Portrait 10

My own boy

I had no idea how long it had been since that telephone call. Unaware that catatonic stupor had vanquished me, I lay motionless fending off the incessant reverberations of your voice. And then you texted me. Don't you love me any more? you asked.

When I was sane I was sure I had lost my capacity for love. I even looked at that portrait I have of you and listened to Sweaters every morning and compulsively sang along: I no longer love the way you hold your pens. And pencils. I no longer love. It. Your mouth. Your eyes. The way you hold your pens. And pencils. I no longer love. You.

The message was fake, of course. Like everything else. Within seconds of my apparent relapse, I knew the message had been sent by a nurse, or a demon, that stole your phone to cure me, or to accelerate the course of the disease. Nevertheless, the descent of the bell jar can no longer be stopped: I look forward to holding you again; I cannot wait to taste the colour of your semen; I jump for joy at the prospect of orgasming inside you.

Esther would have been proud of me.

Iris

Portrait 9

My own boy,

I was away. Recuperating. On the island where the poetess spent a year and a half incarcerated. She is, of course, dead now, like everybody else.

For a few days I managed to think of you very little: only when I lay in bed late at night trying to sleep and when I swam out to the deepest seas trying to hear the laughter of the abyss. I almost thought I would manage to forget what your face looked like, what your body felt like, what your voice sounded like.

I sat on the edge of a cliff contemplating the forthcoming joy of oblivion. I sang Come away death to the rooks crowing above my head. And then I saw the bottle. It could have been any bottle but I had no doubt the message it contained was from you. And it was, of course. You are determined that I should crave for you for ever. I miss you, it said, my Iris. It is I.

And it all came back: the face, the body, the voice; the abyss.

The messages kept coming day after day, sometimes twice a day. They only stopped when I made the decision to come back to the place where you can find me. I have been waiting for you. Again. And dreaming of posing for you. Motionless. Speechless. Lifeless.

Iris

Portrait 8

My own boy,

Funny that I should still call you that. It was already devastatingly presumptuous before, when I thought I was still allowed to deceive myself that there was a chance that we might kiss. The allusion to Bosie was, of course, deliberate and it was in full cognizance of his infidelities that I thus compared you to him; perhaps I was also aware, on a less conscious level, of the impending imprisonment.

A lot has happened since the last time I wrote to you as Iris, a lot whose significance you naturally do not suspect. We had that dinner together by the sea. We met each other's friends. We talked about our lives. I talked about my feelings. I explained, in so many words, that I love you, that I am in love with you, that my life was meaningless before I met you, that there is no other body I have ever really wanted to be in. You did not respond. I did not seem to mind.

And then, you said it was final: we were not to meet again. I smiled. I said good luck, then, with your life. I meant of course your life without me, because clearly there would be no more hints of my existence.

So now. These portraits are the only hint of my existence. I shall continue painting them in fond remembrance of what might have been. I shall continue painting them in murderous recognition of what was not. And if I should die, it will make no difference: I have always been the misplaced ghost of someone who only caught a glimpse of existence when somebody else claimed that a telegram was her portrait.

Iris

Portrait 7

My own boy

Would it have been worthwhile after all?

If we had actually fucked, and we had had the most intense orgasms of our lives, and we had fallen madly in love with each other, and we had disregarded the shapes and the arrangements that must keep us apart, and we had elected to spend most of our time in each other, savouring each other's sperm, would it have been worth it, after all?

Last night I had left my phone on the bedside table, in silent mode. I was lying in bed and writing a story about a man who had been abandoned by a man who he had never been with. I needed to think about my choice of words in a particularly mundane phrase and my eyes wondered away from the notebook that I was writing in. And I saw the phone. And I looked at the screen. And there was one unanswered call, which had been aborted literally five seconds before. It was you, of course.

Of course, we never actually manage to speak to each other. We have never spoken. I keep trying every day, to no avail: there is no answer, ever. And you have now called me twice; in both cases I was at a loss for words and unable to answer.

And then I write these letters. Which you do not read. Which you will not read. And even if you did read them, you would still have no idea whose self-portrait I am painting or who I am lusting after. These pointless letters.

And yet it is not true that I merely lust after you. Love is the face of this addiction.

Iris

Portrait 6

My own boy

I was re-reading Sontag's Syberberg essay in an effort to concentrate on something other than you and it occurred to me that these portraits have become my Trauerarbeit, now that it is crystal clear that there will be no more encounters between you and me, now that you have made it crystal clear that you do not desire me.

Perhaps you never did. I am debating the conclusion that the events of the last few months did not in fact happen. That I am not aware of having hallucinated at such length at any time in my past does not necessarily mean that I have not been hallucinating in the last few months either.

Perhaps I ought to even question your existence. In pursuit of a sanity that I seem to have lost the moment I saw your naked body.

Perhaps I ought to stop painting these portraits.

[And yet, I am the portrait of Iris Clert, a man in fact, a man in awe of you, a man that cannot survive outside you.]

Talk to me.

Iris

Portrait 5

My own boy,

Even though I have sensed this is an ending, I still feel I need to call you my own.

I have been through a number of endings, but none that has not been preceded by the beginning it deserved.

We have been ambiguous. In the messages we exchanged, in our telephone conversations, in our face to face encounters, in our body to body contacts, we have consistently failed to speak. It should therefore come as no surprise to either of us that we have no words left which we might say to each other.

Notwithstanding the ambiguity, I continue to regret that I never attempted to enter you bare, that I never urged you to enter me bare; I continue to feel the lack.

And yet, I still have no face and no voice. I am not even read, let alone fucked, let alone loved. By you.

Iris

Portrait 4

My golden boy,

So you will not see me, you will not know me.

This was in fact the most unpleasant conversation we had ever had. When I called you, you were busy reorganising your life.

Still, you did not hang up on me. Not directly. Of course, I should have known I could not be part of it: I can provide the venue, I can watch you paint everything white, I can then welcome the audience into the vast whiteness, but I shall always be excluded.

The worst part is I cannot even be in the audience. In some peculiar manner I am the host.

This is a difficult moment. I cannot even be sure whose portrait I am.

I will miss you.

Iris