by Nelly Arcan
She’d gotten into the habit of drinking every day from afternoon onward, always vodka or white wine, when it wasn’t both. But she wasn’t going to continue, she had prepared a plan to limit the damage. First, she would get her appetite back through physical exercise and giving up alcohol; once her appetite returned, her sleep patterns would normalize, and once she slept better she would simply follow the program she’d prepared to recover the pride she’d had as a dominant woman, an Alpha Female. She would act upon her life, she wouldn’t let herself die a second time, she’d promised herself that much, it was better to kill herself once and for all, or kill someone else.
Her affair with Charles was a misunderstanding. She should have seen it from the start, she knew it was impossible for anyone, man or woman, to recover from great trauma in the past, she knew that a child’s redemption from insane parents was only a story you told yourself, another lie gladly spoken. She should have known, she knew from the start that Charles was a fashion photographer, and she had encountered early on the deviancy through which he found pleasure, and she had gone so far as to love it.
After an hour on the treadmill, Julie decided to leave the overcrowded gym for Java U, to eat and write.
From Charles and photography, she moved on to another subject associated with it, closer to women in general and herself in particular, a subject that would certainly raise interest among Quebec’s larger television networks. She’d gotten a producer to read a description of the project, and following a discussion, he decided to send the document out. Not long after, they were called to pitch the idea to Radio-Canada, everyone at the table knew them, she had a reputation, one that wasn’t all good. She wanted to talk about images as cages, in a world where women, more and more naked, more and more photographed, covered themselves in lies, they had to find ever more fantastic means, spend greater sums of time and money and pain, use technical and medical means to build masks, substitute their bodies with an infallible uniform, impermeable, with the passage of time they risked going too far and becoming monsters like Michael Jackson, Cher, and Donatella Versace. In all societies, from the most traditional to the most liberal, women’s bodies couldn’t be shown, or not really, not the real body. The real body of women remained unbearable, fundamentally disturbing. When this unbearable side turned to obsession, each and every woman took the most extreme means to treat the illness, means to destruction or infinite manipulation, always to control men’s erections, the absolute core of human society.
In that context, Charles couldn’t hold centre stage, he became just a creator of images, a manufacturer of uniforms. Besides, love and its related states didn’t interest her in writing, her motor was indignation, an emotion far more stable and durable, where the forces of proclamation intervened.
Julie was fleshing out these ideas when a hand fell upon on her shoulder, a small, soft, moist hand that touched her without touching her, with disdain. Julie looked up, already weary and annoyed.
“Hello, Julie. You’re pale. You look out of shape.”
Rose was standing there. She was tanned and elegantly dressed, without that haggard air the time she’d been caught at the Baguette Dorée. Rose had that fresh self-confidence women have when they stand before others uglier than they are, others whose mental distress can be read in the pallor of their skin.
“How strange. You showed up just as I was writing about you. Since you’ve been away, you’ve become my protagonist.”
Rose was stunned. Of all potential replies, she hadn’t prepared for that one.
“Oh, really? So Charles left?”
“I pushed him out. Out of my script, not my life. Sit down, let’s talk.”
“I was just going by when I saw you. I’ve got other things to do.”
“I don’t believe you. Something tells me you’re here for a reason. I don’t know why.”
An employee opened the door to get some fresh air into the café and kept it open with a hook, letting the noise of the street pour in.
“Ever since the Baguette Dorée, I get the feeling you’re hanging around,” Julie continued.
Outside, tires screeched, then came the noise of a collision between two cars. Everyone in the café turned, except Julie and Rose. Customers moved toward the window and exchanged their opinions, all except Rose and Julie, trapped in their duel.
“First, it isn’t true. Second, if you want to tell me something, I don’t need to be sitting down.”
“As you like. The subject of fashion photography has moved toward the torturing of the body as something that needs to be illuminated. I’m thinking of the title The Burqa of Skin for a documentary. It could tell the story of women who bury their bodies through relentless aesthetic efforts.”
Outside, people had gathered on the sidewalks, watching the increasingly hectic traffic caused by the accident. Rose stood with her mouth open, unable to adjust to the situation.
“I’ll never be part of that. You’re crazy.”
“Wait. Let me finish. I could be in it too.”
“Then it’ll be worse.”
“I thought we could be Charles’ models. We could do a shoot together that would be filmed by a cameraman I know. For the documentary, the actual shoot would be the subject, more than the pictures themselves.”
Life was tightening around Rose, the movements of the sky continued to indicate the path to follow, events were making a way for her, she just needed to let herself go. That’s what destiny was, to be carried along by the current, helping it gain speed, letting yourself float in all your glory, like Ophelia. The idea of a shoot and her as a model, even if she wasn’t alone, added to the prospect of her modified pussy. A light lit up in Rose’s eyes, one that Julie had predicted—and noticed.
“We could wait for the sun, the month of July, and meet on the roof again. Think about it.”
“Whatever. But I doubt it,” Rose answered out of principle.
Then Rose smiled, thinking of how Julie would react when she gazed upon her Pussy. More than ever, she hated her.
