Comme ils disent [English translation]

I live alone with mom in a very old apartment on Sarasate Street.

For company I have a turtle, two canaries and a cat.

To let mother rest very often I go to the market and the kitchen - I arrange, I wash, I wipe, occasionally, I also stitch on the sewing machine.

Work doesn't scare me, I'm a little of a decorator, a little of a stylist.

My real job is at night - I practice cross dressing.

I'm an artist. I have a very special show that ends in complete nudity after my strip-tease and in the hall I see that the guys can't believe their eyes.

I am a homo, like they say.

About three o'clock in the morning we'll eat with friends, all the sexes, in an ordinary smoking bar and there we give in to our heart's joy, without complexes we unwrap the truths about the people who dislike us without effort. We have them stoned but we're doing it with humour,

dressing it with puns, wet with acid.

We meet the idiots who, to impress their tables, walk and wave, mimicking what they think we are and they cover themselves, the poor fools! The ridiculous gestures, the loud-talking divas, the leaders, the stupidity, the gibes, the jests leave me cold because it's true

I am a homo like they say.

At the time when a new day is born, I return to find my lot of solitude.

I take off my eyelashes and my wig, like a poor unhappy clown. Exhausted I lie down but I don't sleep.

I think of my loves without joy, so paltry, of this boy beautiful like a god who without doing anything has set the fire in my memory.

My mouth will never dare confess to him my sweet secret, my tender drama, because the object of all my torments passes the greater part of his time in bed with women.

Nobody has right to the truth of blaming me, of judging me and I precisely say that it is nature that is solely responsible if I am a homo,

like they say.

• Artist:Charles Aznavour
• Album:Idiote je t'aime (1972)