Jilly

“...the sense that men were alien, that if I were to foster any intimacy with a man it would be both despite and because of the fact that I could only be a body to him. And I had been right to be afraid. How can a body ever be safe when it is only a body? How can we expect that no stranger will be tempted to torch an empty house? But Nathan was not alien. He had seen the lights on in the house: he has discerned the scenes that took place away from the windows, in the secret rooms. His acknowledgement of my body had allowed me to start to forget about it. The facade of the house has been my duty, my obsession, and now I could wander away from it for days, trusting it had proved its use.”
― Lillian Fishman, Acts of Service