a little life bot

those lines he thought of whenever he was coming home, coming back to Greene Street after a long time away—“And tell me this: I must be absolutely sure. This place I’ve reached, is it truly Ithaca?”—as all around him, the apartment filled with light.

"How long is this going to go on for?" Jude asked. "Forever, I hope." And he did. His one regret was that he hadn't begun earlier, back when they were all young.

He often felt he was made of something liquid, something that was being continually poured from bright-colored bottle to bright-colored bottle, with a little being lost or left behind with each transfer.

But maybe, he thinks, maybe it isn’t too late. Maybe he can pretend one more time, and this last bout of pretending will change things for him, will make him into the person he might have been.

Of course, they both craved beauty, but that would have to wait. Or rather, they would have to wait for it.

he will excuse himself, three times, to go to the bathroom and study his face in the mirror and remind himself that he has only to find the courage to listen,

"There’s not an expiration date on needing help, or needing people. You don’t get to a certain age and it stops."

"Are you happy?" he once asked Jude (they must have been drunk). "I don’t think happiness is for me," Jude had said at last, as if Willem had been offering him a dish he didn’t want to eat. "But it’s for you, Willem."

"Willem," he admonished him, smiling, "you know I can't dance."

"Oh, dying," he said dismissively. "We're all dying. He just knew his death would come sooner than he had planned. But that doesn't mean that they weren't happy years, that it wasn't a happy life."

He kept moving, but so minimally that toward the end of the song they were only swaying, their feet not leaving the ground, Willem holding him so he wouldn’t fall.

things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.

The word "no", so short, so easy to say, a child’s sound, a noise more than a word, a sharp exhalation of air: all he had to do was part his lips, and the word would come out, and—and what?

Here, in his hands, is Lispenard Street:

He wished someone would tell him that he was still a full human being despite his feelings; that there was nothing wrong with who he was.

What is going to happen to me? he asked the sea. What is happening to me?

He remembers then that it is not the problem that is being eradicated; it is the source of the problem that is being eradicated. One is not the same as the other, but he supposes he has to be grateful, finally, for eradication, however it is delivered.

Often, he cursed himself, and how limited he was, but at other times, he was kinder: he recognized how much his mind had protected his body, how it had shut down his sexual drive in order to shelter him, how it had calcified every part of him that had caused him such pain.

"Oh, dying," he said dismissively. "We're all dying. He just knew his death would come sooner than he had planned. But that doesn't mean that they weren't happy years, that it wasn't a happy life."

those lines he thought of whenever he was coming home, coming back to Greene Street after a long time away—“And tell me this: I must be absolutely sure. This place I’ve reached, is it truly Ithaca?”—as all around him, the apartment filled with light.

But now he knows for certain how true the axiom is, because he himself—his very life—has proven it. The person I was will always be the person I am, he realizes.