I remember at one point starting a goofy story about a childhood field trip here, and I saw her eyes go blank, and I got secretly furious, spent ten minutes just winding myself up – because at this point of our marriage, I was so used to being angry with her, it felt almost enjoyable, like gnawing on a cuticle: You know you should stop, that it doesn’t really feel as good as you think, but you can’t quit grinding away.
Your health is not a debt you just cancel. The body collects, Camille.
I would never steer a fellow sufferer from the relief of a blackout.
That’s the way plants down here work: The Mexicans get the shittiest, most dangerous jobs, and the whites still complain.
I DIDN’T STOP giving hand jobs because I wasn’t good at it. I stopped giving hand jobs because I was the best at it. For three years, I gave the best hand job in the tristate area. The key is to not overthink it. If you start worrying about technique, if you begin analyzing rhythm and pressure, you lose the essential nature of the act. You have to mentally prepare beforehand, and then you have to stop thinking and trust your body to take over. Basically, it’s like a golf swing.
Sometimes that’s what happens. No cigarette burns, no bone snaps. Just an irretrievable slipping.
It infects you. It ruined me.
They were women not strong enough or smart enough to leave. Women without imagination. So they stayed in Wind Gap and played their teenage lives on an endless loop.
Worries find you easily enough without inviting them. With Diane, worries were almost physical beings, leechy creatures with latchhooks for fingers, meant to be vanquished immediately. Diane didn’t worry, that was for less hearty women.
She was clearly rich. Her handbag was too plain to be anything but incredibly expensive.
I really wanted the book to make money, in an obsessive childish way – that feeling that if I wanted it enough, it should happen. It should happen.
I’m not someone who can be depended on five days a week. Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday? I don’t even get out of bed five days in a row – I often don’t remember to eat five days in a row.
Diary Amy. She was meant to be likable. Meant for someone like you to like her. She’s easy to like. I’ve never understood why that’s considered a compliment – that just anyone could like you. No matter.
January was the season for house robberies and violence. Christmas was over, and the new year just reminded you of how little your life had changed, and man, people got angry in January.
There might be a space too, for this. The feel of killing, there might be an empty spot just waiting to be filled.
The children in the woods play wild, secret games.
If you were chopping up hookers or eating runaways, you’d try to look normal.
I like rules that make sense, not rules without logic.
I always feel sad for the girl that i was, because it never occurred to me that my mother might comfort me.
That’s how screwed up you are, I thought. Your idea of adulthood still comes from picturebooks.