something rotten I was a child once, but something in me was rotten. I can't "recover lost purity" because I never had any. It seems I had a grudge against the world from the beginning. I was always in a hurry to get something and I wanted it exactly that way. Hamburgers, for example, had to be plain meat, no pickles or mustard, and I would eat the thin wafer of gray meat and leave the bun. I was fussy but not pure. I played with bugs; I killed them; I destroyed whatever I got my hands on. I got a new toy truck and I bashed it with a stone. I went through the fields with a stick, knocking the tops off plants. I was a whirlwind and consuming fire with no purpose. My friends, I reduced to servants or turned into enemies (this still happens). I didn't even have beauty to redeem me. At least, I could never leave beauty alone and had to tear it apart and make it bleed. I plowed through those years like a big ugly machine that ran on coal and spat black fumes. Since then I have cultivated a nervousness that borders on grace, something like an explosive with a hair-trigger. That is probably the closest to beauty that I will ever get: the purity of a death wish which is terrifying.
	location: New York City date: Spring 1990 average rating: [not rated] your rating (0-10):