K'vitsh

I wonder if some of the appeal of books like Twilight, and every Harlequin romance novel ever written, is to experience all the drama of an unstable relationship, while at the same time being able to trust that the motives of the characters are pure.

I’m not excusing the red flags in Twilight, but I wonder if they’re acceptable only because they’re fiction and we know that Edward is the Good Guy. In real life, things are never so clear cut, or dramatic, or exciting. In real life, the screwed up guy hurts you - in fiction, he’s actually the hero, or the protagonist, and he fights against all odds to be worth your time. Perhaps playing with fire in the safety of a fantasy world isn’t so bad. And I’ve said it before - stable romances aren’t exactly thrilling fiction.

There is a moment on nearly every trip that I travel by bus, train, or car, when, looking out the window, an irrepressible and goofy grin spreads across my face. In the movement from the place you’ve just seen towards a place you’ve never been, from the things you’ve just learned towards the things you don’t even know that you don’t know yet, there are a million shards of joy.

Instead of saying what you actually think, simply smile and nod, or at most say, “Interesting!” Will it really kill you to pretend you don’t believe in the moon landing? No, it won’t.

A few years ago, Honda, a college dropout who worked a succession of jobs at video-game companies, began to use the Internet to urge otaku to stand with pride against good-looking men and women. His site generated enough buzz to earn him a publishing contract, and in 2005 he released a book condemning what he calls “romantic capitalism.” Honda argues that romance was marketed so excessively through B-movies, soap operas and novels during Japan’s economic bubble of the ’80s that it has become a commodity and its true value has been lost; romance is so tainted with social constructs that it can be bought by only good looks and money. According to Honda, somewhere along the way, decent men like himself lost interest in the notion entirely and turned to 2-D. “Pure love is completely gone in the real world,” Honda wrote. “As long as you train your imagination, a 2-D relationship is much more passionate than a 3-D one.” Honda insists that he’s advocating not prurience but a whole new kind of romance. If, as some researchers suggest, romantic love can be broken down into electrical impulses in the brain, then why not train the mind to simulate those signals while looking at an inanimate character?

I think it’s pretty difficult to simultaneously love your body, love the sensations its capable of producing and sharing that connection with another human being in the face of a lot of overwhelming seeming “evidence” that perhaps you aren’t beautiful. We can’t be at war with our bodies (and adult women trying to look like the body of 10 year old boys are nothing if not at war with themselves) and simultaneously fully experience pleasure.

30 orgasms in one go: I’d move to a desert island, grow my hair out, and spend all my time surfing the waves and collecting conk shells. That’s how much a 30 orgasm evening would change me.

Could it be that the voice of what you want is God’s voice? Could it be that what you want is what God wants? Could it be that you are eating and sleeping and fucking for God? And if that is God’s voice then what is this other voice that would hobble the hipster and tie him down, would frighten him into a frightful day job he half believes in and half detests?

That must be the voice of the devil! Ha ha ha. Fear the devil.

Give yourself a break, my man. If you are depressed and have a drug problem or have a metabolic imbalance, then that’s some serious stuff and you need medical care. But if you simply lack ambition, I take my hat off to you. The world is way too full already of overly ambitious fucks elbowing us out of the way on the streetcar.

I take my hat off to you. Give yourself a break. Take another day off.

Kid, he says, forget what the world wants from you. Go live out your own fucking sueño.

Your story is taking a hotter and wetter and more cosmically comical turn. The splendor and the rot are all mixed up. The line between your strengths and liabilities are hair thin. But have no fear. One of your dormant talents will activate in the nick of time. Your wild guesses will shed bright light whenever the darkness creeps in. And you’ll have even more emotional intelligence than usual. P.S. If your psyche tingles like a funny bone that has been tapped, it means that unanticipated help or useful information will arrive within 12 hours.