GREG SCORZO's Blog

My Interview with Pukaar Magazine

A Profound and Provocative Debut

PUKAAR TEAM MARCH 8, 2024
Leicester-based author Greg Scorzo shares insights into his debut novel, Love Before Covid, a hard-hitting work of philosophical fiction that delves into themes such as mental health, sexual freedom, parental consent, gender identity, and, ultimately, conditional and unconditional love.

Dark, intense, and emotionally charged, Greg’s book compels the reader to explore a series of intriguing and complicated relationships: a lesbian couple grappling with the decision to have children, a successful porn star facing judgment for her life choices, and a man entangled in a relationship with a clinical psychopath.

It’s an interesting and eye-opening read — a bold and daring book that offers a banquet of food for thought.
Readers are left to decide if there are any heroes or villains in the story, which is primarily conveyed through dialogue — heated exchanges between central characters as they navigate their relationships and various life dilemmas.

“It’s almost like eavesdropping on these conversations, even though you haven’t officially been invited into the room,” says Greg. “There’s a gossipy feel – mischievous and intense, where you experience the pathology and pathos of relationships. Yet, you’re also encouraged to contemplate the philosophical nature of these arguments.

The book prompts the reader to think deeply about uncomfortable topics they might want to avoid —
subjects associated with hurt, pain, or embarrassment,” he adds. “It’s a very relatable book with conflicts, arguments, and vicious insults we’ve all encountered, but it allows us to think deeply about these things rather than dismiss them.”

The central character is Joe Pastorious, a Leicester-based poet who ends his relationship with his girlfriend after she is diagnosed as a psychopath.

“The paradox is that Janet is quite a good girlfriend despite being a psychopath,” explains Greg. “Joe’s
second girlfriend, a ‘normal,’ beautiful and successful dance instructor, is also quite cruel to him.

“The story revolves around Janet’s return to Joe’s life, attempting to convince him to leave his current girlfriend and return to her. At its core, the narrative explores conditional versus unconditional love and how a mental health diagnosis should impact a relationship.”

The second story in Love Before Covid revolves around a lesbian couple debating whether to have children. Alice accuses Eve of being deficient for not wanting children, touching on complex issues such as consent around becoming a parent.

“There’s a lot of education around sexual consent, but there’s very little interest in the culture at the moment
about consent when it comes to becoming a parent,” Greg points out.
“I wanted to address issues that other philosophers haven’t touched on or don’t take
seriously.” The third story in the novel is equally raw and provocative. It focuses on a successful porn star reconnecting with her best friend after many years. Lena, now a successful author, discovers the unexpected direction Davis’s life has taken, leading to a philosophical discussion about sexual freedom and the implications of being a sex worker, especially as a parent.

All three stories immerse the reader as voyeurs — flies on the wall of rooms filled with challenging yet utterly
fascinating conversations. The rooms are uncomfortable, thick with toxicity and tension, yet you don’t want to
leave.

Greg, with a deep interest in philosophy and a PhD in the subject since 2011, aims to bring philosophical
thinking outside of academia in creative and original ways.

“I wanted to write a philosophical book of dialogues, but I didn’t want to adopt the style of a traditional philosophy book, so I wrote a fiction one instead,” he told Pukaar.

“I love the idea of a piece of writing that is simultaneously a work of fiction and a kind of philosophical thought experiment. This book poses many questions to the reader without providing answers, encouraging them to think and emote for themselves.
“So far, the reaction has been great. I haven’t heard from anyone who has read the book and hasn’t had a lot to say about it, so that to me is a huge success.”

https://pukaarmagazine.com/a-profound...

Why Writers Should Address the Culture Wars

One of the things that amazes me is the existence of society. This is because, for better or worse, society allows people to find love, achieve goals, express their creativity, find meaning, join communities and focus on the aspects of our time on this planet that (more often than not) have to do with things other than mere survival.
Society is an amazing system of contingencies, a plethora of measures and counter-measures, co-ordinating safety, comfort, and the very personal goals of each individual walking down a reliable, brightly lit street, surrounded on all sides by stores and cafes.
The fact that such a thing could evolve at all, given the vast differences in how we see the world, and the troublesome pathologies of the human unconscious, is somewhat of a miracle.
Yet we have, despite (and because of our nature) incentivised each other to behave optimally, in a tightly coordinated fashion. It is so co-ordinated we don’t even appreciate its actuality, on most days we enjoy a Starbucks in a plastic cup, walking from an air conditioned office to the inside of a mall.
Everything from our unspoken etiquette to the official laws of the land, is an incredibly complicated web of expectations, the benefits of which incentivise the overwhelming majority of people to willingly participate. We all behave, in exchange for the benefits of peace, diverse forms of reciprocity, and the ability to both directly and indirectly communicate with others who share the spaces we live in.
Yet the darker, nastier sides of humanity can’t completely be overridden by all the inducements we have to behave well in the public space, the professional space, the very spaces where we reign in our depravity in exchange for the benefits of society.
The essential human darkness still re-emerges in the home, in the nuclear family, the couple sharing a flat, or the single person spewing hate all over the internet like an unusually sadistic graffiti artist. Whether it’s spouses tearing into each other, parents abusing their children, children abusing their parents, or friends who surprise each other with everything from callous indifference to the most unexpected malice, the poisonous wickedness of the human soul always manages to cleverly, and craftily find its targets, slipping in and out of the crevices of our incredibly complex labyrinth of polite, beautifully civilised pavements of consumption.
Although this situation is largely the default of western culture, sometimes something that could only be described as a ‘rupture’ will inevitably burst through what Lacan called ‘the symbolic order.’ That is, the malevolence that resides in the private boxes of human living (flats and homes) will wind up infecting the public spaces where people are supposedly on their best behaviour. This rupture is what happens when the selfish cruelty of the dinner table begins to express itself in public politics.
The politics then cease to be rooted in compromise, democracy, consensus, evolution and a need to satisfy reasonable human desires.
A need for revolution emerges, a need which thinly veils a desire for domination, a tribal allegiance which necessitates the demonisation of others, a fervour for suppressing and antagonising the opponents of the revolution, and a childish disposition which is more than willing to take unreasonably massive gambles on social change.
Within this revolution, there is the most callous disregard for the possibility of getting things wrong, of asking for too much, for destabilising and disrupting those things for which one ought to be both grateful and protective. The greed in such revolutionary thinking makes status quo billionaires look like saintly altruists, in comparison.
It is unfortunate that in polite society, the default assumption is that the greediest people on the planet are the rich, people whose desire for capital necessitates the poor not having enough to survive. But this is an easy, fairy tale conception of greed, best suited for those who have an equally childish conception of how wealth actually spreads in a market economy. It is not fairness, nor equality, which has produced the historically unusual situation of so many middle class people living eighty year life expectancies, having a level of comfort, safety and educational opportunity that would make the most lavish kings of previous centuries blush.
It is instead the effect of people with money hiring other people to do stuff.
Welfare states and social services can, of course, make this process more ethical by giving citizens the opportunity to participate in the market willingly, rather than because of threats of poverty and homelessness. But ultimately, the most effective technology for using human desire to satisfy human needs is capitalism. And the best capitalists are disciplined and stoic, rather than greedy. They can be cold and callous, yes, but greed is rarely one of their vices. Greed, if anything, is a danger to profit maximising.
The much more difficult (and dangerous) greed of western culture is the greed of the politically minded: the activist class, the people who wish to agitate their way into dominating, rather than persuading the public, of some radical social transformation. This greed can express itself in everything from a viciously illiberal progressivism to a reactionary libertarianism which aims to both undermine the world order of international institutions and destroy public health as we know it.
Each side scare mongers about the other side destroying important rights, while both sides refuses to countenance the rights the other is frightened of losing. Each side, hence, tragically mirrors the other, through a mutual (and unsurprising) lack of self-awareness.
When these expressions of greed completely dominate the fabric of politics that people are fighting passionately about, and when these politics have gone beyond politics into our very culture, something has gone wrong not just with politics, but the human soul.
In such a situation, we can’t take for granted that these new politics are somehow disconnected from what human beings are actually like. We can’t assume that they, pernicious, greedy and stupid they may be, have nothing to do with us; with what we are like, when we aren’t being political. We can’t assume they aren’t a window into our homes, the ways we treat each other, or the ways we raise our families and maintain our friendships.
We are these politics. Or, to put it another way: these politics are expressing the sides of humanity that, ideally, remain separate from the public sphere.
Since 2014, these politics have been overtaking areas of society we all benefit from behaving well in. As a result, our discourse outside the home has become much less civil and far more vicious. This paradoxically, makes the public sphere feel less, rather than more free, when it comes to diverse expression of political opinion. When words threaten, rather than persuade, freedom of speech becomes self-undermining. There’s no point in having it, if the negative emotions in particularly harsh speech are weaponised to make other people comply with (rather than agree with) new social norms.
More worryingly, we are ceasing to see each other as individuals in the grip of bad ideas, and more as archetypal expressions of those ideas. This is, of course, an obvious road to dehumanising others; of seeing political opponents not as complex three dimensional human beings, but as ideas to suppress (and eventually exterminate, with the worst interpretation of what that might mean).
These politics, after ten years of the worst sort of psychological violence (mostly delivered my text), are now beginning to turn into actual physical violence. In the US, a presidential candidate recently survived an assassination attempt. And it is also a miracle other people have not become targets of assassins, because of this candidate’s own rhetoric which has a habit of (not so subtly) encouraging acts of violence.
The fact that we tolerate this state of affairs, the fact that it collectively expresses the spirit d’age, shows that politics has become less about making a better world and more of an excuse for people to behave like individuals who are unaware that they would do better if they had a personality disorder diagnosis. So by default, the real desire here is domination. Not anything to do with human well being, creative evolution, or the solutions to practical problems.
As writers portraying the present moment for future generations, this is what we should be describing, with the unsparingly accurate power of the literary imagination. This is what we should mirror back to our readers, because it is our readers who have the power to restore sanity, peace, and the incentives that make society evolve, rather than revolve around the deranged, greedy, narcissistic, and stupid demands of the latest orthodoxies on both sides of the political spectrum.
Such orthodoxies destroy our culture, rather than just our politics, as they clearly and succinctly express the demonic aspects of the human psyche. But this, it is important to remember, is still our psyche. It exists because of us, not because of an imaginary them – something disconnected from what we are as human community. And the more we are honest about this, the better.
In the west, we are damaged and toxic, in this third decade of the 21st century.
But like any analogous moment in history, there is always hope. There are also tools to make things better, tools that didn’t exist in previous moments where westerners went a little bit crazy.
But one tool that has (almost) always been there, is the work of fiction.
Love Before Covid

First Advert for my debut novel "Love Before Covid"

This book is officially being published and will be available at all good book shops via. Troubadour Books (July 28th, 2023).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Vl-l...

Why I like Writing Stereotypical Characters

I like writing stereotypical characters. I can understand why many authors don’t like writing or reading stereotypical characters, but I do. Especially if they are the most extreme version of a stereotype I can think of.

