Lolita

Think about a paedophile’s daily diary: yellow stained pages (or stained yellow pages, if you must), scrawny handwritten accounts of disgusting pleasure, half-baked buns of fantasy smeared with rotten butter, and similar. It will invoke revulsion, loathing, and maybe even sympathy towards such madness. But, would such a diary invoke literary mirth and intellectual satisfaction in the reader? Probably not. Think about the paedophile’s victim: a pretty 13 year old. Innocent to the point of being naive; at least in most matters. Dainty, reciting poems from memory, sobbing, throwing pebbles at the caged dog, slightly sadistic – as only children can be, charming in spite of muddy toes, and sprinkled with other Nobokovian adjectives. Think of the child’s Dear Diary: pages stained with salty drops of tears, fantasies of sand castles, running in parks, convoluted stories with toy characters (no adult toys featured in the Dear Diary; those are reserved for real life), candy cravings, a lot of loved loving and a lot of hated loving, and similar. Such a Dear Diary would invoke grief, pathos, hatred, helplessness, love, bitterness, and maybe even murderous rage. But, would it make you chuckle at its wit or marvel at its genius or exasperate you with its self referential cleverness or make you wish that there was an annotated version somewhere? Probably not. ...

Feel my heart, reader, feel it, its throbbing and beating, beating me to death. The death of normalcy, simplicity, and all that my earlier normal and simple writing stood for – or shall I say banality? The tip of the tongue takes a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth – Lo – Lee – Ta. I am in love. In love with Lolita, her simple attire (she looks black and white, but now, she is hardly that, is she?), her appeal’s complexity, my inability, or if you generously will, my incapacity to understand her completely, and most of all, that dolorous fact that she will never be mine, fully…..Lolita, you adorn my shelf and my heart. Worn out, you shall be, no doubt, some day; I will buy a new copy then, whatever your price might be. Did I tell you I loved your dog-eared cutie-two-shoes look? Oh, I might not have, due to my adolescent, almost juvenile principal principle that I will shun vulnerability. ...