Incest

Christmas

After homosexuality, it was insanity. It was Christmas that made me go crazy. We were back together again. Her trip to Peru had been canceled. We were supposed to go to Rome. She would spend a family Christmas with her cousin as always. We were going to leave after. I can’t say: I was insane for three months. For three months, I thought I was condemned to be insane. It’s been much longer than that. Or else it’s the others who are insane. And that’s a crazy thing to say. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say. I’ll just tell this anecdote, I’m not Nietzsche, I’m not Nijinsky, I’m not Artaud, I’m not Genet, I’m Christine Angot, I have the means that I have and I make do with them. There will be an anecdote, too bad, an account of a trigger, it will be Christmas time, it will be descriptive. I’ll describe my insanity through a sudden insight. I was barely conscious of it until the previous page. It was worse.

First, the signs, the symptoms. The alienation that comes over you, it’s no longer me. The causes, which are blinding, immediately discernable. It’s November 28, 1998. I can’t mix things up this time. The kind of connections I’ve drawn until now between everything, everything and anything, I want to stop making them. Cloning, Viagra, Baya, Yassou, Muzil, poor dead Guibert, I’m going to let it all drop. I’ll make do with my own little things, my stuff, Christmas, Nadine Casta, Marie-Christine Adrey. Without bringing in anything larger or universal. Time to calm down, to try to be what I am, that is to say, not much. Putting all this more or less in order would already be something, not bad. Everything will be in the proper order from here and maybe even make me happy some day. And I’m going to try to be polite.

Precise, logical, and clear for once. Maybe things will go better afterward. I’m suffering from paranoia, I think, delusions too, I think. I ordered some books for the definitions and borrowed others. I’m not going insane, I already am insane, I definitely am insane.

Signs, symptoms, immediately discernable causes, trigger, deep causes, concrete manifestations, and word games, folle, a crazy woman but also a gay man, a folle with a limp wrist, (mine are often limp, too, I’ll get back to that). I’d like some classification, maybe even footnotes at the bottom of the page, a critical apparatus including all the books I already have at my disposal.

There are testimonies, many people have told me, it’s not just something I’m inventing. There are witnesses, people who saw me. Waking up this morning, I myself was a witness, it’s Saturday, tomorrow’s Sunday, the day after is Monday. I ask Moufid Zériahen, doctor, psychoanalyst, if he could find a place for me in his clinic for a while. I woke up this morning (very early, in any case I’d barely slept, one of the signs is insomnia of course), I said this to myself very clearly. I don’t know for how long, I know it’s necessary. My reactions are off. The clinic is called L’Alironde, it’s bit outside of Montpellier. (A friend’s son is there, manic-depressive. He just applied for disability assistance, you certainly can’t work with that condition.) You can have yourself committed, Walser did, as a matter of fact. That’s not why I want to do it, but because I have the feeling that I can’t take it anymore. I’m at my limit, what with my mental structure, incestuous, I mix everything up, it has advantages, connections others don’t make, but too much is too much as they say, it’s the limit. I mix everything up, I go too far, I wreck everything. I called Claude this morning to tell him I wanted to spend some time in a clinic and why, he said to me “the good thing is you’re lucid.” Yes, I’m lucid, yes, I’m going to explain everything to you, everything, everything, everything.

Claude said something else when I telephoned again later to read him these two pages: “what’s more it’s mischievous and impertinent.” No, not at all. It’s not at all mischievous and impertinent. It’s not at all a game. I’m not mocking you. I really did wake up this morning thinking of L’Alironde, I’m paranoid and delusional. I’m at risk. It’s not mischievous and impertinent. I can be serious. I can explain. I can try, I don’t know if I’ll be able to, it’s complicated, especially for me, because I’m insane, it will be difficult. I have a tendency to mix things up, you saw it in the first section. No order at all, everything’s mixed together, my mental structure is incestuous, OK, I’m at my limit, I’m not joking, I can feel it. Screaming into the telephone at two in the morning, insulting someone you don’t know, or barely know, who didn’t do anything to you, nothing special but who talks like others did a long time ago, I dragged her through the mud, I said it was worse than a pile of shit even though I didn’t even know her and I don’t care. I’m putting on an act. Stop. Until then I let my insanity show, I exposed my defective mental world. Laclave said it three years ago “her mental world is one of morbid imprisonment.” Since Wednesday, it culminated last night, I’ve been at my limit. It has been nothing but a permanent howl since, I slapped my face, I beat my own body, I was red, I was home alone, if Marie-Christine had been here I might have killed her, if it were Nadine Casta, I would have. I lay on the ground all night. The series of telephone calls described in the first section started up again and I didn’t even realize at the time that it was the work of a deranged mind. Oh, I know perfectly well why.

I associate things others don’t associate, I bring together things that don’t fit together. Dog-child, incest-homosexuality or AIDS, cousin-couple, blonde-bitch, money-hate, movie star-bitch, Léonore-gold, mass grave-gold mine, Holocaust-ghetto, worker-black, etc., etc., and what’s more, I highlight opposites, all the time, for example: Eustache is better than Nadine Casta, Dominique Quentin is also better than NC, I bring things into focus. Frédéric is right, she’s Nadine’s cousin, she could have been a cousin of Le Pen. He’s right but it blocks me. I have to get rid of the block, unblock it all.

I am used to rather particular punctuation. I punctuate my sentences in an unusual way, I’m going to try to stop. I will use punctuation only for clarity, so that readers can find their way. The clarity of my statements. So that my statements are clear, are understood. A bit fastidious, maybe, but this time properly. I won’t write anymore, for example, “I licked her, this woman, whose child is a dog,” I won’t write that anymore, what’s the point? Other than ending up alone. We’re now separated for good, for good this time. I will no longer write, Nadine Casta, NC, haine c’est, hate is, it’s hatred. Not that either.

How I went insane because of a simple trigger, Christmas. A three-day momentary fit of insanity. Before I would have written: momentary fit of insanity, three days. My system of punctuation, I need to get rid of it, to find one that’s more common, more natural, so that people won’t have to make as much of an effort, it’s ridiculous, it was ridiculous. Especially since virgule, comma, etymologically means verge, little penis. I just learned this, I had lunch with Laurent Goumarre and two of his friends, psychoanalysts. I’m losing the thread, I was talking about the trigger. About the three-day momentary fit of insanity. Of breakdown. Which does not mean that I didn’t become profoundly and completely, totally insane, no, I really am insane. The trigger. What the trigger is that occurred, let’s be precise, on Wednesday, at noon on Wednesday, that led me this morning, after a night of trembling, trembling really trembling, my entire body, even though I took my dose of pills, to decide to ask Moufid Zériahen to accept me into L’Alironde for a time.

The trigger

November 25th, a month to the day before Christmas. For years Marie-Christine has spent Christmas in Paris with Nadine Casta, her actress cousin. Surrounded by family. It’s a “ritual” from “time immemorial,” it’s “family” and besides, it’s “one day of the year.”

Rewind: November 15th, we’re at Frédéric’s. We’re happy to see each other, it’s obvious. A pleasant evening aside from two false notes, nothing serious, life is full of them. The conversation turned to Nadine Casta’s Chambord with Decourt, Dupont, Durand. Doesn’t matter. I’m not obligated to like her cousin’s films. Like Frédéric says, she could have been a cousin of Le Pen. At least Le Pen is not an artist. I rant, I take it back, I let it go so everyone knows where I stand. Second false note, during dinner, someone trots out Christmas. Second slap in the face. It was still a very nice evening, our need to be alone together was urgent. We call a taxi, in the taxi, we’ve barely sat down, we start in. We get to the hotel, far from making love, we hate each other, we go to bed, I cry. I cry, I cry, I can’t breathe and am in a very very bad way, my anxiety level is rising. It’s horrible. It’s because of Christmas. I put on an act, OK, maybe, no doubt. I ask her to go back to her cousin’s to sleep, it was a mistake to get together again, we were better apart. It’s too late, but she’s going to get another room, she calls reception, I stop her at the last minute, she lets me. She goes back to bed. My anxiety level is still rising. I get out of bed, fall to my knees, I try to breathe, it’s blocked, I pant (putting on an act doesn’t mean you aren’t suffering), I insult her, with her cousin, like all good homosexuals, she’s the family lackey, always available to serve the real woman. She has paid no attention to me at all for Christmas, and yet she still claims she loves me. In response, I get to hear it all, in short: poor thing, you’re not making any sense, you’re mixing everything up. The ‘poor thing’ is the insult-trigger: I screamed, I think the entire hotel heard me. I hit her hard, on the head, and for a long time. She hit me on the side of the head, my temple, her fingernail on my eyelid, another fingernail on my ear. I had a hematoma, I still have it, a scar on my eye.

