Hélène the Helper

Dreamt in Franglish after seeing “Midi était en flammes” at Anis Gras

Performed by La Difforme, m.e.s by Jessica Dalle

At a time when we’re still school kids, Mum decides to take a “helper”. I am a little shocked at the idea. “Do we have the class for that?” I feel embarrassed about having a helper. She arrives, her name is Hélène. She’s splendid, tall with perfect skin and a relaxed attitude. I decide to “help” by doing everything before she does so that she won’t have to “help”. I clean my room, shop for food from the marché, cook, do the dishes and look after the plants. I feel strangely rejuvenated after her arrival and I am more willing to do everything. Perhaps this was how she was supposed to help us in the first place.

We are three kids and she is to take care of each kid individually after shower. She gives us three options: Do you want to be super neat and tidy? Do you want to learn something new? Do you want to feel pampered and loved? I wonder what my sisters choose, probably to feel loved.

While I’m thinking about what to choose when it’s my turn, Hélène the Helper returns from shower. I run before her as she approaches my bed in the room and I meet her with thick, luxury, forest green towels. I wrap her hair and her body in towels. “Oh, this towel is better for the hair and the other for the body, let’s swap.” She agrees. Afterwards I ask her if she puts on any lotions and such, and I start searching in my things for something that will please her. Finally I find a large blue tube of Shisheido body lotion and I pour a great quantity of it in her hand, she puts some of it on her body and gives back the excess. I spread it generously (and a little sensually) on my legs, on my neck and my arms and there’s still some spilt on the ground, I take it in my palm and offer some to my little sisters who are now little kids wearing little wedding-gown-like ball costumes and jewellery made of “paillettes”. I mock them for their choice of dress but then I decide to let them be.

Before I go out, we have a conversation with Hélène the Helper about whether we have the discipline to have breakfast every day or not. I say “I have the discipline to have breakfast every day even if it spoils my discipline to go to work/school on time. I am always late by half an hour.” We laugh. She says she is always late too. I know she’s always late. She’s that kind of person who makes you wait and you have no problem waiting for her.

I notice on the wall, the postcard I sent to my sister years ago (It’s the photo of a joyful Coca Cola girl in an open top car). My sister stuck some triangle shaped wrapping papers covering a part of the image. I wonder what the paper is hiding. When my sister is not in the room I check under it and see that it was the “décolleté” and the nipple of the Coca Cola girl showing through her top. I feel happy because my sister cares about me, holds on to what I gave her and keeps it on her wall. I feel sad because she has moved in another direction, away from the way of “jouissance”, out of my control. “Because of her marriage,” I say to myself.

I see from my window my colleague Hélène who happens to live in “maison de ville mitoyenne juste en face” she’s doing a playful dance move looking at a high window of her house (probably at her kids at the window). It looks like suburbs or a small town and next to the white-washed walls of the buildings across the road, there are the wooden stalls full of ripe and shiny fruits and vegetables. To the great surprise of Hélène the Helper and my sister in the room, I open the window, shout at my colleague very loudly “Hélène!” and when she looks, I do her a dance move and she laughs. (Later I have regrets, “Was it inappropriate? Did I interfere with a private moment? Did I disturb her in her daily life?”) Then I go out and as I’m wandering in the streets, I receive a message from her on my phone. A video of her singing very nicely and me doing a funny (but incredibly well-sung) “opera voice” singing to the end of her song. We laugh and hug in the video. I reply “When was this? It’s hilarious. I don’t remember, I was drunk😂” 

Later, back in real life outside, I see a bridge and I approach the banisters to look at the water. It flows uninterestingly. I turn my back to the stream and lean against the banisters. A very happy dog starts running towards me from a distance. The dog throws itself in my arms and upon perceiving my smell, it understands it made a mistake. It gets down, confused, apologetic and disappointed but still being nice enough to me to wag its tail a little as I caress it. I notice a plastic chair with cushions and think to myself, it mixed me up with its favorite person who usually sits here. Because its eyes don’t see well. Because it’s an old dog. I regret not taking a photo of it when it was running towards me because it was such a sight to see.

I leave the bridge and continue walking in the streets between houses, I see an incredibly long and colourful anaconda moving in a distance. I’m intrigued, I walk towards it. Where the snake was, there’s a bed on the pavement. And on the bed, sleeping, is a big muscular man whose colourful scale-like hair moves up and down with his every breath. The hair is aligned like the spikes of a dragon along the muscles and bones. It’s oddly attractive. In the dream, this is a natural phenomenon called “drummer poils”. I touch the hair, the dragon-anaconda man wakes up and takes me tenderly in his arms on this street bed.