Kill Your Darlings

Clichés get a bad rap.  Especially in writing, though not without due cause.  You can only deal with so much wind howling on dark and stormy nights (he said, through clenched teeth).  When it comes to the human element, stereotypes face an additional obstacle to overcome, since we tend to compartmentalize for conveniency's sake.  It's not that everyone who lives in a trailer park is necessarily banging his sister; in fact, I've had several friends who have lived in trailer parks, some of which were quite upscale and better than many of the houses I have lived in, and as far as I know not a one was involved in carnal relations with a sibling (then again, it's not like I asked, either).  These "types" are just how we classify: the Asian student who is good at math; the buxom blonde who can't add.  In writing these are kisses of death, because more often than not they highlight a certain laziness on the part of the author.  Your first instinct is usually wrong, because writers, like most people, are inherently lazy.  You have to chew past the outside tough and bland layers to get to the really tasty, flavorful stuff.  Kinda like a dragonfruit.  I guess that applies to most fruits.  Except, you know, the ones with thin skins.

I am not averse to hard work.  OK.  That is a lie.  I am an extremely lazy mutherfucker in many regards.  I'd rob a bank before I'd spend another day digging ditches for the Man (and, no, that is not a cliché; I actually had a job digging ditches.  It was in Minnesota, working for Labor Ready, which is day labor, back when I was a hobo hitching it town to town.  Literally, I'd dig a seven-foot ditch, drop in cable, fill; repeat.  I also, technically, robbed a bank.  I mean, if you steal money from a bank, even if you are doing it with bad checks (or rather, lots and lots of bad checks), you still robbed it, no?).  Back when I was an ice cream man with my buddy, Rich, when we were kids, I remember the boss once saying to the new guy, "You work like Rich; you no work like Joe."  I guessing eating your salary and weight in Strawberry Shortcake bars makes one a bad worker.  But when it comes to my art, I work as hard as anyone.  In the words of Phil Marlowe, Get it through your lovely head.  I work at it, lady, I don't play at it.

"Kill your darlings" is a writing expression that refers to rewriting.  When you finish a draft, your inner editor must cast a cold, critical eye on the working product, slashing and cutting those selections and pretty phrases you love most, as a means to establish the requisite disconnect, employing the impersonal judgment that is necessary to get the job done right.  It's an essential component, since this writing shit is not done in a vacuum; there is audience to consider.  We're not writing a chapbook here about pumpkin cookie recipes.  We want truth.  We want heart and soul.  We want mass appeal and multi-book deals.  We want it all.

Goddamn, I love a good cliché.  Always have.  A well-timed cliché can resonate. Because sometimes a situation itself is so powerful, the best thing we can do is get out of our own way, and trying to add flair on top of that is overkill.  This happens a lot in rock 'n' roll, where frequently bad lyrics ruin a good song.  A cliché is a defense around this.  It is possible to write an entire song composed of nothing but.

I'm not saying a writer should litter his or her works with tired, oft-heard phrases. Obviously, you want your writing to be as fresh and original as possible.  Still, what makes it tougher for me is the fact that I am, myself, a cliché.

Let's take a look at the work that has influenced me most.

Favorite Book 

Catcher in the Rye.  If you've read this blog for more than a day, you know this is my favorite book.  I read it for the first time in front of Syd Barrett's house at 19, and I've read it every year since.  I named my son Holden.  The book has turned into a cliché for every troubled young man and would-be psychopath.  I carried this book in my right hand across America, riding in Greyhounds, with bags full of my laundry http://tinyurl.com/79qwqx4, as I searched the subways and alleyways and empty local bars looking for...the ghost of Dean Moriarty.

Favorite Author

No, it's not Salinger.  It's Jack Kerouac.  If we have another boy, I will not be naming him Jack, though, since Jack (or Jackson) is, like, the 2nd most popular name in this country, and we all know popular equates to stupid (i.e., fat tarts in New Jersey); I will be naming him Billy Pilgrim (pretty fucking cool, eh?).  And there are lots of other books that have helped define me and that I think are brilliant. If I made a Top Ten List, and I just might, I don't think a single Kerouac book would make the list (Subterraneans might sneak in).  The fact is, Kerouac is an author you have to read in your 20s, and then never again.  Not sure why that is.  I mean, you can go back and re-read On the Road, just like you can go back and re-watch The Breakfast Club, and they still might be good, but they'll never move you like they did when you were young.

