mattereaterlad2

"'I have an agenda,' she told him on their first, after a campus viewing of a scratchy print of Last Year at Marienbad. Her master's thesis, she told him, was to be an excavation of the representations of gender in Hallmark cards, but, she added, she hadn't properly theorized it yet. As he listened, Nelson underwent a crisis of conscience: Was Lilith another Wendy Walberg? Was he feigning interest only because he knew she'd go to bed with him? He was still wrestling with this quaint moral dilemma several hours later in her apartment, when Lilith announced that she wanted to investigate with him the interpenetration of power, sexuality, and the pleasures of the text. In practice this meant taking turns tying each other to her futon with an Ace bandage and declaiming 'transgressive things' to each other like porn stars. By now Nelson's conscience was burning like a welder's arc, and when it was his turn to tie her down, he shriveled and sat trembling at the edge of the mattress. Lilith turned imperiously maternal, holding his head in her lap (after he'd turned her loose), and telling him it was okay, not everyone could handle transgression."

--James Hynes, The Lecturer's Tale