He was not the type to say that experience is all to the good, that nothing is wasted in life, that everyone we meet and everywhere we go, down to the most squalid, insignificant job we hold, plays a tiny role in making us who we become. ... There were no second chances in his book of life; you simply dipped into yourself and pawned the little that was left from earlier deaths.
André AcimanTags: who-we-become
To live with yourself you had to cut off the hand that offended, cut, slice, peel, scrape, and tear away at yourself till all you were left with were your stripped-down bones. Your bones gave you away; you could not hide your bones, nor could you avoid staring at them. All you wanted was for others to be stripped down like you ...
André AcimanTags: bare-bones
...he, of all people, understood all about these hidden mainsprings in the twisted gadgetry of the soul.
André AcimanTags: soul
I wanted to hear his window open, hear his espadrilles on the balcony, and then the sound of my own window, which was never locked, being pushed open as he'd step into my room after everyone had gone to bed, slip under my covers, undress me without asking, and after making me want him more than I thought I could ever want another living soul, gently, softly, and, with the kindness one Jew extends to another, work his way into my body, gently and softly, after heeding the words I'd been rehearsing for days now, Please, don't hurt me, which meant, Hurt me all you want.
André AcimanMaybe it was the alcohol, maybe it was the truth, maybe I didn't want things to turn abstract, but I felt I should say it, because this was the moment to say it, because it suddenly dawned on me that this was why I had come, to tell him 'You are the only person I'd like to say goodbye to when I die, because only then will this thing I call my life make any sense. And if I should hear that you died, my life as I know it, the me who is speaking with you now, will cease to exist.
André AcimanTags: life nostalgia regret love-and-loss
I couldn't understand how boldness and sorrow, how you're so hard and do you really care for me? could be so thoroughly bound together. Nor could I begin to fathom how someone so seemingly vulnerable, hesitant, and eager to confide so many uncertainties about herself could, with one and the same gesture, reach into my pants with unabashed recklessness and hold on to my cock and squeeze it.
André AcimanTags: life nostalgia sex regret adolescence love-and-loss
Over the years I'd lodged him in the permanent past, my pluperfect lover, put him on ice, stuffed him with memories and mothballs like a hunted ornament confabulating with the ghost of all my evenings. I'd dust him off from time to time and then put him back on the mantelpiece. He no longer belonged to earth or to life. All I was likely to discover at this point wasn't just how distant were the paths we'd taken, it was the measure of loss that was going to strike me--a loss I didn't mind thinking about in abstract terms but which would hurt when stared at in the face, the way nostalgia hurts long after we've stopped thinking of things we lost and may never have cared for.
André AcimanTags: life nostalgia regret love-and-loss
Kalaj was in top form.
"If I had a car I'd drive you home right this instant."
"I'll take him if he wants," said the young Moroccan cabdriver.
"How many times do I have to teach you," said Kalaj, reprimanding the abdriver who was more my age than Kalaj's. "Never say 'if he wants' with this kind of honeyed, ersatz tone in your voice. Instead, say, 'I'm taking you home. Let's go.'"
"Well," said the shy Moroccan, "should we go?"
Everyone laughed.
As far as he was concerned, all women wanted all men. And vice versa. What stood in the way between a man and a woman at Cafe Algiers was a few chairs, a table, maybe a door--material distance. All a man needed was the will and above all the patience to wait out a woman's scruples or help her brush them aside. As in a game of penny poker, he explained, all that matters was simply the will to keep raising the pot by a single penny each time; a single penny, not two; a single penny was easy, you wouldn't even feel it; but you had to wait for her to raise you by a penny as well, which is when you'd raise her by another, she by yet another, and so on. Seduction was not pushing people into doing things they did not wish to do. Seduction was just keeping the pennies coming.
André AcimanTwo words from him, and I had seen my pouting apathy change into I’ll play anything for you till you ask me to stop, till it’s time for lunch, till the skin on my fingers wears off layer after layer, because I like doing things for you, will do anything for you, just say the word...
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