“In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar”

“In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar” is a sentence from Richard Brautigan’s novel that becomes a small but resonant refrain in Dominick’s account. First encountered aloud beside Dessa, it returns during a moonlit encounter when Dominick cannot decide whom the words describe. The phrase moves from a book in their hands into his thoughts, making literary language a way to register feelings that remain difficult to separate or explain.

The sentence in the paperback

Dessa is reading by moonlight when Dominick asks what has captured her attention. She hands him a paperback by Richard Brautigan and explains that she does not fully understand it but cannot stop reading: its mystery intrigues her. Squinting at the page, Dominick reads the opening sentence aloud: “In watermelon sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar. I’ll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.” The passage’s speaker is not either of them; it is a voice encountered within the novel. Yet its language of presence and distance soon becomes part of Dominick’s own experience.

Their exchange is playful as well as literary. Dominick compares the photograph of Brautigan on the book cover to Mark Twain on acid, making Dessa laugh. She runs a hand through his curly hair and musses it. Dominick later questions whether he remembers the moment precisely, but holds fast to its outcome: he fell in love with her there. The passage is thus attached not only to a book they share, but to his memory of the beginning of their relationship.

Repetition and changing reference

The sentence’s second appearance occurs later that night, after Dominick and Dessa have kissed. When he becomes hurried and hungry for more, Dessa stops him, climbs down from the tower, and walks toward the water. She remarks on the surreal thought that two people are walking on the moon. As Dominick watches her, the words from Brautigan return to his mind: “I am here and you are distant.”

This time the phrase is not simply read from a page. Dominick cannot tell whether it refers to Dessa, his brother Thomas, or the astronauts on the moon. That uncertainty is essential to its force: the sentence gives shape to separation without identifying a single cause or object. Dessa is physically near him, yet the words make distance feel possible even within their intimacy; Thomas and the distant figures above the earth widen that feeling beyond the couple.

A literary refrain in Dominick’s memory

The phrase’s recurrence binds two moments without making them identical. At first it belongs to Dessa’s fascination with an unfamiliar book and to the exchange that precedes Dominick’s realization that he loves her. Later, amid the encounter’s pauses and changing focus, the same language becomes an unsettled thought whose reference he cannot fix. Repetition carries the words from shared reading into private reflection while preserving their ambiguity.

The related phrase “I am here and you are distant” condenses a tension that the scene leaves unresolved: physical nearness does not guarantee emotional clarity, and a statement first encountered as literature can become a means of perceiving relationships beyond its original context. Dominick does not settle whom he means. The refrain matters precisely because it lets several forms of distance coexist in his thought.