I've Never Been To A Dinner Party

I Don't Have A Love Life. I Have A Like Life.

But Family Life Sometimes Had A Vortex, Like Weather. It Could Be Like A Tornado In A Quiet Zigzag: Get Close Enough And You Might See Within It A Spinning Eighteen-wheeler And A Woman.

I Tried Not To Think About My Life. I Did Not Have Any Good Solid Plans For It Long-term - No Bad Plans Either, No Plans At All - And The Lostness Of That, Compared With The Clear Ambitions Of My Friends (marriage, Children, Law School), Sometimes Shamed Me. Other Times In My Mind I Defended Such A Condition As Morally And Intellectually Superior - My Life Was Open And Ready And Free - But That Did Not Make It Less Lonely.

Perhaps She Drives Men Away. Perhaps, Without Even Being Able To Help Herself, She Just Puts Men Into Her Ill-tempered Car And Drives Them Off: To Quarries, Dumps, Small Anonymous Bodies Of Water.

She Had, Without Realizing It At The Time, Learned To Follow Nick's Gaze, Learned To Learn His Lust...his Desires Remained Memorized Within Her. She Looked At The Attractive Women He Would Look At...she Had Become Him: She Longed For These Women. But She Was Also Herself, And So She Despised Them. She Lusted After Them, But She Also Wanted To Beat Them Up. A Rapist. She Had Become A Rapist, Driving To Work In A Car.