Incest, Adultery, and How It Relates to Me (part 4 of 9)
a weekly serial in Stories That Are Hard to Sell
…For Freud, the aim of analysis was not to remember, but to establish sufficient states of forgetting.___On Flirtation by Adam Phillips
Engaged in an Affair with Pain
Christine Angot begins, finally, at the three-quarter mark to describe the incest involved with meeting her father. And he of course charmed her. Angot was afforded eight days for a chance to know him first as a father, and then as a lover, beginning with that kiss on the lips and then whatever else Angot chooses to deliver in what remains of the pages. Yes, I hoped this sordidness was coming, and yes, I still desire to read every detail she will courageously expose. Rare to read such honesty on the page. Angot claims she is insane, and she could be. But isn’t all good writing some form of obsession, a supersaturation of some pressing demand on our heart or an attempt to find meaning? Lives riddled with mistakes and insufficient plans. Character studies among the worst of the worst. The insistence to finally get things right. To make life more interesting and palatable. Trying on names for things and different ideas. Or even changing our point of view. Seeing things in ways others are not susceptible to, or aware of. Taking that one step out of line and suffering the consequences. No playing it safe on the sidelines. Decorum saved for our last days and attempts at amendments guaranteed to be forgotten within days of our being deceased. Moving on regardless of past promises. Hollow effects falling on deaf ears. There is no cover, Gordon said. Charge the fire.
Angot has certainly taken charge. She is controlling the narrative of her life. What has taken so long in her unveiling is a complete analogy for what her father did to her. And now Angot behaves the same way with her homosexual lover Marie-Christine by leaving her, then coming back and succumbing to the licking she claims she does not prefer. She again maintains her insanity, and her pen is how she copes. Details reveal that from age fourteen through sixteen her father took this daughter sexually and Angot could not refuse his advances. And after he abandoned the family she exposed their incestual relationship. But Angot still wanted an adult relationship with her estranged and distant father, so at the age of eighteen she began seeing him again. There was an understanding and a promise that nothing sexual would occur. But her father’s intellect and charm were too much for her again and she succumbed to having sex and giving him blow jobs in the backseats of hired cars. But this all was still too unsettling for her and she felt victimized. She discovered her way-out was by turning her body over and only offering her backside to him. She would no longer grant him access through the front door, but instead bestowed him the only orifice she believed she now controlled.
Part 5 of “Incest, Adultery, and How It Relates to Me” can be found and read here.
Parts 1 through 9 of “Incest, Adultery, and How It Relates to Me” can be found and read in chronological order here.