Helen Garner

"Women fantasise about what we will do if a bloke blah blah blah - but when one does, a strange passivity can swarm through us. Is this really happening? Or am I being over-sensitive, as women are so often accused of being? Surely he'll stop in a minute. Surely he can tell I'm only being polite, that I'm not like it. How can he be completely unaware that I'm actually hating it?

Why isn't he reading my mind? "

The First Stone by Helen Garner
Picador, Sydney, 1995
Page 63-4