Categories
Astrology Charleston, West Virginia My Life Story On My Own Uncategorized

Sad

Well the thing I had been dreading happened. Neptune finally hit the bottom of my chart (representing home) and I had to move out of my house with James, Patton & Slippers into an apartment by myself.

I don’t know if I can talk about this yet because it is too painful. I poured all my love into one person and by the end he would not even allow me to speak in my own home- the home I spent one million hours painting & cleaning, the home where I served him food every day, made him 5 coffees a day, always did what he wanted and tried to please him. But no matter what I did his view of me kept growing darker and darker.


One wrong word from me had become so powerful it would derail his brain for weeks and force him to stay in bed, missing important deadlines. This is why I was no longer able to talk. So I stopped. But that wasn’t enough. In the end he said my very presence terrified him. He wanted me gone. And so I had to move out. That is the bad part. The horrible part. I can’t even process it or figure out what it means.

Based on what others tell me he is narcissistic & discarding me because of his upcoming domestic violence trial. I no longer reflect positively on him and it is easier to get rid of me than to own some mistakes and move forward. Some people tell me he has borderline disorder or might be experiencing psychosis. Sometimes he would scream at me “I’M INSANE- DON’T YOU GET IT!!!!! HOW STUPID ARE YOU!?!?! MY BRAIN DOESN’T WORK!!!”

Some men ask what I did to him to make him this way. Some say he must have just stopped loving me. If there is one area of life in which I applied myself it was as a wife. I did everything I could for him. He used to yell that his stress was due to the house being in foreclosure. “THANKS TO YOU WE ARE GOING TO BE HOMELESS, DON”T YOU GET IT!?!? HOW STUPID ARE YOU?!?!” So I got us in a covid relief program that paid all $18,550 of the debt. It took me 9 months. It didn’t even make him like me for one minute.

He said he couldn’t afford food so I got us foodstamps. He didn’t want to be bothered, so I didn’t bother him. If he wanted cookies at one am, I made them. I *wanted* to make them because I liked doing things for him. He meant so much to me.

He wanted me to run for office and I did. He wanted me to start a cardano stakepool so I did. If he wanted me to do astrology readings for him or his stakers I jumped at it. I would have done anything for him. I enjoyed it.

When I try to think of why he hates me these are the only things I can think of…

  1. I’m not capable of sleeping in the same bed. I just can’t fall asleep. For a long time, anything hurtful he did would be attributed to how I hurt him by not sleeping in the same bed and he needs that.
  2. I can’t swallow his cum. This makes me want to throw up. It’s nothing personal to him I just don’t believe in eating things that aren’t foods. Just thinking about it I’m starting to gag.
  3. I turned him into the police. I didn’t know he would get arrested. I just wanted their help and didn’t know where else to turn. It had been 5 years of him hurting me and in those situations you have little recourse since you are supposed to keep the whole thing private. Him going to jail was my greatest nightmare. I didn’t want that. But he will never forgive me for it. He says I did it out of spite.
  4. I had a mini-affair. After he came back from jail, he was darker than ever. I didn’t know what to do. He loathed me. If I tried to talk, he would twist a blanket into a rope & hold it over my mouth.

    I didn’t know what to do. I felt I’d exhausted all options on the side of good, so decided to try to the dark side & went to second base with a psychopath. In some ways, it helped because it diverted my mind from James, so I could leave him alone more. But it wasn’t long before this other guy was also threatening to kill me and I felt maybe I didn’t want to be a lying cheating whore anyway.

    So this could be why James hates me. But he hated me before I did it too. He hated me before he went to jail. He would scream at me that I was a stupid fucking cunt who had ruined his life. He didn’t say how.



If people had watched the last 6 years they would probably not understand why I miss James so much. But I really loved him. His essence and smell, not necessarily the way he treated me. Now that I’ve met more humans they always say I’m funny and that James must like how funny I am. This makes me laugh because, no, James does not find me amusing. At best, I’m a stupid cunt. At worst, a terrifying presence. “PLEASE STOP!!!!! STTTTTOOPPPPP!!!! WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME!!!???” he would scream on repeat while covering his ears, crying and rocking back and forth if I tried to talk to him about anything. He does not find me funny.

But its more than his essence… I liked how caring and protective he once seemed. How loyal I thought he was and how much I thought he loved me. I liked that he wanted to put down roots with me and create something lasting. I liked collecting things with him and having a house and dogs. I liked it when we cooked together. I liked how he used to help me solve my problems.

