Eudeline recounts, in particular, having shared a bed with Catherine Ringer — which, incidentally, does not — contrary to certain reinterpretations circulating about the text — allow us to claim that he explicitly states he had sexual relations with her. But he immediately goes on to provide particularly intimate details about his work in the porn film industry at the time. He also speaks quite openly about heroin, a dealer and their lack of syringes.
And this is precisely where the unease may begin.
For Catherine Ringer has just died. She can neither confirm, nor clarify, nor recount her own version of events from that night. Fred Chichin is also dead. Indeed, Eudeline concludes her account by pointing out that he is now the sole survivor among the protagonists of that scene.
The problem, then, is not that the punk years are being portrayed as they were. There is no reason for the history of French rock to be sanitised. Drugs, sex, marginalisation and excess were part of a scene and an era, and Eudeline himself has never hidden his connection to that culture: when interviewed by *Le Monde* as early as 2003, he was already describing the role heroin played in the Parisian punk scene around 1980.
What is more disturbing is the timing and the position of the narrator.
No sooner had Catherine Ringer passed away – a woman whose immense body of work is celebrated everywhere – than her pornographic films resurfaced, along with a bloodstained bed, heroin, syringes and a recollection of intimacy recounted by a man who, for his part, is still here to give his version of events.
This inevitably creates a strange impression: are we still in the realm of tribute, or have we already entered the self-portrait of the ageing, surviving rocker?
The title itself perhaps provides part of the answer: ‘Catherine Ringer and Me’. Eudeline occupies a huge place in his own memory. Lennon is murdered, Ringer walks across the stage, Chichin plays the guitar, drugs are doing the rounds, but the real thread running through it all remains the man who can now say: I was there.
One can, of course, defend this kind of literature. It is the literature of raw testimony, without retrospective moralising and without whitewashing memories. One might even argue that turning Catherine Ringer into a respectable icon by erasing her underground past would be another way of betraying her.
But the freedom to tell a story does not preclude another concept: tact.
Catherine Ringer was never ashamed of her past, and she had enough character to respond herself when people tried to confine her to it. That is precisely what makes the situation different today: she is no longer here to speak out.
Eudeline’s article ultimately reveals something that goes far beyond Catherine Ringer. It poses a fairly simple question: what becomes of an intimate memory when one of the two protagonists dies?
Is it still just your memory?
Or does it also become something whose public exposure we ought to weigh up?
Patrick Eudeline probably wanted to recapture the madness of an era when the Parisian punk scene thrived on music, drugs, sex and self-destruction. His piece succeeds remarkably well in this. Perhaps even a little too well.
For three days after Catherine Ringer’s death, many would no doubt have preferred to hear about her voice, her stage presence, her incredible artistic freedom or the impact she had on French music.
Instead, we’re left with blood on the sheets, a porn shoot and a story about syringes.
Rock has never been known for its delicacy.
But sometimes, delicacy isn’t censorship.
It’s simply elegance.
