"Raoul's Version."
[LAUGHTER]
Maybe I'll just quit now.
Or--
[LAUGHTER]
"The first time I met her, she wouldn't let me touch her.
She wouldn't take any money.
She didn't want my help.
That's what made me hot for her, her being poor,
because I knew I could hurt her.
She knew it too.
I was God when it came to her.
She was nothing, and that made me
hot for her, nostalgia for the mud.
But if she was nothing, then it was nothing to hurt her.
Then I was nothing.
I was nothing.
The only power I had was in relation to her misery,
and so she owned me completely.
She could buy and sell me, I was her slave.
And she pretended not to know.
She pretended this terrible story did not include her,
that I was the author of it, that I was the author, period.
She didn't exist.
She was merely a character, a fiction
of to be nothing, a woman down and out, anonymous and flat,
nothing in and of herself, just to belonging.
Just to belonging to me in another version,
myself debasing myself.
She pretended she did not exist, and so I did not exist."