“Es gibt wohl keine unangenehmere
Aufgabe für einen Autor, als objektiv
über sich selbst zu schreiben.” – Sebastian Fitzek
“Ce qu’on te reproche, cultive-le: c’est toi.” – Jean Cocteau
God save the queer
At home with Richard, who lives in Highgate Cemetery in London (photo, 2002)
Pieter regularly stays with the photographer Richard Elliott, who lives right inside Highgate Cemetery. Richard comes to Aarschot several times and invites Frie and Mia to London. Frie, who has never been to England, takes a London-by-night ride on the back of Richard’s motorbike. Afterwards Richard says that through the motorcycle helmet intercom he heard Frie singing with happiness.
from the book ‘De belevenissen van Wytze Russchen, Het Oliemannetje, Toplobbyist in Europa’ – 2014 – chapter 2.8 ‘Buitenwipper’ – pages 40, 41, 42 .
2.8 Buitenwipper
French was a hurdle, but Flemish was too.
I am not even talking so much about language, but more generally about integration in another country. Belgium is close by, but often felt very far away. During various adventures the song by Het Goede Doel played in my head: lk heb getwijfeld over België.
That homesickness slowly gave way to liberation. I began to feel at home with our southern neighbours. Stef Bos took over and from his most beautiful song came: ‘I come from a country of shouters, but I have learned here to be quiet, I only want to live here.’ The song is called De liefde hier gevonden. That applied to me with some regularity in those days.
My first love was a notary’s son. Pieter from Aarschot. Good against homesickness, he provided a ‘plezante’ (pleasant) culture shock. Because Pieter was a gourmand. He rode a motorbike and with him every day was a party. Now most Belgians are crazy about good food, but I was not used to much back then. Yes, in Drachten we went to the Chinese once a year or in later years a pizza was sometimes ordered, but otherwise it was mash and stamp. Always at home, around half past five. Farmhouse hotpot.
Pieter taught me to eat. And that was by no means a matter of money or luxury. But of tradition and taste, appreciating food, enjoying critically, in short something that in Friesland is not always standard in the baggage. ‘What do you fancy today?’ One of the most beautiful Flemish words, goesting. Pieter often had goesting. If I said spaghetti, I thought of having a bolognese at home or around the corner. Neither was an option for Pieter. The best spaghetti was eaten at the Heysel, so off we went on the motorbike to a suburb for a seven-euro pasta. Compromises were not allowed.
Mussel season? Hop, helmet on and off to Koekelberg. There, at the foot of the Basilica, Brussels offered its best shellfish.
Once in a while I was allowed to choose the restaurant. But by definition Pieter then felt unwell. How could I suggest such a bad establishment? Days of stomach ache! Dutchmen were culinary barbarians and I, yes, I was a DiepFries avant la lettre who needed a lot of upbringing, and Pieter was willing to provide it. Pieter was incidentally a regular at the gay bar ‘Le CanCan’. It later turned out that he had also ‘worked his way through’ the whole menu there.
He sometimes came to my little attic room but never stuck it out for long. Pieter was used to big villas with long driveways and lush gardens. Yet he had chosen me. At least that is what I thought. Sometimes we went on the Ducati to his parental home. Rose gardens, swimming pool and golden taps. … …Pieter also lived above the notary’s practice. That is where we mostly made love. With his father’s office or the piano as the top spots. I sometimes thought Pieter was taking revenge that way; later it turned out that his resentment towards his dad ran very deep, so often did Pieter have to take revenge. With or without me. …
… It was a first lesson in a long Flemish integration course. This included in any case good food, chips included, drinking pints, and so also the language. In the end I threw him out, but I still benefit every day from what I learned from the Pieter from Aarschot, on many fronts. Moreover, it made me feel at home in Belgium even faster. Mercikes! – Wytze Russchen
“What was yesterday is over. What will happen tomorrow, we shall see. Most people think they have to do something with every emotion and thought. But that is not so. You can let things pass.” – Petra De Sutter
Spieler (1979) Astrid Klein
Joyride
1990, a bar conversation in the gay quarter of Antwerp with a certain Jan, manager of a large timber business. Jan wants to discover France, does not understand French and persuades Pieter to drive and guide him. The week after, Pieter races Jan’s sports car to the south of France where it rains, so Pieter keeps flat out until the evening and arrives in Barcelona with Jan. There it turns out that Jan wants more from Pieter. He spends the night on a blanket on the balcony of the hotel on the Ramblas. Pietertje is a hit in Catalan gay clubs. An angry Jan tips his whisky over Pieter, to the delight of Catalans who pounce on Pieter to taste the whisky. A depressed Jan photographs Pieter constantly and wants to go back to Antwerp after three days. In a car park in Lyon Jan thinks of suicide and stares at a bench. The moment to get rid of Jan. Pieter takes Jan’s wallet and asks picnicking Dutch people to give it to ‘that one over there’, and Pieter speeds on alone to Belgium. Arrived in Aarschot, Frie says with a cigar in his mouth: ‘Boy, boy, they phoned from the gendarmerie of Lyon that you pinched a car over there.’ The Dutch people had kept the wallet. Jan’s brother was able to pick it up in Lyon… A few weeks later Jan comes to Aarschot to apologise. He had assumed that Pieter was a gigolo. Afterwards a friend of Pieter’s, the decorator Pieter Porters, reports with a giggle that Jan organises slide shows in his home cinema about his trauma suffered with Pieter. Hundreds of slides of Pieter, even in the bathroom.
