Men did not merely want. Men needed. The man who followed my mother to and from work every day needed to do so. Presidents forfeit glory for blow jobs. Everything a man takes a lifetime to build he may gamble for a moment.

It’s the nuances of desire that hold the truth of who we are at our rawest moments.

Now Lina gets these pains, and she believes in her clearer moments that the pains are the heartaches of the past, of being lonely for eleven years. Of being raped. Of being lonely her whole life.

She understands it’s because she fears aloneness more than she fears death.

There should be a stronger word than regret.

ecclesiastical

Men can frighten us, other women can frighten us, and sometimes we worry so much about what frightens us that we wait to have an orgasm until we are alone. We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need.

Even in love Lina understands there is competition—a frantic need to be the one who will hurt less than the other.

The gate that guards the reality of one’s childhood is high and existentially heavy, and merely opening it takes more energy than one expects.