Descent into Madness | Wherelse
Part two in an accidental series on Parisian Nightlife. Plus, some poetry! Wherelse: the Living Guide to Living Good
In the French countryside, about two hours northeast from Paris, there’s an old convent that got turned into a sort of performing artist’s residency by a Dutch communist named Jan a couple decades ago. I’ve been coming here in between stop offs during my stints in Paris for stays between a week and a couple months since I discovered it by accident in 2018.
I’m here now for a five-day getaway from the city. I should be writing, but instead I’ve been baking quiches and participating in improvisational workshops and “group dissolution experiences” in the pitch dark. I’m sitting outside. Chickens are hopping around and pecking on people’s leftover food bits. A grungey-alternative music performance is in earshot, but out of sight. I’m on a bench next to my sister Alice and my friend Evie, who are both writing poetry while I punch up this week’s letter.
I have the distinct pleasure of including Evie’s poem, Verveine, in this issue. There’s a rotating cast of characters here, similar to the one I talk about in this week’s featured piece in my series on Real Life Time Machines.
This community is entirely run and operated by the people who come to live and work on their various projects and experimentations in the castle. Everyone makes art and helps cook and clean and puts on workshops and shares. It sounds perfect, and in a lot of ways it is. Every time I come up here, I meet friends. I re-meet myself.
I’m gawkin’ and balkin’ at the idea that next week, I’ll be stopping over in New Dehli on my way to Tokyo. My time in France, for now, is wrapping up.
Thanks for being here.
- Jackson Greathouse Fall
In This Issue:
🌸 Verveine, a Poem by Evie Reckendrees
📖 Real Life Time Machines: Descent into Madness
➡️ Next Week in Wherelse
Verveine, A POEM BY Evie Reckendrees
I have asked curled up on mattresses under sky meteors forming lines emptied out bodies, indescriptive, countervailing planetary altars I have asked many eyes compelling uncertain I kiss in dark- necessary killings, sacrifices laid in bare hallways no more closing thoughts imitations cling to me like lox plastic wrapper i learn to be disliked, mislikened, kindled, compared, I did talk to fate the other day wearing guises drinking un- making i give my soul planet names, i heard the words ‘i know how it starts’ of course, a bit of self-assertion goes a long way earthy they told me I was kind, conscientious efforts, i lock myself in you don’t listen, again my universe is slippery, put it down fate has become a pro at misdemeanors i don’t tell anymore, i say to you there’s ellipses in my thoughts reinventing con-figs the treetops cracked its perfect round- ing magical forest understand this I know all about the beauty of wrecks, wasps in food my side sending me a message drop my head i love being many people and you say you have have been waiting for a girl like me to piss in your sink
Evie Helen Reckendrees is a poet, writer & performance artist.
They are writing about and engaging with desire, suffering, and God.
REAL LIFE TIME MACHINES
Descent into Madness
This is all 100% true. Everything I write here is, but I just feel like it’s important to re-state that before getting into it. Okay. Here we go.
Some nights, my life in Paris feels like I’ve been cast in a film I can’t remember auditioning for.
I don’t know how long I’ve been here, but from where I stand in the corner of this room, I’m watching a shirtless man doing a headstand on a large pink bed that could seat— or lay— at least a dozen people. His hips are swinging to this off-kilter jazz that’s bleeding in from the next room. I think he’s… dancing? His face is turning purple with strain, and no one of the fifty-some guests at this party seem to notice or care. He’s definitely dancing, just upside-down. His feet are kicking around the pink drapery flowing from the ceiling and off the walls, around the bed.
I’m equally exhausted and hypnotized.
In a side room, another smaller bed is hidden in the dark behind a curtain. Smaller, like, it could only fit four or five people. Marina, a Ukrainian singer, and her two friends Norman and Paul, are reclined on the bed and passing around a book of Paul Verlaine’s poetry as they read aloud to each other, giggling. They call for me to join them when I glance in, so I climb up and look out at the scene around me.
Astrid, who has been organizing various dances and parties for years, drifts past us with a cigarette clinging to her lip as she heads towards the live model drawing salon, to sketch someone who is posing just out of view. Later, she corners me in the fumoir and shows me her sketch. It’s good. “How old do you think I must be?” She prods. She’s tall, nearly as tall as I am. I guess she must be in her early twenties, but protest being put on the spot. “I’m seventeen!” She proclaims defiantly. Loud enough for everyone to turn, nod, and go back to their cigarettes.