The boy’s name Pieter is slowly dying out (photo: 2003)
Wim Schoolmeesters (1975-2023) Between 1994 and 1999 Wim and Pieter became the Aarschot knights of the love romance.
The first evening with Wim, this interpretation of Chopin’s Romance Larghetto played without interruption. Pieter intended their most beautiful romance to start with endless music.
Just to say: At eighteen Wim is Benelux backstroke champion. Wim teaches Godfried’s grandchildren to swim.
Wim takes Pieter to the Karen Blixen house in Kenya (film Out of Africa, 1985)
Marcus, Pieter’s partner from 2004 to 2009, is not introduced to Frie and Mia in order to protect him from their conceivable poisonous remarks. The peaceful little fellows live in the Naamsestraat in Brussels. In that period Marcus studies philosophy at the ULB and wins the ‘prix littéraire de la Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles’. As a student he works for the UGC Toison d’Or cinema. Towards the end of their love story Marcus chats away quite nicely in Aarschot dialect! It was Kiki Didden (Kika D., photographer) and Bénédicte Dautricourt (Pierre Frey import trade) who encouraged Pieter to move to Brussels. (photo: 2007)
Did you know: Godfried and Mia spend their wedding night in the Astoria hotel. Following their example, Pieter and Marcus retreat for their first night to this ‘joyau Bruxellois’.
(September 2009) When this song suddenly springs up, Marcus and Pieter realise that their wonderful union is coming to an end.
‘Champs-Elysées’ is a song programme from 1982 to 1990 and makes Pieter mad about Paris
Sympa et attachiant
Pieter and Christophe, at the latter’s home in the Limousin (2010)
Break with the past: Son Pieter proves to be the opposite of his father. Within the family a code of silence hangs over his homosexuality. For some mysterious reason his ‘Umbruchkompetenz’ (ability to handle upheaval) improves towards the end. Godfried changes course and is delighted about the relationship between his son Pieter and Christophe Coineau from Paris.
Christophe and his father Pierre Coineau
“Christophe, tu n’es pas un français, tu es la France.” – Mia
(2013) Menneke, monsieur Coineau’s Schipperke
Monsieur Pierre Joseph Coineau (1933-2021) warmly welcomes his son’s Flemish partner. (photo: Versailles 2016)
Pieter’s coat is a design by his ex-boyfriend Xavier Delcour.
Zoom mode Xavier Delcour :
(1990) ‘Xavier Delcour is my boyfriend. He takes me to the course at “La Cambre Mode”, nightclubs and fashion parties with Bu-Bu and the milliner Elvis Pompilio. For his twentieth birthday Xavier rents an old cinema. While the film plays, there is a party. Xavier comes along to Aarschot. Xavier Delcour has a lasting influence on how I dress.’ – Pieter
“Exigence et goût de la perfection, Xavier Delcour s’impose avant tout par son style : un chic désinvolte où il jette les bases d’une allure sophistiquée élégance et décadence.” – Le Soir (2006)
(2008) KIJK report with Xavier Delcour
The fashion designer Xavier Delcour (b. 1970) was awarded several prizes at the International Festival of Young Fashion Designers in Hyères in 1995, and the Modo Bruxellae prize in 2002. His credo: respect for the naked body. His source of inspiration: sentimentalism.
“Je crois qu’en fait un homme passe sa vie à guérir de son enfance.” – Jacques Brel
More important than ever: greet each other in the street
Annie and Pieter (Paris, 2020)
Pieter and Annie have been friends since 2019. Where did they get to know each other and how does their contact go? You can read it in this article.
