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: : : —I DON’T KNOW, SAYS FLETCHER, into the phone. —It seems pretty cool to me.
—You're not getting it, says Clark.
—What's not to get? I mean you've been into this guy for—what? how long? Six months?
—More than that.
—My point is a long time.
—Yeah and for like two years I've been saying I'm done with relationships, done with sex—
—But you can't just be done with sex, Fletcher says. Cassandra, across the room, looks up from her book. —That's like saying you're done with oxygen.
—They're not the same, Clark says. —People can go without sex—
—Yeah, right, like priests. And look how well that usually works out.
—What I'm trying to say here is that sexual desire is ideological whereas the need for oxygen—
—I don't know that sexual desire is ideological, Fletcher says. —I mean animals have sex—
—Yeah, but the existence of animal sexuality doesn't necessarily prove that animals have sexual desire—that's presumptuous—
—Maybe, but—
—Wait. Wait.
—But—
—This isn't the argument I wanted to have with you.
—There was a specific argument that you wanted to have with me?
—I wanted to tell you that Oliver and I hooked up. And I knew that you would think it was cool and I wanted to explain why it's not.
—Okay, Fletcher says. He takes a deep breath. —Explain why it's not.
—Why it's not, Clark begins. —It's not because it was self-destructive.
—How was it self-destructive? Fletcher says. —You like him, he likes you—
—I'm not certain that he likes me, Clark says. —Not in that way. Not sexually.
—What are you talking about? Fletcher says. —Didn't you guys just get done—
—Yes, Clark says, —but this is what I'm trying to tell you. What I'm trying to tell you is that he was doing it as a self-destructive act. He was doing the thing he wouldn't normally do. The same thing he was doing when he smashed the letter tray. Don't you get it? By fucking me he's abjecting himself.
—I— Fletcher says, but then he stops. He needs to think.
—And by fucking him I'm abjecting myself. Because fucking him is the thing that I wouldn't normally do. And so what you have here is two people who are both unhappy with themselves coming together and using one another as like a temporary means of suicide.
—That's— Fletcher says. He frowns, puzzled. —That's really messed up.
—This is what I'm trying to say, Clark says. —This is why it isn't cool.
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