The Works of Guillaume Dustan, Volume 1

by Guillaume Dustan

I think all three of us must be exactly as fucked up.

  Me and this other guy are the only ones who didn't shave our chests.

  I don't feel like doing anything anymore.

  I decide to go sit down.

  All the couches are pretty much empty now.

  I put my shirt back on so I don't stick to the leatherette.

  I spread out.

  I put my feet up on the low table in front of me.

  I settle in more comfortably.

  I close my eyes.

  My mouth half-opens.

  Serenity.

  When I open my eyes back up the guy who was on the other couch isn't there anymore.

  E without hash is different.

  I rest.

  I don't think.

  I don't think about Alain.

  I don't think about Terrier.

  I don't think about Stéphane.

  I don't think about Quentin.

  I don't think about Vincent and how the condom broke last year, how there was blood, and how three months later he tested positive.

  I don't think about Marcelo. I don't think about how I'm scared that he's sick. I don't think about the fact that I can't bring him here because he isn't a woman.

  I don't think about how I've been waiting to die for seven years.

  I don't think about how love is impossible.

  I breathe.

  I'm fine.

  I feel the lollipop fall out of my hand.

  I open my eyes.

  Nothing on the horizon but two couples, lovingly glued to each other.

  I close my eyes again.11

  After a while I wake up. The music is better. Funkier. So I get up. walk towards the now empty dance floor. I start to move.

  I head down to the arena. I walk to the middle. I dance pure disco-freak style. Rolling my hips, clapping my hands. It makes me laugh. I feel light. Balanced. Suffering is unimaginable.

  When I look up, I notice an ugly Black man trying to cruise me. It never fails, when I start dancing extra cool I always get hit on by Black guys. I ask him for a light. Continue to dance. It's cool to be able to just throw your ashes on the ground.

  Andy and his boyfriend are getting their bomber jackets by the DJ booth. They put them on. Head across the dance floor. Stop by me. We kiss goodbye. The guy whose name I've already forgotten is just behind me. He puts his hands on my hips briefly. I feel his heat. I say, —Bye.

  I keep dancing for a little and then I stop to go get a drink and pee and on the way I run into Tom and Georges. —Everyone was there tonight, I say. They agree. Ask me what I'm going to do. Georges would like to go to the Queen, Tom prefers the QG. I tell them that I don't really feel like seeing people, that I'd rather go home and jerk off alone.

  It's starting to get cold. They've opened the doors wide to chase us out. Tom and Georges grab their bomber jackets by the DJ booth. They put them on. I walk with them as far as the middle of the dance floor. When they get to the end, they turn around to say, —Goodbye! And then without thinking I say, loud enough to be sure that they hear me, anwyay there's no one there, —I didn't call you because I was a little depressed.

  They signal that it's no big deal.

  I stay there alone. The DJ plays U2's Lemon. It's the hetero sound that begins. Girls arrive and start dancing.

  So I go back up to the coat check. Grab my bomber jacket. Go back down towards the exit. Realize that I missed the doorman from earlier. In place of the gay team now there's two Black guys big as sumo wrestlers wearing navy blue sweatsuits.

  The streetlamps sparkle because of the E.

  Take advantage of the light.

  I decide to walk home.

  Halfway up rue Amsterdam I reach the chewing gum part. I had forgotten. So I light a cigarette with the lighter that I had left in my bomber jacket to have the two different tastes in my mouth at the same time.

  At Trinité, a group of Black people are listening to a beatbox under the bus stop. A bum is taking a piss in the bushes in the square. My high's almost gone. How long was that? Two hours? That's the thing, the E was a hundred francs but it was also two times less strong than when it cost two hundred.

  An old drunk guy starts talking to me about politics in front of the Gare Saint-Lazare. I cut him off as politely as possible.

  The streets are empty.

  For me, all alone.

  I finally arrive at Madeleine. Key for the entryway. Key for the stairway (on the courtyard). I climb the six floors.

  The door opens up to a royal blue carpet, turtle poufs, and packs of candy that are the basis of the décor at Delphine and Tina's.

  I go straight to the kitchen stocked with organic Buddhist food. I heat some water for a tea. I open up a pack of muesli waffles they brought back from Belgium. They're really good dunked in tea.

