"in her bedroom, on his knees, he planted his thumbs on her hipbones and pressed his mouth to her thighs and then to her whatever; she felt returned to a childhood world of grimm and c.s. lewis where a touch could be transformative. his hands made her hips into a woman's hips, his mouth made her thighs into a woman's thighs, her whatever into a cunt. these were the advantages of being wanted by someone older--to feel like an ungendered marionette, to be given a guided tour of the state of her morphology, to have its usefulness elucidated by a person for whom it was just the ticket.
boys her own age wanted something, but they didn't seem to know exactly what." - from the corrections (p. 371) by j. franzen.so many lines in the corrections resonate with me for days upon days. so many lines gone without being underlined that i will eventually forget about unless i someday read my own copy* of the corrections for a second time (* = i'm currently reading bilal's copy because i lost mine & i'm pretty sure he wouldn't appreciate me scribbling all over his book).
anyway, the above passage may be pervy of me to post (especially that cunt bit; i was seriously contemplating censoring it to read 'c*nt'), but that childhood metaphor made me nostalgic. it reminded me of that sprightly excitement stimulated by 'first times'. i'm also really feeling that last line ('boys her own age wanted something, but they didn't seem to know exactly what.'). i know it's a generalization, but it really spoke to me. it reminded me of a failed romance -- a "it's me [him], not you [me]" sort of deal, where he simply didn't know what he wanted at the end (in retrospect, i'm pretty sure everyone kinda knows what they want, but they use this line because they can't muster up the courage to bluntly say 'i don't want to be with you anymore').
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