Even my widowed aunt is doing better on OkCupid than I am. Oh, I know our situations are different, but listen: what if this next one goes the way the last one went? The last one was a psychic. She wouldn't make any form of commitment. She knew what stupid things I was going to do, and it is just impossible to build trust like that. (Let me tell you.) It always runs the same. There's no one to blame. There's no right answer. My weird body just isn't good enough. [Guitar!] And even now, when I think I've found someone who'll think it doesn't matter-- (Kid, you know that love takes work and work is rough!) But am I supposed to sigh every god damn time that I look at her?-- To have come all this way naive and tentative and feeling sick, and then to find out this thing I was after was a sham! [Guitar!]--> The days when I was a coward were not so long ago, and though I'd like to think that I have been recently stumbling toward halfway decency, I am still afraid. I need to take this slow.

A couple of the lesser stars have gone out in the sky & a number of things down here have lost their luster. You know I wasn't fooling when I said that I would try. I've sung them every true word I could muster. I thought that I could trust her. Thought that everything was fine. I thought that something good was coming just around the bend. You've made me feel real stupid, but you haven't let me cry, and I don't believe I'm ever going to hear from her again. Oh, I though this time, I wasn't wrong the way I've been wrong so many times before-- [The Choir readies itself to explain a thing or two to Samuel]

Choir: We've heard tell of first kisses that set heads reeling. Ah! Doesn't that sound appealing? But you--you've never had that feeling. And does it strike a sour note? Some people get to have that kind of clarity, Samuel---- you don't! Samuel: But when I think on the face, the time, the place and the way, I hear my little voice come bubbling up to say:

Do you remember all the fumbling in the darkness? All the wicked bargains we would strike? I've heard that distance makes things plain, but I couldn't tell you now, oh, what you did or what you didn't like. If there's a fine line between love and hate, I must've landed on one side, but which? I can't get straight. Spare me the indignity of having to ask and close the door. What's past is past. Roll out the trundle bed and let me lie beside you. I will try to keep my thick mouth closed so I can't say I feel ashamed and I don't call you by that part of our name no one knows. There's been a pall cast over everything, and though I've rung every bell that still could ring, I haven't found the impetus to make myself laugh, but the joke's in there somewhere, like a toaster in a bath. And I have flung myself into other flings. They always go to shit! There's this dream that I keep having. You're in bad trouble in it-- with your mouth to my gut and I'm overcome. You know well what things like that can do. You can kid yourself you're over them, but that doesn't make it true.

Well, Eli Bell, he moved in slowly, like moss onto a rock-- but you and he sailed out real fast and left me standing at the dock. And will I, dear, be happy? and will I wish you well? Or will I lie awake each night and curse the name of Eli Bell?

It's not like I'm carrying a torch for anyone, but I've got this pile of kindling sticks and once in a while I'll light some. & how easy it would be to just get on a plane, but where to go? Discomfiture as usual. [Guitar!] It's still with me. [x3] When will it not be? Last night I spoke to you face to face across the country and everything I said made me want to give myself surgery. You said, "You'd better think about the paths that you are choosing. Oh, Samuel, it's not a race, but if it were, you'd be losing."

Thought that if I could keep it quiet for the weekend, then I would just like that be healed and all'd be all, but Monday came, and I got lost while walking along the way between Bad Conscience and the Old Chorale. I know I know what makes it tick. It's not a mystery. But there is not any damn thing that I can do to keep from always being tapped and drained and sapped and tunneled under. The words ["Ô pauvres yeux!"] all all all weak, all strained. Once it is gone, it does not come back, but it will hang in the air and taunt you: "Hey, one more thing that you have failed to see through. Of course. Of course. Of course you did. Of course." And as the week rolled by, from my bed on high, I watched the mess spread out unto the wells. Well! I'll have a perfect view of the other shoe as it falls, if it falls.

Alone in the bathroom with "Ranger Rick" and my strange fascination with skunks--

I was waiting for you to call when I noticed it: I'm feeling dead again. And on the mezzanine that falls between the L and the M, there was a couple, and they were making out. You ask me, they could've looked a little harder. They would've found themselves a room. It's September. It's time to start packing away those things. Here's the smile that I'll impress upon my face. Here's the empty cup I'll take and I'll call half full. We resort to relying on automata when we cannot rely on other people; we rely on other people when we cannot rely upon ourselves. And here's the commodification of religion! And there's the commodification of death!-- Jesus Jesus Christ! When did Weird Weird Chess become a machine? And all these cold and sterile electronic records standing in for present warm wet love-- the vagueness I can't get rid of---- I want to, but I still can't force myself to want it badly enough---------

All of the trees were covered in moss, and I was going to win you back to me, no matter the cost. We walked on and on and I never found the way to say what I meant to say and was left to knead the ground with my balled fists while my mouth left air-trails of frost. I know I know I know I know it's just this dream I had of seeing you again. But I'm well aware. I am not disappointed. I know that I'm not your friend.

I knew that you would move to California, and I told you you'd move with him to California! [guitars] I spent six months in vain. I hoped for the sun and I hoped it would rain. But it just stayed cloudy, and having those things hanging over my head makes me nervous.

And then, as if it was meant to be, Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi. First the look, and then something sticks-- But me, I'm as trusty and as handsome as an MTA bus. No more jovial than Job; no more Suave than Pert Plus. And those movies are made to mislead you, but I know the truth! Read it on wikipedia -pedia -peeediiiiaaaa.... [guitar and kazoo!] Now, I could say shit like, "Life's too unfair!" and go fall off a bridge somewhere. Only fools believe love's gonna free them! [But oh, this lack at the end of the day.] C'mon now, Choir. Set me straight. Choir: There's no one who's waiting to hand off the keys. Wrap your head around it: there's no easy fix. It's no truer for you [don't you see?] than for Michael Cera and Charlyne Yi.