There is No Such Thing as White Privilege.

There is no such thing as White Privilege.

1. Whiteness is arbitrary, individually subjective, illusory (in so far as it is regarded as the opposite of blackness) and it occurs on a spectrum with all other racial distinctions.
2. The distinction of people into racial categories is immoral. Drawing attention in passing to a person's racial label is permissible as a joke, but that is only because the individual arbitrariness of the label establishes camaraderie betwixt the labeler and the labeled.
3. All such labels are used to describe a relationship betwixt a labeler and a labeled. This was what Foucault posited about Signs, Signifiers, and the Signified.
4. Privilege is illusory and subjective. Its most popular definition reflects the prejudices of a capitalist culture. This creates the illusion that most people have these prejudices. Yet only mad radicals actually follow these values to their rational conclusion. As Jung said: the Neurotic is just the intensified form of the average man.
5. Because privilege is all so arbitrary it is not an objective quality.
6. Symbols refer to other symbols; their relationship to the WORLD is more nebulous than mere symbols can describe. Hence a reliance upon non-symbolic and non-verbal forms of reasoning, which usually occurs beneath the threshold of consciousness, is necessary to the preservation of the dignity of human nature.
7. It is incidentally for this reason (#6) that we shall never condone such Fascist slogans as "silence is not consent", for it reflects not only the naiivete of people whose love never transcended the slavish dependency upon words, but it all so re-enforces the masculinist phallogocentric prejudices running through the western psyche. Without acknowledging the value of non-symbolic immediate experience, we are lost, and to the degree that symbols shape us, we are sheep to the Fascist Media that uses them to herd us.
8. The goal of the media has all ways been to divide and conquer. This is known particularly to immigrants from countries with more blatant histories of totalitarian oppression. All distinctions made reference to in the media are bureaucratic. Even in dealing with some thing as ubiquitous as gender they manage to reduce it to a set of vital and social functions (much as the faux "social justice movement" that populates college, proto-Fascist "gender studies" class rooms.), which as Gabriel Marcel attested is a distinctly modern reduction of the human being to some thing less than his true self.
9. There is no evidence for the existence of Privilege in the physical world. Oops! I'm sorry. Check my privilege? But my good man. I seem to have miss-placed it. Per chance I left it back home with Racism, Sexism, Patriarchy, Rape Culture, Monetary Value, and EVERY OTHER THING that DOES NOT EXIST.
10. We have no patience for a person that looks at a set of statistics and refers to it as a measuring stick for his own success, but really the lack there of. A genuine go-getter is too busy and fixated upon the Actual Conditions of his Life to bother with what some news caster he has never met says. Only a failure blames the world, presuming all of his superiors to be morally corrupt in what Nietzsche would call Resentiment.
11. We are totally unjustified in presuming the everyman to be corrupt. You do not walk up to strangers and accuse them of having an irrational prejudice without looking like a total fool with three fingers pointing back at him for each one that he points.
12. My parents came to this country when I was four in basically flight from the crumbling Totalitarian Soviet Union. If they had any special help it was by virtue of the Kindness of their Friends, Not the madness of their employers. And what made these privileges special, like any friendship, was that they did not share these specific circumstances, in these exquisitely intricate life situations, with any other people. I have heard it said that only a fool denies the existence of racism. There is absolutely no such thing as racism. Only a total fool would presume that by some physical semblance my parents had an actual kinship with people whose lives some how miraculously, as though by a Jungian synchronicity, lined up to mirror my family's own fortunes and set-backs.
13. Racism does not exist. There can be no evidence for it. Absolutely none. The problem is not the existence of an external phenomenon but the PRESUMPTION that such a phenomenon exists. No empirical evidence can be found for it because it is literally any one's guess what any individual's racial category is. Only a fool would claim objectivity in such a manner and then presume that all the world agrees in his delusion.
14. I do not self-identify as white except by way of a joke. I am a Jewish-Russian American Immigrant. I am a human being. Black lives don't matter. All lives matter. That I am of Judeic lineage does not pre-dispose me to justify the killings of Palestinians on the Gaza Strip, which, incidentally, becomes a lot less tolerable when one simply thinks of the sheer NUMBER of the death toll and not the CATEGORY of the dying.
15. Most of these memes are used to stir up hostility for no reason amidst people that had they not been informed of the 'truth' they would have no extra-ordinary complaints that are atypical of just the human condition. Every one struggles, and you are no exception. If you want to REALLY know about the oppressive power structures in this country, here's a hint: The government is not going to tell you! The media is not going to tell you! You actually have to up and TALK to people out side of your comfort zone. Even some thing as banal as cat-calling COULD potentially initiate a conversation, and it is more ethically imperative than any thing else. If all you do all day is spend time on the internet calling other people phonies, accusing them of possessing 'privilege' because they do not have as much TIME to do that as you do, then may be you should check your OWN privilege and go out side. To quote the film American History X: Life is too short to be pissed off ALL the time.

