I don’t need your permission, to have a love affair or write poetry based on the skeleton of your life. Everywhere in the world crazy people do crazy shit worse than me falling a little bit in love, worse than you telling me not to stop, worse than the transgressional fictions you make up in your head while the rest of us go to work, while the rest of us burn our babies and our college diplomas working menial jobs and condemn the Greeks for their lack of skill in managing debt.
Eat your pizza by the water’s edge and talk your fucked-up grammar, the desert will take us all back in the end, the desert speaks to us from heaven telling us our punishment for living is being beautiful.
We’re not bad people, you and I. We aren’t sitting on leather sofas shopping for expensive tuxedos and red dresses to wear to award shows. We don’t honor well-educated architects for the rebuilding of shitty little ramshackle houses once inhabited by artists.
We always sit in the back, you and I. We always remark about how great it would be if we liked techno music, if we had friends who would just leave us the fuck alone to eat our eggs and write our poetry, about how much we hate sitting in the back and trendy haircuts that remind us of Seattle. Or New York.
What would your fancy people think of me if they knew I came from Alabama, that I still come from Alabama every time I have one goddamned gin and tonic.
Alabama will never leave me, not even when I meet ruddy-cheeked men from Scotland, or fuck just the right man who never bitches and never follows me around to make sure I eat my eggs and don’t fuck the help.
I don’t want to talk to the giant Scotsman today. I don’t want to fall in love, not even with you, not even a little bit, not even to be a well-trained writer. Not even for the chance to leave Alabama behind forever.