what do you need, right here, right now? i didn’t need anything—although I got a spot of pepper in my throat, and that usually meant I was talking too much through my throat—or Ursula was disagreeing with me and or telling me no to something; there wasn’t much i could do but try and tune a little better to the right frequency and speak more from the area between my ears. What do you want, now? i didn’t want anything—I certainly wasn’t feeling sexy; i never did, anymore, which is a good thing, I think, since I don’t have a sexual partner. But you have to want something so i told her flat out: I want to be the greatest artist that ever lived—without being a sham, a man that, though interesting, uses his body as bait—does harm to himself and others in his efforts to be just that: the greatest artist that ever lived. Everybody chooses the dark side for a reason, but I’d much rather spend my time with some one that was both interesting and, in their own way, a good person. A man, pray tell, that doesn’t lie.
Have you thought about it? Have you thought about getting married? I never really did, honestly, except when I started getting older and realized that I wouldn’t settle—and, also, I realized that women weren’t attracted to me anymore. And in that sense I didn’t really think so much about getting married as I did meeting somebody to keep me company—somebody that I would be inspired by, a muse, so to speak, not somebody to get old with; i imagined, in my youth, that six year relationships sounded about right, until, once i reached a certain age, I partnered with the youngest possible person I could get—and stuck with them, at least, i think, most of the time. I don’t think, in my youth, I allowed myself to feel the advantages of committing to someone—going in the same direction, toward an event that we both looked forward to more than having sex with someone new.
I didn’t imagine that any such event existed. It’s so ironic, of course, because of my asexuality, or, alternately, my stubborn refusal to take any risk whatsoever that would lead to a disease and or a pregnancy. Wear a condom, you might think, but, also, I didn’t want to have sex with someone unless the possibility of a baby with that person wasn’t anathema—if that happened, then, it needed to be with someone that I could accept, at least in part, at least well enough to make it easy on the kid. I needed to see, of course, the possibility of that happening by accident—playing the cards, so to speak, since, after all, at some point I wanted an heir, someone that I could look after, and someone that could look after my work.
I can look after your work that would’ve been great, but she was only about twelve years younger than me—and i wanted someone that would look after my work indefinitely—until the right people would make sure it wasn’t destroyed. i see—you want to be famous “don’t you?” And, “you are famous, at this point.” so i said, “well, yeah, getting the right people to look after my work went hand in hand with getting famous; so i wanted to be famous, yes. But I didn’t want to be posing for pictures in fancy outfits or doing the things that famous people often do. Unless I had to in order to assure myself that my work would be taken care of—that, in short, i would be considered at least one of the greatest artists that ever lived.
What are you thinking, now? Why don’t you try a four count breathing mechanism with me when you write this book—and maybe try to vary the amplitude and the frequency a little—do whatever it takes to improve. I don’t know if I was up for a four count breathing mechanism when writing as of right now—but if that’s what she wanted, we’d get there. For now, however, I liked to try and breathe at the rate at which my writing might’ve indicated me to breathe if I was reading it out loud. I connected, that way, with those that were reading my writing in the future. I would like to emphasize, however, that, in my opinion, poems are not always meant to be read out loud—you connected to a different rhythm when you read internally, in part because, when reading silently, we read a little faster, at times, than we can read out loud. Furthermore, if you were reading internally, it kept you from imagining that you might be a renowned speaker at some point—as if people could or would hear what you were doing, out loud, and they’d take interest—even if you were all alone.