Touch
Touch him, Marcelin.
I don't touch. I can't, I never could. I don't know how to reach people that way, I turn clumsy and faltering and everything goes wrong. All I have are words, and he doesn't listen. The others I can at least argue with, but he slips away from me like water, and he never listens to me.
Touch. Try.
What, to take his hand in friendship, as if we could ever be friends? I don't like the man. I don't understand him, and I doubt if he understands me.
Try, Marcelin.
I have tried. I've tried to talk to the intelligent man I know is in there, behind the drunkenness and flippancy, the absurd ravings; I've tried to draw him out, and he won't let me. So let him stay there, sink into his personal bog -- I can't change someone who's bent on remaining as he is.
He could be more than this, and he won't. That is what makes me so angry. That he wilfully wastes himself, drowns all his wit and sense, seems determined to make himself unfit company and yet will not go away.
See him, how he looks at you.
But I don't understand what he wants from me, what reaction he's probing for with his quips and his mocking flattery. I don't know what he's trying to say. God knows if I could answer him, I would.
See.
He won't let me. Sometimes I would swear he wants me to hate him; he never gives me any reason not to. Flaunts his flaws and hides his virtues as though he's ashamed of them. Twists every word I say into a joke or a meaningless rant. What in God's name can I do?
Touch him, Marcelin.
I can't.