Incest

She doesn’t want to see me again, she told me she came close to killing herself several times. She told me she now thinks of herself first, that she has to save herself. That there were very serious consequences. It all weighs on my shoulders. At the beginning, after we broke up, I was calm and then on Saturday I had a very bad anxiety attack. With phone calls, slapping myself and screaming, countless calls to Marie-Christine. And finally calling yesterday, after all, you’d have to be completely drunk to call yesterday. I called Philippe yesterday, my half-brother. His tone was impassive, he didn’t know whom to believe, his father had spoken to him about it, he had said I was making things up. OK, fine, doesn’t matter. I’m fed up with talking about it. I’m happy the book is finished, happy. I’ve already got the opening sentence of my next book. It will be: “I’m not going to spend my time calling Philippe Angot, director of a company for spare antique auto parts.” It will be the first sentence of a very long response to an imaginary interview about art. Writing, art, what I was saying about limits, all that. Incest is the book in which I present myself as a real shit, all writers should do it at least once, after that, we’ll see. Or maybe they should do it several times, or maybe do nothing but that. Writing may only be doing that, showing one’s inner shit. Of course it isn’t. You’re ready to believe anything. Writing is not just one thing. Writing is everything. Within limits. Always. Of life, of one’s self, of the pen, of height and of weight.

Since we broke up, I’ve received two letters from Marie-Christine. It’s hard not seeing her anymore. Yesterday I had just a glimpse, she just drove me to my psychoanalyst at nine at night, for the second time that day, it was nighttime, it was cold out, I asked her if she wouldn’t mind accompanying me. I was expecting her to refuse, to save herself, she really doesn’t want to see me again at all. She agreed, came to pick me up at nine and at ten she drove me home. I’d have liked to spend a bit more time with her, but she doesn’t want to anymore, she says I put her too much at risk. I don’t know if that’s true. Everything is always my fault. You’ve got to give and take. Since the break up she wrote me two letters:

January 6, 1999 Christine One day after another; of course I’m sad alone without you it’s very hard loving someone with whom love is impossible I’m worried that this state of misery will last. I think of you so often. Everything brings me back to you to us and I can’t say us anymore MCA

January 7, 1999 Christine One day follows another, hour after hour, not thinking farther ahead than that concentrating on the moment not thinking that your body is far from mine that tonight you won’t be in my arms that I won’t go out to dinner with you, to the movies with you, on vacation with you that I won’t make love to you that I won’t see your neck your eyes I have your eyes in mine Sunday night your sad frightened eyes No idea what to do too much hope too much despair I don’t know what to do to stop thinking of you all the time Still I know that I’m supposed to go on day after day trying to start living again to start hoping again but hoping for what going where I think too much about you MCA

When I got into her car last night at nine, it was nice, there was music, it was Aznavour’s La Bohème la bohème. I was in a cozy little cockpit, but only for the duration of the drive. It was really, really, truly over.

I’m not going to feel sorry for myself. I’m not going to spend my time calling Philippe Angot, director of a company for spare antique auto parts. But I’m not going to wallow in sweetness either. So:

With Marc

I’m sixteen. Marc is thirty. He’s a friend of my mother’s, he becomes my first lover, he’s from India, a chemical engineer with Henkel. He goes to see my father, he tells him he has to stop, the sodomy, he tells me it could be dangerous for me too. He talks to my father about it. The three of us go to the movies one day, I’m staying at the hotel with Marc and my father, but not with him. But in the cinema, a science fiction movie with Charlton Heston, Soylent Green. Soylent Green. I jerk them both off at the same time because I’m sitting between them. It’s my worst memory of all. I do it so as to not reject my father, he already feels so rejected because I’m with Marc and on top of that I told the secret. He hates talking about it. I won’t be able to tell Marie-Christine, it’s too dirty. Not even in her arms. Not even if she tells me she won’t be disgusted. I made a big slip more than once. I was quoting from Les Autres. The phrase the Arab girls say “because people who write disgust almost all of them,” I write instead: because almost all people who are disgusting write.

Sodomy