iris clert

Portrait 14

2011-01-04T22:58:00.003+02:00

My dear boy,

We had this talk the other day. You had already turned into a frog, I had not noticed, and I had no idea you had never been a prince anyway. So I said,

You know, in addition to loving you, I am also in love with you. And also, I am, in my apparent meekness, strong enough to know and to speak the truth, in full cognizance of the devastating consequences. Because, my dear boy, when you are my age and you have been through a lot of rejections, and a lot of deception, and an awful lot of sheer balllessness, and meaninglessness, and ersatz, you have to take full responsibility and you have to fight. Even if it means risking everything that appears to be holding your life together - when in fact all it does is create the illusion of survival.

And then you turned into a frog: a ballless, meaningless frog in a quagmire of ersatz.

And you still have not wiped that retarded, self-important smirk off your reptilian face; and why should you - after all, I still write for you and I still write to you.

Iris

Portrait 13

2010-11-20T19:52:00.004+02:00

My own boy

It feels oddly safe, writing these letters whose existence you are unaware of. I do not think I will ever tell you about these letters. And there is, of course, noone else that can understand them. No need for this funereal congregation, the sparse audience of my demolition, my holocaust.

I have written so much to you elsewhere. So much, and so packed, that I thought it was a finegan in progress. Until I realised, late last night, while my body was aching with sehnsucht, that it was a leviathan I had created instead. A pointless leviathan.

No letters would have needed to be written, no novels, no poems. No portraits would have needed to have been painted. If you had ever wanted me.

Iris

Portrait 12

2010-10-31T16:39:00.003+02:00

My own boy,

Even though a year ago these letters were addressed to someone else, someone that you hated because he wanted me and because he abandoned me, it dawned on me that I did not need to change anything about them, or about their sequence, now that we know the quagmire ought to have been named after you right from the start.

And even though I have often touched you, and held you in my arms, and told you that I love you, and told you that I want you, only once did you whisper, as I was stroking, subdued but hopeful, your erect member, that you liked that, you liked it a lot, and I asked you, subdued but hopeful as you were about to reach a quiet orgasm, whether you meant it, and you said "wouldn't everyone," mutilating the uniqueness of the moment, shattering the epiphany of the orgasm.

I was devastated. And yet I have continued to crave for you. I have continued to love you. Every time I see you, every time I hear you, I want to fuck you so much I am in pain. And every time I see you, every time I speak to you, I say "I love you" for lack of anything more accurate and less hackneyed. And you say "thank you".

So there. See you soon.

Iris

Portrait 11

2010-10-30T15:16:00.004+03:00

[It has been more than a year. I thought I had died, but here I am again, working on what is seemingly another portrait, another incarnation, another idée fixe, and yet everyone knows it is always the same identical boy, the same identical manque d'un manque, and there is no-one really, no-one ever stares at these portraits, at best they'll catch a fleeting glimpse of the canvases while on their way to some other gallery. And they are never the right people anyway.]

My own boy,

I saw you. You were naked. Etherised upon a table. And I wanted you. You were etherised upon a table, bleeding, and yet all I could think about was how much I wanted you, all I could think about was the infinite desirability of your body.

And I said to myself, you are not cindy sherman, she could have been your daughter, and at any rate you are just the curator, you cannot fuck a carcass.

I wanted you, though.

I still do. The decay notwithstanding.

Iris

Portrait 10

2009-09-08T20:55:00.004+03:00

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

2009-08-21T17:14:00.003+03:00

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

2009-08-02T13:06:00.005+03:00

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

2009-07-03T17:07:00.003+03:00

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

2009-06-30T15:57:00.004+03:00

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

2009-06-29T17:52:00.001+03:00

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

2009-06-25T17:36:00.005+03:00

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

Portrait 3

2009-06-24T14:21:00.001+03:00

My own boy,

You have now taken possession of my sleep.

In dreams, I enter you, you enter me: the pleasure is intense; the pain is excruciating. Then I kiss you. Still, I do not want your kiss.

I need to know why I love you; how this love came about and how it has symbolically flourished.

Unquestionably, love for me is an escape from reality. Which is why I have needed you as the object of my affections. Which is why I have convinced myself that you would have been attainable if you had not been forbidden.

No. That is not it at all. That is not what I meant at all.

Shall I see you tomorrow? Shall I know you?

Iris

Portrait 2

2009-06-23T00:05:00.006+03:00

My own boy,

I insist. I am in awe of you, despite my name, despite my allusions, despite my lustful past.

Days of silence succeed our short meaningless telephone conversations. How odd that I should always need a pretext to call you (such as, I saw your name in the paper, someone mentioned you at the office, which bar was it that you said you worked at because I think I read about it in a novel). How odd that I should so often be unable to think of a suitable pretext and that I should therefore be forced to endure the ensuing silence.

And yet, we have both always known the facts. We have always known how pretentious these pretexts are. We have always known the explosive meaning of the meaningless talk on the telephone. Even though I may never have said how I need to fuck you every day, every night, every hour.

I should speak out when I see you next. fearlessly. Obsessively. And perhaps I will. Or I might email you a link to this space.

In actual fact, I love you. My name is Iris Clert.

Iris

Portrait 1

2009-06-21T19:53:00.001+03:00

My own boy,

I could tell you that I want you, I lust after you, I need you, I crave for you, I dream of you, even that I love you.

But I have written all that; and more.

And besides, it means nothing, as no difference can be made.

You do not even know this heteronym. You think I am a living woman. A blogger. A frustrated writer. A sentimental diarist.

Whereas in actual fact I am the man that is in awe of you.

Iris