I wouldn't know where to begin to outline my self-portrait. But I suppose it's essential, since you ask me so insistently.

I'll start with a detail: details, as you teach me, are essential in portraits. Do you know the Arnolfini spouses? That incredible detail of the mirror reflecting the scene behind it, revealing the fiction, the carpet, the stained glass window, the clogs, the fruit, the little dog, all reproduced with astounding precision. Flemish painters pay obsessive attention to the smallest details: in their paintings, objects acquire an astonishing symbolic value. Don't you find it fantastic?

I do not.

I hate Flemish painting. In that picture there are four vanishing points, do you realize? The Italians use a single vanishing point placed in the center of the horizon, everything is perfectly structured and ordered, with precise relationships between the figures and with a single light source that defines the shadows. That's how it must be done.

But let's go back to my self-portrait.

Browsing through the family album that I provided to you last week at your express request, and which you will kindly return to me, you will have noticed that I often recoil from my relatives' kisses, turn my face away, even shield myself with my hands to avoid physical contact. This is what might be considered a revealing detail: I've always hated being touched. The closeness of others annoys me, it limits me. I hate talking, even more so about nonsense: people don't talk, they chat. I hate expressing myself in an informal and approximate way; I make an exception for some English expressions, but only because they effectively summarize complex concepts. I love purebred horses, long evening rides, high mountain excursions, wild nature in which I can immerse myself completely without thinking in the strict sense of the term. In recent months, however, something has changed, and that's why I'm here: the solitude of nature oppresses me, it sends me coded messages that I can't decipher, it has become an occasion for meditations as intense as they are useless. I feel like I would like a friend. But, as my fencing master used to say, if one has never had friends, in general it is because he doesn't need them. Wise consideration, don't you think?

I do not.

My fencing master is a sucker. He puts it on the technical side, but fencing is a discipline that is done with the head, rather than with the legs or with the hand. The high speed required by fencing to the nervous system places it in a privileged situation for the observation of mental mechanisms. The normal approach to fencing must be turned upside down: before the technique, the mental processes that determine it must be understood. This is called strategy, it requires intelligence and coolness: it serves to achieve the set goals with minimal effort and is fundamental in life. Therefore fencing is a teacher of life.

In fact, I'm perfectly capable of understanding for myself what prevents me from having a friend: the same repugnance that prevents me from kissing women on the mouth. Indiscretion, intrusiveness, intimate contact, mutual infection. Close contact infects, be it physical or psychological. It would be appropriate to develop a more careful reflection on this issue and to impose a sort of mandatory distancing, except perhaps for reproductive purposes. However, let us not forget that there is fertilization in vitro , a desirable solution from many points of view, if only because it is more hygienic.

My ideal friend has a very precise profile: he is someone who knows nothing about me and who is not curious to know me, who adapts to my moods without discussing them; a being who keeps me company with only his physical presence. A dog, you say? Perhaps. Or maybe a vegetable, a carnivorous orchid.

I've just turned twenty-nine and I have a degree in industrial engineering, obviously with full marks; I currently work at a private company where I am responsible for developing programs to determine inventory levels for productions and allow the optimal use of machinery, materials and resources. From my father, the famous Genevan neuropsychiatrist whom you may have seen from time to time on television, I inherited my stature and athletic build. My mother, on the other hand, is of Arab blood: it is probably to her that I owe my olive complexion and black hair. They say they make a nice contrast to my smile, but I hardly ever smile. Why should I smile? You teach me that the first to examine the smile was Charles Darwin, who defined it as a universal act not tied to cultural context. However, scientists have identified six different types of smiles, depending on which muscles in the lips, cheeks or face are involved. Well, the only genuine smile is the Duchenne smile: short, symmetrical, involving lips and eyes. Since I can't do it well, I reject the possibility of smiling a priori.

My maternal great-grandfather was of Saracen origin: from him I inherited the exotic eye shape and my middle name, Valentino: in honor of Rodolfo, of course.

This mix of anomalous somatic traits and psychic pathologies has a particularly exciting effect on women, so I can say without false modesty that I have many at my feet. Too bad I don't know, literally, what to do with them. Women have little talent for spirituality, even the best: generallyspeaking, banality is in their nature, their average ideal is to marry footballers. Yes, there have also been women like Hypatia, but statistically the exceptions don't count. There must be a reason why the highest activities of the human spirit, philosophy, music, mathematics, are almost exclusively male.

Anyway, that's not why I don't fall in love.

You see, the fact is that speaking, like writing, is a great waste of time; however, if you insist, I will clarify the concept anyway.

