Alexander: I have begun to eat meat again and stopped recycling; it’s doing wonders for my creative flow.
psychiatrist
Arnaud, on marriage.
Arnaud: I can’t get married. I am an autistic Sagittarian.
Alexander, on June.
Alexander: And my semi-obscure French word for June is rightfully, in my opinion anyway, “frisson”.
Two friends, on recourse.
Alexander: All male members of our race are DEAD TO ME.
Cecily: Your only recourse is to become a lesbian. Or a monk. Or both.
Alexander: I’ll be a lesbian insofar as I don’t have to see any tits.
Two friends, on marriage on a cliff.
Alexander: Isn’t there something so much more romantic about getting hitched in a setting devoid of human touch — a place not shaped by anyone’s ideas and ideologies but your own? When you decide to let nature be your cathedral, your love becomes the architect.
Cecily: No! I want our relationship to be strong enough to blossom in reality — a reality shaped by previous architects and heavy expectations and other people’s disdain.
Maurice, on mental health.
Maurice: In 2003, they put me in a mental hospital and diagnosed me with bipolar. But I wouldn’t take their fucking meds. I’m proud to be bipolar!
Two friends, on parents.
Cecily: At least your parents know who you are.
Alexander: They’re from Texas. They have no clue how to handle the malaise-riddled, bilingual, gender non-binary gay man that shares their genetics. They’d die of aneurysms if they met the people with whom I keep company: charlatans, musicians, career hedonists, trust fund druggies, and the older men with whom I seek to fill my paternal void (usually via sex and misplaced feelings).
Alexander to Cecily, on pending solutions.
Alexander: I will offer tentative solutions to all of your problems once I’m not so défoncé.
Two friends, on the doctor.
Cecily: I was looking at wedding rings this morning.
Arnaud: Why?! Butterflies’ fingers are too thin for rings dear. You must be ill. Go and see a doctor.
Two friends, on shirking identity.
Charles: I do not want to be Charles anymore.
Cecily: Charles has light and shade. Sometimes he’s so dryly drôle, at other times wracked with deep malaise, at other times, he simply makes dad jokes. You’re a universe. Don’t deny the world your universe. What does it matter if being Charles hurts you a little? You don’t keep long-term friendships anyway.