By the fifth bottle of heavy red, long after dinner, the room had softened beautifully. Coco was telling us why Christian Dior should never be trusted; Anaïs had now fallen briefly in love with the pianist; and Poirot was now absolutely certain that somebody at the table had lied about their age.

And then, because I have a rare gift for ruining perfectly good evenings, I put down my glass and asked the table the one question nobody should ask after midnight.

“If you had your life again…”

I looked around,

“…would you do it differently?”

And suddenly the whole table went quiet.

Hercule stopped rearranging the cutlery.

Coco looked up and took a deep drag from her Gauloise.

Anaïs...well, I think, she didn’t hear me.

Søren looked at me for what felt like an uncomfortably long time… then he slowly put down his glass, folded his hands, and said:

“Marry, and you will regret it; don’t marry, you will also regret it; marry or don’t marry, you will regret it either way. Laugh at the world’s foolishness, you will regret it; weep over it, you will regret that too; laugh at the world’s foolishness or weep over it, you will regret both. Believe a woman, you will regret it; believe her not, you will also regret it… Hang yourself, you will regret it; do not hang yourself, and you will regret that too; hang yourself or don’t hang yourself, you’ll regret it either way; whether you hang yourself or do not hang yourself, you will regret both. This is the essence of all philosophy.”

…

Coco was crying with laughter.

Anaïs was staring into her wine.

Hercule had stopped blinking altogether.

And I…

I suddenly understood why Søren never married.

Christine 🥂🍾

Wilde Nights: Imaginary conversations with the unforgettable.

About life, death, loss, love, and art.

Held late at night, where the rules are soft.

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There wasn’t even a proper sign on the door. Just a single word, half-faded, painted directly onto the wood. Typically Edvard, I thought, probably out loud, as it seemed to echo into the silent darkness.

I tried to remember what he’d said when we arranged this. Something about "the house with too many windows and not enough doors." At the time, I thought it was a metaphor, you know, the things that artists say past midnight. Now I wasn’t so sure.

I knocked, waited, then sat on the step because I didn’t know what else to do. My shoes were damp from the walk. I hate that kind of northern rain that doesn’t just fall as one would expect, but instead settles slowly into your clothes and plans to stay forever.

That’s when I noticed the first canvas in the twilight. It was leaning against the wall, half-covered by a coat that didn’t look like it belonged to anyone anymore. Then I saw more, three at first, then many more, dozens perhaps, as if they were suddenly growing like mushrooms because they were finally watered enough. They looked abandoned in a way, but not by accident. Knowing Edvard, he just appears to leave everything to chance.

They were dropped, arranged, and left with systemic intention. They wanted to be exposed. They wanted to be messed with. They were an invitation to play. I stood in front of one with a pale background and something that might have once been a face.

Now the paint had slid, warped, and pooled at the bottom like it couldn’t hold itself together anymore. I was tempted to leave my fingerprint on one of them. And as I was still fighting with myself about "Do I, don't I?", I heard footsteps on the gravel.

I turned around, and all I could see at first was an orange dot in a cloud of smoke.

"Edvard", I said, "I thought I got lost. Thank goodness you're here."

He was walking toward me, cigarette in mouth, hands in his coat pockets, as if none of this had anything to do with him. He stopped a few steps away, exhaled smoke, and looked down at the canvas in front of me. Then, as if this was the most obvious thing in the world, he said: “Step onto that one for me.”

Christine 🥂🍾

Wilde Nights: Imaginary conversations with the unforgettable.
About life, death, loss, love, and art.
Held late at night, where the rules are soft.

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When he reached €500,000, with no jokers left for him to use, they asked him what he’d do with the money. He said he’d pay off his apartment in Berlin. Normally, you would hear “holidays” first. But he knew this kind of money would change his life, make his future more stable and secure.
Now, you could say: how boring, playing safe, nutter, life is for experience, not material things, and all that.
But honestly? I’d do exactly the same.