When I first met him, I was pretty insane due to living in isolation with a husband who had me be 28 different people. James’s love & his encouragement to listen to myself helped me untie many knots.

But even in the beginning, some problems were there. About every third day would be spent in the closet crying because he would go into rages. I can’t remember what the rages were about. It seems like they didn’t make much sense. My first husband also went into frequent rages about things that were hard to understand. But with James I would block all the bad things out. Because he was True Love. I saw him as perfect and those were the feelings I had towards him. Absolute trust as well.

It was only when he started getting physical that the fog started to lift a little. Because I felt that was crossing a line. As a kid I heard that if a man hits you you must leave immediately,. So I felt I had to draw a line there. But I couldn’t. After jail I stopped trying to draw that line. Cause it felt like me drawing lines was the problem. The problem was that I was a bad wife who had got her husband in trouble. So I wasn’t going to make a deal about it anymore.

But in the end, he wanted me to leave. I was so malicious, so psychopathic, such a lying gaslighting spiteful cunt that he needed me gone so he could function. No amount of silence, service, tolerance, anything made me better in his eyes.


Now when I go to the house to visit the dogs he is neither hot nor cold. Neither happy nor bothered. I’m a janitor wandering in to clean the toilets. No longer a psychopath. No longer a malicious cunt. Just a nothing.



Categories
Charleston, West Virginia My Life Story Uncategorized Writings

The Merchant’s Taser

My practilife is going ok. An ongoing issue is transportation. I walk in the day (busses cost money without saving much time) but at night don’t know how to calculate the odds of danger. One friend sent me a taser which allows you to electrocute people if they get too close. Another said a crossbody bag keeps you safe from muggers so I bought one. I’ve never needed a purse before since I had no keys, phone or wallet. Now I mumble keys phone wallet… keys phone wallet….to myself one hundred times a day. You keep these three on you at all times.

I tried to select a crossbody bag that says Professional Crisp. The one that arrived looks more like Back to Preschool. This is a problem because people keep asking if I’m autistic. Pretty sure this is code for retarded. So Not Retarded is the main message I want my clothes to send.

I know it is bad to use the word retarded. And cool- almost trendy at the moment- to be autistic. Just one more reason I don’t want to be seen that way. Not to mention that it *won’t* be cool anymore once the wheel of the gods turn a bit further. I’m trying to prepare for the future by building a competent Can Do persona. You should too.

But back to the purse- not only does its shape seem dimwitted, its color is too noticeable. I thought it was light colored when I bought it. My goal for now is to blend in. There are too many holes in my skill set to completely avoid a retarded feeling. But I can avoid becoming a Famous Retarded Person. I don’t want people pointing me out as they drive by in their cars.

Maybe I shouldn’t care though because the other weak spot in my practivitization is that I don’t know anyone where I live. I have learned though that long distance friendships are very real. Not only did facebook friends send me enough money to make it through the initial crisis, they also patiently explained how everything in the practiworld works & even called 911 for me when I couldn’t figure out how to do it.

I couldn’t breath & thought I was going to lose consciousness. But when the cops and ambulance arrived a few minutes later then I could breath and felt so bad for wasting their time even though they were really kind. They asked me if I wanted to get into the ambulance just in case. But being laid out horizontally & placed in the back of a mini van is actually one of my worst nightmares. I associate it with being retarded.

So anyway, I am not sure how to meat people where I live. Friends have suggested open mics. But can me and musicians be friends? I feel like we’re oil & water. It’s a bro culture. You aren’t supposed to care about things smelling bad and being covered in goo. Worse than a bro culture, though, cause it specifically revolves around young, lazy men with no moral compass. Still, I’m trying to be open minded. I might have bad ideas about musicians that it’s time to release.. I’ll try to meet some just in case we get along. Maybe I’d like doing drugs. My facebook friends are always high.

Or maybe astrology readings would be better. Then I’d be dealing mostly with women. And you really get to know people when you read for them. I like the feeling of becoming no one & focusing on someone else’s problems. People’s lives are so much messier than anyone lets on. Realizing this has made me more socially comfortable.

