From you, my dear, or from us, from what it is that makes us hate and love and drink, from this intensity of “clean” fidelity, as you call it. I want to be actually unfaithful to you in feeling and imagination as well as physically, so that I can return to you free. Now I am your slave. I never make a move or commit an action without considering whether it will annoy you or not. I swear that the strongest sensation I experience when I look at another woman is to wonder what effect it will have on you. That’s why I get drunk so often. That’s why you get drunk so often. We get drunk to forget we belong to each other and when we are drunk we remember harder than ever. We waltz around and around like Japanese mice. ..I wonder I’ve got the nerve to leave you. If I stay here any longer I won’t have. I won’t have a bit of character left. I’ll just be a drunken jelly-fish swimming around my old ideal of you and polluting it. Yet, if I leave you, I’ll worry furiously..You really don’t know how jealous I can be.

”

— “Parties” by Carl Van Vechten