Returning his pen to its holder, he told us, 'I will have him gutted with that scythe. I will hang him by his own intestines.' At this piece of dramatic exposition, I could not hep but roll my eyes. A length of intestines would not carry the weight of a child, much less a full grown man.

I will admit he is unusual, but that is perhaps the closest I could come to complimenting him.

I lay in the dark thinking about the difficulties of family, how crazy and crooked the stories of a bloodline can be.

I saw my bulky person in the windows of the passing storefronts and wondered, when will that man there find himself to be loved?

He is not bad, I don't think. Perhaps he is simply too lazy to be good.

Here is another miserable mental image I will have to catalog and make room for.

I had never been with a woman for longer than a night, and they had always been whores. And while throughout each of these speedy encounters I tried to maintain a friendliness with the women, I knew in my heart it was false, and afterward always felt remote and caved in. I had in the last year or so given up whores entirely, thinking it best to go without rather than pantomime human closeness.