Structure

That man, staring at you, he must be thinking about what you listen to when you have sex. The truth is, you don’t listen to anything. Listening to music while having sex is bizarre. Maybe he doesn’t know this. Maybe he does. I can see you trying to slug his eyes over your shoulder—they’re heavy—and sling them on someone else. He must be drawing a blank. Coming infinitesimally close to the answer before considering other options. He almost had it, too. No, no, he wasn’t even close.
The man sitting next to me with glass-on, balding, with the facial expression of a squeezed pimple, is doomed by perversion. You can tell just by looking at him. He is truly indivertible. Don’t stand a chance; not a fraction. Call it early, before you start rambling. Before you start sweating. Stop at the bookstore before going home. Look, buddy, staring at a man that way would instigate a fight, what gives—you refrain from making jaw-clenching, constipated faces at him.
And yet you want to know what’s going on inside his head.
I meet you after class, prattle about a little some of that, prattle about a little some of this, we should mosey over to the park, we mosey over to the park, no one’s paying attention to the traffic going by. That facial expression says…just because you’re lonely doesn’t mean you want to be with someone. Would you get that? I got that all from a facial expression.
We lie beneath the swings, laughing until we reach poignancy. We wonder if wishing that your husband wasn’t so depressed is a cruel thought or not. Is relative happiness just a euphemism?

“You’d be the guy wearing glasses in that story,” I comment.
“Not a doubt in my mind,” you confirm, your mind somewhere else entirely. Where the hell are you? What is so fascinating about all these places you go?
“You make me want to suffer and brood horrible thoughts, to try and find meaning out of life.”
“You make it look easy.”
I chuckle. We’re watching pigeons terrorize each other over bird seed.
“If you were a superhero, you’d make architectural masterpieces with your mind.”
“You make it sexy to be depressed.” I picture a woman kicking their legs frantically, taking off into the air, trying to stop, trying to stop, lift off. “Beats making buildings imo.”
“Did you just say imo?”
You laugh.
“Fucking nerd.”
You want to hear about social situations; social situations I have with women, in particular. I just rattle along, trying to stimulate the looming ocean of gray matter in that head of yours. When you pick anything apart like this it tends to…become watered down, defeat its own purpose. I’m guessing that’s the point. Dissect and compartmentalize, break down until it’s an emotion you recognize, build it up build it up build it up until you’re at the top of it, inside, a new and completely different emotion! I’ve never felt sorry for someone so drastically more intelligent than I am. How can people bore you so much and yet you never stop fixating on them? Objectifying an actual person must be thematic for you.
I am sitting on this bench, alone. I am sharing my thoughts with a pigeon. There is no one else here. The pigeon and I have come to a mutual understanding. We both have our doubts. The understanding was so temporary it just gave us the time to get away. Blasted pigeon.