This is partly because, when you encounter someone who exemplifies a stereotype, you’re encountering something that society would rather deny. Sometimes this is because of a worry that a person who exemplifies a stereotype will create bigoted reactions in a more privileged population. A character who is a loud misogynistic black man may, for instance, cause a white audience to think this is what all black men are like.

I take this worry seriously.

This is why I would never write a story (or book) that consists of nothing but loud, misogynistic black men. But I would also, by the same token, never write a book filled with articulate, peaceful black women who are tormented by nothing but loud, misogynistic white men. Both plots are trying to reassure the audience of their own prejudices. And good fiction, like good film making or good poetry, should challenge prejudices. A good story should expand your belief set, not reinforce things in you that are easy, dogmatic, or closed off to the complexities of reality. A good story doesn’t reassure; it probes and provokes. If it’s really good, it becomes a catalyst for new forms of thinking and feeling.

Stereotypical characters are useful in this regard because of what they reveal about all of us. Stereotypical characters are windows into social tendencies that are deeply pathological, tendencies best confronted with honesty rather than denial. A stereotypical character can, after all, easily mistreat others. They can act with something like an invisibility cloak around them. The loud, misogynistic black man may find it easier to be misogynistic and loud, if he exists in an environment of white women who are paranoid about their own latent racism.

Let’s take another stereotype: the HIV positive sexually promiscuous gay man of the 1980s. The easy way to write such a stereotype is to say that this man is promiscuous because it’s his way of coping with living in an oppressive society. The oppressive society denies him a chance to express his sexuality without discrimination or judgement. That’s all there is to know about him, re: his promiscuity.

The more difficult (and more interesting way) to write such a character is to explore how he is pathological, and how this pathology is both medically dangerous and an impediment to the acceptance of homosexuality, generally. That is to say, this character is both a threat to gay lives, as well as gay rights. And yet this character is oppressed, too. These things are all true, simultaneously.

From the complexity of these truths, an interesting question emerges: What’s more important about this character? The fact that he is oppressed? Or the fact that he is pathological, harmful to other gay people, and an impediment towards the acceptance of homosexuality?

This, of course, leads to a further question: Is the oppression of gays happening because of straight society or because of gay men like this character? To answer this question, the reader has to honestly ponder the relationship between individuals and society – as well as think about oppression in a way that is complex.

This complexity is perhaps what explains the grain of truth that exists in stereotypes. And the healthiest society will face these truths without collapsing into bigotry and paranoia. A society convinced it can only be kind and compassionate on the back of lies – even lies of omission, is a society primed for self-destruction.

But part of using stereotypes well is putting them in context. If you write a stereotypical character, your story won’t be insightful if its message is that this character is a representation of a certain demographic group. Your story will become something like propaganda - propaganda that propagates obvious falsehoods. Hence, if you include the loud, misogynistic black man or the promiscuous gay man in your story to claim that this is just what black and gay men are like, your story sucks.

The worst usages of stereotypical characters involve the writer making simplistic and over-generalising proclamations about entire demographic groups. It is easier than one would think to fall into this trap. This is because it’s fashionable to display one’s virtue by avoiding stereotypical characters if they come from demographics associated with historical oppression. It’s also (within the same group of people) fashionable to make simplistic and overgeneralising proclamations about demographic groups not associated with historical oppression.

I encountered this tendency in a book I was reading the other day, a book by an author who I think is otherwise a master of her craft. I was really enjoying her book, finding it clever and insightful, like it was on the verge of illuminating something interesting and tragic about the human condition.

Then I noticed something: nearly every male character in the book was either (1) an arrogant, chauvinistic, and aggressive dickhead, or (2) an inconsiderate, condescending, and overgrown child who wanted a wife who was something in-between a prostitute, a mother figure, and a slave.

All the female characters were middle aged, submissive and resentful. They resented their husbands, blaming them for the fact that these women had not pursued their dreams. Sometimes these dreams were career oriented and other times they were purely artistic. Yet these female characters all refused to leave their marriages, stoically committing themselves to unfulfilling and (frequently) humiliating lives.

The book didn’t question these female characters, or raise the possibility that these women had some responsibility for how their lives turned out. It just took for granted that this is what life is like for heterosexual women, because this is what heterosexual men are like.

Suddenly the book went from seeming like a masterpiece to looking like an expression of rather dated gender stereotypes. Initially, I resisted this judgement about it. I thought, “If this is her experience of men, why shouldn’t she write men this way?” But of course, that didn’t sit well with me.

If I were to consistently take a line like that, I’d also have to say something similar if she wrote the same book but indicated that all the men were black and the women were white. I’d have to say (if I were consistent): “If this is her experience of black men, we shouldn’t she write black men this way?” And of course, I could never say that, because such a book would be outrageously racist. If that hypothetical book was racist, then of course, the actual book she wrote was more than a little sexist.

But it wasn’t sexist because she wrote stereotypical male or female characters. It was sexist because her use of them was to tell the reader a simple, straight forward point: This is what married life is like.

Her characters weren’t used to ask profound or interesting questions about marriage. They were used to simply hammer home the point that the author thinks part of being a heterosexual woman is to be powerless and resentful in a long-term relationship with a penis bearing jerk. And if women find themselves in such relationships, not only can they not leave. They have no responsibility for starting families with these kinds of men. Because, of course, it’s not as if there were any nice men that these women overlooked in their youth.

I might be more forgiving if I thought this author were simply writing a book about stereotypical men and women, a book which was not trying to make a grand statement about heterosexual relationships. But this is clearly a book attempting to comment on the nature of heterosexual marriage in 2021, not simply a tale of a submissive masochist and her boorish male partner. This is a book drawing a strong connection between heterosexual marriage and the subsequent denigration of women.

This, I should say, is not my experience of marriage. And it’s also not what I think 21st century culture normalises. But whether I agree with this message or not is secondary to a more important point: a fiction book shouldn’t be giving a straight forward message.

A good story wouldn’t tell the reader, “Western culture is not a patriarchy”, anymore than it would bang the reader over the head with the idea that our culture encourages men to be jerks. A good story, insofar as it deals with gender, will ask questions about gender, society, and the characters who are gendered in the society in which the story takes place. And in the process of doing that, the story will be mind bending and mind free-ing in a way that day to day life is not.

And yes, such a story may involve stereotypical characters. But they will not be used to say, in an uncomplicated way, that this is what all members of a demographic are like. They will be used to to probe, to unsettle, and to give rise to speculations and new ways of seeing.

They will be doorways into new visions of the human experience, rather than re-affirmations of what readers already believe.

This is the kind of storytelling that excites me.

2 Sentence Horror Story

An amazing group of kind, intelligent and deeply loving humans have lived and died, for as long as mankind has existed.

They are atheists, and so they are all now in hell, experiencing the worst torments imaginable – forever.

Screw The Teachers

When I was in high school, there was always a teacher who thought he was helping us by giving us two or three times the work of the other classes. The teacher would say, “I’m giving you a challenge. You’re going to learn how hard you can push yourself and then you’ll feel this amazing sense of accomplishment.”

At the time, I thought this was stupid self-aggrandising BS. This is because I was already at school for eight hours a day. I was also getting up early in the morning every day, even though that circadian rhythm has never suited me. I already had homework that took at least four hours to complete, because it came from six classes at once. I had a day of almost total concentration with very few hours to myself. A lot of it was boring and a lot of it felt less like education than indoctrination.

So I did the least amount of work in the classes where the teacher was trying to challenge me. I got C’s.
Sometimes the occasional D. Everyone told me I was letting myself down and it would jeopardise my ability to get into a “good college.”

What actually happened was I became a straight A student in college and got a masters and PhD in philosophy at the University of Nottingham. And throughout all of that, I never made myself do 6 classes a day, every day. And I never chose classes where I had to get up at 6am, unless I absolutely had to.
So looking back, how do I feel about those C’s and D’s in high school?

Proud.

Is there a lesson from this to take into adulthood?

Don’t let people overwork you when you can tell the work has less to do with your benefit and more to do with their ego.

Joe's Letter to Janet (A Deleted Scene from 'Love Before Covid')

This is the first thing I wrote for my novel 'Love Before Covid'.

Ironically, it would up being one of the sections that got cut out of the final version of the novel. However, I still kind of like this piece, so here it is.

I think of it as a 'deleted scene'.

"On August 20th, 2015, at exactly 3pm, Janet arrives at her London flat after having had a joyful lunch with her friend Claire Widerlich. Claire happens to be in London reading some of her poems in coffee houses that Janet regularly frequents. Claire gets much bigger and enthusiastic audiences in London than she does when she reads her poems in Leicester. It’s been a while since Janet and Claire have had a chance to have an in-person conversation with each other. They mostly talk on Skype. 

Janet decided to meet Claire in person at a trendy Mexican restaurant (Wahaca) at 11am. Both originally planned to finish their lunch and leave by 1: 30pm. However, Janet and Claire were so engrossed in their conversation that they stayed chatting for another hour. They both found it hard to leave an intense and funny discussion, a chin wag mostly about the pitfalls of conceptual art and the stupidity of the art market. Their conversation also drifted off into other topics: Jeremy Corbyn, 60s jazz, electronic cigarettes, quantum computers, cuban vegetarian food, consensual slavery in the BDSM community, and the most efficient way to control your face during a poker game. They even talked about Joe and Loraine.

Neither Joe or Loraine know that Claire is friends with Janet.

Back at her flat, Janet sips a cup of tea at her office desk and opens her laptop to check her email. Her office is untidy. There are books all over the floor; books Joe either purchased for Janet or recommended to her between 1999 and 2002. Next to the books are iPods, kindles, CDs, manuscripts, drawings, skirts, jackets, hats, plastic cups, incense sticks, and candy wrappers.

Janet can see that there is an email in her inbox from Joe. She opens it excitedly to see how Joe has responded to the long and elaborate email she sent him four days earlier.

Janet reads every line of Joe’s email very carefully. 

"Janet,

Where to begin…

I know it wasn’t easy writing to me after all these years. I appreciate your courage and honesty. I appreciate all the time and effort it took you to tell me all those things you felt you needed to say.

Believe it or not, it was a relief to hear from you again. I’ve been thinking about you a lot, recently. If you hadn’t emailed me, I would have eventually found a way to contact you. I don’t know how, but I could sense we both needed to talk to each other again. Those feelings were reaffirmed when I read all those beautiful sentences you sent me. It didn’t feel like I was reading text. It felt like a phone conversation, but even that’s not quite getting it right.

It was more like an old rock band had been re-united. When you have an idea and I feel something strongly about it, it’s like harmony. Very complex harmony. Maybe we’re not a rock band after all. Maybe we’re be-bop. Maybe John Zorn and Bill Frisell. That’s not quite right either. It’s more like being a 14 old boy, being seduced by a beautiful woman I should report to the police. You’d make an ace coke dealer, Janet. In some ways, you’re like cocaine to me.