He gambled once with shaking hands, went for half logic, half gut feeling, and secured the money. I was so delighted for him. A humble, grounded man who was able to think long-term, beyond thrill and shallow excitement.
With a million, he said, he would have loved to go to the Vitra museum in Basel, checking for fitting designer chairs for his living room.
How charming is that?
But what impressed me the most and prompted me to write about it came after that.

We live in a world where everyone feels the need to have an opinion on everything, all the time, publicly. As if not knowing something would somehow disqualify you as a human being.

And yet, in that exact moment, under real pressure, not knowing—and saying it out loud—made him the smartest person in the room.

Now the one-million-euro question could have made him go to Basel or go home (with 500 euros). That is pressure.
Am I gambling? Am I taking the risk? Will I embarrass myself?
That’s dangerous territory: not the not knowing, but the part where you don’t know, but you don’t want to admit it.

“Pride comes before a fall,” as they say.

Many people would rather disappear into the floor than say, “I don’t know.” The fear of being judged or perceived as stupid is so strong that it leads to genuinely stupid decisions.
We try to stay in control of the situation by producing an answer, any answer. It’s almost automatic.

You see it everywhere. People having opinions on things they barely understand, explaining their own lives in ways that don’t even feel true to them, pushing decisions because they think they should already know what to do.

And most of the time, that’s where things can get really messy.

Not because people lack intelligence. But because they override it, with ego, self-doubt, pressure, and the need to appear certain.

Now, he didn’t.

He sighed in relief when he saw the one-million-euro question and said he was grateful that the decision was made so easy for him.

He didn’t know, he was not willing to pretend he did, nor was he willing to guess.
And so he simply said: “I don’t know,” and walked away richer than any clever appearance would have made him.
He wasn’t in the game to prove how intelligent he was. He left, clear, smart, secure, and with all his dignity intact.
“I don’t know” was not the embarrassing moment here, but the smartest.

So this is for you if you tend to overthink, second-guess, or feel like you should have everything figured out.

When we don’t know, we start explaining, guessing, reaching for something that sounds good enough—and sometimes that costs us more than we realize.

There’s something powerful about recognizing the edge of your own certainty and not stepping over it just because the moment is tempting.

I keep thinking how different a lot of decisions and relationships would look if more people allowed themselves that sentence at the right time.

“I don’t know.”

And being okay with it.

It’s not the end of anything. It’s just where things are clear again.

But what do I know…?

→ What happens when you stop forcing answers you don’t have?

Christine 🥂🍾

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So they wait and keep waiting, and they think and keep thinking, and they analyze everything to death. They circle the same question from different angles, hoping that one day it will click. They watch podcasts, read articles and books, hoping for answers to fall into their lap.

And then they’ll move. Or will they?

But it doesn’t work like that in my experience. I have done all of those things myself, and nothing magically appeared to me. Did I have “eureka” moments? Oh sure, I had them. But I still needed to do, to fail, to fail again, to lose hope, to throw tantrums and curse all advice, and do again.

Clarity and confidence aren’t prerequisites. They are a consequence of doing.
You don’t act because you know. That certainty cannot exist.

You act so that something becomes known.

That’s why people stay where they are for years, while telling themselves they’re “thinking it through.”

At some point, thinking stops being intelligent and becomes avoidance, overwhelm, and fear.

The best shifts don’t happen when you understand everything.
They happen when you step into something without full certainty and can be aware enough to notice what changes.

Christine 🥂🍾

I wasn’t supposed to be here.

I mean, technically, I was- my name had been checked off a list, my coat whisked away by someone who’d mastered the art of appearing useful without actually doing anything. But in every other sense, I wasn’t supposed to be here.

This wasn’t my world.

The gallery was filled with the sound of Important Conversations, the type where no one actually listened, just waited for their turn to sound clever. Sculptures stood on precarious pedestals, paintings hung in calculated asymmetry, and the champagne never reached the rim of the glass.

My friend, real invitee, actual insider, had already drifted off into a cluster of people who all seemed to recognize each other instantly. Air kisses, murmured darlings, laughter just a touch too loud to be real. I hovered by a wall, clutching my drink like a life raft.

