Page 21 of Lucky Night

Okay, but why does that make her enjoyment of blow jobs less legitimate?

Why? Because, I mean, it’s literally not legitimate. It doesn’t arise naturally from her own inclination. Her innate self.

Her innate self, he says. What’s that?

Oh my God. You don’t believe in the self now?

Just hear me out.

She smiles, shaking her head. Just Hear Me Out: The Nick Holloway Story.

He refills their glasses. Good thing he brought two bottles. The way she’s shaking her head, resisting him. She’d resist him in the stairwell, too.Nick, no, someone might see!But she’d be playing. She’s as game as he is, as hungry, downright lascivious, a quality that shocked him when he first encountered it. Shocked and delighted him. So yes, she’d play, she’d sigh and succumb, he’d pin her against the railing, one hand on her lovely throat, his thumb pressing—lightly! lightly!—into the gorgeous hollow at its base while the other slides between her legs—

I’m just saying women aren’t the only ones who are brainwashed, he says. We all are. There is no innate, nonaturalhuman, quote-unquote. We’re each nothing more than the sum of the influences and norms and taboos that have been hammered into us since birth, most of which we’re completely unaware of, and all of which we’re powerless to change.

You don’t think people can change?

Nah, he says.

Why am I surprised? I’m talking to Mr. Negativity here.

How is that negative?

She chuckles. Gee, Nick. Let me think.

It’s realistic, he insists. We can become aware of what’s driving us, the conditioning, the brainwashing, we can wake up to it—some of us can, anyway. And that moment of recognition feels great. Oh my God, I get it now, forces are controlling me, and they’re inside me, they’re inside the building! Epiphanies like that are a blast. But they rarely cause people to alter their behavior. We’re too lazy, too…where are you going?

She’s out of bed, reaching for her sparkling water, abandoned on the coffee table.

Listening to all these deep thoughts is making me parched, she says.

He watches her wander to the window. Is she done with the chitchat? Can he drop the philosophical patter and seduce her, re-seduce her, taking immense care, making sure she comes this time? He would have kept trying if he’d known. Didn’t she realize that? He’s a selfish son of a bitch, no question, but to her he wants to give. And give and give. Which is why it bothered him that she lied. She’d led him to believe he’d satisfied her, only to later reveal—ha ha asshole, gotcha!—he’d failed. Golden boy. So much promise. Turns out you can’t even make a woman—

Oh let it go! She faked it and didn’t tell you, you got sad after coming and didn’t tell her. Everybody’s hiding something. What did she say? Everybody’s ashamed. He doesn’t know about that. Lonely after an orgasm—it’s ridiculous, but not shameful. Is she ashamed? She does have the whole religious thing to deal with. The Catholic guilt. Though how she can believe in, let alone continue to pay dues to, what’s basically a global crime syndicate…it’s baffling. He has zero spiritual leanings himself. Old-school WASP, church on Christmas and Easter, that’s it. Sometimes he wishes it were otherwise. All those strictures against carnal transgressionmust add a certain zest to life. He’d probably enjoy masturbating even more than he does if he’d been taught since childhood to find it filthy and wrong.

Oh well. Like Jesus, we all have our cross to bear.

She’s leaning close to the window, looking down. Then up. Then down again.

Jenny?

She returns, slipping into bed beside him.

So we’re stuck with ourselves, she says. We’re these, whatever, constructions, and we can’t change, and that’s not totally grim and defeating to you?

Not at all. Because it means we can relax. Quit lamenting how we’ve been warped and perverted, quit trying to parse out what aspects of our personalities are quote-unquote natural and quote-unquote authentic, and accept ourselves. Hapless, a little clueless, lacking free will, but alive.

Wait—we lack free will now, too?

Of course. And it’s wonderfully liberating. For example. Let’s say you feel the impulse to give a man a blow job. Some near-at-hand, compelling, deeply deserving man.

Don’t you dare, Nick.

My point is, you don’t have to interrogate that desire, worry about where it comes from, whether it’s real or some sexist construct. He loosens the belt of his robe. You just own it, you accept the urge, and—

She pushes at him, laughing. Put that thing away!

I can’t, Jenny. Like I said, I’m not in control here either.

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