Though it would be years before she’d tell me, I always knew her secret, and I never cared, even a little. I mean, so what if she liked girls? I did too.

When I write about the past, I use sepia and amber tones, soft blues, green washes, a hint of rose. I make the past seem kinder than it was and a stark contrast to the present, but I know the truth. I was never strong enough to save anyone. No matter what I did, no matter what they did, it always ended the same.

Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.

When you get to heaven, my tiny friend, look for a girl named Katie. She’s tiny too. Tell her I’m sorry. Tell her I should have tried harder. Tell her I’m ashamed. Not of her, of me. What shall it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world, but loses his soul?

Sometimes, I’m teased for favoring Chi Omega at Millsaps too much. In my defense, I never chose them. They chose me. As much as I tried to shelter and protect them, they tried to shelter and protect me more, although there were times when I put my body up for the ante.

Stephanie Pella was from the Coast. Her dad was the harbor master for a while. She was known for her raven beauty, her sense of humor, and her piercing, loud laugh. If someone made her laugh near the potted oak, we could hear it on the veranda of the KA mansion.

Pat built a patio onto the back of CS, using mostly his own labor and some dudes he knew. There was a straight shot from the back door of the KA house to the new patio, with West Street as a hazard in between.

Frogger was a popular video game. The point of the game was for a frog to cross the highway without getting squished by a passing truck or speeding car. Getting drunk at Millsaps involved an impromptu game of real-life Frogger.

One night, the sister of a girl I knew misjudged her Frogger leap and got smacked pretty good crossing West Street. Millsaps students formed a phalanx around her as the ambulance guys loaded her up. She survived, but had minor pains forever after, and became part of Millsaps legend.

One night Doug, Al Val Party Pal, Jane, Aunt Bus and I were drinking on the CS’s porch. George Harmon had yet to build the fence around Millsaps. Building a fence around Millsaps was one of the most controversial moves of his career.

There was some sort of hedgerow between the KA house and West Street with a sort of bare spot where most of us passed on our way to CS’s. After what happened earlier, most of us, no matter how drunk, looked both ways.

Jokes between Doug and me could be pretty cutting and bitter. God bless Janie Clover Alexander for putting up with us. Suddenly we heard Stephanie’s piercing laugh from the back of the KA house.

Before the others could realize it wasn’t a laugh at all, I had already leaped the railroad tie wall Pat built around the patio and long-leaped across West Street. The man who grabbed her trying to cross the street must have seen me coming. He ran toward the Sig House. I shouted: “GET HER!” To the KA’s flowing out of the KA house in their underwear like it was on fire. I chased him off campus, around the back of Baptist Hospital, and lost him around Fortification Street.

Returning to the KA House, Stephanie was still red from crying, but she was laughing, surrounded by concerned KA’s and a few girls. Doug asked if I looked for cars before running across the street.

“What cars?” I said.

“You’re God’s own drunk, son.”

If it sounds like I’ve told this story before, there were a total of three incidents where Millsaps ran afoul of Jackson’s grown indigent population. Mississippi had always dumped its homeless and insane in Jackson, but with the laws changed and the sanitarium moved to Rankin County, our ability to absorb them began to fail. George Harmon was criticized to no end for building the fence around Millsaps, but it didn’t manifest out of thin air.

Before you start to critisize Jackson or our African population, every urban school faces the same problem. As a culture, we don’t deal with indigency well, beyond dumping them off in the city so they’re not wandering around suburban areas.

I wasn’t injured trying to defend Stephanie, but I was out of breath. Meredyth and Janie asked if I wanted water.

“Is there beer?”

I had enough credits to leave high school a year early. I wasn’t doing well living under rules meant for a twelve-year-old, and the fact that Boyd had legitimate opinions was a pretty significant challenge to high school administrators.

Daddy said, “Let’s go to Hinds for a year to see if you could make it. After two semesters of working full-time and earning a 3.8 both semesters, I made the president’s list and made my point.

The president was a man named Dr. Clyde Muse. We’d have breakfast coffee some morning and discuss Hinds County politics and the direction of education in Mississippi. Most eighteen-year-olds didn’t have much opinion on these things, but my life was never normal. This was dinner conversation at the Campbell house, and he had been an acolyte of my namesake.

After Katie died, another girl said I had to be her boyfriend. That ended with me trying to block the flow of blood coming from the hole in her father’s head using my hands. That didn’t work out too well. I’d mostly given up on girls, but I wore a suit every day, and with the biggest nursing program in the state, Hinds was full of country girls with big hair who saw one porn movie at the Capri and had things they wanted to try. I’m not proud of that. In my defense, I was pretty numb. In my defense, I still am.

The deal was, if I did well at Hinds, I could go to Millsaps, still working full-time. Since I was just 19, it’d be a freshman. Millsaps meant girls I knew socially; I’d know their brothers, their mothers, their fathers; girls I knew I couldn’t date once or twice then vanish. Going to Millsaps meant no more girls. Besides, I had a secret. Only the Little Bird knows what it was.

I had to appear strong and proud because that’s what the entire world needed from me, but my insides were a bag of broken glass. I mean, how could I love someone? What if they died too? How could I yet again face some girl’s parents and say, “I’m sorry, I tried to save her. I failed.”

As strong as I am, I never saved anyone. It always ended the same.

“Is that offensive?”

“What?” She asks. Forking her crabmeat cake.

“That! You’re clearly a grown woman, with a career and a life, and I constantly speak of you as if you’re a child. Half the people who read me think you’re eleven.”

“No.” She says. “I like it.”

Little Bird and I share so many things. One is sort of a forced lost childhood, sprung on us as a surprise, forcing sort of adult feelings and responsibilities at an age when your friends, at least appear, to have carefree, silly lives.

I think she misses her grandfather. I miss him too. Big John gave her a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s “If” to hang on her wall, a poem normally given to boys, but Little Bird, like the generation before her, was raised to recognize but ignore gender boundaries.

She’s a profoundly feminine person, but she gets this sort of electric look in her eyes when I talk about knightly adventures or getting into fights.

“I wish you wouldn’t do that. I’m afraid for you. I know it’s your nature, but I don’t want you to hurt.” She says. The Little Bird knows I would remove limbs from anyone who hurts her, a fact that was very nearly tested in August.

My phone starts to ding with news about Rush at Millsaps. In all but one case, everything I wanted to happen did happen. Girls’ rush is so much more complicated than boys’ rush. Boys’ rush is pretty much just “you wanna?” Whereas girls’ rush is this complex mathematical equation designed to ensure fairness and feminine grace. Like with the Little Bird, gone are the simple joys of maidenhood; this is serious business. One reason George Harmon hated the Greek system so much was dealing with the broken hearts after girls’ rush every year.

One year I was known to be having carnal relations with a transfer student who failed out of rush. I suspected that one of the reasons she failed out of rush was that she was known to have spent the summer drinking Boyd under the table at CS’s. After cradling her till the tears stopped, I asked one of my contacts in the Chi Omega organization what happened: “I dunno. She cut us.”

What?

Women are so complicated and confusing. Women’s rush is worse.

Ken Roberts came to church Sunday. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since his life partner died. As accurate as “Life partner” is, I hate using euphemisms to describe his husband. At one time, Galloway was the very symbol of repellent and judgmental Christianity. When Momma was a month from delivering me, and she was very concerned about whether I was alive or dead in her belly, Rev. Dr. W.B. Selah resigned from the pulpit because the lay leadership turned away Rev. Ed King and the African Tougaloo students he brought to attend services.

In the torment that followed, Galloway was rent in half; those who remained were a very different kind of Christian. Those who left were destined to fade away into the dust of history.

Ken left a career at the Met to come be the music minister at Galloway. I’ve tried several times to understand why he made this choice. He told me a few times, but I never understood it. Returning to Mississippi, with Nixon in office, quite gay, leaving New York for the most intolerant place in the universe, I recognize the courage and the consequence of what Ken faced, and yet—everyone loved him.

The last time I saw Randy alive, we talked about how to build up the strength in Ken’s legs so he could be more alive again. The consequence of Randy going first no living soul expected. Sitting and having Methodist coffee before church, a silent line of well-wishers came to hug his neck. Knowing that no matter how much and how bravely you love someone, at some point, one of you will be alone and bleeding from wounds that only time can bandage.

They cover the tables at Amerigo with butcher paper. If there’s an actual little girl at the table, the waitress would have brought a wine glass filled with crayons, but since Mary’s little girlness is disguised by her womanly figure and fashion-forward black pantsuit. We both prefer to wear black. I’m wearing a red vest. She’s wearing red hair.

Using the pen I brought, I draw my roses, one for each of us. Little Bird begins to doodle her own signature graphic, which is sort of a work in progress. The story of the women in my life is fairly complex. I write out Katie’s real name, a hyphen, and the word “died,” and then draw a Christmas tree of other women in my life that descended from that moment when my mother said, “Your little friend is dead,” trying to explain to her why and how I want her to have healthy romantic relationships, even though I cannot.

As much as I want her to find love, man, woman, I don’t care; as much as I want her to find love, it’s impossible for me. The tempest and fury of life burned that option out of me at an early age. A big monster, I would be a gentleman of a different sort. I could love, I did love—but I would never accept love in return. It simply doesn’t fit in the mathematics of my brain.

