Ellen moved in with me after that. We really didn’t need two bedrooms, but what the hell. She’s a better roommate than Jack. She does all the cooking and she keeps the place really clean all the time. I think it’s much better to live with a girl all the time than to live with another guy and only get to see a girl once a day, at night, or something like that. It kind of spoils a man. It makes him brood around and think too much. Thinking too much can be a bad scene. I guess that’s what happened to Jack. His mind must have beat him out of the straight life.

It won’t ever beat me, though. Ellen and I make it at least twice every night and sometimes some more, depending on how the day went. I don’t have to feel sorry for anyone any more, and that helps a lot. It makes me more a man. But sometimes I wonder about Jack, about how he was trying to show me that he was making a comeback to the straight life. And sometimes I wonder what the hell it was in his mind that made him think that cleaning up the loft was a straight thing to do. I wonder how the hell that would have helped him. I wonder, and I still think it was pretty weird.

Hue and Cry

A joke is an epigram on the death of a feeling.

—FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

BUT IF THAT IS ALL THERE IS, what is left of life and why are we alive?”

“Because we know no better way to be.”

“And are these our only options?”

“These few should be sufficient.”

“But what of those who look for more?”

“One must either hate or pity them.”

“Why hate?”

“Because they make us uncomfortable in their lack of loyalties to these options.”

“Why pity?”

“Because we know that they must pay for our discomfort.”

“But is it necessary that they should pay?”

“Always.”

“On what authority?”

“For all of those who took the easy options; for all of those who are unhappy in their choices.”

“And are there many of these unhappy?”

“Look around you.”

“And what of those who look for more? Are they just as plentiful and just as unhappy?”

“Look around you. They live in dark and secret places, but one can see they are many and unhappy. And one can see how they pay.”

“How do they pay?”