Father Tongue

with Constance Debré's Love Me Tender

Oh, the voice. The voice, the voice, the voice.

This is the incantation, symptomatic and sure. Where has the voice gone? Write like you or write like Constance Debré. That’s what you loved about the book, you know—the honesty. The permission to love despite the tone, maybe even because of it. You are conditioned to be understood and Debré’s words are opaque. People called her “affectless,” saying she writes with “powerful evacuation of feeling,” and you scoffed at that! You did! Remember, she intended to become someone else. Surreptitious, but routined: a morning swim at the same pool, days writing in Starbucks, wine and sex with women in various quarters of Paris. Look, it’s the real father herself! His phantom hand flying through a glass window, a shard scratching beneath the mother’s eye, her face filling with blood as the father, with filleted finger, walks past. What amazing bravado and so little hurt. It’s how you understand the tattoo stamped across Debré’s stomach: Son of a Bitch. Not apathy, not at all, but overabundance. So, you wanted to see what she was wearing, how she held her hands on video. It’s New York, 2022. She’s on stage with Eileen Myles. They’re being introduced. Myles leans over and asks Debré her sign. She doesn’t understand, but says something that ignites Myles. Yes, of course you are that. What else would you be? She wears gray suit pants, a white shirt rolled up to the elbows, buttoned down to the breastbone. She speaks French. Yes, using her hands, adding hesitations for the audience? The translator? Myles? Everyone appears embarrassed. Who cares about the clothes? The frame holding an image fixed forever.