He might be responsible.
He might be brave.
He might be a louse and live in a cave.
But he might be me.
Or you.A Geoffrey Wells essay.
He can’t unthink the unthinkable, even if he just calls it the big U. Because after a while he thinks of it as the big YOU—i.e. himself; it becomes a kind of a circular paranoia. It is incontestable and can be anything, which makes him think about it even more. And maddeningly, though it’s big and dark and looming, it’s still unknowable. That’s what scares him; or used to.
But he revisits those familiar deflecting phrases in his head:
“I can always . . . ”, “I’ll just . . . ”
He would have, could have, should have had a safety net. She should have mended the hole before she swung through the air. Before he took the pills he should have asked for help from a true friend. Instead, they found him blue and Unthinkable.