barker wanted a dollar for a look. My mother considered the sideshow a blasphemy and dragged me from temptation.”
Tony stepped forward to examine the sheer white sleeping enigma of sexuality, its marble unblemished by war, riots, or neglect and he asked, “How old is it?”
“Dates back 2500 years. Artist unknown.”
“Old as dirt.”
“Yes, the statue had been lost for centuries. The Romans thought hermaphrodites were demons and cast them into the sea or rivers. Someone buried this to protect it from that fate. it was uncovered in the 17th Century. The statue became known as the Sleeping or Borghese Hermaphroditus, since it had been sold to the Borghese family, one of the richest in Europe. Old name. Old money. Old blood.”
“Lot of them uppity types in Paris. ‘Bama too.” Tony looked at the crowd before Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting. Visitors passed without a simple glance at the naked statue.
“They’re here for the Mona Lisa. Some people say that the sitter was Beatrice d'Este, the wife of Milanese duke, but the Leonardo supposedly said, “The Mona Lisa is androgynous—half man and half woman,” and the other model for the painting might have been da Vinci's lover. No one of them knows for sure just like no one knows the sculptor of leHermaphroditus.”
“L’Hermaphrodite is more beautiful and you consider this the most important piece in the Louvre?”
“Yes.” “If you had a choice, who would you take?”
“As A lover? L’hermaphrodite, bien sur. Leonardo’s model was his boyfriend. Bearded youth. I don’t play that way.”
Tony caressed the ancient stone.
“Cool and smooth.”
“Yes, but be careful touching it with someone else. You might fall in love.”
"That true."
"No."
He withdrew his hand and laughed, “You’ll got some funny stories.”
That night I dined at the Studio with Tony’s sister, Eliie. Her brother was with a runaway beauty from Louisiana. During dessert he suggested that they visit the Louvre.
“What for?” the blonde asked with a bayou accent.
“Because I want you to meet someone.”
“Who?”
“Herma. Don’t look so disappointed. Herma is very old. Italian. She sees nothing and everything. The French talk about a curse. How if you touch the statue with someone else, you’ll fall in love.”
“Sounds scary,” Tony’s sister, Ellie, wasn’t scared of anything. Her barracks in Germany were on the front line of the Iron Curtain. This was the height of the Cold War.
“I like scary.” The blonde signed up for the tour and we agreed to meet in the afternoon.
After dinner Tony departed with the blonde, Ellie and I walked back to my Marais hotel on Rue des Ecouffes and the army sergeant lay in bed, smelling of the Cold War, and asked, “So who is Herma? I hate secrets, so tell me the truth or you’re sleeping on the floor.”
“Herma is a statue. A beautiful statue of a Hermaphrodite. The best piece in the Louvre and neglected by everyone since she is next to the Mona Lisa.” I explained it in detail and she assumed the position. "Close, but you're thinner."
"And flesh, not stone."
I climbed naked into bed and caressed her flesh. Smooth as stone. Warm to the touch. Alive.
"I like you more."
“No accounting forbad taste. Like you and me.”
“Taste has nothing to do with us.”
Later the next afternoon the four of us met in the courtyard of the Louvre. Pigeons swirled in the air and the few tourists looked lost in the Pryamid's construction. We wandered over to the Seine entrance. Tony and I paid thirty-five francs for the girls and guided them to the riverside galleries, where the southern light off the Seine cloaked the Louvre’s forgotten passages in gold. We refrained from throwing the football and Tony ordered our guests, “Don’t look at the paintings.”
“Why not?” asked Ellie, expecting a good answer and the Lower Alabama native said, “Hundreds of thousand of people have seen them. Usually for only seventeen seconds according to art dealers and no painting are satisfied with an attention span of seventeen seconds.”
He fixed his gaze on the blonde. It lasted almost a minute.
“Forget Michelangelo, David, or Delacroix. You’re more beautiful than any of theses paintings and you’ll be more beautiful, if y’all don’t let them steal your beauty.”
“Like a camera stealing your soul,” asked the rookie model.
“Everything gets older faster when someone is watching.” Alabama Tony led us through the Louvre and the blonde believed everything he said with that mush-mouthed drawl, since he sounded like two hundred miles east of ‘home’.
“Where Tony learn that shit?” Ellie held my hand.
“I gave him a lesson or two.”
“I thought that bullshit sounded familiar.” She was familiar with my rap from two previous expeditions of Paris.
“Merde peut-etre, mais regardez pas les tableaux.”
“Let me guess. They want to steal our souls.”
Our eyes-down tour passed Bellini’s sculptures, Raphael’s cherubs, and the treasures of France, and at the Mona Lisa, where Tony announced, “Don’t lift your head, but y’all standing in front of the most famous painting in the world. Everyone knows its name. Maybe it’s a woman. Maybe it’s a man. She has a smile. No one knows why.”
“The Mona Lisa.” Even the blonde knew that and she was only eighteen.
The girls wanted to see the Mona Lisa, but Tony and I blocked their field of vision.
“The Mona Lisa is better known than the Crimson Tide football team and everyone wants fame, but to your left is the most exquisite statue in existence this side of the Boll Weevil Monument in downtown Enterprise, Alabama.”
“I hate that creepy thing.” Ellie shuddered with disgust.
“Well, this ain’t that.” Tony played his grits card with vingt-et-un cool and his French was impeccable for someone brought up north of Mobile. “Fermay tes ewes and donnez moi y’all hands.”
Our ‘dates’ obeyed his instruction and we led them to the Hermaphrodite.
“This is the Borghese Hermaphroditus. It’s not famous like the Mona Lisa, but the Hermaphrodite survived the fall of Rome. The Louvre is filled with Greek and Roman statues without noses, arms, or legs, but this statue escaped all harm for over two thousand years. It is immortal.”
