Free Brief Interviews With Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace

about me sooner, and the pattern. Before you moved all the way out here, which believe me meant so—it made me really feel you really cared about this, us, being with me, and I want to be as caring and honest toward you as you’ve been with me. Especially because I know your moving out here was something I lobbied so hard for. School, your apartment, having to get rid of your cat—just please don’t misunderstand—your doing all that just to be with me means a great deal to me, and it’s a huge part of why I really do feel as if I love you and care so much about you, too much not to feel terrified about in any way yanking you around or hurting you somewhere down the road, which trust me given my record in this area is a possibility I’d have to be a total psychopath not to consider. That’s what I want to be able to make clear enough so that you’ll understand. Is it making at least a little sense?’
    Q.
    ‘It’s not as simple as that. At least not the way I see it. And believe me my way of seeing it is not that I’m a totally decent guy who never does anything wrong. A better guy probably would have told you about this pattern and warned you before we even slept together, to be honest. Because I know I felt guilty after we did. Sleep together. Despite how unbelievably magical and ecstatic and right it was, you were. Probably I felt guilty because I’d been the one lobbying so hard for sleeping together so soon, and even though you were completely honest about being uncomfortable about sleeping together so soon and I already even then respected and cared for you a lot and wanted to respect your feelings but I was still so incredibly attracted to you, one of these almost irresistible thunderbolts of attraction, and felt so overwhelmed with it that even without necessarily meaning to I know I plunged in too fast and probably pressured you and rushed you to plunge into sleeping together, even though I think now on some level I probably knew how guilty and uncomfortable I was going to feel afterward.’
    Q.
    ‘I’m not explaining it well enough. I’m not getting through. All right, now I’m really freaking out that you’re starting to feel hurt. Please believe me. The whole reason I’m having us talk about my record and what I get afraid might happen is that I don’t want it to happen, see? that I don’t want suddenly to reverse thrust and begin trying to extricate myself after you’ve given up so much and moved out here and now I’ve—now that we’re so involved. I’m praying you’ll be able to see that my telling you what always happens is a kind of proof that with you I don’t want it to happen. That I don’t want to get all testy or hypercritical or pull away and not be around for days at a time or be blatantly unfaithful in a way you’re guaranteed to find out about or any of the shitty cowardly ways I’ve used before to get out of something I’d just spent months of intensive pursuit and effort trying to get the other person to plunge into with me. Does this make any sense? Can you believe that I’m honestly trying to respect you by warning you about me, in a way? That I’m trying to be honest instead of dishonest? That I’ve decided the best way to head off this pattern where you get hurt and feel abandoned and I feel like shit is to try to be honest for once? Even if I should have done it sooner? Even when I admit it’s maybe possible that you might even interpret what I’m saying now as dishonest, as trying somehow to maybe freak you out enough so that you’ll move back out and I can get out of this? Which I don’t think is what I’m doing, but to be totally honest I can’t be a hundred percent sure? To risk that with you? Do you understand? That I’m trying as hard as I can to love you? That I’m terrified I can’t love? That I’m afraid maybe I’m just constitutionally incapable of doing anything other than pursuing and seducing and then running, plunging in and then