For a While, at Least, She and I Were in Love

SHe: I wish I were her.
He: WHy?
She: Because it would be nice to have someone feel that way about me.
He: You've never been in love?
She: Not even close.
He: And no one's ever been in love with you?
She: Men always want to fuck me, but no one has ever loved me.
He: I don't believe that.
She: It's true.
They stare.
He: If it makes any difference, I don't want to fuck you.
She laughs
She: Thanks
He: I think you're beautiful, but I wouldn't fuck you because when we were done, I wouldn't want you to feel fucked. I would try to make love to you, and I would probably be clumsy and awkward, but when it w as over, I would want you to feel loved.
She smiles
She: Thank you.
He smiles.
He: Thank you.



I listen to the tick of an unseen clock marking moments of time long passed. It makes me the tick and it holds me and it carries and keeps me like the slow swing of a pendulum before the eyes of an idiot. The WOrld has stopped not like before and not in a good way. It has stopped and is not going forward the same way my life has stopped and is not going forward. It is not going forward or backward or anywhere at all it has just stopped. It has just stopped.
The clock holds me nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere. There is nothing else but now and the shifting depth of night. I sit at a table alone smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee and listening and surviving. I should not be here or anywhere. I should not be breathing or taking space. I should not have been given this moment or anything else. I should not have this opportunity again to live. I do not deserve it or deserve anything yet it is here and I am here and I have it all of it still. I won't have it again. This moment and this chance they are the same and they are mine if I choose them and I do. I want them. Now and as long as I can have them they are both precious and fleeting and gone in the blink of an eye don't waste them. A moment and an opporturnity and a life, all in the unseen tick of a clock holding me nowhere. My heart is beating. The walls are pale and quiet. I am surviving.
--James Frey, A Million Little Pieces