The other is a show I'm less interested in watching, which is one in which sex, death and drugs are so terrible and unnatural and ugly that we can't even talk about them, or look at them in a particular context or from a particular angle, because they all mean the same thing, for everybody, for all time. What Jason Stackhouse needs most is a horse to ride, through the wilderness, because what he is, is terribly sad and terribly afraid, and walking takes too long. Lafayette knows that he needs a horse, and knows the perfect solution to the question that is plaguing Jason. Because what Jason's never, ever done, in the midst of all that fucking, is understand why we do it.

I firmly believe -- like Bill, like Adele, like Lafayette -- that anything sufficiently known is incapable of being scary, because to know sufficiently is to love. So when I say Lafayette is the guide, and the only character who is always right, that's what I'm talking about. The cruelest and the wisest thing anyone can do is remove your training wheels. All story but particularly this story is about removing as many things from the bicycle as possible: training wheels first, and then the seat can go, and who needs handlebars, and those gears never did you any favors, and pretty soon the wheels themselves are gone, and soon you'll be flying. Lafayette is sinister to the degree that drugs are sinister, which are sinister to the degree that freedom is sinister and terrifying, which is a lot.

Jason slowly slides a meat thermometer all the way through a sausage, staring intensely at Lafayette; the last centimeter or so are a sudden jerk. "Yeah. Just like that. And no anesthesiar, either. First, I get hauled in by the cops, then I gotta let a dude drain my johnson." They talk about how much they love each other and Jason starts lecturing Lafayette that he better stop selling V, because it's entirely possible that somebody else will be completely retarded and take a whole shitload of it before going into police custody and wouldn't that be sad if it happened again, and Sherriff Dearborne thinks he's some kind of sex maniac (Lafayette is like, "You are!") and now things are fucked up with Tara. Whose spot Lafayette completely blows, as some kind of random craps throw: "She'll get over it. The girl's been lost in love with you since she was eight." Jason is stunned for like five seconds, because he had no idea, and that makes it worse, because when your identity is based on being desired, those who do are simultaneously more and less important than everybody else, so now Tara loving him makes her more important than her utility. "Gah! My life sucks so much ass! And it's all because of your fuckin' V!"