THE WORLD IS ITS OWN MAGIC

Haven't I?-he thought. Haven't I thought of it since the first time I saw you? Haven't I thought of nothing else...He sat motionless, looking at her. He heard the words he had never allowed himself to form, the words he had felt, known, yet had not faced, had hoped to destroy by never letting them be said within his own mind. now it was as shocking as if he were saying it to her...since the first time i saw you...nothing but your body...that mouth of yours, and the way your eyes would look at me, if...through every sentence i said to you, though every conference you thought so safe, through the importance of all the important issues we discussed...you trusted me didn't you? to recognize your greatness? to think of you as you deserved-as if you were a man?...The only bright encounter in my life-the only person i respected...the lowest of all desires-as my answer to the highest I've met...for that degrading need, which should never touch you, i have never wanted anyone but you...i hadn't known what it was like, to want it, until i saw you for the first time. i had thought: not i, i couldn't be broken by it...do you know what its like, to want it? would you wish to hear what i thought when i looked at you...when i lay awake at night...when i heard your voice over a telephone...when i worked but could not drive it away?...to bring you down to things you cant conceive-and to know that its i who have done it. To reduce you to a body, to teach you an animal's pleasure, to see you need it, to see you asking me for it, to see your wonderful spirit dependent upon the obscenity of your need. to watch you as you are, as you face the world with your clean proud strength-then to see you in my bed, submitting to any infamous whim i may devise, to any act which i'll perform for the sole purpose of watching your dishonor and to which you'll submit for the sake of an unspeakable sensation...i want you-and may i be damned for it!

...DO you know what I'm thinking of right now, in this moment?...
...you look so young, so austere, so sure of yourself...what would you be like if i knocked your head back; if i threw you down in that formal suit of yours, if i raised your skirt-

-Hank Rearden (character in Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged)

Best Wishes,
Ronnie