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shirt are not clean. The only thing clean about a human being is his hat. And that, only on the outside. Everyone walks around with a load of shit.
14. A Recurring Dream
    I dribble between my legs, behind my back, do a spin move, take off with da rock in one hand, pump twice in midair, and jam it down Michael Jordan’s throat. “Fuck you, Mike! Fuck you!” His tongue is hanging out.
15. Bulletproof Glass
    Four single men came to the eight o’clock showing of
Sense and Sensibility
that Friday:
    • A short, red-haired man, in his mid-forties, with an unkempt mustache, tobacco-stained teeth, wearing a jean jacket.
    “One, please.”
    “Uh, Val?”
    “Just one, please.”
    • A very large, at least 230 pounds, black man, in his late twenties, wearing a Temple sweatshirt and a Phillies cap.
    “One ticket, please.”
    “Valentino?”
    “Huh?”
    • A man in his sixties, in an old suit. Wisps of hair were sticking out of his ears.
    • A dreadlocked, nose-ringed white man, in his early twenties, obviously drunk.
    “One for
Sense and Sensibility.”
    “Valentino?”
    “Sense! Incense! Sissibilities!”
16. Destiny
    What I said about the movie date was a lie. I did not know this girl. I had seen her just three times. She was a ticket girl at the Roxy movie theater on Sansom Street. I had written her a series of letters. I was in love. On that Friday I was supposed to show up to introduce myself.
    The first time I saw her, I noticed, as she gave me my ticket, that the ring finger on her right hand was missing two joints! Blood rushed to my face.
It’s providence
, I thought.
    This fatal encounter triggered major chemical mayhem in me. I couldn’t concentrate throughout the movie. All I could think of was this forlorn, brazen stump between her middle finger and her pinkie.
    At home I would replay this scene over and over and imagine that my hand had actually brushed against her little stump. My life mission, from that point on, I knew, was to possess that stump.
    A week later I went back to the Roxy. Although it was not very cold, I wore a ski mask. I saw her stump—again it made me shudder—and her name tag: Patricia Potemkin.
    The third time I saw her, I was about to introduce myself, but I could not, I could not do it. I was too frightened to be confronted with destiny.
    That’s when I decided the best way to ingratiate myself into Patricia’s life was through a clean medium. Through letters: words without breath, clean, dry, firm, minus the intangibles of a live body, with its corporeal garbage of seduction and repulsion.
17. Choice versus Bliss
    But why was I so afraid of Patricia Potemkin?
    Faced with an inevitable choice, a command dictated by fate, a man reserves the right to waver, to reject, even, what could be his ultimate happiness. Choice is dearer to him than bliss.
18. On Hair
    You will concur with me that primitive people, people with low self-esteem, South Philly girls, for example, are the ones who pay the most attention to their hair. They like to braid, curl, conk, tease, weave, and dye their hair a hundred different colors. Those with a spiritual life, on the other hand, do not need to do this. They either pay no attention to their hair or go without hair altogether.
    Starting from puberty, I had always been clean shaven: face, chest, armpits, crotch, everything. I even plucked my eyebrows and eyelashes. I would squat over a mirror and cut the hair sticking out of my ass.
    It came as a complete surprise to me, then, that, during the weeks after my failure to appear at the Roxy for my so-called date, I had an irresistible urge to grow a beard.
19. Masked Man
    A man wearing a ski mask approached the ticket window of the Roxy movie theater on Samson Street.
    “Yes, can I help you?”
20. A Stump Devotee
    It took me forever to corner Val into bed. No hints were too obvious. I’d lean over to pick up something in front of himwearing a loosefitting blouse with no bra underneath. I’d say, as we