I shouldn’t have come.

I wasn’t one of them.

I wasn’t anyone.

The feeling was so familiar, it settled in like an old friend. The quiet certainty that I had snuck in where I didn’t belong, that at any moment, someone would tap my shoulder and ask me, kindly but firmly, to leave.

And then I saw him.

The artist.

The real reason everyone was here.

He stood at the center of the room, trapped in a web of admirers, all leaning in, all desperate to extract something from him: wisdom, proximity, reflected genius, star dust.

He looked…absent in a way, tired.

He didn’t seem bored or unhappy; just weary in the way people get when they have to perform being themselves with all eyes on them. He knew exactly what they wanted to see and delivered.

Someone asked him a question.

I didn’t catch what it was, but I remember the tone.

It was the way people spoke when they wanted to prove they were game.

And the artist, this titan, this mythic figure, this man whose work had been analyzed to death, whose name was printed on catalogs and auction house brochures and museum walls, just shrugged his shoulders and made a little pause before he said:

“I just really like to make this kind of stuff.”

That was it.

He didn’t come up with a grand philosophy.

He didn’t squeeze out a tortured manifesto.

He didn’t justify why he did what he did.

I exhaled.

For the first time that evening, I loosened my grip on my glass.

Because that was it, wasn’t it?

All this noise, all this self-importance, all these layers people built around things to make them feel more significant, more intellectual, more worthy. It was all just decoration.

Underneath it, art can be simple.

Underneath it, everything can be simple.

I smiled, sipped my champagne, and left.

As I stepped into the cold night air, a thought settled in,

warm and certain.

“That’s right.”

From “The Unfinished Symphony.”

Christine 🥂🍾

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Christine 🥂🍾

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Christine 🥂🍾

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A hand on skin.
A moment you didn’t plan.
Something that presses long enough to change the surface.

This piece is about what remains
When you stop trying to be untouched.

You can find it here.

Christine 🥂🍾

He looked exactly as I remembered him. In a way, it's unfair, I thought. He should age, too, shouldn't he? I arrived and was about to make myself comfortable next to him, while he was stirring a sugar cube into a drink that did not require sugar.

“Aaaah, mon ami,” he said, before I even sat. “I am suffering.”
I hung my coat. “You’re on holiday.”
“Exactly. Suffering.”
He pushed the glass away. “They tell me to relax. Relax! Hercule Poirot does not relax, he decays.”
I finally sat down. He adjusted my napkin and then his own. “They sent me to Egypt. A ‘gift,’ they said. A river cruise. Sand, sun, and one entirely uninspired murder.” “Uninspired?”
“Pouf. Predictable. The butler, naturally. What a tragic lack of imagination.”

He paused, scanning the room like he always does, even when there’s nothing to see. At least not for us mere mortals. And then he whispered into my ear: “Tell me, mon ami, is there a man standing by the piano?”
I turned. There wasn’t, I believe.
The only thing I saw was the coat rack behind the curtain. But something about it looked, I don't know, interesting?
“I saw him,” he said. “It was a tall man wearing a grey hat. He had a slight limp when he moved.”
He leaned forward. “And very, very clean shoes for this time of year.”

I said nothing. I know better than to interrupt when he’s like this.

“He was watching someone,” Poirot continued. “At first I thought, he is just curious, maybe. Until…”

He looked down at his untouched glass, probably looking for fingerprints. “I know that kind of look. He wanted to make sure that…Sacre tonnerre!”
“You saw all that?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. He was already constructing something. “She is gone. I don’t know who she is, but she is gone. He said nothing to her. He just came to confirm. Mais oui!” He touched his temple.
“And the coat rack?” He didn’t look.
“Perhaps, mon ami. But, permit me, I have never known a coat rack to look back.” He smiled faintly.

“Is it possible,” I said, “that you just miss the puzzle?” He just shrugged, being far away, lost in thought. “It is possible,” he replied, “that we create puzzles to make sense of the missing?”
”Huh?”
I turned and looked again. There was nothing by the piano, not even a shadow. It was just a quiet bar, half-empty drinks, and a man who may or may not exist. What I had expected to be an amusing evening had become something else entirely.

