When I was a kid, waaaaaaaaay back in the day, someone from the Elmhurst PRESS asked me about gay marriage while I was at the library. This is what I told them. Considering the conservative town I live in, it's kind of a surprise that my fellow interviewees agreed with me.
This is from when I won the Carlson Award for Creative Writing at Elmhurst College (one of three winners). It was for a short story I wrote called "Love in a Book." It has yet to be published, but it's a fun tale of what happens when a vampire asks his wizard friend to cast a spell on the girl he loves (and what happens when the cops find out). Maybe some day, I'll let it see the light of day, because it is pretty funny.
This is the ultimate proof of why I can never trust the media. If you can read all of this (I know, it's small and distorted, but it's worth the read), please realize that everything written here (except for the loss of shoes) is a blatant lie. Nicole Evans, who co-wrote "Suicidal Tendencies" with me in TALES OF QUESTIONABLE TASTE, was my date, and yes, I was the guy in question. We were NOT elegantly dressed. I was wearing a denim jacket, for fuck's sake. The creek hadn't dried up due to conditions. They were working on fixing the waterfall at the forest preserve, so they shut down the water, which caused the creek to dry to a trickle. And we didn't leave the path, like some misguided Hansel and fucking Gretel. Nicole saw a duck hanging out by that tiny creek trickle, and she couldn't stop herself from jumping over a barrier to walk out and get a picture of the fowl. Except . . . well, she sank down to her knees. I laughed at her from a safe distance (because I was, am and always will be an asshole), but she asked me for help, so I tried to go out and help her. The ground looked sturdy enough, but halfway out, I sank to my knees. It was nearly impossible to pull myself out and help her. I did my best, but I kept sinking down. I lost one of my shoes, but I was able to reach into the mudhole and grab it out. However, Nicole got tired of my slapstick attempt at saving her, so she gave up and walked past me, telling me how much I sucked as a savior. I eventually pulled myself out, walking on all fours back to the barrier. We were both covered in mud, so we cleaned ourselves off with a hose behind the forest preserve's HQ. As we did this, the Trib writer interviewed us (so she knew very fucking well that she lied in her fluff piece). After we were clean, Nicole told me that she'd lost her shoes--for real--in the quick-mud. Because of this, I gave her a piggy-back ride back to the car, so she wouldn't get her bare feet all fucked up on the gravel path. However, the shoes she'd lost were shoes that she'd "borrowed" (please read as "stolen") from one of her friends, so she didn't give a shit. So yeah, even the ONE THING the Trib writer got right was kind of wrong.
This is from when I was in junior high (what they now call "middle school"). Everyone at school knew I was a writer, but none of them knew about my horrid poetry attempts. Much to my surprise, one of my poems earned me a spot as a Sandburg Fellow. (The school is named after Carl Sandburg, who lived about a mile away from it once upon a time.) This recognition led to a poetry workshop, which I bullshitted my way through, mostly because I don't know shit about poetry. I've only had one poem in all of my career published which satisfied me. "The Rubber Band of Sanity" was NOT that poem. Still, it seemed to impress people, so I was OK with skipping classes just so I could hang out with fellow student poets and a real, live local poet.
Sorry. The reason I'm talking about this shit now is because I cleaned out my desk and found some interesting things. Just thought I would share them. Goodnight, people who are probably not really fuckers. (And some of you who might, actually, be fuckers, but lovable fuckers.)
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