A Comic Carnival.

Part One: Carnival Distraction.

Every time that I enter this bar, I feel the need to pace myself. Though the establishment itself abounds in sexual activity, verily deriving its entire appeal from it, I must do my best to hide my sexuality, except for those brief moments when the bartenders themselves show interest in me, hoping with fervor that the interest is more than just professional.

This precaution is a necessary one. I have come to understand that ours is a deeply repressed Judeo-Christian culture. I do not mind this. I have studied religion extensively. I can understand the Judeo-Christian ethic in the context of the World’s Religions; its aims are no different from mine, so I am allied with it. Society affords us a few luxuries. I can buy a body shot from one of the girls, and she will dance for me, only under the careful scrutiny of the security guard who must ensure that I don’t touch her.

At work it is no different. Any time I spend within the break room after hours is strictly monitored; my Chef even advises that I not be “weird”, and this advice lingers throughout my day. Most people find sex very strange. I do not. But then again:: I am a student of Jung and Nietzsche, a connoisseur of Tom Waits. By any civilized definition, I am a perverse deviant. I have even been threatened with litigation in the past. However empty the threat, the implication stuck.

If most of these women knew I was a Virgin, they would flock towards me. Yet in my countenance, my dreaded beard (whose dreads hide secretly my Jewish heritage, beknownst to the initiated alone), my shadowy cheeks, and my slick, oily locks of hair, there lingers always the suggestion of some devious sin. Yes: I have been one acquainted with the night. But it is well. If women feel the need to find protection, they can trust me, for I’ve looked the Devil in the face and held my ground.

There is a girl at my new place of employment. She is tall and kindly, pale of skin and reminiscent of my ex, though with a face that is inviting rather than mystifying and alienating. I do not doubt the sincerity of her kindness, for she makes no special pains to hide her agitation from her fellows; she must only maintain a veneer before her customers. By the same token I can fathom the substance behind that smile, for no superficial person would have so much angst to vent within the break room. She is beautiful in every way that I have dreamt of. And she flatters me. It’s more than ever I would have imagined. The day before I saw her last I merely dreamt of such great hospitality and such total flirtation. Now I am living it.

There is of course an other girl. She likes me, but she tries with some futility to conceal that fact. I do not imagine that she knows I like her back; she would have no reason to presume upon it except out of hope and lust, and I’ve made no attempt to show her that I like her save within the limits of polite expectation. When a lady addresses me, a gentleman is invariably compelled to answer, and the same principle applies in reverse. Such is the civilized state, for only by observing these niceties can the peace be kept between the genders.

I have been thoroughly instructed in how to carry out these social gestures. I can maintain the peace with fidelity. So ideally I would not worry that my secret longing would be exposed. Yet at times I am met with a cold glare instead of a kindly smile. At that point, I invariably consider two alternatives: either I have exposed my secret, and my shameful lust has sent a lady into cold seclusion in my presence, or otherwise she has exposed her own, for so long as I’ve remained totally blameless she would have no warrant by which to exclude me from her warmth and hospitality, except in an instinctive strife to hide her own feelings of longing from me.

The approval of my Bride to Be, the beautiful Caucasian with the long, pale legs, assures me that I’ve made no such infraction against this other woman. Hence the only sting within my stomach is the sting of pity, that the latter should have to keep her silence as she watches me pursue the former.

The latter is of course the other half of my ex-girlfriend, for she is Hispanic. I don’t doubt I charmed her to a frightening extent when I began to speak to her in Spanish, asking why her accent was of South American descent, for I was partial to that dialect.

I do not doubt that she was flattered. Not only did I express a love for her native tongue, but as readily I demonstrated recognition and even a PREFERENCE for her native dialect. But not all women can handle flattery well, and it pains me to admit that she must suffer silence only in direct proportion to her humility.

TO reach out to an other sexually is so colossal an event that I can hardly fathom it. Most men and women, obsessed with their virtue, for they’ve been raised in this culture of restraint and honourable poise, dare not to pursue the sexual activity until they’ve readied themselves for the act of nurturing children. Some date as many as several different people within the same year, perpetually unsatisfied by the pains of celibacy in pursuit of the ideal mate. My false friends, who have been my only friends, are not such as these. But remember that I’ve cohorted with sinners.

When finally the wall of celibacy is broken, it can only be by that force that defies all laws and rulings: that of Love. Hence any one who would risk one’s virtue by offering his or her body to an other is to be welcomed as Noble, granted that the offer is made all so to a worthy partner, and should the partner PROVE unworthy then no blame should stay with the one who offered.