And if you’re wondering how I’m currently able to survive, it’s mostly through my new identity as Arabian Merchant. Selling on ebay. It’s a decent fit for me because shopping is my one true vice. And I’m finding most things in my bulging vault of possessions have gone up in value since I bought them. I’m able to make a profit while clearing space for future shopping. I’m like a fat person who finally got a tapeworm. Now mama eats what she wants.

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia My Life Story Uncategorized Writings

The Cops

One of my side hustles is offering legal advice and the question I get most is “Should I call the cops?”

Once I would have said yes. I like cops because they are protective. However, I’ve come to realize the answer is no.

Cops are not themselves. They are teeth in a giant mouth. The mouth of the legal system. You don’t want to end up in its belly. You don’t want to end up like me.

How I wish I could go back in time just a couple weeks and change my fate by refusing to speak to them.

But I am so used to speaking my mind in worlds where there are no consequences. It’s what I do. I didn’t know that if you flap your jaws in the presence of cops your whole life can change in an instant.

I wanted to talk to them. I was distraught, semi hysterical. I couldn’t stop crying. But I didn’t want anything to happen. I asked them if it was safe to talk to them. They said it was. Nothing would happen. I was so dumb back then. I didn’t know the role of cops is to move food from the mouth into the belly.

Next thing James is in jail. Not what I wanted. I pleaded with the cops, telling them they would be punishing me more than anyone. Without James I literally had zero access to money, phone, transportation etc (100% of his funds are in crypto which I don’t know how to access.) Do you have any friends or family? No. Well, don’t worry, there are plenty of resources to assist you. Don’t worry. There are so many resources out there. Just call this number and they’ll take care of you.

I called the number. They said they maybe I could have two bus passes if I promised to use them for something important and not to go gallivanting around town.

Every step along the way I am told not to worry- there are so many resources available. They are protecting me. I say being homeless doesn’t feel like protection. They say well maybe they can get me a discount on a counseling session. I say I don’t need mental help. They say well maybe we could get you into a pottery class at the helping hands center. Do you like crafts?

I am The Victim. Everywhere I go there are Victim’s Advocates. They pull me into little chambers where there are crayons and coloring books. They give me hugs and stare into my eyes with caring looks. I try to explain that I’m neither retarded nor insane. My concerns are material. I don’t want to be homeless. They tell me my life is worth more than my home. Yeah, but I really don’t want to be sitting out on the sidewalk with no place to go. I have two dogs. Honey, I understand that but we need to keep you safe. There are so many resources.

Oh really. The night the cops arrested James they didn’t want to take me back home for safety reasons. So they tried to find a women’s shelter to put me in. Every shelter within a hundred mile radius was full. Finally they found a shelter where I was allowed to be locked in a little room next to a trash can. I was hyperventilating & screams would come out because I didn’t want James to be arrested. There was a woman on the other side of the glass. She was laughing with her friend because she had asked me if I wanted her to call a paramedic and I didn’t know what one was.

The shelter was basically a female prison. They said I couldn’t enter the main building unless I was showered & put in a new outfit. Hard pass. There was one room where 20 women slept on bunks. Some women high on drugs were banging on the door to the trash room trying to get in.

A magistrate has ruled I can have no contact with James until his trial. Not even through a third party. And no financial support either. For my own protection. Because there are so many resources out there.

I will survive though. Facebook friends sent me money to get me through the first round of utilities being turned off. Selling my possessions on ebay is working better than expected. I found an extra mini part time job. But what if I didn’t have these things? What if I had kids rather than dogs? What if I hadn’t known to open a bank account the week before due to being an astrologer? Without that one piece in place I’d have no water or power. It makes me feel weird that putting me in peril is happening in the name of making me safe.

A lawyer said it’s cause they are terrified of women getting killed by their husbands cause then everyone gets in trouble. The magistrates, the cops, the mayors. Whereas if the women die in other ways, not their problem. After all there were plenty of resources out there.

So anyway, my legal advice is this- the cops are not your girlfriends. Think twice before spilling your guts because your whole life can change in an instant.

James gets out of jail. I may have given the impression in previous posts that he left me for another woman (I also received condolences on his death.) That was me trying to keep up appearances. He is out now but I’m not allowed to see him until his trial on October 25th at which I am expected to be a witness. Apparently this is the exception to the rule that you can’t be compelled to testify against your spouse. I don’t know that it should be an exception however.

Also I must point out for legal reasons that this photo was not given to me by James. In truth it wasn’t.

