said, when he handed it to her. Killing his wife was a mistake that makes the story more horrible. But what got Grace about both stories was that suddenly a man wants to kill something that he loves. Just like that. Out of nowhere. You can understand something, somewhere deep inside you, but you can’t say what you understand and what you don’t understand. It’s as if the killing substitutes for not being able to understand. In the story. And for the person who’s reading the story. It’s weird. They never get away with it and you know that they’d do it again, because even if they knew they’d be caught, they can’t help themselves. They’re helpless. Slaves.
Grace didn’t want to appear slavish. There was playing with fire and there was getting burned. She might be slavish to desire, but that was her desire. There were slaves and there were slaves. Her private life was her business. She owned it like a coat or a record. She imagined a sign on an office door that read Fantasy—My Business, and she’d be a kind of detective operating a lost-and-found.…What she thought about when she stared out a window or rode on a bus or looked in a mirror over a bar, that was hers. Or that was hers, that momentary sensation. In a way, she thought, it was all anybody ever really had.
The Epicene Is Everything was written in pink nail polish on the frame around Mark’s bathroom mirror. Gay is better than homosexual as a word, he thought, because homosexual sounds so single-minded. “On the other hand, when I say I’m gay, I feel I have to be happy.” Grace washed the dishes and Mark stood behind her, speaking to her back. He said he’d fallen in love with a boy with long brown wavy hair. The feeling had extended beyond their first date, as he put it, and the boy—he was only three years younger than Mark, but Mark felt ancient—had moved in. Grace interrupted. “The plots are nearly identical. Then I read that Poe said the most perfect subject for a poem was a dead woman or the death of a beautiful woman, I forget which.” “My photographs are always the same,” Mark said, “you walk down the street the same way.” “But if you’re going to write a story why would you write the same story again and again.” “Maybe you’ll finally get it right. Or, maybe you like the story better than anything else.”
Mark had given her an old movie poster. Born to Be Bad. To Be Kissed.
Human Desire
, the movie’s title, written in even bigger letters. The poster hung over her bed. Advertising, Mark asked. It was funny, she knew it seemed like that, like the Rolling Stones were like that, teasing and very aware of it. Probably laughing at all of them. Us. If someone wants to believe the words, let them. They’re only words. She preferred to announce it, to say it before it was said. Throw it at them. Not that you send engraved invitations saying Strange But She Doesn’t Care. But if you did, they’d probably love it. Usually it’s just a song and no one lives up to it. She answered Celia’s letter, telling her about the poster, and Mark’s new boyfriend and how she worried that she wouldn’t see him as much, and Celia answered the letter, the way she always did, but couldn’t answer the questions that weren’t written. Grace fumed over a Velvet Underground album and put the needle down on “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”
There was a new patient in the mental hospital, a sixteen-year-old named Ellen. Ellen told Grace she was an octoroon, but it turned out that her mother was white and her father black and years ago when she was two she’d been taken by her mother’s family and placed for adoption, because they said her mother couldn’t take care of her, she was no more than a child herself. Which was true, she was a child, but it wasn’t that. “She loved me,” Ellen cried, “I know that. She gave me this,” and pointed to a battered teddy bear. Then she put her cigarette out in its stomach. Sometimes Ellen
Grace didn’t want to appear slavish. There was playing with fire and there was getting burned. She might be slavish to desire, but that was her desire. There were slaves and there were slaves. Her private life was her business. She owned it like a coat or a record. She imagined a sign on an office door that read Fantasy—My Business, and she’d be a kind of detective operating a lost-and-found.…What she thought about when she stared out a window or rode on a bus or looked in a mirror over a bar, that was hers. Or that was hers, that momentary sensation. In a way, she thought, it was all anybody ever really had.
The Epicene Is Everything was written in pink nail polish on the frame around Mark’s bathroom mirror. Gay is better than homosexual as a word, he thought, because homosexual sounds so single-minded. “On the other hand, when I say I’m gay, I feel I have to be happy.” Grace washed the dishes and Mark stood behind her, speaking to her back. He said he’d fallen in love with a boy with long brown wavy hair. The feeling had extended beyond their first date, as he put it, and the boy—he was only three years younger than Mark, but Mark felt ancient—had moved in. Grace interrupted. “The plots are nearly identical. Then I read that Poe said the most perfect subject for a poem was a dead woman or the death of a beautiful woman, I forget which.” “My photographs are always the same,” Mark said, “you walk down the street the same way.” “But if you’re going to write a story why would you write the same story again and again.” “Maybe you’ll finally get it right. Or, maybe you like the story better than anything else.”
Mark had given her an old movie poster. Born to Be Bad. To Be Kissed.
Human Desire
, the movie’s title, written in even bigger letters. The poster hung over her bed. Advertising, Mark asked. It was funny, she knew it seemed like that, like the Rolling Stones were like that, teasing and very aware of it. Probably laughing at all of them. Us. If someone wants to believe the words, let them. They’re only words. She preferred to announce it, to say it before it was said. Throw it at them. Not that you send engraved invitations saying Strange But She Doesn’t Care. But if you did, they’d probably love it. Usually it’s just a song and no one lives up to it. She answered Celia’s letter, telling her about the poster, and Mark’s new boyfriend and how she worried that she wouldn’t see him as much, and Celia answered the letter, the way she always did, but couldn’t answer the questions that weren’t written. Grace fumed over a Velvet Underground album and put the needle down on “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”
There was a new patient in the mental hospital, a sixteen-year-old named Ellen. Ellen told Grace she was an octoroon, but it turned out that her mother was white and her father black and years ago when she was two she’d been taken by her mother’s family and placed for adoption, because they said her mother couldn’t take care of her, she was no more than a child herself. Which was true, she was a child, but it wasn’t that. “She loved me,” Ellen cried, “I know that. She gave me this,” and pointed to a battered teddy bear. Then she put her cigarette out in its stomach. Sometimes Ellen
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