  I put on the CD of the Lost Highway soundtrack that Tina had the smart idea of buying. Track thirteen, Insensatez by Antônio Carlos Jobim on repeat. That's the song you hear during the sequence when Balthazar Getty lays down in his parent's garden in sweatpants and slippers. He's sublimely beautiful, laid out on a deck chair, and then he gets up and looks over the fence into the neighbor's garden where he sees an inflatable ball or maybe it's a duck float, on the surface of the water of the kiddie pool.

  My girlfriends are awesome. Plus they're away for the weekend.

  I head into the bedroom. I empty my pockets. That's when I find the small piece of blue paper with Andy's number on it. It's folded over on itself eight times, lengthwise.

  I read:

  Andy

  from La Loco

  the guy-ginger

  hair (redhead)

  In London

  (his number)

  call me

  to fucck!

  I laugh a little.

  I finish undressing.

  I slide under the comforter.

  It feels good to lie down.

  I feel something super soft with the top of my head.

  I reach up with my right arm to check it out.

  It's the cloth from the guest mattress resting against the wall.

  It's crazy how soft it is.

  I must be having an E flashback.

  So I pretend as if it's someone, as if I were touching his skin.

  I caress it as if I were making love to him.

  And then I come to my senses and say to myself, —Do you realize what you're doing?, and that makes me laugh, but it's killing my high, so I stop.

  I wonder if I'm going to jack off.

  I don't feel like it but it would be a shame not to take advantage of the E.

  So I jerk off.

  And then I fall asleep, and I dream about Ken Siman.

  —Paris-Toulon-Paris

  March 31st–June 19th, 1997

  For their encouragement, suggestions, support, affection, and inspiration, many thanks to: Aaron Travis, Adamski, Adri, Agnès, Aiden Shaw, Aimé S., Al McKenzie, Alain D., Alain Royer, Alain W., Alexandre, Anne-Em, Annette Rosa, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Army of Lovers, Baby Ford, Baz Luhrmann, Benoît L., Maître Bernard, Bomb the Bass, Boy George, Brad, Brett Easton Ellis, Brian Transeau & Vincent Covello, Bruno D., Bruno V., Carrie Lucas, Catherine C., Spatiale Céline, the cats Joséphine (†) et Julie (†), the dogs Batman, Blanqui, Puce (†), Rynx (†), Zéna, Zénita, Christophe Martet, my clone Christophe, Claudio Coccoluto/One love, Clicking the Mouse / I Must Be Dreaming, Club America, Coldcut & Queen Latifah, Constantin Paoustovski, Controlled Fusion/You, Dale Peck, Damien and Marjory, Dani L. et Claude C., Darrell, Darren Emerson, Datura, Carissimo Dave, David Lynch, Dead or Alive, Deele, Dennis Cooper, Depeche Mode, Diable des Lombards, Didier Blau, Dimitri, Dominique, Double Exposure, Edmund White, Elisabeth S., Éric of XXL, Éric Lamien, Éric Moroge, Estherka (†), Eva Osinska, le grand Fabrice, the Face, Fatima, the soccer player's son, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Fire Island & Ricardo da Force, Francis Bacon, Françoise et Danièle Cheinisse (†), Franck de L., Frédéric Moreau, Frédéric Mari
a, Garbage, George Michael, Georges, Gilles Rivière, Gore Vidal, Grace, Grace Jones, Gus Van Sant, that Halloween TV on the Castro, Harry Matthews, Heller & Farley project, Hervé, Hunter S. Thompson, la fée Isabelle, Jack-Alain Léger, Jacqueline Girard, Jacques L., James Ivory, J. D. Salinger, Jean-Hughes F., Jean-Luc et Stéphane, Jean-Luc F., Jean-Paul Hirsch, Jeanne Moreau, Jelani, my beloved Jessye, Reine Jev, Joey Negro, Joey Stefano (†), Jonathan Demme, Katherine Mansfield, Ken Siman, Kiki C, Kim English, Subliminal Kro, Lars von Trier, LaTour, Laure Adler, L.B., Linda Fiorentino, Lionel and Ludo from Toulon, Loïx, Loleatta Holloway, my friend M., Madonna, my family, Malcolm McLaren, Marguerite Duras, Marina my karmic little sister, Mark Leyner, Marlène Dietrich, Martine F. (Petit Ours et Lapin t’aiment), MC Lyte, Mel & Kim, Michel G, Milos Forman, Monica DeLuxe / Don't Let this Feeling Stop, Mukka, Muriel Moreno, Nadamo et Rodriiiiiiigo, Nadia and Nedjma L., Nastrovje Potsdam, Nathalie R, Nelson, Nicolas X., Nicole Cz, Nina Hagen, Ntrance, Mégabolg, Jean-Pierre, & my future godchild, Odile Terlez, Paul Oakenfold, Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens, Philippe, Philippe and Philippe, Philippe Sollers, Pierre C., Pierre the pianist of la rue de Bretagne (†); Ramirez, Reefa, Régine, Renaud Camus, René Ehni, Reynita, Roberto, Ronald, Saint-Gabriel, Sandra Bernhardt, Foreverlove Drine and Jean-Christophe N., Serge B., Shalamar, Sharon Brown, Stéphane P., the witch of La Cloche d’or, Sylvie B. and her crazy brothers, Taishen Deshimaru, Thierry Fourreau, Thierry X., Third World, Tim, Tom and Julie H., Tom Stephan, my trainer in Tahiti, Truman Capote, Woody, Woody Allen, Zarah Leander / Der Wind hat mir ein Lied erzählt.