CHARLES WAS IN his studio, in front of the computer whose screen displayed parts of women’s bodies on which he clicked to zoom in on and observe every detail. He had a stubborn erection but he couldn’t get himself to come. In his whole life, he’d never felt so weary, of himself and the world that had given birth to him. Rose wasn’t there to help carry the burden of shame and disgust, she wasn’t there and she’d been replaced by Julie, who had him by the balls.
He resented her for constantly making him feel ashamed of his tastes, he resented her for the way she made him feel that his pleasures were a pathology, always bringing back this business with his father, bringing the old man into their bed, where he was least welcome. Unlike Julie, Rose wasn’t a bomb about to go off, nor was she constantly judging. And she didn’t have that past as an alcoholic and didn’t let herself drift off the same way, pain didn’t have the same power of destruction over her, pain causing death.
Of the two women, Rose was best for him, even if she was less passionate than Julie. But when he thought about it, he really just wanted to be alone, he wanted neither Rose nor Julie, it was time to move on to something completely different, a string of one-night stands while he was still young, barely thirty years old.
At least that’s what he thought he wanted, but he wasn’t sure about anything when it came to his future and women. Charles wasn’t feeling right, and he didn’t understand why. It wasn’t because Rose was gone, and it wasn’t Julie, not really. It wasn’t Julie but it was something to do with her, her state, what she said to him, the way he felt her spiralling down to a place he had escaped from, but just barely, when he was younger. He hadn’t been feeling right ever since Julie had started going wrong, there was no doubt, she had a kind of sorcery that made him anxious, black magic that punished his desires with pain and insults, shouts and sermons.
Charles was still looking at the screen, his hand on his cock, but he wasn’t seeing the images anymore. A g
reat malaise had come over him the day Julie made her first scene, shouting in his loft in the middle of the afternoon, already drunk and in tears, ranting about what he was doing in his studio with his fashion models and his computer, what he was doing behind her back, she waited all day for him and depended on him so much. She was pacing around the apartment, throwing pillows every which way, pieces of crumpled paper, books she’d gotten her hands on, terrorizing her three cats who’d hid under the bed, three Siamese bundles with blue eyes that watched their step, sensing the storm. She went on and on about her own father, a true Irishman who never cheated on her mother, her father, she yelled, looking at the ceiling as if she were speaking to God himself, was the man who’d loved her most in the world, who had loved her so much that everyone else was just a disappointment, ready to sacrifice her, she continued to rage.
She was sure he needed help, he needed to see someone, a horrible expression Charles despised, see like looking through, like an exam, a subject of a study. Then she said she would die, and nothing less, then swore to him, her finger pointing at him in anger, that she would never, ever let herself be controlled, this time she would stand her ground. She threatened him with one idea after another, tumbling out, talking about his computer she hoped to destroy, blow up, throw out the window.
Charles had only one thought: run away. Get out of sight of this insanity unfolding before him like a production, a play. It strangled him, it was a scene of suffocation, insanity far less insane than his own father but it was strangely similar, it grew in intensity with the same immoderation, spreading itself everywhere, the opposite of breathing, the opposite of love and desire. All that was missing were mutant creatures and G-men, the destruction of humanity glimpsed in tea leaves and the Earth as well; all that was missing was an eye in the pussy designed to watch him and keep him under surveillance.
Since that day, he started having problems sleeping and even eating. He wasn’t finishing his meals, he ate only fish and vegetables and barely any at that—mastication required such concentration. At night he’d wake up with his father Pierre in mind, and Diane and Marie-Claude too. He had a bad feeling about his mother and his sister—perhaps they were in danger. Instead of worrying about Julie, he worried about his family, as if Julie, in her anguish, threatened his family. Julie demanded his attention, but she was only the door that opened onto his memories and adolescent terror. She was his nightmare.
“You’re sick!” she would scream at him, and those words made him feel cold all over, a nameless fear, noises and doubts, intentions hidden behind the physical world, cancerous, manipulative, knowing.
There was no logic behind these new feelings that quickly turned into unshakable convictions, then premonitions. He called his mother a number of times to try and see how she was doing, and each time she attempted to calm him, each time he felt she was hiding something from him because of a word, the tone of her voice, because of noises in the background where something, he was sure, was hidden, ready to harm, he couldn’t say what, but he felt something was ready to harm, like an oracle hidden in the closet. Whatever she told him, he heard something else.
He was surprised to learn that Marie-Claude went to live in the United States, in Connecticut, for six months, to learn English, the same story his father had invented to keep him away from his mother and sister, a story in which he, Charles, would leave for a year to learn English in Connecticut, in the United States, which was a complete lie. When he told his mother that the stories coincided, and that the resemblance was hard to believe, she admitted as much, she told him it was strange, she herself had thought about it and it had troubled her, but what could she do, after all Connecticut was the state that welcomed the greatest number of Quebeckers in English immersion. His sister was going there, it had all been organized, she would be there next month, she’d found a family with an American girl her age, that girl would come to Quebec later on for French immersion.
