VLVL(7) - Frenesi: Her Dangerous Vice

[David Morris]

Page 236 depicts Frenesi in a rare moment of introspection as she lies 
through her teeth, bearing false witness, committing high treason, setting 
up a murder and a murderer, betraying a lover and all of her comrades:

(236.11) She knew she was messing with Rex, using him against Weed, wasn't 
sure she wanted to, knew that Brock wanted her to, that had been clear 
since the day of the tornadoes, but how was she ever going to sit down, 
even lie down, and talk any of it over?  [The  implications here are at 
least two-fold: 1. How would she be able to live/talk w/ herself after such 
treachery?   2. How wold she be able to LIE to others about what she'd 
done?]  Who with, anyway?  She'd have to tell it, silently, to a DL who 
would miraculously forgive her, to the Sasha whom years ago it had been 
possible to tell anything.  [Note the pronouns "a" DL, "the" Sasha.  She is 
constructing persons w/ whom she can communicate.]  Make believe 
interlocutors, dolls in a dollhouse.  Frenesi had thought for a while that 
her need to talk would build out of control [...]  But in practice she'd 
only kept getting up one morning after another till at some point she found 
she'd adapted well enough to what she was becoming. [...] and make believe 
- HER DANGEROUS VICE [my caps] - that she was on her own, with no legal 
history, no politics, only an average California chick, invisible, poised 
at the life's city limits, for whom anything was still possible.

Me:
Frenesi's "dangerous vice" is "make believe," the ability to lie to 
herself, re-construct reality, individuals, to her will.  All morality goes 
out the door since her bond w/ others is so weak against the force of her 
next whim and the ability to make believe another reality to comfort her 
qualms.  She demonstrated this tendency w/ Brock on "the day of 
tornadoes.":

(216.27) She lay on one elbow, unable to stop gazing at Brock, pretending 
[...] ...just as she had to pretend that Brock was not "really" what he 
looked like to everybody else - namely, the worst kind of self-obsessed 
collegiate dickhead, projected into adult format - but [...] the "real" 
Brock, the endearing adolescent who would allow her to lead him stumbling 
out into the light

There is no Kharma in her world of make believe.  Everything, everybody, is 
subject to the renegotiating of her imagination.