Back in Montpellier, I telephone her, my anxiety builds, several calls and hang-ups later, I tell her it would have been really nice if we had prepared, the two of us, a beautiful Christmas for Léonore, her mother, mine, André, and Frédéric, of course. On the 24th, Claude would have taken Léonore on the 25th, we would have gone on peacefully, we would have spent a quiet day, we would have gone to the movies or taken a nap. Impossible, concepts like family, godchildren, obligations to people who have always been there, it’s not like things are going to change all of a sudden, just because I’m there, like they’ll change at all. It’s all normal, it’s all considered completely normal. I’m the one who’s raving. All I need to do is look around me. She was talking to me about the civil solidarity pact just a few weeks earlier, I remind her. You have to keep this shift in mind. I cry, I go to bed, I don’t want to see her anymore, I tell myself I don’t want to see her anymore, I unplug the telephone. The next day, there’s a message, “answer me, please pick up” in a nice voice, “it’s twenty past eleven, pick up the phone.” She calls again, she really wants to spend Christmas with me, she’ll do whatever she can to make it happen. She hopes it won’t cause any scenes, if there are any conflicts, she’ll go to Paris after all. That’s what she tells me. I’m happy, I buy a copy of Marie-Claire, the special New Year’s issue. I tell my mother, I tell Frédéric, I don’t tell Léonore yet, though, “you never know, let’s be cautious.” But I believe Marie-Christine, she’s happy, our first Christmas together. It’s very important. She telephones her aunt, “I can’t bring Mother to Paris.” Her aunt understands. Marie-Christine, delighted, was very wily. She said to her aunt, “Godmother, I’d like to ask you for some advice,” not a bad opening, it worked, Marie-Christine felt very clever. The big nut, Nadine, was still in Acapulco. She telephoned Marie-Christine on Wednesday, the call went badly, Nadine cried, there will be about twenty-five people, but she needs Marie-Christine to bring some lightness to the holiday. Everyone needs her, it’s not possible, she has to come. Twenty-five people and she must be one of them. It’s not possible, you have to come. She cries. She flips the person I was ready to take as my love like a crêpe. The person who calls me, tells me the news on Wednesday around noon. It takes my breath away, I tell her I’m done with her, I can’t, it’s too much, too much is too much. She could at least have waited until after my reading at the CRL. How am I going to manage?

The day of my reading at the CRL

November 26th, the reading has been announced and it has to be good. The 27th will be just as dark, the night of the 27th to the 28th will be terrible.

But the 26th: at 6:30 p.m., I have a reading, it has to be good. It’s a day full of symptoms.

Breathing: Ragged. I can’t get my breath back. Noisy. Desperate panting. Enormous anxiety. It comes from a very deep source, you can feel it.

Insomnia: I take sleeping medication, I can’t sleep. Even when it’s warm, I’m cold under the duvet, I’m shivering, my fingers are blue, my knees are knocking. My lips are dry, purple.

My face: Drawn with fatigue because of the insomnia, vacuous, eyes blank, someone in a forest who can’t see her feet under autumn’s dead leaves. Eyes blank and terrified, what is there to hold onto?

My whole body hurts, my joints, my back, my lips and my temples. But worst of all, I have the feeling that the next five minutes will be terrible.

I don’t know what it is. A neurosis, a psychosis, I’ve got the definitions, I will look them up. I have to go to L’Alironde, maybe not for long. I can’t take it anymore. Besides, I keep repeating the same thing. I say “I can’t take it anymore” or “I can’t stand it any longer.” Even if I’m alone, I tell myself that I can’t take it anymore.

I slap my face. On the 26th I slapped my face in front of the mirror. Not just once, several times. If someone were here, I’d kill him. Nadine. It could have been anyone. Who represents hate. It’s hatred, I call people, I make a lot of telephone calls, I beg (these calls are like gulps of strong liquor to give me a last, I don’t know), I search, I don’t find. There’s no one. Apparently, I’m overdoing it, my reaction is out of proportion. Me, I don’t think so. People find everything normal. When it’s all insane except me. What’s it called when you have that feeling? For the series of telephone calls, here’s a list of the most symptomatic:

I search through boxes for the telephone number of my father, Pierre, in Strasbourg along with the number of my half-sister, who’s married to a dentist, and of my half-brother, married to a Marie-Christine. I don’t find anything, not one number. I don’t have the strength to check the Minitel or to call information. That would require consistency, a clear desire to reach a particular person, which I don’t have. I would have dialed a number if I’d happened on the piece of paper it was written on. I hadn’t wanted to put them into my address book, to do them the honor, which may well, on its own, be a sign of instability. I had put them in a box. Just in case. This is the case. (And if I did call them, really called them, if I decided to call them now and suggest we spend Christmas together. After all, why not? Is it that bad of an idea?)

Around one p.m. I call Nadine Casta at home, in Paris. In a fit of insanity. I hesitate. I open my address book, I close it again, I hesitate. Finally, I open it. Then there’s another sign:

I entered the number in my book wrong. I put the Cs under A. Chatelain, Constant, Casta. AFAA, Attoun, Art-Press, then all of a sudden Chatelain, Constant, Casta, it ends with an A, Angot begins with an A. I put them on the same page, but Angot wasn’t there. That itself was a sign. The melting of my personality, associating, mixing up, that’s my mental structure, between Élisabeth Angot, EA, and Nadine Casta, NC. EA, an abandoned child, not her but me, NC, it’s hate, not her but me, I already explained it. There you have it, now if that’s not a symptom! Like Emmanuel Adely, there are a ton of EAs among writers.

I put down the telephone, I take a small piece of paper, I write down what I intend to say so I’ll remember, me with my stammering and her, an actress who has mastered language. I’m in tears, my cheeks flushed, eyes blank, hair a mess, I’m sweating and shivering at the same time, I remember. My back is stiff, so stiff it aches, it’s my vertebrae, my back, always my back that’s trembling it seems to me. My lower back. I write it down on a little piece of graph paper: Marie-Christine and I wanted to spend Christmas together in Montpellier. In a new relationship, in love, the two of us wanted to build something together, around us, without any other ties, not even very old ones. Things are complicated, I’m suffering. Her decision to go to Paris has been making me suffer since Wednesday, after your phone call, you insisted she come. We’re going to break up because I can’t tolerate it anymore. You need to know this and the pain that it will cause.

I’m rewriting it from memory, I threw the paper away. I called her, with the paper in front of my vacant eyes, so that Nadine would understand. I got the housekeeper (not two hours a week, all day every day, she takes care of everything, the cleaning, the laundry, the errands, food, at night when she comes home, NC can stretch her feet out under the table, the maid is there, and for everything else, there’s a secretary, professional papers, train tickets, plane tickets, for vacations, Nadine’s or the children’s, or hotel reservations at La Mamounia in Marrakesh, at La Gazelle d’or in Taroundant, she wanted to have a party there when she turned fifty, or in New York, in the Pierre, everyone would have been invited). Close paren, I don’t want to leave the reader stranded like before. Polite, proper, and comprehensible. Frédéric told me the first section was hard to read because things were jumbled. The birthday party ended up being held on Île de Ré. The point of bringing up this anecdote is to underline the modest end, going round the world and ending up in the house on Île de Ré, two storeys, fifteen rooms. In the village of Ars, with the same old people, the Casadesus, the Wiazemskys, Chouraqui, Chesnais, Baye, a little farther away, in the village of Loix, more secret, more secluded, more simple, at least in appearance, it’s much more expensive. “It’s crazy how high real estate prices are now on Île de Ré,” say Marie-Christine and Nadine sitting in the garden of the large house they bought together. I telephone. Chatelain, Constant, Casta, on the A page as if by chance, the little piece of graph paper, the housekeeper answers, “who may I say is calling?” A horrible question. It’s Christine.

