Sometimes you have to remind yourself that it is silly to ask for a world where fucking is not on the table at some point in every single situation, every transaction, every encounter. Most of the time we can decide for ourselves whether or not to notice its presence, but sometimes when it appears to show its head in a place we'd rather not see it, we act as if fucking has no right to intrude upon some of the things we do.

That is when you must remind yourself: nothing came before fucking. Nothing that we've invented, that is"” no city, no scene, no type of human interaction existed before fucking. For a long time, near the beginning of our existence, fucking was the only thing that kept our species alive, and some people maintain that it is still the only thing that allows for our persistence to this day. No type of creature could spend so much time"” thousands upon thousands of years in our case"” where nothing that is done takes precedence over some eventual fucking, without having a serious amount of fucking-related residue built up along the edges of the collective unconscious. By and large, the type of people interested in a task as morbid and futile as an attempt to clean this residue off are also the type of people who have no idea where to look for it"”this is not a coincidence. Things are tilted such that fucking cannot lose, no matter who opposes it.

Because of this, fucking is one of the strongest substances in all of the natural world. It is hard to break apart the molecules of carbon that make up a diamond, and it is very hard to stop two people with the mutual lust from fucking one another.

In Baton Rouge you will find, in an abandoned lot quite a ways outside the bustling center of the town, an older woman that looks in your face and, despite knowing better, quietly asks you to do the impossible.

To eat, technically speaking, is merely to put something into your mouth and chew. However, whenever you speak of "eating a meal,"� you are not talking about the act of literally putting pieces of the meal into your mouth, swallowing, and digesting them the way you might be if you were talking about that one time you ate a live goldfish"”rather, you are talking about an experience involving the type of food; the style of preparation; the atmosphere of the restaurant, kitchen, or room; the company; the silverware and plates--- all of the social decorum and ritual surrounding the process of adding more body to one's body. We rarely, if ever, get a chance to think about the significance of this distinction, but it takes on a vital role for those visiting the city of Covington, Kentucky.

Around the world, the rituals and customs attached to the taking of meals differ from place to place, but most are slight variations on a common set of standards. It should be surprising to us that one needs such little preparation or guidance when visiting a restaurant devoted to foreign cuisine--- there is a plate, or something like a plate, and it sits still while you take food off of it and put it into your mouth- you would hardly be hesitant to venture alone to any eatery in any American city for the first time alone, if I were to dare you to do so. You would assume that you could figure out anything you needed to know with slight modifications to your normal eating behavior.

Covington might be the only place in this country where this assumption would be utterly false. In Covington, meals are experienced by driving your car directly into a restaurant. In other cities, lettuce may lie in the middle of a sandwich, under some bread, or in a separate salad bowl"”but in Covington lettuce mingles with rock-sized pieces of shattered glass and twisted strips of splintered plastic seating. The citizen of Covington thinks as much of a sport-utility vehicle bending the steel frames of the windows and crushing a row of grey, Formica tables as one of us would think of pulling a chair back, sitting down, and placing our hands on the table's surface. Ketchup is for busted windshields and napkins are for blowing around when a car makes a gaping bringing the wind into the dining room.

The people of Covington use the term "break bread together"� with the accent on the "break."�

They do not have a separate name for their particular custom, and blinky sociologists from outside have yet to note this unique phenomenon, so it has neither a colloquial moniker nor scientific title"”this is simply is what they mean when they speak of "eating a meal."�

They do, in Covington, have something called "drive-thru,"� but this is a different phenomenon altogether: "Drive-thru"� is a process where alcohol can be purchased without requiring the purchaser to leave his or her vehicle in order to execute the transaction.

A trip to Baltimore will last for almost three months, but there's one hour (or so) near the end of that time that is so long and heavy that it shall hog up the entire memory of that trip"” spilling out those edges, even, and leaking into other cities stored adjacent and nearby.