But a little self-destruction is sometimes illuminating. I’m always learning something about myself when I communicate with you. The lessons can be painful. That doesn’t bother me though. Most of the things I learn about myself are painful. Being born was painful. And it’s been painful understanding just how much I miss having your thoughts in my life. It was strange seeing them again, like revisiting a confused childhood memory. Your words are like a swarm of beautiful and golden bees. I work hard to leave them alone.

In your email, you said many things I thought were unfair, insensitive, cruel, and otherwise full of shit. In a couple of places, you were just a mean cunt. Not a nice person. Maybe not even a good person. But that’s only one side of you. There are others. Too many for me to pretend that I understand how they all fit together. That’s why I’m writing you back. That’s why I haven’t told you to fuck off, even though I probably should have. You are a master at making me feel things I shouldn’t feel. You bring out the weepy old woman in me. I can only thank you for that.

Thank you for making it so hard for me to stay angry at you. Thank you for expressing yourself so openly. Thank you for explaining to me the entire history of our relationship and break up (from your perspective). It’s good for me to see myself through someone else’s eyes, once in a while. I’m glad I now know so much more about your mind and history than I ever did as a young lad. So much of what you said I wish I knew thirteen years ago. It might have helped me treat you like less of a dick.

For the record, I don’t hate your brain and never have. It’s an unusual brain in an unusual person; a sometimes horrible and unusual person. However, if there is one thing you’re not, it’s hateful. Pitiful maybe. But not hateful. And definitely not scary. Convincing you I was terrified of your brain was what I had to do in order to get you to break up with me. I know that’s callous and nasty-the epitome of youthful hubris and righteous insensitivity. I won’t even try to defend it. I know how much you loved me. I know how much I hurt you. But that didn’t stop me, as you know.

I can no longer atone or apologise for that in any meaningful way. I tried once before and wound up disfigured, traumatised, and suicidal. I haven’t fully worked through that experience, even though a decade has passed. In the present moment, I can only choose to follow your lead about not offering up excuses: What I did to you was unforgivable. I scarred you without considering the repercussions. I was a selfish little shithead; a sadistic and immature prick. You did nothing to deserve the way I let you go. You have nothing to feel guilty about, regards our break up or the lead up to it. I was a cruel fucking bastard, young and stupid, incapable of making the decisions I knew in my heart were the right ones.

In other words, I was just like you the day you shoved a fork in my face and left me for dead. I can understand how hard you wish you never did that. I hate my past as well. Like you, I wish I was a better person. When we were together, I wanted to be the person that held you up when life tore you down. But I wasn’t strong enough. I told you even then: You deserved to be loved by someone much better than me. It saddens me that you still feel that I’m the best you can do. It’s not even sad. It’s tragic. Your love for me is the worst thing I ever did to you.

I’m ashamed of it. I’m ashamed you’re still in love with someone who doesn’t deserve your love. It’s not that I’m ashamed because I think I don’t deserve love from anyone, mind you. I’m ashamed because you hate loving people who don’t deserve love from you. And yet you love me anyway. You love me even though it goes against everything you value in your life. I wish I could send that love back to you, accompanied by a hand written apology letter much longer than this email. Your love doesn’t feel like it’s meant for me. I feel like it belongs to someone else, someone more like my younger self.

Speaking of someone else, I can understand if you’ve been fantasising about sticking a fork into Loraine’s head. Like most human beings, Loraine can be a vile bitch when people take advantage of her. Her blog about me that you brought to my attention was sickening, but what I did to her before she composed it was far worse. I cheated on her, Janet. I broke the most sacred bond a man can have with a woman he loves. Loraine forgave me anyway. That’s how much she loves me.

I can’t blame you for being concerned about me though. If I were you, seeing the things from her that you’ve seen on your screen, I’d be worried about me too. I hate most of the shit Loraine puts on the internet. I cringe at her islamophobia. I can’t stand her weird Daily Mail Feminism. Even her mum gets angry when she reads the stuff Loraine writes on Facebook about how men can’t self-identify as women. And her mum hasn’t even seen the blogs you did. But there’s an important lesson here: Nothing Loraine has ever put on the internet has stopped her from being one of the most sought after dance instructors in the midlands. She makes far more money than I ever did.

Loraine teaches Children’s Gymnastic Dance, Child and Adult Tap, Adult Ballet, Children’s Theatre Dancing, as well as Adult Modern, and Freestyle Dancing for Teens. In the summers, she does Hip Hop and Jazz workshops (which amaze me because Loraine hates both Hip Hop and Jazz). Kids are constantly popping in and out of our home. They absolutely love her. If they have any kind of trouble in their lives, they let it out and she listens. She always gives them great advice. They even cry in her arms. If Loraine were a horrible person, this wouldn’t be happening.

I know it’s hard for you to imagine, but in person, Loraine is a sweetheart. Yes, she is a challenge, but she’s the kind of challenge that makes me feel like I’m accomplishing something. We never talk about social issues or her blogs. We normally talk about things that need to be done in our home. Loraine, as you know, is very beautiful. I know you can’t understand this, but her beauty makes me very proud. Don’t misunderstand me. You’re beautiful too. But not like Loraine. I’ve never seen a woman as beautiful as Loraine. Never in my life. There’s nothing that makes me prouder than the fact that I can look the way I do and still be in a relationship with the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen. For someone who looks like me, that’s like slaying a dragon. 

I might worry about this pride if it weren’t for the fact that so many other things about Loraine impress me. Loraine is incredibly intelligent (she can do maths better than I ever could). She’s also amazingly hard working, great at motivating people, and incredible at remembering all the details of any task that makes our home run more efficiently. She teaches me so much. She’s taught me a myriad of practical skills (how to repair a boiler, install a toilet, and even build a woodshed). Because of her, I’m actually a decent cook today. She’s the reason I learned how to drive and can afford a nice car. Her career is the reason we can live where we live.

I don’t need to have intense conversations with Loraine. I have friends for that. Loraine stops me from hurting myself. She makes me feel good about the fact that I’m alive. She makes me laugh. She even installed a stripper poll in our bedroom so she could dance for me before we have sex. How many women are selfless enough to actually do that? Probably very few. And even less can do extended butterflies as well as Loraine. Loraine’s coordination, timing, and reflexes are absolutely cracking. But that’s only the beginning of what’s interesting about her.

One thing I know you’ll find quite interesting about Loraine is just how beloved she is in our little city. People love Loraine on the streets of Leicester. She can’t walk down Granby Street without strangers constantly saying hello. She’s like a local celebrity because of how much money she’s raised for charities that fund community arts projects, children’s health campaigns, and cancer research. She’s been in the Leicester Mercury at least a dozen times. Her dance classes have won awards. Like it or not, Loraine is an amazing person Janet. And as is the case with any amazing person, you can’t reduce them to how they behave on their worst days. Most of the time, Loraine isn’t just good for me. She’s necessary.

Without Loraine in my life, I don’t know where I’d be, or if I’d be. Loraine is like a boundary that keeps all the worst parts of me from overtaking, like the rock that crushes all the waves in me I can’t see. She doesn’t abuse me. She pushes the boundaries of what I’m capable of hearing, what I’m capable of learning from. We don’t have much in common but we don’t need to. Our relationship is about understanding differences, hearing uncomfortable truths. It’s more like art than masturbation, more punk than Pavarotti.

Loraine hates much of what I love and that’s ok. I get exposure to a radically different perspective when I talk to her. I get to see the world through a keyhole that used to frighten me. When I’m with Loraine, I feel like I’m getting the education I wish I had in school. She says all the things every middle class tutor who got off on backstabbing me would never say to my face. And I give her a willing audience for her behaviours, behaviours that never cease to fascinate and perplex me. On top of all that, she tells me every day that she loves me. As you know, I never got that as a child. 

Of course, that doesn’t make our relationship a breezy stroll through the garden path of putrid, rom-com bliss. We’re flawed, not psychopaths. We love each other no matter how much we hurt each other. We love each other even when we hate each other. We love each other unconditionally, like two halves of a broken mirror, overlooking the wilderness. We don’t need to be smooth and perfect. We don’t need to be society’s fantasy. We don’t need to be a “healthy couple.” We can be ourselves and love each other for that. I’ve never had love like this before, especially not from you.

With you, I never felt love just because I was Joe. But you got my unconditional love, not wanting it. You wanted to earn my love. That makes me sad for you, even now. You’ll never know what it’s like to be accepted for who you are. You can’t accept yourself. You live like romance is just money-money in exchange for doing shit that delights people and keeps their crushes burning. There’s nothing more tragic to me than someone who believes the things you do. Nothing sadder, really.

I hate to tell you this Janet, but you’re an incredibly fucked up person. I’m not blurting this out because I’m trying to be mean. I’m trying to get you to see something: You need love you don’t earn as much as I do. No adult is completely an adult from head to toe. There’s a little selfish child in all of us that needs forgiveness and understanding. That little child in you is the reason I’m spending the rest of my life with one eye. You, of all people, need empathy you don’t deserve. That’s why your email is just a wee bit ironic.

Behind all that verbiage is a truth you won’t say: You want me to love and forgive you. You want to be loved in the very way you spent so many paragraphs denigrating. You want to be loved and forgiven in a way that’s too painful for you to even admit. So as punishment for being such a flagrant hypocrite, I’m going to give you half of what you want. I’m going to forgive you-and I hope it hurts. I hope you learn from this pain.

I forgive you for disfiguring me. I forgive you for not calling an ambulance or apologising. I forgive you for leaving me alone to bleed to death. I forgive you for all the cruel things you said to me before you nearly killed me. You don’t deserve forgiveness for any of that–you deserve contempt and you know it. But you’re going to be forgiven anyway. Like I do with Loraine, I’m choosing not to define you by the worst things you’ve done. I’m allowing you the potential to transcend all of that and be lovable anyway.

I know I should hate you. I should be frightened of you. I should have pressed charges against you for what you did to me. But I can’t feel anything for you other than affection. It feels physical, like my body can’t feel anything other than the deepest sadness when the mere thought of you rolls around my brain. What the fuck does that say about me? I don’t even know. But I do know why I hurt you. I know why I made you want to hurt me as badly as you did.

When we were in love, I was very happy. It was probably the happiest time of my whole life. That was the problem with it. There were absolutely no challenges. You were perfect in every way: beautiful, intelligent, interesting, kind, funny, charismatic, and so sexy it was freakish. Although I didn’t realise it at the time, I didn’t want to be in the perfect relationship. I wanted to be in a relationship where I could face challenges and feel like I’m accomplishing something.

I reacted the way I did to your diagnosis because it was just an excuse to break up with you. Something about our relationship didn’t feel right. It felt too idyllic. Too incredible. Too much like what every geekboy dreams about when they imagine the kind of life partner they could have if life were perfect; the way life would be if every woman were like Anna Karina in Pierrot Le Fou. If I were more religious than I already am, I might say being with you was like owning a brothel in heaven. When you fall in love with a person who seems so much like an angel, that’s when you know you’re fully dead inside.

I’m only happy when I feel alive, Janet.