Dm.A.A.

(End Less) Fields of Immanence.

Fields of Immanence.

Try as you might in your Stockholm Syndrome, in your relativism and you emotivism and your tragic pretense towards egality, you cannot defend him. I never condemned you, but HE DID. About him had all ways been a negative field of immanence that mere Reason could not penetrate. You intuited it, but in your desperation you fore got your Intuition and relied only upon your Logical Function. It IS the strong suit for INTP.

He did not love you. He did not love me. He did not love any one. Not even his self. He acted out of insecurity that night. And that night laid to waste all of my hopes and illusions in his loyalty and his potential goodness. I was left only to investigate the ruins of a once beautiful kingdom of character. We all knew the Kresten from before he started smoking meth and crashing cars. Our nostalgia blinded us to truth.

Lucid Reason can accompany us some way. In the haze of marijuana smoke and the company of his allegiant Robbie and his old friend with whom the bristling ancient bridge is shaky, Anthony, it was easy from the first hit of cannabis to see in Robbie what YOU saw in him: A gentle, well meaning boy. And so I came under your stiletto shoe, the one you might have worn the night I met you. And I pictured you standing over me with Kresten grinning demonically at your side.

And yet you were too demonic for him. And he condemned you to the diabolical. Your humour is justified but pitiable. He hurt you. He hurt you for having expected you to be so much more to him, not knowing that you could surpass any expectation that HIS feeble mind could produce. He hurt you by his disappointment and neglect. He hurt you because (damn does it feel like a relief to write this and not scream it) he broke his most loyal friend’s heart for a woman that he did not love, and rather than blaming his self he blamed – the victim? In passing only. I was too strong for him. <Maniac(hanic)all (s)laughter.> -- YOU. The son of a bitch. Of COURSE he blamed YOU. So that you would blame your self. So that you would take that Shame for having hurt me for a man that did not love you. So that you could turn it in to pride to use against me. So that you might follow his example and not blame your self but blame me. But you did blame your self. And I blamed you for blaming me. But I never blamed you to begin with. Never. No obligation rested upon you. THIS I explain to Tony: With women, we cannot hold them to our own standards. You were only half-right Alanna. I CAN hold others to my own standards. But only other men.

Damn. As a debater that felt good.

The Bro Kode exists for a reason. I tried to tell you rationally affectively and openly. It exists for women. It exists that men could defend women from faithless pricks. The bro code is a spiritual gauntlet that dates back even to the Hindu version of the Chakra System: If you can prove your loyalty to a friend, you may move up the spiritual totem. You shall be ready to prove your faith to a woman.

The rationalists with no myth in their heart try to weasel their way out of the bro code. The feminists are no better.

Rationalists: Well of course it is a Circular Reasoning yet again isn’t it boys? The other guy is bad because he gets the girl. He SHOULDN’T get the girl, making/rendering him bad, for the same reason that we had established at the beginning: He is a bad guy!

