This one time on the street in Gallup down by the good coffee place, we met a chirpy guy who told us that Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire was fake, because although old Ed wrote it as if he was alone during the days he spent as a ranger in the Arches Natural Moneymint, he in fact was cohabiting with a wife the whole time.

To which I reply belatedly:

Abbey called and wanted to call the book Desert Solipsism.

It was his publisher’s marketing department that insisted on naming it after a card game. More relatable, you know.

(and so note–to hell with publishers)

And, as anyone who has ever spent a minute in a marriage knows, cohabiting and solipsism are not mutually exclusive phenomena.

So, buddy, I think your story, while true, is the actual fake.

The fragmentary moments I’ve spent co-habiting in recent years have not interrupted my solipsism, my state of

only, single, sole; forsaken; extraordinary.

But we are spending a lot of quality time in an effort to bridge the gap, the one that exists between every single mother’s son among us;

between you and me.

I believe in the essential nobility of that pursuit.

PS: The reason most often cited for being forced to use social media, or turning ourselves into phone drones more generally, goes something like, “well it’s the only way to stay in touch”.

Man, talk about useless fakery.

In Touch, if it means anything anymore, means exactly that.

Touch.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it right, dear shared societal world of norms and theories out beyond the solus wall.