The Last Temptation of Christ and put in Deleuze’s ABC Primer, at least I won’t waste my time. Not my time, there’s that. Letter B, boisson, drink. I don’t call. Deleuze immediately raises the bar. Oh yes, I drank a lot. I stopped. Drinking is a question of quantity. You don’t drink just anything, everyone has their favorite drink, the quantity is set. Alcoholics and drug addicts are often ridiculed. Because ‘Oh, me, I can stop when I want.’ This is the last. The last phone call, the last, the very last. Before becoming completely disgusted with it. With calling. Given the answers. When I want to stop, I do. Next Saturday when I’m back in Paris, this afternoon, I already stopped a long time ago in my head. With her. The only woman I love is Léonore, not her. But I can’t dedicate this one to you, sweetheart. Sweetheart, I used to call you. Even if I’ve stopped now. Calling. I knew I could stop when I wanted to. I stopped a long time ago in my head. And Friday, too bad, I’ll go to Nîmes by myself. We were supposed to go together. I’ll take the train, I reserved a hotel room. I’ve stopped. Today, in a half hour, right away, already done, I’m done calling. If she called me, she’d regret it. She won’t do it, she wouldn’t dare. And if she does, she’ll regret it. I know how to destroy people. I’ll write her, it’s more certain. So that she won’t call me anymore. Finally. Phew. Besides, I’ll take her the letter myself, right now. In person and put it into her own hands. Unless I send a courier. To show her I didn’t come up with this pretext just to see her. Something that might seem like a pretext in her eyes, her beautiful eyes. I’m not going to shell out 200 francs for that girl. I’ll take it myself. The letter. Written on stationery from the Gramercy Park Hotel. Where we were so happy, barely three weeks ago. Happy, well, as for me, not always. I missed Léonore so much by the third day, I became myself again. I cried in secret. When she was in the shower I called Claude to get news. For two days I stopped being homosexual. I kicked her out of my bed. I never talked about it because I knew it was temporary. So now I take the stationery, the envelope and a page. I cross out the letterhead. And I sign it ironically “your little angel!” But she couldn’t care less that I’m upset. All she wanted: for me to calm down. I took the letter to her office. I ran. I left Léonore playing, watched by her friend’s mother. I’d taken her out of school, I was anxious, I left. I left her with one of her friends’ mothers, I don’t remember which. One of the ones always sitting on the benches. It was hot out, I arrived covered in sweat, I was dripping. For forty-eight hours, it was only by running that I could keep it more or less together. She laughed and said “see you Saturday,” to calm me down. I’d found her in the X-ray room, developing some images. At her practice. But in person. In the little darkroom. Yes, I know, I know I’m all sweaty. And I’d like, if possible, if it’s not asking too much, I know there are patients waiting in the next room, for her to read it in front of me. I don’t want to give it to the receptionist. I want to see her. Her. I want to be certain she receives it, in her own hands, right away. That she realize this time, it’s over, I’m done, finished. I ask her, in addition, to please not try to call me again, there’s no point. I don’t want her to. I left at a run, I arrived bathed in sweat, I ran everywhere for two days. The phone calls were rushed, the letters urgent. To get to the final letter, the final phone call, as quickly as possible. And to the last kiss, still, you can kiss me. As quickly as possible. The last water lily, the last look. I turn on the answering machine, I filter the calls, I won’t answer if it’s her, so there! People make fun of alcoholics because they don’t understand. They want to get to the last glass, to do whatever it takes, an alcoholic never stops stopping. Getting to the last glass. A little like Péguy’s phrase, which is so lovely. I’m giving a source because there should be only one author for each phrase. Péguy, Guibert, a woman. Even if I’m at my last glass, long since drunk. Even if I’m going to Nîmes alone on Friday. I reserved a room near the Jardins de la Fontaine, I’ll take the train back the next day. The little writer recounts his little life. Thibaudet. It’s true that her look is terrible. A little like Péguy’s phrase, which is so lovely. It’s not the last water lily that repeats the first, it’s the first that repeats all the rest and the last. The first glance, the first water lily, the first phone call, and the first glass, it’s the last one that counts. The alcoholic who gets up is intent on the last glass. The first eyes, the very last. The last one: he assesses. What he can hold without collapsing until the last one. Sweetheart, Three fifteen I’ve taken Pitou my heart for a walk honey I love you MCA. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll call her X, anonymous, MCA, or her full name. Sweetheart, three fifteen. Not the last glass, but the next to last, the penultimate one before starting again the next day, “alright, this one’s the last,” groups of alcoholics in cafés are amusing. The last water lily repeats the first, it never gets boring. You quit if it’s dangerous, if it becomes dangerous. But if it doesn’t keep you from working, if it’s a stimulant, then sacrificing your body is normal. For something that helps. Helps you bear something else. Something you couldn’t endure without alcohol. To touch, to stick your finger in, turn it, take it out again, put it in your mouth, make the vagina’s wetness go into the anus, what you can’t bear isn’t that, but what you saw one Sunday, in broad daylight, the light was streaming in through the wide-open bay window, I was looking at her sex, the day before I’d read excerpts from Desert Flower, by an infibulated African woman, you could cut it off, I said to myself, with a razor, with scissors, sew it back up, cut the threads, etc. Not randomly. You could remove the little nub of flesh, slick with a thick rain. What you saw of life in the middle of the afternoon one Sunday or in the desert, remove her flesh where it flows that MCA loves CA. I decided not to think about it anymore. Not to ask her “you know what I was just thinking?” But to calm the wound by licking it gently as long as there was still time. The open water lily also repeats itself on my daughter, I can’t calm anyone. Don’t think about it anymore. I said “loving someone is horrible.” She said “no, what’s horrible is when someone is torn away from you.” And I answered “exactly.” Your own self is torn away. I almost never did it. Covered with this greasy rain, I just felt too strange. I said to myself “if anyone saw me…” no one saw me. Drinking, to get control, I had to call her two hundred times in those anxious days. It’s normal. And at night. You stop, that’s it. It happened yesterday. I stopped it all. I don’t call anymore, I don’t love her anymore. If, at least, it had helped me work, even if there was a physical cost. But the last forty-eight hours, I spent them crying, telephoning, running around, delivering letters, running to get a taxi, the taxi wasn’t going fast enough. I stopped, but not on my own: she said stop. She couldn’t take it anymore either. I begged her for one last weekend. To do the thing I never do, to lick, I can say it, I hoped to be revolted by it for good. She didn’t want to make love at all. She’s here, she just got up. We’ll be friends. Friends. Platonic love. In the beginning I was the one who wanted this. You get caught up in contradictory things. In my own interest. I pretended. The first time I saw her, I thought she was ugly, a skinny little brunette.