Q: What’s the plot of ART?
A: July and August.
It’s daily typewriting.
A man goes on a journey.
He flashes back on earlier times.
Same plot as Wild Strawberries.
I am going to get an honorary degree from my old high school.
Q: What degree is that?
A: “In the
Also, “Anything you have to do, you have to go on and do yourself.” Rahsaan Roland Kirk.
Q: Your old high school is torn down. There’s nothing left but a Y. A. Tittle statue, and it needs painting.
You might as well show the lawnmower parade in True Stories.
A: Yes.
It’s like the lawnmower parade in True Stories.
Kissing a majorette on the band bus.
Why did she choose me?
She’s practicing.
Q: Blue Ball Blues.
A: I feel like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.
The creature must die.
What did I do?
Q: That’s what everybody asks at a high school reunion.
What did I do?
A: You can shit on my shoulder but don’t wipe your ass with my hair.
Q: You had impure thoughts.
A: Probably.
It was a trip to
Pahokee,
Perhaps a trip to the Orange Bowl. The ride home.
Q: Band nerds have more fun.
A: I had swollen testicles.
Q: That was mean.
A: It was high school.
Q: High school is life.
A: High school, military service, college, work.
Retirement.
Unemployment and television. Boca Del Vista Phase III. Early Bird Special.
Have to watch the newsreaders from the Today show, swanning around.
Telling me to buy things.
Q: You don’t need them.
A: I can’t afford them.
Q: They’re bad for the environment.
A: The planet is fucked.
Q: On the necessity of vocational disobedience. You did what you could.
A: It wasn’t enough.
I should have done more.
It wasn’t enough to sit in a room writing poems.
Go on walks, thinking.
Q: Beware of ventures that require new clothes.
A: I bought a couple of gook shirts at Dillards. A silk-cotton blend. $52.95, marked down 30% for the 4th of July sale.
Q: At least you’ll be presentable.
A: I’ll shine my low-quarters. I got a haircut.
Q: You’ll be like Maggio and Prewitt hustling queers in From Here to Eternity.
A: I remember seeing that movie before I went off to the Air Force.
And of course I’d read the book.
I thought I would be James Jones.
Q: You are James Jones.
He said he could no longer remember whether he did it, Prewitt did it, or he made it up.
A: Or Prewitt made it up.
Q: Nicolas Freeling killed off Inspector Van der Valk.
In the middle of a book.
Made Arlette the hero, instead.
A: Auprès de ma Blonde.
Her buddies from the neighborhood helped her solve the crime.
Q: If you die, Brenda can finish the book.
A: What difference does it make.
It won’t matter to me then.
I’ll be dead.
Q: They can bury you in a $50 gook shirt.
A: Cremate me. Give one shirt to Owen and one shirt to Balder.
