Scaffolding

by Lauren Elkin

Oh and there’s the modelling. That brings in a bit. I nod as if I know all about the extra money from modelling.

What would our sexuality look like without the male gaze, she asks.

Oh, apps! I don’t want to learn Greek from a bot. That owl! I want to learn it from a young Greek student who’s trying to make ends meet while he does his masters. Or an old Greek woman who’s lost her husband. A real person, with a story.

You don’t care about Jonathan, she says. You only think you do.

How can one discern the difference?

Then a snippet from Lacan himself, speaking in his peculiar old-fashioned voice. Deranged desires, disorganised, deregulated desires. We are made of desire, he says, made of what we don’t have.