during a particular recent phone conversation with him I had experienced an existential “I am a fraud” moment—a line he repurposed (to my biliousness) in the first sentence of his celebrated tour de force “Good Old Neon.”
The truth: my career had been built around protecting male egos. This was the world I lived in. This was the world I knew, and I never believed this world could, or would, change. It seemed incomprehensible that the system could ever collapse. So I started trying out a new approach. I would change …
I already understood that David would always define the terms of your reality. That’s what he did, that’s who he was. And I also already understood that I could never be a woman who slid into a man’s premade life and claimed it as her own. I had a world. I had a job. It had taken a lot of work to a…
In high dudgeon, I stalked up toward the exit. Back to my point about how anger is a process and a choice.
I couldn’t have imagined that anyone had ever mentioned any sort of resemblance to the sex, lies, and videotape Spader, a louche vagrant who videotapes women talking about their sex lives, to David as praise.
