House of Leaves - The Angel & The Devil

[changeling67]

'The angel of his youth became the devil of his maturity.  He went out with women when he was young, always holding something in reserve.  There would always be a reason to break it off, which opened the door to a multitude of relationships. Heaven. Or so he thought. As age encroached upon his sensibilities and form, he longed for something with enough vitality to endure.  But the covering cherub of his Lothario days had stayed with him and was no longer so angelic  It haunted him, guarded him kept him from intimacy, promising him ash dry glory of so many toppling relationships, toppling like dominos, one after another, ad finitum, or at least until he died.'

Mark Z.Danielewski - House of Leaves (p.544).

Comments

[bluegerl.livejournal.com]

OOooof !! that hurts.

[calico-pye.livejournal.com]

Yes - I have known someone who fits that description. Short term, it brought him everything he wanted - long term, he realised that he had never developed the skills to stay in a long term relationship. Eventually, he was terribly lonely, always looking for Miss Right to come along - only to mess up countless relationships with various Miss Rights.

Because the right one could be just around the corner - right? Miss Right, even?

Some are meant to be free wheeling 'playas' but mostly it does them no good. The one I knew ended up bitter and twisted, not realising that he was the architect of his own misery.