Page 77 of Alone With You in the Ether

She doesn’t want to take them anymore. She doesn’t like what they do to her, how lost they make her feel. Maybe that’s the big secret, that even though she hates her feelings, she’d still rather have them than not. Maybe the enormity of it all is that she hates the highs and the lows and she knows they’re Bad, that they’re Not Supposed To Happen, but she is not herself without them. She misses herself. She doesn’t really know who she is but shewantsto know, she wants tofind out, and she can’t do it with pills. She understands that might be hard for him.

Why does it matter what’s hard for him? He has nothing to do with it.

Of course he does, he has to, because he’s signing up to share her brain-space, her thought-space. Like it or not, the fight they just had? It’s going to happen again, and he’s going to get sick of her and thenshe’sgoing to get sick of her but she’d rather get sick of all of her than get sick of the half-her the pills make her feel.

Of course he signed up for it.

What?

Of course he signed up for it, it’s what he wants. Why should someone else get her highs and lows? He wants them all, selfishly, possessively. He wants to have them, he doesn’t have any highs or lows himself, he’s been… stuck.

Stuck? He isn’t stuck, he’s a genius.

He’s been trying to solve the same problem for years. He’s the definition of stuck.

That’s the definition of insanity, which he definitely is. (This she says fondly.)

Okay fine, he’s insane, is she happy now?

Immensely. (She is.)

The point is he doesn’t need her to be anything, he doesn’t need her to be on pills. He’d like her to be honest if she wants to be but if she’s going to lie then he’d like to be in on it.

That doesn’t make any sense.

Yes it does, he doesn’t want to be the person she hidesfrom, he wants to be the person she hideswith. These are distinct, doesn’t she realize? Does she have any idea how difficult he finds it to exist with other people? And then here she is, this mystery, this puzzle, does she even know how much he loves her unpredictability, her twists and turns? She thinks her brain is some sort of problem? Fine, good, he loves problems.

He keeps saying the word ‘love.’ Does he realize that?

Well, he hasn’t exactly thought about it, but what is he supposed to say?

She doesn’t expect him to say anything, she’s just… commenting. They’ve never talked about love before, only sex.

That’s because he has only loved people he’s never fucked and fucked people he doesn’t love, purely by coincidence. Sex has always been an afterthought.

Strange to think he has afterthoughts. That’s too many thoughts. Besides, sex is about forgetting, about feeling.

He doesn’t like to forget or to feel.

So he doesn’t like sex with her?

No, he didn’t say that, he loves sex with her.

‘Love’ again. He’s doing it again.

Fine, helikessex with her, is that better?

No, it isn’t. Helikesit?

See, that’s why he said love.

He isn’t very good at words.

No, he isn’t, he knows that, people dislike his words and also, he can’t explain anything. She’s seen him teach, hasn’t she? She knows that.

Why doesn’t he just get better at it?

She should go to art school.

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