Here come the pretentious narratives. I'm so, so sorry for this. Apologies to A.D. for part of the first paragraph and to Stephen King for the last line. It fit.

___________

Which brought him to the uselessness of articles. Entire languages and cultures had survived and even thrived without them; so many naming names wasn't even needed. Take the basic phrase "pass me the wrench." How about "pass me that wrench"? Or "pass me a wrench" complete with a pointing gesture? Or, of course, the thought that brought him to the original disclosure, "wrench me"? Sure, it sounds like it could easily be misinterpreted but weren't we already nothing without context and aren't we all someday going to context to die?

11 am and he was disgusted by titles. Would a clever use of something that had sounded like a name really be that distressing that it has to always be equated to a name? Would "Flowers For Algernon" be any less of a story if the title had had some significance to the writer and those in the know to the reference without the existence of a rat named Algernon in the story? Maybe he was wrong and it really would have, of course. Maybe "Flowers and Distress for Lucy" with "Lucy" representing the link found in the western United States during the late 80s and not an actual character named Lucy or "April Brings Rose" without a character named April resulting in the meeting of the protagonist with a romantic interest named Lucy would have caused intense peristalsis and awkward twitching and paranoia resulting in insomnia and such terrible bouts of alcoholism that the story would have to be rewritten such so that a character named April resulting in the meeting of the protagonist with a romantic interest named Rose would indeed exist. Good Will Hunting was just the fox, as it were.

12 am and he imagined the Mona Lisa surrounded by casual merchandise dying, her entire body twitching in peristalsis as foam poured out her mouth as if gagged by a phallus forced down her throat mercilessly. 1 am and his fourth grade teacher once told him he could tell a simile from a metaphor by remembering "and a smile" because a simile included like or as and a metaphor did not but he wasn't fucking smiling. Similes were never as clever, of course, and he did have a penchant for the clever. He wondered if maybe the titlers were just worried that girls would enjoy them more if in the end they veered towards the seemingly heartfelt and not the seemingly clever.

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It was a small gathering at Mary's and he (or maybe it was Sal or Eli) had entered with no particular plan, much less forseeing fucking anybody by the end of the night. And there was no mistake to be made, this was not going to be mutual sexual contact between himself and his recipient of considerably ugly (realistically) penetration. It may start out as such; he was aware that these things can feel good to anyone, even the very inexperienced, but he was also aware that in most cases any girls' first time is going to quickly become painful even if he was not particularly well endowed, which he knew he wasn't, to his eternal social level of neither approval nor laughter. Of course, he could easily have made it easier for her by just about any method but the one he was going to use aside from the ones that would likely result in her saying anything, but he knew that even veering towards making it easier for her would increase the odds of her estimating that he might be compassionate and, once again, saying anything, and that was not a viable option. His basic plan was to start off by counterbalancing her understandable fear by ensuring that she felt good, and then move on to completely have his way (or what he thought might be his way even if he knew it wasn't in reality) with her once she had already given what she would later view as consent. She was a smart girl, but a shy, unpopular one aside from Mary, who engaged in this sort of routine without her half being nonconsensual more or less weekly. Any shy girl whose best friend is renowned as a slut is bound to look down on her while secretly wondering what the whole experience is about, he had figured. Earlier in the night, during conversation and light drinking (not nearly enough that either of them could write off what was going to happen because of it) he had realized that she was at the precisely correct time of her life and teenaged personality crisis for him to do what he was going to do. She had been stood up by her friends the night before, she wanted to change, she knew that Mary was popular and partially because of her promiscuity, he was a quasi-friend she knew relatively little about and seemed to figure was a well-liked person. They were to sleep in the same bed later that night.

Mary: If you touch her I'll fucking kill you.

He had no real reason to listen. He was already in a different tier of the glorious education system. His real friends were elsewhere, and these ones were really only having him around because he was cooler for being older and he was only around for casual maniacal exploitations like so. It was quite wonderfully perfect in the purely mechanical sense. So now it was night time and they both lay in less clothing than normal, him facing one wall and her the other, both on their sides. They were by far not that drunk. He would tell his friends of course, and she would cry of course, and his friends (the ones among whom her virginity would be a very significant social feather in his cap) would have to call her to laugh at her later of course, and he would lose something over this of course, but how could he really pass up such a perfect oppurtunity? He turned and wrapped his arm around her midriff to turn her around as well.

The rest was something of a blur of would-be-spokens and "not at all gentle" and complete silencing of the inner monologue and he was sure not to ever kiss her and when it was done he told her in a quiet but very serious voice somewhere above whispering but below just talking quietly that he had a girlfriend and she can't tell anybody about it. He was sure to be gone before she woke up the next morning and he knew it would cost him a girlfriend he didn't really want since her best friend was Mary and Mary was friends with the aforementioned significant other. In fact it would, combined with the later episode involving her and some of the more cruel of his friends cost him that entire social ellipse, but who needed them and who could pass up such a perfect oppurtunity, regardless of cost? Even years later he would reason that it was worth it. Of course, he wished he remembered more of the details immediately, and of course he would only want to do it again, and again and again because once you've embraced your inner monster in any way it, in isolation mind you, only becomes obsessed with recreating the high. Heroin addicts call it "chasing the dragon" - trying to re-experience the feeling of that first pure high. It often results in the use of more and more heroin to satisfy that that urge, even to the point of overdose. The dragon isn't exactly easy prey.

______

2 am and he reasoned with a self-inflicted snicker that he cared more about his sprained thumb from basketball two nights ago than he did about the starving orphaned North Korean masses. It was, he thought, a conflict that would probably arise in anyone remotely interested in introspection constantly. Bill Gates with a toothache is still temporarily a very unhappy Bill Gates. A very common conflict indeed.

3 am and he reasoned that she probably cared more about her brief and most likely not significantly life changing encounter than about the aforementioned masses as well. So that aspect of them was really the same, and neither of them would be too dramatically influenced. Neither of them would learn anything or grow as people. Just another social and personal setback for her, really, even if it was one that would be remembered much longer than most.

4 am and he couldn't see how any book or sonnet or tome could ever justify the written word. You don't even have the ones I have.

"Oh god help me get through this. I am corrupt in stomach, I am sick in window, I cannot see through even the lightest glass. My own cold ignorance is closing in on me and all I can see fit to do is offer it a fuck and clear a straight path when I know any man would have done the same sans the struggle that probably wasn't in my original intent. How can I move on when I don't know? How will I ever come to grips with all that lies ahead when what came behind still seems so inexplicable and intricate? I wish I could do anything else that didn't involve doing violence to the facts because anything more would be unfair to them. I can give myself hundreds of answers but the real truth lies somewhere where I'll probably never have the real answer and four limp quotation marks can't hide my own obsessions and deviations. We're all so young and disaffected and then we were even younger and moreso disaffected and now my friends are moving on with their lives. Help me Toronto help me Mineral help me Leonard Cohen it's coming time to face up to everything I've failed to contain and it's turned from anxiety into growing resignation and now I don't even want to fuck anymore god help me."

5 am. "For" is a waste of time, space and effort. Either they already know or they'll never see it. I'm wired and want for anything and it's a million empty bottles on a mantle until the day I push them all of on top of the broken bodies of each other and eat the glass. Ladyfingers they taste just like ladyfingers.