Lolita

“offensive” is frequently but a synonym for “unusual;”

at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each
other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have
been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of each
other’s soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would
have so easily found an opportunity to do.

I leaf again and again through these miserable memories, and keep asking myself,
was it then, in the glitter of that remote summer, that the rift in my life began; or was my excessive desire for that child only the first evidence of an inherent singularity?