On the Commonplace again

From The Moth and Flame : a Benjamin Justice Novel, by John Morgan Wilson:

From page 175

I was restless, but my encounter with Victor Androvic had put the kibosh on any interest I had in the X-rated images available on the Internet. Having one of the models in my arms, in the flesh, had reminded me that these were real human beings, not inanimate objects devoid of souls and feelings; the notion of using them like inflatable dolls to satisfy one's masturbatory fantasies had lost what little appeal had been there to begin with. It's funny how we think we need something--how we're sure we can't live without it--until a dose of reality hits us, and the temptation vanishes as if it never existed at all.

From page 193

Prozac had given me six months of peace, of being able to get through the day without being overwhelmed by melancholy and dread. But it wasn't what I wanted anymore. I wanted to be able to write lines again that meant something to me. I wanted to experience sensuality again, to respond physically when a man touched me in a way that should have felt exciting and good. I wanted to care about someone deeply. To risk getting close as once I had, even if it meant doing it without a little pill to take the scary edges off. I wanted to reclaim myself, all of me, and start to feel fully alive again.

From page 196

Cecelia Cortez had arranged my visit through Bibbby's older sister, who'd taken on the responsibility of sorting through his belongings but still wasn't up to getting started. I'd done some of that myself, back in the eighties and early nineties, when every few months another friend had died, sometimes at shorter intervals than that. If you were lucky, he'd have packed up everything and labeled it with a name or place where he wanted it to go, but sometimes it was less tidy than that. Sometimes you had to sit on the bed where he'd died--sometimes the same bed you'd once shared with him--and decide if his old sweaters were worth sending to the thrift store or should be put on the curb where the homeless could pick through them. Sometimes it might even be a sweater you'd given him one year before the plague had come and changed everything.

From page 200

I unzipped and relieved myself in the toilet, staring at a framed lobby card for The Front Page, the 1931 version. It felt strange, pissing in the bathroom of a dead man without his permission, while his blood clotted the carpet fifty feet away. But I planned to be here awhile, so I figured I better get used to it.

From page 285

"I was just thinking that nostalgia's not all that it's cracked up to be".