IJ study archive

attached to the secrecy as to the high

quote

Hal likes to get high in secret, but a bigger secret is that he’s as attached to the secrecy as he is to getting high.

Context

The single sentence that reroutes the whole habit: the concealment is not overhead on the pleasure, it is the pleasure, or a second pleasure equal to it. What looks like a boy hiding a vice is a boy who needs the hiding — the No-One-Must-Know is load-bearing, and naming it "a bigger secret" makes secrecy the actual object of the attachment.

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In anthology