Clearly, this isn’t what Katie wanted. She was just a little girl, trying to enjoy little girl things, a first boyfriend, persecuted almost entirely over the telephone, oh, the simple joys of maidenhood, and then my old enemy found root in her soul. What could possibly make a beautiful and brilliant thirteen-year-old girl decide she cannot live is a mystery still. I spoke to her nightly until just about six weeks before she died, and I hadn’t a single clue anything was wrong.

People like to think that some sort of trauma is what brigns on neverous breakdowns and kicks off a dangerous bipolar cycle, but I knew eerything about this girl. The only trauma in her life was the encroachment of puberty and a profoundly substandard boyfriend, although, in my defense, my boyfriend position was entirely her decision. She said I had to do it.

My body was starting to show signs of a beastly nature, but in that moment, my very soul became the beast. “And lo, the beast looked upon the face of beauty and from that day forward…”

yeah. From that day forward.

Erin sends me a photo of her and Sophie glowing inside a baloon universe she and Shawn crated that morning. Sam’s age, I think of Erin as one of my daughters; now her youngest daughter is a Millsaps student. I suppose there’s no end to this.

Sophie acts tough and acts grown, but she has that spun glass soul of a young girl’s heart. I’m hoping it will last, at least till she graduates.

Reading Little Bird’s first book, “Shoulder Bones,” my own work took on a strong turn. While I had always done my best to speak truth to truth, Little Bird’s courage about exposing her naked heart in her first book inspired me to experiment with the same. Now my readers know more about me than my wife, my mother, or Katie, whose name isn’t really Kate.

Having a girlfriend who didn’t go to our school and didn’t live in Mississippi, I mostly didn’t tell anybody about my first official girlfriend. This was a pattern. Nobody would ever know who I liked until they started noticing she did her laundry at my house—the simple joys of Maidenhood.

I’d like to save Christ from Christianity. Galloway became a place where we would take in anyone who came to our doors without judgment, but we had to lose half our membership before reaching that state. Cable television ruined Christianity. Any nutjob could get a christian show on basic cable.

Afraid of the Democrats’ “Big Tent,” the Reagan Republicans rebuilt after Nixon started making their own “Big Tent,” including the televangellcals and that’s how oppressive social issues became a plank in the Republican platform. Not satisfied, they continued Nixon’s strategy of converting the Dixiecrats to the GOP, eventually becoming the tail that wagged the dog, and forcing black and tan republicans like me underground.

“You’re a Republican?” The Little Bird has a confused look on her face.

“They weren’t always like this,” I explain.

I’m probably the very last person to save Jesus from the Christians. My temper alone should make me incompatible as an agent in this struggle, but it is heartfelt. If people could see Jesus for what he is, rather than an excuse to hate somebody, it’d change their lives.

Looking into a woman’s eyes can betray messages I don’t want to send, so I focus on their fingertips. Active hands betray active minds. Show me what you’re thinking, child. Her fingers are dancers on a stage. Performing a message, cloud-to-cloud lighting in the summer heat. She has the most remarkable mind.

I’ve never been able to extend the simple joys of maidenhood, no matter how beastly I became. You can defend a woman’s heart from the present danger, but not from the world itself. God made me strong, but not that strong.

I’m a remarkably insufficient vessel, if you consider the message I carry.

There’s nothing more useless than a downtown church in an urbanization struggling to survive, much less remain relevant, but at Galloway, every Sunday I go, there are no tiny bodies at children’s church. For any church, every white head is a sign of decay and eventual irrelevance, but every squirming child signals new life, new growth, new opportunity. That’s Galloway in 2026, bucking the trends, sailing into fresh wind.

You’re a little girl, and I’m a big monster. One day, she won’t accept those terms any longer. I have to be replaced in her life. I’m too old, and she’s too young, and she deserves both the childhood she never had and the gentle peace knowing that someone loves her as much as she loves them.

I have a list of qualities and a written test for any potential Little Bird suitors. I know what she looks like, gentlemen, and I know the quality of both her remarkable mind and her remarkable heart. This is not a sale you’ll make lightly. What will you pay me for a piece of my soul? She’ll be your debt collector.

Sometimes I lament the fact that women don’t ever stay in my life, but if Little Bird were to ever come to me and say she’s met the most beautiful depressed person, I’d tell her to stop. Find someone normal. For your sake, and for mine. I only want you to be happy, and they call it depression for a reason.

Feist-Dog isn’t real. He’s an imaginary dog I stole from a man on the radio, a man whose obsessions in life, other than radio, included lifting Mississippi off the bottom of the world’s boot and actually getting some money to our mental health hospital, now that it’s actually trying to help people, not just warehouse the insane. I’m insane. Can’t you tell? Depressed people often burn the world down before they take their own life.

I’ll never take my own life, and I’ll never burn the world down. Even that was taken from me by the vicious nature of life on this planet. God’s creation can destroy you if you let it. Don’t let it.

Feist-Dog is a father's love and a father’s absence. He’s the churches set ablaze because black people go there, and the churches were even children who hear how they should love and accept people who don’t look like them. My own church was once on the side of burning other churches because the wrong people went there; then God himself sent a storm that, like Camille and Katrina, thinned out our population of live oaks; the impurities were swept out of Galloway to form their own little church. Belhaven owns it now. The parishioners are dead and discussing the matter with their maker.

Feist-Dog represents what the world wanted from a little boy who could barely speak, read, and write not at all, and just wanted to paint. When I paint, the mist of depression is on me again, but I paint with the colors I see right now, the colors I won’t see in an hour, the flavors I won’t taste in an hour. I don’t use much shampoo, because I don’t have much hair, but my beard smells nice. Being under my nose makes it easier to smell.

I keep having to apologize for my temper. Cruelty to the innocent turns me into something monstrous, something I’d rather The Little Bird not ever see, something the Monkey Sister has seen, but not often. I don’t physically fight much anymore; I’m lashing out with the most powerful part of me, my quill—but man, looking back on some of the things I’ve said the past few weeks, I’m ashamed.

I am kind. I am a gentleman. But, just, I dunno, man. Leave people alone. Let them live. Give them the respect you demand for yourself, and everything will be cool. I know you’re not gay/black/mexican/liberal/trans/tattoo wearing/nose or nipple piercing/blue hair/green hair/earth loving/communicst/socalist/muslim—I know you’re not these things, but they are not a danger to you, no matter what anyone says. If they were, I’d be defending you because then you’d be the wounded party, but you’re not. You’re afraid because someone made you afraid. I hope to hell it’s not me.

I admit to a certian type of classism and assholery. A room full of bookless rednecks makes my lip curl automatically. I love people who plant seeds, feed cows, and mend the engines of the world, but there’s an element of them that’s come to represent feckless hate and I’m embarassed to admit that I’m more willing to accept that from the assholes at the Country Club of Jackson than I am from the guys at Pops Around the Corner, and yes, Im aware that the crowd that goes to Pops isn’t very white anymore. I’m wrong, and I admit it.

The only one who really cares if I’m humble is me. I’ll even lie about the quality of my work to make myself seem more humble, when I actually do know enough about writing to know that sometimes, yes, I do thread the needle. Sometimes, even when the mist and fog of depression are on me, a tiny naked muse will infest my pen, and I create something wonderful.

I used to know a woman who loved a boy I also loved, but he loved his career, and so he often left her behind. Because I loved him, I became her companion so that some other fella wouldn’t steal her before he came to his senses.

Discovering my art, which, at the time, was something of a secret, she said, “Can you draw me?”

“I can draw anything.”

“What’s it like?” She asked, biting her lower lip in anticipation.

“It’s not what you think. It’s not as intimate as you think. The fire isn’t between me and the subject, but between the pencil and the paper. I’m pretty much immune to nudity.”

“Even mine?”

“Even yours.”

This became a ritual. Dinner somewhere. Music if we can find it, then back to my home on the water, clothes in a neat pile, straddling my art horse, pen touches paper, a woman tries to believe she’s still beautiful.

I get that’s what this is about. All people, but especially women, need to feel not only desirable, but desired. Because the person she loved wasn’t paying much attention that summer, she felt like it should fall on me, but it didn’t. She was lovely, but I didn’t love her.

Exposing the most secret part of herself, she thought would shock and unsettle me. When it didn’t, she began to touch it, then touch it with intention. A new element was added to our weekly, sometimes every-other-day ritual. Since I would not express passion for her, she would express it for herself while I drew her. Her sighs and breaths mingled with the music and the sound of graphite clay on paper.

It wasn’t sex; it wasn’t love; it was loneliness, the bitter taste of desires not spent on her, at the very peak of her womanly blossom, or so it would seem. Her true peak would come later, when her children first drew breath, children that weren’t mine on purpose.

Love and being in love are two different creatures. I loved her enough to lock my own animal desires in a tight box so I could be an artist, and she could pretend to be touched by my hand, not hers. I have the drawings, but they are locked away. Sadness and isolation on 30 lb. wood pulp paper. The same paper used to print my rotting-away childhood comics.

The lonely and the unloved are the weakest of the weak, and they always find me.

—or maybe, I find them.

The world is filled with hate and fear. It’s easy when people never feel like they’re enough, when their concept of self doesn’t match the isolation they feel, when beauty of any kind isn’t matched by love and attention.

That’s something I’ve never had to worry about. Too much beauty, or really any beauty, simply wasn’t among the gifts the angels left in my crib.

“Make him STRONG!” They said.

“Make him SMART!” They said.