Francesco, our host this evening, drifts into the room while we’re on the bed, and Marina starts speaking to him in perfect Italian. He’s wearing a sequined red blazer. I throw out an emphatic “Cosa fai? Como stai?” In my best effort to make a new friend. He seems receptive, but insists on speaking to me in English.
I’ve been moving floor to floor, and the weight of the night is settling on me. Trance music upstairs, a full-on cabaret downstairs, incense bleeding through the walls, bodies melting down into into each other like wax sculptures at the Musée Grevin. It’s 2am and I’m ready to disappear, but first, a final glance over my shoulder at this Lynchian carousel.
I’m getting to know a very different, very new side of myself here. I’m getting to see a Paris I didn’t know existed, through this rotating cast of characters that I keep running into. Something I’ve realized is that one of my greatest passions in life is witnessing other people expressing their own obsessions. To me, it’s the greatest privilege in the world to be present to someone else being fully, completely themselves.
I’ve always imagined myself sort of hovering on the edge of these worlds — half-in, half-documenting, hiding in corners to quickly take down as many notes as I can, testing the limits of how much I can witness and write down before I’m the one to lose my footing and disappear into it.
Where does witnessing end? Where does participating begin? How long can I stay at the edge of the pool before slipping under, clothes and all?
Paris has a way of pulling you into surreal spaces like this — half theater, half debauchery, fully fucked up, in the best possible way.
I wasn’t even sure I’d go.
If I’d had known this twice-a-year party was happening in a swinger’s club, a club whose name I dare not type here, I don’t know if that would have warded me off or intrigued me all the more to come.
I’d heard about it first from Bertrand, mid-60s, beaming, often found on a dance floor flanked by two women more than half his age, handheld geisha fan batting through the thick air as he twirls his partners around. I ask him if he’s sure he only has two arms, and he laughs at that. Parisian nightlife royalty. A familiar face to me by now at these soirées that I’ve found myself frequenting more and more often. He pitched it to me over text message on Wednesday. “Are you available on Friday?”
I was still on the fence until Bartosz and Astrid both told me they were going. Bartosz is Polish, sharp-eyed, and always impeccably dressed. The type of guy who could tie a four-in-hand in his sleep — we first met a few weeks ago when we were both trying on suits at Ammar’s.
I take the night to map the ecosystem. I’m pulling at threads, trying to piece together this weird, elaborate social web.
Paris has its mainstays. Nightlife veterans here are playing a decades-long game of dress-up that I only just showed up for. Imagine civil war re-enactors, but for the 1920s, mingling with BDSM fetishists and drag queens. They must all be sharing a group chat to decide where to go out two or three times a week — I can’t keep up.
No matter how many times I run into the same players, playing the same games, it always feels like stepping into a completely new film. I can’t tell if I’m a character yet, or still just in the audience.
Walking up to Les Nuits, you’d never know what was going on inside. There’s no sign, no one outside, just an unmarked door. It’s silent on the street, all I can hear is the soft rain on my umbrella.
No cars. No people. Eerie.
I rang the doorbell and tried the handle, unsure if I was at the right place. The door opened and I was quickly chastised by a man with— I kid you not — half moon spectacles and a top hat looking me up and down. “Monsieur, faut vraiment pas tirer la poignée.” Merde. Noted. Inside: heat, leather sticking to skin, masks laid out like prop invitations on beds in hidden rooms around every corner. Drag queens and in perfect lipstick fanning themselves in the corners. It smells like incense and bodies.
I’m wearing a double breasted tuxedo — bow tie and all, because I felt like it. Normally, when you wear a tuxedo at something that isn’t specifically a black tie event, you’re going to be the most overdressed person there. Somehow, even though I was the only one in black tie, I was dressed squarely down the middle. I was certainly not overdressed, but I somehow wasn’t underdressed either. I’m wearing patent leather shoes. My hair looks good. Let’s go deeper inside and see what’s in store.
It’s exactly 11:11pm, and the cabaret is kicking off.
Roxana Rotila takes the stage. I recognize her first number from the second the band starts playing — it’s totally Joe Jackson’s arrangement of “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?” I realize she’s the same singer from La Baronne de Paname last week. Same white feather boa. Recurring cast.