Yet blame follows me. I break the rules so much for Love that I have fallen in with thieves and bandits, even rakes and peddlers. My only solace is in that one rule that holds all of us in perpetual innocence: my celibacy. My virginity.

NO one can ever read your mind. They cannot know what your intentions are, for neither can you. That remains to be determined by the Other.

It was in pursuit of this elusive Other that I came downtown within the midst of Comic Con. I had made the acquaintance of several cosplayers over the past year. Some were, I had reason to believe, in attendance at the convention that night.

It was not that I doubted that my bride to be would yield to me. Yet I had matters to attend to that might ripen me before the fact. There was one cosplayer, born of the sign of Scorpio, whose face had puzzled me. Before I knew her sign, I drew her face upon a sheet of paper. The outcome was scarier than I’d imagined, leading me then to believe that her saccharine persona was but a veneer. Upon discovery that she was a Scorpio, I laughed, for I must have known it be so. As I look up at my ceiling now, I acknowledge that all of the other portraits that I drew that hang overhead, looking down upon me from within this alcove that houses my personal computer, are of that same Sun Sign. They are my Guardians.

Instead I saw Zac. He was dressed as Jesus Christ, to his great personal avail, for many flocked before him for a photo opportunity, as though to the Messiah. I laughed inwardly, remembering what Aldous Huxley said: that the fanatic compensates outwardly for an inward doubt. Zac’s militant crusade against Christendom, fueled apparently all this time by his own desire to be the Messiah, and thus to forego all salvation from without, led him to an act of Imitatio Christi. What he might have imagined to be an act of sacrilege was in fact the very height of Catholic doctrine, and as Vonnegut had put it: he was what he pretended to be. Zac’s fight against Jesus transmuted him INTO Jesus, and his “crazy followers”, those same that protested the Convention as a premature Carnival, were vindicated by the sheer manifestation of this Avatar.

When Zac told me that he presented himself as “the Democratic Jesus”, I could only reply that the Messiah has many avatars to choose from when he manifests in flesh. At least I said something to that effect, for my voice stumbled over words. Next to Vince Gilligan’s Heisenberg, whose cosplayer was so convincing in his grudging stroll through downtown San Diego that I was loth to take his picture, Zac’s costume was the most inspiring and convincing. And that changed everything.

When I saw Baruch again, cavorting with two fellow street magicians, I discovered that he’d dated many women since I knew him six years prior, in my acting class. I mentioned that I have been single for a long time, but that I prefer it, and I was met with a look that I could not place and a silence that I could not read. Later, I spoke with one of his fellow performers. She too was a Scorpio, and she was writing her first novel at the age of twenty-two. I was surprised to learn she was so young, but I was not surprised to see that she was an old soul trapped in a young woman’s body.

I agreed with her, upon my own reflection, making this observation public to her ear upon the moment that it crossed my mind, that being old within a young man’s body is a curse, for the Old Soul knows that this youth is fleeting, but the young minds waste their youth in work and slavery. I meant to say by this, of course, that I wished people would be more open to sexual activity, for though it might seem premature as a commitment it is nonetheless appropriate to any one of our range of age.

I knew not how to speak upon such vulgar matters with a lady, but I did my best to turn the conversation in the favour of my rabid curiosity. I cited a statistic that I’d read: a farce that would suggest that most Americans lose their virginity as early on as at the age of eighteen years. I told her swiftly that I was assured that this statistic was a lie, but yet again I was met with an awkward silence the likes of which Baruch gave me.

At my present moment of sobriety I know beyond a doubt that I’d offended her, for if so ominous a work of propaganda could give ME pause, imagine what it would do to the obsessive mind of a young Scorpio woman!! Of course I had to infer that she and her beau, though they practiced much magic out in public, did little in private, for she was only then twenty-two. I wanted desperately to tell her not to worry, but to keep her chastity as long as the World Soul (for she would not have called It by the ancient name of God) compelled her to. I wanted her to know how beautiful it was, and that she was not missing anything.

But as it happened I was drunk all ready, having indulged in a rum and coke some hours past at the same bar I mentioned when I began to tell you my tale. Instead of instantly defending us (the three of us) against the bald-faced lie, I let her take her leave of me, ostensibly only to use the lavatory, and I took my own leave in her absence. I wandered back towards the Convention Center, in search of my good friend Jesus, but he was nowhere to be found, or otherwise he was so readily surrounded that I could not get a moment in his healing presence. Left to my own thoughts, my head began to spin. I thought of Kresten. I thought of Alanna. I thought of those Christians that protested this event. I saw things through their eyes then, not only as a Devil’s Advocate, but as a Son of God. And I saw myself surrounded then by freaks and sinners.

