Joelle's Too Much Fun at Molly Notkin's party (p. 235)
The ’base frees and condenses, compresses the whole experience to the implosion of one terrible shattering spike in the graph, an afflated orgasm of the heart that makes her feel, truly, attractive, sheltered by limits, deveiled and loved, observed and alone and sufficient and female, full, as if watched for an instant by God. She always sees, after inhaling, right at the apex, at the graph’s spike’s tip, Bernini’s ‘Ecstasy of St. Teresa,’ behind glass, at the Vittoria, for some reason […]
Context
What the freebase does for the woman who spent her on-camera life being looked at through apparatus: it makes her feel "deveiled and loved, observed … as if watched for an instant by God," with Bernini's ecstatic saint appearing behind glass at the spike's tip. The drug replicates the condition of being filmed — beheld, unveiled, alone. Key crossover between this theme and the being-watched core of the lens motif.