In my day to day existence, I’m a teacher and a poet. But when I come home to a woman, I want to be a wild caveman. Because that’s so different to every other side of myself, it’s something I struggle with. I thrive off that struggle, like I thrive when I try my hardest to earn a decent living. I find great joy and relief when I can accept rather than judge my base brain, my lower self, all the grimier sides of my humanity. I spent too much of my youth beating myself up over imperfections. I don’t want to fight me anymore. I just want to accept who I am and live my life the best way that I can. I’m trying to be self-reflective, these days. Part of that involves being honest with myself. Not the hypocrite you still are.

I am not civilised. I’m selfish. I’m unhealthy both physically and mentally (and I look it). That’s why you will never find a pic of me on Facebook again (unless Loraine puts it there). I’m a nasty, ugly and self-harming pig. You are not. You are an extraordinary person because you have the brain of the ultimate pig, the deadly pig. Yet you have now trained yourself to act in a way that makes everyone else look like pigs in comparison. You are very civil that way. Maybe the ultimate expression of civility. But that’s not me. I am a naturally civilised person who wants to be a pig.

That’s the reason we were never a good couple. You want systems and I thrive off of chaos. You want to write books and I want to marvel at them. You want to use people and I want to accept them. You want to live a long life and I’d prefer to die young. That’s what we are. That’s what being honest with myself has taught me. I always knew I wasn’t good enough for you. Now I know why.

Unlike you, I can still love myself in all my failures and successes. I couldn’t do that when I was young and cute. It’s very liberating to no longer be the dashing and chiseled young bloke you fell in love with. It’s honestly a relief not having to be a pretty boy who girls fawn over. When women are attracted to me now, I know its because of me. Not how I look. So I don’t have to fuck them. I don’t feel obligated to anymore. I can fuck Loraine instead. She’s more attractive than all of them put together. And she has the courage to be proud of that. She’s not just proud of being beautiful, Janet. She’s proud of being MORE beautiful than most women.

Loraine is not afraid to say this to any woman she befriends who is self-harming. She’s not afraid to get angry at women who start lecturing her about body diversity. If any of her students gain weight, she tells them off in front of everyone else. She says things to them that, for me, would be incredibly humiliating. You’d think Loraine would have been sacked by now, but amazingly, she hasn’t. I think it’s because of how much her students respect her. They can see that she puts herself at risk, socially. She’s not afraid to make other women hate her. She’s not like me. She’s not weak. She won’t allow women to make excuses for not doing their best. 

Loraine is proud of the fact that she’s a fighter; she fights to be as beautiful as she is. She’s proud of the fact that she’s not a typical Leicester girl; she doesn’t eat kebabs; she’s not self-pitying; she doesn’t settle for looking like anything other than what she wants to. She self-creates with exercise and healthy eating. She’s like a sculpture made of iron will; the ultimate expression of feminine energy. I know it’s easy for you to scoff at that. It’s easy for you to look down on the Loraines of the world; the people who actually fight to get rid of the physical insecurities the rest of us tolerate. Loraine isn’t bothered by this kind of snobbery. She looks down on the rest of us. She certainly looks down on me and has every right to. 

At the end of the day, Loraine has made her body the opposite of mine. She has the most beautifully toned and limber thighs, Janet. She’s created, bar none, the most perfect abs on any woman I’ve ever seen. Her arse is hard, shapely, sculpted like fantasy made flesh. Her tits aren’t like tits; they’re like the pair of breasts all tits are an imperfect imitation of. She loves herself for that. She’s not afraid of being envied. Loraine is a woman who will tell you to your face how proud she is of her tight pussy. And why shouldn’t she be? She worked hard for that pussy and isn’t afraid to talk about it. Loraine can talk to you for hours about why you should do the Kegel exercises she does. She doesn’t care if that’s not lady like. She doesn’t care if it makes you uncomfortable. Loraine is fierce. She’s fierce in her individuality. 

Loraine doesn’t want to live in a world where women let themselves down. She thinks all women have a responsibility to have a harmonious relationship with their bodies. Body confidence, for Loraine, is what helps women defend themselves from rapists and street attackers. It’s what makes women feel like they deserve to be in the beds they fuck in. It’s what allows women to be good role models for their sons and daughters. Loraine thinks there is nothing worse than a parent who doesn’t model self-care in their dieting and exercise habits. I don’t agree with Loraine about all of this, but I’m happy she thinks these things. And no, its not because I’m drowning in endless nights of amazing sex. Sex with Loraine is mediocre most of the time.  

Loraine’s beauty and the importance it has to her is what’s not mediocre. It’s the reason receiving her love lets me know I’m good enough not to kill myself. It’s not just society that tells me I can’t be with someone who looks like Loraine. It’s also Loraine. I’ve overcome even her rules, Janet. It’s not just that I’ve made the most beautiful woman in Leicester want to love an ugly fat bastard like me. It’s more transformative than that. If I can make someone who values beauty as much as Loraine love all my rolls of fat, I know that I’m worth loving. I know something about me MUST be lovable. Because I’m lovable, I’ll never have to worry that becoming fat or old (or even disabled) will one day make Loraine go away. I can just be me and that will always be enough. Loraine hates people like me and loves me anyway. That’s the greatest compliment a woman can give a man. I feel like I’ve done something impossible: I made a beautiful woman who hates fat people love me. 

This is what gives me hope in life. You can never trust your own lovability if the love you receive comes with conditions. That’s why I don’t want a relationship with my best friend. I don’t want a relationship even with someone I consider my equal. I want a relationship with someone I’m not supposed to have; someone mysterious to me, someone dangerous, someone I can master. Maybe this is because of how my mother made me feel, growing up. Or maybe it’s because I worry I can never really know people. Maybe its because I was in a relationship with my best friend before and that didn’t turn out so well. 

Whatever the reason, I don’t want to spend the rest of my life having a deep romance with interesting conversations and predictably hot sex. I don’t want to be with someone who is always working so hard to treat me with kindness, respect, and dignity. I don’t want to be bored again. I don’t want the banal luxuries that come with being “the happy couple.” Most of those privileges make me want to be sick. In our home, there are no pictures of me and Loraine on our shelves. We don’t need pictures when we see each other every day.

Our relationship doesn’t need to be freeze framed in a smile. That’s cold and inhuman. Our relationship is like fire. With Loraine, I thrive off of feeling like I’m winning a violent and brutal war, like I’m burning people alive so they won’t decapitate me. I’m addicted to the adrenaline rush of this; it’s absolutely intoxicating, like nothing in my wildest dreams. Other people don’t understand my thrills and I don’t need them to. To me, most people seem like empty holograms and I don’t have to hate them for that either.

I don’t need society to approve of me. I need to do what makes me feel passionate. There’s nothing that stirs me like the moments when I can’t predict what will make a woman incredibly angry with me. It’s better than the biggest orgasms. It makes even the best sex feel like a trivial afterthought. I never got that pleasure from you. You were always so kind, so witty, so intelligent, so seductive, and if I’m honest, so boring and reasonable.

I felt like an indulged child. I felt like you knew me inside out and always delighted me with surprises I didn’t ask for. Every day, I felt like I was getting everything I ever wanted from a woman. For me, that literally feels like decapitation. Especially if none of it’s genuine. I’ll take anger over kindness if there is truth in the anger. Truth is far more exciting than placation. And Loraine is far more exciting than you could ever be. She’s far more exciting than you, even though she’s far less sexy. That’s how much sex matters to me now. Erections are a poor substitute for adrenaline rushes.

What excites me these days is love, truth, honesty, loyalty, support, passion, and forgiveness. And on that front, Loraine soars like an eagle. You were more like a beautiful snake; a snake I’m wise enough to not let near me again; a snake it’s a relief to consign to my past. Or at least it was a relief. Now I don’t know what it is.

Probably 80% of my brain is happy you are part of a past that’s long gone. Probably 90% is happy I now have the relationship I’ve always wanted. 95% of my brain knows it should hate you and it really really wants to. But I’m not strong enough. There’s another weakness in me you can take advantage of. I’m so so angry at you… and yet hearing you describe your feelings for me had me sobbing. I don’t understand why such a small part of me has so much power over all the rest.

What I do understand is that I still like you, though not in a romantic way. You can relax-this like for you is conditional. I like you because you aren’t like anyone I’ve ever known. You’re more like a piece of music than a person; a music too cool for us mere mortals to really hear without years of repeated listenings. I know that doesn’t make much sense, but neither do most of my feelings. That’s another reason we were never good together.

I was never really on your wave length. I was in awe of you. I still am, even though it’s wounding to admit that. I love your insight and creativity, but those aren’t the parts of you that make me jealous. The parts of you I wish I had are your strength and bravery. Even more than that, I wish I had your self-love. I fell in love with you because I was a young fool; I didn’t have good boundaries with people. I had never met anyone who could be so caring and yet stand up for themselves so easily when they needed to. I can’t follow your example but I’m glad I got to see what it looks like. I can’t be like you but you do inspire me, even now. How odd is that?

Don’t waste your time trying to understand it because you can’t. I can’t understand it anymore than you. It’s a much more worthwhile endeavour to be honest instead of trying to understand everything in great detail. In the spirit of that honesty, I can only say again how horrible you make me feel. I feel horrible because we hurt each other so badly. I feel horrible because I can’t really see things turning out any other way. We needed to end. I know that doesn’t mean we aren’t both still hurting very badly.

If it makes you feel any better, you’re not the only one who has feelings they have to shove down. Despite everything that has happened and everything you have done to me, you can erase all my ambivalences with a few strokes of your keyboard. Like an orchestra conductor, you can make me miss you on cue. I miss you badly, Janet. I miss talking to you. I miss cumming in your mouth. I even miss being terrified on roller coasters, squeezing your hand. For better or for worse, I wish you could hurt me one last time. I’m an idiot and I self-harm. You do neither of those things. And so I miss you the way I breathe. I can’t help it. 

Maybe that’s why you’re still magical to me, even though I don’t believe in magic. You might be the most magical illusion in the world: the psychopath who can learn to love and be as normal as anyone else; maybe better than normal. I can’t say whether or not you’re a good person. But I can tell you this: You’re better than Hitler. You’re better than Jimmy Saville. You’re better than Katie Hopkins. You’re better than my best friend. You’re better than a boring and miserable bitch. You’re better than my mother. You’re maybe even better than Loraine. But none of that matters. Love isn’t about what you deserve. Like, however, is a different story.

I still like you, Janet. I like you so much, I want to cry. I’m so sad I can’t like you more. So unbelievably sad I am who I am. But I can cope with the sadness for a change. I can even cope with once having loved you, although that love was just a product of deception. But hey, that’s how the human being blossoms till it burns out, like everything else in the fucking stars.

Feelings are shadow play, nonsense, a good night out under too many mojitos and a thumping bass line. Feelings can cloud your judgement, impede your vision, distorting the lens that should be pointing you towards your higher self. I’m not sure I have one of those but I’m positive you do. So regardless of how it makes either of us feel, we both have to face reality: we are over. You have a life you should value. I damage lives, not just eyeballs.