Poirot lifted his glass at last and tapped it gently. “How long,” he asked, “must something be believed before it becomes true?” And then, sipping with exquisite control: “Perhaps I am also just an idea refusing to be forgotten, is it not so?”

He stood up, smoothed his jacket, pointed at the brim of his hat, and nodded once, already elsewhere.

A moment later, the waiter came through with a cloth over his arm.

He stopped at our table, hesitated, then began to clear it anyway.
Two untouched glasses, a bottle of wine, and a bowl full of sugar cubes.

I waited for him to ask.

He didn’t.

“Table seven is free,” he said, guiding the couple behind him toward the empty chairs.

Wilde Nights: Imaginary conversations with the unforgettable.
About life, death, loss, love, and art.
Held late at night, where the rules are soft, and the truths are sharp.

🥂 Christine

Sitting at our table like the night belonged to her. The cigarette in her mouth was still unlit, the bottle beside her half empty. I took the velvet chair in front of her and moved it closer to her.

“Same?”

“Same.”

The waiter brought a glass and filled it while Anaïs finally lit her cigarette, blowing the smoke into the light above us.

A moth was circling that little lamp.

It was somewhat calming and sad to watch it.

“Poor bastard,” I said.

Anaïs inhaled deeply. “He’ll do it again tomorrow,” she said before she exhaled.

“Hope?”

“Habit.”

We kept watching it spiral.

It was easier than saying what we were actually thinking.

It landed briefly.

Wings like ashes.

Then gone.

Wilde Nights: Imaginary conversations with the unforgettable.
About life, death, loss, love, and art.
Held late at night, where the rules are soft and the truths are sharp.

🥂 Christine

Last night’s letter found its way to a few restless hearts.
Tonight, I’d rather pour a glass and sit with you awhile.

The room is quiet, the world half asleep, and there’s space for whatever breath you have left.

You’ve just come in from the cold.
I’m glad you’re here.

Press play.

🥂 Christine

I had been invited to Coco’s apartment for dinner. I was excited because it was a first in our decade-long friendship.
She never liked people in her most intimate space, a space where she could forget she’s Coco Chanel and, perhaps, just be Gabrielle.

Though I sometimes suspect she invented Coco just to keep Gabrielle out of sight.

When I arrived, she was standing barefoot on the marble, arranging figs on a porcelain plate as if they were brooches. The table was already set, impossibly elegant, but not stiff. Like everything in the apartment, it looked effortless and cost more than anyone needed to know.

She wore black silk trousers, a white blouse undone at the collar, no makeup, except the red lip, always the red lip.

“You’re late,” she said.

“I’m not.”

“You’re right. I just like saying it.”

We ate duck in some kind of sauce I’ll never remember the name of, served with a tiny silver spoon that neither of us used. We used the big ones instead, giggling like teens. The wine was exquisite. She never poured it herself, but it always magically refilled.

We talked about all and nothing for twenty minutes. Then we wasted five, about men. Then an hour or longer, about dresses.

“I once had a lover,” she said, “who tried to buy me a dress.”

I raised a brow. “Did he survive?”

“Barely. I let him believe I wore it once, just to end the conversation.”

She told me a story about a fitting gone wrong, very wrong, at the Ritz. The way she told it made me laugh so hard I nearly knocked over my glass.

“Careful,” she said, “this tablecloth is older than most people’s marriages.”

And then, once the plates had been cleared, we both leaned back.
We slowed down as the night softened.

I looked around. I couldn’t help it. The walls were lacquered gold. There were camellias carved into places no one would notice. Books that hadn’t been opened in years, and lions. So many lions, I started to feel watched.

“What’s with all the lions, Gab?” I asked.

She paused and took a slow sip from her glass.

“They keep me from apologising.”

I waited.

“I started collecting them after I stopped apologising for wanting everything.”

Another pause, another sip.

“But it’s tricky, wanting everything, you know. You end up rearranging it constantly.”

I reached for my glass that was still, or again, full.

