I catch myself saying this, not out loud or anything, God no, but absolutely thinking it, you know, there inside my head, as I’m smiling across the table at her and nodding. Nodding for, like, the hundredth time as she rambles on about her mother and growing up in Wisconsin and the most inane shit I’ve ever heard come out of a person’s mouth. She’s been going at it, this talking stuff, I mean, for around three hours straight, seriously, without a pause, and it’s really getting me down. I almost feel sad inside, or lonely or something, because of it. Which is a weird feeling. To be with somebody, sitting across from them, and at the same time having a moment where it’s like you are so completely and utterly by yourself that you wanna scream or weep or some emotion like that. Kind of like that one picture of the dude clutching the sides of his head and crying out—you know the one I’m talking about? It’s famous, I think. My high school English teacher had it hanging in her class—I don’t know the name of the guy who painted it—and I used to stare at it a lot, especially during tests. Anyway, I’m sorta like that right now. Her talking is making me feel that way and I don’t like it. Not that I enjoy having these other thoughts, the ones about pounding her goddamn head in with a brick or a chunk of concrete or something. I don’t really want to have urges like these toward a person, any person at all, so it’s depressing to be driven to a place like that. Some kind of murderous place all because the bitch can’t shut her fucking mouth.