MAD RAVINGS

Sometimes my emotions sit right on my skin. Sometimes they stick in my brain. Sometimes my thoughts are so muddled with unidentifiable emotion that they flood my head and sweat my skin. I don’t know what I’m doing; I don’t know where I am. Where am I? Where the hell am I? Crazy. Strange. Strange, old friend, inscrutable strangeness, you’ve been with me a long time.

“How I hitched into Boston just the other day. How the glare of the sun in the trucker’s eyes had blinded him for a moment, how we’d almost crashed into the guard rail. It was lucky – he’d had his hand on my leg for balance; I grabbed the wheel and turned us back onto the pavement until he could recover his sight.

It’s pure luck I have a body so many men want to touch, so many seem to need. Like the guy on Tremont Street who confused me for a street walker, who offered me thirty bucks to have sex. When I said no, you’re confused old man, he looked sad as he walked away, as though he had missed the experience of a lifetime. I would have been so lucky to be with you, he seemed to be thinking.”

In this excerpt from PERSEPHONE IN HELL, teenage Glory is confused too. She’s wondering what her life amounts to. She can’t think of what she’s worth. Her thoughts are all muddled up, circling round and round that grey matter, searching for a way out. Circles never end; there’s no way out. It’s crazy, weird. Strange, damn strange. No way out.