ABSTRACT
His face still haunts me. This face I have seen a hundred times and yet have never seen. His name is Allan, I am told, and although he haunts me, I do not know him. I remember first encountering him in high school. I was so distraught that I was led out of the classroom to sob outside. I wasn’t quite sure why I was so upset. Perhaps it was the way his eyes refused to (or couldn’t) look back at the camera in what Peggy Phelan calls the claustrophobia of a shrinking vision, ‘the failure to have one’s deepest gaze returned’ (1997: 165). Perhaps it was the way his mouth, slightly open, suggested a pained, laboured breathing. The clinical whiteness of the pillow gives him an almost angelic glow, but maybe this is my way of sanitising the image, of neutralising the ‘Allan. Sacred Heart Hospice' (1990) © William Yang https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315869537/df4e9cc2-e3c9-41f1-b69f-452d2996d627/content/fig00002_B.jpg" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>
