since no one will write us into fiction, since all the stories somehow never reach where we want them to, we must quietly tell ourselves the stories we really want to hear, we must write ourselves into the femme fatales with excellent posture and glorious skin that we see often in the stories we do read. we don't want love so much as we want the cold hard certainty of a few pretty words. we are always looking for the beautiful things, the fine things we hear about. we have substituted all the pleasures of the world with that one pursuit. we have no stories to tell really. we live in squalor. we don't see into things much. only sometimes, it is nice to know how the others live, how the others cope, how the others keeps themselves together and upright and always noncommittal. we try to sense what they want, you know. it is a little like sitting, crouched very low, behind a large piece of furniture, so you can spy on what they say to each other in private. but they never say anything about you, so you can relax and maybe play with the carpet and have a nice conversation in your head.