—Hello Nadine. It’s Christine. I’d like to talk.

—So would I. But I’m on my way out, I have a lunch date and the taxi is waiting downstairs. When can I call you back?

It was before my reading, afterward I wouldn’t give a shit. Too bad. Go ahead, go to lunch.

—Late afternoon? You’ll be around?

—No, I won’t be around.

—And in the evening?

—No, I won’t be around.

—Tomorrow afternoon?

—Tomorrow afternoon, yes.

—OK, I’ll call you tomorrow afternoon.

—Yes, because there are some things that are complicated.

—Complicated? How?

—We’ll talk.

I regretted calling, she was going to call me back, I didn’t want her to. It was done. The damage was done. As they say. On the 26th, in tears before the reading, I might have moved her.

Then, a call to Moufid Zériahen. I’ve been trying to reach him since ten in the morning. I had thought of calling him the day before, on Wednesday, but I held back.

Another process was underway, also by phone, with Marie-Christine. Plans to break up, screams, I made her listen to my ragged breathing, gasps, my hoarse cries, almost groans on some phrases, interspersed with yelling. After certain words, family, obligation, duty, godchildren, cousin, since forever. Another fit was setting in. It was being sparked again. The receiver was slammed down several times, after “it’s over,” “goodbye,” “well, see you some day.” You know. I threw in dry comments, alternating with death rattles, I made her listen to my constricted throat. Not from exhibitionism, not to draw her attention to it, but simply because I was suffering. She said some words, followed her logic, spouted some things that made me puke with horror, or at least scream. Just the thought of it, just picturing it. Imagining certain scenes, to see what it was related to, all the things it brought up. She was poking around in my childhood, stirring it up, not even realizing it. She was the last, absolutely the very last person on earth I could get along with. We had nothing to say to each other, we were complete strangers. She was in one camp, I was in the other. Eight days earlier she was talking about a civil solidarity pact. A dream. I was getting nowhere, it was exhausting. I take the blame for everything. I was trying to destroy her and her cousin, it was that or me, I preferred me, you think that’s not normal?

The morning of the 26th, of Thursday the 26th, I worked. Alain Françon is staging Les Autres, Sujet Angot, and No Man’s Land as one play, I’d suggested combining the three, to make them all one language, my usual stew, my classic incestuous mix, which I wasn’t repressing up to that point. ‘Everything can always be mashed together’ could have been my motto.

Late that morning, I don’t know which of us called the other. She did, I think. She’s free after two thirty, to get together before the reading if I want or to go for a walk. After the blow with the Christmas… I ask if she’s joking. If it helps for her not to come, she agrees not to. Implacable reasoning, repetition of the reasons for Christmas, Nadine needs support, you don’t suddenly let drop people who have helped you at some point, she has a family, turn of the century morality, nineteenth century, I spew at her. Intolerable notions of loyalty and fairness. So ancient and arbitrary, to be honest. So vile.

When I recount my day on the 27th, Friday the 27th, you’ll be treated to Nadine’s phone call, you’ll see, it’s something else.

To summarize. A few dozen phone calls, at half past noon she asks me – I was in tears – if I want her to come over at two thirty. I tell her it will be too late, that I’ll be dead by then. We hang up and I go lie down.

At two o’clock Denis rings, we had a rendez-vous, I was in no condition to speak. Marie-Christine telephoned, hung up, called back. Two good hours have passed before she hangs up, saying “I’ll be right there,” without giving me time to say “no,” I could feel her exasperation. It was about four o’clock, about two hours before the reading. I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t prepared, I hadn’t showered, I didn’t have the strength to get to 20 Rue de la République, to say hello to Anne and Gil who had invited me to the CRL. I knew if I did, at what cost?

I called Moufid Zériahen. He was in.

—It’s Christine Angot. I have a reading at six o’clock, I’m not in any shape to do it, I’ve been having an anxiety attack since yesterday noon.

—Come right away.

—I can’t, I don’t have time. (Marie-Christine was going to come over. Unless I were to stand her up. After all!… Like Christmas.)

Despite all that she inflicts on me, I haven’t stopped loving her yet, what masochism. Paranoid, that’s certain, delusional, too, masochist, I’d have to check. The doorbell. It’s her. Moufid must have heard the bell. I tell him:

—I’d like you to say something that will calm me down.

I weep.

I go into another room with the hand-held phone.

—A few words.

—In that case, I need you to tell me a bit more.

—It’s about Christmas and Nadine, Do you remember?

—Yes, I do.

—Do you remember Marie-Christine told me she’d try?

—Yes, I do.

—She called Nadine yesterday, who told her it was impossible. And so she’s going. She’s going to Paris.

—And you’re surprised?

—Yes.

—Those are archaic relationships, you know, what would you have done if your father or your sister called, wouldn’t you have answered?

He’s feeling around, that’s not the issue, no, that’s not it. It’s difficult over the phone.

—No, I would have been ‘out.’ She called me yesterday, and I’ve been in this state since then, I have to do this reading. I’m very, very anxious, I scream and slap myself. I can’t stand it.

—What time does your reading end?

—Around eight thirty.

—Come see me after.

—But after it will be over.

—It may help you during the reading to know that you’ll be coming here when it’s done.

—Or I could come now.

—You just told me you couldn’t.

—I’ll see.

Marie-Christine arrived, exasperated. She saw I was on the phone, she kept making signs of impatience. Of anger, “I can’t believe it,” “No this isn’t possible, I must be dreaming,” “I came I’m here and you’re on the phone. I’m here, I’m paying a price to be here, and you’re on the phone, you’re unbearable and on top of that, when I’m here, when I come over despite everything, despite all the horrible phone calls this afternoon, despite the fact that your personality is impossible, delusional, paranoid, perverse, masochistic and sadistic, you are on the phone.” Completely exasperated.

I hang up, I say to Marie-Christine:

—Don’t get upset, I was talking to Moufid, he recommends I go see him.

—That would be a good thing.

She offers to take me in her car, we’d come back after, we’d drive straight to the reading if time is too tight. I call Moufid back, I tell him I’m on my way.

He fit me in for ten minutes between two patients and I went to do my reading. Things were a bit better. And it went well.

Night

She tells me she’s going to go to bed, that she’s going back to her place. I can’t possibly be alone that night, not at night. After all the effort. She’s dumping me, Christmas, and now at night. Again. When I’m in my worst state. Her reasoning: 1. She doesn’t have her things, 2. If she leaves her car parked where it is, she’ll get a ticket like the last time.

—OK, then I’ll go sleep at Claude’s, I can’t stay alone.

—If you go sleep at Claude’s then we’re done, do you hear me? Done. Come sleep at my place.

—I can’t, not after everything I’ve gone through since Wednesday, I don’t have enough faith in you to fall asleep at your place. Don’t you understand?

I started shivering again. Always the same spot, my lower back, around my kidneys. Gil and Anne had barely turned the corner. I collapsed onto my bed, on my back, my head hanging backwards, my eyes blank again, my fingers blue, it had started again. And Nadine getting ready for Christmas with twenty-five people. Her cousin is coming, that’s great, as always, it’s a ritual, an ancient ritual, it will happen again, once more, in a few weeks, since forever.

It must have been one in the morning, I couldn’t take it any more, I had to go to her place, make one more effort, go to the enemy’s, or else she’d leave me on my own. If I went to Claude’s, she’d leave me. She finally grabbed my bag, threw two or three things in it, took my hand, quick and easy. I put on my coat, I was like a huge bear that couldn’t walk anymore, nose dripping, crying, face contorted, a huge bear at the end of its tether. She goes downstairs, I stop on the landing, I can’t move.

