The digital novella, a shot of whiskey, and a concise history of the Alphabet

“I hope you can S-P-E-L-L
Nigga please you don't know me that well
I got a truck sittin’ on sprewells
My flow tight as H-E-L-L”
Missy Elliott

"When I dare to remember, I can share my deepest wishes …”
Nourith

“The world is Sound. The world is Sound. The world is Sound. The world is Sound. The world is Sound.”
Talvin Singh

Let’s just delve in, as if there were nothing else to do. Let’s just begin as if there were no end. Let’s just pretend for one minute that this moment will last forever. That the pleasure will not subside. That the intensity will remain. That your teeth will stay clenched, your face distorted, your muscles tight. Let’s just pretend.

Channeling the only thing I can channel. Hearkening the only thing I can hearken. Trying. Trying. Trying. Vainly trying.

The end of winter. March. Beginning of March. That’s when it all happened. In a town whose name I will never mention aloud. In a town on the coast. In that sleepy town on the mother fucking coast whose name shall remain tacit.

I’m sure the waters were cold. I often wonder what happened just before that. What could one possibly think of just moments before the cold waters of the Sleeve? Could you regret it? Could you rethink it? Could you, perhaps, reaffirm?

I can almost see it in my mind. The night, the scene. The film rolls and rolls and rolls. In super-8. That would be the aesthetic.

I can only (re-)collect. That is all I am left with. The end has already happened, and the beginning has risen anew. One too many times in a life.

A, b, cC, d, EFFFFFFFFFFG, H, I, JKLMNOP. QrSTUVWXXXYZ. The alphabet. Next time won’t you sing with me?

When the news hit, it was all over for good. Two minutes on the phone and …

She was it. The real deal. This, I am sure of. Dominique Barbéris. She was the one that told me everything I needed to know. In reality, she told me the things I should have never known. The difficult things that any writer should never know. She told me the secrets to it all. Dominique. In her sleek dresses day after day.

I met Dominique shortly after I had met Muzil properly for the first time. (And there I go, again, stealing identities.) Muzil had long been around in those circles. The literary circles of Paris. The BDSM clubs in the neighborhoods few went to. He was as he was. Spoke little to those he didn’t know. I should never have met him, I’m sure. That is, at least, what Christine would have wanted. She didn’t want anyone else to know Muzil. But, one day, Hervé told me all about it. He let me in on the secret. I never forgave Christine for that. I had so much esteem for her until I heard that. I began to hate her. I wanted to kill her. I wanted to ruin her.

Really, it was Hervé who had known Muzil the best. And to think, he didn’t live long enough to do what she did to him. He just didn’t have it in him.

Nuit Blanche. White night. I didn’t sleep that night. I went to the Palais de Tokyo to see Muzil. The walls were covered in gay smut. Grandmothers, little old ladies, parents with children all saw it but pretended they hadn’t.

(You see, Christine, in order ruin you, I have To Be you. You fucking bitch. That is the only way. Houellebecq the liar and David were there for a while, by the way. But, I feel badly for Anaïs mostly. Long gone. Long, long gone, and you just couldn’t help yourself, could you?)

Dominique saw all of this in my. She knew what I was up to. She ran into me with Muzil one day. Away from our normal spot. She said very little, a quiet greeting, but I saw it in her eyes that she knew what was going on. The next time I saw her, she told me the things she was not supposed to tell. I know she told me as a lesson.

In the post-Derrida world there is (Re-)(De-)Construction.

At the end of White Night, I almost bought a T-shirt. It had electrical tape on it with the letters MF.

(I hope you read this, Christine. I hope you see what you are making me do. I hope you know that it is your fault. The whole thing. The beginning the end the middle in between. I hope you tell Léonore about how you’ve ruined me. I hope she sees you for what you are.)

In November of that year, I met Claire. That’s when it all started, the entire trail of events. I wonder, at times, how my life would be different without her. The running, the constant running. The sleepless nights, hopping turnstiles in the Metro, countless whiskey-soaked parties, the château near Vichy, fucking in the streets of Paris, the night I had a knife to my throat, hitchhiking throughout the country, taking the train North, then South. And of course, that month. The beginning of a new year in the arms of an inappropriate lover. Those are the things that I remember.

When I finally awoke, much later, I had nothing left. Muzil was gone forever. It was the unspeakable disease. Christine was indifferent, she had moved on. I didn’t speak to Dominique any longer. Hervé, Guillaume, Joël, Sébastien, Michael and the others were elsewhere. And what of the rest? I don’t think I care to know.

In the world of digital literary iteration, there is no form, no structure, there is only a chaotic web. A woven network made of thought and binary. Chronology has no place. Prose, even, is lost. There is no longer a need for anything but the word. The simple word. Back to the root of it all. This is how it all comes together. Read on. Read on. There is much to be found.

“Oh, shit!” was all I could muster when she rang.

Harlequin

It was already two in the afternoon when I emerged from my alcohol induced sleep. The window in Claire’s bedroom had been left open all night and the slightly sharp winter air penetrated into her Parisian apartment. She was still asleep. Deeply. I watched her chest rise and fall with each breath, her face as it calmly grimaced, perhaps wincing from a bad dream, her eyelids fluttered without ever opening. Her nipples were hard from the invading chill. I remained still, not wanted to disrupt her, fearful that she would wake up and notice me staring. I moved my left hand close to her face, never touching, never feeling her skin, my hand approached as close as possible without ever making contact. I was approaching infinity and felt the warmth that was emanating from her body as I continued to follow the curves of her entire face with my hand. I followed every curve, every nuance, perhaps every detour, in her nearly flawless skin. There was a thin film of morning oil that covered parts, around her nose, on her forehead near the hairline.

Claire was not my lover.

And it goes on …

There are three things of which I am highly doubtful: love, money and memory. The Pinter-esque reconstitution of memory leaves for an open-ended conversation. An epic battle of yeses and nos, of acquiescence and denial. Herein lays the verisimilitude that we have collectively agreed upon to call existence.

Opera

The back story to the story. This is where we are. The music behind the writing. The sound that engulfs the writer. The inspiration, even, of the word. The blank page filling up with situation. In Medias Res.

The last time I saw Dominique, it was at a cocktail party. The book had been finished and she toasted me for it. A few months later, her book came out as well. Something about running, about running away. I never read it. I couldn’t read it. I already knew it by heart.