to mind. "I guess there's no reason you would know this," she'd said, "but it's fairly common for people to have one person who's their lover, and a separate person for inflicting pain.” I thought about that, and about Richard saying, "A lot of crap comes out when you do this stuff." I considered the maxims that tell us that the opposite of love isn't actually hate, and how much time I'd spent encouraging myself to hate him. Finally, I admitted that the only term I had to cover this depth of emotion was "love"... but that couldn't make it feel like the right word. Then again, it wasn't exactly "hate", either. He was a demon, an idol. He hardly felt like a person to me. I didn't vocalize any of this. Coming back from the waterfront, we arrived at the intersection where Richard would go to his apartment and I'd return to mine. An awkward pause ensued: I was leaving in a few days, and wouldn't be alone with him again. Watching him, I wondered if he was thinking about asking me over, or was looking for an excuse not to. I looked away. "Goodnight," I said. Walking home, I wished I felt strong. ok oe It was after I left Chicago that I really started piecing myself back together. My anger drained away quickly, as if an infected wound had been lanced. Perhaps I found my strength under the scab. I figured that maybe all this did identify something about my personality, but it didn't tell the whole story. Even now, I could be independent, rational, and feminist, with self-esteem and integrity. Right? Right. It was impossible to deny that the desires were real -- and when I allowed myself to focus on them, I didn't try. Ruminating on my past, I recalled heart-twisting details that put everything in a certain compelling context. It wasn't just the man who'd gone after me in 2003. Wincing, I remembered childhood fantasies: I'd compulsively written and drawn brutal dreams until, at some confused middle-school point, their horror came home to me and I recoiled. In those long-repr