I Don't Care If I'm A Fish,

(such A Life)engaged Gross Quantities Of Hope And Despair And Set Them Wildly Side By Side, Like A Third World Country Of The Heart.

It Was Like The Classic Scene In The Movies Where One Lover Is On The Train And One Is On The Platform And The Train Starts To Pull Away, And The Lover On The Platform Begins To Trot Along And Then Jog And Then Sprint And Then Gives Up Altogether As The Train Speeds Irrevocably Off. Except In This Case I Was All The Parts: I Was The Lover On The Platform, I Was The Lover On The Train. And I Was Also The Train.

Pleasantness Was The Machismo Of The Midwest. There Was Something Athletic About It. You Flexed Your Face Into A Smile And Let It Hover There Like The Dare Of A Cat.

Start Dating Someone Who Is Funny, Someone Who Has What In High School You Called A "really Great Sense Of Humor" And What Now Your Creative Writing Class Calls "self-contempt Giving Rise To Comic Form." Write Down All Of His Jokes, But Don't Tell Him You Are Doing This. Make Up Anagrams Of His Old Girlfriend's Name And Name All Of Your Socially Handicapped Characters With Them. Tell Him His Old Girlfriend Is In All Of Your Stories And Then Watch How Funny He Can Be, See What A Really Great Sense Of Humor He Can Have.

This Lunge At Moral Fastidiousness Was Something She'd Noticed A Lot In People Around Here. They Were Not Good People. They Were Not Kind. But They Recycled Their Newspapers!