Favorite Musician

Bruce Fucking Springsteen.  Which I believe gives me the trifecta of the All-American cliché.  I sat on the hood of a Dodge and drank beer by the lake (Swede's Pond), and fell in love with a girl (KatieAmySherriDarling), whose house, yes, I drove by the other day, as the sweet summer light began to fade.  How many broken heroes can you cram into one 8-minute long song?  About as many times as you can sing "Backstreets" (approx. 30).  The man is Americana.  Blue jeans, T-shirts, and broken hearts.

No, that's not the Boss.  That's Gaslight Anthem.  Meet the new Boss.  Same as the old Boss.

I wear blue jeans and white T-shirts.  I have a reformed criminal, addict past (and I write about it!).  I have my ex-wives names tattooed on my body, which as I sit now is naked from the waist up (yes, biceps bulging), with my new chain I got from my latest wife for Christmas, and when I look in the mirror, it reminds me of when I went back to live with my mother after my last stint in rehab, when I'd said goodbye to my 20s.

"I'm glad to have you back, Joey," my mom said.

"Don't call me 'Joey.'  Makes me feel like a big fat 30-year-old Italian guy who still lives with his mother."

My mother paused.  "Well, you have put on a little weight."

I like motorcycles.  Can't ride them anymore since "the accident."  I like curvy blondes (can still ride them, but we have to be careful because of the hardware the doc put in).  And I like a good fight.

Favorite Movie

Rocky.  Like my friend Jimmy says, that theme song could wake a corpse.  There is only 7 minutes worth of actual fighting in that entire film.  It's not really a movie about boxing.  But it is all about the fight.  On the surface, it's a film about a punch-drunk thuggo, in love with a dopey girl at a turtle shop, who gets one last chance to prove he's not a bum.  But the key is when Rocky realizes right before he steps in the ring with Apollo Creed (what a great fucking character name) that he cannot win.  Nothing he does in that ring will produce a victory; he is outmatched.  In terms of punching power, speed, skill. But by losing he can still win if he can only will himself to stay on his feet until the final bell.  Take the beating, keep moving forward.  An American aesthetic.  More like a religion.

This is who I am, this is what I do, and it has been shaped by the very art you'd expect from a man still angry at his father.  You don't get rich playing another man's game.  (I should've been around in the '50s.  Like Fonzie.)  You find what you do, and you try and do it well.  And you take inspiration wherever you can find it.  No one said it was going to be easy.

Debra Morgan

I don't know how many of you watch the Showtime series Dexter.  Even if you don't, you probably know the premise by now; it's been around a while.  But just in case, here's a quick summary.  Dexter (Michael C. Hall) works for Miami Metro as a blood-splatter specialist.  He is also a serial killer, but he only kills people who deserve it, so he's not one of those bad serial killers.  There's lots of stuff about a "code," and he refers to his need to kill as his "dark passenger," and his dead father's ghost appears, offering advice.  It sounds a little goofy when you put it like that, and the show probably jumped the shark (I hate myself for using that expression) a couple seasons ago, but the writing is still better than most, even if they are running out of believable ways to introduce deserving victims for Dexter to slay.  (Who knew Miami was crawling with so many homicidal lunatics?  I lived there and had no idea!  Lazy, brain-dead douchebags, sure, but all these madmen, makes me glad I didn't leave my condo on the beach more often.)

The theme song and intro is one of the better ones.

The acting is pretty good, and Michael C. Hall proves a likable protagonist.  In a weird way, I enjoy seeing Miami from afar.  Sorta like revisiting the playground where the bully chipped your tooth on the monkey bars; you derive a perverse satisfaction in having moved on to a better place.  

It's a neat little ensemble cast.  There's no reason to list the actors who play these parts.  Fuck, I don't even care enough to look up the correct spelling of the character's names.  There's Batista and Quinn and LaGuerta, and this creepy little oversexed Asian dude, Masuka.  Overall, it's hardly a Breaking Bad.  I wouldn't even put it on par with The Walking Dead.  Then again, neither of those shows have what Dexter has.  Namely, Debra Morgan.

