Now technically the point of the story is that all this "art" is a facade, a denial of reality. However, there are a few points I'm looking at now where I can definitely see your point. Right after "Venus De Milo" where Thomas thinks "Can't ****, can't wipe." I need to rephrase that to something less blatant, because the "shat" just before that part provides plenty of counterbalance. In fact, it's the same reason I changed "balls but no rectum" to "scrotum but no rectum." Well, that and the latinate parallel. There, changed it to "fertilizer of fallow fields."

Thomas is, after all, disillusioned with the museum. His problem is in seeking some sexual gratification here, he simply looks back on a time when he wasn't disillusioned, as unfertile as David's marble (plaster) genitalia or the Venus de Milo. Thomas lives in a world of preconceived notions, of a solid past, a past to which he wishes to return. Like the Monet, Thomas is stuck in a stiff framework confining him to his stasis, to his routine and habit. The disillusionment charges, then, a backwardlooking cynicism, not an enlightenment.