Eulalie Combe writes, draws, reads and performs his texts, sometimes set to soundtracks that he composes. After graduating in 2024 from the creative writing master’s programme at the art school La Cambre, he is currently pursuing a research master’s degree in theatre at La Sorbonne-Nouvelle university, focusing on open-mic performances and the intimate in contemporary writing and sound poetry between Brussels and the Paris region.
Here, he stages models from the video game Dress to Impress—bodies whose visibility usually depends solely on the clothes and accessories assigned to them for the duration of a runway show. Re-enacting the display logic of online tattoo flash mock-ups, he inscribes on their seemingly affectless skin the tension between the conflicting desires for invisibility and for integration that are particularly present in the experience of disability. For the space of a few pages, their bodies lay bare the norms that they are supposed to embody and the dysphoria that such corporeal imperatives produce when one must perform in order to exist.
I don’t know how to introduce myself
That’s what I said to my friend, thinking back to the last birthday party I went to.
I talk about how introductions—at parties and elsewhere—are codified, and how that goes beyond my autistic brain.
It’s a Saturday. I arrive at the flat in the middle of the evening; there are already people there. I walk in and don’t say hello to anyone. I sit in a corner with a drink, and a guy says to me:
— I can’t remember your name,
did we INTRODUCE ourselves?
*
And I remember the convo with Cy, my German friend, when I explained to them about la bise, and how greetings are very gendered.
a kiss for a woman,
a handshake for a man.
At that party, the guys dapped me up ~ I felt their strong handshakes, mine still timid, a superficial gesture ~ and I experienced it as something euphoric, but I also knew that as soon as I opened my mouth, it would precipitate my downfall.
*
I had the impression of having to hide so many parts of myself. I can’t stand being perceived as a woman / gendered as feminine for an entire night anymore… and I also don’t want to go on at length about non-binary identity. Saying: it’s “he,” implying: I’m a (trans) man, seems simpler. AND IT WOULD BE POSSIBLE IF THAT WERE ALL THERE WAS. If it were only that, I’d say yeah I’m a guy, yeah it’s “he”—but since my appearance still contradicts a lot of things in that statement, I’d have to own it. I’d have to say it with confidence.
And if it were only that—but
—but my questions of gender don’t erase autism.
*
I don’t know how to introduce myself
no costume for “halloween” because i am already performing my gender everyday
masking my ethereal nature (autism) for an ungrateful audience
moustache dyke
pussy boy**
*
Afterwards, with Cy we looked up names starting with Eu-
Google Search: Masculine names starting with Eu-.
Apart from Eugène bro there’s nothing that works. They sound like elf names. Okay, that’s badass I said, but it doesn’t simplify anything.
I don’t know
how to say
Translated by Cléo Verstrepen
TRANSLATOR’S NOTES:
* “Normcorps” is a French wordplay on “normcore,” shifting the term from an aesthetic category to the body (“corps” in French), foregrounding processes of bodily normativity.
** In English in the French original text.