A man walks into a man. He realizes it’s the same man … they’re … the same man. They merge. Naturally. Inviolably. A man walks into a man and a merger occurs.

Who was I before I walked into myself? Can I walk out on myself? The merger feels permanent, irreversible.

This man, having walked into himself, now walks into a woman. Naturally, they merge. The woman wonders if the man has become her. The woman wonders if there are men now inside her, how many, etc. The man wonders if the woman has become him, how many women, do they have names, histories. Where does woman leave off from man and become woman, and what about my thoughts (the woman is thinking), are my thoughts my thoughts, are they man thoughts, are they many men thoughts? There is now a thorny gambit of beginnings and endings, crossed lines and blurred boundaries.

A man walks into a man … imitating a child. This is not unlike (the man child thinks) opening your mouth wide and swallowing an entire miniature circus, and the circus in its zeal and mania and kazoos and mirthful mayhem affects you from the inside in, the inside in down deep. You are now a man who hosts a circus, that circus being the childhood you swallowed, and some might say inadvertently. You were a man who walked into a man imitating a child and now you can kiss your business lunches and wingtips goodbye. Say hello to pie in the face and running willdy with scissors. Roll up your trousers and skin your knees and then go out and find a mother made of women who walked into mothers who will peroxide your scraped and dirty knees. Is that the destiny of men who walk into men imitating children?

A man walks into a bar. Ouch. The bar is metal. Unforgiving.

I need a different kind of bar, the man says, rubbing his impacted nose. Let me try again…

A man walks into a bar. The bar is filled with all kinds of men and women who are walking into each other, lost, searching, fevered for the right merger, the absolute one. If the man walks further into the bar, he will walk into becoming they, if he walks out of the bar, he will walk into staying himself, alone … for a little while. The man clearly understands that as long as men and women are walking, mergers of infinite varieties are inevitable.