Categories
Charleston, West Virginia Purple, Magic & Sorcerers Writings

Where is my Venus?

(Warning. This post may contain gross words.)

I am a female. I am an artiste. Why can’t I can’t relate to Venus, beautiful goddess of women and the arts? Ruler of money, comforts and social graces? Why can I only relate to Aries, god of blood and gore? Why do I turn to him when I have problems? I started wondering about this today and then vomited out the following words. I don’t know if they will shed light on the issue or not.

*

Growing up I wanted to be a boy. Or at least a tomboy. Not because I liked boy things. I didn’t. But I wanted to like boy things. I felt incredibly guilty for not reading the sports page, watching sports games or learning sports statistics. My ultimate dream was to be seen by others as someone who was obsessed with sports. My ultimate ultimate dream was to be the first female professional football player.

I wanted to be a great athlete, but was held back by my dislike for sports. They were smelly, dull, tiring, abrasive, and lacking in color.

Still, the world I grew up in was 90% sports, so even if you disliked them you were playing them anyways. Swimming, t-ball, tennis, gymnastics and ballet when you’re little and later volleyball, basketball, tennis and track. In half of these sports, being tall made up for the fact that I was spaced out and apathetic.

It wasn’t enough to just play sports though. Unless you wanted to be an absolute loser in life you needed to force yourself to do sporty things in between playing sports. Time between sports could be filled with competitive ping pong games, shooting pool, practicing freethrows or going for a bike ride. If there was a time lapse between swim practice and tennis practice, you should arrange to hit balls with a friend. Failing that hit balls against a wall or practice your serve. But do not sit there munching a grilled cheese like a lazy piece of shit.

I knew some people from public schools who would sometimes play sports in a silly way, like hitting ping pong balls against the wall and giggling. This shocked me. My husband grew up in a religion where pure thoughts & sexuality were moralized. In my world, sports were moralized. Sports and exertion. If you chose to relax when you could be playing sports, exercising or doing something strenuous, then you were a bad person. A lazy piece of shit, to be exact.

Also on my shoulders was the weight of needing to save the female species from disgrace. They were a disgrace because they were bad at sports. The superiority of men at sports was a favorite dinner conversation. My dad liked to discuss how one day my younger brothers would surpass me in sports and this filled me with dread and humiliation. I had to stop this from happening. I had to prove that females can do everything a man can do. And so from the beginning, I was at war with nature.

But the possibility of being a worthless piece of shit was not the worst part. On its own, I could have dealt with being a loser. The real problem was that if I did not become a professional football player I would have to become a regular woman. I knew I didn’t want this. Based on everything I heard they were absolutely disgusting. They used only one thing to get through life and that was “sexual wiles.” Whatever they appeared to have achieved it was those wiles that had done it. I didn’t know exactly what wiles were, but I knew they sounded gross like smooshing your body against someone else’s while wearing a silk blouse bulging with boobs.

And since I had three brothers and no sisters, I was the only one who would have to grow up and use sexual wiles. It made me feel humiliated. They would just get to grow up and be normal people. Beating me at sports until eventually my wiles took over. This sucked.


***

Fast forward to when I’m 18 and decide to legally change my first and last name. Of course I chose a man’s name. To me, a man’s name meant I would be the person I was within, not someone who played a role to please others. Males were subjects. Females objects. A man’s value came from his accomplishments. A female’s value came from what men thought of her. Unless she could beat them in sports. But I couldn’t. By this time I was just a series of injuries and could barely walk without pain. Dreams of becoming an athlete were over. Sort of.

Now I’m 19. My first boyfriend/spiritual guru/husband and Jesus have agreed. I should be a stripper. The reasoning has something to with achieving enlightenment. I agree I should do this. Why? Because it is my greatest nightmare. You must do the thing you fear. Or as my dad liked to say “That which does not kill you makes you stronger.” If you do what feels good to you, the ego wins. If you torture yourself, the ego starts to die. Then you will finally become free to fly past the Eagle in the sky and live forever. That is literally how I thought of it.

Some people see stripping as a feminine expression. Dumbasses. It is the most manly thing in the universe. No one with a feminine side goes near those places. I can only compare it to a man working up the courage to stab himself in a nut.

