Where are you? On a chair by a desk in the basement of a building near some trees around Lexington within the United States, aka prepositional hell.

What are you? A deranged prophet hellbent on calling bears out of the woods to eat little children. Oops, past life. Right now I’m an English major at the University of Kentucky.

What do you make? Love with honey-covered hands and a satin tongue. And lots of ants.

What do you love? Pork Swizzles and Monkey Butt Custard.

What do you hate? Vapid, fluffy people who stare straight through everything. People who choose reality lite - half the guilt, twice the problems.

What do you listen to? Momus, David Bowie, Lida Husik, Nick Drake, Kendra Smith, The Soft Boys, Spiritualized, Divine Comedy Dante on tape, for your car... , and lots of machinery. big electric fans and elevators and fish tanks and refridgerators.

What do you watch? Everything. Especially you. Quit picking your nose or I’ll join you. Really.

What do you drink? Cranberry Cabanas and Bloody Marias for breakfast in the summer - bourbon with everything in the winter.

What do you smoke? Tests. Low tar, less filling, and, just a like a cigarette, you’ve accomplished nothing when you’re finished.

What do you take? It used to be large quantities of herbs - legal - mixed with LSD, but I’m sticking to over-the-counters and psychotropics prescribed by this geriatric sawbones who’ll write out a ‘scrip for the hell of it, basically.

What do you believe in? ‘Southern Preacher Voice’; Ah buhleev inna evuh lastin’ lahf provided by ahr LAWD JESUS, Say Amen! Wait - that’s all wrong. I believe in the advancement of society and a certain noble obligation on the part of humans to behave decently and with love toward one another.

When We were 16.

Where were you? In a rotten shithole in Eastern Kentucky.

What were you? A precocious, hyperallergic child wholly terrified by the drooling, xenophobic, semi-republican conformity of the community. I stayed in my room.

What did you wear? Clothes, I hope. I had a lot of body hair, even then, so I might not have. Then again, there’s no buckshot in my ass as there would have been had I run nekkid, mistaken for an animal, you see, so I probably wore something.

What did you listen to? Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma and Ken Nordine. Obsessively.

What did you watch? Words in books. Words in about 800 books.

What did you love? The stars and the woods.

What did you hate? Practically everything in my immediate vicinity.

What did you drink? Little nips of voddy and the occasional whiskey-mixed-with-honey. All from the parents’ liquor cabinet.

What did you smoke? Nothing. I’m allergic to smoke.

What did you take? Allergy pills.

What did you want to be? Out of that rank, moldering decay called home.

Who did you fight? The system, man…

Who/What did you believe in? Eh, I was pretty nihilistic then, but I think I believed in fantasy.

Where did you go? Music camp, church camp, and the bowels of Mammoth Cave. Church camp was the most worthwhile. I learned about S&M there.

What did you learn? Life in Eastern Kentucky is a sad parody compared to the rich, entertaining pursuits possible in a moderately sized city. Don’t go there.


1998