The winter air in Seligman’s cramped apartment was stale, smelling of old paper and unwashed tea. Joe lay on the bed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, continuing the story she had started hours ago. She had moved past the youthful games of Volume I . This part of her life was colder, a calculated pursuit of a sensation that no longer came naturally.
Seligman listened, his mind constantly darting to parallels in history and religion. "Like the desert fathers," he mused, "seeking enlightenment through the mortification of the body." Nymphomaniac: Vol. II(2013)
Joe ignored the comparison. She told him about P, the young girl she had taken under her wing, hoping to pass on her "darkness" like a grim inheritance. But the girl wasn't a nymphomaniac; she was just a shark, someone who took without the burden of Joe's existential dread. Joe had tried to build a family in the shadows of her own addiction, only to find that shadows don't hold weight. The winter air in Seligman’s cramped apartment was
"I am a bad human being," Joe concluded, her confession finally complete. This part of her life was colder, a