This is the episode where the contract breaks. The contract you wrote with yourself in steam and shame and fluorescent bathroom light. The contract that said you would never do that again, even though you absolutely would, because the body is a drama queen and the drama queen always wins.

This is the episode where Morrissey’s shirt is unbuttoned for no reason, where Martin Gore stares you down like he knows what you did, where Kurt Cobain’s dress is somehow less revealing than your childhood panic attack at 9 p.m. on a school night.

This is the episode where a kid cries so hard he becomes a weather system. A low‑pressure front of snot and terror. A small boy melting down in someone else’s driveway while a friend watches like he’s witnessing a live demonstration of “emotional instability” for a science fair project. A mother hovering, calculating how much of this meltdown will rub off on her own child like secondhand smoke.

This is the episode where you realize fear and pleasure share a bloodstream. Where getting naked with strangers feels safer than sleeping away from your mother. Where the eclipse is the only honest light source. Where looking directly at the truth will blind you, but you do it anyway because you’ve already gone blind in all the important ways.

This is the episode where you turn knobs.

Every knob.

All the way up.

Until the knob becomes the next knob.

Until the feeling becomes the next feeling.

Until the child becomes the adult who still can’t sleep in certain rooms.

This is not a story.

This is not therapy.

This is not healing.

This is extemporaneity as deity.

This is the cult of the knob.

This is the gospel according to the drama queen inside you.

And he is wide awake tonight.