When I finally came too I realized that this is nothing more than a hotel room. Prostituted for its space, and bed.

We came together. We stole the boat. Some sort of strange feeling like a polished sculpted birth. No one knew what it looked like inside.

Roger thought that we knew what we were doing. He thought that we could all play together and that it would be fun and no one would get hurt. Just messin' around is what he called it.

I sat there. Smoking my cigarette on the way to an inner-dialogue when Roger came back, for more messin' around:

Hair disheveled, he tossed his briefcase up and for a kiss against my coffee cup. Porcelain it was.

"My parts were assembled wrong." Roger said, panting. His voice was like acceleration. Quicker and quicker as it went.

"What?"

"Yeah, you know, like when I was a kid…"

"Your parts?"

"Yeah, how I learned things."

He was so much more animal than I could ever be.

"It's… like a game of Tetris."

"Tetris?"

"Yeah, you know where you're stacking all those blocks up, and you get points for executing a complete line."

"Oh, yeah the video game…"

Roger grabs a lot. He don't hold on long.

"Well, so it's like my basic blocks, the primary ones, and the way they were stacked, is my, is the assembly." He paused; caught his breath and snorted. "And the assembly, it's wrong."

Backup, I imagined my waving hand was saying. "What, are the basic building blocks?"

"All the blocks. Experience." Quicker and quicker, as it went. "It's the way they were arranged; what I learned when and how, or if I learned it at all. If I synthesized this or that, in this way or that, then maybe some neural connection was made, and if not…"

I usually fidget for a minute or two before I can just chill.

Roger knows this, so he excused himself to the bathroom while I settled in. Roger was very good at creating win-wins.

story by: luc simonic, jonathan bitz. circa 1999.

illustration: dr. davis g. coombe