Euphoria

by Lily King

Experience, contrary to common belief, is mostly imagination.

she seemed to know it was me as soon as I lifted my head.

It is the one thing each and every one of us is programmed for, directed to, and cannot swerve away from indefinitely.

Lovely lips in a devastatingly tired face.

They might have needed me. But I needed them far more.

He is gone, as is all his potential and his happy

I felt relieved when her eyes shut, as if she were my own croupy child who needed rest, and I puzzled over this feeling

History hung suspended for months. I took solace in the not knowing.

A generous epithet for scientific prostitution.

‘I’ll take a partner of some sort or other next time. More efficient, too, by half.’ ‘Not sure I’d go that far.’

Fen is an actual POS

He didn’t answer, but I wasn’t bothered.

I heard her let out a big American ‘Wow.’

‘Americans make such good anthropologists because they’re so bloody rude.’

But I wasn’t put out by what she’d said. Quite the opposite.

I was eager, desperate for more. Ideas, suggestions, criticism of my approach.

Dear Mum, leave me alone. Love, Andrew.’

But at that moment the place feels entirely yours. It’s the briefest, purest euphoria.’

‘Bloody hell.’ I laughed. ‘You don’t get that?’ ‘Christ, no.

We’re always, in everything we do in this world, she said, limited by subjectivity. But our perspective can have an enormous wingspan, if we give it the freedom to unfurl.

The truth you find will always be replaced by someone else’s.

I’ve always thought my opinion was the right one. It’s a small flaw I have.’

I guessed I wasn’t anything like Fen.

It’s just that they’ve been born into a culture that makes no place for it, so the impulse weakens, like an unused muscle. You need to help them exercise it.’

‘Were you close to your brothers?’ she asked. ‘Yes, but I didn’t know it until they died.’

And then my throat closed entirely and I couldn’t force it open. She stared at me and nodded into the silence between us, as if I were still talking and making perfect sense.

Americans could surprise you with the things they knew.

I wanted to write about Bankson but felt I shouldn’t.

Pitiful that a great amount of my pain disappeared when someone paid a bit of attention to it.

I want to write more but too many feelings are bottlenecking somewhere near my collarbone.

I am wearing his dead brother’s glasses.

He despairs at the deepest level that this work has no meaning. Does it? Have I been deluding myself? Are these wasted years?

Fen bossing every last one of them around with only a handful of Tam words but a big barking voice when he needs it. So glad it is not directed at me.

words aren’t always the most reliable thing.

the boys shouted with pleasure and Kanshi’s grandmother called out from her mosquito bag that she was napping and could they please go and drown themselves.

I want. Intransitive. No object. It was the opposite of wanting to die. But it was scarcely more bearable.

That night at Gertie’s when she asked me if I preferred to be the one who loved slightly more or loved slightly less. More, I said. Not this time, she said in my ear.

Once I published that book and my words became a commodity, something broke between us.

All the downplaying I must do starts to rub off on me so that I don’t even allow myself a few minutes of private pleasure before the squelching kicks in.

And I am angry that I was made to choose, that both Fen & Helen needed me to choose, to be their one & only when I didn’t want a one & only.

My loves remain wine to me, yet I become too quickly bread to them.

Over three years ago now but am still stuck there, going back & forth between the two hotels, trying to split myself in half.

I want too much. I always have.

Why are we, with all our ‘progress,’ so limited in understanding & sympathy & the ability to give each other real freedom?

‘It’s not my fault you aren’t pregnant.’ The lie of it hung between them.

Thinking was derivative. Dull. The opposite of living. Whereas she suffered through the humidity and the sago and the lack of plumbing only for the thinking.

Not think of her as female? I wished I could manage that.

I had never heard the word vagina spoken aloud before, let alone by a woman in my presence.

My height can be disturbing to certain tribes. And I am bad luck in the field, utterly ineffective. I couldn’t even manage to kill myself properly. I stayed away as long as could, and it is only now I see I have been rude by not coming sooner. Forgive me.’

Nell. Fen. I felt such a relief upon recognizing them, like a child identifying Mother, Father.

there were times I half pretended, half believed, she was my wife.