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