As fucked up as you are my dear, you’re a few paces better than yours truly, a few rungs higher on the consciousness ladder. Even though you’re officially a bad person, you’re still too good for me. I can’t repeat this enough. I’m ok with it and you should be as well. It’s an odd stroke of luck, a little pathway upwards, a gift wrapped courtesy of God. Or whatever.

For my sake, just try to be be happy and live your amazing life. You don’t need me in it, the way you once did. Don’t let your memory of me stop you from living in the present, living at your best. Love is blind but you can open your eyes. Don’t let your memory of me stop you from opening your heart to someone else who can love you far better than I ever could. Don’t miss out on that because of me. You honour your memory of me if you can lead the best life you can without fear or hesitation. Your life is too precious to sabotage over an ex-boyfriend who was far too flawed to love you the way you needed to be loved.

So please, on behalf of that ex-boyfriend, find someone you deserve and grab him. Love him conditionally. Fuck his brains out. And charm him enough so that he doesn’t see all the self-interest rotting underneath your vivacious personality. Don’t try so hard not to hurt him. He might like how powerful and strong you are. I certainly do.

I’ll write you a poem you can read aloud at your wedding. It will be short, pretty, and have nothing in it but the most polite and bland lies about love; like the Corinthians poem you love so much; the one that expresses shame at the way love actually works. But if shame is what works for you, I can play along. But not in this email.

Love, my darling Janet, is impatient. It’s not kind. It’s boastful and proud. It dishonours the memory of others, it’s self-seeking. Like Loraine, it angers easily. And like you, it keeps record of wrongs. But it’s not all bad. Like you, it doesn’t delight in evil. And like Loraine, it rejoices in the truth. Of course, love doesn’t always protect and trust. It doesn’t always hope and it certainly doesn’t persevere.

But you do. And I love that about you so much, Janet. I don’t have the words to tell you how much I love that about you. And that’s why I’m choosing love over you. I need love right now. Not what you give me. What you give me is better than love but I can’t handle it. It’s too powerful and I’m too damaged to be able to take it with grace. If you allow me to take centre stage in your life, even as a friend, I’m certain I will make things much worse for you. Let me be in the background.

Let me just write you that poem when you get married. Let me love my memory of you, the memory of all the things you were before I hurt you.

That’s all I can give you, apart from my forgiveness. That’s all I have left in me.

Joe"

After finishing the email, Janet rolls her eyes. 

Joe’s words are drenched in three things Janet hates: hypocrisy, inconsistency, and self-pity. There are also remarks in Joe’s email that Janet finds unfair, delusional, stupid, reactionary, self-destructive, and incredibly insulting. Janet can tell Joe is trying to make her angry; he’s trying his hardest to push her away from him. However, Joe’s email contains an additional quality that makes the above elements comparatively unimportant to Janet:

It makes her feel loved. Janet can feel love for her in Joe’s words."

Love and Weight Loss

Joe: I want you to help motivate me lose weight in a way that works for me.

Loraine: What would work for you?

Joe: Well, here’s what I’d like: between Sunday and Tuesday, we have sex that you want, or no sex at all. It’s up to you. But on Wednesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, I want you to use your vibrator if you’re horny. I want those to be my days off.

Loraine: I can do that, but I don’t understand how your weight loss figures into that.

Joe: I will weigh myself every Friday. If I don’t lose a pound, Fridays and Saturdays are days I don't have sex.

Loraine: Okay.

Joe: If I lose a pound, I have sex with you on Saturday. But it’s sex exactly the way I want it.

Loraine: How do you want it?

Joe: I want to role play some fantasies with you. I might want to buy some Halloween costumes I think you’ll look sexy in. There’s a William Shatner mask that would be so hot if it had your body poking out of the neck. I want you to wear that mask and I want to play some Star Trek episodes on my laptop while I’m fucking you. I’ll plug the laptop into our stereo speakers so we can hear the dialogue and music booming through the floor. That’ll be so fucking horny!

Loraine: That doesn’t really get me off, but I can do that for you. I’ve still got Sunday until Tuesday for me to get the sex I want.

Joe: That’s true. But on my days, I’m not holding back Loraine. I’m taking everything I fucking want from you.

Loraine: Fair enough. Is there any other kind of sex you want on Saturday? Or is it gonna be you, me and Captain fucking Kirk?

Joe: Hmm… sometimes I’ll want us to act out a scenario where we pretend we’re different people before we have sex. Other times I might want you to read an erotic story to me while I wank.

Loraine: That’s not a problem. You know I’m good at reading bedtime stories to my little cousins. I’m a good actress.

Joe: Your talents will come in handy, I assure you. When you read me a story, I want you to put some bloody effort into making it good. Pretend it’s a dance you’re getting just right. I want to see skill and artistry, Loraine.

Loraine: You’ll see it. Trust me.

Joe: When I tell you I’m ready to cum, I want you to stop reading and fuck me to orgasm. I want you to be really responsive to my body in those moments. I want to feel you pushing hard and fast with those strong hips.

Loraine: (smiling mischievously) You don’t know what hard and fast is.

Joe: Well, after I find out, you’re going to read me a second story and repeat the process. I’ll want at least two orgasms from two different stories that I pick during the week.

Loraine: (giggling) I feel like I’m about to host my own late night radio show!

Joe: It’ll be more like a radio drama.

Loraine: This actually sounds really fun. I used to love doing voice over work.

Joe: It will be really really fun… FOR ME.

Loraine: Well, I can’t guarantee anything, but I can only say from the bottom of my heart that I hope you love it. You having fun with me… is more important to me than anything right now.

Joe: Well, you owe it to me. If I owe you my health, you owe me some joy, on my terms. That’s what a girlfriend’s for.

Loraine: I know that now, Joe. I really do.

Joe: Well, that’s not how you act, Loraine. You stopped acting like that after I moved in with you.

Loraine: (sighing) It’s because I can’t do it anymore, no matter how hard I try. That’s why I hate your fucking friends. They make you happy. I can’t ever do that. I can’t ever make you feel creative, or inspired, or naughty or...

Joe: (interrupting) They don’t make me feel naughty.

Loraine: Yes, they do. Just not in a sexual way.

Joe: Why do you say that?

Loraine: Because I’m like your mum and they’re like the kids you get in trouble with. I hate that. It’s so different to how I thought things would be. I wanted to be like… your sexy fantasy mother. But instead, I’m like a real mum. It’s embarrassing.

Joe: You’re not like Mum, Loraine. I didn’t want to fuck her. She was the one who wanted to fuck me.

Loraine: (smiling sadly) I wish she was still alive and you could hide me from her. I wish you were fourteen and hot and I could be the age I am now. I wish I could have an affair with you and break the law and risk everything, maybe go to prison. I wish I could scar you for life and still be your dirty little secret.

Joe: …I don’t need any secrets. Not anymore.

Loraine: I just wish I wasn’t me sometimes. I’d rather be a bikini poster on your bedroom wall or some wet dream – something more exciting than old hags or fat bitches or… pointless conversations.

Joe: (irritated) They’re not fucking pointless! I get ideas from those conversations! My friendships make me happy in ways you can’t! You don’t do depth or imagination, Loraine. That’s not what you bring to the table.

Loraine: (looking up in disappointment) I just wish I did. I wish Claire was your girlfriend.

Joe: Why?

Loraine: I wish Claire was your girlfriend and you were secretly falling for me.

Joe: Well, that’s definitely not what I would want.

Loraine: And I’d love it if you were obsessing over me and hurting her, the way she hurts me. It’d make me so happy if you’d betray her and make her feel like she couldn’t believe in anything. I wish you’d fucking destroy her, Joe.

Joe: Loraine, that’s not–

Loraine: (interrupting) I wish she’d slit her fat fucking wrists. I’d want to be there when she got scared. I’d want to be the one she needed to call 999. I’d laugh. I’d watch her fucking die and spit on her.

Joe: When you talk about Claire like that, it makes it hard for me to like you.

Loraine: (smiling seductively) Well, that’s too bad, ‘cause if I had my way, it’d make you hard... harder than when you watch Davis.

Joe: Well, you’re the reason I’m not hard. It’s you and your awful fucking behaviour.

Loraine: (wistfully) I just wish I was like this dangerous drug… or piece of forbidden candy. And I wish you would just fucking take me, before I even knew what was happening. I wish you wanted me so bad, it hurt.

Joe: (irritated) Then you actually have to try to be a decent lover! You can’t be half-hearted about getting me off anymore. You have to be sexy and seductive! It’s not just me that should do all the work!

Loraine: I know that, Joe.

Joe: (angrily) I’m so sick of you assuming that because you’re a woman, I’m the one who needs to do all the work. You need to give me your best for a change. And stop complaining about me all the time!

Loraine: I’ll give you more than my best, Joe.

Joe: How do I know I can trust you about that?

Loraine: Because it’s important to me. I feel like I need to prove myself to you.

Joe: Well, you do. Things need to change around here.

Loraine: I need to be better at something than Claire, even if it’s just making you cum.

Joe: (authoritatively) Then here’s what you need to do: when you role-play with me, always stay in character. Even when I’m cumming.

Loraine: (nodding) I’ll stay in character.

Joe: Don’t ever stop being that character, Loraine. Even if it’s a character with a helium voice. We’ll get you some balloons so you can swallow air that makes your voice go high.

Loraine: I’ll swallow anything you give me, Joe.

Joe: Good. Because if you’re doing a character with a helium voice, I want to hear that fucking voice when I’m cumming.

Loraine: Don’t worry. You will.

Joe: I want to hear it right at the moment the semen starts popping in your fanny.

Loraine: (smiling) You are such a weirdo.

Joe: That’s who you chose to love.

Loraine: I know.

Joe: Anyway, that’s what I want every Saturday night if I lose one pound.

Loraine: What if you lose more than one pound?

Joe: (smiling mischievously) If that happens, you’re gonna get a golden ticket into Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory.

Loraine: (smiling) Why am I frightened?

Joe: On Saturday night, if I lose more than one pound, I want you to give me a three-pronged stealth-attack massage.

Loraine: (rolling her eyes) What’s a three-pronged stealth-attack massage?

Joe: It’s Japanese. It would suit us perfectly because you’re taller than me.

Loraine: Just tell me what it is.

Joe: It’s a nude massage where you massage with both hands and your tongue but the person you’re massaging can’t see you.

Loraine: I hope this isn’t what I think it is.

Joe: It’s based on the idea that erotic power stems from creating sensations that the body can’t anticipate using visual cues. For the first prong, we both get naked. I bend down in front of you in a doggy position, facing away from you. You get behind me. You spit three times on both of your hands and do a wrist prayer about forgiveness. Then you use your right hand to alternately toss off my cock and rub your palms against my balls.

With your left hand, you alternatively pinch my nipples and rub your palms all over my chest in a rapid motion. Then you do a little prayer about atonement that starts the second prong.

Loraine: This sounds really complicated.

Joe: It’s something you can have fun with once you really get into it. The fun will help you ignore what you’ll be doing with your mouth.

Loraine: Don’t tell me that you want me to–

Joe: (interrupting) Yes, that’s the chocolate factory, Loraine. The third prong of the massage involves you licking my arse while you use your hands to do the other things.

