Affair II

See, if you were really handsome, more handsome, you might be taken more seriously. Girls would swoon over you. They’d think you were deep.

Is that a thing anymore, to be thought deep? Do girls really go for that?

 

I think my husband’s kinda transhumanist. He talks about the transhumanist inevitability. He thinks transhumans are going to take over the world.

Is that, like, a warning?

I think it’s a threat …

 

You can’t count on it. Some days you can write and some days you can’t and it’s all a mystery.

So the Muse hasn’t visited you today.

It’s all so pathetic, isn’t it? Writing things no one’s interested in. For an audience of no one. That no one will even publish. By someone who can’t actually write.

At least you have ambition.

A stupid ambition.

At least there’s something that makes you get up on the morning – think about that.

 

The function of the artist is very clear: he must open a workshop, and repair the world there, in fragments, as it comes to him.

Who said that?

Francis Ponge.

Who's he? Or she? 

 

Let’s have a non self-reflexive moment. Let’s have a naïve moment. Let’s have a unselfconscious moment. Of, like, pure enjoyment.

I don’t know what that is.

 

I need to be with you – that’s how it is. I need you. There, I’ve said it.

Is it hard to admit that: dependency?

Quite hard.

 

Anyway, what else can we do besides sex?

Take a walk on the beach. Outside.

We’ll be seen.

By who? Besides, I thought you didn’t care.

That was in the first days. Now … I think it would make things … inconvenient.

 

And I like our Thing. I like your Thing.

 

We haven’t run out of things to do in the bedroom yet.

Don’t pretend to be so virile. You can barely get it up.

 

Sex can be such an effort. I just feel a great can’t be bothered, most of the time. Not with you, though.

Because coming round here is an Occasion. Because you’re preparing for it, anticipating it. Anticipating cock. Whatever.

 

Are your … faculties getting better or worse? Are you a better philosopher today than yesterday? Do you think you’re get better as you get older? Or do you think you’ve peaked?

 

What about organisation management?

See, I don’t take organisational management – that’s what we call it – as seriously as you take philosophy. I’m not an organisational management person through and through.

Thank God.

 

All these feelings passing through us. Having their way with us. 

 

Philosophy in the Bedroom: is there really a book called that? Go on, read me a section.

It’s too filthy. Really, it’s disgusting.

I don't mind filth.

 

The way we talk about IT. IT’s this, IT’s that … God … What is IT anyway?

Us.

Us. God. Lovers just feeding on their so-called love …

It’s all just biological. It’s supposed to make us want to have a child.

Do you want a child?

I don’t know. Do you?

Would you like a child with me? Like, a cuckoo child, a philosophy child who me husband and I could bring up in bourgeois comfort?

What about you. Do you want a child?

My husband doesn’t want one, and nor do – did – I. You know what: I’d like to scandalise him by just saying, I’m pregnant, and it’s not yours.

Would he leave you? Would he kick you out?

Maybe. Probably.

But he doesn’t know – he doesn’t sense it – about us.

I’ve told him you’re my gay best friend. What a cliché. Actually, I didn’t say you were gay. He just assumed. He’s from Middlesborough. They’re provincial up there.

 

So do they just fade, these feelings?

They would if we lived together. That would kill anything. Fifteen years I’ve been with my husband. Fifteen years!

So why do stay with him?

Pair bonding, or something. I don’t know … This is getting very soap-opera-y. Let’s talk of more lofty things. Or more wistful things.

 

What are you writing about?

Your beauty. Your charms.

Oh don’t say that. Such a cliché. You’re writing philosophy.

 

You came into my life, all philosophically dashing and philosophically handsome. Ha!

 

You’re searching for profundity. Something all sublime and revelatory. And I’m just going to disappoint you.

 

This Indian summer’s lasting forever. It’s carrying us off.

In what direction?

Sin.

 

It’s supposed to be an African plume. It’s Saharan sand that we’re supposed to be seeing in the air. It’s turned the moon pink.

 

You can’t actually get it up – not properly. You’re not very potent, are you? You’re supposed to come, like prematurely. Did you ever come prematurely?

You’re not very virile. The levers and cogs of your body don’t work properly. Clearly. I’m not sure you can satisfy me.