The Feminists: And you mean to tell us that it is OKAY for a girl to date a skummy guy just so long as he has a “bro” to back him up?

Of course, the bro code is simple: I do not rat you out, bro, and in exchange you do not rat out me. We make each other look good. And no bitches come between us. We shall never be rivals, for that exists in a competitive arena. That creates no net benefit to people on our level, interested in creating love. I trust you and you can trust me. I trust that you trust me. We are on the heart-chakra. We are not bound to our past karma. This is no zero-sum game with no net benefit, where one’s selfish joy is cancelled out by the other’s suffering, and it is only by virtue of this un-spiritual selfishness that the indecorous joy is made even permissible. This is not a conquest for a mate. For such a conquest, were it…

And the Feminists pro-claim again: So you have but a CONSPIRACY to hide your own skum from women, like a gang does?

You didn’t let me finish. For such a conquest, were it to be motivated by Love on the parts of both men (surely evidence of the absence of a Just and Sane God from this mortal Uni-verse) for that woman, would have to consummate the surrender of the friendship, and that is to be honored as a tragedy. But supposing that only one man TRULY loved the woman, that he would be capable to go to such lengths to Comprehend her, to forgive and to love no less than her normalities her peculiarities and idiosyncrasies, and not to miss-lead her with temptation of a diss-honest sort,, and that the other could only hold before her a deceptive mirage and lead her into traps set up to house his own diabolical flesh-eating insecurities that would swallow her whole, then the virtue of COMPETITION would be found, as the virtue of POWER is found when it is trans-muted in conjunction with the Fifth Chakra, used to dominate others not for personal gain but for the honesty expression of the Truth due to be Vocalised, not in seeking this mate for one’s OWN sake but genuinely for HER sake. Not once would the victor in this duel of consciences be capable of blaming her, for he could not dis-possess his self of his own responsibility in choosing to pursue her. Competition, an evil when it is done in the service of the self and produces no net benefit, can be made acceptable when truly the most Virtuous is the victor. And only the less Virtuous, the less honest, the less True, (for that is what it means etymologically to have Virtue), would condemn the woman for his own victory. Only HE would blame HER, that gem that he had killed his best friend’s innocence of heart for. And of course long before any one else saw it the Just and Virtuous of heart, his slieghted adversary, would flee. For how could he compete? What is of greater gravity than the benefits of the bro code are the detriments of its breaking. For the genuine man can NOT SAY ANY THING to warn this woman now that she is ensnared in the guy’s charm, and it would appear to be the feeble jealousy of a poor friend, for that expectation upon him that he would BE a friend and not a petty cuckolded lover creep would still hang like a fading poisonous cloud. THIS is why it is a crime to break to the bro code. But Jay Dey was right. I am NO LESS OF A MAN for being Jealous! Andrew was right. It is perfectly all right for me to feel this way. So was that Christian lady. Ali would say so too; I know it. Even Anthony, though he tries to be nice (to Kresten). Even some Irish stranger at the bar who is best friends with the chill guy who got me drunk. The second man to ever get me drunk, Jay having been the first. And Kresten for all those years of debauchery could never do it. Nor tried to.