Loraine: (shouting) NO FUCKING WAY!

Joe: Loraine, it’s not as bad as you think. The anus, when it’s clean, is much more hygienic than the human mouth.

Loraine: (loudly) You can fucking forget that! I am NOT RIMMING YOU…

Joe: Can’t you just concentrate on other things the way you do when we have sex?

Loraine: (adamantly) No way! Rimming is fucking disgusting!

Joe: Is it really that much of me to ask of you?

Loraine: It fucking is! I wouldn’t even do that to Brad Pitt! I do not clean out arseholes with my tongue.

Joe: (angrily) Then let’s fucking list the things I’m doing for you:

1. I’m trying to lose weight!
2. I don’t smoke in the house!
3. I’m agreeing to not have my friends over the house on most nights!
4. I’m agreeing to cook for you before you get home from work!
5. I’m agreeing to spend my weekends with you!
6. I’m agreeing not to make you have to listen to music I love that you hate!
7. I’m agreeing to give you the sex you want on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays!
8. I’m willing to accept the abusive language you use in the ways you express yourself to me AND
9. I’m agreeing to stay with you even though you won’t give me a family!

Loraine: I can understand what you’re saying but–

Joe: (shouting angrily) Now let’s fucking list what you’re doing for me!

Loraine: Calm down!

Joe: (yelling and adopting a physically threatening pose) DON’T YOU TELL ME TO FUCKING CALM DOWN! I SAID LET’S LIST ALL THE FUCKING THINGS YOU’VE AGREED TO DO FOR ME!

Loraine: I get your point!

Joe: (aggressively with hatred in his voice)

1. You’ve agreed to come to a fucking poetry reading!
2. You’ve agreed to watch some fucking art films!
3. You’ve agreed to wear clothes that make other men want to talk to you!
4. You’ve agreed to get some tattoos that will help you look nice!
5. You’ve agreed to help me lose weight by giving me some sex I want EVEN THOUGH you’re getting WAY MORE OF THE SEX you want!

That’s five against fucking nine, Loraine!

Loraine: I know it’s five against nine. I just don’t see why you need me to do something that disgusts me.

Joe: (shouting in a rage) YOU SAID LOVE BETWEEN US WAS NOT ENOUGH! YOU SAID I NEEDED TO LIKE YOU!

Loraine: But why do you need me to rim you in order to like me?

Joe: (shouting loudly and menacingly) YOU FUCKING OWE ME THIS!! YOU OWE ME THIS FOR EVERYTHING YOU’VE PUT ME THROUGH!! YOU OWE ME THIS FOR EVERY DAY YOU HURT ME!! YOU OWE ME THIS BECAUSE I FUCKING LOVE YOU!!

Loraine: Joe, I’ve never seen you like this before. You’re scaring me!

Joe picks up a glass and smashes it on the ground next to Loraine’s feet. Loraine screams.

Joe: (screaming menacingly and coming closer to Loraine’s face) YOU WANT ME TO FUCKING RIP YOU APART?? IS THAT WHAT YOU WANT? IS THIS WHAT TURNS YOU ON!

Loraine: (scared) Joe please stop!

Joe: (screaming in a rage) YOU’RE GONNA GET WHAT YOU WANT, YOU SELFISH FUCKING BITCH!!

Joe grabs Loraine by her shoulders. Loraine struggles to get away in a panic. Loraine can see pure hatred in Joe’s eyes, staring back at her.

Loraine: (screaming) GET OFF ME!! GET THE FUCK OFF ME!!

Joe: (screaming) NO!!

Joe slams Loraine hard against the corner of Joe’s office door. Loraine hits her head and is nearly knocked unconscious.

She quickly stumbles away from Joe towards the back of the office, feeling dizzy and trying to remain upright.

Once against the wall, Lorain is in pain, terrified, breathing heavily and experiencing a huge adrenaline rush.

Loraine: (frightened) What are you doing? Why are you doing this to me?

Joe suddenly stops his aggression and smiles at Loraine.

Joe: (in normal tone of voice) You should be careful what you ask for Loraine. You might get it.

Loraine: (shouting) I DIDN’T ASK FOR YOU TO DO THAT!!

Joe: (loudly) Oh yes you did! You said acting like an animal trying to kill you gets you hot!

Loraine: (loudly) I meant I wanted sex to feel that way! I didn’t want you to fucking act like that here!

Joe: Get over here.

Loraine: Why should I trust you?

Joe: I want to show you something.

Loraine: (scared) Joe, I’m freaked out. I think I’m bleeding.

Joe: (calmly) There’s no reason to be scared. You know I love you. Now come here, I want to show you something.

Loraine: (nervous) You’re not going to hurt me, are you?

Joe: (calmly) No, Loraine, I love you. You’re my partner. The last thing I would ever want to do is hurt you.

Loraine: (softly) Please don’t hurt me. Please...

Joe: I won’t hurt you. You know you can trust me. I’ve never hurt you before now.

Loraine cautiously steps towards Joe. Joe sticks his hand down her knickers and feels her lubrication with his fingers. He then sticks his fingers in Loraine’s face.

Joe: There’s wetness there Loraine.

Loraine: (sighing) I know.

Joe: You don’t like it when I’m nice to you.

Loraine: My body responds to you when you’re aggressive.

Joe: I knew it!

Loraine: (loudly) That doesn’t mean I wanted you to be aggressive here! I can’t get off if I’m fucking terrified! It doesn’t matter how wet I am! That’s not what I want!

Joe: Then what do you want?

Loraine: (angrily) I want you to be aggressive in bed when I tell you to be aggressive! I just want you to do what I fucking tell you to do, Joe. I don’t want to feel scared in my own house!

Joe: I see.

Loraine: (loudly) Just because I like aggression, that doesn’t mean I want to feel like I’m on my way to a battered women’s shelter! Pretending is one thing, but this wasn’t pretending! This was fucking real! You fucking hurt me!

Joe: (suddenly confused) I take your point. I don’t know why I just did that.

Loraine: I know why you did it.

Joe: Why?

Loraine: I made you really fucking angry.

Joe: Maybe.

Loraine: (loudly) But you can’t behave like that just because I make you angry! I’ll punch you in the fucking throat if you ever come near me like that again!

Joe: (feeling like something is taking over him) I don’t know what just happened to me. I’ve never done that before… to anyone. I’ve never been that angry with anyone before…

Loraine: I made you that angry?

Joe: (sighing) Yes. You did.

Loraine: (smiling) I know you won’t believe me when I say this… but that actually makes me feel good.

Joe: What?

Loraine: It’s a relief.

Joe: Why?

Loraine: Because it means it’s not just me that gets really angry.


From my novel, 'Love Before Covid', (2021)

Janet's Romantic Email (an Excerpt)

Joe,

Let me start off by saying you have every right not to read this email. You have every right to delete it and if you do, I won’t have any hard feelings. You have every reason to hate me. You have every reason not to forgive me for what I did to you.

If you choose to keep reading, I will tell you from the start that this is not a letter trying to elicit sympathy for me. I’m not writing this to try and convince you that you were wrong or that I’m somehow a normal person who isn’t any different to anyone else. I have no delusions about who I am. I am a clinically diagnosed psychopath. I am writing this letter for purely selfish reasons, reasons that will become apparent as you read on.

Since we last met, I’ve had some pretty decent career success. I’ve travelled the world and met lots of cool people. I’ve had the opportunity to do creative work I find interesting and helpful to my fans in different ways, yet I haven’t been happy through any of this. For a while, I thought the intensity with which I applied myself to my work would compensate for the feeling of emptiness that accompanied your departure from my life. It did not. As the years go by, I feel less and less like I can continue.

This last year has been particularly difficult. For the first time ever, my sadness actually stopped me from working at the pace I have become accustomed to. I’ve been struggling with mental health difficulties, I find it hard getting out of bed, I can’t stop crying throughout the day and I’m finding it hard not to harm myself. I’m not telling you this because I want you to rescue me from it; I know that won’t happen. I’m writing you because my thoughts are tinged with an unbearable guilt. I worry that I really damaged you the last time we spoke.

I bet you’re thinking, “It’s pretty obvious you fucking damaged me! You poked my eye out, you fucking bitch!”

If you are thinking this, I can’t say I blame you.

I was a horrible person that day. The act of violence I committed against you was pure evil. It was one of the worst things I have ever done in my life, an act so awful I struggle to comprehend how it came out of me. It was wrong, it was cruel and it was terrifying (for both of us). It would be a cop out for me to say, “It wasn’t really me that did that to you. Something took over me. My true self would never be capable of such an act!”

That, of course, is rubbish.

I take full responsibility for my actions. They were all me. What you saw that day was my worst self: a dark side I hid from you the moment I fell in love with you. I worry now that you think that side of me is the predominant one.

I’m also worried that my horrendous behaviour during our last conversation caused you to interpret the things I said in the wrong light. The things I said which were true, I said with such malice that I can’t blame you for writing them off as obvious falsehoods. Still, I’m in turmoil over the negative consequences for you that might happen if you did dismiss it all. You always had a habit of substituting ideological crusades for instances where you should instead be standing up for yourself.

I remember you telling me many times that your mum made you feel like her love for you was conditional, when you were a child. Then you became very passionate about the importance of unconditional love. You’d give sometimes beautiful speeches about it. We would wind up discussing unconditional love instead of talking about how you needed to stand up to your mother because of how she was treating you.

I remember she once left a phone message for us where she said the amount of money you made was evidence you didn’t have any potential when you were a kid. Instead of calling her back that night and telling her off, you had an argument with me about why you should just ignore that comment. You said you wanted to love her unconditionally and her comments gave you the opportunity to practice the art of forgiveness.

This was one of the few arguments we ever had, yet by the end of it, I could tell you were starting to see that your mother was actually being harmed by your forgiveness. I remember you calling her the next day and telling her, with confidence, how you didn’t approve of the way she spoke to you.

She started swearing at you, screaming that she wished she’d never had a son. That was typical of her. But this time you yelled back, “Start acting like my mother and not like such a horrid fucking cunt!”

I was so proud of you in that moment. You were actually giving her consequences for her bad behaviour. Throughout her life, no one ever did that. When you slammed down the phone, you looked at me and said, “That woman does not deserve my love. She deserves a fucking beating.” I smiled and hugged you for what seemed like ages. Up until that point, I never felt like I was able to help another human being the way I helped you. What made it even more special was you were also my lover.

During our last conversation, I’m afraid I undid all of that. I behaved coldly, with vindictiveness, making a virtual mockery of the importance of justice in any relationship. I made it seem as though anyone who values justice in a relationship is an unforgiving, self-righteous pedant.

Given what I know of you, I’m guessing you would see my behaviour as a vindication of the idea that unconditional love is the only healthy and humane way of loving another person. I can even see you taking on your ‘unconditional love crusade’ with renewed fervour. And yes, I can see you being a casualty of that crusade. I can see unconditional love being a way that people take advantage of you.

