It's all about...
sex, she said, over dinner. I hadn't even noticed, and I normally do. After all, she's this lovely slender successfull doll of a woman with a love-affair that defies space, the child of intellectuals and sister to artists, while I am the dark mean bitch, crawling, slithering, kicking and clawing. I am she who wears normality as a warm sweater and protection against reality, while my mind roams the dark corners and my students can't use a ketchup-bottle after graduating because of the images invading their hot-dog meals. The pretty danish waiter flirted skillfully, secure in his handsome maleness, knowing that if he made us feel good about ourselves, intelligent, witty, wanted and attractive, tips would fall out of our purses, and yes, it did. A touch of a hangover from italian wine at inappropriate hours was repaired with more of the same while I told her another outrageous true story. And she laughed, her dark eyes alight with wicked amusement as she shared a taste of my sadism.

But it kept returning to sex, to words licking the g-spots of our brains, to ideas fertilising receptive minds, to images penetrating texts violently rather than emerging in tranquility. And I remembered her fingers caressing the lid of her computer, the flush of her cheeks as she listened to a brilliant statement, and I nodded, unable to do anything but agree; the lust - yes the lust - fed at this moment by the red meat and the creamy sauce on our plates. It's a love-affair, not a lifestyle, and I mourn at the knowledge that I have to break up. This passion burns out. This thesis has to be concluded. And I need to end it in a civilized manner, as I strive to appear to conduct all my affairs, in the hope that there will be enough warmth left that in the near future it will settle into being a sweet part of my past.