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“What? Because I think you’re good?”
“You, uh, you say those things, like that everything’s just pain and difficulty and that the only way to be happy is to lie to yourself, and then you say this.”
“What?” she said.
“If people aren’t happy, they’re also not good.”
She furrowed her brow.
“Look, the essence of people is… I don’t know, whatever we’re programmed to do,” he said. “Survive, I guess. Which does include being social, because we’re all social species, but goodness is a set of behaviors. It’s not a deep-down core quality. And one way you behave in a good way is by not giving in to your violent desires.”
“You don’t think you’re a good person?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“It kind of sounds like that’s what you said.”
He thought about it. “I think I’m a good person because I choose not to do certain things that other people allow themselves to do, I guess. Listen, I have this theory about porn—”
“Oh, tangles and briars, we had a conversation about this once,” she said. “About the desensitization thing, and you were all, ‘Guys get too into porn, and they can’t get off when they’re having sex with real women, and that’s porn addiction’ and I was like, ‘Whatever, that does not even happen’ because I don’t know anyone who prefers porn to actual people.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding, remembering the conversation. “But you conceded, at the end, that you were not a man and so you didn’t know.”
“I did,” she said. “But you also conceded that you had never been addicted to porn yourself.”
“Did I say that?” he said.
“Well, I know you cut yourself off from porn, which I thought was a little extreme.” She spread her hands. “Like, sorry, I’m not going to stop reading romance novels or even going and looking at a little stroke fiction on the free erotica sites on the internet now and again. I’m never going to stop doing that and I don’t see that it has anything to do with my actual sex life.”
He surveyed her. “Uh, what are those romance novels you read about anyway?”
She shrugged. “What do you mean? They’re about two people falling in love.”
“Yeah, okay, and what is the sex like? Is there choking in the books?”
“I mean, maybe, sometimes. It kind of depends on what I’m in the mood for.”
He ran his fingers over the chain that held the cuffs together. “Is it, uh… what are the men like? Are they nice and sweet and giving lovers?”
“Sometimes,” she said. “I mean, it’s not super realistic, to be real. They usually know exactly how to touch you and where and it’s always really easy to be comfortable in front of them and no one’s having any body insecurities or in their head about anything and they always say the sexiest things and they just take control of you in this way that’s perfect, like they’re reading your mind or something, and… it’s a fantasy, okay? I get that it’s a fantasy. I don’t expect actual sex to be like that. But what happened with us, it was sort of close.”
He sat up straight. “What? Really? Why?”
“Because… I don’t know… I just felt comfortable,” she said. “With you, I mean. I know you, and I knew you wouldn’t judge me. Except… you did.” Now, she was deflated.
“Judge you,” he repeated thoughtfully. “For what?”
“For, you know, wanting it like that.”
“Like what?”
“Oh, for fuck’s sake, you know like what.”
“The choking.”
“You’re very fixated on the choking,” she said. “Which, by the way, you did all on your own. I didn’t, like, beg you to do that. You just went there, and then you acted like I forced you to do it, and—”
“That’s from fucking porn, though!”