This may be paranoia on my part. Nonetheless, it’s paranoia I can’t get out of my mind. Maybe I don’t know you as well as I think I do. Maybe you are happy and self-confident in ways that have nothing to do with anything I said to you during our last meeting. However, I can’t bear the thought of you internalising a bad idea because my own inexcusable behaviour made it seem attractive.

If what you believe about love has nothing to do with what I said to you that day, feel free to not read any further. However, if you feel what I said negatively impacted your life in any way, give me a chance to explain what I was trying to say in a better way. I want to say it to you again, but this time clearly in a calm state of mind. If you disagree, you disagree and that’s absolutely fine. Nonetheless, I want you to see what I was trying to express in a way where my words aren’t coming out of a person behaving like a psychopath. This is the only way I can deal with my guilt and try to turn it into something positive.
So here goes:

Every human being has faults. Any kind of relationship with an adult requires a lot of slack cutting from both parties. People can indeed be grumpy and unsociable on many days when the best response to such a mood is patience. However, there are limits to the amount of patience one displays before the patience becomes a way of normalising abuse. This is why constant forgiveness is bad for any relationship. If you have to constantly forgive, that means your partner is constantly doing something you have to forgive.

If that’s the main dynamic in your relationship, the relationship isn’t fair to you. It’s not fair to you whether it’s your spouse, your friend, your parent, or your child. If the forgiveness in any relationship consistently goes one way, that means someone is giving way more to the relationship than they are getting in return. When that happens, the relationship instantiates a kind of injustice. The injustice becomes abusive when there are no boundaries in place to stop the forgiven behaviour from becoming cruel behaviour that is also forgiven.

The biggest threat to the boundary which keeps a relationship just, is the idea that adult relationships are grounded in unconditional love. When you love someone unconditionally, you love them irrespective of who they are or what they do; you love them whether they treat you fairly or whether they abuse you. This is why I believe unconditional love is the lowest form of love. It’s a love necessary for infants and small children because they need to be forgiven for consistently bad behaviour. This constant forgiveness is necessary for them in their journey towards goodness.

The same is not true of adults.

Unconditional love reduces adults back into the infantile state. It teaches adults that they don’t need to bring things to a relationship that are proportionate to what their partners bring.

Worse still, unconditional love teaches adults that it’s okay to treat everyone’s pathology equally. This is another hallmark of abuse. When someone’s messy bedroom is treated as the equivalent of someone else’s punches, the relationship is actually harmful to the parties involved. Nonetheless, this abuse gets normalised because the person with the messy bedroom wants to love their partner without expecting anything in return. The outcome of this pathological desire is enabling.

Enablers use disturbing language that reflects their particular insanity. They will say things like “We need to treat each other better” when referring to an unclean kitchen which had prompted a blow to the head with a hammer. The enabled abuser will say things like, “Your hyper-sensitivity isn’t good for us” when referring to the enabler’s meek complaints about the blow. What’s often unnoticed is that physical violence isn’t the only context in which this dynamic is present. The enabler may also complain about being hurt by emotional sadism on the part of the enabled abuser. The enabled abuser will respond that the enabler is being emotionally sadistic, merely in complaining about it.

Whenever the enabler complains about the abuse, the abuser will reframe the issue as though the enabler is at fault. The abuser may even demand that the enabler should choose to interpret the abuser as someone who gives the enabler “tough love.” When the enabler expresses reluctance to accept this interpretation, the abuser will accuse the enabler of placing conditions on their love. The enabler, wanting to love unconditionally, will do anything to remove the appearance of these conditions. Thus, the abuse cycle will continue, often getting worse and worse.

When there are no conditions placed on love, neither partner has any incentive to treat the other as an equal. In any relationship, these incentives are necessary. There also needs to be additional incentives to motivate both parties to treat their partners with kindness. These kindness incentives must be juxtaposed against still further incentives that motivate dignity and self-respect for and from both parties. Unconditional love removes all of these incentives in one fell swoop. For adults, it is toxic and dangerous. Something for nothing is nothing indeed.

I suspect the reason why unconditional love remains a popular delusion among the adult population is that adults have a romanticised view of infants and children. Adults talk about infants and children as though they are more valuable or precious than other adults. They use words like ‘innocence’ to describe behaviours in children that would more accurately be described as naïve and immature. Temper tantrums in toddlers may be something we find cute for evolutionary reasons, but temper tantrums in adults are the source of everything that’s wrong with the world. Like children, adults need boundaries. Unlike children, adults are better at undermining those boundaries by exploiting the compassion of those whose job it is to reinforce them.

As an adult, when you can be loved for having met certain conditions, you know you deserve that love. You know that love has been given to you because you’ve helped someone, touched someone, entertained someone, amused someone, impressed someone, cared for someone, sacrificed for someone, inspired someone, or simply loved someone.

If you’re a bad human being and you get love anyway, that love is tragic and pedestrian – a love for infants and dogs.

It is a love for what you are, not a love for who you are. Conditional love is love for the individuality of autonomous adults. Unconditional love for adults is a de-humanising form of pity. This is because when unconditional love is given to an adult, pity rather than affection is the reason it’s given. No one wants to love a serial killer because they feel warm towards the killer, nor do they love the killer because they appreciate the killer’s inner qualities. The killer’s individuality expresses itself in a way which is destructive. Unconditional love is given to the killer as a way of saying, “I hate how horribly you behave. Let me reward you with what you don’t deserve so that I can change your behaviour. Let me help you be nice to me. Let me lick your arse to stop you from shitting in my mouth.”

Because of the ludicrous condescension of this gesture, it rewards the killer rather than stops the killing. Even more importantly, the unconditional love is given begrudgingly. It’s given for the purpose of stopping behaviour which is hated. It’s given as a tool to achieve something else. It’s the furthest thing from a spontaneous affirmation of a person’s individuality. It’s a Pavlovian manipulation and an ugly one at that.

So for me, conditional love is an end in itself. It is given to reward rather than manipulate. The reward is not given to ensure future good behaviour. The reward is given out of awe and respect. Awe and respect are the main ingredients of a healthy companionship. Companionship, to put it bluntly, is roughly symmetrical mutually self-satisfying behaviour. Companionship would be totally symmetrical were it not for the flawed nature of human beings. Yet the behaviour must be roughly symmetrical in order for the companionship not to degenerate into an instance of one person treating another like a beggar waiting to be pissed on by a drunken rich man. This is why the term ‘self-satisfying’ is so important. You can’t be in a relationship for the sake of your partner. You both have to be in the relationship for yourself.

In my view, love is not a favour or an obligation: it’s a gift. And like any gift, what matters is that (a) the gift is given so that it can be reciprocated and (b) the reciprocal exchange is roughly equivalent. If someone buys you plastic turds and you buy them a mansion, this makes for an awkward Christmas.

I hate how people pretend that Christmas is about giving. It’s obvious Christmas is never fun when the gifts aren’t roughly equal. Giving only feels good if you know you are giving in proportion to what you are getting. This is the true meaning of Christmas – a lesson society would gain from acknowledging rather than denying in shame. If you want proof of this, imagine Christmas had a different set of rules. Imagine Christmas gift giving involved half of the participants being givers and the other half being only receivers. Would people still do Christmas if these were the rules? Of course not! Unfortunately, most people celebrate Christmas in a way which is far worse. A typical Christmas has become a ritual where adults wilfully harm children.

Think about what happens at a typical Christmas when the older members of the family give gifts to the children without expecting anything in return. They are spoiling an entire generation! They are teaching the extraordinarily harmful lesson that the children are entitled to receiving without giving. The older generation isn’t simply selling themselves short here. They are enablers, creating a generation of privileged and self-absorbed arseholes, arseholes who deserve pain instead of material items.

The reason why good parents force their children to give presents is so that their children can experience Christmas with the asset of likability. Without likability, Christmas is psychologically painful for a child. This pain is good. It’s the means by which the child learns to be more likeable next year. In a healthy Christmas, children experience shame and humiliation when they don’t give the equivalent of whatever they receive. Father Christmas punishes greedy children, in much the same way that the law would punish bankers and thieves. It’s not a coincidence that Father Christmas is red. Father Christmas is justice, or to put it another way, a rebuke to consumerism and unregulated capitalism.

This is why I think a healthy Christmas is a good model for judging when relationships are healthy and unhealthy. The justice of the healthy Christmas is in its expected proportionality. The achievement of justice is through the recognition that giving is inherently about receiving. Receiving works when everyone is aware of what is in their interests and can communicate that with partners who they have affection for. The affection arises because the partners are likeable to each other. This likability arises from each partner displaying qualities that are themselves presents for the other partner.

It doesn’t work if one partner is intelligent and kind, while the other is a fucking moron. Moronic attitudes can’t and shouldn’t delight a good person. In any relationship, a good person needs a partner with qualities that are equal to their own. Otherwise, the relationship is like an imbalanced scale. When a relationship attains balance, everyone in it can be happy in a way where no one is deluding themselves. The best strategy for never deluding yourself is to recognise that for 99% of the things that matter in life, acting in your self-interest is what makes you a good person. Self-interest is what makes you happy, healthy, successful and likeable.

The other 1% is where altruism comes in. Altruism is what happens when people are too flawed to do what is in their self-interest. They can still do the right thing, but in a way which is crippled and half-hearted. The soldier who fights the Nazis is too flawed to find pleasure in blowing up Germans who clearly deserve to die. So the soldier has to rely on an altruistic desire to die for his country. He is motivated not by his own pleasure at enacting justice, but by the thought of democracy defeating a racist totalitarian regime.

Although the soldier takes the life of another human being, he is too weak to experience it in the fullest way. He can’t see that his execution should be cruel, that the violence should be joyous, that his own heart should delight at the crimson blood spilling out of his enemy and that he should swoon at the screams and sobs of the wife, the mother and even the children of the Nazi scum he’s just vanquished from the earth. But of course, he can’t. Mimicking a coward, the altruistic soldier can think only of helping others when he pulls the trigger.

A similar thing happens when couples who are victims of terrorists are forced to choose between their own lives or those of their partners. Individual members of the couples sacrifice themselves not because they gain pleasure out of it, but purely for the sake of their partner’s continued existence. Here, they are too weak to enjoy their own death, a death responsible for the continued life of their beloved. Because they are weak, they can only think of the beloved when they die. They aren’t strong enough to think of the fortunate violence ensuring their beloved’s continued existence.

There’s nothing wrong with any of this, mind you.

However, it’s only in these exceptional circumstances that humans actually draw upon genuine altruism. These occasions are so rare that altruism has nothing to do with whether or not anyone is a good or bad person.

From my novel 'Love Before Covid' (2021)

On Being a Mother and a Pornstar: A Dialogue Between 2 Friends

Davis: (interrupting) Ben won’t fucking allow himself to enjoy this because he doesn’t believe in himself.

Lena: But why does he feel that way?

Davis: (angrily) God, it drives me bonkers! It would be easier if he was just boring. I could handle that, but not this. This is fucking pathetic, it really is.

Lena: Well, insecurity takes patience to handle and eventually overcome – from both you and Ben. You’re in a relationship together.