I was told once last year not to expect any great sociability on the part of these people, for they had no social lives of substance. I knew comic books to have been an escape from culture for a great many people, but why should they pale before great classic literature? Surely novelty does not kill the novel, and all writers of merit attest to those same Universals that the Bard and Goethe venerated so perceptively.

As I penetrated the crowd ghosts haunted me without and within. It had not even crossed my mind, since that strange silence, that my interlocutor had been a virgin. I imagined that she all so was a sinner, and that her surprise stemmed not from the thought that the veil of chastity could be broken so quickly, but rather that such a swift break would surprise and bewilder me to the point of doubt. Again, I must remind you, kindly reader: I was drunk.

The crowd did little to sober me up. At some point I saw a man, situated upon the curb outside a bustling restaurant, a tiny Yamaha keyboard before him, perched upon two amplifiers, and an electric guitar at his side. I wanted more than anything else, at that point, to lunge into the space created about him and to play, but then his own song stirred me. On the car ride downtown that same day my driver blasted electronic remixes of classic video game anthems; one that stuck out in particular was from the second stage of Sonic the Hedgehog Two. Now this crusty old man on the street was playing a song from the first stage, which my driver said he wanted to play but had yet to find. Within a few moments, police cars instructed the carnival goers to clear the street. A mob of dissent emanated from the restaurant, chanting “let him play! Let him play!” I saw that this was not my opportunity to shine, not even if I played a classic hook from Spyro the Dragon. As I joined the procession of displaced peoples lumbering about a white truck to escape the cops and all their residue, I raged inwardly, thinking dimly upon a recent observation I had made: that though the Law is impersonal, it is only by allegiance to it that we can transcend the uncivilized state, and to transcend its impersonal claims one had only to cultivate the religious instinct. It was fairly basic stuff, though the chanting of the mob threatened to knock the last vestiges of common sense from my skull.

Part Two: Carnival Attraction.

Some nights you feel as though you’re in a dream. Not only is the whole affair surreal, but it feels as unstable as though you were ready to wake up at any moment. If you ask a dream figure if you’re dreaming, he or she will probably remain silent. Such is the silence that I saw then in Baruch (for it was visible as well as audible) and that I saw in the Scorpio street performer, whose identity I shall disguise herein only out of consideration for her secrecy.

Upon arrival at the bar I noticed something else that mystified me but that I could not reach: tucked away between two men that could be called corporate bodyguards, a smiling Lilith (as shall be her name herein) admired her own diabolical creation. As half-clad girls danced on the bar before us, she grinned, peering like a wild dog bent on flesh, and I knew it was she that founded this same bar (and all its sister bars) all of those years ago on the East Coast. I had wondered what day it would be that she strolled in, as I’d heard that she was prone to, but I’d not imagined that it would be now. Yet the surprise was not a puzzling one in and of itself; what a better time for Lilith to appear than in the midst of a sacrilegious Carnival?

A woman at the front of the establishment, tending a booth upon the patio before the doors, those to her left admitting to the bar and to her right revealing a pizza parlour, spoke with me about Lilith. Asked if the boss was mean, she recounted a story wherein Lilith was harassed by an alcoholic patron and told him, blatantly, to discontinue the conversation. Though such behavior is shocking in a lady, and terrifying in a position of power, so much so that one wonders how she ever climbed to such a tyrannical posture that she might abuse vagrants and drunks at her own bar, I made a note to limit my consumption from that point forth. By the girl’s estimation, Lilith was “not mean, but just a boss.” I said nothing.

Eager to escape the watchful eye of the proprietress, I accepted gladly the invitation by the girl to visit the Bar Upstairs. Instead of swerving left, as I am often prone to do, I went right, passing my friend Sylvia (all so a Scorpio, and this time of considerable, tortured years) in the pizza parlour. Promising to return, I ascend the staircase on the distant right-hand side. The familiar brick alcove, overlooking the main bar via a balcony as a dragon overlooks his treasure hoard, welcomed me, and two of the bartenders danced with me at a distance, mirroring my awkwardness with laughter.