Deb Morgan is the character played by Jennifer Carpenter, who is Michael C. Hall's ex-wife in real life.  Hall also just got over cancer.  Not sure why either of those details is relevant, but there you go.  On the show she plays Dexter's sister. Anyway, this blog has four revolving topics: writing, that proverbial dead horse we've been beating the shit out of for the last two weeks.

Then there's my mental illness and this new journey I'm on, fatherhood (those are two separate topics.  Most of the time).  Lastly, there are the posts about the women, specifically the numerous ways I have loved, lost, and contracted a venereal disease; the women who drive me mad with...I'm not sure what.  I wouldn't say desire, necessarily.  It's more about approaching the subject through the eyes of a 12-year-old boy, which would make them girls I guess, and the way you view them at that age, a time when they were still magical and you didn't have their names tattooed on your chest or know the pleasure of working with a divorce lawyer.  Part of me still thinks about them like that, at the fairs and dances, the way my palms would get all sweaty just thinking about her, the fun part, before the work.  I guess the word would be "crush."

And I have a serious crush on Deb Morgan.

Every time I watch the show with my wife, Justine, the conversation is the same.

(Deb comes on screen)

Justine: I can't believe you have a thing for her.  Look at her!  She's gangly and awkward; she's got a body like a boy.  Look at how she dresses!  And she's a mess of a human being.  And her eyes are all wonky and crooked.  How can you possibly find her attractive?

Me: I love her.

One of my Facebook friends, Annie, was commenting on the strange appeal of Deb. She was speculating it might have something to do with her vulgar mouth, and she does swear up a shit-storm.  That's certainly part of it.  I mean, what guy doesn't love a classy girl who says fuck a lot?  

But I think it's more this: I know if Deb Morgan were my girlfriend she'd make me really really really unhappy.  She'd be an absolutely awful girlfriend, and most definitely cheat on me.  She'd take advantage of my love for her and take a giant dump on my heart.  And, obviously, that appeals to me.  

A little context.  

When my second wife left me for a friend in Houston, I was still in grad school in Miami, and it left me reeling from the rejection.  I was taking the whole thing pretty hard, a situation made worse by the fact that I still had to be writing and reading and taking tests and editing the magazine and all that.  I didn't have any time to do what I wanted, which was hole up in my apartment, chain-smoke and feel sorry for myself.  

I went to a reading one night, where I met up with a friend and his girlfriend.  It was very crowded.  We said hi, and then they went to get punch or something.  Anyway, I'm staring at the door, watching the people showing up, when this drop-dead gorgeous Eastern European-looking bombshell walks in, and she's got everything I like, the high cheekbones and long legs, absolutely stunning.  What really gets me is the eyes, that intense, soulful gaze, you know, the come hither stare, and I'm instantly in love.  I'm thinking, "Now THAT would help me get over my ex-wife."

My friend and his girl walk back over and see me staring like a cartoon fool, tongue hanging out, and my buddy's girlfriend is, like, "Oh, I see you've noticed so and so. She's a friend of mine."  And I'm thrilled, at last something's coming my way.  I say, "You have got to introduce me!" And she says, "Oh, no, I can't do that.  She's a schizophrenic alcoholic.  You need to stay away from her."  And I'm thinking, of course!  Because if a schizophrenic alcoholic walks into a room of 50, you better believe I'm zeroing in and falling in love.  In other words, my self-loathing runs pretty fucking deep.

The best relationships I've ever had have been the ones that occurred through no doing of my own.  Like moving next door to Justine, or being set up on blind dates, whatever.  All I know is if it is left up to me and my own devices, I will make the wrong choice every time.  

I pick the basketcases and the nutjobs, the ones who fall apart when they can't find their glass of water.

I think such women appeal to my messiah complex.  

My friend Rich says his father gave him three rules to live by: 1.) Never play cards with a man named "Doc" 2.) Never eat at a place called "Mom's," and 3.) Never lay down with a woman who has more problems than you do.  And I like those rules, but if I tried to live by them, I'd never get laid.

Maybe my crush on Debra Morgan is actually simpler than that.  Maybe it really is about viewing this through the lens of a 12-year-old boy.  Or, more accurately, a 16-year-old one, since I don't think I ever really matured past that age. 

