If I am to heed Edie and Jack's advice of bringing Lucien around the house at some point, I need to actually become familiar with him so that such a goal is attainable without it being awkward or suspicious of murder in my basement that reeks of unshaven writers and wings of dreams clipped without consent yet a basement that is home to me, which may unnerve people to whom it is not, because quite frankly it looks like a dump, and I've just grown accustomed to its flaws, though for others it will require a prolonged period of time to mask the dinginess with an odd appreciation for the space.

Even then, it won't be the same, at least in intensity, because this is first and foremost my own dwelling, not the dwelling of someone else, especially if they aren't living in it for as long as I am and maybe longer if they're living in it with me, but wouldn't it be nice to live somewhere with someone? Wouldn't it be nice to escape this basement, no matter how much it has grown on me like the fungus cackling in the corners of the ceiling?

Lucien has grown on me, too, so he should be adequate for my goals, but I'm not even acquainted enough with him to simply bring him around the house, let alone ask him to move in with me after a few days of knowing him and only two conversations sprinkled in there, the rest being furnished in speculation and eyes entranced ostensibly by the wall but are actually entranced by the thought of Lucien Carr, the thought that requires a resting point for my vision to repose.

But speculation is a bore when the real model is out in the world for one to grasp and for one to adore, and that real model is wading among the books of the Paterson public library with a murderous cigarette strapped between his fingers and a devilish expression taped to his composure, in his swagger, in his clothing, in his speech, honeyed on some occasions and brittle on others just to dive into the low tones not yet explored by any other man, the low tones capable of slaying those vulnerable to his charm, or in other words, me.

And, like any normal human being, I am craving another taste of Lucien Carr, though he is not as pure as my parents would like, but I don't talk to my parents anymore, so they don't matter. I'm not ever bringing Lucien to meet them, if I can bring him to meet anyone anywhere, and that's just the goal I hope to fulfill.

I've managed to sneak out of the house, past Edie's docile figure reading the newspaper on the couch and past Jack's slumbering body hidden beneath a mountain of blankets that must be as tall as he is because he won't settle for anything less or anything more, even if there's nothing more than his grand mountain he's erected. Maybe the two adults did, in fact, catch me shuffling against the walls to blend into the shadows of the abundant furniture, but they're those kinds of people who want the best for me and mostly my social life, the kind of people who won't object to my departure.

After remaining to be in a basement for almost my entire experience since the dreary halls of Columbia University teeming with people cramming for a test and people accepting that they will fail (overall a high-stakes, traumatizing environment that leaves its students ruptured), Edie and Jack both recognize fully that my social life is something that needs to be excavated by citizens in the outside world. When they try to explain what that outside world is, I don't really understand, because the closest I come to the exterior of the earth is the frequent comments my readers draft to let me know that I can improve their minds with practice and interesting facts and controversial opinions to those who tie themselves to conservative beliefs, but today I'm actually imbibing the outside world for myself, for my own senses, for my own repellant of artificiality sinking into the digital pages of poems about what life and dying and being reborn really are.

Today, I visit the library for the third time in the past few days, not for the books or for a quiet place to study, but for the company of the extraordinary librarian named Lucien Carr, whose resilience is the singular motive of my transport and the singular motive to justify the fact that I just barely finished my article on rhyme and meter after being charged with it a while ago, or at least a while ago for a very productive writer who is now deteriorating because of the man that I am indulging myself in this very day, with my toes tapping the pavement in the rhythm to my convulsing heartbeat on their journey to the library where I will greet the person who has been glued to my mind since we met.

I expect him to be here as he always is, just behind the counter and hidden by the shield of his book so that his ocean eyes are but a treat for those who daringly approach him like I did and have since done once more, but there is no third time from what I can detect. Lucien Carr is nowhere to be seen.

Disappointed, I grab the first book I can contact upon the shelves, a thriller about a murder in Victorian England judging from the cover and the terribly cliche title exactly like the others of its genre, and I then plunge into the leather of a chair directly across from the desk where Lucien usually works, either waiting for him to arrive or just wasting my time.

With Lucien here, my brain would be wailing with the sirens of a thousand ambulances seeking two thousand emergencies, but now that he's absent for whatever deranged reason, probably out breaking the law with that flammable store of opinions he tends to perpetually, my thoughts are docile and pleasant if they do at any point arise. I should really be locating another book for another article -- a pleasurable one of my own choosing, now that I've been subtly forced into writing about something I despise -- but sitting here, my only company being a book, is much more pleasurable than that other suggestion.

I'm beginning to enjoy the dormant experience of lounging in the library alone, without the exuberance of Lucien Carr to disturb me, and even this ghastly novel of the Victorian era is perfectly enhanced by a long awaited reprieve finally shuffling my way.

No one is bothering me, because research is a fundamentally quiet activity, and I'm reveling in this peace I've conducted for myself in Lucien's vacancy, which I plan to preserve for as long as I can, but the slamming of the door on its hinges in its perpetrator's frenzy ruffles the feathers of the isolated situation.

The man bursting through the door is none other than Lucien Carr, a tie nowhere near his neck to instead drip loosely towards the left side of his body, swinging from his arm a haggard leather bag stuffed with manuscripts somersaulting from its brim, an invisible bird roosting in his hair as it styles the mismatched direction of the golden threads for its young. Lucien ambles towards the counter hectically, sweeping his bag across the mahogany as his manager emerges from the office tucked behind the desk.

"Lucien, why are you so late?" the manager yawps, much harsher than the voice Lucien fills my head with, and from that I'm surprised that Lucien still works here, his calm nature so disparate from that of his supervisor's.

