_It’s kind of a “can you help the mouse get to the cheese” type of situation. Because here’s the mouse, he looks happy enough, got a big old goofy mouse grin on his fiz, but there’s these two cats stationed on the outside of the maze, so he can’t go around to the right and he can’t go around to the left, and he can’t go under or over because he lives on and in a piece of paper and is only effectively twodimensional after all. He could just walk right over the lines of the maze, but his eyes won’t let him—they see that entrance hearkening back to his days of abundant pellets and strokes from the pussy, and they just have to start roving in, further in, to try and figure it out. So that’s where we are. At the entrance to the maze._ _Oh yeah, and there is a clock somewhere ticking, too. You can hear it but you can’t see it. Or you can see it but you can’t feel it. Whatever._ HIM: Dude, you gotta help me. ME: How can I help you, mister I-went-back-tohigh-school-and-did -drugs-and-got-laid-andhad-all-sorts-of-fun-being-young-as-a-freshwillow-branch-again? HIM: Ahem. That’s not my name. Mister I- staid-here-and-sucked-cock-behind-the-gasdryer-while-pretending-to-puzzle-out-a-worldstopping-allegorical-phantasmagoria-ofcharismatic-futility. ME: Oh fuck off. HIM: And you. ME: So what was your little problem? HIM: Oh yeah. Well, I asked this girl to marry me. ME: And? HIM: She said yes. ME: Hmm. I see the difficulty. HIM: No, I’m serious. Dude, I can’t be married. I’m gay, for chrissake, I’ve just never wanted to admit it. Afraid I’d be too lonely, or there’s no good boys out there for me that won’t be disgusted by me, or— ME: So why’d you ask her? HIM: Well, because, I don’t know. ME: Yes you do. HIM: Shut up and give me time. ME: There is no time. Just answer the question. HIM: I asked her because it seemed like the thing to do at the time. ME: Maybe it was. HIM: But now it doesn’t. ME: So tell her you were just kidding, and life goes back to normal. HIM: But it doesn’t. There is no normal! ME: Now you’re just trying to stymie me with maxims. What’s normal for you? What do you even want? Who the fuck are you, anyway? Do I know you? Why am I even talking to you? HIM: I am, I am, I am a rusty pipe lying in the alley that someone kicked and now i’m going <CLANG!!!> ME: Yeah, and? HIM: I am a leather-jacketed pirhanna walking down the alley under-neath pneumatic sunshine singing green and gory like the odd gun. ME: Right, right, what else? HIM: I am a lonely old faggit afraid it’s going to be too late for me to have a family of my own. ME: Okay, so you wanted to marry this girl so you could have a family. HIM: Look, I don’t want to talk about it any more. ME: But you asked me— HIM: I know! Shut up. Just shut up for now. Which way should we turn? ME: _[seeming to notice for the first time the maze of halls they’ve been walking among]_ Huh? Oh. I don’t know. How about left? _They turn left._