In this scene—set on the first day after meeting Cornell—the dialogue reveals something important. If they truly had no thoughts about getting into a sexy situation with him, the line “It’s just acting, after all.” would have been the end of it. But instead, they keep talking.
Just like how a student in Europe doesn’t worry about a school shooting on the way to school—but a student in the U.S. might—the very act of worrying about something means that, consciously or subconsciously, you’re thinking about it. The fact that they continue exploring the topic shows that something in them, even subconsciously, either wants such a situation or is afraid of it.
And as the conversation continues, it becomes clear that their subconscious isn’t rejecting the idea—they’re actually drawn to it. Their dialogue gradually builds sexual tension, and that tension eventually leads them into a sexual encounter.
This is the subtle method the story uses to reveal that they have cuckold tendencies. It’s never stated outright, but the way they keep circling back to the idea, probing it, and feeling both apprehension and fascination makes their underlying dynamic clear without needing explicit exposition.
This is a hallmark of Dimajio’s storytelling. His couples don’t jump into ventures spontaneously; instead, they build a shared fantasy step by step through their conversations. That fantasy generates mutual arousal, and the sexual interaction that follows reinforces it, creating a feedback loop in which the fantasy strengthens itself over time. Eventually, the intensified and repeatedly rewarded fantasy becomes something they actively seek—and ultimately, something that materializes in their reality.
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That line—“I hope that he will avoid embarrassing situations and will not drag me into them if they happen.”—is also quite fascinating. If Julia consciously wanted to have sex with Cornell, she wouldn’t say something like this, because her fiancé could easily prevent such a situation from happening in the first place. On the other hand, if she consciously didn’t want anything like that to happen, she wouldn’t have agreed to help Cornell at all.
What this reveals is that Julia herself is unaware of her own subconscious desire for Cornell. She’s imagining the possibility of getting caught in an embarrassing situation in front of her fiancé, and that very embarrassment is part of the appeal—something she subconsciously wants. That’s why she agrees to his request in the first place: the “embarrassing situation” she claims to fear is exactly what her subconscious is drawn to.
I think this is a brilliant touch. Dimajo’s work often contains these incredibly subtle psychological nuances, and this is a perfect example of how he uses dialogue to expose subconscious desires without ever stating them outright.
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