Don't Choke.

"What I want is to be needed. What I need is to be indispensable to somebody. Who I need is somebody that will eat up all my free time, my ego, my attention. Somebody addicted to me. A mutual addiction."



Chuck Palahniuk must be one of the most talented writers I've read, if only because his stories are beautiful despite how ugly, graphic, dirty and vile they are.

Choke is about a sex addict, Victor Mancini, who makes his living by pretending to choke in expensive restaurants and then collects money from those who "save" him. He visits his mother, who has Alzheimer's, in the hospital and pretends to be someone different each visit in order to find out how she really feels about him.

Despite that he is by all accounts an insensitive, unfeeling bastard...he isn't.
Palahniuk won't let the reader write Mancini off that way.

Palahniuk's books always make me remember that even people who are incredibly fucked up are still human, still have a heart, and still feel, no matter how infinitesimally small those feelings may be.