Lucien is no doubt spontaneous, but with that spontaneity comes stubbornness, which I really didn't need in a moment of laboring to lug Lucien out of the locked bathroom stall and back into the main dining area where he would sit the fuck down and resume the activity he had planned earlier today in order to celebrate my blog's perpetual success and hope to neglect the minor argument that ensued this morning. But none of that happened. I stayed, but I stayed alone.

It required at least ten minutes worth of talking -- or it at least seemed like ten minutes -- to lure Lucien out of his bathroom stall, the only protection for a man like him who is usually so outgoing and fearless but was then shivering at the sight of something whose identity I am unaware of, and he was extremely reluctant, but this is not the sort of reluctance that comprises Lucien's character, rather a reluctance birthed out of a phobia of doing something, not because he prefers to go his own way in life and fuck the opinions of others.

The man who exited the bathroom stall was not the man I know, the man who cackles in the home of fear, the man who follows his whims without considering the consequences because he'll find a way out of them, the man who jumps from topic to topic like life is more fleeting than it actually is. That is not the one I saw. The man who exited the bathroom stall was broken, and irreversibly so. He's seen monsters unlike nothing I've ever witnessed, and he just saw another one.

Lucien elucidated the fact that he is powerful to me a while ago, and I have long since understood that, but this is not him, and this is not me. Why would Lucien Carr run from danger? Why would Lucien Carr refuse to address it again once calming down enough to unlock the door to the bathroom stall and depart? Why would Lucien Carr be in shambles after seeing something that should only slightly piss him off at the least? Yeah, I don't know what that something was, but how terrible could it be? It's a fancy restaurant in which he noticed it, for god's sake! He loves to overreact, yet I don't suppose this is much of an overreaction, as his kinds of overreactions are marked by a high volume and a philosophical lesson afterwards, but all I received after he finally emerged from the bathroom stall was a man in the fetters of his own mind.

Stripped of dignity, we paint with crimson blood and cascading tears smeared across canvases as broad as the institutions that kept us in tight locks, in cells and in chambers and in our own flaking minds whose only deliverance is the knife of revenge where finally the fluid chipped is not our own, where the grave is the best location we can attain for matter destroyed by tantalizing objections and taunting whispers of what could be but what hasn't been for a while, sculpting features into daggers to impress squares, huffing paint in a back alleyway and hoping to be arrested because prison has better food than food for thought, though we have been starving for a while — starved of our confidence, starved of our trust, starved of nostalgic nights under blankets and peaceful misconceptions in the burrows of Paterson, where morals stride unquenched through bustling city streets, where our ears cloud over with soot to neglect the pleas of our mothers ordering us to wash the dishes left dirty from the mercurial age of thirteen, pubescence clenched between teeth wracked in the standardized wires of conformity who also conform solely by existing, who serve as a role model imposed by idols creasing with each lie they fold under their skin to contemplate later. This is the rebellion we have created, and this is our jailbreak after years of suppression.

But Lucien is somehow weakened by this rebellion, by this jailbreak, by the sight of something whose influence over him he never would've predicted, which throws a wrench in this artistic revolution of his, and now he's inordinately sorry about what transpired at the restaurant, apologizing over and over to me as we glide into the streets to settle down and drift across the sea of sleep to a place where all is better than life really is, but we can't reach that state when Lucien is chattering about how he ruined everything for me and how he was inadvertently exaggerating and only now realizes the effects of his intractability, though I'm not blaming him for any of it. He didn't ruin anything, and I'm much more concerned with his belief that he did ruin it than with the vagary itself.

Will he tear himself apart over this? Because from what I can tell, he already is, and he can't seem to settle down into sleep, as he's rocking the boat to the point where the prospect of capsizing is stretching from the sea and cackling at us, for we are its next prey, and Lucien isn't doing anything about it. His panic evoked the shaking of the capsule, and it will not cease, and Lucien doesn't really give a shit about it, because he needs a way to solve his problems. He will only halt when he has calmed down, but when will that occur? All I see from the mattress of the bed is Lucien bouncing all around within the sharp confines of that box in which he is trapped, but he makes the most of his limited space by utilizing it to shift the entire frame with his movement, then proceeding with his incessant chattering about how much he is sorry about something for which I'm not blaming him.

