Last Words from Montmartre by Qiu Miaojin

Author:Qiu Miaojin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781590177389
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2014-05-13T21:00:00+00:00

Having been through so much, and though my body is wracked with pain, I must point out two things of profound significance. These are the most painful and difficult realizations to articulate. First: I knew I had lost you the first time I hit you. I sobbed hard inside, silently aware that I had pushed you past the point of no return. I spent my days tortured by terrors and nightmares: terror of losing you, terror of being dumped, nightmares of your infidelity. Controlling the urge to hit you was so excruciating that I had to hurt myself in terrible ways. I still have dreams where I wake up crying. Second: Sexually, you completely rejected me in Paris. You didn’t have the slightest sexual desire for me, the slightest wish to make love to me. This went on for nearly a month before I could admit it, and when I think about it I still weep. I can’t believe we fucked up our relationship up to this extreme. It hurts so much I can barely speak. It hurts so much that whenever I’m about to remember Clichy I feel a shock like I’ve just touched a live electric wire. It hurts. It hurts.

Then I decided to forget you, to transform myself into someone entirely different from my old self: a vital personality. Suddenly it seemed so easy, so entirely possible to imagine. It would be so easy to cast off the defining features of my old self that I couldn’t rid myself of before. . . .

Since returning from Tokyo, I can feel the nature of my sexuality changing, gradually changing, a tectonic change so mysterious and private that I initially wasn’t sure what was happening or what triggered it. I could feel myself “becoming a woman” (according to some basic biological definition of “woman,” anyway) or perhaps just becoming a Woman. My period became extremely regular. One morning I was dreaming about you and I suddenly woke up. I thought I had gotten my period, and in fact I had, precisely at the same time. It felt like a mysterious connection. I also dreamed I had long “feminine” hair, and in the dream I was aware that I was enjoying my appearance and that my face was becoming more beautiful (a “feminine” sort of beauty). Once, Qing Jin looked intently at my face and told me I was very beautiful in a way that could be attractive to both men and women. In the dream I could actually sense that my facial features and my behavior were becoming more feminine. My sexuality also began to take on a more “receptive” quality. I still fantasized about you, but the way I had loved you and made love to you now seemed more of a desire for you to love me and make love to me. . . . And I felt a sexual relationship with a man was possible (just the sex). Or perhaps I should say, I was starting

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