They were not the last to dance with me. Beside me at the balcony stood a girl of disarming beauty, though its charm was just as subtle as her gaze was. Her nose was pointed, all most as a witch can be made out to be, but not curved inwards to that grotesque extent. She wore a scar upon her cheek, as part of her costumed complexion, and her clothing evidenced a faithful love for Star Wars, not uncommon at that hour in that time and place. I evaded her gaze, but within minutes it seems she was talking to me, about what I can’t recall. Not long thereafter I invited her to dance, and she claimed to be poor at doing so. Finally we settled on a two-step solution. Though it felt awkward, the awkwardness was transmuted to awesomeness by its mutuality. But my heart broke, for not long thereafter I witnessed her dancing with her female fellows, and to such an extent of eroticism that I had precluded in her, for she claimed that she lacked rhythm towards that end. Supposing that the judging gaze of a man might upset her, though still feeling betrayed and lied-to, I returned downstairs.

I all most got a body shot, but as though by the Hand of God a drinking contest immediately at my left saved me the anguish. When I first sat down, a black man at my right addressed me so brusquely that I mistook the address for instigation, though as it turned out the token fear, so typical of unwarranted aggression, was expressed passively; he wanted to make sure that HE had not offended ME by bumping into me (I’m guessing, since I can’t recall now) as I sat down in the open seat beside him, knowing not if it was taken.

When I first came to the Saloon, I must have worn a pained expression of aggression every bit as frightening as Heisenberg’s. A devouring and rageful gloom had descended upon me as I took leave of the Police. As I moved through the crowd, yet with the crowd, I heard behind me a young man ranting to his buddies about sex. The bushy-bearded Caucasian, dressed above the waist in only a white tee, as though to contrast my own black shirt, ejaculated publically as he passed me upon my right, raving about how his being “more drunk” would reduce the chances of his fellows getting laid, RATHER THAN enhancing them (as though the matter could be swayed in either direction by such banal personal indulgences).

I remember wanting to attack him, yelling at him to show my city some Respect, but instead I internalized my rage and clung to it piously as to piety itself. When I saw a ripe young girl, with a face not unlike my bride’s face but without the nicety, standing upon my left, behind me all so, her cleavage exposed in part between two straps that clung about her neck and left her shoulders bare, I had to swallow down all pretense towards conversation with her. It was not hard to do. I knew it would be fruitless, and I had to lead by example, as I crossed the street and came to the Saloon.

Along the way I met with an old friend of mine: a promoter named Lauren. With little patience for the old pretensions, I voiced my rage at these tourists, as well as my guilt for feeling it, without adulteration, and she smiled and nodded along with me about these sentiments, however insecurely did her facial muscles twitch in forming a congenial grin. I learned then, though perhaps before I vented my frustrations on this captive audience, that her two coworkers, both men, were fired, most probably for showing up to work stoned. I said it was good for them. It dawned upon me then how long it was she’d worked in this same part of town. She’d dated her present boyfriend about twice as long as that. Since she was due soon to quit, I took her address for a social networking site, and we parted ways on my say-so, the time ripe for her to return to work. She still tried to sell me a ticket to the club she was promoting for, an old favourite of mine that had housed my twenty-sixth birthday. But they would not allow hats, and I was loth to part with the cap I all ways wore at work.

My coy new dancing partner found me at the bar, for she sat all most next to me; we were separated only by a drunken broad of similar stature whose public cuddling with her beau behind her lived up to every definition of the word “slinky”. Ever the gentleman, I offered to buy my new squeeze a drink, reaching across the gap created between the pale blonde nymph’s right shoulder and her boyfriend’s left. She replied in such a manner that I could not hear her, but I could see from her expression something resembling (in fact, invoking!) rejection, so much so that I filled in the words to have been “I have a boyfriend”. It was no different from that same mystique that had been haunting me since Baruch’s awkward pause, but that it was cold and direct.

I was about to leave town for good, letting the tourists take over my home and run amok, but some Devil tempted me to make amends. Out on the patio, I saw a girl I’d known to work as a bartender there, but she was visiting the bar in leather, her jacket the very face of class. A gemstone ring dwelt on her left ring finger. I learned that night that she had been married for two years, as long as my friend the Promoter had been with her boyfriend. Both were radiant.

Hitherto I’d asked my dancing partner why it was that she’d turned down a free drink. She’d replied that she was an electrical engineer and that she could buy her own drinks. An apology was in order, one way or another. I found her upon the bridge of the balcony, overlooking the back of the Saloon from the right and the main attractions on the left, running up to the door to the Office where the C.E.O’s go, and from whence they probably survey the goings-on remotely.