Davis: But I am very very patient, Lena. It’s been over fifteen years and I’m still with him. Lord knows how many times I’ve thought about leaving Ben.

Lena: Before you created Inside Davis, did you guys talk about his feelings? Did you discuss how he felt about you becoming a porn star?

Davis: Of course we did.

Lena: Do you think maybe he lied when he said he was okay with it? Do you think he said he was okay, maybe to not disappoint you?

Davis: No, we’ve always been very honest and straight forward with each other. He’d never placate me.

Lena: Well, that’s good.

Davis: I told him the truth. I said if he wanted to stay with me, my new career was something he’d have to be a man and get used to. I can’t stand possessive guys. Ben knows I would never put up with that kind of relationship.

Lena: But when you told him you wanted to be in porn, what exactly did he say? What was his reaction?

Davis: He tried to manipulate me, but I could so see through that shit. He kept saying, “Are you sure this is what you really wanna do? Are you sure, Davis? Have you thought about this?”

Lena: And you told him you were sure?

Davis: Of course I did. I am sure. I’m more sure about this than anything I’ve ever done.

Lena: How did he react to your certainty?

Davis: (giggling) He gave me this look like I ran over his dog. It was so stupid, Lena, I swear. But when you’re with a man, you have to put up with some dumb shit if you wanna keep the peace. It’s not easy though. I’m tellin’ ya’. Ben would make you want to pull your hair out! You dodged a bullet, Lena, you really did.

Lena: Well, any relationship has problems, even when it’s good. You have to compromise; you have to learn how to fight and negotiate and then make-up. It’s all hard work, even when it’s very satisfying.

Davis: Ben gets that, Lena. He knows he can’t control me and he’s a good husband in that way. That’s why I still tolerate his boring ass.

Lena: Davis… what do you want from Ben? What could he do that would make you happy?

Davis: I don’t know. I feel like I only know what I don’t want him to do.

Lena: And what would that be?

Davis: Well… it would be nice if he didn’t hurt my feelings. I could put up with him more if he didn’t hurt my feelings.

Lena: How does he hurt your feelings?

Davis: Like, I did this scene with Licky Linda, who I know Ben has a total boner for, even though he won’t talk about it ‘cause he’s embarrassed. I was sooo excited about this ‘cause I fucking love her. It was great for the web traffic and it made Inside Davis huge. But the thing I was most excited by was Ben. I wanted that scene to finally be a way for us to enjoy my porn. That’s the main reason I asked her to do it with me.

Lena: So Licky was like your gift to Ben?

Davis: She even offered to have sex with him, but he fucking said no! He wouldn’t even watch our scene when it was done! Can you believe that?

Lena: Maybe Ben just wants you to himself. If I were him, I would.

Davis: (disgusted) OH NO, I’d never be with someone like that! If there’s one thing I fucking hate, it’s monogamy. There’s no reason to be monogamous with anybody, ever. That’s pretty black and white, for me.

Lena: Does that mean you think I shouldn’t be monogamous?

Davis: (passionately) Of course you shouldn’t! You can’t just exclusively own someone’s sexuality. That shit is Victorian, Lena. I can’t believe people still practice monogamy today. I mean it’s 2016, for Chrissakes! Everybody needs to just fucking get over controlling people; that’s bad for humanity.

Lena: Well, are you open to the possibility that Ben might secretly be monogamous? Like most people?

Davis: Well, he says I can trust that he’s not. He begs me to trust him all the time, so I give him the benefit of the doubt.

Lena: He begs you?

Davis: Yeah, he won’t risk ending our relationship. He likes having a family with me. I can understand that.

Lena: (sighing in frustration) Well… it could be that Ben isn’t turned on watching you have sex with other people. That might be what’s going on.

Davis: Maybe, but that still hurts me. It’s not like I’m unattractive, you know? I read email after email from men telling me how lucky Ben is. I could easily be in relationships with any of them.

Lena: Well, is that what you want?

Davis: Ben could lose me, Lena. He’s in danger of losing me. I tell him that every day.

Lena: I’m sure you do.

Davis: (angrily) But he can’t see it! It’s like he won’t see it, no matter how hurt I am. It’s like I can’t fucking win with this man! Nothing and I mean NOTHING I do is ever good enough for Ben. Even Licky wasn’t good enough for him! He rejected her and made her cry! She’s never been rejected by a guy before – never in her life! And she’s gorgeous!

Lena: Did that embarrass you?

Davis: It made me feel fucking ashamed.

Lena: Ashamed?

Davis: Yep. I was ashamed to be Ben’s wife that day. That’s how angry I was. You can’t insult a beautiful woman like that, especially when you know she’s had anorexia.

Lena: How does Max feel about Inside Davis?

Davis: Oh, he’s worse than Ben.

Lena: How is he worse?

Davis: Well, he’s not technically worse. He’s not mean to me about my career. It’s just the things he does… the things he does hurt me way more than anything Ben could ever do.

Lena: How does Max hurt you?

Davis: (sighing) Throughout his whole life, we were so so close, Lena. He never disobeyed me. He was always so curious and smart and well-behaved and just perfect. I didn’t feel like I was hanging out with a kid, when I raised him. He was like a little old man, a sweet and gentle friend of mine that just totally understood everything about me there was to understand. We had that until last year.

Lena: What happened last year?

Davis: He just got very quiet, like he’s disappointed in me.

Lena: Are you angry with him, like you are with Ben?

Davis: I try not to be. I try to cut Max some slack because I know why he feels the way he does.

Lena: And why is that?

Davis: He’s fourteen.

Lena: (sighing in frustration) Yeah, fourteen is a hard age. I remember what you were like when we were fourteen.

Davis: Kids are so fucking self-absorbed when they’re fourteen.

Lena: Do you ever talk to Max about your porn?

Davis: It’s hard because every time I try and have a conversation about it, he says he’d rather not. He can be really rude sometimes.

Lena: How do you handle that?

Davis: I tell him if he wants to be rude, he can fucking be rude mowing the lawn. I don’t let him get away with being a dick, just because he’s fourteen. I won’t let him guilt trip me just because his friends like Inside Davis.

Lena: That must be hard for Max.

Davis: What do you mean?

Lena: Well, I mean, his friends can see Mom having sex. That’s not something kids normally have to deal with.

Davis: There’s nothing to deal with. Sex is natural.

Lena: Well, sex is natural, but turning sex into a consumer product is a fairly new thing. It’s not natural when the producers are your parents and the consumers are your friends.

Davis: (passionately) Yeah and why is that? It’s ‘cause the way things were throughout most of history sucked for women. I don’t want to live in that world, anymore. I don’t want to live in a world where women have to hide their sexuality. I don’t want Max to grow up in that world.

Lena: I know you don’t. I just meant that most kids don’t worry about their friends seeing Mom have sex. That’s the part of being Max that’s hard.

Davis: But Max doesn’t have to worry about anything.

Lena: I know he doesn’t literally have to worry about anything. I was just thinking it might be embarrassing. Can you imagine how you’d feel if you were in his shoes?

Davis: Well, if I’d been raised by a family that didn’t consist of backward, slut shaming misogynists, I’d know my friends were just being obnoxious little shits. If they put my mom down for her choices, I’d tell them to fuck off. I wouldn’t be friends with people like that.

Lena: Yeah, but Davis come on: You’re thirty-four. Not fourteen. When you’re fourteen, you’re not perfectly reasonable. Your hormones are crazy. Don’t you remember what that was like?

Davis: What do Max’s hormones have to do with my porn?

Lena: Well, he’s fourteen. When you’re fourteen, you want your parents to protect you.

Davis: I do protect him, Lena.

Lena: I meant when you’re that age, you want your parents to keep their sexuality away from you.

Davis: (worried) You think I’m molesting Max?

Lena: (abruptly) No! I know you’d never hurt him! That’s not what I’m getting at!

Davis: Then what are you trying to say?

Lena: I’m just saying… most people have a target audience for their sexuality. They flirt and seduce people who become their lovers. They don’t seduce people they aren’t interested in. They don’t show those people images of them having explicit sex with strangers.

Davis: Yeah, but that’s only because of social attitudes, today. At this point in time, we’re still pretty backward in the West. I wanna move things forward.

Lena: But Davis, when most kids go through adolescence and start to develop their own sexuality, they want their parents to keep out of their social circle.

Davis: But I’m not in Max’s social circle.

Lena: I know that, but your sexuality is part of his social circle.

Davis: (defensively) But that’s true of any kid who has a hot mom! Why is it my fault his friends wanna fuck me?

Lena: It’s not your fault, exactly. But you do encourage it.

Davis: (puzzled) How?

Lena: You consent to his friends seeing vids of you having sex. That’s what separates you from all the neighbourhood MILFs.

Davis: But I don’t consent to that! My vids are for adults.

Lena: Maybe you should be honest with yourself.

Davis: (confused) What?

Lena: You said you’re an exhibitionist. You said you liked being able to get off any random person who happens to watch your porn.

Davis: (abruptly) ANY GROWNUP! NOT FUCKING TEENAGERS! If I had my way, kids would have to use fucking finger printing to go on the internet, Lena. The only reason Max’s friends can see me is because their parents are lazy. It’s not because I’m trying to get them off! I don’t do that.

Lena: (frustrated) Oh, come on Davis! If you make porn in 2016, kids are gonna see it. No one can keep teens from seeing porn anymore. It doesn’t matter if you’ve uploaded it “for grownups.”

Davis: But why is that my responsibility?

Lena: Well, it wouldn’t be if you were single. But your son is a teenager and all his friends look at porn. But Max is the one kid with a mom they can all jack off to.

Davis: (defensive) But they could jack off thinking about any mom in Downey! It’s not just me!

Lena: I know that, but Davis, you’re making their jack off material for them. Are the other MILFs on the block doing that?

Davis: Well, in a way they are. Any hot woman who wears a short skirt is making their jack off material.

Lena: (rolls eyes) There’s a difference between wearing a short skirt and uploading vids of you having sex.

Davis: But I don’t make porn for fucking kids, Lena. My vids are specifically written and directed to please my fans – my adult fans.

Lena: (angrily) Oh, fucking get real! If you put porn on the internet, you’re crazy if you think only adults will see it.

Davis: So should no one be making violent movies? Kids’ll find a way to watch them too.

Lena: (adamantly) I’m not saying no one should make violent movies! I’m saying sex is different to violence in that when we grow up, we want to be at a distance from our parent’s sexuality.

Davis: Max is distant from it, Lena. I never do anything in front of him.

Lena: (impatiently) It’s still very close to him. Don’t be stupid, Davis. Come on.

Davis: (defensive) But it’s not close to him! I don’t do anything anywhere near him!

Lena: (loudly) That’s not what I’m saying!

Davis: I’m confused now.

Lena: (in stern voice) Then pay attention! I’m saying YOU are the mother of a fourteen-year-old son. You’re making the porn you know his friends watch. Can’t you read between the lines?

Davis: What’s between the lines?

Lena: You’re helping them cum.

Davis: …Well, I don’t see it that way.



From my novel, 'Love Before Covid', 2021.