_And then, in this living arrangement, we become each able to do our separate things, to read our books on separate couches, to glimmer languidly in the unassuming presence of one another's love, without having at all times to make love—and then, looking back, we wonder why we wondered why, or what is the purpose of this living, when simply to do it, to inhale and exhale, is, after all, the peak experience, enlightenment attained but usually ignored, hurried past, run through as heedlessly and clumsily as this sentence runs on through the blissful purity of a snowwhite page._ # HIM: What was that all about? # ME: What? _By the time you recognize it, it is already gone. But it is still there: that dark, windy thing—and cock and pussy and clever new parasitic forms of art and hyperbooks and all that fun stuff notwithstanding, “it” remains the thing._ HIM: That! Didn’t you hear it? ME: I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about. _[goes back to looking at Cosmo]_ _Do you think sometimes you tell yourself it's because you don't have those feelings any more, when actually it's because you are afraid to let in the impossible now? you can go wherever you want, my friend. you don't have to pass a king arthur or a jedi or a nazi test of fate in order to get a passport. it's your god damned boat. you make the rules. Tell 'em to fuck off for me, willya jake?_ HIM: Okay. Now that time you HAD to have heard it! ME: Hey—are you feeling okay? _[magazine falls open on ME's lap, showing a lipstick ad. The enormous woman's insane mouth is coppery and luminous. What goes in must come out!]_ HIM: Uh. Nah, yeah, I don't know. Look I'm going to go outside for some air. ME: Sure. Bring me back some when you come in, okay? _HIM stares as though ME has just said something. I mean really._