get your head up off that floor and stop making yourself the animal they've always tried making you think you are--don't you see them laughing at you, the ladies' arms craned around their men's necks and in their free hands, flutes of champagne as, in their own minds, they see themselves as jet-setters, stage-stutters, world-changers, male-enslavers, and it's all thanks to what they have between their legs--they are strong, they are women, they are mothers and daughters and nieces and aunts, they are friends, they are comforters, they are salvation, they are life, but they will bring you death if you ask them to--all of this and so much that you can never conceive, this is all that spins about in their heads as one stands and one sits and all smile at the tale of you heading down that hill in a shopping cart--that's you'd even told them you were an expert in navigating a shopping cart was a joke, but for you to demonstrate for them, and then for you to almost **** nearly everyone you'd almost run into: well, it didn't look good for you, and what did it matter that they hadn't invited you to stand there looking up as they couldn't even be bothered to look down on you?--what was important was that you see how you looked through their eyes, that you see you seemed somewhere on the social food chain between clown and worm--and you needed to see yourself like this, you needed to be taken out of your own head where all of your real problems were that you might begin to fix what was the biggest of all these, that this self-image you have of yourself where you are a jester, a buffoon, a trickster, that you are none of these, for these things are not anything even close to what you wanted yourself to be perceived as...but it was all you'd come to take as you couldn't be taken seriously, so you accepted being the one they laughed at--you'd win them all over like that, right?--but it hadn't really occurred to you that they'd never think of you as an actual human being like this, and even as you considered ******* one of them, you came to see that you could share with her whatever you wanted, you could tell her whatever thing you thought was most serious, most pressing, the thing with all the gravitas and drama, but it still could never shake the idea of you she'd already formed in her head that you were a ******* backwards-*** man who wasn't even really a man because you never hit on anyone, you never threatened anyone with physical violence, you never ordered anyone around, and you never even raised your voice--the only way she could tell you were a man was that you kept to yourself, that you didn't talk to anyone, that you preferred your own company and didn't have a wife or a girlfriend or anyone to love you...but there was no way you were ever going to sidle up to her and tell her how amazing she looked in that dress that clutched at her every curve, there was no way she was ever going to accept what you were saying as being part of the larger "dance" that always began with looks and words and ended with ******* and regret and in the most terrible of cases, as you'd already experienced, ******* lifelong regret...which was passing strange to you because she seemed to smile, to regard you in a way she hadn't before, but hadn't you been standing in this very spot in times past where you believed one thing while something quite contrary was taking shape before you?--this was one of those times and you had realized it without being told this time, you knew that she was either lying to herself or she was just toying with the idea of being with you to titillate herself, to pass the time while she waited for something or someone more exciting, more important to come along...but it had occurred to you here and now that that could be said for all of them, and if you were being honest, it could be said of everyone, everyone except you because you were the last one standing, the last one who would pass up the opportunity to be with someone more exciting because you were someone who was loyal, someone who could be trusted to behave like a faithful boyfriend or husband or whatever should behave like...and you despised yourself because of it, and you saw that that whole dream you'd conjured up about her, the one where she had become homeless, where she had lost everything she had had and you had swooped in to help her track it all down and get it all back, that truly, it was in vain because she wouldn't understand your love of antiques and sense of the "old world" would help you be a better person because it would make you see that however fine those things were, that however rare they were, they were just things and when you saw her crying and in need of someone to listen to her, someone to hold her, how could you not come to understand that that love for old things couldn't compare with your love of people, that you'd only ever wanted to be surrounded by people who would try to do as you did, that you too had wanted to be held and stroked, that sometimes you could've cared less about ******* because all you'd wanted was to fall sleep against the breast of the one who'd told you to relax and close your eyes, that no harm would come to you because she wouldn't let any harm come to you, that you should just get whatever rest you could and that she'd be more than happy to be the one you trusted enough to fall asleep against...you could've told her all these things about your but, really, what good would any of it have done you?--remember, you had wanted to win friends, you had wanted to not be alone and so you'd allowed them to paint you as you'd made yourself appear out of thin air: as the one who would make them laugh...you couldn't have known then that it was something that'd be impressed upon them as the one and only thing you'd ever be, you couldn't have suspected that in its own way, it was a ******* death sentence for you and for the kind of life you'd always dreamed about living, for no, you'd never get a woman like that, you'd never attract a wife or girlfriend or any female who'd want to have and raise children with you, for you were the ******* fool, you were the freak of life who'd made them laugh for years and that's all you'd ever be, and that lie you'd told yourself that that's how you'd win them all over, through laughter, that was only for men with money, men with striking hair and striking good looks, men with the patience and the intelligence and the soul to endure the pains of having to reinvent oneself, and this last one, this was most definitely not you--you had told them all in action and in spirit to go **** themselves--you never had to say and they never had to hear it, especially the way you'd gone about things: first by making them laugh and then when you discovered the ugly repercussions of your choice, by ignoring them completely, by seeing them and saying nothing, by not even greeting them--this is how they had come to eventually you, for what were you now but this controllable, unpredictable creature that did one thing and then did another totally unrelated to the first?--yes, you had succeeded in doing exactly what you'd never wanted to happen: they feared you, they stayed the **** away from you, and you were never on their minds in any way you'd like to smile and swell upon...unless of course you had finally sold yourself to the fiend, unless you'd come to see that you had always been the fiend, that you had only tried to re-invent yourself as something other than the great satan and when you'd failed, all that was left for you to do was to smile at your own isolation and loneliness, for isn't this what would've happened in any case, even if you hadn't tried to make them laugh as a desperate gambit to win them over?--so no, you weren't about to share with her the dream you'd had where you two had lived in the same apartment building but in different suites, that one day in this dream she'd come over and after spending some time together you two had come to see how much you'd always had in common and never knew it, so much so that you had fallen in love and married and broken up all in the span of minutes when after a brief conversation you found yourself alone all over again and looking over at the spot where she'd sat and wondering why it always had to be like this even in your dreams--why bother sharing something that she'd find funny as hell when it had been the crux of your soul?--that your suffering would be the cause of her laughter, something that she'd share with her friends and end with, "...can you imagine that?: being married to him?!"--it's not even that it was too much to conceive of, but that it was only more than natural for you to conclude a dream of trying to connect with her, or with anyone--that you had seen failure in your mind long before you would ever consider trying to talk to her or any of them in real life, this is what made you want to walk away smiling at yourself because in some outré way, you'd always been right about them being beneath you, so beneath you that you had to play the fool to entertain the idea that they were worthy of your time...it was only that you'd forgotten your true worth and when you remembered, it's not like it was a celebration of your acumen or ability, no--it was just another ******* funeral you'd love attending in the rain and with that smile spreading wider and wider and that threatened to crack open the very jaws of life and death in its silent scream--