“Give him an artist’s brush and a poet’s quill,” they said.

“Should he be beautiful?” They said.

“No, you’ve given him enough. He’s just a boy.”

I’ve never missed beauty. I wouldn’t know what to do with it if I had it. I like food too much. I especially like getting hit in the face so I can laugh about it. I have scars I don’t even remember getting. While it works out in a lot of cases, I’ve seen beauty bring the host such pain and isolation. It’s the reason I never talk about beauty in my love letters.

I tend to let my body rot until I have to face my own mortality. “You want to push that long metal tube into my skin and inject me with some sort of mold?” Think again, sister.

When I was a child, I never let the nurse give me a shot; only Dr. Alexander did, and even then my childish cries soon turned into the roars of a dangerous beast. The monkey had allergies, so she got shots all the time.

“Look how brave Martha is. She doesn’t even cry when they give her a shot.”

I can see her eyes. She may not cry, but she’s feeling terror.

“If she’s so brave, she can have my shots.” But then when the nurse actually did approach her with a syringe, I said: “STOP!”

About midway through my Batman tour, the girls stopped me at Walker’s. “What are you doin’?”

“Well, I was gonna come eat on y’alls patio, but then I found my sister and some dude, and they found beers.” I share my life and about thirty percent of my thoughts with the world. It’s kind of nice. I’m too ugly to keep many secrets.

Feist-Dog gets up in about an hour. I still feel pretty good.

I’ve been having really bad suicidal ideations in church. Don’t freak out. It’s part of the landscape. One of the things I try to share with people is that these thoughts aren’t that rare. Sitting in church, I would imagine another three or four people were feeling the same thing, only they don’t write about it when they get home, or, if they do, they don’t put it out on the internet for God and Nixnon and everybody to see.

Because I’m so outspoken, I have actual enemies now, and I put everything they need to destroy me in my stories, but there’s a certian advantage to fighting without a shield or fear.

Profound, persistent depression can make you afraid of everything, or it can get so bad that it breaks the mechanism in you that feels fear, and then you’re truly strong.

I’ve decided to paint two of my professors. Hopefully they’ll keep their clothes on. That might be a deal breaker. I’m not really a portrait guy. I’m an impresisonist/expressionist, with an appreciation for the Modern Art movement, but not the talent.

It’s not even modern anymore. Modern art is older than I am, as if there’s anything older than I am.

I’m thinking of the little girls at Millsaps who pick up their sorority bids while I have lunch with the Little Bird. The boys do too, but they’ll be fine. It takes so little to break the heart of a nineteen-year-old girl.

Two of the girls I particularly care about accidentally got wasted at a frat party; now they’re worried that’s all people will think of them. God god, y’all, when did getting wasted at a frat party at Millsaps become a rare thing?

A gentleman will always walk a lady back to Bacot if she’s had too much. It was my job every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday. It was also a moment to hear about why the guy the hooked up with last week wasn’t paying them any attention.

One little girl, I barely knew. A tiny raven that I noticed precisely because she was a raven, I saw weaving side to side and trying not to cry in the corner of the Pike house. Zero percent of the corners in the Pike house were square, and I wasn’t a very square person. I wasn’t even a Pike.

“Want me to walk you home?”

Walking toward the Christian Center under a blanket of stars, she asks me “Do you know (insert boy’s name here)?”

“Well yeah, he’s on the baseball team.”

“Why is he such a dick?”

“I dunno, baby. Sometimes boys just are.”

They say if you kiss somebody on the M Bench, you have to marry them. I avoided doing it for that very reason. Sitting on the M Bench, I cradled her in my arms like a fresh puppy while she cried it out.

Walking between Murrah Hall and the bowl, she delicately vomited into a bush.

“Take me home, Boyd.”

I carried her the rest of the way.

I hope the fog stays away long enough that I can have lunch with the Little Bird and she can see me without it. I can see feist-dog’s leg moving under the covers.

“Good Mornin’ Mississippi! It’s four in the mornin’. Farm report at six and pet parade at seven. This is Oliver, singing ‘Good Morning Starshine.’”

Good morning, Feist-Dog, the Earth says “hello.”

I’m aware that I will die with unresolved feelings over this issue. I’m aware that I’m causing the problem in my own head because I refuse to protect myself and people who are gendered like me. I’m not gonna critisize how women handle their perspective with men and the choices they make in life because it’s their life and not mine, and a man, to be a man, to be a fucking man, can take it on the chin, at the end of the day,

but…

I won’t, but if I were to ever admit I was hurt, that a particular thing slinces my skin but doesn’t stop my heart, it’d be this. Which head do I listen to? The Push me, or the Pull you?

Boyd, I need you. Now go the fuck away.

I feel like a lot of things would have fallen on my brother, but once he was diagnosed with Bipolar and Schizophrenia, everything shifted down. If things get shifted, Boyd becomes a pretty big target. Whatever I wanted in life (most of which I had no clue about), I was Alexander Boyd Campbell the Second, and it was time I acted like it.

Mississippi has the smallest economy and the most poverty in the most successful economy in the world (at the time). The New Deal, the End of The war in The Pacific, and a brief cease fire in the battle for civil rights meant we had a narrow window of opportunity to develop Mississippi. This is my home. This is my duty.

I wasn’t even officially a freshman yet when Daddy and I began discussing how 90% of our sales came from 10% of our product line, so my entire education at the Else School of Business became about re-designing and re-enforcing that market strategy, from financing to warehousing, order taking, order fulfillment, marketing, advertising, salesforce training; all of it was on me. Certainly there were older heads working on it, but the one who had to make daily reports was me.

Most of the company, most of Mississippi, thought I was a wet-head, silver-spoon kid. Nobody ever thought about my reality because I never talked about my reality, even with the women who slept naked in my apartment.

For some reason, Daddy wanted me to do my final business case on a software company he bought that I never had a thing to do with. Even Shirley Olson said, “Why not the stuff you actually work on?”

I haven’t a clue.

The Daughter of Dragons had a fascination for the personalities of the business world in Mississippi. We would discuss them in some detail without mentioning names. She was from here, I was from here, this was our world, there was no need for names to know who she meant.

Before we knew if we were gonna win in the Pacific or not, my Uncle Boyd, my namesake, wrote a speech called “For The Public Good” for a chamber of commerce meeting. It made him famous and got him elected the national president of the US Chamber, twice.

Boyd was no socialist, but he had strong ideas about how and where business fit in with the community. He saw business as the engine that made everything work, and that it had responsibilities extending far beyond “increasing shareholder wealth,” Shirley’s class said was the only responsibility of a corporation.

It was the eighties. Greed, for lack of a better word, was good. We were cutting the taxes the rich paid in hopes that they would spend us out of the recession. We talked about balancing the budget while doubling red ink. At least Reagan believed in the invisible hand, and he kept us out of wars, for the most part.

They say Reagan brought down the Berlin Wall. Corruption, greed, and stupidity brought down the Berlin Wall. We just happened to be there when it happened. All pigs are created equal, but some pigs are more equal.

The women in my life didn’t particularly care about me. Sure, they put up appearances when it was useful, but once their lives achieved some sort of stability, I was superfluous, unnecessary, undesirable. Some even tried to claim they didn’t know me.

Does it really matter? I had a job to do, and there are lots of girls.

I’ve written a thousand times about how the fibers within me began to break, silently at first, one by one. “Ignore that. I’m a big boy.” Then one day Daddy said, “You’re dying, aren’t you, Buddy?” Then he died instead.

I still believe in everything I believed in 1990. My goals are much the same. I broke because I was burning the crucible as hot as I could make it, but not adding fuel to the fire. Simple math would tell you what went wrong there. If you want a fire, you gotta have propane in the tank.

Some parts of Mississippi are ten times better; others are a hundred times worse. Jackson got lost in the storm then ran up on the reef. There were no sirens singing songs of forbidden knowledge. Just shouting and short-sightedness.

So, what to take from all of this? Girls aren’t mean; I just make terrible choices. Sometimes they seem mean because life is hard and Boyd is either durable or expendable, depending on how you look at it. Business is the engine that runs everything, but greed ruins everything. Greed ruins everything, even if you’re a communist. Even the strongest of boys aren’t as strong as they seem.

But the strongest of all are the ones that come back fighting after they died.

Like, me.

First and foremost, whether in regard to guerres du cœur, or commerce, shopping, even deciding who takes which chair at dinner, a gentleman abhors quid pro quo. Act as you should act, feel what you truly feel, express the truth at every moment, but what you receive in return is irrelevant, as much as you can never think of it.

There is a sharp pain when you know for certian that you are not loved in return. You must endure it though because otherwise you might be guilty of trying to buy love with your love, and that’s never an honest love. The lady must love you because she loves you, not because you love her or because you provide things she needs.

I hate it when men are described as “providers.” Everyone is a provider. The man who picks your lettuce provides lettuce, your cat provides gentle caresses, and occasionally a dead mouse on your pillow. We ALL provide. A gentleman opens doors; he walks on the street side so that danger will befall him first; he goes to war to defend the hearth; he does these things because they are the things of him, not because they will be somehow returned.

If a lady loves you, she will find a way to repay every kindness with an equal or greater kindness. If she doesn’t love you, you’re still obligated to do these things because women create life and you cannot. A gentleman’s life comes with no reward. It is simply right.

