by Alicia Kopf
J: You need to cherish yourself more. Let yourself shine, use your gifts, stand up for yourself, show yourself, you don’t know it but you can do it another way, transform it, you have a language.
(I fall.)
J: Look straight ahead. Find a fixed point on the wall and keep your eyes there.
(I turn.)
J: OK, that’s it.
“How can you regain your balance when you’ve lost it?”
J: You have to dig deep. You can only find your balance when you can show your vulnerability and face your demons. That’s the only way. It entails an exercise in humility. You won’t be able to be honest or humble until there are no longer any traces of pretense in you.
J adopts the lecturing—not at all humble—tone he likes to adopt in these circumstances. After class I tell him what happened to me.
J: The problem with that person is that he wants to receive. And he gives objects without truly giving. He is giving you external things, he is giving you gifts to ensure reciprocation and to compensate for what he can’t offer. A relationship can have an energy that feeds back into itself, or it can be a short circuit. The spark it gives off produces a lot of light but then leaves you in the dark. And you need the other person more and more to recover that light. As that repeats, you are left in progressively deeper, larger darknesses. That is the mechanism of addiction … What’s his sign?
“Aquarius, like my father.”
J: (Shakes his head, rolls his eyes with a heavy sigh, and laughs.) An Aquarian has to work very hard on individual human relationships, they can be adored on a group level, but face-to-face they have a lot of problems connecting.’
I don’t personally believe in astrology, although I sometimes like to read my horoscope when I’m bored. But I have to admit that R’s personality fit that profile perfectly. I explain that R is very skilled at communicating, and can turn around situations of conflict with ease so he becomes the victim. That doesn’t mean that he has access to what he’s truly feeling. He works hard in the world of music management, but he hasn’t devoted any energy to working on himself, to figuring himself out. I have the feeling he’s avoiding something.
J: That’s typical of an Aquarius. Aquarius is an air sign, even though it circulates in the water element. There’s a lot of emotiveness but it’s not directed, they have a terrific ability to communicate, but it’s not based on anything, it’s pure air. They are the Greenpeace of the zodiac, the ones who help the weak whenever they can, who can move masses, those who can sacrifice themselves for a group cause, but when they get home they’re unable to say “I missed you all day” or “You know what? I’m scared.” Or simply, there will be things in the relationship that aren’t working, but they’ll never address them head-on, it will be obliquely. You understand what I mean?
“I recognize some of it,” I reply, “but only after very serious arguments. And his desire is inconsistent in the same way. It’s especially problematic when things are flowing smoothly. It doesn’t work unless there’s drama, or we haven’t seen each other in a while. Not ever as a predictable thing. And I’m not talking about boredom. I’m talking how after a few months of a relationship you can lay your head on the other person’s shoulder.”
J: Hunt him down, challenge him, dominate him.
“You’ve watched too many music videos.”
Ice Blink
Ice blink is a white light that appears near the horizon, especially on the underside of low clouds, resulting from the reflection of light off a field of ice immediately below them. This luminous effect was valued by both the Inuit and explorers searching for the Northwest Passage, to help them find their orientation and navigate safely.
As I wonder about the journey or the plot guiding this narration, I sense that there’s something I must discover, and until I do I won’t be able to finish. There has to be a conquest. At this point the territory is not yet visible to me. If it were, I wouldn’t write. This isn’t a banal voyage, and it’s no safer than the ones undertaken by the explorers: I feel that my life is at stake. Writers’ prefabricated plots and characters are odd to me, as unknowable as the past and future of people I pass on the street. They come and go, often without us understanding the meaning behind their arrivals or departures. They carry their plots inside them, and often do not include us in the figures they are creating. The actions of others, and sometimes our own, are a mystery to us. Third-person narrations are security fences. Omniscient narrators, pure arrogance. Perhaps I think that because I’m not an author, just an explorer of my limited textual possibilities. Narration as a place to fictionalize memory, which is constructed, partial, voluble, and will be reinvented in the text and therefore always destroyed again in the text. That ax we use to break the frozen sea that inhabits us.
Symzonia.
Paris
March 29, 2015
Presentation of my work for a conference on contemporary art at the Sorbonne Nouvelle. Expenses paid by the Institut Ramon Llull.
It seemed like it was going to rain the whole week but the sun comes out occasionally. H and Ma, a couple of friends who live in a garret at 33 Boulevard de Clichy, let me stay in a double room with views of the Sacré Cœur and Montmartre.
I bring some homework with me; I’m preparing the translation of my first book. Opening those files took me a couple of days and a rainy morning. Finally I revise the text and send it to the translator.
Right before I came I cleared the memory on my iPhone so I could take more photos. The program transferred the thousands of photos taken over a year onto my computer. That new folder contains the entire space of time that my relationship with R lasted. Like that effect they say happens at the moment of your death when your life flashes before you, nine months with R parade before my eyes in just a few minutes. In the photos where we’re on holiday, he is always sleeping; in the hotel, on the beach, on the lounge chairs of the restaurant. The camera outlines details of his body: his hands, his knees, the corner of his mouth, the inner part of his arm, his closed eyes.