By now you know my favorite book is Catcher in the Rye.  Hell, I named my son Holden, of course you know.  I think I am always after Jane Gallagher.  You remember her, right?  She was the girl Holden met that one summer up at their vacation home because her family's dog was always coming over and taking a shit on the Caulfield's lawn.  Holden runs into her later when he's at Pency, before that suave-looking bastard, Stradlater, tries to give her the time in fat-ass Ed Banky's car. Holden won't even go down to say hi to her when he finds out she is on a date with his roommate, and although he keeps talking about calling her up, he never does. Jane remains perfect, untouchable, because Holden knows it's never getting any better than his memory of her that summer they first held hands.  Any future interaction will only be a letdown.

Well, maybe Holden doesn't know that, exactly, but that's why I think he never gets in touch with her.  It's a fantasy, and you can control your fantasies, and in them you never, ever get hurt.

Plus, whenever Deb Morgan speaks, her mouth goes all muckle.  Just like Jane Gallagher's.  

Truth in Advertising: The Deception of Noir

One of the more interesting subdivisions of the writing world is the relationship between literary fiction and genre fiction (e.g., noir).  As a writer trying to straddle the two, if with a more sympathetic foot on the darker side of the street (or as Paul W. might say, with "one foot in the door, the other foot in the gutter...), I've discovered the presentation and promotion of both camps can be a bit deceptive. Kinda like Greenland vs. Iceland.

For those of you who are (like I) geographically challenged, that's Greenland on the left, the one covered with a fuckton of ice, looking about as hospitable as a summer's day on Hoth.  In one of the first examples of tourist duping, early settlers, attempting to lure workers to the snow-covered wasteland, came up with the idea of calling it"Greenland." (Ironically, Iceland [pictured on the right], is mostly green, but got saddled with the shittier island name.  Apparently only two names were left in the hat.)

I didn't start out intending to write one brand of fiction or the other.  In an early writing class I took after getting straight, the professor remarked that my voice betrayed a certain "hardboiled" edge.   Which I found remarkable.

"How weird!" I said.  "Because I read a lot of hardboiled authors."

Well, no shit, Joe.  That's how it works.  You are what you read (which is why, even though I haven't read the book in a few years, there is an undeniable Catcher in the Rye tone to my blog posts.  That's what you get when you read one goddamn book 6,432 times, ya phony bastards).

I soon learned that hardboiled/noir constitutes "genre," a five-letter dirty word in the writing world, and that if you wanted to be taken seriously, you needed to steer clear.  Fucking with genre is like fucking with venereal disease; you'll never shake its stigma.  I wanted to be taken seriously because I was still delusional enough to believe I'd have a legacy.  Seems crazy now, but I'd just gotten sober and my head was stuck pretty high in those pink clouds.  I was so much older than the other students, but with real world experience from which to mine; the (mostly self-imposed) standards were erected pretty goddamn high.

When I received an offer to study at Florida International University for my MFA, I found, by chance/luck/fate, that I'd ended up at a school deeply immersed in the mystery tradition, of which noir is a subset (or maybe it's the other way around). Department director Les Standiford's an accomplished mystery writer with several novels to his name, and Dennis Lehane (Mystic River) earned his Master's there. James W. Hall also taught in the program (not that he could pick me out of a line up of one), and my thesis advisor, Lynne Barrett, had spent a lot of time dissecting the inner-workings of mystery and suspense.  As a result, I started writing more noir and less literary fiction.  And I started having a lot more fun.  All the stodgy, overbearing themes and insufferable morality plays about sons who can't speak to their fathers over holiday dinner went out of the shattered bathroom window.  In its place were the wonderful criminals, the wounded and broken hearted, the morally bankrupt castoffs and fuck-ups who still try to do the right thing, even when all evidence points to the contrary.  Which made sense beyond just the fact that this is what I liked to read.  It's also the world I'd been living in for the past tent years.

This wouldn't even be worth remarking upon if there didn't exist such a chasm between the two schools.  I still write literary fiction, but I have to say, by and large, the purveyors of literary fiction tend to be pompous douches.  I know I am running the risk of over generalizing, and it's a big fucking field.  But I have been to one too many pretentious parties where "craft" is discussed as nauseum over plates of  over-rated cheeses.  I remember this one particular get-together at the AWP, a small gathering, where everyone (but me) had a fellowship, and they all wrote this brand of fiction, or poetry, all in the same uppity vein, and soon as you walked in the room, you felt drenched in the phoniness, the front of it all.  All one needs is a little validation to bring out their inner dick.  And, yeah, there was envy on my part, and I'm not saying they were bad people, and I'm certainly not saying they weren't good writers.  Still, little kindness or generosity emanated from that room.