You and your friend from home decide to devout an afternoon to routine maintenance of your primary traveling vessels"”there is a Jiffy Lube that is a reasonable number of blocks away from the Free Clinic, there is a Free Clinic, and there is a comfortable chunk of time to spare.

Upon entering the Free Clinic, though, at the end of a brisk walk under a confident spring sun, you find yourself standing at the outermost circle of Hell"”the ninth circle, the Pluto of Hell's layers: the circle so small and so comparatively free of the gravitational pull of the great fireball in the center of Hell that it can be reached by those who are fully living, if they decide to make the effort to get there.

You can tell you are near Hell proper because of all the flies. The front door is propped open but the sunlight only ventures in so far. The air gets a little thicker, although it still looks like the air you are used to, and it's the same temperature. There are maybe 16 or 17 seats, all facing towards you as you look in from the threshold of the doorway, and they are spread out in uneven rows. On a few of the chairs, some of the red material on the seat back has been picked away and the white, sticky stuffing is showing through. A few of the chairs have people in them, and a few of those people look like most of their flesh and fat has already departed on small ships bound for deeper places in Hell, perhaps on previous visits to this very room. Some people look used to the flies, radiating the same blend of awareness and indifference towards them that all of the humans in the room are projecting towards one another.

At the end of the short hall at the entrance, right where the building balloons out and becomes the room with the chairs in it, there is one of those doors that is partitioned in the middle, and the top half is opened but the bottom half is shut, making a little counter-window. The cheerful-looking Asian college girl on the seat behind the table hands you two tickets: one is red, and one is blue, and both have completely different 7-digit numbers on them. You sit down in one of the chairs, trying to keep an appropriate number of empty seats between you and the others waiting here (not too many, not too few"”it's a tricky balancing act that you don't have much time to dwell upon) and begin your own waiting. Different doctors appear from one of the various doorways scattered around the perimeter of the large room and call out non-sequential, two-digit numbers, most of which seem to be within spitting distance of the final two digits on one or the other of the colored tickets you hold"”although, you can only assume that these people are doctors: they carry clipboards and accompany the bearers of the figures they announce into what appears to be examining rooms behind their respective doors, but they are dressed as casually as the patients they bring into their rooms. Occasionally one of these "doctors"� will walk to the front counter to retrieve or drop off a folder before calling out the number and returning to their room with that number's possessor.

The order of the calling does not seem to follow any discernable pattern"”you are unable to anticipate when your number might be called, because the numbers announced seem to vary so unpredictably. Also disturbing your attempts to sort out the code of these broadcasts is the old television at the top of the black TV-cart off to the side, facing towards the chairs. On this old, wood-paneled television"”very likely donated by a nearby grade school or community college"”a short video made during a particularly potent portion of the 1980s blares information and testimonials concerning genital herpes, and specific personal experiences with this virus are related at an obscenely loud volume by various people unmistakably of this particular period in time.

You do notice, however, that there is something peculiar about one of the doctors. He has no hands. Instead, his wrists taper down to one long, curled finger-like appendage. Attached to each of these is a bulky, protruding metal rod that acts as a non-opposable, makeshift thumb. This doctor can hold a folder by putting it between his "finger"� and the metal protrusion, and pushing against it. While you stare absent-mindedly at his unique deformity, you hear him call a number"”panic strikes you, when you look down to see that it is not one of the numbers you hold. You are not completely relieved, though"” there is still a possibility that he will draw your name in this hellish lottery, that he shall be the one who conducts your physical examination. There is no way to know how close he may be to pulling out the two digits matching those on one of your stubs. Nobody moves in his or her seat. The television continues to blare.

When you are snapped to attention by the sound of your number, a young black girl on the TV is just beginning to tell a young black male why she chooses to abstain from sex with him, in the form of a rap. The doctor stands at the open entrance to one of the examining rooms with his face buried in an open a folder, one that he holds in his artificial claws.