With regards to the physical act, in particular the thought and desire of the physical act, a woman’s breast, the small of her back, the hollow above her lip, the spot we give the undignified name of “philtrum” will drive you mad and break your dreams into fits and storms, but they are not love itself. They may accompany love, just like thunder may accompany rain, but don’t confuse the two.

A woman feels passion, probably more than you do, but they express it differently, and they value it differently. Don’t let these things govern you. Imagine your lady faire as a blank void. Can you love her then? Can you love her because of what she is and not how she looks?

A woman will blush and grin if you write about her eyes, but that’s not love. That’s the simple pleasure of making someone grin and a little laugh. That being said, never let her forget how beautiful she is, no matter how old she gets, or how much weight she may gain. If you love her, it should all be the same.

Love is not a reward; love is a challenge. All men have the desire to conquer, to sow their seeds in whatever ground seems fertile. Men are also unjust and cruel. A man will destroy a nation to possess the king’s wife. Be not those men. You don’t possess anyone. You serve. It is your duty. It is your nature.

Gentlemanly behavior isn’t something we made up. The men we call prophets gave us these rules. Pray without recognition for praying. Return assault with love and peace. Feed the naked. Clothe the hungry. Put your lord before your desires. Men who seek to be kings receive their only reward here on earth. Feed the sheep. Find the lost sheep. We all have some ability to heal the people around us. Use it.

When you speak of love, speak the truth. The pure truth. Do not speak of what you need. Everyone has needs. A lady knows your needs. She is not bound by them because you love her, but she may be bound by them if she loves you. That, however, isn’t up to you or her. Love falls on you like rain. You cannot cultivate it or seek it; you just have to be unsheltered when it falls.

First there’s the endless hours of practice. Sketchbook after sketchbook filled with unfinished ideas or repeating techniques over and over until I feel satisfied with them—currently it’s ribbons. Drawing ribbons relates to so many difficult things, like long hair and the folds of cloth.

It’s kind of hip to write about masturbation. I don’t much because sex embarrasses me. It’s the opening character development for both “American Beauty” and “The Shape of Water.”

Guillermo del Toro is so brilliant. Although he’s basically doign a remake of “Revenge of the Creature,” he twists the beauty and the beast tale into something truely beautiful. He establishes water itself as a character because only characters are shaped. To establish Sally’s relationship with water and her utter isolation, even before we know she’s deaf, we see her boiling eggs in water, using water to clean her shoes, then filling her enameled-steel tub with water so she can immerse herself in it and masturbate.

When you think about how that was shot, Sally Hawkins gets so much respect from me as an actor. Recognizing the very exposed nature of the shot, del Toro reduces the on-set staff as much as possible, having people set up the shot then leaving; this is sort of standard for nude scenes, but there’s still the matter of getting into water that they struggle to keep warm, remaining in character, and massaging her sex organs in a way that’s expository, not exploitative. Later, when she consummates her passion for The Creature, it’s in the same tub. Del Toro is a master.

For many people, probably most people, even if you have a partner, masturbation can be a daily thing. In film and in novels, it’s almost always used as a device to show how lonely and isolated the character is, but in life, it’s far more utilitarian. You masturbate in the shower. You masturbate on the toilet. You get it over with.

Drawing page after page of ribbons, five or six ribbons per page, in pencil, in stick pen, in nib pen, shading, cross-hatching, inverting, over and over, developing the technique, passionless, emotionless, I’m essentially masturbating with a sketchbook, and just like masturbation in the shower, no babies come from this. It’s utterly utilitarian and ultimately, unless you look like Sally Hawkins, not very interesting.

It’s also necessary. You can't go from here to there without practice drawing in the middle somewhere.

In real life, as much as I resist it, I always seem to come back to the idea that I really am lonely, that I really am isolated, so I don’t go out searching, but I open my senses up to searching. It’s a whole being sort of search where, yes, I’m looking for a quality of the eyes, the lips, the hands especially, long legs, muscular backs, a gentility of voice, but far more than that, the qualities of her mind, what has she read, what movies, what music, what colors does she like vs what colors “look good” on her, the quality of kindness.

That last one. That’s so important. I’m acutely aware of women who act kind because “babies are so cute,” and there is a cultural expectation that they, as Southern Women, are kind, even when it’s clearly not a part of their nature.

The Little Bird is possibly the kindest person I know. Kindness runs in her family. Her grandfather knew I couldn’t afford a thing in his shop, even the indian arrowheads or shark's teeth. I think he knew I was riding my bike to his shop because it was just so damn cool, but he never acted annoyed. I suppose he thought his stuff was cool too.

Crossing the street, a random stranger asks Little Bird how to get to the restaurant he’s taking his wife to. She waves at me, “Do we have time for me to walk them to Saltine?” You could literally see the sign, but she was willing to miss the trailers attached to Spider-Man so she could help this clueless man be less clueless.

For me, everything starts with kindness. This tiny woman, the child I left behind, is completely re-teaching me what kindness means.

For me, the internet is source material for my art. Everybody doom scrolls. I doom scroll with a purpose. I’m seeking ideas, parts of ideas, fragments of ideas, themes, colors, bodies, trees, rocks, something that I can use to make my painting. Just like making a human connection, which I also do with tremendous trepidation and struggle, finding something to paint is at least equal to finding a girl.

A lot of guys I know, they just pick whoever they think is prettiest at the barn dance that night, and then see how long they last. I know a lot of artists like that too. I can’t do it. Even if I don’t understand what it means, I want my art to mean something. For that, you have to search. You have to finger through a great many thorns before you find the blackberries.

The painting itself is very much like how I have sex. I set the mood. Lights are important: lights to see, lights to stimulate my emotions, my baser self. I put on music, often the same music when I have actual sex with an actual person who eventually grows to hate me because I am emotionally oblique.

For the painting below, it’s Prokofiev’s “Dance of the Knights” from Romeo and Juliet. It's all tubas and violins and a deep rhythmic movement, not at all unlike the movement of my hips during actual sexual congress, including the trumpet tippany after the deepest notes.

At home, I’ll lay out flowers, soften the pillows on the sofa. At the drawing table, I select the paper, the size, the tooth, the weight, then I tape it to the drawing board in ritualistic movements, smoothing the blue tape with my fingers as it adheres.

The sketching phase is like the sexual banter before the lights go out. Teasing, laughing, giving shape to the emotions I feel. I often use a camera lucida (my secrets exposed). I have mechanical aids in love making too, often poems I’ve memorized, poetic lines I may have written by myself.

Then,

There’s always a Rubicon, a moment, a line, where you go from a potentiality to a reality. It almost always involves water.

A kiss. A simple kiss. A tongue escapes its bounds and touches a lip, a neck, an earlobe, fingertips, a nipple, a belly. Wetness is how we describe a woman’s state of sexual readiness, and so it is with watercolor painting. The paper has to be wet, the paints have to be wet, or nothing happens.

Sexual intercourse itself is a dance of uncripted choreography. Move your leg here, hold on to my shoulders, turn around, turn over, look that way, don’t look at me, look at me! Pull her close, push her away, tangle her fingers in my fingers,

you don’t know how long

how long

it continues,

layer upon layer, color upon color, value, hue, contrast, shape, emotion, commitment, if I make this line, I CANNOT take it back, pressure, sensitivity, I’m LOSING MY FUCKING MIND!

and then?

Oh, it’s finished. I’m finshed. Are you finished? I uh. Yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m finished.

Then I look at what I created, and I think “Wow, I really like that,” then “oh, that didn’t turn out as I thought.”

No matter how much you care, there is no perfect love, and there is no perfect painting. Deciding when it’s finished is something you feel. If you keep going, you’ll ruin it.

Then, you put away your tools and let the work dry, then cure. Drying is the evaporation of water; curing is the fixing of the pigments to the page, the fixing of the emotions about what I just did to this woman’s body, and what she feels about me, what I feel about her.

“Please don’t make me do that?”

Should I feel guilty? I should have stopped. Oh god, she’s gonna think I’m an asshole. I WAS an asshole. A certian amount of give-and-take, a sexual struggle, compromise, conquest, it’s all part of it, but did I go too far? She did come, but is she mad at me?

Painting is like that too. You always, always look at a part and think, “Should I have done that?” In real life, I’m always accused of not taking enough risks. I was dumped once, and the exit review said I was boring in bed; that’s why she cheated on me.

Well, that sucked.'

I try not to be as timid with art. With human beings, I’m constantly thinking about the emotional impact I’m causing when exercising my animal instincts, but with paper, you don’t have to worry about that. There are no psychologists for 130 lb cold pressed, American-produced, watercolor paper or Bristol Board.

Some people are gonna read this and be super offended. Some people will be shocked I even think about these things. The majority, though, if they’ve stuck with me for more than one or two stories, will think it’s pretty cool.

People always look at my work and say “that’s so cool. I could NEVER do that!”

Yeah, well, you can; you just haven’t really tried. If you want to paint, learn how to Fuck, and you’re mostly there. The rest is just art supplies, spots on your good shirt, and stained fingers.

In school, I was punished three times for beating up a bully. I never once tried to say, “But he was bullying Billy!” Bullying is wrong, but so is fighting. I’m not better than anybody. Punish me however you see fit, coach. I did what I had to do.

Recently, somebody was menacing somebody I cared about, so I did something to show them what menacing is all about. Things I’m not proud of. Things I won’t describe to you. It is my nature to fight and to defend, but is that what God wants of me?