  Stronger Than Me

  A Novel

  Introduction by Thomas Clerc

  Stronger Than Me, the third and final opus in this first trilogy, is a borderline book. Having already dedicated his first text to sex, Dustan went on to radicalize his gest by orienting it in a clearly sadomasochistic direction. Stronger Than Me is a rough book, a very rough book for those who don't really appreciate descriptions of gay S&M sex. There is something strange, however, in this sexual remake, as if Stronger Than Me formed a pair with the first novel, but in order to perfect it. Penetrating a zone where the stakes of S&M were desubjectification, Dustan remade In My Room, but stronger.

  Dear Mr. Masoch

  Even in his depiction of homosexual sadomasochism, Dustan continued to innovate. This might seem paradoxical, given that the S&M phenomenon with its endless clichés is a well-known scene. Yet, this is more the case in practice than it is in representation. Quite frequently described from a heterosexual framework, S&M has expressed itself in other disciplines, such as cinema for example, but has had greater visibility in critical theory than in role literature. Foucault, for example, delivered some remarks regarding S&M, although in peripheral interviews.1 Dustan was therefore able to bring out a literature that existed less than the reality it was based on. The text overflows with explicit scenes that cannot be qualified as trash since they contain that oxymoron of hot coolness that corresponds so well to S&M. It is thus quite revealing that the cruelest chapter of the text, which occupies its center, opens on an image of the mother.

  It is out of the question to attempt an interpretation of sadomasochism in Dustan's work, or to dedicate any time to the morose charm of its etiology. But for all that, we cannot avoid the questions raised by these practices to which our author dedicated an entire book (as well as a few scenes of In My Room). The term “novel,” which we contested in the preface of this trilogy, should be understood here in the restricted sense as “Bildungsroman.”

  The Experience of Limits

  Not without humor, Dustan ended chapter 27 on both a sincere and theatrical note: “It's not the pleasure that's absorbed me until now, but the apprenticeship,” linking sexuality to pedagogy. Because of its artifice, sadomasochism demands a more precise technique than regular sex. In Stronger Than Me, Dustan anticipated the didactic nature of his political endeavor; his experimental side encroached on radical literature. Inscribing Dustan in an avant-gardist tradition might seem pointless considering the specific historical connotations associated with the term—the lack of permanence of which has been noted since the 1980s2—and Dustan's distance from the literary elite. And yet, stretching the limits of what is acceptable (which the title, living up to its name, exemplifies) geared the book towards an informed public: unless the reader was a jaded adept at S&M, the book's non euphemistic nature spoke for itself. Furthermore, subversion was affirmed in its very form, here, as a remake: Stronger Than Me is a hardcore remake of In My Room. It is a new take on the same story. Written by a subject dominated by his sexual passion but who looked to dominate said passion by writing about it, Stronger Than Me materialized a purposeful will. As a specialist explained, “in the military world, the avant-garde designates a small reconnaissance group that scouted ahead, preparing the path for battle troops and for those who made battle decisions.” 3 In this double limit-experience of S&M and writing, Dustan was both master and student at the same time.