The logicians and the feminists are wrong yet again. It was never a merely circular contrivance; we merely passed through the circle to get to it. The Truth: No man WOULD be-friend a prick. That is an OTHER un-written aspect of the Bro Code. By entering into this invisible contract we agree that we are both of virtuous character. Aristotle would applaud us. So would Plato. Even Lao-Tzu. This is not, as the insecure cynics would posit it, a circular contract to gang up on women, nor a way to blame a man of no lesser character simply by condemning him for an inconvenience that is only evil because our condemnation labels him evil. The Bro Code PROTECTS women BY preserving the dignity of men, for only a man of no faith would break the bro code indecorously, and a faith less man could never be a satis-factory lover. Broes before Hoes ultimately serves the Hoes, for while the Hoes come second they all so have the last word. <Oh! Check out that millennial victory dance at the sight of that rhetorical stease.> And to swoop in after only three days, with out warning, with out remorse, with out even having the nerve to confront the friend in person and to sever the friendship nobly, claiming Love, with out the COURAGE to have a fair game, but rather using the entire instruments of his intellect to deliberately dis-patch an enemy, can only be symptomatic of insecurity and selfishness. It was Ali that told me that insecurity breeds selfishness, but so had that Christian lady. The fyck deliberately became knowledgeable on things of arbitrary scholarship just so that he might dis-confirm me when ever he wanted to, to make me look marginal, and that he might flatter YOU at will. Who does that? Who stoops to that degree of competition? And who surrendering that friendship for rivalry then blames the woman for his own shame full conscience? “I could kick your ass Taylor.” A lad who all ways had been too insecure to be totally open, except in moments of brash anger which were just symptoms of a psyche losing control. And I as a fool had missed taking it for its GAINING control over ME.

You tire of these rages. But now you under stand my position. My heart is full with the Grace of God. It had been that Sunday. Which was why I had invited you both over. I had no competitive intentions, only trust full ones. But compunction is beyond me at this point. This is war, and I am winning. I cannot be happy for some one who hurt a person that I loved, and I cannot be happy for her that she hurt me to get to him. But I can fore give her. I fore give you. All ways. He does not deserve YOU. And I will vanquish what ever ghosts still haunt you by his vice and virtue because he does not deserve the enduring influence that his image has over you. I am sorry. I know it. Like a police officer, no one likes to see me coming. But I only carry the Truth. It was all you ever asked me for, except for Space.

Dm.A.A.

[(Urgent.)] Tony tells all: The Evidence.

[(Urgent.)] Tony tells all: The Evidence.

Anthony to-night told me some thing in one line that corrob-

borated every thing I sus-

pected about you and Kresten.

He said: May be she was just a bad girl. His faith stays, naturally. But I con-

Demned him as mysoginistic [sic fuck].

And then he said the Fate full words:

That’s what Kresten said. He said she was a bad girl.

He went on to say that you had turned out to be ‘more dymonik’ than he had initially expected. You have no idea, Alanna. No idea how much force I could use to snap his lights out right now. The truth is that I have never hated a single person that has only hurt me.

Not even the psychiatrist.

Not even Ally’s mom. I des-

pized them. But I did not Hate them.

That is my Kardinal virtue (to cite that terrible book THE GREAT GATSBY. I still keep my hand-written letters to you in my copy of it. I read bits of it that Sunday Night. I wrote a poem that referenced it. Tonight feels like an extension of that night my [sicly] body is a razor with a million volts of eccentricity.): I only hate the people who have hurt people that I Love. And

in pursuit of their own self-interest.

Of course. He could have never loved you. I told the bastard to study the Anima. Agh! I could break his fucking knees for you. [Keep reading please.]

It was *HE* that saw you to be an immaculate angel. Yet it was HE that was diss-

appointed by you.

It ALL MAKES SENSE NOW. Your entire be-

haviour.

1.       The insecurity about your body.

2.       The insecurity about your relationship w/r/t him.

3.       Your general insecurity.

4.       His neglect of you. Particularly on your <very own> Birth-day.

5.       Your sense that I would idealise you. (as he did)

6.       Your sense that you would disappoint me (as he was, both diss-

appointing and disappointed.)

7.       Your tendency to blame your self and to brag about your own power.

(Shame = Pride. He shamed you and blamed you (see foot-note bel[l]ow); you took pride on it.

You blamed me be-

*May be as a causal result of his own being a Kunt.

cause I made my self Karnikally Available.

                                                                                dm.A.A.

ALANNA.

THERE IS NO THING WRONG WITH YOU.