I told the tiny dancer that I did not mean then to offend her, but that it was just an act of charity, for “I was trying to be charitable”. (Making it clear, by my choice of words, that it was adjective of myself rather than an objective necessity for her.) In fact, though I did not tell her this, I had at least once before considered buying her a glass of wine, yet by my estimation she had had enough to drink all ready, even from the moment that she started to speak with me in a slurred and bubbling tone.

Nothing could have prepared me for her reply.

“I did not want to lead you on,” she said.

The pronouncement was so brute and direct that it might have past for an attack, and surely as I feel a coldness in my stomach now I felt it then. I stuttered, naturally, as she smiled, smiling back at her, explaining more by facial twitch than by my words that I had not intended to be so direct, and that in fact my intent was pure. That would seem paradoxical, I know, for if my intent was pure then directness would have cost me nothing, and if I had been direct she would have seen its purity for what it was. But as I’ve stated, a gloom had hung over me, forbidding me to even yield entirely to our dance.

I can’t deny that something died inside me when she told me that. But what it was I could not know yet.

Over the next half hour we spoke. Peering over the right-side edge of the bridge, or perhaps seated along the parapet that bordered it, we observed, under her guidance, various patrons. She explained to me that sex was easy, but relationships were hard. I asked what was the difference, having all ways thought the more difficult of the two, naturally, to have been a prerequisite for the easier of them. She beckoned for me to look about the bar. It was as though simply by spotting a single bald patch on the top of any patron’s head she might withdraw the entire contents of that sinner’s Soul through the brain, yet she disguised this mystical gift under the cloak of scientific objectivity. In the process, she surely exposed the very religious vainglory that haunts the Scientific Method itself. One by one, she categorized the women as available or unavailable, referring me to two men who were looking for something they could not get. A couple in the corner, all most right beneath the far end of the bridge, and right beside the cashier’s booth that served as entrance to the back of the bar, became the object of her fixation. At first, she seemed convinced that they were not together, but following an embrace and a passionate but sloppy kiss, as he took leave of her to use the restroom, my friend amended her opinion, though only slightly. It was not long before she was again convinced that though they were a couple, saying blatantly that “she is definitely fucking him tonight”, as though to make me cringe at the thought of that sort of animalistic encounter, the girl was not faithful to him, for she was reading a poem on her phone when he was around. I asked if she thought the poem was of her own device, for I had secretly (and unbeknownst to my new friend) written a poem mere moments ago to the witch dealing in magic tricks. By this point, I had had enough time to forget the Scorpio’s address, so I knew that the poem might be published before it was read by its intended audience. I’d bewailed the fact I had not acted sooner on that pious impulse.

The boyfriend returned, and the girlfriend turned her phone over, though I did not notice this until my new friend told me to attend to it. Apparently, though this would seem insane to fathom, and I’d always lived in fear of such projections, as projections rather than as “facts”, the girl was cheating on him, “definitely”, since anything she would have to HIDE from him must be incriminating towards that end.

After some time either it was I that had grown delirious or she that had grown bored, for we retired to an other table. The whole bar was decorated for the Comic Con, so a torn mannequin covered in bright false blood lay at the foot of my stool as I took a seat beside her; she sat at my left hand, close at hand, only one corner of the table, to my memory, between us, and the blue lights and cacophony of celebration, lurid in their climb from within the great chasm, crawling in behind her. She explained to me that all one has to do to get laid is to ask, and if the answer’s “yes”, then you get laid. I told her that that is impossible, considering that any act of asking is officially considered to be harassment. She mocked me for that, imagining a situation wherein one would ask for sex, receive a “no”, and then withdraw. Of course, I did not tell her my counterargument: that to be worthy even to APPROACH a woman, a man must KNOW that he is worthy of “yes”, and any man who meets with “no” must be persistent in redressing the grievance, for one cannot preclude the possibility of error in women any more so than one can preclude it in men, and that only an extensive investigation, made bearable by the fact that such approaches are so pitiably and nobly RARE, could evidence which of the two is at fault. This was all I ever wanted from a woman: an answer that was credible, rather than an appeal to her own savagery.

But we were both drunk. I’d witnessed her drinking two separate glasses of beer. Myself I’d all ready sipped away the greater part of two rums-and-cokes, reminiscent of the last girl that I brought to this place, who in her nuttiness had claimed to be a pirate’s reincarnation.

Part Three: Carnival Sins.