And you want to be satisfied?

I want to be ravished.

 

Maybe I shouldn’t get in your way. Maybe I shouldn’t here, and you should just drink on your own.

Don’t go.

Why not? Why should I go?

Because you’re so fucking hot.

I’m not even hot. I don’t believe in my hotness.

I’ll make you believe in it.

You’re too drunk. You’re not hard enough.

 

Singing: Most of my .. fantasies are about making someone else come. That’s an old Smog song.

Is it true? Are they?  

I like eating you out. That’s what it’s called, isn’t it?

Disgusting. It’s disgusting to hear you say it.

 

How shall we do it now? What page of the Kama Sutra have we reached? I’m joking. Don’t you think we should do it more interestingly?

 

I think millions and millions of people are going to die.

Is that your vision?

It’s not a vision. It’s a feeling. I feel things. Vast things.

And you feel millions of people are going to die.

Yes.

 

Why isn’t the sky just black? Why is it blue, anyway?

How should I know?

I thought you knew the answers to questions like that.

 

God … we’re so diminished. Do you ever feel that: diminished? Fuck … we’re the end of some dreadful process … we’re some grotesque experiment … in how not to live. How to ignore life. How to miss life.

 

I want to pray. I want to sink to my knees. And pray to the God of high modernism. To the absence of God that all of them lamented. Because at least they felt the absence of God, which is more than we do.

 

Fucking in the afternoon and talking about God. That’s what my life’s about now.

 

God help us all. God bless us all.

We don’t know what God means. We don’t know what the … soul is. We wouldn’t know what could help us. We’re distressed. We live in the time of distress. And we barely understand how deeply it rends us.

 

I know there’s evil in the world. I even know it’s increasing. I think my husband is doing evil things. I think he serves the evil empire.

 

It’s getting cold, philosopher. 

Isn’t it, though?

It's getting autumnal. Our eternal summer is over. 

So we can stay in and huddle up warm. You can feel the cold pouring down your walls. Should it do that?

 

And I’ve driven here for this. Instead of exercise class.

This isn’t good for you.

Yeah, but what is?

 

This is us. Contemplating the nothingness of the day and our nothingness and our obscurity and the fact that we’re going nowhere and the earth is just falling falling through space forever. God. The whole senseless thing. The whole blind universe thing. The whole armies clashing in the night thing. The whole just-more-of-it thing. The whole never-ending thing.

 

The tohu vavohu, that’s what I write about. The unmanageable, In essence. Even God couldn’t manage it. Even he couldn’t banish it in the act of creation, with his, Let there be light.

Who believes in any of that stuff?

You don’t have to believe in it literally. It’s all there, in the book of Genesis.

God was never omnipotent, see. That was all a Christian lie. Creating everything out of nothing: forget that. Order – so called order – is provisional; exceptional. Surrounding order is chaos. Fringing it. Even God can’t tame it, so you have no hope, organisational manager.

 

What are the main theories of organisational management? Who are the up and coming organisational managers? Organisational manager theory – does such a thing exist? Do they make really strange use of Deleuze and other stuff?

 

How, like, old is the field? When did organisational management begin? Do real organisational managers read academic organisational managers?

 

I’ll bet there are some secret philosophers who made the move to organisational management. Like, working in secret. In code. Pretty smart.

 

The skylight dialogues. A erotic merger between organisational management and philosophy. In bed.

 

And you don’t hate me, imagine. Why is that? You hate everyone but me. There must be something very special about me. To escape your hatred. Your scorn.

And are you any better? What’s so great about you? What do you bring to the table? Who are you supposed to be?

At least I know I’m fucking dead. At least I don’t pretend. At least I know I’m a corpse. At least I know I’ve got nothing to say. Nowhere to be. Nothing to do. At least I know my … redundancy. That it’s all played out. That the whole world’s been placed in the hands of these maniacs.

 

I can’t believe I’m seeing you like this. Drunken you. I don’t think I like drunken you.

Have a drink. Catch up.

I don’t want to drink. I don’t like seeing you like this.

You prefer me miserable. You like a miserable philosopher lover.

This is why you’re so miserable. Because you drink too much.

It’s all worth it, anyway. I write better when I’m drunk. Sometimes, anyway. God. I don’t live my life to impress you.