And we both lit a cigarette simultaneously.
The room slowly filled with smoke as we sipped our digestifs in silence,
And in that moment,
We had everything.

Wilde Nights: Imaginary conversations with the unforgettable.
About life, death, loss, love, and art.
Held late at night, where the rules are soft and the truths are sharp.

🥂 Christine

They went to a bar after the reading. Susan had chosen one of those places where the tables are sticky, the lighting is both too dim and yet still too aggressive, and the music sounds like a mistake someone refuses to correct.

Arthur sat down, looking like one of his older books. As if he had given up on life in chapter one.

Susan ordered for both of them before he could say something sad, like red wine.

“Two gins. One good, one house,” she told the bartender. “Surprise us.”

Arthur opened his mouth to speak.
“Don’t,” she said.

They sat in silence while the bartender wiped the bar with a cloth that smelled like old socks. Arthur eventually said, “They hated it.” Susan shrugged. “They hated colour TV when it came out. Some of them still do.”

Arthur looked up, like a wounded puppy. She had never seen him destroyed like this. “They walked out.”

“Yes. Because you used words like warmth and joy. They were hoping for decay and nihilism.”

“I said ‘kiss’ in the first line.”

“I know. I was there. My champagne almost flew out of the glass.”

He buried his face in his hands.

Susan leaned back. “Arthur, darling, you finally wrote something with a pulse, something that can move people. It’s not your fault they showed up expecting an eulogy.”

The drinks arrived. She raised her gin glass, which felt somewhat greasy and too warm.

“To death by romance,” she said.

He clinked his glass with hers and whispered, “I think I’ve actually ruined my whole career, my reputation, myself.”

“No, Arthur. You just walked into the wrong room with your heart showing.”

He stared at the table like he wanted it to open and swallow him.

She pulled out her phone. “Smile.”

“What? No.”

But she had already taken the photo. It didn't matter that it was blurry and off-center. Arthur's eyes were only half open, as if he were about to fall asleep or had just summoned a demon. We don't know. Susan, however, looked bubbly and fun, as always, their two gin glasses raised like weapons into the flashlight.

She posted it without a filter and wrote:

Here’s to writing what actually matters, even when everyone walks out on you.

Arthur looked at her like she’d just publicly leaked his diary.
“Why would you post that?”

“Because it’s true,” she said.
“And because if we’re going to get publicly crucified, we might as well look fun doing it.”

THE POST

The photo went up at 1:12 a.m. A joyful little scene in the life of two beloved, famous artists.

When Susan went to bed, she felt content. Arthur felt so much better when they parted that night. ‘That's what friendship is all about, isn't it?’, she thought and fell asleep.

When she woke up the next morning, things were… active.

Her post had been reposted four times in private stories, each one tagged with vague phrases like “yikes” or “oh dear.”

Someone had DM’d her a screenshot of her own face with the words “this ain’t it” above it.

The comments were worse.

“This feels like a lot.”
“Why does she always make everything about herself?”
“I’m actually embarrassed for her.”
“This is such a weird hill to die on.”
“Support is fine, but this is giving ‘pick-me’ vibes.”

Someone she had worked with three times before liked one of the negative comments.
Someone else unfollowed her, then publicly posted about how “people will do anything for attention these days.”

She checked her phone once, put it down, and sat very still.
Then picked it back up again.
By then, there was a tweet.

“Nothing more cringe than someone clapping for someone else just so you’ll notice them.”

It had twenty-six likes in under an hour.

Three of those were people she had hugged, in a different lifetime…

THE REVIEWS

The reviews started to flood in a day later.

All important publications had something meaningful to say about Arthur's unexpected adventure into romance.
The first one called the book “a raw and necessary departure from toxic masculinity.”
The second said, “Finally, something from Morgenstern that feels like it wasn’t edited with a scalpel and a grudge.”
Another wrote, “He’s never sounded more human; he finally arrived in the 21st century.”

