Ebba Simone’s Reviews > Less > Status Update

In ordinary travel Less was always a hermit crab in a borrowed shell: he liked to get to know a street, and a café, and a restaurant, and be called by name by the waiters, and owners, and the coat-check girl, so that when he left, he could think of it fondly as another home.Freddy was the opposite.He wanted to see everything.Freddy suggested they take a bus to see all the highlights of Paris! Less shivered in horror.

'Le tour de monde en quatre-vingts jours,' Finley murmurs.

(chapter Less French)

"The items still unused: sun lotion, nail clippers, sewing kit. The items still unworn: the brown cotton trousers, the blue T-shirt, the brightly colored socks. Into the bloodred luggage, zipped tight. All of these will circle the globe to no purpose, like so many travelers."

[Less] says, in German: "I am surprised and perhaps delighted!"

"Arthur returns to the bed, where Bastian is waiting, naked and tan, and climbs aboard. As Less does this, he rests one hand on Bastian's chest. Bastian gasps. He writhes; his breathing quickens; and after a moment he whispers: 'Was tust du mir an?' (What are you doing to me?) Less has no idea what he is doing."

"There are some men who have never been kissed liked that. There are some men who discover, after Arthur Less, that they never will be again."

"Anyone would guess, seeing Bastian staring up at Less' window each night, waiting to be buzzed in, that it is the sex that brings him. But it is not precisely the sex. (...) Arthur Less is - technically - not a skilled lover. He kisses (...) like someone in love. Like he has nothing to lose. Like someone who has just learned a foreign language and can use only the present tense and only the second person."

"You know, your German is pretty terrible," Bastian tells him.
"Not true. It is not perfect, perhaps," Less tells him, "but it is excited".

"At ten, we climb the tree higher even than our mothers' fears. At twenty, we scale the dormitory to surprise a lover asleep in bed. At thirty, we jump into the mermaid-green ocean. At forty, we look on and smile."