—I’m downstairs and you’re staying upstairs, is that it?

Shouted up at me at half past midnight.

She climbs the stairs again, without any trace of tenderness, exasperated. She pulls me along to the street where her car is parked. I don’t cross the street, I’m petrified. I want to scream. I head back towards my place. She drives up, opens the door, she says “hurry up.” I get in the car. I say “take me back to my place.” An ancient ritual practiced since forever with people who have helped her and whom she can’t abandon. Out of loyalty, yes, out of duty, yes. Yes. It’s her family, she has a family, yes. Nadine is essential, Nadine is a fundamental part of me. If you can’t stand her, then you can’t stand me either. A cousin, godchildren, yes. I sleep very little. I wake up very early, the morning of the 27th, I call Claude. I say to him “please, I can’t take this any more, introduce me to some new people.” That very evening, there will be Nicolas and Judith, the daughter of my first psychoanalyst in Reims, she was at the reading yesterday, she liked it a lot. She’d heard about me all through her childhood, I shaped her father as an analyst, “the young woman” in exceptional terms. I’m too tired.

The day of the 27th

I clean the house. In the evening I may see Marie-Christine, we still haven’t decided. I’m also invited to Claude’s with Judith. I have a five o’clock appointment with Toro, my chiropractor, he’s Colombian. He helps me. Finally relaxed, I get home at six thirty. I’m doing well. Maybe I’ll even draw myself a bath. I call Marie-Christine in this tranquil state. I don’t want to see her, I’d rather rest, eat a few raviolis, watch the movie about Thomas Bernhard I’d recorded, and go to bed early without discussing everything again. We talk calmly, a call comes in, it’s Nadine.

I summarize what’s on my little piece of graph paper, which I’d kept. Her answer:

—We’re a family. It’s a family of octogenarians, of ghosts, of this family, of ghosts, of shades, you see, Marie-Christine and I are the only ones that have a bit of life left in them.

—…

—They’re like ghosts. When you have kids, you want Christmas to be joyful, Marie-Christine is the only one who brings the slightest bit of joy to this holiday. If I didn’t have children, I wouldn’t care at all about Christmas, and I wouldn’t do anything, I’d go to the movies, I’d do whatever. (So the movies are whatever…)

—I have a child and I’ll be alone with her.

—Like everything that reminds you of childhood, Christmas is important for everyone, obviously. (In that brisk tone that made her famous, the slightly haughty woman who is suffering.)

Ancient, a ritual, ghosts, a family of octogenarians, and that I was perverse to express my suffering the way I did, that she understood very well, very well indeed, perfectly, everything I was saying about legitimacy and illegitimacy, but it’s not her responsibility. Besides, it’s a very male thing to do, to meet someone and say “everything you’ve done before me, everything that existed before I came on the scene doesn’t exist anymore, men do that.” But she’ll telephone Marie-Christine and will give her clearance. Because, anyway, she has lost interest. She doesn’t want to be responsible for our break-up. It’s really not worth it. She had put pressure on Marie-Christine over the phone the other day, she’ll give her clearance.

I didn’t say: I know you broke out in tears.

—Give her clearance? But you don’t have to give her clearance.

—Yes, I do, I’ll give her clearance. I don’t like it when people do things out of obligation, on the phone I put pressure on her. I want to take that pressure off her and for her to spend Christmas with you. Because, in any case, under these circumstances, I don’t like it.

Another phone call to Marie-Christine, this time I got told off. Later she told me she had bought and chilled a bottle of champagne, she also bought filets of fish because I love them. She should have told me instead of insulting me and hanging up on me. I tell her “I’m leaving,” I’d decided to go to Claude’s.

—Right, you do that, go see Claude and your old analyst’s daughter. Go have a nice time with others who are more interesting than I am. You’re exhausted, but go ahead, go out. This time you’ll be with people who suit you.

—You’re right, I’m going to have dinner with my husband and my old analyst’s daughter.

We hang up on each other. At Claude’s, Léonore is asleep, I stroke her hair. Judith and Nicolas are seated with a bowl of salted things between them. We go to the table. What Claude has cooked is not good, the store-bought gnocchi are hard, fortunately there’s a salad and bread, the ham isn’t good either. I don’t at all like the way he talks about the sauce he made. The conversation, anecdotes and more anecdotes, that’s it. I leave early. A little bit of cheese, I don’t wait for the ice cream. To be polite, I tell them about my insomnia, the reason I have to leave, ten hours over three nights. Two messages from Marie-Christine are waiting for me “you are a real shit, a real shit. You left, I can’t believe it, you are a real shit, a real shit.” The line is busy, then it rings. She was on with Nadine. What is it some women have against their relationship, why do they find it objectionable? It got poisonous. I was still screaming at two in the morning. Even though I was calm before, I’m now in my bed, deformed and disfigured with pain. She’ll end up unplugging her phone. After a particular thing I said.

She hangs up. It’s Friday night. I call her back a good dozen times, I leave pleading messages. “Please pick up, I’m begging you, please,” I’m garbage, I’m a masochist, I have no dignity, I treat myself like shit, I plead with her. She picks up, she tells me again that this is her last sentence, that there’s no point calling back, because Nadine is objectionable, that I’m not the first to say, it’s part of her, it is her.

—You wouldn’t defend me the way you defend her.

And so on until the end, I don’t know any more. I must have fallen asleep. I woke up around six o’clock Saturday morning, the 28th, on Monday I was to see Moufid Zériahen, I was going to ask if I could be admitted to L’Alironde for a while. I wrote, things got a bit better. There are rooms for writing in the hospitals and psychiatric clinics, but things shouldn’t be mixed up.

There would be other signs, other symptoms and other physical manifestations, I only mentioned the most recent, the ones right after the trigger. If I went back in time, I could write pages and pages. A sense of suffocation, vomiting, nausea, bouts of colitis, insomnia, breakdowns, suicidal urges, spectacular ones, I picture myself again one evening in Spain, in Rosas, lying on the sidewalk, I was eighteen years old, I was on vacation with Pierre, a summer evening, I was stretched out on the sidewalk because my stomach hurt so much, people passed by, it was vacation time. Vertigo, fits of hysteria, I remember a Place d’Erlon in Reims, on the corner of Rue Burette, near the Espace store, I’d thrown my eyeglasses on the ground, I’d broken them (like I did when Chirac was elected), Place d’Erlon, I remember the reason: I didn’t know what to buy for dinner, slapping my own face, in public but mostly alone, and my speech, a way of talking that constantly associated disparate things. François told me “you should put yourself to the side a bit.” A way of unintentionally attacking with language, obstructed breathing, in the end you’re alone. You feel contempt for people who help you, you feel contempt for people who don’t. When I got married, I had insomnia for eight whole days and lots and lots and lots of violence, perverse language, this chapter could have been long and detailed, I’ve forgotten some, and I have to be precise, clear, accurate, and orderly. I don’t want to end up with something more or less impressionistic, what they call: artistically vague.

Definitions

These are taken from Elisabeth Roudinesco and Michel Plon’s Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, published by Fayard. We’re now on Wednesday, December 2nd. I’ll get back to Sunday the 29th, Monday the 30th, and Tuesday the 1st. I was affected by certain definitions. I made an initial diagnosis, empirically, I’m not a doctor. I took some words, I understood what kind of insanity I have, what form. I figure it out, and it’s not pretty: it’s terrible. As they say: the rules of the game. The rules of the game as they say, I’m somewhat mad as they say, I’ve got my feet on the ground as they say. It’s a kind of excuse, this “as they say,” a kind of regret, and of innocence. I’ve underlined certain words to make reading easier. At the same time, it’s for emphasis. And finally, it builds something. Earlier my motto could have been ‘Everything can always be mashed together.’ I couldn’t take it anymore, as they say: enough was enough.

Incest

We call incest a sexual relation without force or constraint between blood relatives to a degree prohibited by the laws of each society. In almost all known societies, except for a few cases including Egyptian pharaohs or the ancient nobility of Hawaii, incest has always been severely chastised then prohibited. That is why it is so often kept secret and experienced as a tragedy by those who engage in it. Prohibition is the negative side of a positive regulation: the obligation of exogamy. The act is disapproved of by social opinion and always experienced as a tragedy caused by irrationality or leading to madness or suicide.