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO

Do Not Hit Me;

I am a child. By definition I am entitled to what ever fruits society can pro-
vide for me. Every day my project is to subvert the norms of the past to resolve the crises of the present, fit to the best of my imagination and ability to my God-given,
Nature-inspired vision of a suitable future. The parents who deprive me of any re-
source in the actualisation and attainment of this are to be met only with scorn. I owe them no debt.

They owe their parents no debt.
The whole concept of an end-less lineage of debt is a totally trans-
parent tradition of bond-
age engineered by the hegemonic bastards that run this cruel machine that oppresses society. Only a fool would begin to parrot these Fascist maxims, and such a fool could not meet Truth with reason but with rage.
If my peer is denied by her parents access to a basic freedom, be it the inter-
net, a mode of conveyance, or

a material necessity, I must not hesitate to condemn those parents with swear-words. No loathing could be greater than that which I feel towards those entitled hypocrites who sit on their asses after a 'long day's work' for the establishment, hoarding the fruits of those actions that were they works of love they would have done for free. I am not fooled by their pre-
tense towards drudgery nor impressed with their stupidity. I am a child[;-]

I run the world. The steward that sits on my throne is capitalism.
And these bastards who sit on their hairy couches perpetuate His rule . What can they do to save the world from suffering and Absurdity?
Whilst they absorb the Fascist media I might have a Love Affair. A new design for the Infra-
structure of a city. A satori. I can become a yogi. Amonk. A priest. I could write the next great Novel. A film. A game.

The weight of the chuman <and non-human> worlds rests upon my shoulders and those of my peers.
And THEY call me entitled?
THEY call me ungratefull?
*THEY* interrupt my letters of love? *THEY* delete my Master Plans?
*THEY* deny me food? They deny me sex? They deny me every thing
That I must work to preserve for *MY* children? How could I raise children if to do so would be to become *THEM*?

Some thing is wrong here. The roles became reversed. The old are not supposed to work -- only to Help.
The young are not supposed to obey --
only TO *CREATE*.

And I am no longer fooled.

dm.*A.A.*

The Hand that Feeds.

The Hand that Feeds.

I am honestly done with Behavioural Psychology/iatry. Alanna would say:

The shrinks! It is maddening. But what ever lingering guilt I might feel in glaring in to the Abyss is cleared away by the Abyss Her Self. I am merely weary and upset at the totali-

tarian anti-intellectualism and conventionality of these Self-Help Cult Gurus.

As usual, their definitions (in this instance, for manipulative be-

haviour) are SO banal and SO murky and opaque that one is led to suspect that they are All manipulators.

Authenticity.                      |Manipulation.

Artistry.                                                |Control.

Ambiguity.                          |Evasion.

Reality.                                 |Semblance.

Critical                                   |Word games. Diss-

Thinking.                              |trust. Idiomatic.

Moral                                    |Shaming. Victim-

Authority.                           |Blaming.

Optimysm.          >>           |->Cynicism.

Disappointment.->          |>>Confidence.

(The Dialectic does on and on…)

Really: It is no wonder, if mani-

pulation is so pre/-valent in the Debate Community, that a thing like Derridean De-construction could be termed ‘Abuse’. Yet not every Artist is a Confidence Artist. Not every Lover is a Seducer. Not every intro-

vert a Master Mind.

Alanna manipulated me for drugs. That is hard to admit. But I fore give her. It was my intent and consent.

What is harder to fore give is the Gothic accusation of my own mani-

pulative tendencies. Were I to say: At least I KNOW that my intent was good, or: At least *I* know ‘twas not *MY* fault, a ‘man’ like K. or Dentoni would re-

ply: But of course! A mani-

pulator NEVER admits to his own faults! And I would reply:

It is YOU that would manipulate ME to entertain so dim a world view!

