Holofernes,
I’m afraid I’ve become a creature of comfort, a housecat, a vine or an orchid with a wild habit. I sit on the bed and read and turn to the mirror: the hair has become wild, falls suspended beyond the plumb line of the vertical. It makes a kind of floating fringe around my head; and at once it falls in rivulets, but not softly—rather in rigid threads of roughly extruded keratin, which reflect incident light with the uneven rhythms that constitute the impression of brilliance or vigor we attribute to the fine hairs on the seeds of certain flowers, or to the frieze a common vine forms over a large wall. I am a creature, a creature who entertains without having to lift a word out of its mouth; I sit and someone who happens to be “I” observes, seeing the eyes of an animal in the mirror, eyes as static as they are live. These eyes are completely feminine; there’s an inner mystery to them which must never be verbalized. It cannot be verbalized because there’s nothing behind it.
I lie in bed and read and looked at the mirror when this series of thoughts came to me; so often am I like this, in a state of lassitude and distraction, and it is rare for me to punctuate this languor with a series of thoughts written down and then heavily edited. It seems that in the mirror I see and know all; I know all there is to know about what I see. The big question is whether this is a lot, or a trifle, or nothing at all. It feels like a lot, like too much for me to know. “I” don’t feel that “I am” all-knowing, but when I see this reflected image, the truth of that reflection pierces and silences my thoughts—the face in the mirror knows itself better than I know at all, I can know nothing about it because of how close it is to itself; there’s no space between the inner mystery and its perfect and complete encapsulation in the image of the eye. I sit apart from the reflection, but I feel its emptiness or plenitude as a total seal over me, and speak of nothing but what the image dictates I write on it. And so I am caught up in the stuck-on nature of the “I” on the “eye,” while the sheets sit flat on this mattress. I lie on my stomach with this keyboard in front of me, which allows me to avoid the sight in the mirror when I tap at it and consider these words. But I must return, for the sake of expressing something to you, to mute contemplation of the reflection. In the reflection I see that I am wearing a blue dress with a drawstring neck, whose thin straps could slip off at the slightest movement. I feel desolate but calm, which I ascertain from what I feel but also what I see. I look in the mirror and discover once more this apparition of me as a creature of comfort, as a housecat, as a vine or orchid with a wild habit.
I feel like coins. I have one face, one axis of symmetry. But I feel like a motif, a set of objects, identical containers of value. The soft flesh motions toward the notion of “fertility,” but corresponds to an infanticidal or perverse or decadent mind. The eyes project a vision onto the viewer, a vision of the enigma of the surface which represents the unplumbable mystery of the cunt’s epiphanic response to the phallus. I wonder about the apparition’s capacity to undergo the highest convulsions of the soul, and know that it can, that it can always go harder or higher than anything else. The hair is as unbuyable as an unconscious thought; it is a clamor of value and common and valueless keratin, a pure measure of time that nevertheless falls out and is lost to the drain. We can stroke it, touch it, grow it, cut it, but can we exchange it, can we express the value of hair by any means other than to exist with it, as it comes out of our live flesh, and to have it stroked? Hair is the best material correlate for aesthetic value; it backs the banks of taste. I say this all to myself in silence.
Several weeks ago I saw the Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I at the Neue Galerie, and it struck me as so vulgar: she’s so obviously decorative, and covered in the material we think of as the basis of money; the gold feels like the word “gold.” This gold nevertheless recalls the gilt icons of the Eastern Orthodox church, or of the Byzantine art which the wall text mentions. But what she’s covered with is assertively decorative; it is decorative because it becomes the ground for two serialized patterns: the little eyes that make one think of the Turkish nazar, meant to ward off the gaze of an envious onlooker, and the little blocks of cut ovals, which come to resemble the vulva in iconic reduction, or the cracked form of an Ancient Greek symbolon, a token whose split-off half is meant to be returned to conclude a debt, to “confirm a relationship.” And this is her fringe, her halo, her functional value: Byzantine cunt-coins, held in the skirt of her dress. It’s frightening.