“Turn the other cheek, Boyd.”

Baby, I am running out of cheeks. Help me. Show me!

I’ve been fighting a man who decided he was gonna attack a woman just doing her job and being a good citizen because he wants to be governor. For a while, I thought we could be cool, but I guess not.

There’s a guy in the race who doesn’t say he’s not MAGA, but I’ve watched his career the entire time, and he predates MAGA. We’ve had disagreements in the past, but he may be my guy. At least, he’s not a bully. In a better world, you could say, “Hey, I’m not MAGA, but I’m still a good Republican.” But I guess those days are over. The “Free speech” people are pretty solidly against free speech in their own party.

I don’t represent Christ, but I am his faithful student. I’m not the best student. Ask Pat Taylor or Brent Lefavor. It’s not that I’m a bad student, but my nature often leans in another direction. I am a scolded puppy.

I’m aware that the world is at a crossroads, and I desperately want to do the right thing, the necessary thing, but God’s instructions are unclear. One thing I do know is it’s not my beastly nature that will win the day here. What’s happening is much more nuanced than that.

Not all of my teachers are still around, but several are. I listen intently to try and see what they honestly think of me. I’m not great. I’m not even particularly good, but I am trying.

Mississippi was on fire when I was born, but it was mostly cool when I was an adolescent. I had to learn other lessons in this piping time of peace. Lessons of dead girlfriends, mentally ill brothers, a recognition that I could never be “strong enough” no matter how strong I became, and a mirror full of nothing but monsters.

I visit my city in the sunshine, hoping upon lost hope to feel God’s measure on my skin.

“I know you’re whispers. I am listening. Please, please. I am so lost.”

People who say they know where they’re going so you should follow them are often lying. Odysseus, the wisest of the Greeks, was lost for a decade. Before that, he spent a decade trying to win a war he tried to hide to avoid.

Once Odysseus regained his home, re-bed his wife, and sat his son on the throne, he left again. Odysseus was a man of many twists and turns. Polytropos: the war changed his inner being. He listened for God’s message on the winds of Greece and the Tuscan sun. Athena’s owl delivers messages of the god’s justice, but Athene noctua never had a message for me.

Like a scolded puppy, I crouch down, waiting for some sign of God’s approval or directions.

Father, please. I am so lost.

“Boyd, you’re still too weak for battle.”

Yeah, well. There’s only a thousand enemies.

“Someone was ugly about Millsaps, so I’m being conspicuously present.” I text one of the thousand daughters, a Premier Scholar. “I really enjoyed your game.”

When I was at Millsaps, I got elephants to recognize me to impress a girl, and I climbed, oh so many trees. These days, all you gotta do is be their fan while Millsaps women athletes skunk the competition—which they did, last night.

Ed King didn't start that long and venerable relationship between Millsaps and Tougaloo College for Negros. It was generations old when he was a freshman. Nobody uses the “For Negros” part anymore. Nobody uses the Spanish word for Africans anymore—well, they do; they just use a variant of it I won't use.

Conspicuously present at the Women’s Volleyball game, I don’t think anyone on either side recognized how big a deal it was for Millsaps and Tougaloo to face each other as equals in sport. When Ed King was twenty, this seemed like a viciously impossible development, and then God let his influence over Ed be known to Ed.

It nearly killed him. It broke his face.

My face was broken by God. I’ve been reminded recently that I’m just too ugly for love. That’s ok. I have a quill, and I have a sword. It would be dishonorable for me to turn away from the challenges presented by the growing evil in the world as it is. Don’t be afraid for me. I’m stronger than I look.

I said that Dolly Parton hated MAGA and hated Trump. That was inaccurate. She never expressed hate for anyone. What she did do was embrace and very publicly show love for the people Trump and MAGA want to destroy. People they want to destroy because they’re different.

A man online called one of our students “a freak.” I said he was more of a gentleman and more of a man at his tender young age than the “adult” trying to bully him for having long hair. I said some things I regret now. When you threaten innocent people, the rageful beast in me takes over. Not for long, but for long enough that even I think, “Boyd, that’s enough.”

Trump is not the first politician to try and use Dolly Parton’s fame to draw attention to themselves. She’s steadfastly refused presidential attention, but what she believes, what she supports is plain for all to see.

So, what did Dolly support?

She spoke out strongly in support of:

BLM
Trans Rights
LGBTQ Rights
Palestenians
Higher Education
Trade Education
Gay Marriage
Artists
Missfits
The Disabled
The Sick
Christians
Muslims
Athiests
Drag Queens.

Dolly Parton once entered a “Dolly Parton Drag Look-Alike Contest” and lost.

Like Elvira and Cher, she recognizes that her stage presence really is a drag performance, even though she is a cis woman.

Donald Trump ordered the flags at half-staff because he wants to absorb some of her good feelings. With the war in Iran and the economy going terribly, he needs it. He did not honor Aretha Franklin or Ed King with flags at half-staff (Neither did Tate Reeves, even though King and Reeves both graduated from Millsaps). Trump did order flags lowered for Charlie Kirk, who famously said he was afraid to fly with black pilots because they may be DEI hires.

I hope a black pilot flew Charlie Kirk to his final destination, but I doubt he was going up.

Without her wigs, without her highly structured foundational garments, Dolly Parton had a simple country-girl beauty. A tiny woman with tiny hands, she was so much stronger than I’ve ever been. She only ever loved one man, and he preceded her in death. I hate it when old people in love are left alone. It’s cruel.

Love is a tricky thing. You have to reach for the ring as it passes by. You cannot earn it. Who you love falls on you on rain. There’s no escape. There’s also no way you can influence it. I’d like to say what happens next is under your control, but it’s not. You’re a leaf in God’s wind either way. Pray he finds favor in you.

He never found favor in me. He made it astoundingly clear where I had to fight, though. I know that God loves me, but sometimes I don’t understand when, or how. Sometimes, I’d like to rest, but he won’t let me.

Kindness is so easy to do. Just sitting in the movies, the kindness inside Little Bird spilled out on the people around her. “Hi, would you like my water?” I literally just bought her that water, and now she’s given it to a little old man because she loved him and worried for his comfort, and for his hydration in the Mississippi sun.

I kissed her hand. “I love you, Child. I’m so very proud of you.” She looked at me, so curious why I would say that.

I find myself going to Drag Shows and other things I find kind of silly and unnecessary because people feel free to express the hate they feel for gay kids and trans kids because the President says it’s ok. He says, “There are very fine people on both sides.”

Penny Nickles is an extraordinary peson, she builds he own costumes and she’s dedicated herself to helping gay kids who are picked on, but I’ll be honest with you, her jokes suck. I don’t care. If she’s performing, I’m there. I’m conspicuously present because gay and trans kids should have the same kindness in life as the little old man Little Bird gave water to.

And

Dolly Parton embraced drag and drag performers.

Porter Wagoner discovered Dolly Parton; she wrote, “I will always love you.” For him, and then he sued her for a percentage of her income since he had discovered her. Porter Wagoner was a shit human being.

Daddy loved country music. He tried to learn classical and opera because Brum and Rowan liked it, but Daddy liked Hee Haw better.

Daddy and the NSSEA used to do a fair amount of business at Opryland because it’s a hotel big enough to handle the organization’s meetings. Hiring Wagoner to perform, he shook Daddy’s hand gladly, but when Daddy tried to introduce me, he blew past me so fast I could smell the hairspray.

Literally twice his size, he didn’t just not see me. It was a snub. I don’t give a shit because I don’t care for his music. He snubbed me because he cared more for money than kindness.

No matter what shitty things he did to Dolly, she always loved him, and she always got him out of the jams his clouded nature got him into. I understand that. Sometimes you have to show the most kindness to the people who treat you the most cruelly.

I try not to posit myself as some kind of superior person because I truly am an asshole and I let my temper do too much, when really kindness like Dolly would work better. I am kind. I shouldn’t just ask you to believe that. I have references. I am kind, but sometimes I get so damn mad.

I knew that Ed King worked for God. I knew he was kind. I knew he had a developed taste for Art and Music. He knew librettos by heart for operas I barely knew existed. Once I took the most remarkable creature to La Bohème. Between songs, I’d whisper the Libretto to her so she’d know what was going on.

“Do you speak French?”

“A little, but this is Italian, and no. I don’t speak Italian.”

The world is growing in cruelty, and I find myself losing my temper all the goddamn time. Ed King was kind. I knew he was kind. He was respectful to me as men are to men. He never had cause to be kind to me, but I saw his kindness spilled out on others. I recognized he was like me, only better. Ed King had an intimidating presence. A friend recently returned to take a job at Millsaps. “You used to scare the shit out of me as a student.” She knows the truth now.

Restless at sleep now, I wonder if Ed’s spirit is visiting me. He fought an incredibly cruel world. It tried to take his life. It left his face scarred. Fortunately, someone already loved him before he became beastly. The world is growing in cruelty now. What am I supposed to do?

It’s always been incredibly easy to spot me in a crowd. First because of my size, but now because of my size and the broken nature of my old body. A student tried to hold the door open for me. “I’m stronger than I look.” Then she paid for my supper. Hamburger Steak and mashed potatoes. I was, conspiciously present.

It’s important for the students to see me. The world is cruel. They know I don’t get paid a dime to be there for them. They know I’m there for them because a gentleman should be there for them. I’m there for them because, in many cases, I was there for their mothers and fathers.

