Out on the Cutting Edge

I wanted a drink. There were a hundred reasons why a man will want a drink, but I wanted one now for the most elementary reason of all. I didn't want to feel what I was feeling, and a voice within was telling me that I needed a drink, that I couldn't bear it without it. But that voice is a liar. You can always bear the pain. It'll hurt, it'll burn like acid in an open wound, but you can stand it. And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going.

We're all whirling merrily through the void on a dying planet, and gay people are just doing their usual number, being shamelessly trendy as always. Right out in front on the cutting edge of death.

You can always bear the pain. It’ll hurt, it’ll burn like acid in an open wound, but you can stand it. And, as long as you can make yourself go on choosing the pain over the relief, you can keep going. “I

was thinking about getting myself a VCR. I could see any movie I wanted any time of the day, and it doesn’t cost but two or three dollars to rent one. But it’s not the same, watching on your own set in your own room, and on a bitty TV screen. It’s like the difference between praying at home and in church.

I went into the bathroom and caught sight of my reflection in the mirror over the sink. All my years looked back at me, and I could feel their weight, pressing down on my shoulders. I ran the shower hot and stood under it for a long time...

New York is like that, and a sizable percentage of the people who work for the local government regard their salaries as a sort of base they get in return for reporting to work every morning.

Around one-thirty it started raining lightly. Almost immediately the umbrella sellers turned up on the streetcorners. You'd have thought they had existed previously in spore form, springing miraculously to life when a drop of water touched them.

The Players are gentlemen,” he’d intoned, “pretending to be actors. The Lambs are actors, pretending to be gentlemen. And the Friars—the Friars are neither, pretending to be both.