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While closing lacanian ink 37 there was a ghost in my thoughts. It was calling upon Psychoanalysis—since it is the topic for the 9th NLS Congress up to happen in London only two weeks later, because I had been reading Pierre Rey on his Saison chez Lacan… My introduction could well be made of a few lines from these remarkable two men Saison.
I dressed up to seduce him. Tweed, velvet, cashmere… I even suffered from, as to add a supplement to my charm, an imperceptible limping due to an injury I got from a kick while boxing. I made it my duty of honor to arrive at the exact time of the appointment. He corresponded—I didn't have to wait a single second.
It didn't have to be always like that, however on this first day he found perfect synchronism: The moment Gloria opened the door of the apartment, I saw him slide the door to his cabinet. We gave a big smile to each other. It was obvious that, despite the patients I saw in the waiting room, he was only waiting for me. He closed the door to his studio after me. He placed his chair in a parallel line to the table. I sat on my chair.
Face to face.
From the day before I had had the necessary time to organize my defenses. I watched him with amazing curiosity, I crossed my legs, lit a cigarette—it didn't bother him at all, he handed me an ashtray… and in a few uptight phrases, powered, as by the need of my story, by names pumped up with importance, part of my everyday life—I gave him the brilliant picture of a talented dilettante coming to his aid—I didn't get to formulate an idea like that, but let's say that it was implicit in what I said—mainly because of a harmonic chance coincidence and out of intellectual curiosity.
I think he understood very well. He was enchanted. So was I. When I told him about my professional doings at the paper where I was working, he asked if I knew Madame X, who also worked there. I had never heard her name and so I told him. Now he abruptly asked me if I drunk. He disconcerted me. No, I don't drink. Wine like everybody else, but drinking for the sake of drinking, no. I was the sporty type, how could I be drinking? He immediately said that I
was right.
I lit one cigarette after the other. He continued to offer me the ashtray. Finally, after a last smile, he got up. The session was over. For how long had I been in there? One hour? Maybe more. I asked him how much I owed him. Although nobody had told me, I already knew the figure he shot at me. I had decided it would be exorbitant. It was. It matched exactly what I had managed to borrow from two friends as needy as myself. So I handed him my three bills without surprise. They instantly disappeared into his pants pocket. He shook my hand with a big smile and said "Until tomorrow". I answered that unfortunately it was impossible because I didn't have enough money to pay him. My hand still in his hand, I tried to gain it back without it sounding offensive.
He opened the door as if he hadn't heard me and repeated, "Until tomorrow."
I found myself in the street with a knot in my throat, asking myself if the lack of resources wasn't going to break such an ineffable relation, right at its start.
Where was I going to find the money?
I went mentally through all the friends susceptible to lend it to me. I already knew, from previous experiences, that the strong pattings on the shoulders, as the giving or taking of pleasure in love, would be put on hold the moment one ventured into the delicate ground of numbers. Some time ago I was in need of a certain financial relief for an urgent debt. The loan I solicited would only last forty-eight hours, as I specified, when giving in proof of my good faith, a check signed with my name that could be presented for collection immediately after that time elapsed. That same day I addressed three people, a woman and two men.
The woman was famous, she sang and was the star in a musical show. On a Sunday afternoon I visited her in her dressing room. There still was caviar there in a crystal cone, champagne and iced vodka. From where I was you could hear the murmurs of the salon applauding. She entered the dressing room in a whirlwind, covered in refulgent spangles, she kissed me with passion, and started to unbutton my shirt. So that nobody would bother us, her gay hairdresser kept watch behind a velvet curtain. The instant her eyes turned white, some energetic knocks at the door pulled her out of my arms to throw her into the arms of the public…
To be continued
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