About today's humanoids--they confuse me. Even while they beguile and delight me. Something about their flirty pseudo-maturity, an air of extreme knowingness, a sagacious style, which aims to tell you they're in play, but oh so cool about it. I've never understood cool.

Okay, I'm talking about the women. You knew that.

My Sissy, who (over 30 years ago!) loved me the moment she realized I was "somebody," has been Harvard Square's reigning blues queen for years, still looks 34, still trolls for guys and they stand in line. But she has nothing on these chicklets. They are sooo hip, so in-their-sweet-bodies, so ironic, so unshockable. Yet, push them beyond material basics and they are suddenly just a collection of attitudes without a center. Like, WHO ARE YOU ? A secret box of heat and dust inside an infinite regress of empty boxes. A flashy freeway that ends & there's no place for cars to go except off a sudden cliff gaping in the darkness. . . .

They don't know the darkness is there. "Come touch me Mr. Holy Man," says a hip college chick, leading a little hairless dog. "Touch my puppy, too." She thinks she's sized me up--an old wreck of a beatnik out looking for love, & she thinks that's funny, ha ha ha.

Am I looking for love? Well, it's an open point, I guess. Humanoid girls are designed to be irresistable, just like Twinkies.