Give Me That Body (Oneshots)

Laurent (2002) - A Letter, "I Am In Love With Him"

My Miriam,

Shall I tell you a story? Shall I tell you my mind? Miriam, will it make you laugh? I sit here smiling to myself, and you are thinking lately I am very weak, but still I have the power to make you laugh at me, n'est pas vrai, ca? It is cold here these days, even in California, I am very cold. I am thinking of the fur you took. Maybe you will give it to me again, even though I did tell you to have it? I am writing with the pen you sent me from your little trip to Rouen, and I put your picture on my desk, that you taped to the postcard. I am surprised you do not break cameras, pitiable face. See, I am making you laugh? But really, can we talk about your teeth?

Recently I have been thinking about the sword I had in old times, and I wonder what had happened to it. Don't fret at mention of an object, for I know that you cannot retrieve it. Did you know I got that sword from Antonin? My little lord of the exchequer. The living man I loved. Lately as I lie in my bed, I feel the shape of his body with me. De toute facon, I have thought of a story for you. Maybe if you like it, you will write back to me more than a postcard? My red bird.

I think of you and I think, why is it that I bother with him? Why is it. I think it is because there is nothing much elegant about you. You are nothing much of nobility, or even aspiration beyond the crude figure you cut, which makes me laugh, and makes me smile, and your wicked tongue, and your wicked looks. You are always some kind of mischief. There is about you always something up. I like it. I will tell you about someone I know like you. Should I?

He is Iovita. Does it make you gasp? To know a name you did not ever hear. I hear you gasp! I am laughing. He is around me. Can I tell you another secret? I am in love with him. He is from England now but he is from my baby time, in Rome. He thinks that I am silly, and he throws me around. He picks me up and he throws me aside onto my bed, and he says, "You're so impossible. Come down out of your tree, you," because he thinks I am away in fantasies all of the time. But I will tell you another secret. I will tell you this, that I have always been in love with Iovita. I tell you this, because being near to him makes me feel as a child, and the most happy, when lately I have been so vexed.

I chase him, and he says, "You are ghastly," and it makes me look at myself in my mirror and wonder, "Is not it he whom I know in the mirror? Myself, is it not my face, this? Perhaps because I do not drink blood, Iovita is thinking that I am acting very proud to deprive myself," so I tell him, "Iovita, look at me directly and tell me what is wrong. Tell me clearly; I will believe anything of you." And he says, "Don't follow me anymore." He calls me, "Little bird", but understand he knows that name as another name for "lover". Do you know that, that is why I call you "Little bird" always? You are always flighting elsewhere. I am singing after you, singing.

Anyway, he reads to me in the night, because his eyes are very good,  as like mine used to be. He can see very well in the dark, and he studies me in my bed, and asks me if I would like to have one of his good eyes. But I will never do that. How could I do it? My body will kill his eye like it has killed all of the others. I say, "Keep it," pushing his book away, and he whispers to me to calm down, and behave like a man, and not become hysterical. But I think that I behave like a man. Have I not always been this way? Why should I not weep? He becomes frustrated with me, because I want to die, and he thinks that I should resist that hope. You know, because of course he wants to die as well. Who is dramatic? If I would like it, why should I not have it? I have waited very long for my lucre. I have suffered long! Should I not take a prize? And wipe myself away? 

He thinks that I will like it much, death. He thinks I say it to make them pity me, but do they not do pity on their own? Crones of Rome who have returned these fifty years, after so many centuries away. They lace me tightly in their little cage of pity, and say, "Look at Escha, he is wanting to be stroked and told he is very important." I do not care for it! They are thinking of me as Escha! I have far outgrown this little skin they crowd me into! It is agony to endure it, though I do so for the love I bear them. How can I go on this way? But where else might I go? And every time I cry out over it, they are all saying "He wants a kiss. He wants to be stroked. Look at him. It is a love tantrum. Don't you know him?" All has been wrong since they have been here. All is upset. I do not know where or to whom I shall ever feel I belong again.

I have had illusions. Yes I know. Maybe I am in a mood. I cannot help that I am passionate. I will not inhabit a world so small.

I am created by my condition. I am a creature of evening. Evening has created me "vampire." Rome has done so. And Vienna. Germania has done so, and Lorraine. My little birds. My little birds who died of plague in Lorraine, and said, "Do you see him, he is Death?" as they died of poisoned blood. As they died of starvation. When you struck me, when I made you, when I wept of fear of you, you created me. When I loved a boy, and he would not bend, my Dasius, he made me thus. When I gave him my sword in France, and when I said, "Have blood or have death", and he chose to blood and also death by staying by me, who will never let him alone, he made me thus. A boy who loved the face of God as he loved me, creates me. A boy who says, "I will die by you or I will have no good death, I will die by you," creates me. To do violence, when I do not mean to do violence, what will I be? When violence is done by me, whose children do it? If they are my blood, and myself, and my pride, what then created so? I am so many sorrowful selves.

I cannot be Escha who does know these cares. I am made quiet by that I am made not to think as myself. I am not mad. It is clear to me that I cannot breathe. This skin is too tight.

So hear I make a good false face for Iovita, who sees me through it all the same. He knows I am unhappy. I tell you true that it is him I love. For though I have protested, would not Escha only love so purely? I have always desired of love that has no mind or matter for itself. I love him as a boy loves, and is that not myself as well? I am as confused as I can be, that I would want a love such as this when I struggle against him so much otherwise. He knows I am of two minds. He has no interest in love anyway. It is all in vain. It is unimportant. It is only that it excites me, and makes me take a separate point of view than the one I have been thinking within for so long. But is that not the work of love, that it drives us mad while making clear so much? How can he know me, and how can I know the boy he wants to see? I know he and the others do their best. I sigh over it. What shall I do? Truly these days, all I want is to fall asleep, and sleep always, and in arms that will keep me safe from myself and my poor head. It is all very confusing. I am not I.

I wonder where my sword is. I wonder where there is a sword.

I wonder after your lips and I think of how they kiss your lover. How you kiss him. Your soft lips. Your soft words. Your lips that when they touch make me anew, someone else again. I liked who I was with you at least, and like you now as my friend. Your ear that hears from me and says, "I am listening, and I do not judge you for what you say." Practiced words perhaps, but good enough for myself, who is too tired to reject fakery. A false face it seems, is as good as the real one, for the lie it allows us to tell ourselves. Come sing lies to me, soft lips, and let me fall asleep in your deceiver's arms, for I like the lie sometimes, that it is possible to go on living for its own sake, and that you may understand all of my words. I like it.

You see that I have promised to make you laugh?

Amant.

Enclosed, find extra stamps for the mailing of a real letter, you traitor's dog, for telling me to write to you true and then sending me a postcard. I do not believe it, blackguard! So now I have written twice for only cardboard and a little photo? You are not good at correspondence. Bisoux bisouxxx.