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People cause pain. Even good people hurt those they love. We all do it because we can’t help it. Most of us aren’t evil; we’re just stupid and flawed and not careful with others.
Frankly, fictional people appeal far more to me than real people do. In fiction, the choices have to make sense. The timeline proceeds rationally. Emotions are explained to me. Characters feel the way they are supposed to feel in response to the actions of others. Nobody stays in a bad situation because of inertia or low self-esteem. That would make for a truly shitty story. But in real life . . . God, in real life people so rarely behave in ways that improve their circumstances.
But emotion isn’t logical, is it? Emotion is sticky as tar, and it’s hard to get off you, which is why I’ve spent my whole life trying to avoid exposing my skin to it.
Erections and guilt can’t exist in the same plane. One makes way for the other.
Maybe I should get a cat. The thought invades my head fully formed and utterly obvious. A cat. Another little sociopath to curl up beside me at night and keep me warm.
They like a woman with no shame. We’re rare, you see, because we’re told to be ashamed of everything every day by everyone. Ashamed to give them what they want, ashamed not to want to give it to them. Ashamed to show our average bodies, ashamed not to have a perfect one. I have no idea how normal women date. The world seems like it’d be an unbearable place for people with real feelings.
After all, everyone knows that women are responsible for how men behave. If we’re not careful, they might decide to take what they want. They can’t help it. But somehow I’m the one with the psychological impairment.
When other people are suffering, it’s because they’re not righteous. But when our people suffer, it’s only a test of faith.
In my experience, men try to talk women into opening their legs from the moment girls can walk on them. Men stand in for the Lord in this scenario. Always testing us to see if we choose right or wrong. But it’s a trick. There is no right. You’re a tease or a whore. A heartless denier or a Jezebel. Their penises are God’s divining rods, searching out evil.
I was fascinated by the way Meg interacted with men. She always made herself smaller, and they always loved it. At first I admired it as manipulation, but I later realized that once she’d established herself as small, she couldn’t make herself bigger again.
