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Show 165 the pale horse galloping around the globe, she wanted to clasp me close, to thrust into the future through me, as if that way she could increase life. I felt criminal saying it, but I had to leave. When I took off my uniform it was like taking off my magic. My role as Babe Brocken, hotshot fighter pilot, vanished. Gone too the powerful machine which lifted me, which I could ride into the sky. I was not Bellerophon; I was no one. I had no rank, no job, no place, no plans. My very self felt ghostly to me. Without thinking about it anymore than I could help, I probably confused impotence and sterility. I knew that if I could not be a father, I could be neither 9 husband nor lover. I remembered how wasteful I had been with love, how I had littered my path with discarded emotion, and with the deepest regret I recalled Avis and Marion and Liz Brown, I remembered even some of the whores in San Francisco and some of the girls of Miami, I thought most hopelessly of Kate Cannon. So, beyond all else, I knew that I had to move out into the world, to somewhere new to dream a new self into existence. |