The truth is this: that never has it been proven to me that I cannot approach women properly. Whenever I am told to amend my attitude or my behavior, as though for my own benefit, it is only to my immediate detriment, for the first step towards salvation is misrepresented as the failing choice: to abandon whatever woman had betrayed my trust and to ensnare another. This could not be permitted, for it is to presume that my guilt is so great that I would have warranted the abandonment, and at that point no other woman COULD be made available to me, for any woman that could know what I had done would slander my name throughout the streets, painting it in my own blood, before she batted an other eyelash in my wake. No benefit remains in love except to change the maiden’s mind. But when all direct avenues are barred by social convention, a man cannot hope to seduce a girl he has not known for a great time and depth. He must therefore constantly hide whatever Devil dwells in his pelvis from the World, perpetually self-aware and poised, until that space is ferreted out by a Soul Mate, condemned to the agonies of loneliness until that point.

I ask you this, reader: how am I supposed to keep the Devil in my bloody pants if she can see right through them?

TO my interlocutor’s mind, people were transparent. She preferred women to men because women knew how to give woman an orgasm; the entire process of teaching the Other to recognize you as one’s self was lost to her, even reduced to a chore, and she preferred even masturbation to the act of love. Love for her was not a primary quality of the Beloved, but rather a secondary quality, internal to the body of the Lover, and no more, in fact, than a chemical reaction within the skull. The skull was not a symbol for mortality but rather for eroticism, for if I wished to ensnare a damsel I should focus on my tongue work, and not in the manner of my speech but rather in the manner of my feeding on her lower parts.

I asked her what she thought of the statistic. She replied that she lost her virginity when she was nineteen-and-a-half years old. She disbelieved the same statistic, but not as I had done, for whereas for me eighteen was much too young to fathom, for her it was much too old, most of her schoolmates having shed their birth-right at the tender age of fifteen or sixteen.

I asked her what she thought of the institution of marriage. The wench told me that it was no longer “necessary”, but that it amounted to a social contract that women had simply “used” when they needed men for financial support. I explained to her how happy I was that my folks were still together, though I’d worried in my youth that they would split. She told me that when she was young she and her sister would wait to see which of their parents would cheat upon the other first.

I asked her why one would even bother to have sex if one were not intending to get married. She replied in a manner that I would not have stomached sober, for she attested again to the chemical reaction of the orgasm. I asked her if this was not all Utilitarian to her. She did not flinch. She simply settled on Utility as the modus operandi of the status quo, devoid of yearning for a state that’s yet-to-be that might transcend this status quo.

At this point, I began to laugh, though with exasperation. I explained that were it so that women could read men’s minds, I would have no problem having sex with any woman that I chose, or at least SOME woman of my choosing, for the confidence I’d found upon my meeting with the woman at my job was starting to seep out from underneath me. My friend told me that I had to use my words more, though I still did not know which words were permitted, and some large part of me wanted to believe that no words were and that silence alone might be consent, for only in a state of silence can one truly recognize a Soul Mate. Yet I was too overwhelmed by everything to make this point, and it now seems so self-evident I would not bother.

“Go dance,” she had said, as though to suggest that any one would dance with me. They seldom do. And never does it lead to anything.

“Imagine that you get married. Some years down the line, your wife has put on thirty pounds, and you meet a hot new secretary. What are you going to do?”

This sentence sums up what she took for insight and I take for madness at the moment. As a child, the thought of anybody doing that was awful, especially my own parents. Hence it follows logically that it makes no sense for me now as an adult, for I am responsible for the preservation of the World’s Children, especially my own. What difference would thirty pounds make, and if it made a difference, what wife would not amend her body to the husband’s fashioning, IF IT WERE NECESSARY TO DO SO, as my interlocutor implied by the depravity of the alternative?

I asked what secretary would dare to risk her station for that temporary stimulation. She laughed, explaining that that’s why people BECOME secretaries. The worst that can happen to a secretary is that she works for a fast food restaurant after she’s fired.

But what can MONEY have to do with LOYALTY to a STATION?? Since when did women cease to DEPEND upon men?? And when did the secretary fantasy become reality?? My head began to spin. I could not help but feel as though the various energies of the people in the room were beginning to encroach upon me, their eyes reading my Soul, formerly an opera libretto, now a pulp fiction. I could not understand how anyone would tolerate a state of total chaos wherein human beings were mere bodily machines, prone to some chemical reactions and entirely devoid of loyalty and virtue. Was it not for virtue that I had to suffer? Was it not to preserve a maiden’s honour, at all costs, except when the Heavens should open up and grant us permission to consummate our animal emotions in conjunction with our Souls?

