It had been over a month now that I had been waiting. A month, what is that? Nothing, in some cases; the crossing of an icy marshland, in others. Had they said to me right off the bat, Look, you have to wait a month, or three, there wouldn’t have been any problem, I could have taken measures, I would have known what to do. But now the waiting was losing all form, for every day that incompetent administrator would promise me: Tomorrow, perhaps, or surely the day after tomorrow. Only the weekends gave rhythm to this infernal idleness, for on weekends offices are closed. And so I was fading away; the longer the wait, the more my substance slowly dissolved. I was having more and more trouble sleeping; at night, impossible to fall asleep; I was reduced to taking pills, something I’d never done before. And in the morning, impossible to get up, a black, crushing fatigue nailed me to the bed, sometimes till afternoon; often, I finally got up for just a few hours, before falling back asleep, exhausted, until dinner. Then insomnia would reclaim its rights.
Irritation overwhelmed my thinking and my senses; irregularity ruled over me. I drank, but even that had no consistency. When I had a bottle, I would empty it with frightening swiftness; but once it was empty, I wouldn’t buy another for days and days. I still wanted to drink, I desired it terribly, but to go out to buy another bottle was beyond me. As an excuse I dreamed up money problems, but that was just a vain pretext, good enough, though, for my paralysis. And during this time, other desires, even more ambiguous, hollowed out my body through and through. I didn’t try to satisfy them directly; but alone in my room, I toyed with them, sometimes until I drew blood.
Once, already, I had found myself in a similar state. It was certainly during another wait. But back then I was even more lost, at least I think I can say that now. In any case, either because I had more strength then, or, on the contrary, because my weakness stripped away all my defenses, I had taken things much further. This is how I had found myself one night along the city’s embankments, roaming the area where you can always run into a few suffering souls, greedy for some other whose inner emptiness could fulfill their own for a few hours, fill them with emptiness (it’s one way to see things; there are others). It was certainly a disreputable place, which after a certain time of night fell under the jurisdiction of the vice squad. Playing hard to get, in my despair, I let a few walk by; my choice, almost at random, finally fell on a young black man. I think I can say he was a nice boy; he was in any case very shy. We walked for a long time, we didn’t even touch until we reached his place. He didn’t really know what to do, I had to guide him. But he gave in readily enough to my demands. Thus I submitted my body to his, for hours. Shame, pain, nothing was enough, I was nothing more than my emptiness, and the more I thrust that young man into it, the more I let myself be invaded by his frame, his musculature, his thick but strangely pointy cock, the more this emptiness opened up, deepened, and revealed to me the gloomy reaches of its immensity. In the end, it was the flesh that weakened, stumbled. The boy, sinking into an ordinary confusion, already thought he was in love. The cold took over me, his gushing disgusted me, I disgusted myself even more. I got dressed and went out, cutting short his declarations. On the landing of his wretched room stood the toilet, but I was in too much of a hurry, too crushed with shame, I didn’t stop. This was a mistake, for an irresistible need seized me a few moments later, in the street. It wasn’t yet dawn, all the cafés on my way were closed. Somehow I reached the building where I lived. I had to use the service entrance; by a miracle, I found a toilet on the ground floor — I couldn’t take it any longer. Red, breathless with anguish, I rushed into it without even closing the door, almost too late, I let everything go. It was very unpleasant, believe me. My guts tied into knots, I stayed for a long time glued to this can, jumping at the slightest sound, terrified someone would discover me. I was sweating, there was shit everywhere. I managed to clean my pants and the edge of the toilet seat; as for my underpants, I didn’t even try, I extricated myself from them and threw them in one of the garbage cans in the courtyard, burying them beneath the trash. Trembling, emptied out, I went up to my room. So much filth suffocated me, but at the same time I desired more, I desired madly to sink into it, I lost all notion of myself, my body was overcome with madness; contorted, I was illuminated by so much horror, I wanted to start again and never stop. Sleep calmed me down a little. Some time later. . but let’s drop this silliness, that’s enough. At the time, then, that I started out talking about, I certainly hadn’t gone this far, except perhaps in dreams. The way, though, seemed very much the same. But my situation featured a few differences, probably they played their part as well. First of all, I had an aim, a specific destination, which hadn’t always been the case. What’s more, I had someone to write to. Of course, her absence, her distance didn’t improve my low spirits any. But the role of this distance in the ravings of my mind would be far more complex to define. Perhaps it contributed as well; but on the other hand, it seems to me that it might have been an attenuating factor, inasmuch as it offered my unhealthy avidity an outlet — fictive perhaps, but undeniably effective— an outlet, then, that took the form of exorbitantly expensive phone calls and especially a series of endless letters, written sometimes over the space of several days. Curiously, these letters and these calls, if they weren’t entirely devoid of a certain eroticism, remained on the whole quite chaste, and sometimes even took on a quasi-idealistic turn. Given the state I was in, this may seem strange, all the more so since, as I have said, it worked out well, in a way, for my desires. Not that there was any sort of sublimation involved, far from it. In fact, the most tender words could bring a rush of lewd images into my head, some indeed concerning my correspondent, but others, rather, figures such as the boy I had once picked up by the river. Similarly, after days that were almost calm and serene, I might end up writing horribly tormented, violent, despairing letters. In truth, all that made me and still makes me dizzy. Still, the fact remains that in this way time went by. It’s true, it went by, somehow. But it was very trying. It must be said: one day, the wait came to an end. But you can be sure it will start again.
