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 Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 3:20 pm
"It's like being a house," she explains and she thinks of her wooden floors now, and feels a quiet, sudden longing. "You can get a fresh coat of paint or new curtains and look changed, but those aren't real changes. Those aren't sort of bone deep. It's the walls being added and knocked out and rooms being built on and fires burning parts down that are the real changes. Most of your changes are just decorations. Your house looks nice on the outside sometimes, but it's just a ******** cover over a pit that goes nowhere." Another laugh follows. "Bullshit. Folks doesn't know s**t about people's value right off, you just like to pretend you do."
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 3:32 pm
"I know plenty about people right off." he said. "Plenty of things I have warned other people about came to pass in the end and it takes a certain amount of knowing people to do what I do. I saw Melvin and Horace for what they were right off the bat." he smiled. "And it's so often boring. People are simple predictable creatures but you, well, you weren't. I never can tell if you are going to strangle me or talk with me, run to where I am or run far away. One moment it seems like you have no spine at all and the next moment it is made of iron."
He looked her over thoughtfully. "You have some ruleset under there somewhere, some set of values which are the cogs behind the machinery of the person you are, but they are impossible for me to read or guess. You felt like a mark, and at the same time not a mark at all. The enigma was present from day one. You can argue otherwise if you like, I will not contend in your world you give people time, you hand them a little book in your thoughts and let them write their worth and then judge it like St Peter, but I am different and so is how I approach people. Broken humans all but have a smell, especially those who had problems with their parental relationships, or as in the case of Melvin, all of their relationships."
The house metaphor appealed to him simply by letting him think about how grand and glorious his house would be. "The impracticality of the house that I inhabit or am is why I prefer to live under the roof of others. It is far more practical from a functioning perspective."
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 3:41 pm
"You know their weaknesses and potential to benefit you," she nodded in agreement. "But that's not their value, just what you're capable of appreciating." An alarm went off and America pulled out a cellphone to silence it. Reaching forward she plucked up one of the snacks from the table without making much note of it. "It's like your some sort of parasite. The sort that can move in and eat away at a thing, though maybe this thing with Melvin is the other. Where you can be a little helpful in return."
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 3:48 pm
"What I appreciate is their value. Perhaps in the eyes of some religious framewok their value might be every good deed they have ever done or in some other scale their attractiveness or in the most selfish sort of scale how much they improve the life of one's own self. Value is subjective."
"And perhaps, I do get as much interest and positive feedback from fixing things as breaking them. Certainly there is carnal satisfaction to be had on occasion from the latter, but that same satisfaction can be adequately earned with the former. "
He didn't argue with the estimation of him as a parasite though, all he understood about human interaction was that there was a certain amount of using and being used involved, he was simply capable of doing both without the restriction of whatever bizarre reasons people had holding them back from taking the obvious path.
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 4:25 pm
She popped a second morsel of food into her mouth and asked, "Was there anything else you wanted to ask about her?"
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Posted: Thu Nov 05, 2015 11:50 pm
He didn't ask her how the food tasted but there was a satisfaction in being useful. He thought about it for a moment and the question he wanted to ask was an essentially selfish one, but he was an essentially selfish creature and he needed to understand if it had all been an inevitability or if the blame lay at his own feet for not doing everything perfectly.
"Was there ever even a moment when she considered staying?" and he looked away from her while he asked it. "Or was I simply a convenient bed and board while she texted Dawson." He didn't blame her if that was the case, Dawson was a person, Dawson was all the good things she could have wanted, he wasn't anything much to speak of and he had had little to gain logically from her at all.
"Or is every version of you simply inherently programmed to leave?"
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