I Love Dick Read Free

night (Sunday) and this morning (Monday) talking about Dick’s 3 minute call. Why does Sylvère entertain this? It could be that for the first time since last summer, Chris seems animated and alive, and since he loves her, Sylvère can’t bear to see her sad. It could be he’s reached an impasse with the book he’s writing on modernism and the holocaust, and dreads returning next month to his teaching job. It could be that he’s perverse.
    December 6–8, 1994
    Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday of this week pass unrecorded, blurred. If memory serves, Tuesday that term was the day that Chris Kraus and Sylvère Lotringer spent in Pasadena, teaching at Art Center College of Design. Shall we attempt a reconstruction? They get up at 8, drive down the hill from Crestline, grab coffee in San Bernardino, hop on the 215 to the 10 and drive for 90 minutes, hitting LA just after traffic. It’s likely they talked about Dick for most of the ride. However, since they planned to move out of Crestline in just 10 days, on December 14 (Sylvère to Paris for the holidays, Chris to New York), they must’ve also briefly talked logistics. A Restless Longing…driving through Fontana and Pomona, through a landscape that meant nothing, with an inconclusive future looming. While Sylvère lectured on poststructuralism, Chris drove out to Hollywood to pick up some publicity photos for her film and shopped for cheese at Trader Joe’s. Then they drove back out to Crestline, winding up the mountain through darkness and thick fog.
    Wednesday and Thursday disappear. It’s obvious that Chris’ new film isn’t going to go very far. What will she do next? Her first experience in art had been as a participant in some druggy psychodramas of the ’70s. The idea that Dick may’ve proposed a kind of game between them is incredibly exciting. She explains it over and over to Sylvère. She begs Sylvère to phone him, fish around for some sign that Dick’s aware of her. And if there is, she’ll call.
    Friday, December 9, 1994
    Sylvère, a European intellectual who teaches Proust, is skilled in the analysis of love’s minutiae. But how long can anyone continue analyzing a single evening and a 3-minute call? Already, Sylvère’s left two unanswered messages on Dick’s answerphone. And Chris has turned into a jumpy bundle of emotions, sexually aroused for the first time in seven years. So on Friday morning, Sylvère finally suggests that Chris write Dick a letter. Since she’s embarrassed she asks him if he wants to write one too. Sylvère agrees.
    Do married couples usually collaborate on billets doux ? If Sylvère and Chris were not so militantly opposed to psychoanalysis, they might’ve seen this as a turning point.
    EXHIBIT A:   CHRIS AND SYLVÈRE’S FIRST LETTERS
    Crestline, California
    December 9, 1994
    Dear Dick,
    It must be the desert wind that went to our heads that night or maybe the desire to fictionalize life a little bit. I don’t know. We’ve met a few times and I’ve felt a lot of sympathy towards you and a desire to be closer. Though we come from different places, we’ve both tried breaking up with our pasts. You’re a cowboy; for ten years, I was a nomad in New York.
    So let’s go back to the evening at your house: the glorious ride in your Thunderbird from Pasadena to the End of the World, I mean the Antelope Valley. It’s a meeting we postponed almost a year. And truer than I imagined. But how did I get into that?
    I want to talk about that evening at your house. I had a feeling that somehow I knew you and we could just be what we are together. But now I’m sounding like the bimbo whose voice we heard, unwittingly, that night on your answerphone…
    Sylvère
    Crestline, California
    December 9, 1994
    Dear Dick,
    Since Sylvère wrote the first letter, I’m thrown into this weird position.