March 29, 2015
Lately, during the boring parts of conferences and colloquiums, I think about sex. I wonder if the other attendees are doing the same. Now I write in my notebook as if the speaker had said something very interesting.
L’homme parisien
Morning. Le Pain Quotidien. Everyone seems busy writing a novel here in Paris. In the café I’m at there are people working on their computers, like me, or reading. Part of me would like to be at home, to have a family life. The other wants adventure. I haven’t yet found anyone who can accompany me in both things. It would be amazing to live here for a while. Improve my French. Not work much. Have fun. Watch life from a small round café table.
Afternoon. Le Progrès café, rue de Bretagne, the heart of the Marais.
A guy comes up to me. He seems very French; dirty blond hair and gray eyes. He asks me if he can sit at my table and we chat a little. He is nice, says that he’s an actor. He’s quite a bit younger than me. He’s surprised when I tell him my age. Thirty must be some sort of a psychological barrier for him. But he isn’t scared off. We talk about the theater. Night falls, the actor chivalrously walks me to the house of my friend JM, from my high school days, who has invited me over for dinner.
He insists we meet up some other day.
Why isn’t attraction always mutual? It should be.
“Merci, adieu.”
April 3, 2015
I make a plan with JM and his roommate, A, to have dinner out. It’s late and all the restaurants are closing. I’m wearing my hair straight and shoulder-length—usually it’s long and naturally wavy. I have the feeling that until I was thirty I never styled my hair, I was too busy with my schoolwork and projects. We finally find a restaurant on Rue de Bretagne, in front of Le Marché des Enfants Rouges, and near Le Progrès, where I was approached by the actor. We sit down at one of the small tables outside, warmed by an overhead heater. A g
oes out for a smoke and we see him outside talking to a thirty-something man with black hair. JM sits beside me, elegant as always. He has on a white shirt with a narrow black tie and leather fingerless gloves.
When A comes back to the table he tells me that the guy he was talking to had asked about me: whether I was with him or with JM, and what we were doing that night. He told him that he’d lived all over the world, before finally returning to his native Paris. The guy looks at us from his table, a few meters away.
Disconcerted, I don’t react. The guy, who is there with another man, turns every once in a while in our direction; they’ve already finished their meal. Finally they leave. When the guy stands up, I find him attractive.
The night continues, we go to a few different places and then to Silencio, a club set up by David Lynch. The music is good and we dance a lot. I imagine what could have happened if I’d gotten up from the table to say hi.
April 4, 2015
I wake up late. I go to the Palais de Tokyo. Visitors are greeted by a large-scale piece called “JUST SAY NO TO FAMILY VALUES.” It is the title of a text by John Giorno adapted to a large format by Sowat. I meet up with JM again, today he shows me the Left Bank. It’s raining. Since he has to leave for work later he leaves me on the Boulevard St. Germain and recommends a café: Le Hibou. It’s a sophisticated place, like many of the ones my friend frequents; thanks to his wealthy family he’s always been able to live the life of a postmodern dandy. I arrive, close my umbrella and dry off at one of the narrow tables warmed by heaters hanging from the awnings. It seems like sitting at outside tables is an important activity for Parisians, who are out in equal numbers rain or shine. A couple of French guys two rows away turn brazenly toward me. They say something to each other and one of them leaves. The one remaining is blond, his slightly long hair brushed back, with melancholic blue eyes and a thin moustache. He’s wearing a suit jacket with small brown and green plaid with elbow pads; all that’s missing is a flower in his buttonhole.
As time passes the axis of his torso rotates; instead of looking at the street he has now turned his profile in my direction. Men have a very sensitive radar for women’s energy. The law of attraction depends exclusively on that, on the energy that is given off at certain moments. Expectation mixed with confidence is one of the energies that attracts them most, and these days in Paris have me glowing. It doesn’t happen to me often, that feeling that some call self-confidence even though it’s not exactly the same thing. He picks up a book and seems to be very focused on taking notes, but still keeps his head lifted in my direction. A woman arrives and sits down next to him. She’s wearing a lot of makeup, and clothing and accessories with expensive brand logos, all so ostentatious that they could be fakes. Her long black hair reaches her waist and is slightly scorched from so much straightening. A few seconds later she takes his head in her hands and kisses him passionately. He seems to accept it willingly, albeit passively. Shortly after, she rummages through her bag, looking for something and she gets up on her way to the bathroom. He turns toward me again with the book in his hand; he hasn’t put it down at any point. He looks at me, and he smiles at me. I smile back, open my umbrella, and leave.
I imagine a secret local community of bookish gigolos living off of the romantic fantasies of wealthy young women.
Whatsapp
April 5, 2015
[R:] You look very pretty in your whatsapp photo.
Thanks. C’est Paris.
(End of the conversation.)
April 14, 2015
[R:] Today would be our one-year anniversary. I’ll wait for you at the restaurant where we first had dinner together. If you don’t come I won’t bother you again.
I can’t. Maybe another day.
