The Possibility of an Island by Michel Houellebecq, Gavin Bowd Page B

and tired, and of a certain gastric heaviness. On leaving I realized that a carelessly parked Chevrolet Corvette was blocking my car in. The prospect of returning to the bar and searching for the owner was enough to plunge me into a discouraged gloom; I leaned back against a concrete wall, trying to get the whole picture of the situation, but mostly smoking cigarettes. Out of all the sports cars available on the market, the Chevrolet Corvette, with its uselessly and aggressively virile lines, with its absence of true mechanical nobility wedded to its overall modest price, is undoubtedly the one that corresponds best to the notion of
pimpmobile;
what sort of sordid Andalusian macho type was I going to bump into? Like all individuals of his kind, the man undoubtedly had a solid understanding of cars, and was therefore perfectly poised to recognize that my car, being more discreet than his, cost three times more. To the act of virile self-assertion he had made by parking in such a way as to block me in, was therefore added, undoubtedly, an undercurrent of social hatred, and I was right to fear the worst. It took me three-quarters of an hour, and half a packet of Camels, to pluck up the courage to return to the bar.
    I immediately identified the individual, slouched at the end of the counter in front of a saucer of peanuts, letting his beer go warm while he shot, from time to time, desperate looks at the giant television screen where girls in hot pants gyrated their pelvises to a fairly slow groove; it was obviously a
foam party,
the outline of the girls’ buttocks became clearer and clearer, as they were molded by the hot pants, and the man’s despair was increasing. He was small, potbellied, and bald, doubtless around fifty years old, dressed in a jacket and tie, and a wave of sad compassion crashed over me; his Chevrolet Corvette was certainly not going to help him to
pick up babes,
it would just make him look, at best, like a
fat old fart,
and I found myself admiring the quotidian courage that made it possible, despite everything, for him to drive a Chevrolet Corvette. How could a suitably young and sexy girl do anything other than
snigger
at the sight of that little man getting out of his Chevrolet Corvette? I had to put a stop to this, despite everything, and I went over to him with all the smiley indulgence I could muster. As I had feared, he was combative at first, and tried to get the waitress to act as a witness—she didn’t even raise her eyes from the sink where she was washing glasses. Then he gave me a second look, and what he saw must have calmed him down—I myself felt so old, weary, unhappy, and mediocre: for obscure reasons, he must have concluded that the owner of the Mercedes SL was also a loser, almost a companion in misfortune, and he tried then to establish a male bond, offered me a beer, then a second one, and proposed that we end the evening at the New Orleans. To get out of it, I pretended that I still had a long road ahead of me—it is an argument that men generally respect. I was in reality less than fifty kilometers from my house, but I had just realized that I might as well continue my
road movie
at home.
     
     
    In fact, there was a highway a few kilometers from my residence, and beside it there was a similar kind of establishment. After leaving Diamond Nights, I drove, as usual, across the beach of Rodalquilar. My Mercedes 600 SL coupe skimmed over the sand; I activated the door-opening mechanism: in twenty-two seconds it transformed into a cabriolet. It was a splendid beach, almost completely deserted, of a geometrical flatness, with immaculate sand, and surrounded by cliffs with strikingly black vertical faces; a man graced with a real artistic temperament would undoubtedly have been able to make the most of this solitude, this beauty. For my part, I felt myself faced with infinity like a flea on a sheet of flypaper. I couldn’t give a fuck about this beauty, this geological transcendence,