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He wanted to be interesting, and confusing Mark’s goodness for tediousness he confused Jay’s badness for interest.
He had the monopoly on points of ingress, and he smiled with a monopolist’s cruel confidence.
On the far side of it were all the things he was too afraid to think about, all the pieces he was too afraid to fit into place. On the near side was only his oldest, closest, most familiar, most private self. He sensed that as soon as he pulled the comforter down some part of this self would be lost.
Money, Mark knew, was a gnat of complexity forever hovering at the edges of her vision, encroaching on what she considered to be simple pleasures.
His sense was that in the course of life every person got one preoccupation, one obliterating fascination, one call or cause or catastrophic exhilaration, and for whatever reason Alistair was his.
as if explicitness were the price of absolution.
He made his way across the backyard under an apricot-colored sky, amid darting birds and flickering fireflies, as all around him shadows darkened and evening gathered into a mournful, greenish-blue haze—New Jersey had no business being this beautiful.
Mark couldn’t believe how much she resembled Alistair. She seemed to have made him all by herself.
the libido wants unrestricted power and freedom. It wants to take, it wants to own, it wants to control. But not everyone can live out that desire, especially not in this country, and the next best thing is to participate in someone else’s domination, even if it means being on the receiving end of it.
“Gay men understand the centrality of the libido better than anyone,” he said. “They conduct their lives with lusting rapacity. They earn good grades, secure jobs and promotions, acquire wealth, climb social ladders, give perfect wedding presents, curate wardrobes and home furnishings, all with the same ravenous zeal they bring to their fucking. They know, better than anyone, that fucking is where the truth of life resides. And they understand the authoritarian nature of desire. They top, they bottom, they roar in conquest and squeal in defeat. They get down on their knees and look up at their
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“There’s another example of intellectual impoverishment,” Jay said. “The idea that art must necessarily promote the ‘good.’ No bigger lie has ever been told.”
He was angry that Mark had disapproved of his “badness” while taking selective advantage of it.
the longer Herve drew out his silence the more forceful his presence became, the more it dispersed itself and took possession of the room around him.
Poppers did weird things to the mind, he knew. They could make you fall in love with a pillow.
“Satire is for suckers,” Jay said.
Elijah’s hangover lasted all weekend and was existential in its dimensions.
There’s a sick part of me, there always has been. It’s not part of me, it is me.
he felt that weariness and resignation were surer signs of love than fascination.
Maybe what I need is a thing that tells me not to want anything at all.”
Elijah tilted his head. “The nice thing about being empty inside,” he said, “is that you can pose as anything.”
he saw no small tragedy in his decision to give it up. Yet at the same time he envied him his freedom, his fresh start. He’d be happy to put his own name, his own burdensome self, behind him.
For nearly a decade he’d been dithering and tracing the curlicues of his malaise, and the whole time, without realizing it, he’d been sealing his fate.
Add up everything you’re willing to give, subtract what you might get back, and whatever’s left over is the measure of your soul.
that was what love was, he saw: it was defeat.
As long as money remained the currency of human relations, and as long as it was able to pool in few hands and drain from many others, it would always implicate anyone who touched it in its cruelty.
you had to let people make their mistakes. All you could do was hope they learned from them and be there for them whether they did or not.
And now he was gone, her little boy was gone, and she had two choices. She could either let her love shrivel or she could cast it around, spread it, let it travel as far and wide as it would.
Renounce, renounce! It was the hardest and simplest thing to do. Renounce your object, abandon your singular infatuation, give up whatever yearning blinds you to everything but its endpoint, diverts your energy away from everything but your pursuit, justifies whatever harm, whatever waste, your quest entails. Renounce, renounce, and see how your love flourishes.