For were it so that I could not trust my Own feeling to be genuine and sincere, then we could atomise ALL heroism to deception, and all internal feelings of a righteous conscience to Bad Faith.*

Manipulators will tend to treat others as though THEY were the manipulators. This is the essence of victim-blaming.

It is symptomatic in Awilda’s accusations of Sarah and Dewi.

It is symptomatic to Arthur’s whole ruse, and to Kresten’s entire Akt.

*This is called ‘poisoning one’s world-

view,’ and it is the hint that I have found a foot-

note foot-

hold in.

Yet such objectivity could not be Universal.

dm.A.  

I like deliberate ambiguity just for its own sake. That I am Heide-

ggerean does not render me a Nazi; that I am Nietzschean does not establish me to be krazy.

I like ending a para-graph just at the very korner of the page,

so that in trans-scribing it I can choose to treat both sides of the page as either ONE para-

graph or two. It is not that I disguise the ‘Truth’. I rather RESIST the very Notion of a Truth! It is in fact my HONESTY that leads me to be such a stickler for detail in trans-kryption.

The arguments for spotting a manipulator by behaviour are ridiculously manipulative:

1.       ‘Manipulator twist the Truth.’

What truth? Manipulators might just as easily demand the ‘Truth’ of you to gain the upper ad-

vantage whilst LYING.

2.       ‘Manipulators blame others.’

So do any self-respekting viktims.

Unless you mean to say that no one is EVER a victim. Now WHY should you want to attest to that?

May be they are YOUR victims!

Manipulators try to make their victims accept their own responsibility.

3.       ‘Manipulators are sarkastik’.

We do not need to be. We choose to be.

It is a matter of stylistic pre-

ference. A manipulative person Relies upon such emotions, but a genuine crusader (like Dr.

Whearty) uses it to not only salt his enemies’ wounds but to un-mask them.

4.       ‘Manipulators try to make their victims accept their own responsibility’.

My own words yes. But a case in point for both deliberately art full ambi-

guity and deceptive post-modern evasion.

Whose is ‘their own’? That of the assailant? In this case, I mean that of the ‘viktim’.

Hither/to I meant to say that the manipulator tries to burden the victim with the MANIPULATOR’S OWN guilt.

Yet not all guilt belongs to the assailant, who there in had been the manipulator. Some times it is the VIKTIM that must be held responsible. Not the defendant but the ever-so defensive Plaintiff is the mani-

pulator in what is called a case of Histrionic Personality.

Not all preaching, blaming, and holding others accountable is malevolent. Were we to presume it to beso, not only manipulators but all criminals would run amok.

So it is that just as the true victim must stand up for her self the Histrionic must be condemned.

Is this an easy situation? No.

But neither is the virtuous life.

To atomise all moral authority to relativism, suspect of mani-

pulation, as though all judge-

meant were immediately hypo-

Kritikal, is again to poisson

one’s world view.

5.       ‘Manipulators are elitists.’

The most dangerous ones I have met are in fakt the most egalitarian levelers.

‘Who are you to judge me?’* is the best defense against all finger-pointing. To say that requires an a posteriori warrant, such as ‘What have I done wrong?’ or

‘Have I done no right thing?’ The mani-pulator when confronted with this problem is reduced to re-

petition in the face of the fakts,

refusing to admit either to the innocence and virtues of the accused nor to provide any defense for one’s self out side of

*a priori leveling.

As I have demonstrated:

Manipulators can make all others look like manipulators. They can level indefinitely. Yet their

leveling is a lie, and Truth (in the sense of Honesty, even if Truth cannot be called Absolute)

will lay their indefinite leveling to the waste of the pathetik.

                                                                                                                dm.*A.A.*

ADDEND: All so: About Derrida. Per

                haps Whearty is suspicious be-

                cause he takes the murkiness of human motivation to be a start-

                ing point. I doubt that Ms. Watkins isso innocent. As for me: I am a genuine optymyst. Like de

Beauvoir. DM.

