He's a vulture picking at other people with a bone beak just like all of the others. And it all comes from that sanctimonious center--the man who pretends to have it all together, just like the millions of other well-fed Americans, trudging to and from their jobs dragging forty ton stones tied by a rope to their balls.

At some point you realize that none of them have it together at all: that the judge hurling thunderbolts from behind the bar is wearing pink Victoria's Secret panties beneath his robes, that the psychiatrist loading up your kids with drugs lives in a lavender hell and is known as "Queenie" down at the local gloryhole, that the chica in a mansuit with shoulders padded so thick she looks like Lawrence Taylor is on so many little happy pills that the slightest break from the ordinary will lead to her dragged off screeching and hysterical to the psych ward.

They're all compensating. They're all fucking sick. Every single one of them, one of us, is so damaged it's like being in about the third day of opiate withdrawal when everything that moves still scares the shit out of you, your eyes and nose are running and your head feels like a lysol sponge but it's possible to put up a brave front and say that you're doing fine.

That's life--a society of polite manners, intelligent people like Luke Ford pretending to believe in big bearded Jehovahs and that clothing woven of two fabrics will condemn them to Hell with the children who smoked in the bathroom during study hall. Because they're convinced that it will all unravel around them if they don't believe in the myth that they're okay and just like everybody else.