I was not simply drunk. My tiny dancer was driving me crazy, and all because I had taken a diabolical leap of faith straight into the Demonic. Or perhaps because she had rejected me, rejected me before I even made an offer, and before she even knew me. And I had to get her to see Reason, one way or an other.

I asked her about Our Generation. I asked her what we would be remembered for. She simply replied that her grandparents were remembered for the Vietnam War, her parents were remembered for destroying the economy, and that our generation would be remembered for… well, what it is I can’t remember now. That shows how memorable it all is, I guess.

As a man who has once aspired towards a teaching profession, it is alarming to meet with anyone who boasts learning that by her having learned it first it came at my expense. I must have been mad at this point to the point of breaking, for I’d asked her to take an other seat with me at a distant table, away from the shelter of her friends. I had to tell her my side of the story. But it was only a few minutes into this that she was approached by a member of her group who instructed her to pay the tab. I was confused. I could not tell what she preferred: to stay and talk, or to pay and leave, and this young man hung over us imposingly as though he had decided all ready our conversation was of lesser value.

She asked me what I’d prefer. I could not keep her from her duties, so I waved her away. She promised to return, or so I thought I heard. She descended the stairs. A glass of beer was left behind her.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, I followed her. I took the beer with me, but it proved not to have been hers, so she and her friends agreed that it was mine. She’d urged me to continue to talk to her over the internet, but I’d felt apprehensive about this; I needed her, for some reason, at that moment, in person, in that booth on the far right side of the building’s second-floor alcove.

When I asked her, back up there, about if masturbation had the same reaction as sex, forced to whisper in her ear because her friends were near, as was some suitor dressed as Luke Skywalker, she replied that it’s the same, but that to do anything all alone is much less fun. I asked her how that was the case if the entirety of love was chemical, and if the two were chemically identical. I can’t recall her answer now. All that I know is this: if having partners is fun, why would masturbation be better than men? Surely the company of woman, in a narcissistic way, would be to her equivalent to masturbation, for one does not LEARN any thing about Others that was not prerequisite to qualification.

Now that same Group was out in the patio, with me trailing behind. She tried to spell her name out for my reference, but as though I were some predator they pushed her out from sight.

So much for sex being easy. But I guess that relationships are harder. And she proved that to be the case in her case, especially the part about her lack of interest in them. But riddle me this, reader: if relationships don’t matter, why did her friends sweep her away from me so swiftly and protectively? If they suspected me of sexual perversion, though they’d seen me speaking with her quite some time, and even dancing with her, how then could it be so easy to attain that One Great Pleasure, met with such rampant social opposition? How can they say that in that time I had not cleared my name of sinful allegations, cleared her mind of apprehensive reservations, and established myself as a peer within her Heart? Why would I not have earned the right to continue this correspondance betwixt us, especially if distance would bar me from acting on my base instincts, and if sex was furthest from THEIR minds when they stole her from me, as though she had never been there for the teleological purpose of our meeting, as had I, what was to stop another lunatic from misrepresenting my chase as though it had been motivated by blind lust? Would they have honestly believed that I would harass her over the internet just to track her down again over the next few days? And what was so urgent that they had all to leave at exactly that moment??

Do not accuse me of self-interest, reader, much less of self-entitlement. I ask only for what I’ve all ways asked of women: Reason and Resolution.

Part Four: Resolution.

It’s hard to believe that she was not flirting with me, upon reflection. Everything she said was so devious that it could only have been designed to ensnare a mate. How can a sane person say otherwise that watching pornography is the best way to get better at relationships? I told her I did not enjoy it. It’s a chore. She seemed shocked.

I had to ask of her one last thing: her impression of me. Right before she was whisked away into the patio I asked her. She said I was awesome but confused.

When Sylvia asked me how I was doing, still concerned and maternal, I said “awesome but confused”. I returned upstairs. She was still buzzing around in my mind. She could not understand, apparently, WHY someone would want to get married and to put in all that effort.

“Well, of course, BECAUSE it is an effort!!” I exclaimed exasperatedly.

It’s true: the more we fail the more we feel the need then to succeed.

