Desire Had Teeth

“Mine” turned out to be more honest than “toy,” and more terrifying: “the ring could be held from either end.” For three years Jacob possessed Simon — and only today, staring at the closed door, did he feel “the answering loop” around his own throat. Everything that had run for years on a single fuel — “being wanted and feared” — ground into reverse. Wanting, it turned out, hurt far more than being wanted.

This is the turning point of his arc. A narcissistic organization (see “A Hunger Without a Name”) is built so that a person receives confirmation from outside and owes nothing himself; desire reverses the direction of the flow — now he is the one who depends. The fingers over the screen that “had no idea what to write” are the first helplessness of his correct life. Important: desire is not yet love, and for now Jacob understands it in the only way available to him — as the need to get back what has slipped away. But from this moment on, the power is no longer one-sided, and he will pay for every one of the days that came before.