* * *
You want to go to Palo. To hug him, to hold him. But you don’t know him. And you’re not wearing pants. Leave him alone.
* * *
Let Palo try to find some value in suffering, I am so tired, some compelling narrative for misery, no, bored, some justification for solitude, no, inept, some love for being, no, alone, yes all those tired bored inept alone of it, it being story, it being being, it being perhaps the most versatile word in the English language, it being able to satisfy many parts of speech, be it subject or object, direct or indirect to a verb, object to a preposition, it being a pronoun referencing a lifeless thing, a stone, an inanimate life, a tree or dead raccoon, a sexless being, you, or an abstract entity, me, it just needs to be a verb too, to be everything, to form a complete sentence, It it it., but It hit it. or It lit it. or It bit it. or It fit it. is as close as it gets, as I get, let Palo try it, let him hit it, let him flog it, let him light it let him bite it let him fight it, let him value compel justify love it. I cannot it.
* * *
You go to him. He is kneeling over the hole. Below the hole is the ground, which stops moving. The train stops at his stop, which is the only stop. You present him with these pages as toilet paper because he has not wiped because the train does not carry toilet paper because it does not cater to its customers because it is a public service and does not want to encourage the use of its facilities and he has nothing to wipe with besides his raccoon and you want to wear the raccoon. He wipes with these pages-cum-wastepaper. The air in these tight confines is fresh because of the negative or positive pressure gradient created by the air rushing below the hole when the train was hurtling forward, the airbelowthehole’s greater relative velocity and lower pressure sucking the foul stagnant air in the bathroom out, which sucked better air in from the train car and cracked windows and loose joints. If everything were sealed perhaps all the air in the train car would be sucked out this hole, still open, the flapper still unshut. But all that is in the past: the train stops and the wind is broken and the air does not move and Palo drops these soiled pages through the hole where they go nowhere but a few feet down and lie in a small smeared pile on the gravel below.
While he wipes you put on his warm rotten squelching raccoon. He does not stop you. This toilet paper for an eviscerated raccoon breechclout: that is the transaction. With the raccoon head between your legs you feel better about hugging him, and you do, but it is like hugging a hole. You are not sure you hug him. He goes like you are not there.
* * *
What I can do, what I do do, is sing in an attractive voice in an enchanting rhythm with seductive words I am sick of. The question is do I have the focus, the fortitude, the strength of heart to see this through, the self-restraint and commitment and discipline to do what I set out to do, the purposed hole and harnessed desire and penetration of mind to eliminate myself from the story and destroy Palo and thereby discover what it is to be? I can imagine nothing more devastating than for him to encounter those whom he has destroyed, these wives and children, is destroying, destroys by his presence, by his infidelity, by his broken faith, broken again and again in its reiteration, nothing more shaming, nothing more disgracing, nothing more. It will be good for you too when I go, we will discover together, we will be engaged engaging life apart, just relax, don’t relax too much, relax your mind but don’t lie there like a log, move with me a little, roll where I roll, push back where I push, touch where I touch, fit our shapes together, we are geometry, what will fit in the ring?, yes a hole but there is already a hole in the ring, there, yes be on top put the round hole on the round peg, okay put anything that fits into the round hole in the round hole, anything that fits whether it’s round or not, that’s novel and functional, purposing all these pieces that don’t fit, it doesn’t have to fit perfectly, of course it does but we take what we can get, I’m sorry there’s these edges and corners and I am covered in this inveterate plastic film but I have no protection, take what you can get, be in control be yourself be out of control lose yourself get me loose yourself take me in please take me please push me in please pull me in please all my pieces please get me out of here please all my shreds into you please all my please into your please.