Read Online I Love Dick by Chris Kraus - Free Book Online

the end of the afternoon I started having doubts. This morning I left a message with the President of your school thanking him for a pleasant evening. Imagine the scene: the President mentioning to you that I might join the faculty next year, Chris arriving on your doorstep just when you thought the devilish couple had flown away. What would you do? Say “Hi” or reach for your airgun? Maybe it’s not such a good idea. Let’s try another:
    Chris arrives in Antelope Valley around sundown and settles in your favorite bar. She leans against the door sipping a long-necked beer and waiting for your car to drive by. Should she call your house? But she knows you’re screening calls.
    Here’s another: you drive past the bar and notice that her truck is parked outside. You pull up by the bar, take your hat off and go inside. She looks up modestly across the long empty table of this cantina and sees your frame hovering in the door. The rest is history.
    Scene Number Three: Chris books a room at a motel in a nearby town. She considers phoning you, decides against it, then on impulse drives to Antelope Valley and installs herself at your favorite bar. After a while she strikes up a conversation with the barman. Does he happen to know anything about this gringo living by himself on the edge of town? A nice guy, but somewhat strange? Chris fires questions at the soft Chicano cowboys who make a living keeping the undocumented Guatemalan orange pickers in line. Do they know your girlfriend? Do you have a girlfriend? Do you come here often? Do you go home alone? Do you talk? What do you say? “Whatsamatter?” the leathery-white American barkeep asks. “Are you a cop? Has he done something wrong?” “Yes,” Chris says. “He won’t return my calls.”
    You see? It’s no use hiding.
    So long for now,
Chris & Sylvère
    Tuesday, December 13, 1994
    Crestline, California
    Dear Dick,
    None of these ideas are right. The closest I can come to touching you (and I still want to) is to take a photo of the bar in your town. It’d be a wideshot, kind of Hopper-esque, daylight tungsten clashing with the dusky sky, a desert sunset wrapped around the stucco building, a single lightbulb hung inside…
    Have you ever read The Blue of Noon by Georges Bataille? He keeps talking about chasing, missing, the Bluebird of Happiness… Oh Dick, I’m so saaaad.
    Chris
    Dear Dick,
    I may be leaving the scene of the crime, but I can’t let it fade out into nothingness.
    Sylvère
    Tuesday, December 13, 1994
    Crestline, California
    Dear Dick,
    I’m not sure I still want to fuck you. At least, not in the same way. Sylvère keeps talking about us disturbing your “fragility” but I’m not sure I agree. There’s nothing so remarkable in one more woman adoring you. It’s a “problem” you’re confronting all the time. I’m just a particularly annoying one, one who refuses to behave. That makes the picture less appealing, and I just can’t desire you anymore in that straight-up, Saturday night Some Girls kind of way. And yet I feel this tenderness towards you, after all we’ve been through. All I want’s a photo of your favorite bar. Today I phoned your colleague Marvin Dietrichson, to find out what you did today. What you said in seminar. What you were wearing. I’m finding new ways to be close to you. It’s okay, Dick, we can do the relationship your way.
    Chris
    Tuesday, December 13, 1994
    Crestline, California
    Dear Dick,
    Call me persistent if you want but if you’re an artist you can’t rely on other people to do the work for you. Tomorrow night Chris is coming out to Antelope Valley.
    Sylvère

    And now it’s nearly 10 o’clock at night and Chris is heartbroken and Dick still hasn’t called. She knows she really won’t drive out to Dick’s house, she’ll just drive away, and she hates Sylvère