Mental illness

Whether called fury, mania, delusion, rage, frenzy, or alienation, madness has always been considered reason’s ‘other.’ Extravagance, senselessness, confused thinking, mood swings, excessive emotion: these are the manifestations of this affliction that human beings have suffered since the beginning of time.

Paranoia

This type of mental illness – which Freud compared to a philosophical system due to its logical mode of expression and an internal consistency that is close to “normal” reasoning – could be defined as the insidious development, determined by internal causes and following an extended evolution of a delusional, lasting, and impervious system that preserves from its inception complete clarity and order of thought, will, and action. Paranoia consists of two basic mechanisms: delusions of reference and illusions of memory, both of which produce different delusional beliefs of persecution, jealousy, and grandeur. The paranoid individual suffers from a chronic illness, believing himself a prophet, an emperor, a great person, an inventor. It is a pathological defense mechanism, people develop paranoia because they cannot tolerate certain things, provided, naturally, that their psyches are predisposed to it. Paranoid individuals love their delusion as they love themselves, this is their secret. Paranoia is defined as a defense against homosexuality.

Narcissism

Françoise Dolto locates the roots of narcissism in the privileged experience of words spoken by the mother directed more at the satisfaction of desires than in response to needs.

(Like when your mother tells you that you’re the one she loves most in all the world, that you’re the most beautiful thing she has done in her life, that her life was worth living if only for this, to have you, to have had you, that of course giving birth is not exactly a pleasure cruise but there’s nothing more beautiful in life, nothing, that she thinks you’re so very intelligent, that she wishes she had talent like yours, that naturally she avoids saying it too often, but of course you’re the prettiest of all the little girls she knows, that just because she tries not to say it too often, doesn’t mean she’s not thinking it, that she will love you forever, that that will never end. Never, never, never, you understand?)

Homosexuality

Freud was not interested in valorizing, degrading, or passing judgment on homosexuality, but first and foremost in understanding its causes, origin, and structure from the perspective of his new theory of the unconscious. Hence his interest in latent homosexuality in neurosis and even more in paranoia. Freud used the term perversion to designate sexual behaviors deviating from a structural (and not social) norm, and he classified homosexuality as such. He did not assign it any pejorative, differential, depreciating, or on the contrary, valorizing character. In a word, he brought homosexuality into the whole of human sexuality and humanized it by conceiving of it as an unconscious psychological choice.

In 1920 he formulated a canonical definition: homosexuality is the result of human bisexuality and exists in a latent state in all heterosexuals. When it becomes an exclusive object choice, its origin in girls is an infantile fixation on the mother and disappointment with respect to the father. And he stated “…to undertake to convert a fully developed homosexual into a heterosexual is not much more promising than to do the reverse…” In a letter dated April 9, 1935, to an American woman worried that her son was homosexual, Freud wrote: “Homosexuality is assuredly no advantage, but it is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation; it cannot be classified as an illness; we consider it to be a variation of the sexual function, produced by a certain arrest of sexual development. Many highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals, several of the greatest men among them. It is a great injustice to persecute homosexuality as a crime – and a cruelty, too.”

The Kleinian view, although liberal, considers the female version of homosexuality to be an identification with a sadistic penis.

A lover of literature, Freud often stressed that the great creators of art were homosexuals.

Subject

A common term in psychology, philosophy, and logic. It is used to designate an individual who both observes others and is observed by others.

Suicide

Suicide is the act of killing oneself so as not to kill another. It is not the result of neurosis or psychosis, but of depression or a serious narcissistic disturbance.

Perversion

A term derived from the Latin pervertere (inversion) used in psychiatry and by the founders of sexology both pejoratively and positively to designate sexual practices considered to deviate from a social and sexual norm. From the middle of the 19th century, psychiatry categorizes as perversions sexual practices as diverse as incest, homosexuality, zoophilia, pedophilia, pederasty, fetishism, sadomasochism, transvestism, narcissism, autoeroticism, coprophilia, necrophilia, exhibitionism, voyeurism, sexual mutilation.

Sadomasochism

A sexual perversion founded on a mode of gratification from the infliction of pain on another and from pain suffered by a humiliated subject, as well as on the reciprocity between pain passively suffered and pain actively inflicted.

Two processes: the reversal of aggression against the subject him- or herself and the inversion of an active function into a passive one. This process can be accomplished only by means of an identification with the other in the order of fantasy. In sadism, one inflicts pain on another and feels pleasure in a masochistic way by identifying with the suffering object.

Moral masochism is performed through language, based on a sense of guilt, it is the most significant and most destructive. It is characterized by its apparent remove from sexuality and a loosening of ties with the loved object, attention being focused on the intensity of the pain, whatever its source. It is a matter of being able to sustain a certain level of suffering. Psychoanalysis has progressively shifted sadomasochism to the core of ‘normal’ individuals.

Nazism

From the moment he rose to power, Adolf Hitler implemented the National Socialist doctrine, of which one of the principal objectives was the extermination of all Jews in Europe as an ‘inferior race.’ Similarly, it was seen as necessary to remove all those considered ‘defective’ or bothersome to the social body. Thus Nazism treated homosexuality and mental illness as equivalents of Jewishness according to their theory of hereditary degeneration.

Hysteria

This condition’s distinctiveness lies in the fact that unconscious psychological conflicts are expressed in a theatrical manner and in symbolic form, through paroxysmal physical symptoms. (I mentioned them, screaming, ragged breathing, blocked diaphragm, the need to lie down on one’s back, the tendency to drop to one’s knees, the cries, indifference to being watched by others or even experiencing pleasure in it, slapping one’s own face being the epitome, an actor rehearsing in front of a mirror, crying jags, nervous breakdowns, lying on the ground, messages left on the answering machine saying “I’m begging you, please” and ending in a sort of groan, audible even on the machine.)

Desire

It is connected to mnemic traces, to memories, it is realized through the unconscious and hallucinatory reproduction of perceptions that have become ‘signs’ of satisfaction. The demand is addressed to another, it is apparently directed at an object, this object is not essential because the demand is a demand for love. Desire is directed toward a fantasy, towards an imagined other, it is the desire to be the object of another’s desire and desire for absolute recognition by another at the cost of a fight to the death, which Lacan identifies with the dialectic of the master and the slave.

Schizophrenia

A type of mental illness with symptoms that include incoherence of thought, emotion, and action thinking, withdrawal and delirious activity. A pure state of insanity characterized by the subject’s internal entrenchment. The patient, male or female, falls into such a state of delirium that he or she seems to lose his sense of reality.

Night and day, eyes staring, eyelids never raised or lowered. Attempts are made to speak with the afflicted, he or she does not hear. A shard torn from the tomb, a kind of victory of life over death or death over life. But abruptly able to stop trembling and slowly say “the angels are all white.” (According to the clinical case of Louis Lambert.)

Loss of vital contact with reality and intent on not being himself.

There is “schizophrenic art,” wild, like art made by children and primitive peoples.

Foucault refuses to make any diagnosis but finds in the madness of Artaud, Nietzsche, Van Gogh, and Hölderlin the final instance of the work of art: “Where there is a work of art, there is no madness; and yet madness is contemporary with the work of art, since it inaugurates its time of truth.”

Applications

I see myself primarily in the two statements: Paranoid individuals love their delusion as they love themselves. And: It is a matter of being able to sustain a certain level of suffering. And in others on contempt and delusions of persecution that lead to destruction.

I recall having said, in reference to Seen from Above, that rape was good, “of course rape is good, otherwise we couldn’t bear it.” There was no doubt in my mind, at the time it seemed to me to be inarguable. I was quite simply: paranoid.