Two Asian kids, sitting adjacent from each other, trying to figure each other out, both of them stumped. The male is doing magic tricks; she finds him charming, but not because of the magic tricks. If this was the first romantic notion I’d ever had in my life, I wouldn’t be ashamed. You could do much worse. Like trying to reach out to people through writing. And yet, it’s the main reason people write if they even write at all.
Pigeon: have you ever read a paragraph that wasn’t sexual and by the end of it you’re beside yourself, absolutely helpless? Big beady watering eyes. You make pigeon noises. Don’t worry, if I was a pigeon, I’d be confused too. What a shitty existence, to be you. Don’t you think? My brain allows me to feel a wider and more detailed range of emotions than you can. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Think about how happy we’d be if we were retarded.
You look so wretched when you’re stricken with sensuality. You sit there, frustrated and flustered, in love with no one at all. You pick apart the things people say that most people can tell aren’t thought twice about. Ulterior motives and subliminal meaning. Just because you look for it doesn’t mean it’s there. And when you know it’s not there and yet you’re still looking for it, have you gotten any closer? Look at you, tumultuous!
When you get no ass out of it after trying your best, it’s called a learning experience.
There is no hope, little pigeon. Have strangers talked about the world ending, with you? Have they gotten into the semantics? You make a pigeon noise, looking at me as if you have no idea what I’m talking about. Don’t be coy; you think I haven’t already thought of the complications?
They weep over their love, as if it’s something they don’t have an infinite amount of it. Humans are truly fickle creatures. They love you, force you to try and feel things, to be in love when you’re not, to feel love when you don’t. He’s busy writing a textbook about you; you should dash his hopes and tell him you live your life on a set path easily fulfilled and set by only the basest of desires. It leaves much to be wished, but at least you’re not star struck over total strangers! All this misplaced passion. Don’t tell me you love me, I don’t want to hear it. I’ll love you if you pay me by this amount every hour; is that really so unreasonable? But now…you don’t believe me; you don’t think that love isn’t genuine? You don’t think I could love money as much as I could a person? You think its preposterous? Well, then where’d you breed your love kiddo: ARF?
Pigeon, isn’t it absurd? We nod solemnly at each other, pensive. You buy me a hotdog as I fail to notice your existence while I’m displacing my rage on the piece of bread I was breaking crumbs from for you. You are hoping that I will compensate for your kindness, failing to notice your masterplan. Tsk tsk, I wag my finger at you.
Think of all the people I could love in that lover’s stead.
You thrive with structure, yet become paralyzed by the possibilities of wide open spaces.
All the people!
Are you going to tolerate this…this freak, superfluous with love, demanding your own?
It surprises me that you can fly. It’s pretty amazing, that pigeons can fly. You’re the most mellow person I’ve ever met. You hut around, making tiny hops, making your noises in the face of danger, making your noises.
So do you think it’s better to just give up and let unconditional love dominate you? Give up for now, try again later, hoping with time that you’ll actually just forget about it, probably never going to try again? You will get your day in the sun, just like everybody else. But you have to wait your turn. You can’t just push people out of the way, they’ll get miffed.
Let’s drink over it. Let’s play dumb. What’s your poison. Yeah, I’m a hemlock guy myself.
Out there, on your own, in all that open space, that’s where the danger lies. You’ll begin to believe you can move the sun if you stare at it long enough. There’s no reason you shouldn’t, after spending all that time in front of your TV, or whatever you watch that now substitutes for your TV. My…what happened to you? My God did you lose your face?
You come back, expecting me not to recognize you after all this time. You locked yourself in your own closet and thought about them, trying to measure how much more in love you were by the second, just to scientifically prove how much distance makes the heart grow fonder.
Just because you have more insulation doesn’t compensate for your lack of a wall.
I was deprived of a Tomagachi, when I was a kid. Unresolved mother issues, broiling to the surface.
What units did you measure all that love in?

I’ve lost most of the staring contests I’ve had with pigeons. Their stare is inexorable. It can break a man.
You…you are intoxicating. I am obsessed with you. You’re so young, nubile...it’s easy to forget how quickly one can be an adult these days if they skip the basics. It’s like trying to pretend you actually have to search for someone during hide and seek if you refuse to shut your eyes. What’s up with these lovers playing hide and seek? There are such obvious conflicts of self-interest. I don’t understand it.
Fucking retards.
Roleplaying during a game of hide and seek that you actually might just not be able to find all the places people can hide themselves without asking for help, inability to ask for help, these are father issues, most positively…
The last words I ever said to you would be so different if I’d known I was never going to talk to you again.
You’re a great drinker. You don’t seem to care about the details, sitting there, concentrating hard on making your noises. It’s almost as if you go into another zone; you’re mesmerized, enchanted by your noises. You’d make a great lover, too. I could make you tiny little pants or something if you ever began to feel overexposed.
Understanding someone just has to do with listening to someone without interrupting them.
In trying to measure love, you didn’t understand how you could measure so much of it a week before she left you. I tried to tell you that measuring love probably required two people, but you wouldn’t have it. You were determined to feel everything for her if she was unable to. You took matters into your own hands: you became both sides of the relationship. There was nothing that you couldn’t solve now. You took yourself seriously for a couple hours. I tried not to laugh and if I did it was at your brazen earnestness, which you should find as a compliment.
How are you, stranger. Are you over my personal legal age, the one I set for myself that’s lower than the law’s? Why, you have no face! Did someone steal it from you, or are you so careless as to have lost it? They must’ve stole it, why, that’s absurd. Someone losing their own face. Well, I wouldn’t worry that much about it. You could always just steal someone else’s, if you were desperate. Just wait until they enter a wide, open space, then snatch it from them in their state of bedazzlement.