Then he learned, once again from Diane, that Pierre, who’d been at the Robert-Giffard Psychiatric Hospital for the past fifteen years, would soon be released, like many other patients. Nobody knew exactly when, but it would be soon. He could be released any day now to go and live in a pre-selected apartment not far from the hospital, held there in case he relapsed, a sure thing for severe cases like his, since he lived under tight surveillance, surrounded by powerful enemies.
Charles couldn’t believe that his father, whom he hadn’t seen in eight years and who, on his end, didn’t seem to recognize anyone anymore, could live in the real world with his delirium and imprecations and, who knows, even track down ghosts, which might include his mother, his sister, and himself.
In the studio, the temperature was dropping; outside the wind beat against the large windows hidden by drapes. On his computer screen were still pieces of women fallen into obsolescence, worn threadbare by past masturbation. Charles knew what he had to do: go hunting, find new parts.
An hour and a half later, he ejaculated three miserable drops on his screen. He released his seed in small dry pleasure, woeful, with great sadness in his heart, weary, so lacking in pleasure that for a moment he thought of beating Julie to the punch and throwing his computer on the ground.
CHARLES WAS HOLDING Julie’s hand. She had cried a long time on her brown leather couch where he liked to take her, when he wasn’t doing it on the floor, on the hardwood. Besides firm bodies, he liked feeling cramped in bed, he hated having sex in the softness of mattresses and the flickering light of candles, he liked the constraint of a hard surface.
“You’re sick,” she was saying, “but I don’t know what to do with your sickness. I just know it’s impossible to cure, it’s too deep. Your sickness is a god that orders you around. I’m not made to obey it. I want to give myself to a man, not a sickness, even if it comes from you. Even if it’s your god.”
Charles couldn’t stand the words anymore, Julie felt as much. She was tired of hearing herself think them. It was hard for her to describe the situation in words, usually she talked too much and made people think she knew everything. She felt terrible, but wouldn’t give up and admit defeat. What she wanted, even more than to be loved, was to fight and resist, show she was stronger than him by breaking down his limits, no matter what.
“Being in a relationship with you means engaging in self-harm. It means intentionally hurting myself.”
“I’m not asking anything of you. You talk like I was forcing you to stay here.”
They were sitting side by side, looking at the lemon still in the lemon tree, not yet fallen, yellow, enormous, bigger than a tennis ball.
“But I want to be able to give you something.”
“I know, I’m sorry. But stop pushing. And please stop drinking because of it, I beg of you.”
After these sorts of discussions—more and more frequent—Julie calmed down most of the time and would set out to seduce him, squeeze an erection out of him with the same tools that made them ashamed and that she endlessly brought back to the table, after they “consumed,” after she’d been to the “slaughterer’s,” she told him cynically.
Julie didn’t consent the way Rose had, but in a way she went further. She didn’t try to cause him to swell through plastic surgery alone—no, she was an innovator, she knew she had to push her body toward ugliness, and not beauty, splendour, and health.
In the past weeks, she’d cut herself of her own volition, first her breasts, then between her legs, with a razor blade, opening dozens of deep cuts in her skin and daring Charles to take his pleasure there.
Her wounds threw Charles into ecstasy, then he paid for it with deep, disturbing distress. Shame, always shame like a mirror discovering a slab of meat, magnifying it, rigor mortis that didn’t stop him and that Julie overcame, as a challenge, to hurt him too, he who gave into her initiative and her trap. Fucking her was like throwing himself into the devil’s jaws.
That night, after the argument, Julie decided to return to submissiveness, as a str
ategy, a ruse, then something that had never happened before occurred. Julie lay flat on her back on the floor, open, her breasts overflowing from the bra she was wearing that was far too tight. Fresh cuts showed angry red on her breasts from being pinched and scratched and maintained. On her left shoulder she still had the fading yellow bruises of her former injury that gave her skin a sickly tone. Everywhere else her skin was white, almost translucent, brindled with brown tones, and her emaciated body and vacant eyes made him feverish.
His erection was solid, and it reassured him. He touched the cuts with his fingers, and scratched at them to test the firmness of the implant on the other breast, then concentrated on her wounds again. A few minutes passed and then, without warning, as he played out the performance he knew by heart and had executed a thousand times, a scene he’d always been a part of, developed to perfection, integrated into his world, his logic, his mechanical preferences, Julie slid away from him—he could see the wounds on her breasts, he could see her breasts, face, her body, but from kilometres away. Her body cast him out, distanced him, though Julie had done nothing at all, she had remained in the requisite motionless state, eyes closed, passive, a corpse.
For the first time, Charles was seeing Julie’s naked body and it was a crude expression of nudity, fear-inducing, sickening like Truth. For the first time he encountered its brutality, the cold matter of it, without a purpose, without intention, nothing, an object, a flat tire. That thing did not beckon him to her, it felt neither pleasure nor displeasure, but Charles felt something he had never encountered before until after the act: disgust. Suddenly he lost his erection and even wiped the fingers that had touched the cut on his shorts, then he got up from the couch and looked around, lost.