I’ve always been conspicuously present, except for those years when I was conspicuously absent.

I’ve never quite known how to handle God’s favor or God’s challenges, so I let it break me. I understand now that it broke me because I need the healing that comes when I paint or write. Without that, no matter how strong God made me, I’ll eventually be taking on enough to break my keel and rip my sails. In the darkness, I had to decide: life or die. It’s remarkably easy to mend ripped sails.

Despite her costumes and her stage presence, Dolly Parton was a tiny country girl with a big smile. In the end, she was a tiny old woman who absolutely didn’t look like it, although, at her home, without her wigs, without the makeup and the foundational garments, I’d bet anything she’d look like somebody’s grandmaw, because she was.

I know I’ll never have her talent, and I’m cool with that. I wish I had her kindness.

Dolly Parton was conspicuously present. Now, she’s conspicuously absent. The better angels of my nature call to me every night. I don’t know how to answer them. I wish I were more like her.

The Batman Tour is also when I do a lot of my pre-writing. There are a few spots I hide out, including the top of the parking garage, where I’ll sit with my earbuds playing Prokofiev loudly, filling my quill with ink until I can get in front of an actual keyboard. Words, music, color, and tonal value are how I understand the world.

The morning tour, well, that’s all Daddy. Before assuming his desk, he’d walk through every department in the building, even if nobody was there yet, just to see what was on their desks for the coming day. Daddy taught me to be a part of the world while not being a part of the world. Constant observance is part of it.

I'm aware that a lot of what I do is a hair’s breadth away from actual stalking. I think what makes it not stalking is the fact that I never get a sense of personal power or sexual gratification from it. At night I used to watch my parents breathe, just to make sure they were. What I do now is akin to that. You never think about your parents not breathing until they don’t anymore.

This morning, a small army of young men with sunglasses, face masks, weed eaters, and leaf blowers descended on Fondren like a ninja army. I’m hoping they work for Doug Boon and not Kim Jong Il. Where I live, I have maybe two score neighbors who attend the University of Mississippi Medical Center to become doctors, nurses, and such. Baby Collins Cooke goes there to learn physical therapy. This means I can’t ever get hurt again or she’ll kick my ass.

That street is very busy in the morning, and there’s a steady stream of young medical types making their way to class. There’s always work being done at UMMC. A peckerwood driving a truck for a subcontractor was drinking coffee, picking his nose, and got stuck in the crosswalk, forcing students to walk into traffic to get to class. I don’t normally get in a fight before eight am, but I did today. He kept trying to tell me the light turned yellow, trapping him there. Yeah, well, yellow lights do that. That’s why you don’t stand your ridiculously large truck in the crosswalk waiting to turn.

Dickless.

A thing I’ve noticed that I never really noticed before is that there are over a dozen students who use some form of a head covering, and do so while going to class. I’m aware that it happened before and has been happening for quite a while now; I just never thought anything of it because nobody else seemed to think anything of it, but now they do, so I do too.

By Statute, the University of Mississippi does everything it can to help students born in Mississippi; their student slots are filled by the best candidates they can find, wherever they are in the world. While I am not a graduate of the Oxford School for Girls, I’m well aware of its importance to Mississippi. I’m immensely proud of Ole Miss, despite the amount of shit I give them.

I don’t want to say they raised their academic standards because Millsaps did first, but it’s possible. I’d also like to point out that seeking academic excellence, rather than some sort of Jingoistic pride, is literally the academic ideal. More than that, I’m immensely proud that a student that bright, from that far away, would pick Ole Miss out of all the schools they could go to.

However,

Because the GOP elected an insane person because they were mad about Obama, they now stand to get murdered in the midterms because nothing is going as promised. (Are you surprised?) In an effort to turn the tide somewhat less against them, they are seeking dragons where there are none and finding enemies among friends—including Americans who practice Islam and practicing Muslim cultural memes.

A lot of religions believe women’s heads should be covered. Orthodox Jews believe men’s heads could be covered. When I was young, there was a heavy Mennonite presence in Central Mississippi, and it wasn’t at all uncommon to see their women wearing a bonnet to cover their heads.

Creating the Constitution, Jefferson and Adams both appealed to John Locke, who believed that the only way to allow free practice of religion is to draw a sharp distinction between religious authority and political authority—separating church and state.

I hear all the time how we’re founded on “Judaeo-Christian” values, which isn’t true, and isn’t even a word, but if it WERE a word, I should point out that Islam is also based on Judaeo-Christian values. Allah (pbh) is the Arab word for Jehovah, and all are words that mean “I am.” We are all descendants of Abraham.

Now, I personally didn’t descend from Abraham. None of his genetic material is in me because I’m Celtic. Most Muslims, though, actually do have genetic material from Abraham because that’s their culture. If Abraham existed, he’s very much like modern Arabs and very little like modern Celts—but so was Jesus.

Jake Lang went to Michigan to chase out the Muslims, and Spider-Man kicked his ass. So many people were kicking his ass that he hid behind the plywood cross he made.

Irrational and unreasonable hate is on the rise in Mississippi.

These young nurses and doctors, they think they’re grown. They don’t know that peckerwoods in the crosswalk and rednecks who love Donald Trump are a threat to them, but they are. They will tell you that America and Christianity are in danger if we allow women with their heads covered among us and that—that right there is just a lie.

Nobody is so grown that Boyd won’t spend some time watching over them and making sure they get home safely. Nobody asked me to do this. Some people are offended that an old white dude is assuming a position of power over them. It’s not a position of power. It’s a position of servitude.

It hasn’t happened yet, but somebody is gonna do something stupid about Muslims in Mississippi. I say this because I love Mississippi and I love our people, but I know what we’re like.

When I was little, crazy people tried to blow up Beth Israel. Not long ago, somebody did again. We buried Ed King Saturday after attempts to kill him and kill what he believed sixty years ago. This isn’t a sixty-year-ago thing. This is here. This is now.

No fear, no regret,
in your child eyes,
I knew what the contract said
When I signed it.

For you, this life
Must be safety and beauty.
For me—
a thousand, ten thousand,
I will fight who I fight.

A hearth, gentle touches,
Were never meant for
Creatures like me.

Alone on the stage
I draw my sword.

Hello old friend,
Shall we dance?

In school I studied advertising. I’m sending a message with the intent of making your perspective what I want. You may not have tried Oreo Cookies. You will trust they are delicious because I say they’re delicious. That’s the goal. My work isn’t like that.

I don’t want you to have my perspective. I want to take the cover off the machine so you can see how the wheels turn on the inside, but the perspective going in and the perspective coming out are still yours. I don’t want anyone to think how I think; I want them to think about what I think about.

I’m committed to beauty, knowing that your perspective on beauty is not my perspective on beauty, and I’m committed to truth, knowing that your perspective on truth is not my perspective on truth. I don’t want to change my reader. I want them to be more of what they already are, hopefully reinforcing the good in them and not the bad because we all have both.

I’m not trying to teach. Most of my readers are far more learned than I am anyway. I’m not trying to assume a position of authority because, to be honest, I grew up at the feet of people with positions of authority. I know their strengths and their weaknesses, and I know their doubts and worries. They fart when they sleep, and many die far too soon.

Moses came down from the mountain top proclaiming “I have seen things you people wouldn’t believe.” He sets himself apart as superior to his readers. The same line in Blade Runner comes from a created being trying to prove he’s not inferior. I haven’t seen things you haven’t seen. I may have seen them differently, though.

I embrace it and rejoice when people don’t agree with my words. It means that, well, first, it means that they read what I had to say. They gave my words their time, and that’s a very special gift. I also rejoice in knowing that they don’t believe what I believe, but they see what I see, and they’ve at least had the chance to see it as I see it, even if they still don’t agree. I don’t want agreement. I want an army of people who think.

A demagogue wants you to trust them about what is safe and what is a danger. I’m not that. I’m not a savior either. I may fight like hell when there’s a temporal threat, but I’ve done this to know that once that threat is gone, I’m no longer your ally. I’m a reminder of a less pleasant time and a flag stuck in less pleasant things. Saviors always die.

When in an era where so many people want to tell you what to think so they can be powerful. I want none of that. At the end of the day, it’s my machine, but it’s your laundry.

When you’re nineteen, writing about a woman’s beauty is ubiquitous, but it’s also shallow. If you love her so much, what else did you notice? Also, no matter how many times I tell someone that they’re as beautiful at sixty as they were at nineteen, they never believe me. I’ll lie about love, but I’ll never lie about beauty. Love may be beyond me, but art is not.

I lie about love for a number of reasons. First of all. I know what I look like. There’s a certian freedom that comes with monstrosity. People often assume that there’s a really sweet monstrous woman out there to complete the set, but it doesn’t usually work out that way. The women who might be willing to accept their monstrosity rarely retain any sweetness. I suppose the world was cruel to them.

Most people only want peace in their lives, and I’m aware that I’m a very divisive character. I’m divisive because the world is cruel to innocent people. Nobody wants that in their personal life, though. “Boyd, can’t you just be quiet this one time?”

No. I’m sorry. I can’t.

It’s a cheap shot to say “oh your hair/shoes/ring/dress/purse is pretty. It’s cheap because everyone has something about them that’s pretty. Acknowledging it can’t really help somebody through a rough day, but it does allow them space to get an extra breath. “Oh, thanks. I got it two years ago.”

