I am not a chair. Or a cane. I am not built for constant leaning or sitting. You can’t depend on me that way.

I can only teach you to sit.

There are plenty of places to sit down if you want. I won’t bore you with an endless list. All you need is gravity and the desire not to fight. It’s first nature.

So, yes, I care and no I can’t help you. I have no change to spare and I have no wisdom to impart. If I had any, it would be to get some and don’t let go.

We are not satisfied with waking up every morning only do the same thing we did yesterday. We want horizons and terrible adventures. We are looking for place we don’t recognize. We are dancing to a beat we aren’t sure we understand. All of our mistakes are preludes to revelation, all of our tears preludes to getting there. Stop waiting for us to grow or give up. We only want to lose our fear. Everything else, we want to squeeze between our palms and grind like an orange. We want to lick the juice from our fingers and touch the world with gluey palms so everything sticks.

He wants to tell her so many things. His mind is like those old game shows with the chamber rigged up to blow dollar bills everywhere and the contestant has to grab as much as he can before it stops. When the wind tunnel stops, it’s always a disappointment.

No, rather, his mind is like a barrel of eels swimming in olive oil and he cannot pick one up for the life of him. His thoughts slither, shed, become new thoughts, disguise themselves, hiding like invaders. He cannot tell her anything.

He sees the ball coming and the bat won’t connect.

He wants to tell her its about money. Why won’t she make more? He wants to say its about sex. What happened to them? He doesn’t say these things. Instead, he says other things–vague, general things that only inflame her. She wants to help. Just tell me, she says, tell me anything.

He can’t tell her anything. He doesn’t know. He wishes he could just open up his skull and show her: here, this is my resentment, all black and oily and impossible to unstick. Don’t get close to it or some will get on you. His sadness is a tarpit. This is what he wants to say, but he doesn’t.

I’m here, she assures him, no matter what. Ok, he says. It doesn’t matter to him now, but it will. And so they hold on.

After years of outracing Responsibility, the monster finally had him in its claws. They were having a baby. Actually, she was going to have the baby and him too. His friends with kids had already told him what to expect. Forget about happiness, forget about ever having any money ever again, forget mobility and freedom. From now on, he had a life of drudgery, answering yes and nossir, to look forward to for the rest of his life. Infrequent sex and no oral. The descent of the three harpies Bitch, Moan and Nag. He had become the tragic hero of a Greek play. His back was now a flatbed truck hauling the weight of the universe. No one spoke to him of Love. It had become a non-issue. His relationship to the woman and the child she carried now had the consequence of Law. It was no longer a free choice, but a mission. He woke up each morning, his face a sculpture of grave determination and resolve. He showered like a gladiator preparing for his final battle. As he drove to work, fighting against the asthmatic sludge of traffic, he listened to the news with grim satisfaction and considered the impending Apocalypse inevitably factual. He imagined the freeways full of abandoned cars and ex-studio executives wandering the shoulders in tattered suits lamenting their fates to a cold uncaring God above. He pictured the skyscrapers neglected and moth-chewed, unwashed little children playing in puddles from busted water mains. Nothing anyone could do could change this. The genetic capacity for heroism had been bred out of man. All that was left was a slow, inexorable tumble into the sun and, then, finally, nothing. Barely suppressing a giggle, he could hardly wait.