You know—I almost do want it to be true. The permission to just fuck around and live alone forever and never need anyone else’s company in particular, and for that never to seem lacking. But maybe it’s the fact that the body decays that makes this kind of intimacy important.

So that someone finds you if you have a stroke? So that someone’s there to clean up your vomit after the chemo?

Yeah, I guess so.

But if that’s the role, then it seems like the selection process is asking all the wrong questions. Or it’s like—people fall in love for reasons that are nice at the time and totally useless a year later.