The Correspondence Artist

by Barbara Browning

  The funny thing is, Sandro shares some of these oddball tendencies. And in him, too, I find it all frustrating and yet weirdly hopeful and innocent.

  We were planning a visit. We decided to book a room at Propeller Island. Binh suggested the “Two Lions” room. That’s probably the kinkiest choice you could make. Here’s the description of the room from Lars’ website: “Dual cages, situated in the center of this spacious menagerie, rest on stilts measuring 1.5 meters tall and await applause from the neighbouring guests [Applaus vom Nachbargast] . Your curtain presides over what your audience sees and what not!”

  In preparation for the trip, Florence had purchased me a pair of black thigh-high stockings. I think if it hadn’t been his idol, Binh, arranging this tryst, Sandro might have found the whole thing a little theatrical. I did too, to tell the truth, but by the time my plane landed at Tegel I was in a state of almost unbearable sexual excitation. I checked my BlackBerry for messages: a bit of spam, something from my editor, two shorties from Florence – nothing from Binh. I jumped in a cab. At Propeller Island, the girl at the front desk appeared to be very stoned. I asked for the keys to “Two Lions” and she stared at me, wiped her nose on her sleeve, and finally turned them over.

  I tapped on the door to see if Binh had gotten there first. He hadn’t. I let myself in and tossed my bag on the bed. I thought I’d freshen up. Some of the rooms at Propeller Island don’t have their own bathrooms, but this one did. I had to climb up a little tower to get to the throne-like toilet to pee. I climbed back down, undressed, and took a quick shower in the golden tub. I slathered some lotion on, touched up my make-up, and wriggled back into my thigh-highs and a fresh pair of black lace panties. I looked at myself in the mirror. I wasn’t sure how much longer I could wait.

  I lay on the bed for a while with my eyes closed. It was nearly 11:00 p.m. in Berlin, but of course by New York time it was just late afternoon. I thought about e-mailing Binh but I didn’t want to seem overly needy. I figured he’d get there soon.

  I found a German copy of Vogue and flipped through it. I texted Sandro reminding him to practice his piano. I lay down some more. I kept checking the BlackBerry.

  At 1:15, I scaled the metal ladder into my cage and shut the door. What was I thinking? I was pissed off, I was sad, I was humiliated, I was embarrassed. Part of me was thinking that any minute Binh would turn the key in the lock, let himself in, and find me irresistibly sexy in my ridiculous get-up in the lion cage. Those cages are too small to stand up in. I took two turns crawling around my cage on all fours. Then I flipped over on my back, plunged both hands into my black lace panties, and began masturbating. It took me a surprisingly long time to come, considering I’d been pretty much primed for this since the airplane ride. I think it was because I kept getting distracted wishing Binh would walk in on me.

  Still, after I’d finished, I waited just a minute or two and then I started all over again. It was 4 a.m. in Berlin by the time I’d tired myself out.

  Binh, meanwhile, was sleeping like a baby in the acoustically muffled “Padded Cell” room about 15 feet away. You see, this was the ending of the message that got caught in my spamtrap: “And even if I won’t be stroking your pussy tonight in the lion cage as we planned, I’ll be waiting for you just down the hall in the room for crazy people. I am getting a very hard wood just thinking about it.”

  Friday, July 28, 2006, 3:12 p.m.

  Subject: Why I Am So Wise

  All good here. Paris is beautiful. One day it rains, but the next it’s sunny. I haven’t written much but I’ve been reading. I brought over Nietzsche’s “Why I Am So Wise” for Sandro but he didn’t feel like reading it. It’s so much fun. Of course the general consensus is that Nietzsche was a misogynist but I find some of the things he says about women kind of charming and totally recognizable, at least in reference to my own person. Look:

  “The complete woman perpetrates literature in the same way as she perpetrates a little sin: as an experiment, in passing, looking around to see if someone notices and SO THAT someone may notice…”

  Speaking of which, I did finish the lyric for A Zed and Two Noughts. I remembered that your birthday is soon and I decided to give it to you for your birthday. If you get here before we leave I’ll give it to you in person but if you don’t then I’ll send it to you, with the music. It’s flawed but in a way I kind of like.

  I think of you often here. It’s a little irritating.

  I wrote this e-mail when Sandro and I were spending two weeks in Paris. I was doing a longish piece on Mathieu Chedid, and since Sandro was on vacation I brought him along. We swapped our apartment in New York with a French couple who lived in the Marais. It was great in many ways. I knew even before I bought the tickets that Djeli would probably be out of town the whole time. He had a show at a festival in Dakar, and then he was going to go to Bamako to visit the kids. There was the slim possibility that he’d come back to Paris before we had to leave.

  Staying in Djeli’s city without him being there was very strange. It seemed like everywhere I went there were reminders of him. I’d walk into a restaurant near the Bastille and hear his music playing. There were posters up with his picture, advertising his show at the Zenith in August. I saw an Arab kid on the metro listening to his iPod, mouthing the words to the refrain of “Semer la zizanie.” As I said, all these reminders were a little irritating.

