May 12, part three: what if I told you the truth? (12 minutes)

I am not who I say I am, have not been for thirty years. When we moved to East Texas I decided to take on a new identity, leave everything behind. I ran away, killed a boy who was my age, strangled him with a pair of gym shorts. He didn't see it coming. We were at school, wrong place wrong time.

I knew where he lived, so I went there, walked in, sat down at the table and told the woman at the kitchen sink I didn't feel well; didn't feel like myself, was the way she later put it to the man in the living room. He was blind, so that worked out, and she was a mother and didn't realize that her son had been replaced, just that her son was more in need of mothering than before and that was a role she felt very comfortable in and she was happy for the enhanced need.

My own family never missed me. They never knew I was there in the first place. I'm sure they just went about their business without me, none the wiser. And so I took on this new identity, found the room that was mine and slipped into the identity of this schoolmate I hardly knew.

He wasn't a popular kid so nobody noticed that he and I weren't the same one. He was quiet. And so was I. I grew up like that. Married the woman of his dreams, got a job doing what he was best at, selling cars, and now I drive a BMW and I take trips alone and drive around towns I've ever been to before and I cry behind the dark tinting of my fancy windows and I'm looking for someone, looking for the next place to go, looking for the man whose place I'll take.

I'll yank him out of his car, take his identification and let him roll off a cliff in my car, then I'll find his house and see what my new family looks like, see how many kids I have and what plans we have for the summer. My wife and kids won't miss me. They never seem to know when I'm even there. They're not really my family anyway.

May 12, part two: a piece of paper flapping in the wind... (9 minutes)

...lifted up from the front porch junk trunk and danced across the wicker chair to the landing, the sidewalk, past the bird bath. A cat huddles down at the coming sound, waddles, leaps, attacks, bats the paper into the street and there it sits, not flat, more crippled from the cat play. The wind plays with it again when the cat has lost interest. Briefly it ponders the pile of sticks and other garden clippings piled up for the coming pickup, but the clippings are various shades of dull green and brown and this paper, though not white-white like the smooth white pages in the desk drawer, is too white for that group. It lets the wind carry it on down the street, caught in a whirl of wind, past the fig tree in the house that's being renovated. A week ago, the paper would had to have stayed there because a limb hung out onto the street low and heavy and deformed, its leaves would have halted the paper, held it there, kept it for further inspection when its bulbous fingers turned purple and left sticky prints on the paper. But no, the paper moved on, swept along the street past the abandoned house, past the new build modern structured rumored to have been bought by Hollywood star Kirsten Dunst. The paper doesn't know Kirsten Dunst. It might be vaguely aware of Robert DeNiro for his role in the movie Brazil, but not well enough to say so. The paper blows, makes its way to the end of the street, to the chain link fence that surrounds the cemetery. It waves at me when I pass by in my car. Waves as if to say, "Hey, look at me! Now I'm free!"

May 12, part one: I am (12 minutes)

I am six feet four and a half inches tall.
I am a white boy but I don't always feel so white or so boy.
I am ready to drive cross country at the drop of a hat.
I am relatively happy with the way my life is
going but I seem to have fucked up my right
shoulder somewhere along the way.
I am right-handed.
I am afraid I will lose my hearing and eyesight.
I am writing a novel and it annoys me when
people say, "Is that based on your life?"
I am fatherless, have been since I was sixteen; it's for the best.
I am done with a three-day fast that started a week ago today and I do feel healthier.
I am not drinking coffee or smoking cigarettes or pot anymore.
I am not saying I never will again.
I am excited about the weather.
I am anxious to see my old friend who is coming for a visit next month.
I am starting to perform again and I thought for awhile that I never would again.
I am damaged but it makes me interesting.
I am over organized religion, maybe I always have been.
I am trying to keep an ongoing, relatively healthy relationship with my family.
I am confused.
I am hungry for bread though I just had breakfast, but since I didn't have any kind of bread I
think that's another addiction.
I am constantly aware of my addictions and try to mess with them, push myself to my edges.
I am going to Bigtown tomorrow to take my mother out to lunch.
I am more in touch with both of my sisters since our grandmother died but it still doesn't feel
like it's enough.
I am close to a cemetery and I like to go for walks there.
I am exploring things about my nature that have lain dormant for many years.
I am a divorcee, but my marriage lasted such a short period of time and was nearly twenty
years ago, I always check the Single box on forms.
I am interested in painting, watercolor, just for the joy of it.
I am happy in my garden, snipping zinnias and picking weeds and watching the sunflower stalks
get taller and taller.
I am in love with the idea of composting, making dirt.
I am trying to make a difference in society.
I am volunteering at a thrift store four hours a week.
I am thinking that might get me in trouble.
I am going to tell you about those crazy duck people.
I am going to New York City in July.
I am going to buy a washing machine at a scratch and dent sale.
I am going to have to borrow money to finish paying for my truck.
I am ready to stop writing and start reading.