pausing in the gilded powder room he scrubs water across his face smelling sixty dollar soap and thinking thoughts that aren’t polite or appropriate for any place and certainly not a gala affair such as the one he’s at and shadows shift inside his eyes pushing at his eyelids crunching and punching his tear ducts and his thoughts feel like a private horror show to be held close and pondered in his heart all the socialites and their posh words of foreign origin and the stabbing looks from idle eyes and infernal sounds from painted lips mocking him and his eyes like ice alight and frightened stab into the antique baroque mirror and he wants to shove their nouveaux riches decoupage six hundred dollar lounging chairs and their bullshit Nouveau Réalisme garden gnomes into and through their tasteful torsos and up their 4K anuses slick and blunt and thick and he wants to catch the flood of blood in a paper cup with all the poise of a cannonball and he wants to leave this nice soiree and find a fucking bar