  I’d been thinking I should really write some more poetry. I hadn’t done that in a while. Sandro had been playing this piece by Michael Nyman and the melody would stick in my head. I decided to write a lyric for it. I worked on it while Sandro was practicing. There was no piano at the apartment in the Marais, so we’d walk over to a place called Cyberpianos, where you can rent a digital piano with headphones by the hour. I didn’t really need to accompany Sandro, but I liked sitting at the little table in this place, reading. It was funny to watch the pianists clacking away at the silent keys, each one in his or her own world. The owner of Cyberpianos was a very nice guy named Michel. He was either gay or pedantically flirtatious. I have a hard time distinguishing with French men. Anyway, he was always complimenting me when we’d go there, saying how young I looked to have a son Sandro’s age. One day an old lady came in to look around and when she left she called me “mademoiselle.” Michel got very excited by that. He said, “Vous voyez? C’est fantastique, quoi! ”

  Anyway, about the paroles for “A Zed and Two Noughts”: I wrote these at Cyberpianos. When I was halfway through, I realized they were about Djeli. That’s when I decided to give them to him for his birthday. They were a little bit sad, and a little bit funny. Djeli said he thought they were extremely beautiful. “Stupéfiantes .” That was an exaggeration but I was glad he liked them.

  I kind of love that quotation from Nietzsche. About how women “perpetrate” literature. Of course it’s always reductive to say “women write a certain way,” or “men paint with these things in mind,” but as I wrote Djeli, I actually recognized myself in that nasty little reduction. Simone de Beauvoir wrote to Nelson Algren about writers she liked and didn’t like. She hated women who wrote “like women.” Throughout the correspondence she keeps mentioning “the ugly woman who is in love with me” (the editor helpfully identifies her as the writer Violette Leduc, claiming that Leduc referred to herself in precisely this way). They have regular lunch dates at which “the ugly woman” mostly just cries and says how fascinating and attractive Simone is and how this is driving her to suicidal despair. Simone isn’t sure why she keeps making these lunch dates. But at one point she does predict that “the ugly woman” will write an excellent novel. She says that this novel will describe a woman’s sexuality in a pure, strong, true, and poetic way, as no other book ever has. But a few letters later Simone dismisses “the ugly woman” as really not knowing very much about literature.

  Right after that visit in January, when we had seemed to be so close, Djeli had a couple of shows to do in West Africa. A British journalist was goi
ng along for the ride. On my way home I wrote Djeli from the airport a pretty heartfelt message about our time together, how close I’d felt to him, and because I was feeling that close, I made the mistake of raising the subject of a couple of moments of seeming miscommunication in our sex. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about – this kind of thing happens to everyone once in a while. Of course it’s best just to let these situations pass. The worst idea is probably to touch on it, however tenderly, in an e-mail. While I had felt particularly intimate with him on an emotional level, it hadn’t really been the smoothest sailing in bed. Things may have been compounded by the fact that I was menstruating, which wasn’t objectionable to either of us, but introduced some minor inconveniences. Djeli answered with a short and very banal e-mail about the mosquitoes in his hotel room in Ouagadougou. Apparently he’d had to get up in the middle of the night and hunt them down one-byone. Finally, he conquered them. He sounded kind of pleased with himself.

  I shot him back an image I really love, a painting by the DRC painter Chéri Samba called Lutte contre les moustiques:

  Saturday, January 19, 2008, 8:14 a.m.

  Subject: Je te félicite pour ta victoire sur les moustiques.

  La lutte continue.

  This painting was particularly appropriate, for a couple of reasons. I figured Djeli would understand. In it, the man is saying to his wife, “I’ll kill all the leftists. You take care of the ones coming from the right.” Obviously, I was referring to Djeli’s totally unpredictable political stance. As you know, the paramour resists all doxies. I was also referring to the real mosquitoes. And I just love Chéri Samba.

  Djeli didn’t respond. That didn’t mean much – he often takes a while to get back to me. That could mean anything. Professional obligations, family obligations, general distraction.

  Anyway, two days later, I wrote a slightly more extended message:

  Monday, January 21, 2008, 4:11 p.m.

  Subject: fruit

  The week of menstruation is a drag, but in compensation the week of ovulation is a total delight. My sex is like a ripe fruit. Persimmon. Not even I could resist. This made me think of you.

  Everything went exactly as I predicted: that little melancholy when I first got back, but when I walked in the door I found Sandro, hilarious, and then Florence came by with a bottle of Malbec and before I knew it I was happy.

  Extremely busy. I have two deadlines this week. Tomorrow afternoon I’m flying to Chicago.

  And the guy from NME – interesting? Are you already in Bamako? Did you see the kids? Was your triumph over the mosquitoes definitive? I was happy when I got that message because it was so banal. I’d written a kind of sad e-mail, asking about our sex, and you answered about mosquitoes. I told you once, I like hearing about the banal things in your day-to-day life. It makes me feel closer to you.

  Okay, I’m going to finish typing up my notes for this article, take a bath, make a little love to myself and go to sleep. I miss you and I hope you’re happy.

