Brief Interviews with Hideous Men: Stories

by David Foster Wallace

Not really psychotic, I came to see. Crazy like a fox. An agenda behind every outburst. ‘Too much excitement, overtired, cranky, feverish, needs a lie-down, just frustrated, just a long day’—the litany of her excuses for him. His endless emotional manipulation of her. The ceaselessness of it and her inhuman reaction: even when she recognized what he was up to she excused him, she was charmed by the nakedness of his insecurity, his what she called ‘need’ for her, what she called my son’s ‘need for reassurance.’ Need for reassurance? What reassurance? He never doubted. He knew it all belonged to him. He never doubted. As if it were due him. As if he deserved it. Insanity. Solipsism. He wanted it all. All I had, had had, never would. It never ended. Blind, reasonless appetite. I will say it: evil. There. I can imagine your face. But he was evil. And I alone seemed to know it. He afflicted me in a thousand ways and I could say nothing.