Here you can read an extract from our study guide:
The boyfriend never seems to pay attention to the narrator’s wishes. He gives nude photographs of her to his photographer friend without asking her if she is okay with it, probably to show off his pretty girlfriend. When she complains, he is offended and argues that she does not understand the artistic value of the photographs. He ignores her requests to get the photos back, despite her insistence.
At the same time, he insists that the narrator should obey his wishes: “he wouldn’t tolerate this guilt and blame fucked-up thing. He’d done a lot of work for himself and wasn’t going to be busy with my shit” (ll. 7-8). While he expects her to do what he says, he does not seem inclined to listen to her.
Whenever they argue, the boyfriend silences the narrator with generic philosophical statements that do not mean much and do not address the problem they are discussing. For example, when the narrator asks her boyfriend to get the nude photos of her back, he tells her “ ‘Nothing real can be threatened (…) Nothing unreal exists’ ” (l. 81). This is complete nonsense. This statement shows that the boyfriend’s approach to self-improvement is surface-level. He fails to apologize or take responsibility for what he has done and resorts to meaningless statements in an attempt to sound intellectual.
His words also do not match his actions, as he tells his girlfriend that “ ‘Lying is worse than anything’ ” (l. 105), but after he hits her he lies and says “ ‘I hardly touched you’ ” (l. 121). In this way, he is also hypocritical.