— WINTER 1996
Between Planes
My misfortune is that there had been this contact, that a part of me had remained caught by her and had gotten me tangled up in the workings of this machine. Without that, nothing would have happened, I could have admired her, desired her calmly, and her indifference would never have touched me. It had begun during a brief visit to K —. I had met an old friend there, A., who had put me up at her place, on her sofa. C., who shared the apartment with A., had come back at four in the morning (the train, apparently, had gotten stuck), making a huge racket because she thought the door was locked, and had left again at six. During the day, I had come across her at A.’s office, overexcited, always in motion, a manic whirlwind that left no room for getting acquainted. She seemed unable to stop even for an instant. Her features were hard, but mobile, and not without beauty; and especially she had a furious energy, concentrated on work to the exclusion of all else, but capable too at times of generating bursts of lively cheerfulness that lit up those who otherwise just kept bouncing off of her or bumping against her. A. had already left, leaving me in the apartment. I would probably not have seen much of C., since I myself was supposed to leave the next day; that morning, there were riots in the city, all flights were suspended, and we stayed stuck in the apartment. In the afternoon, unable to bear it any more, C. decided to go out, and I offered to go with her; the authorities, because of the situation, had forbidden the use of vehicles; adhering to the letter if not the spirit of their instructions, we went out on foot. At the time I had a slight injury on my big toe, an injury that due to the climate and the irregularity of my way of life had degenerated into a nasty infection. So I was limping, and our journey across the city was a comic spectacle — she straight, proud, hurried, and I hobbling along, more than a little amused by the situation. Our shopping done with, as all work was out of the question for that day, we sat on the terrace of a bar on the main street for a beer. This was the first time since she had arrived in K —, she told me, that she had taken such a break. We chatted, she told me about her many trips, her stays in countries where I myself had long dreamed of going. An old comrade, whom I hadn’t seen in a year, joined us, just as surprised as us by this unexpected day off, and we traded a few memories of the country where we had met, an atrocious region, but one that had seduced us both. The beer was cold, the terrace sunny, the rioters passed by in commandeered trucks, waving green branches and chanting slogans against the new authorities. It was pleasant, I think I can say that even C. had relaxed a little, and we were both in a cheerful mood when we returned to the apartment. The state of my foot had grown worse, and it had become very painful to walk. C. offered to cut open the abscess a little in order to relieve it. I had had a few drinks, and I agreed. I settled into an armchair and lit a cigar as she set to work, my foot wedged between her thighs. Her colleague D., exhausted, had fallen asleep sitting on the sofa, and the wild laughter that the pain of the operation strangely caused me didn’t awaken her. Between fits of laughter I dragged furiously on my cigar, C. kept making me drink and scraping away at the infection; I took such a keen pleasure in this charming operation that I hardly noticed the discomfort. I put an end to it when I reached the end of my cigar. C. held my foot very tenderly, she cleaned it and bandaged it properly; D., waking, went to bed. C. and I, I think, stayed talking for a long time. Our hands sought each other, touched, played with each other, intertwined. We were still drinking, nothing else happened, the damage had already been done.