I missed him, so I actually did stare at him sometimes, on my computer screen. I had downloaded his face, and if I didn’t have one iota of normalness left in me, he probably would have made it onto my wall. I could have printed a poster, I could have greeted him every morning and looked up to him for inspiration, or advice, for reassurance, but I simply couldn’t imagine having to roll up my illusions in a tube each time company dropped by. So most of the time he was there, on the screen, and I was free to stare, at one ear, at one flyaway hair, at his mouth and nostrils, always perfectly groomed and flawless. Rotate left, rotate right, zoom in or out, different angles, how fun. Of course he would stare back, right back, with his hazel eyes, brown and green if you look long enough, and close enough, right back into my eyes, and maybe he could see there the beginning of madness. I permitted myself these euphoric moments of indispensable escape. They provided me with sumptuous, deep enjoyment as long as they remained utterly private and personal. But often my days had to happen outside, so I must admit that he did however make it into my wallet, folded in two, smiling politely still, wearing a grey shirt and a black jacket. Sometimes I would take him out to make him part of the city, unfolded and physically engorged in my environment. Let him inhale the air I was breathing, so we were breathing together, make him pay attention to the sounds I was hearing. I wish he could have grabbed my waist, kissed my lips and my collar bone, smelled my neck, lost his hands all over me.
The images of him were helping, but soon they were not enough. Thankfully I found some recordings of him online, talks at conferences, radio interviews, and I started to play them in loops in my apartment. Sound and vision, sometimes simultaneously. I was driving myself right over the edge, willingly. Definitely. I decided that I was still sane, just as long as he was not completely replacing music. Bach was still a favourite of mine, I was fine. Well no, precisely, I wasn’t. All this staring, and listening and fantasizing and thinking, it clearly became too much. On some days I felt like I needed some space, some time alone, a distraction, even just a few hours with myself. I wanted him out of my head, but I had lost control over his presence in my life and was waking up with him every morning, no matter what. During the day he was always there, and then it was night, and he stayed with me, in the dark, and as I opened my eyes in the dark I was trying to think logically about this obsession, which had turned into the most marvellous of routines, but a routine without pauses, or breaks, ever. I was sure I hadn’t completely lost my mind because I could take a step back, but I could never let him go and that couldn’t be a good sign. He was on my skin, under it, I was all over him, under the sheets, he was standing beside me in the street, he was etched, carved in an area of my brain, his smell was my favourite scent, his omnipresence persisted even when I stopped looking or listening, even when I deprived my senses of any traces of him. I couldn’t tell if it was love or madness, I feared it was both, but did I need to be that obsessed? I could imagine myself again sitting on this chair opposite him and falling, falling off the chair in an abyss of unrequited love and lust, of insanity. All it took was one hour, and before that hour I was fine, I think, psychosis-free. As time passed my fondness for him grew, closing its eyes to any notion of proportion.
Except where stated, all material copyright © Emmanuelle Dauplay.