Which is where I draw the biggest distinction between what separates the two camps, which ends up being fairly ironical.  Noir is a world populated by unsavory types doing unspeakable things, and its writers create hellish landscapes, where characters backstab, murder, and dismember (and not necessarily in that order), but in real life, the authors who write this stuff tend to be real sweethearts.

From David Corbett to Thuglit editor Todd "Big Daddy Thug" Robinson, to the good folks over at Shotgun Honey, the noir/hardboiled/mystery community has been nothing but generous and supportive.  Go to any one of the sites that house my noir shorts and look at the comment sections.  You won't find a remotely negative comment.  For any story.  Just all these hardasses taking the time out to religiously read one another's efforts and prop each other up.

It's funny.  When you think about literary fiction, the works upon which critical acclaim is heaped--let's take, say, Infinite Jest by lit fic darling David Foster Wallace--even if you actual read that and pretend to have enjoyed it, you can't exactly use words like "like."  It's an experience, a masterpiece, a whatthefuckever, but I tried reading that shit and it bored me senseless.  Maybe I'm not that bright. But I'll take Jim Thompson over Don DeLillo any day.

The truth is I like a lot of literary fiction, including DeLillo, whose White Noise mesmerized me.  For the first half.  Until I just sorta...lost...interest.  I didn't put it down, or rather not pick it back up, because it wasn't good.  I kinda forgot about it. Which never happens with Charles Willeford, or David Goodis, or Day Keene.  I think one of the reasons I didn't read much in high school was the books they assigned.  I know the guy has his fans, but I can't stand Dickens.  Every year, they tried to cram that whimsical crap down my throat.  And I wouldn't bite.  (When I was finally forced [in grad school] to read David Copperfield, I felt justified in my prejudice.  Fuck David Copperfield.  Guy finally gets to exact his revenge against his tormentor, and what's he do?  He slaps him.  Not punches.  Slaps.  What a fancy pants dandy.) High school English teachers don't assign Stephen King, who is a brilliant, funny, amazing writer.  I'm not going to say he's better or worse than whomever, but reading King is something you enjoy, whereas so much of literary fiction feels like work.

No point in apologizing, really.  In the end, it's a matter of taste, I suppose.  Given my druthers, I'd prefer not to use expression like "given my druthers"; I prefer the cheap and lurid.  I like the lowlife.  I want the visceral grittiness of pulp, to share in the bond among the lowest common denominator.  I feel like I am among my own kind there.  And if you can get past the tattoos and criminal record, you'll find that the people are really nice. Plus I like books that have a plot.

I've Got Amazing Powers of Observation

Forgive me (darling) for getting a little heady with our last post of the week.  I watched The Dead Zone last night, one of my favorites.  It plays a little dated, because it was made in the fucking '80s, but Christopher Walken's performance is still mesmerizing.

The better scene, which I can't find on You Tube, is where the sheriff (Tom Skerritt) comes to ask Johnny Smith (Walken) to use his powers of second sight and help him solve a series of murders.  It's this great bit, repeated almost verbatim from the Stephen King novel, where the sherriff says something about how God gave Johnny "a gift," whereupon Walken delivers this killer soliloquy about how God threw him into the path of a truck and knocked him into a coma for five years, and when he woke up his job was gone, his girl was gone.

"God?" Johnny asks in disbelief.  "Oh, God's been a real sport to me."

This movie came out in '83, and I must've seen it at least two dozen times over the years.  Johnny Smith is a weird hero to have, but he was always right up there with Rocky and Luke Skywalker, Superman.  And it is a superpower, really.  Maybe the best the one.  The ability to change the future.  Because you can't change the past. (I'm discounting the deus ex machina superpower/moment of Superman I when Superman reverses the Earth's orbit to go back in time, since it essentially establishes precedent that every time something doesn't go Sup's way, all he has to do to fix the problem is fly backwards really, really fast.)