  S/M

  By linking Sade and Masoch, Dustan placed himself under the guardianship of two philosophers. More of a masochist, he wrote, “I am not a sadist,” although in one specific pornographic passage linking finances with tyranny (pornography understood in its etymological sense), he accepted the role of Chief Sex Officer. A Sadean spark lived within him, due to an extreme taste for direct debauchery, descriptive excess characteristic of hypotyposis, and what would come later, his obsession with political systems. But we should also highlight everything that separated Dustan from Sade. In addition to being a concise writer, Dustan separated theoretical sections from descriptive scenes. After this first trilogy, sex would disappear from Dustan's corpus, as if the manifest excess of Stronger Than Me had been meant to annihilate it. But most of all, Dustan was diametrically opposed to a negative image of mankind. Despite all this, Sade was the subject of an unpublished note by Dustan titled “Sade, critique of indecision” 4 in which he highlighted his artistic debt to the author of The 120 Days of Sodom the moralistic style of which Dustan would pastiche in his later works. “Virtue is boring,” he wrote, “for it is the daughter of the fear of living; doing wrong does not aim at doing evil, it aims at making (oneself): reinventing oneself, the poetics of action.” It is from this quote that Dustan drew the ethical and esthetic law that governs his oeuvre: intensifying existence by action and therefore proposing a type of literature that is performative and compels to the reader to enjoy (jouir). His handwritten note ended with an order: “Live more.”

  The Watchful Eye

  You will not find an interpretation of masochism here, as that lies beyond our expertise. But let us remark that “the masochist always reveals himself.” 5 Autobiography, an act of self-revealment, inscribed Dustan within a tradition attested since Rousseau. Stronger Than Me deployed a camera-eye technique that did not allow anything to escape, even if it blinded the reader with its clarity. Showing the unshowable is a crazy endeavor, one that is arguably at the heart of so-called realist literature as well as at the origin of what Pascal Quignard called “the sexual night,” which associated writing with the invisibility of the two primitive scenes: our death and our conception. Clearly, for Dustan, S&M could not be given a psychoanalytic interpretation. That is not to say that this type of reading is not permitted, inasmuch as the author himself, with a mix of disarming sincerity and textual perversity, slipped in the most conspicuous elements of Freudian hermeneutics, beginning with the dedication, “to my mom.” It was quite cheeky to place the rawest, the most violent, and finally the most disturbing text of the trilogy under the gaze of the mother, who was invoked several times. The father, moreover, was not absent, and was subjected to the moral aggression of the narrator who showed up very late to their planned meeting at a museum in Berlin.

  Masochistic Humor

  For Dustan, S&M was a form of life that was closer to the ideas of Foucault and Deleuze than to psychoanalytic ones. We know that Deleuze opposed masochistic humor to sa
dist irony: the anticipated subversion of a desire to submit answered the castrating dimension of a dominating spirit, undermining that very domination. Dustan invoked this ludic quality of S&M on the back cover of Stronger Than Me in a text that was not integrated in the book itself but constituted a section in its own right. Imitating the comedic structure of a fairgrounds S&M play in which the participants were actors, Dustan parodied himself as a slave in the long central chapter in which he did not hesitate to offer himself as a victim to the reader's voyeurism. In the same stroke, he never forgot to play his role as the sadistic master, demonstrating the reversibility of roles in what was not for him a perversion (according to classical Freudian analytics) but rather a practice of reciprocal pleasure (in the Foucauldian analysis). There was something “humorous” in the absence of concession of the technical description of his verbal abuse, as well as in other small elements distilled here and there, for example when Dustan refused to be “tortured” by the music of Dire Straits, a band he hated—it appeared masochism did have its limits.

  Power and No Power

  Dustan envisioned S&M as an allegory of the domination hidden by the diurnal order; it didn't have to do with the pathological but rather the political. Bringing to light that there was domination was already to carry out a demystification of the false innocence of the world above. Since Dustan never settled for mere showing, but rather played the game as both master and slave, the autobiographical novel completely took on its virtue of realization. The representation of homosexual S&M was equally political via the juridical, if we consider the homophobic judgement passed by the European Court of Human Rights which held that fully consensual S&M practices were not protected by the European Convention.6 In fact, Dustan's sadomasochism was ballasted with an implicitly subversive dimension because it did not essentialize the places of domination; Dustan was both dominator and dominated, top and bottom, sadomasochist and masochist all at the same time. This was perhaps the originality of Dustan's contribution to the issue. This exchange of positions pleaded for a democratic quality of sexual activity that did not assign defined places to its subjects—this is very different from Sade who only viewed sex as violence towards someone else. Reversing the essentialist interpretation that would like to paint Dustan as a pure masochist, S&M appears as a process of unlocking paradigms, a strategy to relax identities, and a practice of contesting power.