It is about as sexual as a man pulling down his pants to be examined by a doctor who happens to be his uncle. But I was honor bound to do it because it combined all the things I dreaded most- being on stage, dancing, acting ‘sexy’ and worst worst worst of all- not wearing clothes. I can’t really convey in words the extent to which I did not want to be without clothing. Would you like to be naked and carved up in the middle of a Thanksgiving feast? Would you like to be hog tied with your head buried in mud and your bare ass pointing towards the sky as friends walk by pointing and laughing at you? Cause that is how it felt. Disgusting but also like a horror movie. “Guts” was my name. But the disgust and the horror were why I had to do it. Only the ego has those feelings. Unless you kill the ego you will never fly past the Eagle.

This is also the time I decided to become a Professional Body Builder. This was probably a way of trying to turn my body into a suit of armor since I really didn’t want to be naked. I was not looking to become toned. I wanted to become absofreaking ginormous like those men in magazines with veins popping out of their forehead. I wanted to be a three hundred pound monster. I was convinced that if I ate enough canned chicken and spent all day at the gym, I would become just like those men. I didn’t realize this was as unlikely as becoming a professional football player. In the summer I spent all my time pumping iron and packing down protein. When I got back to school the teacher had me stand up for the class as an example of a body type that would never be able to gain muscle mass. I was confused because in my mind I already resembled those giant men.

But that one statement popped my dream. And if I couldn’t be a successful professional male body builder then I wasn’t going to be a stripper either. The two things went together.

***

Always people were breathing down on me, sculpting me. My psychology was built around finding ways to fend others off while also seeking them out for protection. But every new protector would become the one I needed protection from. Normal, healthy people probably steered clear of me, I was so weird. Or maybe I steered clear of them. To this day, I feel very uncomfortable around nice people. When people tell me I am the dumbest person they have ever met, I feel safe, like Briar Rabbit in his briar patch. When people gang up on me I feel at home. Nobody in my family liked me. I was surrounded by invisible cooties and you could see the disgust in their faces.

***


I don’t trust men who try to pretend like men and women are the same. My first husband was like this. He would wear women’s clothing and mascara. He would decorate my room with pictures of women carrying guns and knives. And naked women making weird expressions. To me they looked like men in those unnatural poses, their faces scrunched up as though (trigger warning) they were trying to take a crap. But to the males that came around they were hot and sexy women. I never knew what they were seeing.

Husband would wear my shirts and perfume. He would buy me knives whose handles were carved into skulls. He bought me swords. He gave me a stolen gun and told me to keep it in my backpack as a symbol of female empowerment. He called the cops and told them I was planning to murder someone. A man who had recently crushed my skull but whom I had no plans to murder. It is hard to explain the full extent to which murdering people was not on my mind. It really hit me from left field. The cops took me to get psychiatric evaluation. They looked at my dorm room, the walls covered in collages and posters hung there by my husband. Violence, nudity. The big black pirate flag he had hung in my window. I had thought it was funny and weird the way teenagers think it is funny to turn a sign upside down. It was better than naked women. But when you are a potential murderer these things take on a different glow. The collection of knives on my desk. It made me feel special when he bought these for me. He wanted me to be safe and powerful. At any rate, I hadn’t had much say in the way my room was decorated. Each new piece of decor was hung while I was out and then presented to me as a surprise, a gift filled with complex existential meanings which would be laboriously laid out. Usually something along the line of female empowerment or getting past the Eagle.

Aesthetically I didn’t care for his decorations but it never occurred to me to view them through the eyes of police men. Although this wasn’t the first time police had shown up in my dorm room. Once they came because there was a gigantic naked man handcuffed to the stairwell outside my door. My name was written over his naked body, presumably by my husband. He was rattling his chains and wailing my name. I don’t know why. My roommate and I were pretty scared because this was the middle of the night and we had been sleeping. But it had become normal for my husband to do weird things in the middle of the night, like pulling the fire alarm, sometimes repeatedly forcing everyone in the dorm to evacuate. It was so loud & startling & cold & then the nightmare of having to get out of bed in a panic and be around boys without real clothes or makeup on. But he said I needed to learn to go without sleep to get past the eagle.

So when a naked guy was chained to my room wailing my name it was not totally out of the ordinary. I was usually in a state of semi-horror. The cops came and I was hid from them because I didn’t want them to see me in my nightgown with no makeup. I couldn’t look at them and I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know why he was chained there and why my name was written on his body.

