He wants to be a brutal old man, an aggressive old man, as dull, as brutal as the emptiness around him, He doesn't want compromise, nor to be ever nice to anyone. Just mean, and final in his brutal, his total, rejection of it all.
He tried the sweet, the gentle, the “oh, let's hold hands together” and it was awful, dull, brutally inconsequential. Now he'll stand on his own dwindling legs. His arms, his skin, shrink daily.And He loves, but hates equally.