hedonism on a budget

I saw another post a while back about someone realizing that, even as a bisexual woman, they still preferred to write m/m over anything involving a woman because then they weren't caught up in the eternal comparison of themselves to other women, and could instead just think about the romance.

Page 114, the first paragraph:

... holiday to Europe. My ... Claudia herself. … though ... there be a careless child … high backed chair. There was no happiness in Claudia … coerced her into staying ... I was the last time she left, how I had ... out of some combination of guilt and … threats, she had stayed. But … were both captives now. That Lestat had ... not with blows but with words. I only knew the precise ... of the words he used to coerce her, when, a week ... I read Claudia’s diary entry for that date.

Page 114, the second paragraph (from Claudia‘s diary):

“I sat myself down among the luggage, the hat boxes[?], the caged dogs. Which was fine by me, didn‘t mind being crammed in with the luggage, and not having to pretend to be a lost little girl to the humans, or getting caught up in[?] their passing concerns for me. I was breathing easier the more track I put between me and my brothers, the devil and the dear. But only some miles into the journey I felt the train car slowing right down, and I heard metal clanging and a muffled scream. And the sound of a commotion on the other side of the doors. And then Lestat skipped in wearing the porter’s attire, holding the porter’s head, neck a dripping stump, and made his jaw move like a ghoulish puppet, asking for „tickets please“. I tried to hide even though I knew there was no point to it. And in his droll and menacing way, Lestat cussed me out for not saying goodbye to him (again). Even though I reminded him it was never me he’d wanted. I was a lure he’d made for Louis, an opiate to keep him placid and domesticated, to keep Louis his, and even though I assured Lestat, upfront, that Louis picked him over me, that I had yet again asked Louis to run away with me to Europe to search for our kind there and been turned down flat, Lestat was his worst self. He said Louis was too fragile, it was hi....

Page 115, the first paragraph:

... And then he got that look like he does when he‘s playing[?] with humans, when he‘s taking a sick delight in ... He told me the motherfucker thinks ... he hears the thoughts of other vampires ... and the rule[?] in our little family ... He likes rules when they serve him ... the same[?] rules are to be snapped in two) ... and heard the motherfucker in the wind. ... what the motherfucker had done to me ... Which made my skin prickle. Cause he said it with a sneer and a smile, like he enjoyed the thought of the motherfucker doing what he did, like it was a ... lesson I had been taught about vampire nature, and not me stuffed under the floorboards, and not me pinned down like a fucking butterfly, like all that was just a big … to him, or a joke. And just the fucking thought that all along, all along he’d been faking it, pretending he did ... what had happened to me out there in the “American Hinterlands” that he just had a general sense of it, when he knew exactly what it was all along. And what a fucking liar he is. It’s all lies, lies and lies and lies. Lestat said, and this was taking Louis name in vain, that Louis wouldn’t forgive himself if it happened to me again. It had a threat in it, under the surface, but not much under the surface, cause then he up[?] and said it outright, said something that burned itself in my brain and I don’t think I’ll forget it until I’m ash. He said “if you try this again, Claudia, I won’t snap your leg, defile your pocket, and zoom off on a motorbike. I’ll turn your bones to dust.” Even as I’m writing this, I’m snapping the pen with fucking rage, and if I had any doubt, any love, any gratitude, any feeling in me for Uncle Les, it dried up with that.“

Page 115, the second paragraph:

Television is not the truth. Television's a goddamned amusement park! Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business!