CONCLUSION.

Propriety does not an Ethic make.

Politeness is the breeding ground that manipulators feed on. Hence Trevor claimed Politeness and Morality/Ethics to be identikal and the same, and Thompson too rejected the notion that Ethics (public) and Morals (private) could be separated, reducing all to propriety by suggestion.

At least he covered the material.

                                                                dm.*A.A.*

After Thought. Just remembered.

6.       ‘Manipulators do not respect boundaries.’

Pat a lying man on the shoulder and you will notice your trust go down.

Get a seductive girl drunk and she might let slip more than she lets on.

Cathy Ames in EAST OF EDEN hated Steinbeck’s drug of choice for this very same reason. Are all mani-

pulators followers of Dionysus? No.

Are all Dyonesiacs manipulative.

No; they are too busy dansing.

And Appollo Knows that Many of his followers are deceptive and Haephestian.

So be it. One does not pick one’s fans. I guess.  dm.*A.A.*

Whilst I do espouse Transparency at every Corner of the Marxet...

I am beginning to grow suspicious of who it is that reads this blog regularly.
And why he does not leave a comment ever.
Julian. Is that you?

Dmitry.
Dm.A.A.

(The) Untitled One. (Not) The Entitled One(.)

Of course the greatest shock imaginable and the surest symp-
tom of a venge-
full God would be to introduce one's prospective lover to all of one's friends and family, one's best and most presumed loyal friends, knowing that one would boast of her as a 'catch', knowing that for once one would be Happy, and not only by virtue of the self-
transcendance of a volunteer, and that one was justified by Fate in this immeasurable pleasure, that the both of you would become a beacon of Hope for all aspiring lovers, parents, and children, if not cultural icons then at least kind, gentle souls, only to find that she does not love you.
How then to make sense of the violent passions of human emotion that had hitherto been cele-
brated as 'Love'?
How to justify the sexual appetite? How to pardon the un-
validated and, again as in childhood, meaningless songs of sentimentality on the Juke Box?

And what an affront by God.
What an affront by the woman.
What an affront by the mass of once-thought friends and elders and betters, who now with such selfishness and inhuman delight sink their grinning teeth in to the Splendour of this person that you had thought your equal. It would be as though to say: God does not love you. Your most intimate of impulses are vile, and your existence is utterly super-
fluous and there by un-
justified. What value would you possibly possess as a man then? What did you do wrong?? The world of friends and benefactors that one had presumed plotters for one's own joys, to whom you had been in-
debted, who had with every seductive coaxing smile promised you the heart of a girl like HER -- and none other --
who by every gesture of either marital fidelity or a passing fancy pro-claimed:
Marriage is justified! Love is justified! Even lust serves our Highest Purposes!
What purpose has your life then? How did you fail in your heroism?

What remains? For you to re-
solve your self to the embarassment of selfishness and arbitrary idleness?
To become less than human as all others evolve to attain greater and greater dimensions of altruism and Eros?

No. I know that you love me.

Dm.A.A.

But then how could you do that?
How could you lie? How could you accuse me of entitlement? Have I not only been kind to you, patient and polite, the hope its self justifying my endurance, its own re-
ward, with no anti-
cipation of a reward but the most eager desire, un-
abashed and surely -- as older women have in-
tuited -- sweet?

Who are you to accuse me then of entitlement? To your own joy? To the pleasure of my friends' company, and that they might have the honor of your presence?

I still recall the face of my band-mate's uncle.
The fourth of the four siblings.
That sunken, clamped look in his face that tightened about his eyes. I must have thought then: This man is whipped; you would dis-approve of him.
If only I had known his wife then! I had felt my intuitions corroborated by the fact that he checked his cell phone within minutes of entry to his brother's home, boasting suspiciously of the responsibilities of marital life. His days of getting high were over.
If only I had known her.
I spoke with her for at least an hour at the Graduation Party.

Dm.A.A.