The Little Bird doesn’t believe she’s beautiful or brilliant or kind or funny. Something about the world makes little girls forget they are what they are, so I remind her. She’ll deny it, so I’ll point my finger at her and remind her, “I’ll never do you.”

Defend the right, protect the weak, guard the honor of woman.

That last part. That’s so complicated. It’s imperative that they don’t think they need us or that they’re somehow less without us; that being said, though, you better be there when the wolves come. They don’t play by your rules. I’ve seen what happens when the wolves come and I’m not there. It burns my soul.

Whether it’s from an enemy’s blade or from decades of abuse and neglect, I have no delusions about whether or not I’ll die in battle. I also have no delusions that this will grant me entry to Valhalla. A knight doesn’t fight for hope of reward. A knight fights because his duty commands it.

I’ve written love letters to people who don’t exist anymore. The mailing address is tricky, but some people deserve a letter.

An artist recognizes the beauty in all things, and in its eternal nature. You actually are as beautiful at sixty as you were at nineteen. I don’t care if anyone believes me. I’m kind of an expert on these things.

To prove she’s feeling as strong and brave and wonderful as I say she is, the Little Bird took a Sunday Selfie, in her Sunday Dress, with her Sunday hair, wrapped in a blanket.

The very last thing I thought I’d find when I came back from the dead is a child I carelessly left behind. Now a woman, but still a child in my heart, I believe she might actually be magic.

Sometimes, what I’m doing is so important, I can’t walk away, so I end up letting the same person missjudge and beat on me over and over and I never mention it becasue, what good would that do? They know what hurts. They know what’s reasonable. If they’ve chosen something else, there’s not much I can do.

I have to do what’s right. If some one misjudges me or is cruel to me, there’s not much I can about it if my choice is to walk away from what’s right.

Is that fair?

Not really. I’m a big boy though.

Is that cruel?

Not for you.

These are your tasks,

accept or pass

expect no reward

expect no peace

Not for you.

Is that cruel?

Is that fair?

Sometimes I wonder:

Do I serve a master that hates me?

Do I serve a master that I hate in return?

Why not for me? Am I that ugly?

Am I that undeserving?

Nevermind.

I’ll do it.

Let’s get it over with.

Clearly, I don’t have that problem. I’ve written very long, poorly read essays on the name of God and more specifically the concept that God is a state of being, which is perhaps the most brilliant expression of God man has come up with yet. God is. Simply “is”.

God isn’t the sun or the sky. God didn't cut off his father’s testicles with a golden sickle his mother made for him. (Unpack that, you Freudians) God doesn't drive a golden goat cart across the sky like a more butch version of Santa Claus; God simply is.

God is.

I’ve always struggled with my own state of being. My father, and his father, and his father, believed in a concept of peace through economic development. I believe in it too. You could say it’s my second religion. My problem is, though I speak the language and understand the models and everything involved, I’m just not very good at it.

It’s been suggested by everybody from Doug Drapter to the last three women I saw naked that my biggest problem was that there was such immense pressure for me to be Boyd Campbell the second that I developed mental blocks to it.

There’s another issue though. I like to fight. I like to fight so much that the same two women who I last saw naked all said the same thing at some point: “Boyd, would you leave that man alone?”

My concept of justice has always been built around the knowledge that, somehow, for some reason, there’s always somebody fighting for injustice. Often there are many more of them than there are of Boyd. I prefer those odds.

One day, the Comte de Guiche sent six men to kill Cyrano. Touching and cleaning his wounds later, Roxanne says, “How many were there this time?”

“Only a thousand.”

Recently, someone I love more than anyone said: “Boyd, the world is too cruel for your romantic ideas.”

Maybe, but honestly—there’s only a thousand of them. What chance do they have?

Toward the end of his remarkable life, The Rev. Ed King developed a friendship with the Rev. Cary Stockett. Southern men, southern pastors, southern Christians in the middle of what is both the most beautiful and the most cruel places on earth.

Eulogizing Ed, Cary said something remarkable. Apparantly, sometimes Ed would call him and say “You’re my pastor, we need to talk,” and then they’d get in Cary’s truck and drive around, a deeply venerated southern tradition; they’d drive around and talk about stuff, pastor to congregant, pastor to pastor, man to man, Mississippian to Mississippian.

I never really thought about pastors needing pastoral care. Personally, I’ve always resisted the idea. I don’t care who you are, you don’t get to see my wounds. They may have cut me, but there were only a thousand of them.

The first time I agreed to pastoral care, my wife had grown to quite resent my embarrassing her by not taking communion. I’d known David Elliot all my life, and I’d just met Minka Sprague. David could speak to me as someone who'd known me all my life, and Minka could speak to me through the complex hall of mirrors that is intellectual Christianity. We discussed the Lord’s table as a matter of Greek words and compared it to Greek myths. We discussed the concept of sin, and my sin, which I didn’t enjoy talking about much.

Having nearly died and given a second shot at life, I made all sorts of promises to talk to someone and not swallow my suffering, which I was only too glad to do as I only had a thousand enemies. The flaw in the plan was that Doug Draper was still quite dead, and as much as I liked Cary, I didn’t yet feel like I could drive around with anybody and reveal my innermost self.

As a writer, I’m deeply committed to the idea of truth, at least my truth. Often my readers will comment on “how brave” one of my stories was, meaning they were shocked about what I revealed about myself, a man of strength showing his every weakness knowing that the thousand enemies are probably reading.

I enjoy Raigan very much. More than that, I trust her with something very important. Galloway Memorial United Methodist Church didn’t intend to become something of a nexus for the soul of Mississippi, but the very moment Ed King and his students were turned away from the steps of Galloway, we became precisely that, and have remained so, even when it was painful, ever since.

Coming back to life, I knew being an active Christian again had to be a part of it. Even though I still had to have pretty constant care in rehab, I knew that one day I would get out, and I was very concerned about the fact that the United Methodist Church was again splitting in half. At the precise moment that I was rekindling my connection to Galloway, I was also counting who would go and who would stay.

In 1963, when Rev. Selah stepped down from the pulpit because lay leaders locked the great front doors of Galloway to Ed King and his students, almost 200 Galloway members eventually left. Not all of them were regular attendees, but they wanted their names included among those who withdrew their letters from Galloway and became Independent Methodists because they could not stand what Ed King was doing.

I always liked Ed. He only had a thousand enemies. What chance did they have?

Samson’s hair grew back; he regained his strength, but he still couldn’t see. I always really admired the story of Samson, but there’s one small fragment of a sentence I don’t like. He wanted to destroy the temple to avenge the loss of his sight. Even in his last moment, Samson thought more of himself than of the people God created him to protect. Samson had a thousand enemies. Samson was one of his own enemies.

My physical strength will never fully return. Boo Hoo. I’ve discovered something tough: those things I always kept secret, even from those I loved, might actually be my greatest strength. I was born with mental conditions and learning conditions that might have made words my enemy, but, with God’s help, I have bent them to my will.

Cyrano had a rapier. I have a quill.

Technically Cyrano had a quill too, that’s kind of the point of the story. That’s fine. I have a rapier too. It belonged to my great-grandfather. I don’t use it much. Maybe as a metaphor.

I like Raigan very much, but I’m not gonna ride around in a truck talking about my problems. I might ride in the back with Rocky’s dog. At one time, riding in the back of a pickup truck was a test of Mississippi childhood. Somebody decided it wasn’t safe. Baby, a thousand enemies are less safe than riding in the back of a pickup truck.

Both The Little Bird and the Monkey Sister reminded me of my promise to find someone to talk to. I found my quill. Poor Reagan. My letters have a reputation for being long. Having mastered letters, they flow out of me like water.

I do tell her my secrets, though. My hopes, my dreams, the things that hurt me that I’ll never admit hurt me, my thousand enemies would just love that, wouldn’t they? I can’t ever stick to the point, though. It always ends up being a matter of “this is what Galloway means to the world. These are the things I think you’re doing right. These are the things where we might have some weakness.”

As the United Methodist Church became less united, I realized that, once again, Galloway had a thousand enemies, but, fortunately, very few from this side of the doors. It seems we’ve grown in spirit since Ed tested us sorely in 1963.

Ed King had a thousand enemies. They tried to take his life but only took a part of his face. It made him even more determined. At his funeral, the doctor, a black doctor who treated the wounds on his face, spoke. A thousand enemies, one of them clipped Ed’s jaw with the tip of his rapier, but never advanced further. Ed fought them back, with his words, with his quill, with his spirit. Only a thousand; what chance did they have?

After the service, I texted Little Bird, “They sat Bennie Thompson, Joan Trumpauer Mulholland, and your former Boss (Katie Blount) behind me. Joan Trumpauer Mulholland had a thousand enemies too. Since then, she’s grown ten thousand friends. She never recognizes me, which is fine by me. I recognize her. She kept wandering off (quite intentionally) from her son so she could speak to people and see things. Acting like we were lifelong friends even though she didn’t have a clue who I was, I quietly escorted her until I knew where she was going.

A lady doesn’t want you to guide or guard them, but they will let you escort them.

I keep a list of my thousand enemies. Not the people themselves, that’s another list, but the things they want. The things they’re doing that hurt, sometimes deeply hurt, innocent people. There’s only a thousand items on the list. I shouldn’t have any trouble dispatching my enemies. Might die. Who cares?