Nadine is intolerable and I’m not the only one to say so. “It’s a pathological defense mechanism, people become paranoid because they cannot bear certain things.” When we’re at table and she goes on and on about her problems with film shoots, Catherine Decourt here, Dupont there, Durand, Emmanuelle Vigner, who gave her an insanely expensive watch for Christmas last year. She was in the film, Mari et Femme, with André Dujardin, which I went to see in Sète and she’s presiding over the dinner after the screening, Marie-Christine sitting next to her, the crown princess, they burst into laughter at each other’s refined jokes. The entire table follows suit. Like the king, when the king laughs, the entire court joins in. When the jester makes the king laugh, the entire court doubles over. Marie-Christine, I’m neither sitting next to her nor across from her, but catty-corner along the table. Other friends are there. From Montpellier, doctors, professors, whom Nadine knows, lay it on as soon as she’s near, they ask Marie-Christine, “How’s Nadine? Is her film going well? And Decourt? How are things with Decourt? Of course we’d like to have dinner with Nadine.” Or, “I love Dupont.” And, “Nadine is a very warm person, and very generous.” They ask questions about Decourt, offer their opinions, list the films of hers they liked, inquire if, in fact, there is a ‘Decourt effect.’ Nadine calls her “Catou” to tease her gently. She recounts impossible moments on the set. Delays of unbelievable rudeness (but all in lavish juicy detail), and what she did to show Decourt, to teach her some respect, which they owe the technicians and the production team, NC. To embarrass her, to make it clear to her that everyone was waiting. I’m remembering Dominique Quentin in Edward II, her scream in the middle of the movie, I’m on another planet, this scream exists, no one is thinking about it. The conversations are all about plays that will be opening, about restaurants they’ve tried or want to try, about the third Michelin star given to the So-and-so brothers, the Pourcels and their Jardins des Sens, and about film ticket sales.

Paranoia is based on delusions of reference, Quentin or Eustache, I alternate. Persecution, jealousy, grandeur, of course. People become paranoid because they cannot bear certain things. That’s the way it is. Marie-Christine tells me, “I saw Nathalie Bayard, I had dinner with Nathalie Bayard, we went with Nadine to the beach where Nathalie Bayard always goes, if you saw how Nathalie Bayard is with her dog, everything revolves around the dog, she chooses the beach for him, she loves him.” This because she knows I don’t like the way she is with Baya, her dog, but if I saw how Nathalie Bayard is, I wouldn’t make any more comments. I saw Chambord, I’m not just speaking nonsense. Besides, Freud compared paranoia to a philosophical system because it’s so rigorous, because its expression is so logical, and because thought, intention, and action are so clear and ordered. Obviously “people become paranoid because they cannot bear certain things,” that is my case. Except for one scene, the film is so academic, it pretends to be sensitive. And even a little revolutionary, for example with the way it goes after the image of the star. “Look, I’m filming Decourt’s thighs, I’m bold enough to do it, she’s sixty years old and I dare film her thighs.” There was a scene in which Decourt was panic-stricken, I don’t remember what was happening to her (because on top of it all the screenplay is completely muddled), Decourt was supposed to get up and leave right away. But you know what she did right at that moment? Nadine was telling us (this wasn’t the first time I’d heard this anecdote), she said, Catou said, “and my bag?” Can you imagine, Nadine goes on, the bourgeois reflex that is deeply grounded, very deeply grounded inside her, she’s thinking about her bag. So I told her, “but Catherine, you don’t care about your bag at the moment, you really couldn’t care less, Catherine, you leave your bag, naturally, you don’t even think of it.” And everyone at the table agrees. Naturally, she doesn’t care about her bag at the moment. They all agree. Maybe there’s a picture of her son or godson in it, what do they know, all of them?

(I’m annoyed that I changed the names. It makes the book less good. But better that than paying damages.)

The object is not essential, what counts is the demand for love. I was asking her to spend Christmas with me. For a while, I thought I could master it. I said to myself “she’ll come back to Montpellier on the 25th, we’ll celebrate Christmas on the 25th.” I don’t like to celebrate Christmas on the 25th, I don’t like eating a big lunch. I can’t do celebrations at noon. A poor man’s Christmas, playing catch-up, the real celebration having been on Christmas Eve, I couldn’t, the foie gras from the evening before would still be weighing on her stomach, and the champagne, a magnum of Ruinart, in Paris, the real feast with twenty friends, and the godchildren, the godchildren, the godchildren, especially the godchildren, “me, I don’t have any children, of course, I was touched when Nadine asked me two times to be godmother to her children,” the children she feels closest to, whereas Léonore… if writing were visual I’d make the gesture of a finger tapping on a cheek swollen with air, which means ‘that’s rich,’ but she doesn’t give a shit. Léonore isn’t a part of her family and never will be, she doesn’t give a shit. Léonore’s just a little girl who is nothing to her, as they say. She gets a day-after Christmas, after the most urgent needs have been satisfied, the cousin, honor where honor is due, and the godchildren, the crown princes who will inherit her legacy as first cousins, closest kin, whereas Léonore is nothing to her and never will be anything to her. Never. Less even than her dog. The cleaning woman, the cook, the little poor child. She has never taken Léonore for a walk alone, even though she takes her dog out everyday. Alone with Léonore, she doesn’t want any part of it, not to the movies, not for a walk when I’m not there, not even going to pick her up from school, not once. For Christmas, it’s a Barbie doll put under the tree “from Marie-Christine” who’s celebrating in Paris after having trawled through the boutiques on the Boulevard Saint-Germain with her cousin who gets a forty percent discount at Prada and Jil Sander, while Dominique Quentin has to pay full price, as do I. It’s disgusting, clothing designers don’t care, just like everybody else.

Afterward I said to myself “no, I could never go meet her, getting out of the plane, exhausted from Christmas Eve, from the celebration, the real Christmas celebration, the night before. I get seconds.” We were meant to leave for Rome on December 28th. I’d reserved a hotel near the Piazza del Populo, the same week she’d promised to do everything she could to stay in Montpellier, and with Léonore and me. She hadn’t really wanted to, that’s what she says now, I’d pressured her, she had kept warning me, she wouldn’t do it if it would cause a scene. Scenes, conflicts. I tell her, Rome, I don’t want to go to anymore. It’s December 4th, our tickets are canceled. The hotel was called Hotel Quantin. We’re breaking up because she loves Nadine Casta and I love Dominique Quentin. It’s a real philosophical system, with a proper foundation, what causes me distress is the famous “insidious development” and the subjection to internal causes and that continual progression that doesn’t stop once the trigger sets it in motion, the engine starts, and it cannot be stopped. It’s in motion. Not a single phone call from Marie-Christine, it has now been more than ten days since the delusions set in, not a single phone call, not one visit, was able to stop me. The system is delirious, enduring, and impervious. I’m not the one who invented it. I won’t go to Rome because it will persist until the end of the year. The demand for love is made at the cost of a fight to the death. Last night Claude came by to see me, he said, “Oh Christine, your face is in tatters.”

Nazism, I persecute Marie-Christine for being homosexual even though it’s just a variation provoked by an arrested sexual development. Several highly respectable individuals of ancient and modern times have been homosexuals. But I have a sadomasochistic structure, which no one can deny, and, by the way, no one does. I am not the first, or the last, to persecute homosexuals, even if it’s cruel, I freely admit it. Why? Because my father was homosexual. He wasn’t, I’m raving, I’m exaggerating, I’m spouting nonsense, but the sodomy he practiced on me and on a certain Marianne, as he told me, brings him close to them. Bisexuality is human. It exists in a latent state in all heterosexuals, Freud said this as early as 1920. It’s one aspect. Not to mention his limp wrists, which he was always twisting and turning. Everything can always be twisted around.

Yesterday she said to me on the phone, “you destroy others because you yourself were destroyed,” that’s always nice to hear. Soon she’ll tell me she pities me. Paranoids can’t stand that, it’s intolerable, intolerable. In-tol-e-ra-ble.

I wept. She talked to me then:

—This may be our very last phone call. Do you have anything to add?

—Merry Christmas.

—I doubt it will be particularly merry.

—And Happy New Year.

