Because you patronize me and refuse to see the possible reversibility of our situations it is impossible for me to state my love for you as totally as I feel it. You make me backtrack, hesitate. Then later, confused and psychically dismantled, I fall into your arms. A last resort. We kiss. The obligatory first contact before fucking.
Months later, parts of Chris’ story would turn out to be remarkably prophetic.
Flagstaff, Arizona
December 16, 1994
The Hidden Village Motel
Dear Dick,
I got here around 10, 11 last night depending on which time zone you figure, wondering if I can really drive another 3000 miles. The town is wall-to-wall motels, and the billboards advertise a race war between the local rednecks (“American Owned and Operated”) and the Indian immigrant majority who offer “British Hospitality.” Competition keeps the prices down to 18 bucks a night.
This morning I woke up early and outside it was brilliantly cold and clear, that bright almost-weatherless mountain kind of cold with frosty ground. I made coffee and took Mimi for a walk back behind the train tracks through a scabby mix of low-rent complexes and trailer parks. 200 Dollars Moves You In to Blackbird Roost.
Walking, I thought about you or about the “project.” How I’m realizing that even though the movie “failed” I’m left with a wider net of freedom than I’ve ever had before.
For two years I was shackled to Gravity & Grace everyday; every stage of it an avalanche of impossibility that I dismantled into finite goals. It didn’t matter, finally, that the film was good or that I wrote 10 upbeat faxes every day, that I was accountable, available, no matter how I felt.
Anyway Dick, I tried my best but it still failed. No Rotterdam, no Sundance, no Berlin…just neg cut problems in New Zealand that drag on. For two years I was sober and asexual every day, every ounce of psychic anima was channeled into the movie. And now it’s over; amazingly, and with your help, I almost feel okay.
(Last night I woke up in bed with cold feet, forgetting where I was, curled up and afraid.)
(And sometimes I feel ashamed of this whole episode, how it must look to you or anyone outside. But just by doing it I’m giving myself the freedom of seeing from the inside out. I’m not driven anymore by other people’s voices. From now on it’s the world according to me.)
I want to go to Guatemala City. Dick, you and Guatemala are both vehicles of escape. Because you’re both disasters of history? I want to move outside the limits of myself (a quirky failure in the artworld), to exercize mobility.
I don’t have to topless dance or be a secretary anymore. I don’t even have to think that much about money. Through the last five years of building Sylvère’s career and real estate I’ve bought myself a very long leash. So why not use it?
This morning I called a New York magazine about my article on Penny Arcade’s Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore! The assistant maybe did, maybe didn’t know who we were, but at any rate she was discouraging and snippy. Is there any greater freedom than not caring anymore what certain people in New York think of me?
It’s time to pack and call Sylvère. It’s just fine here, being on the road.
FAX TO: CHRIS KRAUS C ⁄ O THE HIDDEN VILLAGE MOTEL
FROM: SYLVÈRE
DATE: DECEMBER 16, 1994
Sweetie,
I woke up in the middle of the night last night and wrote you a letter.
Things seem a little rough…
Santa Rosa, New Mexico
December 17, 1994: around midnight
The Budget 10 Motel
Dear Dick, Sylvère, Anyone—
I wouldn’t be writing anything tonight if it weren’t that I’d left my books out in the car. Now I’m too tired to get dressed again just to read another few pages from the life of Guillaume Apollinaire.
There were some low moments out there on the road tonight—abandonment and what’s the point?—but then I pulled in a radio station from Albuquerque playing historical rap and breakdance circa 1982. Kurtis Blow and disco synthesizers made me feel like I could drive all night.
I didn’t write anything last night in Gallup and I got a late start after that terrible phone call with Sylvère. Since when’re you so impressed with Isabelle that her opinion counts for what we do? And then I got an oil change, had lunch and it was noon…
…but I detoured anyway off the Interstate at Holborn to see the Petrified Forest, which wasn’t a forest at all but a museum of boulders and stones. There were very few of us, walking aimless on the mesa, exposed.
Back in the car I started thinking about the Orphan Plan, how what you “want” (our life in East Hampton) can suddenly seem repugnant. What a torture for someone from the Central American rain forest to have to live in East Hampton and attend Springs School.
Somewhere on the drive the whole sex/Dick thing disappeared. I guess I’m ready to go back to asexuality for another year. I don’t know what I’m driving towards…
And later thinking about John Weiner’s Poem for Vipers—
What were his career strategies? Hah. Pessimism’s what Lindsay Shelton liked so much about Gravity & Grace and now it’s clear the film has no chance in movie terms. I may as well own it but ohhh, I thought there’d be more movies after G & G. If there are no movies I need to figure out what it’s gonna be.
And now Sylvère’s confused and ready to disown this whole escapade, and he’s mad at Jean-Jacques Lebel for his depiction of Félix and he’s mad at Josephine’s boyfriend for writing a book about the pair. But Sylvère, Félix and Josephine were French theory’s Sid and Nancy…
Tomorrow’s another time zone (Central) and the Texas panhandle. Then Oklahoma, then the South. I bought three pairs of earrings yesterday in Gallup.
Dick, it’s hard for me to access you tonight. All your cowboy/loner stuff seems silly.
As Chris drove East she felt herself being sucked forward into a time tunnel. Christmas was getting closer. There were more Christmas songs on the radio, more Christmas decorations in every little town, as if Christmas was a cloud that descended on New York and feathered out across the West in broken strands. She was literally losing time by crossing time zones to the east and driving pulled her farther away from what she knew. It was like that spatial/optical illusion, being in a car stalled in a single lane of traffic. You panic ’cause you think your car is moving by itself and then you realize it’s the other cars that’re moving. Yours is standing still.
Shawnee, Oklahoma
December 18, 1994: 11:30 Central Standard Time
The American Motel ($25 a night)
Well Dick,
I got lost in Oklahoma City, nearly out of gas and couldn’t find a room. The motel in the AAA book turned out to be a fuck palace by a topless bar and everything else was full. It took another hour driving to find a vacancy here in Shawnee. There’s a meat works right across the road.