Am I madly in love? Am I lusting for other people? I don't know, man. I've spent years in an unrelenting pursuit, staring into a thousand pairs of eyes night after night, wondering if this time would be any different from the last one. I've taken every risk, and dodged a dozen bullets. The only diseases that wreck my body are purely psychological. My deepest wounds were self-inflicted.

The old gods condemned idol worship, but in my worst moments, I reduced people to objects and set them atop the highest of pedestals. I stabbed myself over and over again, metaphorically, believing that I was equally too much and not enough. I pined for things that never happened, and developed a heartache for imaginary versions of real people. In the depths of a crowded and darkened bedroom, I'd touch myself and weep because empty fantasy was all I could afford. The jeering and the insults had been in my own voice all along.

I feared and hated strangers because I thought they would be like me. I loved and missed strangers because I thought they would be like me. For twenty-nine years, I've been chasing my own tail, desperate to catch myself, if only that at least somebody could have me. For I am a stranger even to myself, sitting alone in crowded bars, staring silently into the bottom of a glass and feeling the aches of my existence wreck me, like a wooden ship in a storm, crashing into a rocky shore.

And yet, in spite of that, I find kindered spirits everywhere I go. Other lonely whispers, candles burned at both ends with only a flicker left. I've dug through junk in the attic of my mind to find that all of the records I had kept there were beloved by someone else doing the same thing, wistfully listening and laughing and crying and loving all at once, wondering if someone else might join them on a rainy day and listen in.