This derangement.

Reclining Nude, Amadeo Modigliani
1919

Attachment creeps in. The eternal problem of attachment. No, not even fucking can stay totally pure and protected. And this is where I fail. The great propagandist for fucking and I can’t do any better than Kenny. Of course there is no purity the kind Kenny dreams of, but there is also no purity of the kind I dream of. When two dogs fuck there appears to be purity. There, we think, is pure fucking, among the beasts. But should we discuss it with them, we would probably find that even among dogs there are, in canine form, these crazy distortions of longing, doting, possessiveness, even of love.
This need. This derangement. Will it never stop? I don’t even know after a while what I’m desperate for. Her tits? Her soul? Her youth? Her simple mind? Maybe it’s worse than that – maybe now that I’m nearing death, I also long secretly not to be free.


in The Dying Animal de Philip Roth
Vintage Books, 2001