Black Swans: Stories

by Eve Babitz

Jealousy It’s only temporary: you either die, or get better.

The thing about jealousy that makes it so confusing is that it throws us out of civilization and beyond the bonds of humanity and allows us to believe that crimes like suicide and murder and spying are necessary.

Anything difficult, as far as I’ve been able to determine, seems to work, and anything easy is just kidding yourself.

And it’s not just my friend Warren, who married for money and now never reads a book or laughs or helps anyone but only tells you how much things cost, and who spent his engagement celebration sequestered in the Rodeo Gardens so his ex-girlfriend wouldn’t find out until it was too late.

But to be corrupt, you must once have been innocent—and I guess some people never were.

“Can’t you see,” he said, “that life is too short to be miserable? You have to be with people who love you. The people who care about you. You are too fabulous, darling, to be miserable!”

my advice to you is—for great sex, get a vibrator (or do it yourself), and remember how fabulous it was; don’t go trying to get the person back, or you’ll wind up a skull in the desert outside the Bagdad Cafe.

“Death is just fear.”