(2025) Annie and Pieter are neighbours and often chat, among other things about Mia, who also picks up litter on the Steenheuvels. Annie and Mia have already spoken on the phone several times. In Mia’s opinion Annie deserves a statue in Paris. Annie is seventy-five years old. She lives in and owns an apartment in the Rue Saint Sauveur in the second arrondissement, where she has lived for forty years. She spent her youth in the fifteenth arrondissement right next to the Champ de Mars. Her father was a garage owner and electrician specialised in lighting for performances. Next to the garage there was a lamp shop. Annie sold lamps and helped with the bookkeeping. That is how Annie was able to attend, among other things, ballet performances by Maurice Béjart. Her father toured for three months with Johnny Hallyday to provide the stage lighting but was not paid for it afterwards. Then at the age of fifty her father had a heart attack and dropped dead. Annie immediately found work at Rodier and Cacharel. When Annie talks to me nobody may interrupt us. She snaps at people who also want to say something kind and signals with her broom that they should clear off. Annie phones the police all the time and wants cameras in the street. Annie starts early in the afternoon sweeping the street and picking up everything that is in the way. She works until about 8.30 p.m., seven days a week, also on holidays, in the rain or when it freezes. ‘There are those who run after a golf ball and I run after cigarette butts,’ Annie explains.
PRV PROTEGER, RASSEMBLER, VIVRE ENSEMBLE (recording: 2024)
Why does a little woman like Anie get a place in the Godfried Van Kerckhoven section? ‘My father greeted people in the street and made time to have a chat with them. Following my father’s example, I have greeted people in the street from an early age. This gesture touches, inspires and has an impact on my thinking or life.’ – Pieter
Annie with Geertrui Van Kerckhoven (2024)
Striking image from Aarschot:
“Pieter, nobody in all of Aarschot would dream of being photographed with the Sheriff!” – mayor Willy Schellens (1943-2021)
On the first Christmas Eve after the Second World War, ‘The Sheriff’ Frans Léonard Bellens (1945-2009) was born.
He always had a revolver in his pocket but was not malicious, on the contrary. In the centre of Aarschot he guarded the cars and was given 5.00 francs for it. He lived with his brother Jos, whom he helped to deliver newspapers. As a good father of the town, Willy Schellens kept a watchful eye. At the opening of the fair, a showman spontaneously asked the Sheriff to guard his stall. The next day the mayor arrived in Aarschot and saw that the Sheriff had stayed on guard all night. The mayor took him under his wing. Willy Schellens occasionally treated him to mussels with chips. Just once he was out walking at night on the motorway. The Sheriff then spent a night at the police station for safety’s sake. The Sheriff was proud that he knew the police, the refuse collectors and above all mayor Willy Schellens.
Memory from Brussels
Mike Kelley (1954-2012) The Power of the Unconscious, 1985
“Les folles honteuses, il faut en dire du mal“
“Les gens qui s’assument pas et qui font peser sur les autres le poid de leur tourment interieur. Qui condamnent les autres à cause de leur propre péché. Parce qu’ils appelent leur peché. Les folles honteuses sont les curés qui mettent leurs mains dans les culottes de leurs petits garçons et qui après condamnent les homosexuels adultes.” – raconte Michel, Haute Personnalité française à Pieter (2024)
“Das schöne, Gute und Wahre in der Kunst interessiert mich nicht besonders. Den Künstlern geht es um die Auseinandersetzung mit der Gesellschaft. Und die kann hässlich ausfallen.” – Harald Falckenberg (1943-2023)
Herr Nilsson, acrylic and glitter on resin panel 80×80 cm – 2019
Pieter gives his sisters’ dolls a more modern hairstyle and gets a smacking for it.
A nineteenth-century wedding display cabinet. Instead of wedding souvenirs, Pieter places in it a Bavarian soldier, a Sunny angel and the black transgender Barbie Laverne Cox.
« It’s important with all the messages that might tell you otherwise that you have it within yourself to say that I’m smart, I’m beautiful, I’m amazing, I’m enough.” – Laverne Cox
Malice (2010-2022) King Francis I (16th century) gave his consort such a little dog, a Bichon Frisé, from Italy. His gay grandson Henry III kept around a hundred of them. The Sun King had his powdered mistresses stroll around Versailles with a Bichon Frisé called ‘Malice’. Frie’s reaction to Malice: ‘Well I never, boy, what have you gone and brought home now? That’s no dog, surely, my word!’ After a while Frie asks whether he may take walks with Malice.
Pieter’s best friend: Johan Wouters and his mother
PRXXI Lions Club Aarschot >>>