Essays and Fictions

In the end, I only believe in Siddhartha Gautama and Bertrand Russell. And although I’ve published many things indicating otherwise, I believe the only truly original artists of the last one hundred odd years are Vladimir Nabokov and Patricia Highsmith.

Hipsters aren’t visited by unseen tragedy (unless the mother kombucha falls off a ledge and breaks)

Danny had a parrot named Fucker. And besides dealers and hookers, Danny only had two visitors to his house—his mother and his parole officer. The parrot didn’t have many words or sentences to blurt out, because neither did Danny. So his parole officer would drop in, or his mother might bring him a casserole, and Fucker would say one of two things:

The things I’ve done for sex and drugs: unspeakable. The things sex and drugs have done for me: my entire output. And enough material to last me another lifetime as an artist.

Novels, suicide notes and memoirs all have one thing in common: they’re all fictions. Novels, obviously. Memoirs, while promising the truth of a life, are still inherently fictional by virtue of what’s excluded and what’s amplified. Memoirs are the manipulative presentation of one’s life for public consumption. The mundane and the embarrassing are

It occurred to me that there was in fact no magazine, overt or hidden, that would not make sense in the waiting room of a psychotherapist. The

Sex requires someone else, usually. Drugs are for being alone. People who like to get fucked up with other people are not people I like to get fucked up with. Because getting fucked up is for doing alone. Or, very rarely, with someone who is likeminded and handles their drugs well; who doesn’t talk too much and will let you rest your legs on their

William Eggleston once said that his entire body of work was an attempt to write a novel. I think my entire body of work is a suicide note.

He sat at his desk. I sat in the chair, which supported my thoracic and lumbar spine in ways I hadn’t previously known possible. I could see this relationship having legs.