Imaginary Heroes – a short extract from ‘Uranian Games’

Susan de Muth, the translator, explains why she chose this extract: ‘For me, it shores up the suggestion in ‘Cancelled Confessions’ of Cahun’s trans-masculine identification.’

I who know nothing so well as how to be a friend… for we were both grown men, and he a few years more so…
Montaigne

My friend and his friend, we will be, if you like, imaginary heroes.

He, standing before you, looks you straight in the eye. His height is not certain, for nothing can compare with him. To you he appears immense, broad in his sports coat, wide-shouldered: he seems slender, in his tight-fitting evening clothes, a white violet in his buttonhole. He is interested in women’s coquetries, in all the little ones’ babblings: he can play with the children, converse with you and worry about serious matters; he knows how to laugh and how to cry, and how to remain unmoved. You will see him by turns lament a bubble that burst, then show me how to live, compel me to do so and give me the strength for it.

You will feel uncertain before this being endowed with contradictory qualities, and you will think, sceptic, that he is too ideal to be real.

I hide myself in him and look at you from beneath his eyelids. How would I have a name, a body, my own ideas, I, his pale reflection, the shadow that follows him word for word? What am I if not the friend of my friend?

You see, there are a thousand existences and I have none at all. So, positioning ourselves behind faithful friends birthed by the poets, we are, if you like, imaginary heroes.

Yet we exist, since you know us.