Elvis asked a question and he expects an answer? From ME? I’m just sitting here minding my own business flipping switches and turning knobs and pushing his buttons I suppose because he asks me how I plan on transcending humanism. Humans? What could those be? Little furry creatures with NO BUTTONS and NO KNOBS but lots of hard boney outty parts and lots of warm moist inny parts who make awful racket and LOOK YOU IN THE EYE. DONT LOOK ME IN THE EYE GODDAMNIT. Your soul is dark black and contagious and I am soul-free thank you very much. My mouth opens and my charismatic tone flees my throat and I croak out the relationships between me and you and you and me and it is stale and flat and disgusting and I heave and panic and HEAVE. My interactions are mine, goddamnit, and I choose who is on the other end of the line, who I call, which buttons I press, when to hang up. Action at a distance HA action smacksion resmacksion

The point, c’mere, up close, Elvis says. The point, you see, is that when I touch you, when I slip your fitches and knurn your tobs, that I am in control. And I, Elvis says as he beats his chest and breaths a mucus breath, his hair in individual strands on his head, and I am human, and I am god.

And then he stops and smokes a cigarette and takes a drink of water, and then sits down for a meal which he scarfs in living, bloody chunks, and then he shits and watches it as it spirals down the drain. And then he grabs his dick, large with loose strands of hair and veins and the grime of a well handled handrail, and he pumps it and pumps it and stares at the wall and the mucus slips out his mouth as his breathing gets faster and I curl in the corner and wish there was more time and time and time and I can feel my clock, ticking away with the accuracy of atoms, regular like the sun, deep in my gut, and I wish there was more time, and I just want to push my button and sleep.