  That was when Djeli responded with that second “I love you but I’m not in love with you” message, the one I said sounded like it was written to himself. It was really unpleasant. And I accused him of playing fort/da. If he didn’t take this up with his analyst, he should have. You know, even his mother made that comment about his “distance” in that documentary.

  I mention these messages for a couple of reasons: because of the mosquitoes, but also because of this business of a letter which one seems to be writing to someone else, but is really writing to oneself. We all do this, of course. And yet we persist in imagining that a correspondence is a direct communication between two people. And we persist in believing in the singular reality of any given message.

  Lacan made some interesting grammatical observations regarding this delusion. He said that in French, you could only speak of a letter – in any sense of the word – with an article attached to it, be it definite or indefinite. For example, he said that you could take something “to the letter” (à la lettre), you could receive “a letter” (une lettre) at the post office, or you could be a “man of letters” (avoir des lettres), but you couldn’t say that there was “some letter” (de la lettre) anyplace, even if you were referring to lost mail. You would have to refer to a lost letter, or the lost letter. He explained this in relation to the function of the letter as a signifier. He said that any signifier was the symbol of the absence of the signified – and for this reason had to be unique. “Which is why we cannot say of the purloined letter that, like other objects, it must be or not be in a particular place but that unlike them it will be and not be where it is, wherever it goes…”

  Am I losing you? Think about it this way: even though I “received” the irritating “I love you but I’m not in love with you” message (the banal understanding of “a letter always arrives at its destination”), it’s still pretty unclear who was writing what to whom, and who was in any condition to read it when it got there (where?). And as for that message that got caught in my spam filter – it was and it was not where it was, wherever it went… Even when it got permanently obliterated by my server.

  My writing was interrupted yet again by an incoming message from the paramour. Actually two. There was one relatively chatty one, anecdotal, nothing too significant, which ended with “a kiss” of indeterminate temperature. Since this message was not hot enough to stoke the flames of desire for the romance, it provoked a slightly impertinent response from me. You might even say rude. But funny. I think the tone was disconcerting. I got another short message almost immediately that ended, “Now I go to the shrink.” Of course, my lover’s sessions with the analyst are regular, but I couldn’t help feeling like maybe I’d provoked some discomfort. This felt both bad and good.

  The paramour doesn’t like to feel out of control. Take, for example, the little exchange Djeli and I had once about oral sex:

  Wednesday, October 24, 2007, 6:14 p.m.

  Subject: reflexive verbs

  I read some Sappho this morning. Do you know the fragment where she’s watching a girl that she loves talking to a man? Did I already write you about this? The poem is all askew, because it begins as though it were about him, but she’s just displacing herself onto him: “That man is like a god. He’s just sitting there talking to you like everything is normal, but me, when I look at you, my mouth is dry, a flame runs under my skin, I start to sweat, I can’t talk, I can’t see, there’s a ringing in my ears, my heart starts to palpitate…” I’m paraphrasing but it’s almost just like this.

  I loved the connection you made between the reflexive verb and the question of passivity/activity in the reflexive sexual act. I’d already thought about this in other grammatical and sexual circumstances, because the word “passive” is complicated. “Reflexive” too. Look at Sappho.

  Thank you for your kisses. I received them all. I would kiss you back in particular places but sometimes you don’t like to be kissed there. You said, “fellation is not my cup of tea,” which is hilarious because it’s such a stuffy way to put it, but also, in English we say “fellatio”. Florence once spelled it “fallacio,” which was especially funny because it made it look fallacious.

  But my kiss would be true.

  As I told you, despite the fact that he’s in analysis, Djeli had at one point resorted to national stereotypes to explain our differences of opinion about fellatio. He had no resistance to cunnilingus, as you will perhaps have understood from the reference to the location-specific “kisses” he’d sent in the closing of his e-mail to me. I’ve already disclosed myself as wielding Freud with a pretty heavy hand, so you can take it with a grain of salt when I suggest that Djeli’s distaste for “fellation” has anything to do with a fear of losing control in love.

  More interesting, perhaps, was that question of reflexivity. Djeli was very interested in hearing about my auto-erotic life. And as you can see, I was never disinclined to talk about it.

  We were planning a visit. It had be
en a while. It was a relatively relaxed period in Djeli’s schedule, for once, and he wanted to spend a little time in Bamako hanging out with me and visiting with the kids. Mariam had been surprisingly mellow recently. We were hoping we could have an uneventful week at this nice hotel called Le Djenné. Djeli had booked us adjoining rooms. We thought he could spend the afternoons with Issa and Farka at Mariam’s house while I got some writing done, and then we’d have the evenings to spend together.

  When I booked my flight, I decided that instead of hanging out at CDG for a long layover, I’d spend one night at a hotel in Paris. It would break up the trip and I’d arrive in Bamako less fried. On the RER into the city, I checked my BlackBerry. You already know what was on it. Nothing from Djeli. I dropped my stuff off at the hotel, met my old friend Susannah for dinner, texted Sandro before I went to sleep, and woke up feeling relatively refreshed for my flight to Bamako.