I'm not a mother. Of course I'm not. Who would want to be? Apart from people who've failed at everything in life. People who have failed so hard at everything that having this status is the only way they've found to get back at the world. Some people seem to think that's how it works. Women who call themselves mothers because they have children. Men who call women mothers because they have children, all those dads with their cushy little lives. Or fathers who want to be mothers, like Laurent, to get back at women like me who aren't real women. “Mother” is worse than “woman.” It's closer to servant. Or dog. But less fun. There's an element of malice. You only have to go on Instagram to see that. Or take a train and watch all the mothers fussing over their children, nagging them about every little thing, throwing their weight around and showing off that sadistic little bit of power they have, or think they have, as a mother, the humiliated becoming the humiliator, like the proletariat to the underclass. If people want to believe that women have a connection to the Moon, to nature, a special instinct that forces them to cling to motherhood and give up everything else, that's their business. But I'm not interested. There's no such thing as a mother. Mother as a status, an identity, a form of power, a lack of power, a position, dominated and dominant, victim and persecutor, it doesn't exist. None of these things exist. There's only love, which is completely different. Love that doesn't need love in return, love that doesn't ask for anything, love that knows what love is, love that never doubts, love that knows pain is nothing, that pain has nothing to do with it, that it's futile, that violence is always about the person inflicting it. My son knows all this. My son's a little mensch.

8

When it comes to love, nobody likes limits. When girls start to push it, I draw an imaginary line between them and me, and I tell them, My limit is Paul. That's what I said to A. when you were still staying with me every other week and me taking care of you was driving her mad. I said it to D., too, at Café Tournon, before I slept with her, when she said she'd need a lot of space and I told her that one day I'd get you back and then I wouldn't have the space she was asking me for anymore, the kind of space that takes over everything. But really it doesn't work like that, and now you've been gone so long I can't do it anymore.