(End of the conversation.)
April 19, 2015
I return to the routine of teaching. On Friday I’m called into the principals’ office in the middle of a class. The two principals of that elite school tell me that they are happy with me but that they need more English teachers. They indicate to me with their attitude that there is no possibility of negotiation or further explanation. I try to ask for reasons but they repeat what they’ve already said. That I will finish out the year and they will terminate my contract. That I shouldn’t worry, they will give me very good references.
“Okay.”
I go back to class. The kids are working serenely. Last hired, first fired; the cheapest one to let go of, even when there’s a steady contract; it’s very easy these days to get rid of an employee. Luckily I don’t have a mortgage and haven’t even really considered having children … maybe they chose me just for that reason … The woman who does the remedial classes, and who’s involved with the owner of the school wanted my language class … If they give that one to her and the other to my colleague in the department, they’ll save one salary … Any mistake I could have made, any setback … They can always find some reason. Someone take me away from here, far away.
April 20, 2015
[Me, in a WhatsApp to R:] OK. Let’s get together. Take me to the sea.
April 23, 2015
R picks me up in his mother’s sports car. He is wearing a shirt with small white flowers on a navy blue background that he bought last summer when we were on holiday, and jeans, and yellow sneakers that match the car. His look, this time, is a bit comic.
“I was dying to see you,” he says. His enthusiasm sometimes borders on the manic.
During lunch, in an expensive restaurant at some port in the Maresme, he reasserts himself:
“I’m sure: I want to be with you.”
He gets up from the other side of the table and kisses me passionately. His lips are fleshy and fickle, and with the enthusiasm of the moment they heat up very quickly, becoming warm and welcoming. But they can cool off just as quickly. That’s the case with every part of his body and his soul. We end up in bed together.
April 24, 2015
Today he isn’t so sure.
June 1, 2015
Swamped with work; classes, an exhibition and a new edition to revise, translate, and send to press. I swallow my pride and show up punctually to work every day, as if nothing has happened. Someone else might have raised Cain over being let go without good reason, but I can’t take the risk of losing my right to unemployment because of a disciplinary offense (which they could claim if they didn’t want to arrange for my papers). On the other hand my students aren’t to blame, so I try not to let them notice. The woman who does the remedial classes asks me for my syllabus for next year; she will be teaching my subject. Rumors spread through the school and the kids ask me if it’s true that the owner and their future teacher are having a thing.
In an attempt to cheer myself up after recent events, I ask my mother if I could organize a lunch with friends at the house. She says no without any logical reason. She has to clean before the renters arrive. I tell her that we can eat in the garden, and that she has a whole month before they get there. The answer is “no.” The wall of authoritarianism, the steamroller. Rain of ash. I’m thrown back into my adolescence. The situation relived now, and already lived thousands of times, takes me back to the deepest pit of my high school years, pummeled with punishments for my rebelliousness. Because I always “asked for too much,” and because “it’s not possible.” I will never know if I got through those years despite her or thanks to her. I call R to ask for consolation, consolation which he gives me coldly. The next day he sends me some messages that suggest something isn’t going right. I call him in the middle of important tasks, thinking that it’s urgent. R tells me over the phone that he’s scared. That he doesn’t feel able to give me what I need. That it’s best if we leave it be. I ask him coolly if he’s aware that this sudden change of opinion dynamites a year-long relationship. He says yes. I say goodbye calmly, the way I do when I’m overwhelmed by situations and I save them to deal with later. I finish work, go out and get my scooter. I explode inside the helmet, the crying helmet.
June 3, 2015
Moments of sun alternate with gusts of pain and longing that cut through my chest with the whimper of a dog that’s been run over.
Rage and Thaw
Pyrenees Mini-Break
Friday night. I have a completely free weekend ahead of me, perfect for frittering away in see-sawing emotions—rage-longing-rage-longing—and wasting time on social media, and finally going to see my family mostly just to remember I have one. I get an email from G, who I haven’t seen much for a long while, perhaps since the last time I was single, four years ago. I call her and she says that she’s going up to the Pyrenees that very evening. That she’ll spend the night there with a friend and his dog.
“Is it a date?” I ask her.
“No.”
G’s friends are very different to the ones in my circles, normally tied to the cultural sector.
“Pack a bag quickly, we’ll come pick you up.”
I don’t have any equipment, and am quite the city mouse, but I improvise a rucksack best I can. She brings me a sleeping bag and mat. G is impulsive, almost to the point of recklessness. She went by herself to the Himalayas. In many regards I would say that she is the person I know who is most my opposite. I say that because of her explosive power—as opposed to my British unflappability—combined with a certain, very punctual malice. G, however, is always willing to help others in difficult moments. I, on the other hand, am usually focused on my projects, and that leads people not to think of me as someone they can count on. In a family where the mother always works, the father’s not around, and there’s an autistic brother, it’s best to entertain yourself. G grew up with four siblings, and is used to working in a team. She is one of those people who show up for moving day and at hospitals, and usually have their doors open. That is highly prized in this era of people alone in front of their computers.