In the Fantasies He Chose It

One sentence cuts through the whole embrace: everything looks like the dream — the body, the arms, the world gone — except for a single detail. In the fantasies, Jacob chose it himself. Consent is not a decoration of closeness but its substance; remove it, and the same embrace becomes restraint, the same tenderness — immobilization.

Here Simon’s plan refutes itself at the moment of execution: closeness taken by force stops being closeness in the very second of possession. It is worth reading as a formula that applies far beyond this story: everything that makes a person worth winning exists only for as long as they are free to leave.