Moral masochism. It the most destructive, for me it’s essentially expressed through language. I won’t go into the details. I’m a sadomasochist, that’s hard enough. I have conversations in my head, a lot, in that spirit of torturing, with Claude, Marie-Christine, my mother, and others. With others, there’s no harm, it’s not serious, the pleasure of sticking someone’s nose in his own shit, and the situation is not reversed. You’re a sadist, the other person, surprise, thinks they’re in the wrong (and they really are in the wrong), they argue, instead of – there’s only one thing to do, only one, it doesn’t occur to them – putting themselves in the role of victim, it has to be surreptitious, for me (me or another sadist) to switch, immediately, to apologizing, to reverse the process, to feeling pleasure in the pain in turn, to become at once the victim, which I am in my fantasy, right then, the moment I apologize and now, in turn, to feel pleasure in pain I’ve inflicted and in pain I receive. It’s not very original but that’s what I’m living and I don’t enjoy saying it. Taking pleasure in the pain you cause and the pain you’re given. ‘Everything can always be twisted around’ could have been my motto. I’m looking for a new one. People who know me, answer, suffer, or say, as Claude did yesterday “I don’t hold it against you, I know.” Suffering from what is said to me, and at the same time taking pleasure in what I say to others, I just can’t do it anymore. I’d like it to stop.

The other day

I stop by her practice. Her secretary, whose name is Nadine (Nadine Martin), doesn’t tell her right away that I’ve arrived. She finishes her mail, her phone call, typing on the computer, whatever. Then she picks up the phone and tells her “Christine is here,” she says to me “she’s examining someone’s breathing.” I wait a moment, several minutes. Then I leave, I don’t wait. This secretary whose name is Nadine and who is creating a barrier, after what’s happened, I won’t put up with her. Marie-Christine had told me “when I was interviewing her, she told me her first name, I said ‘that’s good.’” Finally a Nadine she can order around. I really am spouting nonsense. I said this secretary’s name several times, and I left:

—Nadine, will you tell her I couldn’t wait, that I was in a hurry, OK, Nadine?

—Certainly. In any case, I’ll tell her you stopped by.

—Thank you, Nadine, thank you. Good-bye Nadine.

Familiar hallucinatory process, one Nadine replaces another. One head of black hair replaces another, especially if it falls softly on the nape of the neck.

Yesterday, Thursday, December 3rd, I called the hospital in the morning:

—I wanted to let you know that Saturday I’m going Christmas shopping with Claude. He wants to give me my present, we’ll go to Avignon for the day…

—To Avignon?

—You know there’s nothing in Montpellier.

Then, I call her back five minutes later.

—I wanted to tell you something else, but it will hurt your feelings.

—Go ahead.

—I don’t want you to give me any Christmas presents, I couldn’t stand it. I wanted to tell you early enough, it’s December 3rd, it’s about the time when people start looking for presents. And that’s just it, I couldn’t stand it if you gave me a present. You can understand that. After everything that’s happened, I think.

—Anyway, we had said we’d exchange presents in Rome.

—You know perfectly well I don’t want to go anymore.

—We hadn’t really decided yet.

—Well, me, I’ve decided. I don’t want to go anymore. I’ve known since noon on Wednesday (November 25th) when you didn’t call. You know that. And since then I haven’t changed my mind (impervious).

Ten minutes ago, I called her at her practice, the tickets to Rome have been canceled at my request. I asked her never to call me again. Ten minutes ago, I called her:

—Maybe it was a mistake to cancel the tickets.

—You want to go?

—No. I told you I wouldn’t change my mind. I don’t want to go. But we could have waited a bit longer just in case.

—I could call them back if you want.

—But I don’t want to go to Rome, not at all. Rome is finished. After all that’s happened. The only place that would be possible for me now is Seville.

—I could call if you want.

—But I didn’t say I wanted to go. I can’t at the moment. You know very well I’m blocked, and that I haven’t wavered, not for one second, since Wednesday noon.

At the cost of a fight to the death, which Lacan identifies with the dialectic of master and slave. I can’t take it any more, I can’t go on, I want someone to help me. Writing made me feel better, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, but since the definitions, it’s over. The relief ended with the first difficulty I ran into.

A while ago I was thinking of another example of sadomasochistic inversion: Sujet Angot, the structure.

Other points of view

Gisela: Don’t you think you’re exaggerating a little bit.

Marie-Christine: You’re making me crazy. You’re pushing me to the limit.

Nadine: It’s extremely perverse, the way you present your suffering to others, telling them afterward that, in any case, there’s nothing they can do. Whether you like it or not, I’m going to call Marie-Christine tonight and give her clearance. Under these circumstances, I’m no longer interested. You can’t say what you’ve just said and then play innocent, as if you hadn’t said anything, telling me it was just so I would know how you’re suffering.

Yvon Kermann: You have a sado-masochistic relationship with the public.

But most of all, during the night from the 1st to the 2nd, Marie-Christine had wept in my arms, telling me: I love only you, I’ve never loved any one but you, you’re the first and only one, but you don’t want me so I’m going to kill myself. I’m going to disappear, you won’t hear of me ever again, not ever. You can’t stop me, because I’ll do it when you’re not here.

The last few days (flashback)

Saturday, November 28th, in the evening, there’s a party at Nathalie’s, in the end I accept the invitation. I don’t watch Marie-Christine dance, I don’t dance, I pout, I tell everyone that I’m tired, exhausted, I’m told “not me, I spent the whole day kayaking and I’m not tired…” Or “drink a little whisky, it will wake you up.” Red wine makes you sleepy, and whisky wakes you up. Or “I’m sorry I told you the other day that you were overreacting. —Well, it’s your point of view. —No, I shouldn’t have said it. —It doesn’t matter.”

It was horrible.

The key moments:

We make love. My fantasies are often of humiliation. Marie-Christine humiliating a girl, who is such an idiot, she doesn’t notice that I’m there, I know what Marie-Christine is thinking, I get off on this. Marie-Christine doesn’t give a shit, while the other one would lay siege to her house for eight days just for a chance to sniff her. Marie-Christine will take advantage, will tell her “since you’re here, go ahead, lick me, you won’t have come here for nothing.”

Another element, a Freudian slip while writing yesterday, that encapsulates my sadistic and sadomasochistic disorders, instead of ‘vaginal penetration’ I wrote ‘vaginal, sodomization.’ And you see, the comma comes in, the virgule, the little verge, little penis, it’s starting all over again. As if my head, mounted on a pivot, had two faces always present, I connect, I associate, everything relates, that’s what I call my incestuous mental structure. Which I’m trying to lessen a bit, like a fracture and a facture. A digression on fracture-facture, on puns:

Puns, jokes

On multiple occasions, Freud used Witz as much to make fun of himself as to show those around him that he could laugh about the most dire realities. A joke is an expression of the unconscious. Like human sexuality, it has infantile and polymorphous aspects. Freud studied joke-techniques and the mechanisms of pleasure they generate. There are inoffensive Witze and those that are tendentious, motivated by aggression, obscenity or cynicism. When they hit the mark, jokes, which require at least three people, the author, the recipient and the spectator, render suppressed desires more bearable by giving them a socially acceptable mode of expression. According to Freud there is a fourth motivation, one more terrible than the other three: skepticism. Jokes in this register bring absurdity into play and instead of targeting a person or an institution, they attack the certainty of our common sense. They lie when they tell the truth and tell the truth with a lie. Jokes produce pleasure. If they rely on condensation and displacement, they are characterized primarily by the playfulness of language. Humor, the comic, and jokes, all three bring us back to an infantile state, because “the euphoria we try to reach along these routes is nothing other than the temper of our childhood, a time when we were ignorant of the comic, incapable of making a joke and had no need of humor to feel happy in life.” Freud did not consider his book on jokes to be very important, he viewed it as a psychoanalytical essay applied to literary creativity. The book was not received with much enthusiasm, the first edition of a thousand copies took seven years to sell out. Jacques Lacan was the first, in 1958, to raise Witz to the level of a concept.

