Page 88

With the crossed-out opening removed, the page becomes a sharper, single-note joke about Jefferson's absence and the speaker's fixation on it.

What survives is much terser and cleaner than the earlier transcript suggested. The humor now comes from the mismatch between Jefferson never coming up and the speaker's insistence that he must still be thinking about him.

A three-line handwritten coda that lands as a single dark joke and an envoi to the preceding courtroom monologue. Picking up the nine-name confession, it observes 'Funny how Jefferson's / NAME NEVER CAME UP', the capitalized middle line shouting the omission, then snaps shut on a paranoid certainty, 'I bet He's thinking about me'. The humor turns on the mismatch: the one name that never surfaced is the one the speaker is sure is fixated on him. With the heavily struck opening stanza removed in review, what survives is terse and clean. This reading is provisional because the page is a mixed-band handwritten manuscript whose struck opening was omitted; source capitalization in 'NAME NEVER CAME UP' and 'He's' is preserved.