Either/Or

by Elif Batuman

If you ever asked why any particular person had had a kid, or what good a particular kid was, people treated it as a blasphemy—as if you were saying they should be dead, or the kid should be dead. It was as if there was no way to ask what the plan had been, without implying that someone should be dead.

Was this because their neurological hardwiring made them better at systems, while women were better at empathy—because men valued abilities and things, while women valued feelings and people? How could we learn to place less value on feelings and people?

Kitty looked lovingly at Vronsky, who was already really into Anna: “and long afterwards, for several years after, that look, full of love, to which he made no response, cut her to the heart with an agony of shame.” Kitty literally almost died of shame, and had to go to a German spa.

But what was the man going to do—how was it going to work? I tried again to put in a tampon. ABSOLUTELY NO FUCKING WAY.

The devastating line at the end of “The Seducer’s Diary”: “If I were a god I would do for her what Neptune did for a nymph: change her into a man.” Would Ivan do that for me? YOU HAVE TO DO THAT FOR ME. The thought made me come, sobbing.

One time, I was late to Pilates. Then I saw how everyone who had gotten there earlier was avoiding eye contact and doing stretches in the clear hope that I wouldn’t sit near them, and would sit somewhere else. This felt unfair and hurtful: I had signed up on time, and had as much right to be there as they did. I had run all the way, and would have been early, except that I had been on the phone with my aunt, who wanted me to sign a piece of paper saying that I would be the adult guardian for my autistic cousin, David, after she and my uncle died. How confident the other people in the class seemed to be in the rights that had been conferred on them by being there first—which was really only a matter of luck, because their aunts hadn’t happened to call just then. Where, exactly, did they want me to go? Did they want me to just not exist? Was that how the Israelis and Palestinians felt about each other?

“It could be Selin’s Finnish friend doing a thought experiment,” Riley said. That was what she always said now, whenever we weren’t sure if something was really happening.

Anyway, I never had been able to understand how girls like that cared so little about worrying their parents.

“My style is indeed one of the foulest,” one of them said. “I inhale large clouds of smoke through my chalice.” I had a thought that was so surprising that I stopped in my tracks. Was it possible that Zoloft would cause me to like rap music?

I couldn’t get my bikini top to stay put, so I just wore the bottom. Lakshmi’s bikini fit her perfectly. Steam rose over the surface of the glowing blue. All around us was blackness. When had I last seen so many stars? Was this depressing, or was it fun?

it was like sliding back into the water on one of those long days at the beach, where you just get out so you can go back in again.

Why did everyone’s favorite part have to be something different?

What if the way Zoloft worked was just by dehydrating you?

I understood that what had been revealed to me at this sadomasochism-themed party was the true face of all parties: how they were all, in one way or another, sadomasochism-themed.

Was that what was so painful: that nobody had ever come so close to me—nobody had ever seen me, and come right up to me, and kept going, and looked into my eyes so seriously, with so little fear?