It's all the same

It's all the same is a self-reassuring refrain that Marion Silver repeats while having sex with Arnold for money and later trying to obtain drugs from Big Tim. Its insistence on sameness is contradicted by each scene: Marion knows that her circumstances have changed, feels estranged from her own actions, and cannot make the words restore the comfort they promise. The expression turns repetition into both a means of continuing and a measure of how far she has been driven from herself.

The refrain with Arnold

Marion reaches for the thought while at Arnold’s apartment, where she is waiting to have sex with him in exchange for money. She tries to tell herself that this is no different from previous occasions, but the feeling of strangeness persists. Arnold’s voice continues over the music; Marion hears herself answering him, yet feels detached from her own speech. Her imagined alternative is a phone call from Harry Goldfarb telling her to forget the money and come home. But Harry does not know the number or where she is, and does not realize she is waiting to go to bed with Arnold. The refrain cannot conceal that knowledge: Marion recognizes that she and Harry are in love, even as she proceeds with the encounter.

The expression also accompanies the physical details of Marion’s effort to get through the scene. Sitting on the edge of the bed with her back to Arnold, she tries to orient herself and keeps repeating the thought. The bedside light bothers her, so she asks Arnold to turn it off. He notices the change and asks why she suddenly wants darkness when she never did before. Marion nearly cries but insists that she simply wants the light off. In the dark she undresses, conscious of each piece of clothing, and slips beneath the sheets, which feel slimy to her. Darkness offers a momentary sense of security, not a return to ease.

Arnold has been to bed with Marion many times over a couple of years and notices that her body and manner have changed. In the dim light he sees her pallor beneath her makeup, her gauntness, and the needle marks on her arms, which her long-sleeved dress could not hide indefinitely. He almost asks about them, then decides not to and pretends they are not there. Marion responds to his kisses as warmly as she can, repeating the idea that nothing is different. During sex she tries to remember the movements and sounds she believes are expected of her. Thinking of Harry briefly disrupts that effort; she freezes until she can push his image away. The refrain helps her continue, but does not make her feel clean or convince her that the encounter is ordinary.

Sameness as justification

Marion gives the repetition a practical purpose: she reminds herself that Harry needs the money and tells herself she is doing this for him, not for the money. That distinction lets her cast the transaction as an act of devotion, even while her own account makes clear that she knows what she is doing and that the explanation does not relieve her distress. The words perform a limited task: they help her get through what she believes she has to do. They cannot make her feel at home in the act, and they cannot make Arnold’s bed feel like the familiar setting she is trying to remember.

The refrain’s form sharpens this conflict. Marion does not say it once and move on; she circles back to it as the encounter grows more difficult to sustain. The repetitions preserve a claim of continuity precisely where her feelings register rupture. Each return is an attempted correction—nothing has changed, this has happened before—but the need to keep correcting herself shows that the claim is failing. The expression therefore holds two truths at once: she uses it to continue, and its persistence makes her alienation impossible to overlook.

The refrain with Big Tim

A later use places the same self-reassurance in a more immediate struggle. At Big Tim’s, Marion is slowed by dope and alcohol. She has been laughing and kissing him, but when he takes out his joint she becomes aware of a strong inward revulsion. Her body and mind do not move at the same speed: she knows what she is expected to do, yet feels repelled by its reality. After she becomes sick and vomits, she sits trembling in the bathroom, frightened and unsure what Big Tim will do. She still needs the dope. Before going back into the living room, she puts cold water on her face, pats it dry, tries to fix her hair, and tells herself that she is all right and that it is all the same.

This time the phrase is a bridge back to the transaction. Marion returns, manages a smile, and resumes the sexual act that she associates with getting the drug. Big Tim laughs and directs her toward the encounter; Marion’s eagerness is linked explicitly to the thought of the dope. The sequence gives the refrain a sharper edge than it has in the scene with Arnold: it follows nausea and fear, yet still helps her present herself as ready to continue. It does not erase her revulsion. Rather, it sits beside it, marking the distance between what she feels and what she has to do to obtain what she needs.

Recurrence and significance

Across the two scenes, the expression changes from an effort to make a familiar sexual relationship feel unchanged into a way of returning to an unwanted act after her body has revolted. Its repetition links Marion’s transactions without making them equivalent: with Arnold she is conscious of Harry, their love, and the money she hopes to secure for him; with Big Tim she is frightened, physically sick, and focused on obtaining dope. The recurring words flatten these different circumstances into the same assertion, while the narrative details keep restoring their differences.

The refrain is thus neither a successful comfort nor an empty phrase. It provides Marion with a script for continuing when her feelings threaten to stop her, and the gap between that script and her experience exposes the cost of continuation. Each time she insists that it is the same, the scene supplies evidence that it is not: a lover absent from Arnold’s room, needle marks that can no longer be concealed, a body she cannot make respond naturally, or sickness and fear before Big Tim. The repetition gives her a way through each moment, but never the security or sameness it names.