[ WP ] `` Why are you doing this ? ! '' `` To make sure Hell is n't lonely . '' *gunshot*

Jared had met Peter in a new age cult meeting in the basement of a South Boston tenement a few years earlier, probably late'62. The two had been similar ages, shared similar middle class backgrounds, even knew a few of the same `` revolutionary'' figures in undergraduate political circles and had become fast friends quickly. They drank together, merged their already overlapping social circles, helped each other meet girls, and relentlessly pursued what was becoming known as new-age beliefs. It had ended like this, Jared held on a couch at gunpoint by Peter. As Peter spewed his newest amalgamated screed Jared tried to reconstruct how he had ended up in this position. 
 
 Jared had taken the scientific approach to their shared interests, applying his sociological and anthropological interests to interpret what they saw and read, while Peter had established himself as a true believer in what even then could only be described as experimental and untested belief systems. While Jared enjoyed their pursuits as a sort of detached cultural study, Peter seemed to be trying to throwaway the context his own culture and upbringing had given him, attempting to adopt foreign and untried ways of thinking for himself. It had especially been the newest ideas, not those mugged from ancient and established cultures, that had been the most upsetting to Peter's peace of mind. He started saying shit like, we're all queer pedophiles and racists, man at very inopportune situations. 
 
 One night, at a very Irish pub in Quincy, Peter stood up and started yelling about karma, spewed conflicting opinions about the IRA, scaring away their dates and pissing off the blue collar `` salt of the earth'' crowd. The two were chased out of the bar, although Jared was the only one who got hit for Peter's poor behavior. 
 
 The two grew apart for a few months, Peter having exhausted Jared's interest in circular logic ( revolution, duh ) and becoming more and more detached from his social circle. Finally, Peter had accosted Jared while he was heading home one night, waving a WW2 pistol of unfortunate extraction around and herding him into his own apartment. 
 
 Peter refused to meet Jared's eyes, ranting again about divine law, Huxley, karmic balancing, and other shit that Jared had finally realized did n't fit into their shared cultural foundations, before Jared finally asked `` Why are you doing this?!'' 
 
 Peter considered for a moment, his eyes rolling every-which way, undoubtedly considering his theories about wilding and Western cultures inferiority over the ever so equal cultures of the non-Christian world before saying `` To make sure hell is n't lonely.'' Thankfully he shot himself first, and Jared was able to resume his life. He attended graduate school, became a banker, and never fucking looked back at the intellectually unfounded and guilt ridden cultural revolution while simultaneously funding civil rights movements and participating in Church organized benefits for the homeless. 
 
 Peter became a sort of martyr among the `` awoken'' members of their old social circles for a short while, although most of them eventually got respectable jobs. A few, obviously, did n't make it out of the 60's. 

