Цитаты из книги Two Stories

«He thought that his life was just about to start happening then. He thought that he was poised tantalizingly on the brink, and that any day — or even any minute — the waiting would end and the real thing would begin.»

“It was in my nature to absorb large volumes of information during times of distress, like I could master the distress through intellectual dominance.”

“My love for him felt so total and so annihilating that it was often impossible for me to see him clearly at all. If he left my line of sight for more than a few seconds, I couldn’t even remember what his face looked like.”

If he left my line of sight for more than a few seconds, I couldn’t even remember what his face looked like.

My most recent boyfriend had called me ‘frigid’, but added that he ‘didn’t mean it in a sexual way’. 

It was in my nature to absorb large volumes of information during times of distress, like I could master the distress through intellectual dominance. 

In bed that night I asked him: When will we know if this was a bad idea or not? Should we already know? Because now it feels good.

I found his distraction comforting. In a way I wanted to live inside it, as if it was a place of his own, where he would never notice I had entered.

Death was, of course, the most ordinary thing that could happen, at some level I knew that. Still I had stood there waiting to see the body in the river, ignoring the real living bodies all around me, as if death was more of a miracle than life was.

Frank? I said. He mumbled something, and I thought: well, even cats recognize their own names.

If I happened to meet the woman the following morning, I would discreetly inspect her for any physical resemblance to myself. This way I found that everyone in some sense looks like everyone else.

Before he was diagnosed with leukaemia, I had been toying with describing Frank as an "abusive father" when the subject came up at campus parties. I felt some guilt about that now. He was unpredictable, but I didn't cower in terror of him, and his attempts at manipulation, though heavy, were never effective. I wasn't vulnerable to them. Emotionally, I was myself as a smooth, hard little ball. He couldn't get purchase on me. I just rolled away.

Outside the restaurant window it had started to sleet, and under the orange street lights the wet flakes looked like punctuation marks.

We were predictable to each other, like two halves of the same brain.

He used cutlery like a real adult, not shooting glances at me to check if I was admiring his technique. I always shot glances at him.

Ok, funny, I said. Your jokes are always very humorous. I could have a girlfriend. Hypothetically. But then what would we joke about together?