Tallahassee (cont'd)

One time I picked up Cecil Taylor
in Hosford on a Radio Shack portable radio
on the seat of my rusted-out Peugeot 404,
Roland, as in "Chanson de Roland," and thought,
"This is really living, ain't it?" I had a permanent,
Career Service job as an information specialist with
the Department of Commerce in my old college town,
where the writers' clique associated with the university
would probably welcome me with open arms.
Fraternally yours, Jack the Raver.

With the stub of a pencil for a nose
and slobber running down my chin.

I worked in the Collins Building.
Named after former governor Leroy Collins.
A fraternity brother of my dad's at Florida.
Sigma Phi Epsilon. He was the campaign manager
in Delray Beach for Collins the year he was first elected
mayor. Collins won too, on Dad's coattails. In every town
in Florida we drove through, on vacation, when I was young--
Apalachicola, Miccanopy--my dad knew the doctor, the lawyer,
and the pharmacist. Who do I know? Displaced seine fishermen.
Potter Brown. A roofer in Alabama, Walter Moore.
Folk artist Woodie Long.
Suzette and Pretty Michelle.
The Hogtown Hellcats.

One time a state legislator
and his entourage of lackeys
crossed a yellow crime scene tape
designed to keep civilians out of
our excavations, for safety's sake,
and Jill called out to them, "Hey, asshole--
can't you read the sign? Keep out. That means you."
Her tits moving around under her T-shirt like puppies in
a croaker sack. Before they were drowned. Ah, youth.
Ah, life. She had that joie de vivre. She was full of
piss and vinegar. An ex-cheerleader who fell in with gypsies.

Usually we ate on the green, a sort of a Dejeuner sur L'herbes,
but in bad weather we'd repair to the top floor of the New Capitol,
and I'd check the Florida Artist Wall of Fame, to see if I
was up there yet. Burt Reynolds is.

We went to FSU together at different times.
I think of that picture of him as a running back,
a threat display, a fierce grimace, while I was taking
seminars from Dr. Dailey on The Savage Mind.
"A bunch of conceited muscles running around
Doak Campbell Stadium" he would say. He should
see it now. It looks like a gothic cathedral.
I was going to be a writer. And now I am one.

Think of Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces,
working as a roughneck, and it turns out
he's a classical pianist. Think of the hitchhiker
he picked up, wringing her hands and saying, "Filth."
That's me. Overwhelmed by the progress I see
all around me. The sense of loss. Of innocence betrayed.

Nelson Algren said a writer has to have an acquired innocence,
tested in the annealing flame of rejection and indifference.
Charles Willeford was afraid his Army life would coarsen him.
He knew he had to protect his sensitivity. Which he dared not
reveal to his compatriots, lest they tease him unmercifully.
It's a tradeoff and a crapshoot, isn't it? Vocation and career
in conflict. The writing life versus korporate kubicle kulture.com
The street versus the penthouse floor, executive perquisites.