I’ve always had a lot of trouble fraternizing with men. Gay or straight. The gay sense of humour is often too ghetto-bound for me, while it’s rare for straights to have any sense of humour at all; gay men make me feel as if I’m always competing for sex, and straight men do too, but in a different way, and with a latent misogyny I find hard to take. With my group of women, though, I feel not only safe but confident. That’s it: I never trust men. No matter what kind. Why lesbians then? Because of Mélène, actually, who introduced me to her group in the early seventies: I liked them right away and they adopted me at once. Because of the rights they demand, of course, which resemble mine, but mainly because of the way in which they conduct their struggle: my friends, my family. They’re never heavy and instead of being hostile to men, they laugh at them. Laughter again.

My colleagues, both male and female, who’ll always consider me a misfit, often tell me that laughing will either kill me or turn me into a total fool. I hope they’re right.

Mélène set down a brush soaked in white paint, then wiped her eyes on a corner of the old chef’s apron that she wears for painting.

“I can just see you, running down Prince-Arthur like a gazelle . . . You must have looked like a lunatic! And the poor guy who thought he was set for the night, sitting there ­staring at an empty glass of milk . . . How humiliating! I’d hate to hear what he’ll say if you ever run into him again.”

We were in the lane behind the house we’d bought ­together the year before, she, her lover Jeanne, another ­couple of women and myself. We were painting that day and I’d been cursing since morning. Don’t worry, I’m not about to hold forth on the joys of co-ownership; I’ll just say that some days I’d gladly take an ax to the contract we all signed, which requires me to do a lot of things that make my flesh crawl. Such as, for instance, repainting our old fence on a Saturday morning when I’d rather get back in bed with my Devoir. But no, the phone had rung at half-past eight and Mélène had warbled with obvious bad faith ­verging on the sadistic: “Morning, honey, rise and shine! Traipse your lovely buns around the bars till all hours if you want, but don’t forget your obligations! I hope you remembered our fabulous plans for the day: it’s our turn to paint the gorgeous fence that keeps us safe and sound . . .”