"I'm a fucking idiot, Allen," Lucien admits, shoveling the dirt of his hands over his head to protect him as a grave. "I screwed up everything by being so fucking dramatic. It's not that big of a deal anyway."

Part of this self-deprecating spiel is because Lucien actually means it (and bless his soul if he's telling the absolute truth), but most of it is probably derived from the stress of whatever lured him to the bathroom in the first place, though I'm still not certain what is plaguing him, so I cannot conjecture all that accurately, and I cannot help him to the full extent.

I offer a hand to him, planting my fingers on the outside of his arm gently and reassuring him, "Hey, you did nothing wrong."

"No, I did do something wrong," Lucien negates, and here he goes with the stubbornness. "We were supposed to be enjoying a nice dinner to celebrate your blog's success, but I just had to be a wimp and flee to the bathroom." My companion's shoulders scab into stone, imbued by malevolence towards himself and malevolence towards the object that spooked him enough to usher him into the bathroom through fucking telekinesis or something. "I should just plan a trip to fucking Alaska or something, though I might mess that trip up too, but all I need is to just get away. Why can't I just get away? Why can't I ever just get away?"

I would've never assumed that Lucien is basking in the contemplation of what seems to latently be suicide, of throwing himself from a ledge coasting on the higher meters of elevation who are sure to break his bones and kill him instantly when he collides with the snowy ground, and even the sheet of alabaster cannot save him, as it's as flimsy as this relationship yet as rock hard as Lucien's ambition to apologize endlessly about something he doesn't need to apologize for at all.

I have always identified Lucien Carr as a man of free spirit and passion for everything he glimpses, detesting nothing but the world who warped people's minds to divest the appreciation of nature from them, a man who wants to stay alive for as long as he can so that he can enjoy all that life has to offer, a man who frequently seeds a smile upon his stunning complexion highlighted by the glimmer of his teeth, a man who would hate to die, especially in a voluntary manner, so what is this display of depression? Who is this man? I had expected an impenetrable resilience from a lover, and there's no doubt that Lucien is resilient, but the cracks in his character and in his stability are far too wide to be sustainable — wider, I dare say, than his perception of life.

And I really have no idea what to say to him, because I understand that suicidal people are hell bent on death unless their life improves for the better of them and those around them, but writers are perpetually incarcerated in the underworld with no hope for an escape, but we writers love to lie, implementing them everywhere in our work, so that's the only route to Lucien. "People will care if you're gone," I try half-heartedly, but Lucien won't take any of this stock phrase suicide edition shit.

"You know that's not true, Allen. People don't give a single shit about writers. They only want their words, and they'll do anything to obtain them, never ceasing even if I'm suffering or if I'm dying or if I'm already in the grave, because they say beauty is eternal, so what does it matter if I'm not? My words will live forever, and I am destined to a fucking tomb. You never win this game, Ginsy. You, of all people, should know that."

He's correct, and I hate that he's correct, but this is an ineluctable fact that we are never free to join our words wholly, though I don't care to confess to it, so I only enmesh Lucien's hands in mine to reply to his devastating truth, delving into the priorities of my soul to expel them for my companion. "Speak to me and tell me of your woes, for they have festered inside of you for far too long. One day you will rupture, and one day you will regret allowing yourself to decay."

One day, Lucien will not be able to bear the weight of his burdens upon his back. His spine will snap, he will deteriorate, and life will move on as if nothing ever happened, yet it did. Life cannot forget Lucien Carr. He is a roadblock upon the street of existence, always in people's line of sight so that he'll be recognized as extraordinary, and he is recognized as extraordinary by everyone he encounters, but one day that will be too much for him to handle, because he has never clarified to anyone that being extraordinary is a strenuous job.

Lucien is quiet now, fuel truncated by the compression of his lips together, and he eventually flops on his side, towards the window and away from me, because quite frankly it's easier that way. "I saw someone I hadn't seen in a while, and that's it. Just stop asking me about it. I'll be fine by the morning." And I'll just have to trust him on that.  

~~~~~

A/N: why do I end every chapter with a sentencing beginning with "and" lmao bye dakota get more creative

objectivism: certain acts are wholly right or wrong

~Dakrunk