Easy Comfort Isn't Comforting

I Always Felt Like You Had To Be Important To Have Enemies.

All Along — Not Only Since She Left, But For A Decade Before — I Had Been Imagining Her Without Listening, Without Knowing That She Made As A Poor A Window As I Did. And So I Could Not Imagine Her As A Person Who Could Feel Fear, Who Could Feel Isolated In A Roomful Of People, Who Could Be Shy About Her Record Collection Because It Was Too Personal To Share. Someone Who Might Have Read Travel Books To Escape Having To Live In The Town That So Many People Escape To. Someone Who — Because No One Thought She Was A Person — Had No One To Really Talk To.

But There's So Much To Do: Cigarettes To Smoke, Sex To Have, Swings To Swing On.

I Think When You're 16, If You Have Good Parents, They Generally Just Fade In The Background. I Had Great Parents, And Because They Were Great, I Thought Very Little About Them In High School.

Half-drunk On Well-creamed Gas Station Coffee And The Exhilarating Loneliness Of A Freeway In Nighttime.