Imbrication w/David Foster Wallace and My Own Personal Problems

A piece of moral gymnastics equipment on which you can demonstrate your virtuous character, being generous to other people only because you want to be seen as generous, and so you may actually like it when people around you go broke or get into trouble because it means you can rush in all generously and act all helpful, or treat them as some narcissistically cathected projection of yourself, etc.

Also the crawly feeling it gives me to wake up from a dream in which I am paralyzedly witnessing from some low (not to be read as, ‘debased’) angle the horrible facial expressions of some nameless dude in the midst of a sexual act that I am either engaged in or simply closely observing but, in observing so closely yet obviously totally detached from, there’s this voyeuristic guilt combined with knowing that this is not how a Normal Woman&tm; experiences the situation, for instance a Normal Woman&tm; like you, to whom this thing is desirable and an activity that you are not detached from or dare I say grossed out by. And to me that is as incomprehensible as someone telling me that they like to eat raw eggs off gravel or watch someone taking an enormous dump? Like “why would you like this grossly unpleasant thing?!” and “what is wrong with me that I can’t get behind that?” which makes me feel the exact chagrin of a child spitting out a chunk of brie in front of a group of Grown-ups who are all patronizingly like “Some day you’ll ‘get it’,” or “It’s an acquired taste only Grown-ups like us are advanced enough to experience.”

So instead of being happy that you were with me I had this malignant suspicion that maybe you took no genuine pleasure in this “less-mature” act and concentrated only on making me happy, as if you took some above-it-all satisfaction in inflicting pleasure on me. Showing me up somehow, like just tossing satiety at me casually, maybe thinking “Wow I can’t believe you actually like this,” or being as detached and clinical and bored as I would be with a guy? And what if you were looking down on me the way I look down on them?

You told me that you never had ‘pity sex’ ever whereas I said probably most of the sex I’ve had has been pity sex in one way or another. I privately think of it as self-pity sex almost invariably regardless of the situation, you know? So I think you have to revise your statistics because I pity myself very much for being pitiful, “pity-filled” if you will, by you. And your hands scooped my own sadness into me, etc. And the conclusion was basically some concussive wave of our mutual dissatisfaction with me, smashing me over the head, triumphant.