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During the first days Lóri was bothered because she was sure Ulisses was waiting. It pained her for the roses to wilt and for him pathetically to replace them with others that would wilt too. It consoled her to think that his wait wouldn’t be too painful for him, since he was an extremely patient man who was capable of suffering. So she calmed down. She thought now that the ability to bear suffering was the measure of a person’s greatness and saved that person’s inner life.
In reading Lispector’s books, I learn about the structure of the relationship between a human and God, between a human and herself, and between a human and the other; in this case, both the other who is just another person one has slept with and lost desire for, and the Other who holds your life’s happiness in their hands. This second Other is the elemental force that drives the life of the loving one, while the other other has no power at all and might as well not even exist. Why is life like this? How can so much importance (for the one who loves) be concentrated in a random, Other, singular individual, while diffused among the rest is nothing, and we are able to stride past them with complete indifference?
What is this Other capable of that the other other could never do? In one sense (unhappy as this is to write) the Other is the one who circumscribes our limits. With the choice of who to love, we end up in a city, with a side of the bed on which to sleep, and a certain set of friends (growing further apart from those who are not invited over because one’s partner does not like them). We watch certain shows, not others. And the Other circumscribes our limits metaphysically, too. Maybe this procedure is necessary, in order for our lives to have a form. Just as the art-impulse must take a certain form — a sculpture, a play, a novel, a dance — so does the election of a specific Other shape our blobbish life-impulse into a specific form. I am now thinking of the part of the novel where Claire writes, “Lóri had a kind of dread of going, as if she could go too far — in what direction? Which was making it hard to go . . . There was a certain fear of her own capacity, large or small, maybe because she didn’t know her own limits. Were the limits of a human divine? They were.”
All love stories must have their obstacles: religion, parents, a stone wall. The obstacle in this book is that we may be unfit for love, plain and simple: because we haven’t lived in such a way that we have let ourselves be fit for it; we haven’t even lived in such a way that we have made ourselves fit for life. For God. For sex. For anything! We slack off on the spiritual level, always. We guess no one’s going to see it. Who’s looking? Even we are not. Then someone like Ulisses comes along and says, You cannot have me until you do the difficult work of being a human that you have been putting off. (And inwardly, the man says to himself, I am also not worthy of her, and cannot have her until I make myself fit for love, too.)
Is this book a fantasy, in a way? While some writers might fantasize about a man coming along who will shower a woman in diamonds and install her in a penthouse, Clarice Lispector, the great mystic, spins a fantasy of having an explicit reason for doing the most difficult labor a person is capable of: the work of becoming an actual human being in this world. Here, the motive to do the work is to win the love of a man. (But a man is not just some guy; he represents one of the elemental forces of the universe — the masculine force that sets the difficult task in motion, of impelling the feminine force, which would otherwise sit, roundly, alone. What woman has not felt that unfortunate thing, that some man, not yet won, was “like the border between the past and whatever was to come”? Yet in a way, isn’t Ulisses asking Lóri to find the masculine force within herself, before coming to him? Or to find it in herself so she doesn’t come to him seeking it, then get bored of what she’s found, like any woman who goes from man to man, never satisfied because she’s mistaken about what she is looking for, really? Yes. Any woman wanting any sort of lasting happiness has to realize that she can — and must — be the impelling force that moves herself through the world.)
I go swimming every day, I have a muscular back and shoulders, I have short hair that's brown with a bit of gray at the front, I have part of a Caravaggio tattooed on my left arm and delicate lettering on my stomach that says Son of a Bitch, I'm tall and slim, I have small breasts, I have a ring in my right ear, I wear jeans, canvas pants, black or white T-shirts, men's shirts in summer, an old leather jacket and Converse or Church's, I don't wear a bra, I sleep in men's gray Oxford boxers, I don't wear makeup, I brush my teeth three times a day, I don't use deodorant, I don't sweat a lot but sometimes I like to, the cologne I wear is called Habit Rouge, sometimes I feel like switching to something else but the girls like it, so I stick with it, I also smell of chlorine, what with all the swimming, I smoke Marlboro lights in the evening, I don't drink a lot, I don't take drugs, I live in Paris in a studio near Denfert Rochereau, I don't have any furniture apart from a double mattress I got from a discount store on rue Saint Maur and a plank of wood with trestles, 17.90 euro the set from Bricorama on Avenue Flandre, I don't like stuff, I don't have any pans, cutlery, or plates apart from a few disposable ones, so I don't have to do any washing up, I don't have any money because I don't give a shit, I'd rather write than work, I don't feel 47, I guess I'll wake up one day and suddenly be old, unless I die before then, like my mother did, apart from the fact that I don't see my son anymore, everything's going well, he's eight, my son, then he'll be nine, then ten, then eleven, his name is Paul, he's great.