After Roxana’s cabaret act, we’re silently ushered upstairs where the evening shifts. After waiting around confused for 20 minutes, a man in a yellow shirt, bolo tie, cowboy hat, no pants, stumbles out from behind a curtain. The air is dense. He starts by reciting poetry in English, and out of nowhere, men around the room who are evidently part of this avant garde theatrical production (I learn later they’re all part of a troupe) shout lines at him from every corner. Then someone’s dancing. Then everyone’s screaming.
A man staggers to the mic, ostensibly pretending to be drunk. Another man starts to play the accordion. Behind the curtain, gold lamé flashes as someone slithers onto the floor, guttural sounds bubbling up from his chest. He’s howling. Someone jumps on the bed. Everyone starts dancing.
This is what it feels like to live inside a fever dream, I decide. Nervous laughter from the crowd bleeds into screams and cheers, and I start sweating through my clothes. Something about the awkwardness of the theater piece— if I can even call it that— plus the sheer heat of the room before they turned on the AC— my jaw was agape and I had to physically, deliberately close my mouth on more than a few occasions.
We’ve fully slipped into a play — a piece of immersive theater — where no one knows the script and everyone’s overcompensating by improvising like their lives depend on it.
I’m exploring more rooms now. Everywhere I turn is something theatrical, unnerving, erotic, or all three. A mirrored room hidden behind a secret door covered by a curtain is revealed to be the source of the incense smell. There’s a bed with black silk sheets. As I’m leaving, two girls slip inside, whispering “je pense que c’est ici,” and vanish behind the door.
Just as soon as I’ve turned around, I look back at the stage, which is hardly a stage — more a the part of a room that isn’t occupied by Bed or Couch. Two dancers have appeared from God knows where — one in white lace, corset and elaborate crinoline, the other in black latex with a spider-web veil over her face. The cowboy returns, now he’s playing a yellow Telecaster. They’re locked in a snakey rhythm, circling each other. The trance builds. Bodies fall onto the bed.
Part of me wants to stay perched on the stairwell, in the corner, and take notes; part of me wants to throw myself onto the bed.
I move downstairs, where another band started up. I pass through an empty room that feels weirdly clinical, like a freaky doctor’s office. An old, empty examination chair stands guard — all that’s missing are stirrups. There’s a table I notice with books stacked on it. Staged, even. “La femme au temps de Casanova” and two copies of “La Fonction Erotique”.
I made my way, against my better judgement, to a basement dungeon out of sheer curiosity. I can’t resist a good staircase, especially when I hear voices at the landing. That’s where I first met Marina and her friends. We chat for a minute about America and the war in Ukraine (seriously) while I climb inside a cast iron birdcage, the kind with a hook at the top that could be affixed to the ceiling by some sort of system of pulleys or chains. I gawk at leather podiums and swings and chains on the stone walls. Everyone is acting like this is all very run-of-the-mill stuff. Suddenly: “That’s my friend singing!” Marina perks up and shouts as we race upstairs. A man in a floral tutu that looks handmade for the occasion has begun serenading the crowd with opera. Italian.
He stops mid song. “On peut changer de chanson?” — a few people laugh, and he launches into something even stranger. I don’t think he meant to be funny, though. I feel uncomfortable for him.
By 1am, the night has softened — but it’s clearly far from over. Transvestites dressed like Tim Burton characters sing a cappella in foreign, unintelligible languages. I lay on the bed with Marina and her friends, sipping my Perrier, watching everything and everyone collapse in on itself. She tells me she’s staying until the end of the party at 5am, which sends my very sleepy, very sober reality into stark contrast with everyone else’s imbibing this evening — suddenly, all I want is to get home to process it all.
I slip to the coat check. I get my umbrella. I say only a few goodbyes before making sure to not leave too loudly back out through the unmarked door. Once outside, I feign knocking at the door for good measure.
The street outside is cool and quiet. The rain has stopped and I can hear Paris start to hum again, like we’ve all been holding our breaths in there for a very, very long time.
Next Week in Wherelse,
we’re stopping over in India.
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A Note to New Readers:
Welcome! I’m Jackson Greathouse Fall, an American based in Paris, living on the road. I write stories about the places I go, the people I meet, and how it all fits together.
Wherelse is my handmade weekly dispatch: part travelogue, part love letter, and a guidebook for the emotionally adventurous.
I’m also on Instagram and TikTok, where I share reels and engage in more visual storytelling. If you like this, you’ll love that.
Avec Grand Plaisir,