I recently read the book again, which was the first novel I ever read.  I remember being in the 10th grade and the teacher (help me out BHS grads--Mrs. Colaiacovo?) asking everyone in class to list his or her ten favorite books, and my having to make them up because I'd only actually read one, The Dead Zone. Which is kinda funny considering what I call myself these days.  One fucking book.  I'd read kids' books of course, Hardy Boys, The Great Brain series, Bernstein Bears, but all through elementary, middle, and into high school, all those books assigned? Never cracked a fucking cover.  I hated being assigned books to read. Not because I hated reading. Like I said, I read a lot of kids' books.  But because I hated being told I had to.

Because my life really is a Bruce Springsteen song.

It wasn't until after high school, when I was well into my first four-year-stint in college, that I started getting into books.  And it wasn't because of any class or professor; it was because my buddy Jimmy told me if I wanted to matter in this life, I had to start reading.  Then I read Catcher in the Rye and the rest, as they say...

That's one of the questions I really wish I could magically have answered.  Like Johnny Smith clasping the spine of a novel... Having read exactly one (adult) book in my first 20 years of living, how many have I read since?  Got to be at least a thousand, right?  Or maybe that's shooting too high.  500?  I mean, you could do it like I average 3 books a year, but it doesn't really work like that.  There was that stretch in rehab where I read 50 books in 50 days, and then think of all the classes I took, repeating undergrad and getting my graduate degree, with sometimes upwards of 20 books per class, and while out of school now I've only read 20 books or so this past year, this feels like far and away the fewest I've read since I was in my 20s. No, I'm thinking at least a thousand.  Maybe a couple thousand.  Maybe more. Then again, I'm delusional.

I wonder where I'd have ended up if I never started reading books.  Lots of people don't read them.  TV and movies are a fucklot faster.  Yeah, books open up a whole new world to you and all that shit, knowledge is power, etc., but sometimes I wonder if I might've been better off staying the way I was.

*

I was having an Internet exchange with this guy, George, the other day.  George and I used to be roommates back when I was an out-of-control, in-your-face, let's-fight-about-everything punk.  An East Coast transplant like I, George had an equally strong personality, and we clashed pretty much daily.  I used to like to say things just to get under his skin, which was easy to do.  He'd get so worked up.  I remember these reoccurring conversations we'd have about my drug use, which was not only starting to escalate but which I was championing like a mutherfucker.

"Hey, George," I said, "You taking aspirin is no different than me doing speed." (I didn't posses my gerunds back then).  "You drink coffee, right?  You're a drug addict too."

George would get so inflamed.  And rightfully so.  Because I was an asshole and full of shit (God, who doesn't like a good early morning anal conceit, eh?)

I think it's safe to say the guy hated me, whereas I just hated everyone equally and reveled in being a dick.  But now we make nice on the Facebook.

George was really into weightlifting back then, like I am now.  One of the things that would drive him nuts was when people would see him after not having done so in a while and say, "Wow, you look great, George!  Did you lose weight?"  People think they are complimenting you, but no bodybuilder wants to hear that.  When people say that to me these days, I get pissed.  I'm like, "I lost body fat (mutherfucker)!  I weigh the same!"

George posted a pic the other day and I commented, saying he looked great and asking if he lost weight.  He wrote back, something, like, "Very funny.  But if you think about the old you and the old me, I'd say you're the one who came fill circle, Mr. Biceps."  Of course referring to my 17" guns, of which I am so proud.

And he's right.  I have come full circle, which can make a man question what the fuck all that work was for.  Yeah, I learned a lot, empathy, experience and all that shit, but what if I just stayed in my hometown, married the first girl I fucked, got a job, got fat, went bald, and the only thing I ever read was the Sports' page like my old man.  Would the world--my world--be any different?

It'd be nice to be Johnny Smith for a day and see what might've been.  Maybe somehow my mother would still be alive.  I wouldn't have Holden.  But I wouldn't know that, would I?  So as much as the boy is sewn into my very fiber and fabric of my being, how could I miss him?  I guess what I'm getting at is I feel like the old Bernstein Bears book, the one where Papa Bear wants to buy a new hat, so he goes to the hat store to try on new hats, leaving his old one at the the counter, and after trying on a wacky assortment of crazytallshortfatsilly hats, he's like, "That's the hat I want!"  And of course it's the same hat he came in with.

I know, I know.  It's the journey, not the destination.  Just seems like if I would've known where I'd eventually end up, I might've packed a little lighter.

Maybe, either way, we all eventually end up in that same room, alone, staring at a wall, and asking that same goddamn question...