Words like brave, unfiltered, and deeply felt appeared on more and more blogs and even in the news.
There was a brief, breathless, try-hard piece in a magazine that once described his last novel as “an endurance test for the literate.” Now they were calling it “beautifully alive.”

Arthur was suddenly everywhere. He was being invited onto podcasts, asked to speak at festivals. There was a new headshot. He looked five years younger, had more hair, and looked much taller, impressive.

Susan hadn’t posted anything since the photo, but the notifications kept flooding in. She didn't even dare to look anymore.

THE RETURN

And then one morning, Susan's doorbell was ringing. She didn't expect anyone, oh, perhaps a dead pigeon in front of her door, yes, that was most probable. But when she finally opened it, she almost collapsed to the floor. Someone had sent her flowers. The card attached read: "To my beautiful darling friend. Let's go for coffee sometime soon. G"

Susan was stunned and stared at the card.

G. Wasn’t she just turning on her three days ago? Then she looked at her phone.

Her inbox was flooded with names she used to call friends, people who all seemed to be reciting a new script.

“I always knew how fabulous you are, babe.”
“You’re literally glowing. Been following your journey with so much admiration.”

“You two looked SO cute in that post. Literally radiating truth and creativity.”

“Can I just say… you're 🔥 just so inspiring. Always have been.”

“Reading the reviews now and thinking of you. Queen behaviour, let's go to dinner, finally.”

“Susan, you're a star, and I’m here for it 💖🌿”
“We NEED a catch-up coffee. Miss your face!! You glorious creature.”

A woman who had once subtweeted her into humiliation now replied to an old story with: “Wow. Still such a vibe.”

Someone sent a Reel of a rescued baby goat learning to walk again, followed by: “This reminded me of your strength.”

Someone else who had once removed her from a panel invitation without notice now replied to her story with: “Angel.”

Another sent a heart emoji.

Susan made herself a fresh cup of coffee, strong enough to outlive the flowers.
And as she lit a cigarette to fully enjoy this morning ritual, she casually blocked three, muted twelve, and archived the rest.

And then she got back to work.

based on a true story,
🥂 Christine

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I slid in opposite him with a fresh drink. He didn’t look up.

“You’ve missed nothing,” he said. “The pianist has entered his seventh stage of grief, and our waiter appears to be afraid of liquids.”

He was halfway through another insult when I noticed it.
Behind him, just above the radiator,
A hairline crack in the wall, maybe a meter long. Pale green paint chipped at the edges.
But the way it curved, just slightly, like a line drawn by accident and left out of stubbornness,
it caught the light.
It held.

I said,

“Oscar. Look behind you. That’s beautiful.”

He turned, slowly.
Squinted.
Paused.

“That?” he said. “That’s a structural concern.”

“Look again.”

He did.
Leaning back, glass in hand, head tilted just enough to look theatrical without trying.

“Ah,” he said finally.
“It’s awful. I like it.”

“It looks like it doesn’t belong here.”

“Which is often the beginning of something worth staring at.”

He sipped.
Then lit a match and held it up to the wall. The flickering light made the crack look like it was moving.

“You know,” he said, “if that had been part of the original design, they’d have covered it with a frame and charged admission.”

“Now it’s just damage.”

“Worse,” he said. “It’s unintentional.”

We both stared at it for a while.
People came and went. No one else looked.
It stayed there, crooked and quiet.

Then he said,

“One day they’ll plaster over it. Smooth it out. Paint it shut.”

“Probably.”

“And someone will walk in here and feel that something’s missing, but won’t know what.”

“And they’ll order a drink.”

“And blame the lighting.”

I laughed.
Oscar didn’t.

He just raised his glass toward the crack.

“To the things that ruin symmetry.”

“And make it worth sitting through the rest of the room.”

We drank.

And that was the end of it.

One of my imaginary midnight conversations with Oscar Wilde.
They tend to happen somewhere between the second glass of bubbles and regret.
More of them will live inside Cabinet Rouge- soon.

Wilde Nights: Imaginary conversations with the unforgettable.
About life, death, loss, love, and art.
Held late at night, where the rules are soft and the truths are sharp.

🥂 Christine