I’m proud of the artist and the model both, I’m proud of their entire milieu for having made it possible to write about something that I’ve felt to be so fundamental: this relation between frightfulness and splendor that exists in the confluence of woman and value: the mute femininity of coins, of capital that’s conceptual, unbacked, like a backless dress, a heel-less heel, an ensemble made of nothing more than flat surfaces.
Meanwhile I had blistered my feet wearing the egg heels, whose slight 1.6'' differential still made for a lot of pressure and friction in the narrow toe box. I was with Adam, who compelled me to look for emergency shoes, to keep me from bailing from the museum visit. I found the situation too awkward and painful to be all that embarrassing, but it was a reduction, to have to walk barefoot, and to later have to walk in some 25-dollar mules from a Marshall’s. I saw the painting in these 25-dollar mules, and did not like it much, as it was crowded and dull in the room, and I could only really feel the smarting of the blisters on my feet.
Judith
Holofernes,
Time has elapsed since the aforementioned events transpired. I want to know how to return to the mirror, to the reflection, to the stasis of time, the frozen clean state in which I can write. Or, to a sort of heat that can make glass soft and blowable. I’ve had so many orgasms in the last month that I no longer care to recall them. I come on account of the will of Adam who buries his cock in me several times between Friday night and Saturday morning each week. I came once in the middle of this routine from the lucky accident of Alex, who was bestowed on me when he came and visited for four days and delivered all my stuff from Ithaca. I like the fact that he’s such a competent consumer of food and clothes; we went to a lot of stores while he was here, and I enjoyed it all: Russ & Daughters, for bagels and a variety of smoked fish, including sable and sturgeon, and caviar, which we didn’t order, but which we imagined having prior to the descent into the underworld. The waitresses seemed like undertakers, he said, which I loved to hear. Matchaful had nice matcha lattes. Frenchette had a nice lemon-cream-filled croissant. Argo, a Georgian restaurant in the Slavic-Jewish part of south Brooklyn, had a nice dish with chicken gizzard and walnut sauce and pomegranate (kuchmachi). Saravanaa Bhavan had an incredible thali; I ate dosas with Lara there once, but hadn’t experienced the thali with the twelve-or-so sides it came with. I do not attempt to enumerate or describe these sides, because I do not in fact know much about them; there was something with okra, something very clovey, very mustardy, various sorts of lentil or chickpea stews in which the spice mixture came through as distinct and simple and pure but also complex and mixed. And I think Alex spent about $2500 on clothes. He bought a suit at the Armoury for his grandmother’s incipient funeral, and called his father while we were walking to ask if he’d finance it; his father agreed to contribute $1500. The suit came out to around $1900. He also bought some raw denim: first he tried some jeans on at 3sixteen, and then settled on a pair at Standard and Strange ($265) that fit him better. And then there was the dark navy-black cotton gauze shirt from Assembly NY ($288) and the cap in black cord ($75); he bought these after I was finished with the Baserange sample sale, where I bought two of their sheer seam-forward shirts, a white one and a burgundy long-sleeve, and a white and a red bralette, because you can’t wear these translucent fabrics without something underneath. I spent $110 on the four pieces. There was a tall brunette with severe, clear features who was astoundingly beautiful in the green and yellow silk dress she tried on. It was a severe and eccentric dress, split down the middle, a panel dedicated to each of its two colors, and I was so moved that I spoke out a compliment to her, and felt the pure truth of her beauty continue in her acceptance of the words.
Alex’s income ($100k) is less than half of Adam’s ($250k, minimum), but he is always spending so much; his rent ($1500) is a quarter of Adam’s ($4500), and far less than a quarter if Adam moves to 22 Perry Street ($6500). They are 31 and 33 respectively; I am 25. I burst out laughing after I reread the earlier sentences with numbers attached; perhaps NYC itself necessitates this, the tabulation of prices. I am the recipient of expenditures: each time Alex or Adam are with me, spending money on drinks or a meal, the bill comes out to somewhere between 40 and 80, and during Alex’s visit it was like that multiple times a day for four days. He had sex with me three times over the course of the visit, and he came twice; I came once. Adam had sex with me innumerable times on our third and fourth dates, and came three or four times; I came three times.