[...] So I spit it out, I say, I've started seeing girls. Just in case there was any doubt in his mind, with the new short hair, the new tattoos, the look in general. It's basically the same as before, obviously just a bit more distinct. It's not as if he never had his doubts. We had a little chat about it, a good ten years ago. I said, Nope, no idea what you're talking about. I mean I'm dating girls, I say to him now. Fucking girls would be more accurate. He says, All I want is for you to be happy. This sounds like a lie but it suits me fine, I don't reply. He's barely touched his croque monsieur, he lights a cigarette, calls the waiter over, orders more champagne. That's what he's drinking these days, he says it agrees with him, that it makes him feel less shitty in the morning. The check comes, he pays, we leave. Instead of going his own way on Boulevard Saint-Germain, he walks me towards the Seine. When we get to my door, he goes to follow me upstairs, as if we hadn't been separated for three years, as if I hadn't just told him what I just told him. I say no, he says, Have it your way.
lmao
The next day he messages me, Yesterday was nice what are you doing tonight? I thought we'd settled things but maybe he's thought about it and wants to talk some more. We've hardly seen each other in three years, I liked it just fine that way. But I agree to meet him, I tell myself I probably owe him that much. He comes to pick me up outside my house in a taxi, it looks like he's made an effort, he's made reservations at a restaurant in another district, a fairly chic place in the courtyard of an hôtel particulier. He talks to the waiters like a regular, he orders a good wine like a connoisseur, he acts like some guy trying to impress his girlfriend. Maybe this is what he does now with girls, maybe he wants to show me, try out his techniques. He wanted to meet but he's not saying anything, he's not asking any questions, not a word about yesterday, nothing about him or me, we talk about holidays, foreign countries, books we've read, as though we're politely humoring each other on a date that's not going anywhere. He wants us to walk home together, I make sure there's enough space between our bodies, not too close, not too far, as if everything were normal. The Marais, the Seine, Notre-Dame, we're like a Chinese couple on honeymoon. Once again he walks me right to my door, once again he wants to come up with me, to kiss me, once again he seems surprised when I say no.
lmao
First there was Socrates, then Jesus, then Oscar Wilde, and now me. We're a select few. And while I'm at it, there was also Spinoza: “Cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night; cursed be he when he lies down and cursed be he when he rises up; The Lord will not spare him.” You just don't get that kind of writing from the Judicial Court of Paris these days. No great life is complete without a trial, you have to ruffle a few feathers, you can't just be a good little child all your life.
I took the first apartment I could find, 500 euros for 100ft2 just behind the Pantheon. There's a little square downstairs, a few cafes, students everywhere, a kebab shop called With Or Without Fries, a Lebanese restaurant opposite that sells chicken kebab for 4.90 euro, the swimming pool isn't far, I have a fridge that I have to unplug at night because of the noise, a plastic plant on the windowsill, a mattress on wooden slats, two drawers, a shower in the corner of the room, a laundromat just downstairs, the place gets no natural light in the day but there's a bright light coming from a spotlight just beneath the window at night, the phone doesn't work, it's a bit like a cave, I'm stealing WiFi from the neighbors. 100ft2 is the size of a prison cell or a monk's cell. It's very Ignatius of Loyola, very spiritual retreat. There's a certain joy that comes from doing things you didn't think yourself capable of.
<3
It's the tipping point, the Kairos, it's like the conversion of Saint Augustine, just as radical. It's not just a matter of him believing in God or me liking women, it's the fact that there's a life before and a life after. For me, homosexuality isn't about who I'm fucking, it's about who I become. With men there was always a limit, now I have all the space I want, I feel like I can do anything. Women, love, sex, in the beginning it was all new and exciting, but not anymore. It's all still there, of course, it's still the subject matter of what's happening to me, but it's not important, like the décor of a room, I have to go beyond that to find what I'm looking for. For me, homosexuality just means taking a break from everything. That's exactly what it is, a long vacation, expansive as the sea with nothing on the horizon, nothing to close it, nothing to define it. That's why I quit my job. To be both the master and the slave, the only one responsible for setting the limits. Work, family, apartments, finito. And you can't imagine how good it feels.