“You don’t lose your lust at the rate you lose your looks. Its a cruel fact of nature. you go on fancying it just the same. And thats hard” (149)
At the time that this quotation is said by Gail to the narrator caught my attention because currently there is something happening between the speaker and Gail. There seems to be a different type of relationship forming between the two. Gail is seemingly nursing the narrator back to health mentally. She is making statements generally saying get over Louise. This quotation is interesting because with all the help the narrator has received, Louise is still the main issue in zes mind. The statement itself that “you don’t lose your lust at the rate you lose your looks” is the exact feeling the narrator is going through. Although Louise is many miles away in Switzerland after receiving treatment for cancer, there is still an obsession being clung to. When told that Louise has beat the cancer and is in remission, the reader can feel the sense of relief felt by the narrator. This reiterates the fact that although the narrator claims to not want to see Louise, ze is still in fact in love with her, and it is very hard to go through. “Fancying” her from this great distance is all that the speaker has left to hold onto as of now. The readers are told early on in the back that Louise does not have the same feelings that the speaker does. It is a form of unrequited love. Gail’s words above hit that idea on the head, stressing that holding these strong feelings for a person when they do not return them in the same capacity is very difficult to live through, especially as your lust for that person are growing consistently.
The narrator and author spend multiple pages discussing how love for Louise encompasses the speakers whole being, that the love the speaker has for Louise is literally described on all parts of her body, from her skin to her bones, to her ears etc. The article written by Halberstam states that “different histories touch or bush up against each other, ceasing temporal havoc in the key of desire” (3). This relates directly because through the speakers love and lust for Louise it is causing the body true havoc because of this intense sensation of want and need.