He's thoroughly taken off guard, a product of sleep deprivation and too much caffeine to accommodate it, and he eventually catches himself, though his vision is a bit skewed from recently slipping out of the house and sprinting here before his manager can scold him, though it's a bit too late for that, as he's trapped within his punishments and somewhat unaware of what the hell is happening.

Lucien gestures vaguely around the burrow of hair sat atop his head, around the air, around all things ambiguous, as he attempts to sort through his alibis fumbling from his lack of sleep. "I was writing."

"Well you have a job to do, Carr. Do try not to mess it up in the future, okay?"

Lucien nods solemnly, then migrating to the place his manager claims he's supposed to be when he himself claims that his true location should be in a hall of fame somewhere and being told to fuck off with his impenetrable pretentiousness. He's halfway around the desk when he captures me from the corner of his peripheral vision, and he stumbles over to me with a broad smile illuminating his cherubic features, including those godforsaken ocean eyes I absolutely worship.

"Allen Ginsberg? What a pleasure it is to see you here. How's the article going?" He waits hopefully, a portion of that hope tinged by mandatory small talk and the other portion genuinely invested in what I have to offer, in what I've been procrastinating for.

"I finished it."

"So are you here to research another topic?" Lucien swipes a hand through his hair in a pathetic attempt to restore some order to it, but he eventually gives up. It's not like it pains me much, though, as he looks boyishly captivating.

"No, actually I, um..." Spontaneity has never been my forte, and now I'm stuck in this mess of laboring to answer Lucien with a plausible phrase that isn't the truth where I simply yearn to see him, and that plausible phrase suddenly comes to me without any warning, without permission to fly free as it immediately does. "I'm here to ask you if you'd like to go to lunch with me."

I'm so fucking stupid. I shouldn't ever let impulsiveness thwart my rationality like it just has. Maybe admitting the real truth would be less painful than this. I should have protected myself better, but I didn't, and now Lucien is tasked with the harrowing deed of declining in a manner that won't injure my already wavering emotions, because there's no way in hell that he would ever have lunch with me, and I've accepted that since the beginning, but my energetic words beg to differ and will do anything to receive their wishes.

"Oh." A swallow caresses the walls of Lucien's throat, flaunting his astonishment in unnerving harmony with his flexed brow.

I should have known that he would be freaked out by my proposal, however inadvertent that it was. I've only talked to this guy two other times besides this one, and I'm already asking for a date with him, if I would call it that anyway. Lucien Carr, the most brilliant man I've met in my entire life, does not like me. As a writer, he's a master of psychology and is merely toying with my emotions. He has no veritable interest in me, no flickering ember dwelling inside of the Marianas Trench of his ocean eyes, no rose bud desiring to blossom into a flower splotched by both red and white who will never clash so that they may bolster one another's beauty forever. That is not us, and that will never be us. Lucien has no love for me, and if he does, then it's twisted and sick and a fucking experiment at best, not the events in a sappy romance novel bestowed upon the luckiest of people, because those people are fake and can receive whatever the hell it is that the authors want them to receive, whether that's idolatry or death or tragedy for those they dragged into this wreck, and if that's to become of Lucien and me, then I don't want to cram him inside boxes too meager for his infinitely expanding heart.

It all starts with something as paltry as a lunch date, just as his heart started as the size of a dime. All of it will grow, with no exceptions. It will bask in the summer fragrance of grass and sunlight, and it will snare in the immoral barbed wire of miscommunication. That is, it will endure those haunting fluctuations if this lunch date is successful in committing this man to my possession as if it is fair to win him, as if he did not do the same for me, and that's just a sign that things will not work out between us. Each relationship is doomed from its genesis, and therefore I am incredibly grateful that Lucien will reject the spark.

But his next two sentences change the game forever. "Well, yeah, sure. There's a nice retro diner at the end of the block if you want to eat there."

He just screwed himself to the demise of our friendship in the most painful fashion possible, in the eaves of a writer's soul, two writers' souls. Writers are uncontrollable monstrosities who are not compatible with real human beings, so they confide in fiction and in the same mind who has fucked them relentlessly while muting their screams in a jar to save for later, for the occasion where the trials are at even higher stakes, when a day ago that would've never been persuasive. Lucien Carr is already dead, and I aided his downfall.

I'm new to love. I'm new to people. I don't understand how any of this operates, and maybe I'm blowing this up to points where it could never have otherwise reached, but my irrationality has already been established and not fixed. I'm not the kind of person that people want to be friends with. Lucien has better things to do than affiliate himself with me, than bring him down to my level. Edie tells me not to doubt myself, and although she doesn't mean it in situations like these, I'm still going to believe that this has a higher chance of failing than of succeeding.

On the contrary, society would have us conceive that manners are more essential to life than literal life is, and Lucien doesn't yet understand how much of a mess he's found himself in from my own careless inquiries, so I have to pretend like I didn't just pave the road to his murder and stick him in it with the etiquette obligations of saying yes.

"Yeah, that would be awesome."

Cherishing a faint smile like it's all he has, Lucien stalks towards the counter again to resume his duties or else be punished once more by his manager, and I obediently follow as he speaks. "You can hang out near the desk until I finish my shift, and then we can go." He observes me for a few more moments before continuing to log his information into the library's complex machines, catching only a smile who won't leave me alone, and I suppose I don't need it to, because it's appropriate.

I can't believe I asked out the boy of my dreams, and neither will Edie. That's one hell of a dinner table story right there.  

~~~~~

A/N: this is even longer than the other chapter wh yt he fuck

logicism: the idea that mathematics are based on logic and that any mathematical problem can be reduced to logic

~Dacaterer