Incest

The day the bay window was open, I made her come, though before I’d always quit after three licks. I suddenly felt my blood exposed, long before any tests. That’s it. My blood was stripped bare, exposed, it had always been clothed or covered until then without my being aware of it. It exposes your blood in three months. You’re undressed and then dressed again. Your blood has no more veins. The standard sexuality that was yours until then, you suddenly wonder how you manage. I had to live for three months with this blood stripped bare, exposed, in town, going shopping, I didn’t do my errands anymore the way “an unclothed body must make its way through a nightmare,” I had things delivered. My blood, unmasked, everywhere and all the time (in Europe, the United States, at the market or the seashore, in town, with friends), forever, except in the unlikely event of miraculous transfusions, an infatuation of two weeks, a miraculous disgust, a guy, I dreamed, my blood laid bare around the clock, on public transportation, the way I dressed to please him, when I’m walking in the street, always the target of an arrow constantly aimed at me. My shoes, I’d always chosen bulkier ones, and the jacket I wore everyday. Does it show in my eyes? That you can’t penetrate yourself. You find some expedient. There are always solutions. Living by your wits. You resort to alternatives. Yes. Wanting. For me, it was a question of expedients. And that has its appeal. Instead of wealth, longer lasting. Finding an alternative. I wanted to. Female homosexuality involves a lot of strains. I was lucky, she was a doctor, she prescribed me massages, respiratory rehabilitation, spinal physical therapy. My spine took a hit. During the forty-eight hours of anxiety (running around, telephone calls, letters, taxi) I skirted an asthma attack. Living on expedients is nice too, trying to catch your breath elsewhere, it’s over. I still could, that’s why I’m sad. “You’ve got to be two” – not her. There’s something about me she can’t stand, she says. “I want to live,” she finds me intolerable. People want to be tolerant. To be satisfied. One morning she tells me a dream she had, someone shot a little fallow deer in the ear. I was telling her: I want to write a book with you about all the different ways of dying. In her family they’re doctors from generation to generation. I need to write a book with you, please. “An aneurysm, it’s a kind of pocket, an abnormality, of course, on an artery wall, a cerebral artery, it’s a weak spot and it forms a kind of sack, weaker than the artery wall, that can rupture or tear at any moment. This anomaly occurs relatively frequently. The aneurysm can rupture. When this little sack tears or bursts. There’s a hemorrhage, in other words, the brain is flooded with blood because it’s an artery and the pressure is high, with each heartbeat, the blood floods in. The blood destroys the entire brain. When the rupture is complete, death is extremely sudden. People drop, just like that, right in front of you, boom, they’re dead. Sometimes it’s preceded by fierce headaches, that happens. Other times there are no indicators, it’s immediate. —And eczema, what’s eczema? —Eczema is a skin disease, caused by an allergy, often with bubble-like lesions covering different parts of the body that form crusts, which may start to ooze and are pruritic. —Are what? They itch.” But we never started, we were never able to do anything together, we never had time. We never seriously started. On one of the days we were breaking up, I told her, weeping, “I didn’t know how to enjoy you.” Even though she had offered herself. She gave me her father’s personal journal. I gave it back to her that weekend. Doctors from one generation to the next. All the ways of dying. I take praxinor. My blood pressure is so low, when I was getting on my bicycle yesterday, Léonore asked me, “Mama, are you going to die?” I could have dedicated this book to her, but I was afraid to. She uses her tongue like a cock. When she kissed me, I opened up. I wanted her. Living on expedients, that’s exciting. You lose half the world and there are lots of strains. But I still wanted her. Once she said to me: you’re a real little macho. I had trouble hiding my smile, of satisfaction. Like you see sometimes with actors who think they’re exceptionally good. What are you missing with me? Half the world, my dear, quite simply. With you I’m missing half the world, that’s all. I can’t get turned on by someone who hasn’t got anything. If there’s no dick, well, for me, it’s not enough. It was not important. And not true. You shouldn’t let yourself get worn down. By all the obstacles you meet. Stuck on the pubes, that works too. Without counting the satisfaction of solving the problem with only what you have at hand. When you think of all the ways there are of dying and you don’t die, it’s amazing. I was missing half the world, that was my big argument. A person is a whole world, that was hers. An entire world unto herself… incredible. Locked-in syndrome, what’s that? Literally ‘locked within.’ A rare form of brain damage. A drastic impairment of blood flow to one part of the brain because of a blocked artery that kills the nerve cells. Once or twice she called me a “little slut.” Homosexuality is when you can’t do otherwise, it’s that simple, Claude told me. No, the strains, the exhaustion, the disappointment. The exposed blood. But the freedom of not having to search anymore, I recognized that. That, yes. “I don’t care, I’m glad I’m done with her,” as we said when we were children. Good, good, good vibrations. Last night Claude dreamed good-bye, good vibrations, and he was crying. Good-bye, good vibrations, that got him sobbing. Everything gone, good-bye. Just as well. I met her on September 9th. I immediately fell in love with her mouth, her eyes, the way she walks. Her smell, her sex, the way she moves, her voice. More than anything, the way she looks at me. The way she walks. The way she runs after her dog, Baya. The way she throws a pebble into the sea for her dog when we’re on a walk. Her throat and the back of her neck. Her gold necklace, which she never takes off. Her slightly protruding shoulder blades. Her slightly hollow chest. I didn’t admit it for three months. I didn’t see anyone all winter long. Claude saw us through the window when he was watering the bonsais of neighbors across the street who had left for a weekend, friends of his. Valérie had her fit of jealousy. My mother said to me “love takes different forms.” Léonore told everyone at school “X and Mama are homosexuals.” Everyone understood. It was perfectly clear. I slunk along the walls in my jacket and my big shoes. Slunk along the walls, the barriers, like slicing them, with a razor, slicing veins and my luck. A razor in the rock wall, rock, pierre, my father’s name is Pierre, and on this rock I will build my church, that’s literature, I will carve it out, a wall of books, a wailing wall, incest, insanity, homosexuality, holocaust, start strong, my jacket, my big shoes, and my razor.