Reign?

"She has a system," Trader Joe's associate, two bells

Conservatives are right to criticize victim's narcissism; it is exceedingly self-involved. Viewers inclined to sympathize don't know what to say. At the moment I feel overwhelmed, and, even if I wanted to engage in illegal schemes or really invective language, it would amount to an exercise in futility. Angry quadriplegics are that. I've been sick to my stomach with the memory of this Eddy throwing herself on me. Sick with Linda's scathing embarrassment ringing in my ears. I splintered like the crack of a tree trunk, sick from my own embarrassed lashing out at her, or the memory of my stepfather, or my brother, little Nicky. He paged me at the partial hospital when he thought it was time. He wanted me to help him die. Couldn't do that for him.

Yet, my vibrancy is still there. "I shouldn't buy them," I said, "because when I open them I eat them all." I barely noticed the man. That is my way of blocking out ambulatory paternalism, but I must have amused him, because I noticed him smiling at me when we changed aisles, and he would have been perfect. Grandfather who passes out $20 dollar bills at funerals. Pot belly but carried well. "Take care," he said, flushed.

What was I supposed to do, scream "Wait, tell me you're divorced and don't feel threatened?"

I may keep Thomas H Earle entertained; I may even win and get reforms instituted in rehabilitation law, but I've never lived my thriving sensory engaged literary life.