Well, here we were, in some deeper realm of analytic thought, concerning ourself with mathematical stimulus, trying to prove the existence of heaven.  That’s what everybody would like to do, I think, but most people can’t understand anything but love for one another; if told them that math is love they’d say it’s over their heads—as if they didn’t want to think about going to heaven, even if it meant, in thinking about it, you increased your chances of getting there.  I’ll be a doctor one day, but this came from someone else, someone I knew only a little, from the church, and, once or twice, his appearance, along with two missionaries, at our dinner table.  The root of that—the person I thought of after I overheard that, was Ursula—I wondered, even, if she said it.  What was she doing?  “Did you say that?”

Here I was, talking to Ursula, having defined myself—through a respectable test, the Storms Sexuality Axis test, to be seventy percent heterosexual and thirty percent homosexual. So all the second guessing myself and overthinking of whether or not I’m homosexual had to stop—it had been going on for too long. this pleased Ursula, since, ac-cording to her, I was too straight to be gay, which is exactly what the test said. So good—I was straight enough to deny being gay—only i didn’t want to deny being gay, which is why I call myself queer and say that I don’t fit any category—I do it for strategic reasons, to silence all the people that, out of hate, would argue that I’m gay, (because of my now prior confusion and my sexual dysfunction). Now that my confidence was growing—I’d gone on misleading both myself and others enough, yes; but also, yes, I was thirty percent gay, and that was important to me—enough to celebrate in my writing since, after all, being thirty percent gay is really quite beautiful, if you’re not a jerk.

You’re young, you have your life ahead of you; and that’s true, I did—not to mention the life to come, in which, well, my life would somehow be both ahead of me and perfectly in step with every decision I make. You’re great to think that – so what was she saying? Was she affirming my be-lief in the life to come—or, perhaps, to keep her happy, I should say a life to come? That way she might not feel like I’m saying she must necessarily also have a life to come—i don’t know why she would want that, but, if that was all she could believe in, then, i guess she didn’t have a choice. I think that’s the main point that some of us want to make—that we’re not free agents, that we don’t have a choice, and the life, this life, is nothing more than a dream that doesn’t involve the consciousness of the person that’s asleep.

Who’s door is that? Yes, truly, one door opens, but can’t I stay here, or go back in time? What if I don’t like it on the other side of that door—and who am I to think that they will open it? Ursula is asking me who’s door this is; but it’s my door, so I must be overhearing something, unless she’s trying to tell me that this is her door, and I should pursue our affair. But to think something like that might be over-doing it, given that, a long time ago, people would tell me that I think too much—and, as I understand, that may have been true, but, if it was, I had a good reason: I never should have been playing baseball in the first place, for example. I should have been drawing and painting, as I soon found out—or, when it comes to women, well, I shouldn’t have been with them at all.

     Is this how you treat me? my Scotch uncle asked.  Yes, it is, Ursula said.  So they were talking to each other, now?  Was i some kind of switchboard operator?  (I was expressing consonants using my Scotch uncle’s voice, as opposed to my own—he needed the exercise).  I didn’t know how good an idea

     I’d been sticking with my voice and Ursula’s voice and waiting for the others to chime in, but, I considered, I needed to maintain the connection—or else I’d just forget about them.  That is to say, I wasn’t hearing from them that much.  So I changed my idea—I’d use their voices on various things

     don’t zone out, listen to me, in here  and by in here she meant at the center of my brain, basically.  A quiet place that yielded a quiet voice—which was something that started between your ears as opposed to in your throat.  But here my wine drinking uncle was saying something that I couldn’t