A few examples: Crêpe: Flip like a crêpe. Marie-Christine wanted to spend Christmas with me, Nadine calls her, sheds three tears over the phone, she lets herself be flipped like a crêpe with a little butter. Butter, Vaseline, tears. Sodomy, the body is flipped. Practical, you end up with a body that has no vagina and no breasts, at an age when we were ignorant of the comic, incapable of making jokes, and had no need of humor to feel happy in life. Still, jokes about Toto, lemons, carrots. There, no lemon, no vagina, a carrot.

Other examples: Folle: A gay man with a limp wrist. I often let my wrist go slack, my father used to. Elisabeth (my father’s wife’s name): bête, animal. The reason why I don’t like animals, not even the poor Baya, Marie-Christine’s dog. Another example: The mark: I am marked, the mark, and also the D-mark, to the point, my father’s wife was German, he deeply admired Germany and its culture. I’m trying to keep things more or less in order, not too cluttered. I reached a point of no return, the word associations were threatening, incestuous ideas were filling my head: always experienced as a tragedy by those who engage in it. There is no partition, everything touches, nothing is untouchable. It’s disapproved of by social opinion and always experienced as a tragedy caused by irrationality or leading to madness or suicide. I’m not making this up. The brain cannot be divided into separate parts. It’s not that I’m missing something upstairs, as the saying goes, it’s a house without walls, like those lofts that are very fashionable these days, I had some press in September, you hear all the noises, from the kitchen and the bedroom, and the radio, and the TV, and the telephone, the fridge kicking in, the doorbell ringing yesterday, one o’clock in the morning, Marie-Christine wanting to tell me she loves me, and the bathroom, you’re never alone.

Lacan turned the joke into a signifier, that is a sign through which a trace of truth emerges. Like Freud, he had a biting sense of humor. He often used the technique of figuration through the opposite as evident in “love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.” As to vaginal sodomization, I agree completely with Melanie Klein’s theses in which she considers female homosexuality as the use of a sadistic penis. In my case it’s undeniable. I don’t have a dick, but I still sodomize you, not in the ass, but I sodomize you anyway. We have nothing, we have nothing for ourselves, and our head is fucked. Fucked, pulled out, of the cunt, that is, unblocked. Our head is fucked, you understand, it’s pulled out of the cunt, our head is, but where should it go? Rome? You want it to go to Rome? We canceled the tickets, there’s no more flight, no more hotel. Seville? It’s two weeks before Christmas, you know we won’t find any rooms at this date. In Egypt, the pharaohs of Egypt and the mummies, there are no rooms at this date.

(My old reflexes set in again on this page, I’m not working well, in fact, I don’t feel well, as I’m writing I want to cry and that’s not normal. I’d promised Léonore we’d go see Kirikou and the Sorceress today, Sunday, at eleven. Marie-Christine came and rang the doorbell in the night, I’d just fallen asleep, to tell me she wanted to stay together. I said no. Maybe I’ll add the intermediate phases later. After Kirikou. I told her no. I repeated it. She asked her question again several times. I said “you woke me up” in any case the answer is no. It’s not a question of whether I want to or not, it’s that I don’t want to. She left at a run, she ran away, her dog running behind her, not even on a leash. She’d tried to choke me before. She got down on all fours above me, I was lying down, I was in bed in my nightshirt. She was fully dressed, in the outfit she wore to that dinner and her leather jacket. She straddled me, she took my throat, my neck, in her hands and pushed with all the strength in her arms. I grabbed her wrists to make her stop, she could have killed me. She sat on the ground next to the bed and started squeezing my arm very tight and shaking it. I let my arm go limp, completely, I let it go. I was exhausted. Of course I still am. She slammed the door and stumbled down the stairs, running down the street to disappear from my sight as quickly as possible, I was at the window, I was calling to her, I think I’d have liked her to come back, complete nonsense, ridiculous, overdone, disproportionate, again I took the usual dose before going to bed. This morning my tongue is swollen, doughy, I’m thirsty, nothing matters anymore.)

The cinema with Léonore, Sunday morning, 6 December

We’re on time, but the line extends to the wall across the way, people are wondering if they’ll get a seat, there are children, adults. Everyone is standing on line. I go to the end of the line with Léonore, it’s not a straight line, it’s hard to tell who’s in front and who’s behind, it’s not obvious. Unless you’d gotten there first and watched the order in which everyone arrived. I take my place in line and move forward as the line advances. Some guy, thirty, tall, brown-haired, with a mixed-race wife and a young child, says to me, very confidently, “so you want to cut in front of me, is that it? You know perfectly well I’m ahead of you.” No, I’m moving forward, that’s all, I’m not trying to take his place, not at all. I’ve got other things on my mind. The line moves forward again, again he gives me a sidelong glance, bending down because he’s very tall, and a lot heftier than I am, “you’re in a hurry, what’s your problem?” I’m already upset enough by the night I just spent, but I finally say to him “if you don’t like the way I walk, that’s too bad, I’m sorry.” Again he accuses me of trying to cut in front of him, he was first. At that point, I grab him. The whole street can hear, I yell, I grab his arm by the sleeve of his anorak. I push him in front of me, shoving him so he’s well in front, completely and fully in front. “You’re ridiculous,” he tells me. The crowd is silent, people look away when I meet their eyes, their mouths are busy with other things, their eyes too. I tell Léonore that the guy was bugging me, I hope it didn’t bother her. She said no.

(The film was good.)

When I got home, there was a long message.

“I don’t know if you’re there or if you’re screening your calls. I’d like to see you today, so we can give each other something before we break off completely or get back together. I don’t want us to forget, but to forgive. What we had together was beautiful.” She wasn’t home, I called her cell phone, she was on the tennis court. She was happy when she heard it ring.

That’s fine, but everything that happened before this is not going to just disappear. The trigger on November 25th can’t be overcome. I was talking about causes, profound causes. To go into that, stir it all up? What good would that do? Will it make the book more interesting? No. It won’t make the book more interesting. And most of all, it’s not very polite. It’s not essential, essential, I’m perverse, just consider the way I engage in mental torture. To the point where some people, made crazy by things I’d said to them, these people around me, close to me, were driven to beat me, to insult me, sometimes very harshly (bitch, disgusting, perverse, whore, that all happened), to strangle me (two times, once in Bordeaux, and once right here in Montpellier), to shake me, to beat me, insult me. But always, pushed to the limit, I trust them when they say, at their limit, that they know me, they know me well, they’ve seen me, they’ve heard me, pushed to their limit by a mechanism inside me, a verbal mechanism, extremely effective, extremely destructive, extremely sly, above all extremely sadistic, at all times evoking elements from reality, fitting, wounding, in a kind of ferocious machinery that no one can stop, certainly not me. Except death one day. Or another trigger, in the other direction. But it would all come down to the same thing. My motto could have been ‘everything can always be twisted around’ and ‘everything can always be mashed together’ so it’s logical. I went to see my homeopathic doctor yesterday, it had been a long time since I’d last seen her, she gave me mercurius, mercury, quicksilver, quoting the corresponding phrase: “wanting to break social conventions or to see them only as the instrument of human relations, he ended up breaking human bonds themselves,” it’s logical. I need logic. I’m getting there, others understand that I say what I think. In Sujet Angot, there’s a passage in which Claude says as a compliment: “your writing is so unbelievable, intelligent, muddled, but always luminous, accessible, direct, physical. Your readers don’t understand a thing and they understand everything. It’s intimate, personal, shameless, autobiographical, and universal. You are touching without using gimmicks, without being emotional, you make people think with bits and bobs, a miracle of logical disorganization. Freedom without chaos, openness without drift.” That’s very kind, but he doesn’t get it. It wasn’t freedom without chaos anymore, but the opposite, nor was it openness without drift, but the opposite. I couldn’t take it anymore. With my muddled bits and bobs. I have a critical apparatus, there, a rather solid one. Roudinesco’s Dictionary of Psychoanalysis, I’m happy with it. At my level. As they say, by the way, people who say “at my level” put themselves down, I don’t claim to be a specialist either, I’ve got my limitations, I’m a failure, I try to be logical, simple, and to make myself understood by most people. If everyone did the same, we wouldn’t have all this shit. A lot of writers think they’re hot shit, that’s not very polite.