The authentic is for the few, while the many must make the most of the fictional, and pretend there isn't anything more to life.
Excerpt from Priapus Unbound:
As Hubert slid down the steep hillside, swimming profusely in the way-too-big shoes anchored to his knobby-ankled feet, toes squishing in sweat, socks straining for every last drop of grip power in their Herculean cotton and polyester blend possession, he reminded himself that should he perform the miraculous and live through this ordeal, an event unlikely as the steep drop he was now embarked upon culminated in a meeting-rather abrupt-with a perfectly perpendicular wall, he would never again put aside the precepts of Proper Footwear Sizing. If only he lived.
Well, perhaps this was more a past tense ode to brevity, foolery, sloth, or in any case professional indolence, a sad reminiscence of a life whose wheels no longer turned without rupture. A life devoured of pleasure. Perhaps. Yet the truth could also be contained within his self realized tendency toward Pity-Party theatrics that had so often alighted just at the inception of prevailing doom. Perhaps this would be one of those times.
SPLAAATTT!!!
Or not one of those times, but a time at least that would be no more. Her memory was today sharp as crystal, cutting through his indentured brain as he now lingered within the pain of her remembrance; she was disquietingly beautiful, he ceremoniously stiff and formal.
Perhaps if he had only…
No. A pointless excursion of mind and limb. Meanwhile, there was the pressing matter of this fast approaching and immovable –implacable?–wall. Dear, dear, an altogether frightful predicament. And where oh where is dear mummy when most needed? Cast your infant from the suck and away you flee I suppose, hmm?
Yes…well. Bigger fish to fry and all that old boy. Seems your crumpet is in a bit of a pickle. Not unlike the…um…pickle you had gotten yourself into…or gotten your pickle into, as it were; Miss Periwinkle, that is. Naughty, naughty. Had better stay clear of that Periwinkle, Mr. Pickle. Stay clear indeed! When caught between the hammer and the shooter, which way to run?
Hubert looked before him at the sloping hillside, the advancing wall, the surrounding area. Everything appeared as in flashes but yet unusually clear. And for the most briefest of moments, he captured the distinct impression that all around him was conspiratorially involved against him. Surrounded as it were, bollocksed, hoodwinked, bamboozled. Nowhere to turn for lack of avenue. And always skating, swirling, spinning, on that dim and murky perimeter just beyond the wall … a Griffin?