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Summary
Chapter 10: Out of Body
The narrator switches into the second person as Rob tells his story. It begins on an evening at his friends Bix and Lizzie’s house, as he listens to his friend Sasha Blake and her boyfriend Drew joke about becoming president. Rob admires Drew's taut body and makes a weak joke. Everyone laughs, and Rob feels good until he starts to worry that they’re only laughing so he won’t try and kill himself again. Three months ago, he attempted suicide. He’s only been out of hospital for two weeks.
Drew kisses Sasha, and Rob gets caught up in the erotic energy of the moment. This gives him an erection and makes him furious. He thinks about how when he was a kid he would get into fights as a way to release tension like this. Now, however, no one will fight with him because he tried to kill himself. Everyone is nice to him and he hates the insincerity he assumes is behind their politeness. Rob insults Lizzie’s parents, calling them bigots because they don’t like Black men. She loses her temper and yells at him, which he likes more than the bland niceness he’s currently getting from everyone else. Bix tells Rob to go inside and apologize to Lizzie, and Rob starts to throw more insults at Lizzie in the guise of a fake apology but ends up bursting into tears.
Rob, Drew, and Sasha walk to Washington Square Park. Rob reminisces to himself about how he and Sasha became friends when she asked him to pretend to be her boyfriend. They’ve shared secrets with each other over the course of their friendship; Sasha told Rob that she had been shoplifting since she was thirteen, and that she was forced into prostitution in order to survive in Naples, and Rob told her that he had an intense sexual experience with his friend James in high school, but that he isn’t gay. This confession was the first time he felt a distance from himself, a feeling that has since become very familiar.
Back in the present, Sasha and Rob go to her dorm room, where she showers quickly because she doesn’t want to leave him alone too long. Rob and Sasha head out to meet Drew on Third Avenue. Rob offers Drew and Sasha each a yellow Ecstasy pill, but they both refuse. When they arrive at the venue, the Conduits are playing and Rob is already rolling, thinking about killing elk and seeing Drew naked. Drew takes a pill, and when Sasha gets bored with them, she leaves them to their own devices and heads off to a party with Bennie Salazar. The story flashes back to Sasha cuddling Rob after he slit his wrists and making him promise not to do it again.
Back in the present, Rob and Drew meet up with Bix and continue their night. They go clubbing and stay out to watch the sun come up. Drew says he hopes he’ll remember the moment forever. Bix leaves, and Rob and Drew walk home. As they go, Rob says he wishes he and Drew could live in Drew’s cabin in Wisconsin. Drew demurs awkwardly and Rob panics. He tells Drew Sasha’s secrets to try and make him hate her. Drew is furious and walks away to the river’s edge. He dives into the freezing, filthy water, and Rob follows. They swim out for a while until Drew relents. However, Rob is quickly overcome by the cold and the current. He hears Sasha’s voice imploring him to “fight, fight, fight” as he drowns.
Analysis
Rob's recent, violent suicide attempt casts a long shadow over his interactions with other people, even the ones who love him. Every conversation he has is overlaid with his suspicion that people are only being nice to him because they are afraid that he’ll try to kill himself again. Although he has no plans to, his friends' cautious treatment and his own paranoia quickly make him feel terrible. Rob had intended to die, and his own mortality is constantly on his mind. His every action and thought after his attempt is an unintended consequence of what he sees as another failure. The use of second-person narration intensifies this wrangling, as it does two things simultaneously. Firstly, it pulls the reader into the story, as it seems the narrator is addressing them directly and clearly. It confers a sense of immediacy. Secondly, the reader gets a strong sense of Rob’s character, as writing in the second person is far closer to the first than the more distant third. The experience is one of duality or mirroring: the reader is having an “out of body” experience alongside Rob.
The driving impetus behind Rob’s suicide attempt was the sense of alienation and detachment that has always haunted him. Rob never felt capable of truly expressing his feelings, and he’s also not sure what those feelings are, as he experiences periodic and confusing attraction to both Drew and Sasha. He envies Drew’s physical beauty and confidence and Sasha’s tough, lovable resilience, but he isn’t sure if the feelings are romantic or platonic. In the scenes where Drew and Sasha kiss, Rob feels an uncomfortable mix of fury, jealousy, and desire. Stronger than any of these, though, is the feeling of being left out of an important experience. He’s aware of his youth passing him by, and he feels like he’s merely a spectator in his own life rather than an active participant.
The theme of fate plays out more cruelly in this chapter than it does anywhere else in the novel. Rob works up the courage to try to reintegrate into society after he leaves rehab. He tries to communicate honestly with his friends, and he even plucks up the courage to tell Drew that he wishes they could be together, a confession that Drew responds to with a chilly dismissiveness. Rob's sense of foreboding throughout his story, and his tendency to mentally revisit past crises, suggest that he’s locked into an inescapable fate. The narrative structure further reinforces the theme of ungovernable destiny: the chapter's progression—from Rob’s pained, confused thoughts to his final moments in the river—mirror the inexorable tug of the current of fate. His decision to jump into the river and to follow Drew, despite his fear of water, is a final, desperate attempt to assert control over his destiny. As he struggles against the current, the writing becomes disoriented and panicked. The narrative voice also shifts from second person to first-person narration in his last thoughts. This return to the self is heartbreaking, as it suggests Rob could only solve the “distance” he feels from his life by dying in his body.