My husband would wear my clothes and give me his. Sheer mesh shirts from International Male that reeked of permanent b.o. He made fun of my clothes, saying I dressed like a gigantic baby. He bought me new ones. He said he needed me to be a classy elegant lady. This had something to do with existentialism and Apollo vs Dionysus. There were always very complicated explanations for things. Classy, elegant ladies wore cutaway tops. Cutaway tops were shirts which covered up one’s entire torso except for the breasts which were left bare and exposed. I said I had never seen a cutaway top and it made no sense that elegant ladies would wear these. But that is when he would start screaming. Really really loud, just like the fire alarm. I guess his pattern was to make a false or absurd statement and then start screaming until I accepted it. He especially liked to scream in public. It seemed as though the more he screamed at me in public the more our friends would come up with psychological theories as to why he was actually a good guy, just someone with problems. Which caused an ever increasing flow of kindness and generosity in his direction.

He liked to humiliate me in public. Screaming at me until I would take off clothes or dance. Taking off his clothes in a fancy restaurant. Telling me I had to say sexual things to people, including family members, or saying sexual things himself. Giving people inappropriate gifts that were supposedly from me or threatening teachers in my name. I became accustomed to living in a state of permanent humiliation. I was horrified to be associated with myself and the dark, perverted, murderous freak I was supposed to be. But this made me cling to him even tighter. He was the only one who could love me.

People say it is your fault if you are in a bad relationship because you didn’t leave. I don’t care. I don’t know what fault means anyway. There were reasons I was with him. For starters, even before him I was very confused. I remember running around outside at night screaming “Help!! I can’t see!!!” I felt there were things in my mind I couldn’t get to. I was confused as to what was real and what wasn’t. I was always looking for people who could help me make sense of things. Nothing ever made sense in my world. My parents would say things that didn’t make any sense either. They would project strange things onto me.

Even moreso I was with him due to fear. I was terrified of my parents. I still am. I preferred being escorted by cops as a potential murderer to being alone with them. And for all his faults, my husband had the virtues of being insanely brave and bold. He wasn’t afraid of anything. He would bite the head right off of a live snake knowing it was poisonous. It was insane.

I suppose my core flaw was not being an independent person. That is my core flaw to this day. Everyone is expected to be an independent person ready to handle life completely on their own at a moment’s notice. But it is hard to be independent when you can’t trust your mind to know what is real and what isn’t. The terror, the confusion & the dependence became this Bermuda triangle, each point playing off the others so there wasn’t any clear way to escape it. He was the only person willing to step into that mess.

Nothing has really changed. I am still confused, still terrified and still dependent. But I try to be a productive person to make up for my flaws. I don’t want to be a net drain on the world.

Categories
Los Angeles Music & Songs Red, Soldiers, & Fire

Clothes

 

Self-Portrait in a peach studio by Julien AkleiWhat a strange little song… probably in the top ten of songs I wouldn’t mind being washed away in the sands of time… why did I even have to mention the word clothes? Why did I think I needed permission to keep my clothes on?

At any rate, at one point in this song I mention my age and my weight, and- just to clear the air- I feel the need to say that neither statistic was accurate.

My weight came from a cop, who said it was his favorite weight for women and offered to write it down as being my weight (which I didn’t know) when I got detained for stealing gummy worms.

I didn’t mean to steal gummy worms- I thought they were free samples. It was my first time inside a giant superstore where they had those clear plastic bins filled with unwrapped candy. I thought I was in heaven eating handful after handful of gummy worms and other candies while wandering around an endless store. Next thing you know, I’m having my mugshot taken and bawling hysterically, certain my life as a respectable citizen is over. I think the cop felt sorry for me and was trying to comfort me by helping me select an ideal weight. At any rate, the whole event scared me so much that I promised God I would never break another rule again- a dangerous vow, since trying to be too good can land you in far more trouble than being a little bad will.

The second inaccuracy in this song was my age, which I lowered by five years after being constantly criticized by my boyfriend for being too immature. I agreed with him that I was immature (getting arrested for gummy worms!), but felt it would be more practical to adjust my age to reflect my development rather than the reverse. In some ways, changing my age was a good idea, since it did lower people’s expectations of me and cause them to praise me more. But I couldn’t keep it up for very long since my nerves were too delicate to be lying all the time.

Still, the basic idea of lowering people’s expectations seemed sound, so I decided to start telling people I was mentally retarded. But that is a story for another day.

Download MP3: Clothes