I spoke with the bartender at the tiny bar upstairs. All night she had supplied me with ice water, even though she was forbidden to by Corporate Policy. I sipped my plastic cup and told the bartender all that was on my mind, or at least what my mind could funnel through my mouth. OBVIOUSLY, people cannot read minds, and most often when one believes one’s self to be attractive it’s a let-down and a disappointment, especially after one has spent the time necessary to establish one’s value, where animals of less than human dignity would steal the woman of one’s dreams away by acting on some Arian impulse without having appealed the girl’s Heart and Mind.

The bartender simply nodded. A haze hung between us. But I’d come to enjoy this dream. I respect the Mystery of Other People. And I had to leave immediately.

My friend had left to use the restroom when I sat beside her fellow cosplayer. The young girl with the soft but pointed baby face was dressed in clown attire. Her bare back revealed a Scorpio tattoo upon her left wing. I explained her friend was sort of crazy. She agreed. She sat at my left wing as at my right approached an other man from the same group. He asked me what was up. I did not know. He said the easiest of answers were the ceiling and the sky. I said that neither of them were “up”, but that both were “above”.

I’ve seldom used quotation marks, reader, because I hate to be found guilty of misquoting.

Then I asked him, before she returned, if he REALLY wanted to know what was up. He said sure. I said that two of my friends died last year: one from heroin and the other from suicide. He was not expecting that. But he had plenty of death in his past as well.

This Death is not in my past, reader.

It is all around me.

I have told you that I’ve met the Devil before. Sometimes he presents himself as a false idol, sometimes as an imitation of Christ, and at other times as a coy young girl with an apparently narcissistic personality.

We are not machines.

On the ride home both Carlos and Abrahao Lincoln agreed with me. Carlos sat on the right-hand side of the front of the car. I sat behind the driver. The driver spoke little English. But he was a nice guy. Both of them agreed that she was crazy. So I felt a little better. I guess when I’m drunk my tongue changes to fit the audience. And by that I mean to insinuate nothing perverse.

I assure you: all of this happened. Though I cannot attest to the objectivity of my account. Carlos was calm. Abrahao Lincoln was the actual name of the driver. Right before they showed up I talked to Luke Skywalker. He confessed that she was cute, but he would not corroborate her theory that women could read men’s minds. I guess a Jedi would love to possess that power. But of course the Ancient Texts warn us against abusing spiritual power. When one does that, innocent people are led astray and die. He was confused, though, by my version of the story. He stood just a foot or so then from the curb outside the bar, and I had to tell him that what he said and did would either prove her wrong or right. I said that if he had her address online then I would be able to continue the investigation. He was not angry, but just confused.

Outside the bar, some women stood. They were of ripe age. A woman drank at the patio. Perhaps she was eating pizza. I usually remember all these things, but now I don’t. I asked her first if she worked here. She did not. I then came back asking her if she worked at the Comic Con. She said no. She worked on this street, but she would not tell me where. I told her I recognized her. She did not care.

I looked back at her. How can a lady, now, dismiss a gentleman who claims to have had her acquaintance at some time? I had done nothing wrong, right? I’d not asked her to surrender her honour. I was a Virgin.

I had to get home. I was going crazy. I got in the car with Carlos. Carlos was chill. The driver’s name was Abrahao. It was like Abraham, but with an o. he said. Perhaps it was a u. I can’t remember. People all ways mess up the last letter in my last name too.

She said that I was Russian and that I spoke Russian and that I could get with anyone except for her, I guess. What if the girl at my place of employment never sleeps with me? Would I stay sane again? It’s been eight years since my first break-up and since my first break-down. How will I survive if she says “no”? Will I be fired?

This, reader is the price of Equality: a brilliant mind, reduced to shreds. A celibate Heart, rendered equal to a sinner’s sty.

Those girls evaded my gaze. They all ways do, I never get laid. I guess I’m not a man. And Alanna is still dead. And I fear Kresten still might be alive. And today I ate a poppy seed bagel and I thought of my friend who had died of heroin.

If I never get married, if I never settle down, how can I finish this story? Where does it end? Is it even a story, or a run-on sentence?

She said that I was Russian and that I spoke Russian. I could get laid. But I did not want to. This I told them, though, as we rode home: I entered that bar pitying myself and left it pitying her. She is just a child, and there’s no way to tell her tale without reducing it all to a scrawl. What difference does it make if I speak Russian? French? Spanish? English? If we can’t settle down, the story’s never over, and no one would ever read it any way.

Dm.A.A.

This narrative numbers 8242 words.

The Prime Factorization is 2, 13, and 317.

Two is the number of bonding.

13 is the number of Death.

3/17 is my birthdate.

Dm.A.A.