Death Is The Room That Is Always

Piers Is Always Going On About How He Hated Stowe. As If That Solves Everything, As If To Hate Something Means It Can't Have Affected You.

It's Like The Day You Realize Dolls Are Dolls. I Pick Up My Old Self And I See It's Silly. A Toy I've Played With Too Often. It's A Little Sad, Like An Old Golliwog At The Bottom Of The Cupboard. Innocent And Used-up And Proud And Silly.

Ask Me To Marry You." "will You Marry Me?" "no.

I Suppose I'd Had, By The Standards Of That Pre-permissive Time, A Good Deal Of Sex For My Age. Girls, Or A Certain Kind Of Girl, Liked Me; I Had A Car-not So Common Among Undergraduates In Those Days-and I Had Some Money. I Wasn't Ugly; And Even More Important, I Had My Loneliness, Which, As Every Cad Knows, Is A Deadly Weapon With Women. My 'technique' Was To Make A Show Of Unpredictability, Cynicism, And Indifference. Then, Like A Conjurer With His White Rabbit, I Produced The Solitary Heart.

It Came To Me…that I Didn’t Want To Be Anywhere Else In The World At That Moment, That What I Was Feeling At That Moment Justified All I Had Been Through, Because All I Had Been Through Was My Being There. I Was Experiencing…a New Self-acceptance, A Sense That I Had To Be This Mind And This Body, Its Vices And Its Virtues, And That I Had No Other Chance Or Choice.