Look at you, Television Monkey, with your Vicodin jive and orange hair, shocking as Bukowski is shocking-violence is cool, fast, and mildly tragic; Less than two weeks of fame-one day for each soul-they are calling you Bozo in the bars as they eat their peanuts and pretzels. Downstairs, my dad has been watching TV for hours, every few minutes slurring words of misguided hate, "JUST KILL THA FUCKER AWREADY!" Don't mind him; another member of the Middle American lynch mob. He's drunk. Aurora was always in you, lurking; Freud’s greasy cocaine fingers would have a field day poking around there, stroking fragments of gray matter, Id, Ego, Super-ego; how many psychologists sofas have you sat on in the past year, trembling like a trapped animal, sure your plans would be discovered by the probe? Forget it. You don’t have to answer that.

 

We’re from the same neighborhood of San Diego-Torrey Highlands-you graduated from my brother’s rival school, you lived down the street from me. Do you remember that little taco shop called Rodrigo’s near the 7-Eleven, the place that never gave credit and the dusty old TV played Telemundo all day? Did you eat there, did your mother ever pick up carne asada and burritos and chips there on Fridays for you, and would you smile? Do you smile? Have you ever smiled? Forget it. You don’t have to answer that.