There Follows A Little Obscenity Here, A

And Then There Were The Wallflowers Who Had Recognized For Years That The Thing Was Hopeless, Who Had Found In That Information A Kind Of Calm. They No Longer Tried, With A Bright And Desperate Effort, To Sustain A Conversation With Somebody's Brother, Somebody's Usher, Somebody's Roommate, Somebody's Roommate's Usher's Brother... The Category Of Wallflower Who Had Given Up On All This Was Very Quiet, Not Indifferent, Only Quiet. And She Always Brought A Book.

There Is A Difference, Of Course, Between Real Sentiment And The Trash Of Shared Experience.

My Dislike Has No Consequences. It Accrues Only In My Mind—like Preserves On A Shelf Or Guns Zeroing In, And Never Firing.

A Favorite Strategy Was The Paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed Immediately By Wrong. This Linear Invitation To A Mugging Was Considered A Strategy Of Wit.

Did I Throw The Most Important Thing Perhaps, By Accident, Away?