Patrizia Valduga

107 I have always been the way I am even when I wasn't the way I am and none can ever know the way I am because I am not merely the way I am 122 Him or someone else, what's it to me if every time I'm lonely afterward? Alone here with my moribility . . . if there only were such a lovely word . . . 124 These hemorrhoids, this bleeding from behind . . . I'm spilling out of all my holes—yes, all. My ass is wrecked . . . (My speech is so refined . . .) There ought to be a plumber I could call. 154 You want to die with me, you dumb shit? Excavate my heart with your shovel? This is getting to be a hell of a habit. Want me to swear on my knees? Grovel?

8 By now you know: I need the words. You'll learn to give me what I seek. It's my sick mind, it feeds on words. I'm begging you, for God's sake: speak! 17 Hurry, pin my wrists in place, nail me to your bed like Christ . . . comfort me, caress my face . . . fuck me when I expect it least. 45 From nerves veins valves ventricles from tendons cartilage nerves ducts from follicles nerves ribs clavicles . . . from every pore my soul erupts. 47 You liked that? you actually came? but how? Explain to me. But why? If you got off on that, you're doomed. A charge I can't and don't deny. 71 Why is even pleasure a kind of chore? Why is what sense I have left leaving me? Come on, explain. Who do you take me for, your personal doctor of philosophy?