The best couplet I've written. Perfectly captures a certain stage in my continuing adolescence. Allow me to illustrate:


Charles and Colleen are walking up the stairs after eating lunch together. Charles thinks, "Gee, I sure would like to go upstairs and spend time with Colleen, but I need some excuse. I know! That CD I've been planning on loaning her!"; Charles needs a defense, so he needs a pretense. He walks calmly into his room on the second floor, grabs the CD, then walks upstairs--to make it appear he's really doing this to give her the CD, not to spend time with her. Now that appearances are taken care of, he can stick around for a while. But Charles only owns a few CDs; pretenses cannot last. Pretenses, like laughter, veil meaning.

See A Lot of Loneliness.

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