If You Have Given Up

For Some Reason California's Always Been Where The Struggle Is About How Much Authority You Can Impose On People's Private Lives. It Seems To Show Up There Most Clearly. They Had A Helmet Law For Motorcycles In California And The Bikies Were Saying Things Like, "it Restricts My Vision. I Can't Hear What My Bike's Doing. If It Was On Fire I Wouldn't Know It Until My Ass Caught." And At The Bottom Line What The Bikies Were Saying Was, "look, It's My Goddamn Head And If I Want To Splatter My Brains All Over The Guardrails On The Coast Highway, Super For Me."

I've Been Typed As A Horror Writer, And I've Always Said To People, "i Don't Care What You Call Me As Long As The Checks Don't Bounce And The Family Gets Fed."

I Worry About You Bev. I Worry A Lot.

What Do You Really Want To Know? Am I Sorry For What I Did? There's Not A Day Goes By I Don't Feel Regret. Not Because I'm In Here, But Because You Think I Should Be. I Look Back On The Way I Was. A Young, Stupid Kid That Committed That Terrible Crime. I Want To Talk To Him. I Want To Try To Talk Some Sense To Him. Tell Him The Way Things Are. But I Can't. That Kid's Long Gone, And This Old Man Is All That's Left.

He Remembered Waking Up Once, Listening To The Wind, Thinking Of All The Dark And Rushing Cold Outside And All The Warmth Of This Bed, Filled With Their Peaceful Heat Under Two Quilts, And Wishing It Could Be Like This Forever.