/lit/ - Literature

The way Dazai describes 'absolute security' and happiness in the arms of a woman is so accurate.
>But in their arms I felt absolute security. I could sleep soundly. It was pathetic how utterly devoid of greed they really were. And perhaps because they felt for me a certain affinity for their kind, these prostitutes always showed me a natural friendliness stripped of high-pressure salesmanship, for someone who might never come again. Some nights I saw these imbecile, lunatic prostitutes with the halo of Mary.
Yozo is comfortable around people he doesn't have to please and won't see again, and especially for the reason that he's paying for the service and the prostitutes are making no real effort to get into his mind. There's some comfort in that. But,
>It was entirely different from the feeling of being able to sleep soundly which I had experienced in the arms of those idiot-prostitutes (for one thing, the prostitutes were cheerful); the night I spent with that criminal's wife was for me a night of liberation and happiness. (The use of so bold a word, affirmatively, without hesitation, will not, I imagine, recur in these notebooks.)
Of course— Yozo found someone relatable and, to some degree, he's opening up emotionally. Yet the feeling dries up quickly,
>But it lasted only one night. In the morning, when I woke and got out of bed, I was again the shallow poseur of a clown. The weak fear happiness itself. They can harm themselves on cotton wool. Sometimes they are wounded even by happiness. I was impatient to leave her while things still stood the same, before I got wounded, and I spread my usual smokescreen of farce.
And the avoidant withdrawing from affection, intimacy, and happiness. But most of all,
>I didn't meet my benefactor of that night again for a whole month. After leaving her my happiness grew fainter every day that went by. It frightened me even that I had accepted a moment's kindness; I felt I had imposed horrible bonds on myself. Gradually even the mundane fact that Tsuneko had paid the bill at the cafe began to weigh on me, and I felt as though she were just another threatening woman.
And I have felt those bonds many times. It has gotten so extreme now that even being recognized by a cashier feels like too tight a chain, so I no longer shop in person. :l

More books with protagonists like this?