Notes on Afterwards

I can no longer think about anything. I simply savor the moments when I can close my eyes and let myself be carried away by the memories of that night. Desire burns me, devours me, paralyzes me. Abrupt sentences, monosyllabic words, insults, linguistic pirouettes—from god to whore—loop endlessly in my head. It’s the moment when one no longer knows how to speak, like a newborn, the moment when the verb is not yet there. The moment when one feels the present instant in all its nuances: through touch, sight, taste, smell. The moment when one almost no longer exists. No, when one truly no longer exists, especially as an individual being. It is the moment of absolute fusion with another. It is the moment of coït. With two dots on a single i.

And then I wonder: why am I able to descend into hell on my own, yet I always need another person to ascend to paradise? Would the difference between the act of loving and that of dying depend solely on the presence of another?

And now, thirty-six hours later, thirty-six hours after his departure—actually, I even cried after he left—I feel as though I still do not exist as an individual being. I can’t recover my ability to read, write, think, carry on a conversation. I am still swallowed by a whirlwind of emotions hiding behind a wall of absent gazes I cast upon the foreign world around me.

My inner frenzy even managed to synchronize with that of nature: the mistral kissed me at the foot of the station, lifting my polka-dot skirt, and then the rain watered my terrace, just as my tears watered the bed that still held his scent.

Thirty-six hours later I feel like a starving dog, filled with anger and fear of not being fed. And I still can’t calm my animal instincts to bring my human and cultural being back to life. I only want to see him again, to reclaim him, to reabsorb him, so that he may accompany me once more in the ascent toward the summit of the sublime. I ask only one thing: “Again!” I pose only a single question: “When?”

But doubt settles in whenever there is no precise answer. It is on this terrain of uncertainty that desire is born. One enters a playing field without ever knowing in advance whether one will win or not, a labyrinth without ever knowing in advance whether one will find a way out. Chance always rules, even if an imperceptible voice whispers in the ear that this time the ball will land in a winning slot, that this time the thread will not tear. Love is a game of fate.