Out of the Loop

The Man finds himself in a room named ‘1992.’ “’Go to Poland,’ he said. ‘Adventure,’ he said. ‘History,’ he said. ‘You’ll love it,’ he said. The brochure looked good. The Boy, being the Boy, heard something else beneath the words: Leave, but only so that…

Quite what Bernard of Clairvaux is doing here is anyone’s guess. But Lacan seems to think it’s a good idea. “The road to hell is paved with good intentions,” Bernard says, apropos of nothing really. “WTF,” the Boy says. “Who dat?” Lacan is lecturing again…

When she confused Lacan for Lancan – or maybe she was thinking of Lancôme – it was hard not to fall in love with her. “Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it,” Lacan says, as the Man struggles to…

A bicycle. A car not properly seen until the moment it has already cut him up on a zebra crossing. There are no zebras crossing. Impact arrives all at once and then oddly slowly. The bike rears up like Champion the Wonder Horse. The Man…

The Man thinks perhaps sex should come later in the book. Or not at all. They are all there now. Lacan. Freud. The Holy Father. The Publisher. The Editor. The Boy. M1. O. M2. The Writer too, sitting slightly apart wearing the hunted look of…

The lecture hall is three-quarters full. There are therapists, NGO women, someone from HR, two students who have come by mistake and a bearded Czech man in a linen jacket who thinks he is attending something called “Reimagining Masculinity in Central Europe.” He isn’t. At…

“Have you learnt nothing?” said Joanna. The Man looked at her with the expression of a schoolboy confronted by a teacher who has acquired access to his internet history. “Some things,” he said slowly, carefully reading her face. “Name one.” He considered lying, which had…

The Man is adamant. He is not angry. “No, I am not angry,” he snorts. “How preposterous!” The Boy looks at him with open contempt. Not because the statement is false – the Boy has long since ceased to be surprised by falsity – but…

An open mic stand-up evening in a St Denis bar. Lacan is halfway through a joke, something involving desire, the Other, the signifier, the mother. Or perhaps the mother-in-law, the Editor says. A cigarette held between his fingers like a Gallic Bill Hicks, the Frenchman…

The lake is still frozen, but not enough to trust. Hyde Park this time, though one lake can seem very much like any other. Our quartet circle it, as they do. Somewhere on the lake, a yacht is being launched and on it a party.…