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You put them on a pedestal and then get mad when you can see up their skirts. What sense does that make?

Well, maybe I get some sort of masochistic, horror-movie-like thrill from seeing their awful underpants before I topple their pedestals. That could be sort of... invigorating, you know?

Well, you certainly do hate women's underwear.

Oh God yes! I think they're awful. Pure filth. I like to touch them, smell them, buy them, and maybe wear them on my head once in a while -- but look at them? Blech! The vilest of the vile!

But none of that is really germane to this discussion, is it?

How could this discussion not be germane to itself?

Fair enough, but hear me out. There is no rationalizing our way out of any of this. It has nothing to do with reason or analysis or logic. The emotions control the thinking and understanding, and there's nothing to be done about the emotions except to ride them out.

That's what the others don't understand. "Choose," they always say. Sorry, Buster McMuster, there ain't no choice. The emotions are choosing me. I can see it so clearly now, or at least for moments of time which approximate "now." When the emotions recede I believe I've changed my perspective or reasoned a more sensible way of looking at things. But then the tide comes back in and those rational thoughts aren't just replaced, they're actually inaccessible. They can't be created in that emotional environment, not even by brute force. That's how I know there's no choice.

Yeah, exactly. It's so funny when I get brief glimpses of what the reality was and how warped it got in my mind. M was just doing whatever and I was hardly paying attention. I don't even recall why I would occasionally check up on her because I didn't care. Truly. But then there she was, thick as thieves with J, and then the most hilarious of ironies unfolded and I started to get confused about what was what. All of a sudden she was the object; she was the "other," and the coquette, and the emasculator, and all that good stuff.

Oh, for sure, for sure. But it was never like that in reality. Not at all. As I said, just weeks before that she was totally inconsequential. The other one was of consequence; the other one was everything. I traced every word back to her even though not one of them came from her. She was everything. She was all that mattered, even though when I wrote the things that connected me to her, I didn't care about her at all. We were always perfectly out of phase.

No doubt. The words are hollow, like the connections. They're just images and concepts, created in my mind and projected onto a surface. At first the two images are indistinguishable and I think that the thing I love (the concept) is the same as the person (the object). But slowly (and painfully) the differences begin to reveal themselves and cut away at the seamlessness of the connection between the two.

In other words, you start to see up their skirts and you don't like what you see. They're all... I don't know, frilly and lacey and whatever. They're pink or purple or some other obscene color. And they've got those little bows on the front. It's enough to make your skin crawl.

And so you topple that pedestal. You just take a few steps back and run right into that sucker and down she comes.

Right, but here's the good part, in three parts. First, once she's down for good, she doesn't matter anymore. Her skirt can be up above her head as far as we're concerned. Her underwear down around her ankles. It makes no difference to us.

Exactly. Like A.

Like A. Exactly. Second. The break is clean because it was never the girl that mattered at all. It was the projected image. So when the image and the object separate, the object no longer carries any importance. All of that importance and emotion and everything else is baked into the image. There is no danger of damaging anything that truly matters, because the image will always be the same -- despite its shifting appearance -- and the object is devoid of any meaning except for what it receives via proximity to the image.

Shazam.

Booya.

Precisely

Third. What does it matter what the connections were (if any)? They don't change the self. That's the error in this whole thing. So what if any of it was about me? So what if they even cared? None of it does, or would, change who I am. Even if the fantasy played out in reality, beat for beat, it wouldn't change the self. And this is really all about the self -- the object is just a catalyst, a conduit.

So maybe that's why I don't like their unmentionables. Because it's not really their undercarriages I'm sneaking a peek of -- it's mine. Their lady bits would be all trimmed and neatly tucked away inside their delicate unmentionables. And I suppose I could bear the sight of that. (Maybe.) But my dangly bits are all bulky and hairy and spilling out all over the place.

And they look silly in pink.

And they look ridiculous in pink with a little bow on the front. Exactly.

Well, I'm glad we wrapped that mystery up.

So, where to from here?

The beach.

What's at the beach?

Well, when the tide is in, it's nothing but white sands and cerulean seas (titter) as far as the horizon.

And when the tide is out?

That's when a bloated, seaweed-covered, crab-eaten corpse peeks above the waterline and all the kids poke it with a stick.

To the beach!