Right away we shared amphetamines. He fed them to me to keep me awake.

You have to keep in mind this is a true story, and the events I’m about to describe took place before 2006 in a desert land which I’ve never been able to find again on any map. And years later, when I

Loud noises bother me. Crunching on chips. What did they do five hundred years ago when they didn’t have chips? They ate grapes. Quietly.

Dexedrine,
obedient beauty,

a low-calorie
alternative

for excess.

I tell her I want some kissing, one
minute of mat kissing before lesson plans,
emails, dishes.

and by the way, I wear jeans too, and I’ll fuck that white girl, absolutely, from the commercial, the camera trails her on the beach, she’s smiling, now she’s hiding behind her hands . . . 

They put her flyer on their mailboxes and look at me like she’s dead.

My boy on the boulevard bubbling.
Triple wick rip tide in my mind.

Seeing a picture of my tits online didn’t bother me as much as it should have. 

With snot running down my chin, weeping, I allowed myself to entertain the possibility that this key situation would go on forever.

I have to believe that what I am writing — what I am living through — means something.

There is no hotel breakfast. No air conditioning. No Tour Guide singing in the next room.

Bliss can flip into alienation and back into elation, adding to the teasing uncertainty of identity.

When you peed in the cup, Herman was behind you, watching.

‘Did you talk about capes,’ he said.

‘Yes,’ Mary said.

But I don’t even know what a collective is. And I can’t remember if he had tattoos.

One weird Halloween everybody dressed up as Elliott Smith.

like HFCA is kind of artless manipulation 
it’s not subtle
 

People keep saying that they can’t say anything but everyone is saying everything all the time. 

Finally, Mr. Mackey, the chair of the school’s English Department, delivered a rambling panegyric about the school’s depth of talented writers. I left my seat in the bleachers to fetch a Dr. Pepper from the vending machine.