What are you doing to yourself?

What am I doing? It’s what the world’s doing. It’s what the universe is doing. It’ what Weltzschmerz is doing. This is where it leads, all of it. This is where we end up.

Fuck you.

Are you going to storm out. Is that what you do? Really?

I don’t want you like this. I don’t like seeing it.

 

You could go to AA. Why not? Fellowship. Support. But that’d be too obvious, wouldn’t it? … You’re supposed to admit you can’t quit on your own. To put yourself in the hands of a higher power. I like that idea.

What would your higher power be?

God, maybe.

Do you believe in God?

I think God believes in me. I think I’m a dream in the mind of God.

So God’s dreaming all this. God’s dreaming you and dreaming me.

Maybe.

 

This is how you live? This is how you spend your time? Torturing yourself, basically. Drinking too much, basically. Every night … It’s repugnant. It’s repellent.

Are you drunk now? Is that how weak you are? Drunk and sitting at your laptop, expecting … what? Believing what might happen?

Just drinking, and what for? Drinking into the day, all alone. It’s pathetic. How do you think it’s going to end up? It can’t be going anywhere good. Who are you trying to be?

Am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Am I supposed to patch you up, take care of you, like some tragic fucking artist?

You’re so weak. You’re a weak man. I despise weak men. I despise weakness. I didn’t think you were like this.

You’ll need to find someone else, you know. Someone who can look after you, or whatever.

Okay, I won’t drink anymore.

You can drink all you fucking like. How much do you actually hate yourself?

 

Let’s go back. I’d like to be alone with you. I’d like …

To be centre of my attention. For me to tell you how great you are. How beautiful you are. How hot you are.

Yes … all those things.

 

Am I supposed to go after you? What am I supposed to do? Who am I supposed to be? We have our allotted roles, don’t we?

 

I’m banging my head against … what? Everything. The entire world. The entire fucking universe. I’m banging my head against me Against who I’ve become.

 

These dialogues. The skylight dialogues. Leading … nowhere. Just tracking the fucking decline.

You like this talk. You like me talking like this. You want a doom prophet all to yourself. You feel it too. Don’t deny it. That’s why you’re here.

I’m here because I like to fuck.

You’re here because you feel like me. Because I speak for you, too. Isn’t that funny? I never thought …

That an organisational manager can feel anything?

Yeah, maybe. Maybe.

That an organisational manager has a soul.

Maybe that.

 

God. When I speak to you, I feel so phony. I say these things.

I like it when you talk. I like it when you hold forth. You seem so certain of everything.

I seem like an idiot. Fuck. Fuck.

At least I’m not content. Perish the thought. At least I’m not settled. At least I’m not comatose.

 

You be with him forever. You’ll be holidaying and going on driving trips and going out with couple friends. That’s the truth of it.

Yes, well, you have to live.

 

It makes me interesting to you.

Yeah, as a case.

You’re interested. You want to follow me down the drain.

I want my own drain.

You’re lured. That’s why you come here.

I come here for sex, not death. Laughter.

God, what a dead end. How futile this is. It’s going nowhere. Day after day like this. It isn’t good … This isn’t part of the Good.

What’s the Good?

Not this.

 

Every day grows more sordid. We’re growing more sordid. I need a wash.

Take a shower.

I need a spiritual wash. I need to be spiritual cleansed. And I don’t know how. We’ve grown so corrupt.

 

All this is a waste of time.

But I like wasting time. I like burning time up. Using it for nothing. It’s my revenge on timetables and deadlines …

 

Sure, this isn’t the gym, is it? This isn’t sexercise. This isn’t a sports fuck.

You’re tired of happy happy. You want to destroy your life. You want to wager it. You’re bored in some fundamental sense.

Aren’t we all?

You want sabotage. You’re a ruiner. A destroyer. You want to tear things apart. You want to be torn apart. You’re a gambler. You want to be caught. You want some big emotional scene.

Do I?

 

You find my little world interesting enough.

Don’t kid yourself. It’s your body I want.

 

I think we’ve covered everything.

I think we’ve covered everything in shit.

We’ve said enough.

We’ve always said enough. Everything we say is too much. Words on top of words. Layers of words reaching up to heaven.