Tony had the timing of a Delta tide and paused for a span of time not needing a count.
“Y’all can open your eyes.”
The statue’s whiteness glowed in the light of the approaching dusk.
“Maybe a boy, maybe a girl, but certainly not the Mona Lisa.” Alabama Tony pointed back to Da Vinci’s immortal painting.
“No one can touch the Mona Lisa, but anyone who touches the Borghese Hermaphroditus will fall in love.”
That line was my cue to finish up the tour. We had created the curse, but both of us were in awe of the statue’s power to have existed for centuries without any damage.
“You girls care to drink some wine in the Palais Royal?”
Ellie said yes and we retreated to a renowned cafe at the northern end of the garden. The barman knew our names. Les Bains and Studio were on his list of after-closing bars. We toasted the magic of the Borghese Hermaphroditus. Everyone was happy.
Throughout the following months we perfected our non-seeing tours of Le Louvre with other models, Sorbonne painters, dancers from the Crazy Horse, and wandering heiresses. Our best time from the Seine entrance to le Hermaphrodite was twelve minutes, but our luck couldn’t last as long as the existence of a naked transvestite’s statue.
Tony spent that winter with one girl. Tracy was a brunette from Vermont, a twenty year-old dripping with North Country innocence. Her smile was too lovely for a cover girl, but Tony had been blinded by her maple syrup brown eyes and I met him at the Studio to see how he was.
“I think she wants to get serious.”
“How serious?”
“I’m not seeing anyone else.”
Those words explained the sad faces on the Dixie girls at the Studio. Tony wasn’t playing FREEBIRD after last call anymore.
“She wants to go to the Louvre.”
“You going to give her the tour?”
“What you’ll think?”
“You like her?” I thought she was a good woman. Like me Traci was a New Englander.
“More than like.”
“Then do what you think is best as long as you remember the danger of the Hermaphrodite.”
“You mean I’ll fall in love?”
“It happened to me.” A young artist from La Ruche had dared me to touch Herma. I hadn’t looked at any woman since. We were in love.
“That falling love story’s a bunch of phooey. Intouched it and Didn't fall in love with you.” Tony smirked at my caution. “Besides Traci’s from Vermont.”
“What’s that have to do with it?”
“She’s just another Yankee girl.”
“And you’re Johnny Reb. Every town squares in Vermont had a statue of a Union soldier defiantly facing the South. The South will not rise again.”
“We will, you damn Yankee, but I want you to come along, so I don't touch Herma."
The next day Tony led the way through the museum. Tracy was smart for a teenager. She had studied art at a real school in Brattleboro. She pouted at his warning to not regard the other paintings.
“I didn’t come to Paris to be told what to do. I could have stayed in Vermont for that.” Tracy pointed to the wall. “That painting's English. That’s French and that’s Delacroix’s LIBERTY LEADING THE PEOPLE.”
“How you know that?” Tony had been coming to the Louvre on his own. He looked at the paintings. The color of the light showed him the truth about Art. Paris had him in its power.
“I’ve been here before.” Tracy stepped closer.
“I’ve never seen you here.” Tony held her hand and felt the softness of a stalled breeze.
“And I’ve never seen you here until now.”
A vagrant ray of sunset struck the wall mirror. The only camera was their memory. Time slowed to the pace of their breathing and she hushed, “What now?”
“I’ll show you my favorite piece in the Louvre.”
“The Sleeping Hermaphroditus.”
She laughed like she had been waiting for this punchline.
“How you know?”
“Every model in Paris talks about how you two bring them here and have them touch the Sleeping Hermaphroditus’ ass to fall in love. Funny, but they all loved you for a few days. Maybe that’s the power of the Sleeping Hermaphroditus. You willing to try?”
“I am, if you are.”
Tracy led him toward the Mona Lisa. They passed the gaggle of admirers before Leonardo’s painting and stopped before the blemishless statue.
“It’s so perfect.”
“Saved from a grave of dirt.”
“To sleep on stone.”
They touched the marble together.
That autumn the two got married at the Studio. Leaves from the old Chestnut tree covered cobblestones. We drank tequila and danced to the owner playing OLD ROCKY TOP on the fiddle.
At the end of the night Tony and I threw a football in the medieval Marais courtyard. Two high stakes Ivy League lawyers challenged us to a game. We beat them like rented mules. Cobblestones were our home advantage and we toasted our victory, yelling “Joe Namath.”
Tony stopped.
“What?”
“Look.”
I did.
Tracy beamed at her football hero. Neither of us had broken a window in the courtyard. At dawn the newlyweds went home. The Louvre was never the same for me after that. As IM Pei’s Pyramid took form, people once more discovered the museum.
French first. English. Dutch. German. Japanese. It wasn't same with all them. it no longer belonged to me. The foreign crowds flocked to see the masterpieces. All of them stopped at the Mona Lisa.
As always few bothered to at le Borghese Hermaphroditus, because the fame of Mona Lisa was a tough act to follow even for the cool stone of her sleeping beauty.
None touched her.
I always did, because nothing else felt more of eternity, when you wanted to fall in love during football season.
Even in Paris.
Go long.
Frank the owner of Le Studio, Tracy, and Tony 1983.
"Her prayers found favour with the gods: for, as they lay together, their bodies were united and from being two persons they became one. As when a gardener grafts a branch on to a tree, and sees the two unite as they grow, and come to maturity together, so when their limbs met in that clinging embrace the nymph and the boy were no longer two, but a single form, possessed of a dual nature, which could not be called male or female, but seemed to be at once both and neither."
Ovid, Metamorphoses
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