So-called love is a flaw: I mean a flaw in the self-defense system. A healthy individual puts himself above all else out of a simple survival instinct: love undermines this self-defense mechanism, eliminates the perception of danger, it is a form of madness. Proof of this is that people in love behave in an imbecile and self-defeating way: this is demonstrated by the irrationality of their actions, the stupidity of their speeches. I stopped esteeming some of my acquaintances, whom I considered rational people, hearing them pronounce alogical or paralogical affirmations under the influence of amorous inspiration. I feel ashamed for them, especially since in those moments they think they are particularly original.

However, loneliness, as I said, has been weighing on me lately.

Contrary to what you are thinking, the problem isn't sex; I have no preconceptions against sex, which is a natural and unnecessary activity like riding a bicycle, but first I have to be sure I can master it: it must not turn into an addiction. Don't be surprised, we engineers too know Epicurus: I attended an excellent classical high school, apart from the fact that simple common sense and a little observation skills are enough to understand it. Some of my acquaintances, for example, indulge their instincts by practicing sex tourism in Thailand, an area full of pretty budding whores: it will seem incredible to you, but they not only do not hide this despicable weakness from others, but show it by projecting slides to friends: they organize special evenings, as if there was something interesting in seeing starving eight-year-old girls performing oral sex. Such behaviors are useful for understanding the extent to which a human being can be degraded by sex.

For this reason I imposed myself a few months of absolute abstinence by frequenting deserted Gothic churches; I spent entire afternoons contemplating the windows crossed by the sun, immersed in the divine kaleidoscope of their lights. I read somewhere that the stained glass window, like the entire Gothic cathedral, is an archetype revealed by light, and that thanks to the stained glass windows the instinctive and holographic mind associates images, thoughts, and the pure soul generates resonances with what Jung calls the collective unconscious. While that sounds like phenomenal bullshit to me, it got me thinking as I stood in there for hours staring like an idiot at the stained glass. As an engineer, however, I can tell you that without the regularity of the project there are no resonant and multiplying forms: the Gothic cathedral is a harmonic structure based on precise repeated geometric rules, above all the golden section. Hence its appeal, which, while seemingly spiritual, is essentially mathematical.

I stayed there until sunset. It's a mystical hour, you know? Sacred places exalt it. Mind you, I'm not religious, even though I studied from the Jesuits - or maybe because of it. The commandment "love your neighbor as yourself" has always seemed to me little more than a brilliant joke. Let's say that it helped me to temper my character: now I think I'm strong enough, and the time has come to prove it.

I have been frequenting Jacob Kellermann's villa for some time. The eldest son, Michael, is enrolled like me at Caprera; we discovered we have things in common, horse riding, tennis, rowing, bridge.

A month ago I met Antonia, his girlfriend. The name corresponds to the typology, nomen omen: she is a cold and unfeminine woman, with pale skin, as a red; a strange look, gray eyes that leave something stuck on you every time they look at you; an androgynous body of which she highlights the only strong point, the legs.

Michael's choice struck me, above all because that woman is not one of us. It is clear from everything, from the tasteless clothing, from the ordinary hands, from the hair dyed with cheap henna, from the vulgar laugh, from the interjections she uses. The girls in our group have straight hair, tapered fingers, they move in another way. I suspect she's even of southern origin. In any case she is not a thoroughbred horse.

She is not in love with Michael. Maybe he is, I don't know. In me she arouses a mixture of disgust and curiosity. An unusual cocktail, an interesting starting point.

She is an assistant professor in the classics faculty, a job with no future. The poor girl has no career prospects: she is not determined enough to break through in her field nor bitchy enough to fuck a professor. In addition, she wastes time with ridiculous and humiliating activities: Michael expects her to give private lessons to her brother, an adolescent nonentity with something ambiguous - ambiguous nonentities are mostly fascinating, like useless and decorative beings in general - and she has accepted without claiming any compensation.

She misunderstood me: since I observe her, she thinks I like her. From a whole series of details I understood that she is the right person for my experiment.

But now you'll excuse me, I have to interrupt the chat: I'm expected for the bridge tournament. I play in tandem with Sebastian, an Italian-Australian who declines the five card major in a spectacular way. As you teach me, the secret to winning is to bid better than the others, and play, as often as possible, the right contract, having however declared it in advance. Let me cite an example: Bocchi and Duboin play a natural-based five card major system with a thousand conventions. But the basis is that: Majeure Cinquième. The Italian declarative school from Chiaradia onwards is and remains the first in the world.

I forgot: tonight my opponent is Michael. I don't remember with whom he plays in pairs, but for all intents and purposes it doesn't matter.