But these reminiscences feel distant now. Classes started this week—9/18—at NPAP. On the first day I wore balloon-ish grey corduroy pants from Rachel Comey, and the veiny black “Omato” long-sleeve from Baserange, and chunky heels with a silvery-white ponyhair upper from Eckhaus Latta. Two of the three pieces had been acquired second hand from TheRealReal in the last several weeks. It rained a great deal and later I changed into my emergency shoes, the black linen tabi mary janes from Drogheria Crivellini.
In class I feel vaguely masculine, the way little flirtatious girls can be, and like an enfant terrible. I want to build knowledge with others, but I also want to destroy the stability of dyadic structures—I am against the containment or neutralization of the individuals who enter a “partnership” or who are part of a “couple.” Life is best apprehended as a set of notable asymmetries: the cock digging into the cunt, the student talking back at the teacher, the analyst listening to the analysand, the woman looking for the absent man. There’s a cute sensitive intelligent man in class with me, who went to the Iowa Writer’s Workshop. He’s a little too blond and softish for me to be attracted to him now, but he’s attractive, and was interested enough in what I said in my brief introduction to talk to me after class, so we took the train back to Flatbush together on Monday night. At the social later in the week he told me he had read Swinburne’s “Anactoria,” that it was beautiful. But he has a partner, which means that he’s probably not an appropriate substrate for flirtatious hijinks. I like him, and am curious about the story of his life, but “nothing more,” for his seriousness is strange to me.
Judith
Judith,
I’m listening, tell me more. I’ll write back soon.
Holofernes
Holofernes,
I liked the NPAP candidates I met, at least four of them—they’re so full of vituperative complaint about the relational or self-psychological orientation of the professors. Somehow in the relaying of these complaints comes a certain comedy, which heightens the aggression while making it light and ornamental. I’m finding the classes sort of cringeworthy, but it feels like an important anthropological experience to become familiar with the “American way of life” in contemporary psychoanalysis. These “analysts” believe far too much in empathy, and in neuropsychology, and in the grand narratives of object relations. They believe that if you are kind, and understand your countertransferential feelings towards the patient, therapeutic results will follow. These results they want to see have more to do with the social link, with being a good spouse or parent or worker, than to do with the truth of one’s desire. These analysts don’t care about sex or the unconscious.
Later I left the social to meet with Ricky, the psychoanalyst from the train, at a bar in Crown Heights. Ricky: I liked him at first, and I liked him after the first date, but it stunned me to recognize this—how is it that I can encounter two men that both seem worthwhile, it’s one thing to date a man for five months before meeting another and another the meet a second man a month after the first. Thursday is for Ricky, Friday is for Adam, Saturday is for Alex—that’s what happened that week. I was so overwhelmed that I didn’t message him for a while and he didn’t message me either. And I was willing to let him go because he’s thirty-nine—too old!
Ten days after the first date I told him over text that I wanted to meet him again, but that I understood if he felt strange about getting to know someone so much younger. I told him that I once had a poetry TA who I had been quite friendly with, who is his age now, and that I was both proud of and ashamed of that time. I thought this was all a necessary caveat to freeze things up in advance, but he said we should hang out, so we did, I asked all of a sudden on Friday afternoon if he’d be free later that night. It felt so fun, so tense. I flirted hard, and felt smart, and felt that he was in the position of the bemused and withdrawn attractive man. At the end of the date, after we had exited the bar and were walking outside, he asked me what I was doing next. I said I didn’t know, and asked him the same, and when he said “going home,” and I said “I’m going home too.” I wanted to touch him. I had been aggressive in my flirtation: I said he had nice hands, I said I trusted him because he liked The House That Jack Built, I said he was probably smarter than most people when it came to listening. I like that I flirted hard, but it served to delay the experiment of sex. I’ve presented myself as a promiscuous pervert. Therefore I can’t be so predictable with sex, I can’t be a collectionneuse who collects him. Anyway, the next day I sent him pictures of my tarantula, which he had requested, and I requested to see his orange male cat, Malcolm. He sent me two photographs of Malcolm on his bed.
