Content: Arthur/TMWTPF, Allusions to child abuse, Self hatred

There are dancers on the television. Arthur watches intently, leaning in from his place on the couch. The volume is low, hidden from his sleeping mother, but he can hear the music clearly through the dance itself. Between his fingers burns his last cigarette, its hungry flame eating paper until it finally bites at his skin.

Arthur flinches and stubs it out into the overflowing ashtray. Beside it lies the empty pack - a useless pile of bent cardboard and foil. He reaches for it on instinct, then curls his fingers into a fist and stands, walking quietly to the kitchen where his jacket is hooked over the counter. From its pocket he fishes out the pack he'd bought that afternoon, and when he returns to the living room the man with the painted face is sitting in the armchair beneath the lamp, watching the dance he'd left behind.

"Hey," the man with the painted face says, gesturing to the television, "you think you could do that?"

Arthur picks the lighter up off the coffee table before sitting down. "Does it matter? It's not like I'll ever be on TV."

"You don't have to be on TV to dance. Do you only dance because you wanna be on TV?"

"Not really," Arthur says, peeling the cellophane off the fresh pack and crushing it into a crackling ball. "I dance because I like it and it feels good. You don't really need a reason."

The man with the painted face gives him a knowing look, "Yeah, but you have a reason. Don't you?"

"Maybe," Arthur considers. "I've never really thought about it." He pulls the first cigarette from its snug row and beneath it lies a perfect hole - darkness surrounded by columns of white.

Throughout his childhood there were always crowding men. And as time went on they would leave things behind: sometimes scars inside and out, sometimes clothes that would find their way into his wardrobe, sometimes worthless things that would collect like garbage in smaller and smaller apartments. And always new shards of disappointment and anger and resentment. And a hole that felt safe but that his mother was desperate to fill. But once or twice he was left with something good that remained with him, something gentle and calming and perfect.

"My mother had this boyfriend," he says with tentative shyness. "I was pretty young, still in elementary school. He had a lot of money - more money than we did, anyway. He was a lawyer or a professor. One of those people with big patches on the elbows of their jackets." He absentmindedly covers one elbow with his palm. "He was never violent and he spoke softly and he always took care of us. And one day he asked me 'what would you want to learn if you could learn anything, just like that?'" he snaps his fingers, punctuating the memory, "And I said that I'd want to learn how to dance. So he paid for dance lessons." Arthur flicks the lighter a few times, watching sparks burst in and out of existence, before holding it to the cigarette between his lips.

"You only dance because of some guy your mom fucked?" The man with the painted face sounds incredulous and his lewdness makes Arthur wince.

"No," Arthur says. "Because of him I learned that I was good at it. It made me happy. And people like you when you're good at something. When you're good at something it makes everyone think you have a purpose because you can give them something that they can only get from you."

He remembers a sunlit gym and the smell of warm rubber, the feeling of slick hardwood beneath his feet, the gentle tug of his hair being tied up by a laughing girl.

He breathes smoke between his teeth and it curls around them in fading patterns. "My mother tried to talk him out of it," he explains. "She was worried it would make me grow up to be - y'know - to like men."

The man with the painted face laughs, something high pitched and cackling, "Wasn't she right, though?"

Arthur shrugs. "Who knows. Who knows what makes people turn out like me." He turns his attention back to the television, to the dancers moving behind glass. He wonders about the life he could have had if things had been different, and the life he wishes he had even if everything had stayed the same.

The man with the painted face carves into the silence. "So what happened? Did he die?" he mimes holding a gun to his head and pulling the trigger. "Was it like that? Did he fall and break his neck? Was he hit by a car?"

Arthur flicks the lighter one more time before tossing it back onto the table. "No, he didn't die. He left. Every good man left. My mother drove them away. She's like a poison to kindness."

The man with the painted face leans in, serpentine and smiling. "So you're saying you're not a good man? 'Cause if you were a good man you'd have left a long time ago, just like he did."

Arthur is quiet. In the background, the music fades into the white noise of applause and the curtain closes on the bowing dancers, cutting them away one by one. "I guess I'm not," he says.