Joe ignored the comparison. She told him about P, the young girl she had taken under her wing, hoping to pass on her "darkness" like a grim inheritance. But the girl wasn't a nymphomaniac; she was just a shark, someone who took without the burden of Joe's existential dread. Joe had tried to build a family in the shadows of her own addiction, only to find that shadows don't hold weight.
As the story reached its end, Joe spoke of the moment she found herself beaten and left in the alley where Seligman had discovered her. She felt she had reached the bottom of the ocean, a place where the pressure was so immense that it was all she could perceive. Nymphomaniac: Vol. II(2013)
The winter air in Seligman’s cramped apartment was stale, smelling of old paper and unwashed tea. Joe lay on the bed, her eyes fixed on the ceiling, continuing the story she had started hours ago. She had moved past the youthful games of Volume I . This part of her life was colder, a calculated pursuit of a sensation that no longer came naturally. Joe ignored the comparison
"I am a bad human being," Joe concluded, her confession finally complete. Joe had tried to build a family in
Seligman looked at her with a gentle, scholarly pity. He argued that there was no such thing as a "bad" human, only different ways of experiencing the world. He offered her a bed, a sanctuary, and the friendship of a man who claimed to be beyond the reach of physical desire.
Seligman listened, his mind constantly darting to parallels in history and religion. "Like the desert fathers," he mused, "seeking enlightenment through the mortification of the body."