Beautiful; I’ve never felt so in love with a picture of a cat. I will ask him if I can meet Malcolm.
Judith
Judith,
Did you meet Malcolm? Did you meet more of Ricky? And what about Adam?
Holofernes
Holofernes,
He said “sure, we can make that happen.” Brooklyn was flooding so the trains weren’t running and I was in a tizzy because it took Ricky about 20 hours to write back—he might be reluctant to fuck around with me.
I’m filled with desire, and the return to the terror of not being wanted excites me. And how do I know that I want him? I know I do, but how? He’s just John no. 2—psychoanalysis boy no. 2—avoidant boy no. 3—daddy no. 6—but we all know that he’s not them. At one moment in the bar he had sat at a bar stool next to me and I felt his body inviting me in, cloak-like, but then we left. We had been sitting across from one another for the entirety of the date, in the area outside, and on the way out as he closed out the tab, the bartender offered him a free drink, but this got lost in the melee and he went to the bathroom instead. Adam tells me that he definitely wanted to have sex with me, but that it would’ve been on me to initiate it in this case. I’m really not sure about that. I do know that the hug we exchanged outside the train station was a little longer and nicer than the first one. For whatever reason I heard his “I’m going home” to be at the exclusion of me. I wonder if he imagined me disappointed. I want to know what he is, I want to suck at his insides.
I know I’m being non-specific with respect to the story—that I’m failing to describe Ricky or what I like about him or what I like about me when I’m with him—but that’s the truth of this series of encounters thus far—I like him in a blind and luminous and dark way that feels truly “real.” Like I know my soul is being reconfigured or that it’s spiraling back in on itself and that this is my next “move.” All this mystification!
I told Adam the next day about how I had “cheated” on him by going out with Ricky. I showed him the pictures of Ricky’s cat, and later in bed I admitted I had a crush. Adam says he’s accepted the fact of my promiscuity, but he said more bad things about himself that night, stuff about his emptiness and silliness. He has finally cleared up space in his living room and taken out some books and it looks a lot better, and the bathroom feels a little cleaner too. I told him to just live there instead of moving to the more expensive place, and then he insisted that what I truly wanted was for him to live at 22 Perry St. He believes that when I tell him to stay in his current apartment is fine, it’s because I no longer want to be his “layabout” or “housecat”—in other words, that I don’t like him enough to want to use him for his $$$. Then he lunged at me and he was aggressive in bed and I was a little less able to resist than usual. I started to insist on a few things, though: that I don’t feel like having sex with him but will do it anyway, that this makes me a slut, a whore, a gold-digger, that I want to be raped, and that I will cuck him against his will. I did feel that he was entering me more than I wanted, and that I was getting closer to being a true slut. Adam always says I’m not a slut because I am too thoughtful (ugh, whatever!), but that night I got him to stop telling me that I’m not a slut. Being called a slut or a rape-toy is supposed to be a confirmation of how I’d like to be seen or how I feel about myself, but in actuality it feels like an empty performance—I don’t want to have sex when I don’t want to, and being forced doesn’t turn me on. I did have two intense orgasms, but I experience them as if alone. I came for the first time while on top of him, and it felt like a real flash of light spreading out from me. I’ve started to come from this spot in the very back of my soul—the posterior fornix, which appears very close to the end of the tailbone in anatomical diagrams. But I suspect that being called a slut means nothing to me. We started to joke about him giving me cash, but he says he’ll only give me cash for slut-clothes.
So that’s my story about Adam and the increasingly degrading sex I’m having with him. We watched Antonioni’s Blow-Up at Metrograph. It has a great scene at the end: a crowd of clowns miming a tennis game, forcing the photographer who saw (or fantasized that he saw) a corpse at the scene of a shoot to play with an object that isn’t there. I swelled with pleasure when I saw him pick up the ball and throw it.
Judith