A very slight disturbance in or variation from the normal state of my body has a greater impact on my state of mind than nearly anything said to me by other people. Is everyone like this? For example, an ordinary gastrointestinal misfortune, a very common one that's neither alarming nor impedes my daily activities, more of an annoyance, affects me more, when all is said and done, than the utterance of a stranger on the street, no matter how hostile or explosive or unexpected it might be. Minor tooth pain agitates me more than a tense argument with a loved one. If given a choice between neck discomfort from sleeping funny and being reproached by someone I respect, I'd take the scolding any day. It's not that such interactions have no effect on me, it's simply that betrayals of my own body hit me on a level that other people or events just can't reach, and the basic self-absorption that comes from living in a body means that even minor bodily events draw my attention more easily than events from outside it do. This must be why so much importance is placed on sex in a relationship, apart from its moist but brief pleasures. It allows you to be unashamedly narcissistic and viscerally communicative in the same action. It's like a mutually agreed-upon cheat that way, to be generous and giving while expressing the worst kind of physical greed. What a terrific deal that is.

This realization reinforces the awareness that for the most part we each live in our own isolated tubes. C and I call this the tube feeling because it's a sensation of being in a tube. People sit way too close to you and talk a lot about intimacy, and prattle on about communication, into the night they prattle, but I normally find this to be poignant wishfulness, and I'm sure many people would agree with me if I ever spoke to them about it. Our little tubes are thicker than we want to admit, whereas mine is thinner than I admit. I've been known to add a couple of inches, what of it? Thick, thin, armor-plated, who cares? How much genuine intimacy and meaningful communication occur between any two people in an average day? Once in a while you hit paydirt, the rest of the time it's more like repeating gestures that suggest intimacy and communication but are really just symbolic, stand-ins or reassuring placeholders, or mutual promises for future intimacies that always get deferred, forever, until you die. And thank goodness for that, because there just isn't that much to say about life that's worth listening to, and the people worth listening to about it are always at fancy cocktail parties downtown or on the better talk shows. Thank goodness for my tube, otherwise I might be doomed to a life of embarrassing sham-cosmic chit chat with a parade of earnest dullards sitting on porch swings or long walks down by the rendering plant. No way I could handle that. I can't exchange perfectly ordinary pleasantries with the taco lady without screaming on the inside. It used to even hurt to smile, but I had a few root canals done.