But she doesn’t compulsively rehash everything that happens to her in the form of a story. She’s in my story—I’m not in hers. That makes her and me unequal, but it also gives our relationship a kind of stability, and safeness. We each have our different roles. It’s like an unspoken contract. With you, there’s more instability and tension, because I

It was decreasingly possible to imagine explaining it all to anyone. Whoever it was would jump out a window from boredom. And yet here I was, watching the accumulation in real time, and not only was I not bored, but it was all I could think about. This discrepancy seemed to set up an unbridgeable gap between me and the rest of the world.

I didn’t really know what to make of this, though it was certainly true that consciousness could be a trap.

I really felt that way, even though he stressed me out so much, and all we ever did was mishear each other and say “What?” all the time.

I didn’t want anyone to think I thought it was good.

This meant that the Disney portrayal of bullies wasn’t accurate, because the Disney bullies realized they were evil, prided themselves on it, and loved nobody.

And still no waking moment went by that I didn’t think of him—he was in the background of everything I thought. My own perceptions were no longer enough to constitute the physical world for me. Every sound, every syllable that reached me, I wanted to filter through his consciousness.

He isn’t operating on the level of a real person. He isn’t a real person to you. If he was a real person, you would have all kinds of opportunities to see the flaws in the situation—or to see that, as far as you’re concerned, he isn’t really there.

Moreover, my policy at the time was that, when confronted by two courses of action, one should always choose the less conservative and more generous. I thought this was tantamount to a moral obligation for anyone who had any advantages at all, and especially for anyone who wanted to be a writer.