Towards the end of the day there is Clémentine at the door. Anna! she says, rummaging in her tote bag. Lamia gave me this book and it’s incredible and I wanted to tell you about it right away. It’s about this woman – fuck that’s not it – she’s in love with this guy and so much so – ah there it is, and she pulls out a copy of Chris Kraus’s I Love Dick – so much so that she is willing to debase herself by writing him all these letters! And so it isn’t really about him at all, it’s really about desire and daring to make art, and the importance, for a woman artist, of being blatantly narcissist in order to actually become who she is. But! she says, flipping through the dog-eared pages, this is what I wanted to tell you about. She finds the passage, reads aloud in her accented English. Desire isn’t lack, it’s surplus energy – a claustrophobia inside your skin.

That’s it, she says. That’s why I can’t get on with Lacan. I don’t see my desire as a lack of something. Not a phallus, not some substitute for it, but like – it’s like some people plant this seed of energy in you, that loads of other people don’t. And as it takes root I feel like I’m shimmering with excitement, and need to get physically close to them, to share it, to feel their shimmer. Do you know what I mean? And I think I know what she means, I think I have been trying to share Clémentine’s shimmer this whole time, and I pull her closer, and then she says something that makes me wonder what exactly we’ve been doing this whole time.