I’m not my father. I’m a lonely wounded animal who only wants to know the soft things, the gentle things, and to sleep at night without someone trying to take, limit, or ruin their lives. A thousand enemies. Only a thousand.

Ed King had a thousand enemies. We buried them before we buried him.

Catherine is gonna hate if I screw this up: νίκη τῆς δικαιοσύνης,

Victory of Justice!

I got to see Catherine at the service, and Suzanne and Jeanne. They hugged my ugly neck. For them, Ed was a colleague and friend. I would gladly lose one of my own limbs or two of yours for those ladies. A thousand enemies, indeed.

I’m still figuring out my state of being. Listening to Cary speak yesterday helped a great deal. Whenever I talk about getting in a fight, The Little Bird says, “Please don’t. I worry about you.” We’ll talk about it, and eventually, she’ll come to accept that, “A warrior is your nature, isn’t it?”

I suppose so. She’s such a tiny thing, the child I left behind. She says I’m forgiven, I remind her this is between me and God, but I appreciate the love and concern she shows me. I don’t let many people do that.

There was a time when I was pretty sure the world no longer needed me. The dragons Ed King fought were well-slayed—their bones in museums. I seem to have been too optimistic.

In the past fifty days, I’ve three times gotten into actual shouting matches with people determined to destroy the rights and lives of innocent people. While Ed King might have fought these thousand enemies back, they seem to feel emboldened to come out of their hiding places again.

I don’t rest well. Sometimes not at all. Last night, I thumbed through my list of a thousand enemies, naming each one, and the vunerable spot they’re likely to attack. Like Cyrano, it is my nature to fight them.

Now, all of this is really just stupid writer’s metaphor, and it probably sounds like I don’t really have any plan at all, and there may be some truth to that. Between you and me, though, as friends, the plan is pretty simple.

I fight.

Though I was licked by the flames of hell before I was even born, because of my associations, my family, my teachers, I emerged, not pitted tin, but an entirely different metal altogether. Eulogizing Ed, my friend Reverend Cory Stockett said Ed could be a divisive character. Yeah, well, at least I inherited one thing from Ed King.

When people say they want to make America Great Again, I always ask what year they think America was great, because it sure as hell wasn’t 1963.

In 1964, Nina Simon recorded “Mississippi Goddam.” In 1939, Billie Holiday sang “Mississippi Trees Bear Strange Fruit.” In 1963, Momma and me hadn’t even left the hospital when Eudora Welty wrote “Where Is That Voice Coming From?” on paper from The Office Supply Company, where Daddy worked.

As much as Mississippi tried to sell itself as “The Hospitality State,” The world saw us as a place that hangs men for no reason and beats boys to death. They considered us unsavable and refused to do business here or move here.

Ed King didn’t see Mississippi as unsalvageable and unredeemably evil. He saw a Mississippi full of promise. Ed saw a Mississippi that could follow the word of God, if they only would. He believed this so much that, even after they tried to kill him. Even after they left a jagged scar across his face, he didn’t give up. He continued working to expose the beautiful soft underbelly of Mississippi, not covered with thorns and hate.

Because of Ed King and scores of young people like him, I don’t remember living in that Mississippi. I remember living in a Mississippi steadily marching toward freedom, love, and reconciliation.

When I was a year or two younger than Little Bird is now, Ed and I ended up on opposite sides of the abortion rights issue. Considering his association with liberal social causes, and my association with conservative economic causes, I’m sure the entire world was surprised when we took the sides we took. It seemed inverted according to the political spectrum of the day.

Ed believed the political spectrum was useless. He made his own decisions based on how he understood the teaching of Jesus. So did I. Ed was divisive. So was I. Ultimately, I convinced him that, if we respected each other’s opinions like gentlemen and behaved honorably in dealing with the issue, then it didn’t matter if we didn’t agree. I wish all my disagreements went as smoothly.

Mississippi always refused to bring the people who caused racial hate to justice. That’s one reason people found us unredeemable. When I was exactly Little Bird’s age, a young lawyer named Bobbie Delaughter thought he had a thread he could follow and finally bring the man who killed Medgar Evers to justice. Many cases still haven’t been brought to justice, but in this case, Bobby brought down God’s own judgment.

At the time, I took this as a message and a signal. The message was, “Stand down, son. This is no longer a time for warriors. We’re entering an age of Reconciliation.” Preaching at Galloway, where Ed went to church, Ross Olivier talked about the reconciliation process in his home in South Africa.

Wounded and tired to my soul, I did stand down. Whatever the world needed, it wasn’t Boyd. I won’t die by my own hand, but I will die in peace and anonymity.

only,

It didn’t happen that way.

I believed we defeated evil. We didn’t. We pushed it underground. I don’t even want to use the word “We” because I didn’t do that much, but that doesn’t matter because I was wrong. Evil doesn’t kill so easily. It comes back.

I love seeing people who don’t remember me. It keeps me humble, and I need to be humble. I texted the Little Bird,

“They sat Joan Trumpauer Mulholland behind me.” Little Bird is an archivist for the state, and she’s smart as hell. Even though she’s unbelievably young, she knew who Mulholland was and what she did.

She didn’t recognize me, but she treated me as if she knew me all my life. Considering what Mississippi put her through, she shouldn’t embrace an old, bald, white guy like that, but she did. Headstrong and curious, she kept intentionally losing her son so she could speak to whoever she wanted to and look at whatever she wanted to. Wikipedia says she’s 84. I figured she was about that.

When you see her mugshot in Jackson in 1962, you’re struck by two things: her innate, effortless beauty, and the vast intelligence and determination in her eyes. Raised in Arlington, Virginia, she knew exactly the score in Mississippi, and she knew neither her whiteness nor her beauty would protect her. If anything, her beauty might cause even more problems, but she felt the spirit move her, and she stood down the crucible of hate in Mississippi.

The only thing I love more than Mississippi is the people who live here. I’m an honest man, though. I know the score. As beautiful and as wonderful as we can be, that doesn’t mean we always are.

Leaving, I told someone, you sure can tell which ones are Ed's daughters and granddaughters. There’s a strong family resemblance.

Ed King was a giant. I’m just a mouse that grew too big. I did my best to learn what he was teaching. One thing he taught was “don’t be afraid of being divisive.” Ed fought to clear the world of evil for me. Now it’s my turn.

In the original poem, a frog and a scorpion are on the banks of a river. The scorpion wants to reach the other side, but he can’t swim. He asks the frog if he can ride on his back, and the frog says, “Of course I won’t let you ride on my back! You’re a scorpion; if I let you get close enough, you’ll sting me, and I’ll die!”

The scorpion says, “How foolish would I be to sting you while you were so kind to carry me across the river, and I cannot swim?”

The frog, unable to answer the scorpion’s logic, says, “Get on my back. I’ll carry you across.”

Halfway across, the scorpion repeatedly stings the frog so that he can only die. As the frog loses consciousness, he cries out, “Why did you do this? Now we will both surely die!”

“But my friend,” said the scorpion, “you knew I was a scorpion when you let me on your back.” And then they died.

The thing that strikes me is how Trump knew this story. Surely he knew he was the scorpion and they were the frog, and yet he told the story to his followers, just as he was about to sting them so that we all may die.

You see, the problem was never Donald Trump. Donald Trump is perfectly himself, just like a scorpion is perfectly itself. The problem is all the frogs who forgot what scorpions do and how they do it.

“Who’s that?”

My friend Liz is beautiful, bright, inquisitive, intelligent, artistic, and kind. Her only real flaw is that, a few years behind the Little Bird at Jackson Prep, she’s fresher than fresh peas. She’s heard of a time when Mississippi was known around the world for its hostility, its anger, sin, murder, and hate, but she’s never lived it.

Hopefully, she never will.

We were trying so hard to sell ourselves as “The Hospitality State,” but the entire world was wondering why we weren’t hospitable to Goodman, Schwerner, and Chaney, or Emmitt Till. We were trying to sell ourselves as a place of tea on the veranda, hoop skirts and gentlemanly behavior, but the world knew us for assignation, bombing synagogues, and bodies swinging from trees.

Mississippi, Goddamn.

“Wow, all this happened here?”

Prep is at a disadvantage. They’re required to teach Mississippi History, and I know which textbook they use, and I know how that textbook edits the truth. My father once had to give a deposition in a court case to have “Mississippi: Conflict and Change” added to the approved State Textbook list. A book kept off the list for telling the whole truth.

The week before I was conceived, Ross Barnett gave a speech where he said, “I Love Mississippi! I love her people. Our customs. I love and respect our heritage.” That sounds like a wonderful speech, one any governor should be proud to give, but in 1962, that one word “heritage” was a fuse that lit a bomb that exploded in Oxford that night.

As the riot in Oxford deepened and worsened, Barnett got on the radio; instead of working to quell the violence, he said, “We will never surrender!” A political trick led to the Pearl River Reservoir being named for Barnett. I once lived there. I will not return there until the name is changed. That it hasn’t been changed is a brutal scar on the face of Mississippi, far more visible than the brutal scar on the face of Ed King.

Four days before I was born, Medgar Evers was killed. Four days after I was born, not the same person, but the same people tried to kill Ed King, but failed. He wore a vicious scar on his face forever after. Surgeons in Jackson refused to wear it. It became a medal of honor for King.

“Momma, what happened to that man’s face?” And every mother in Mississippi had to explain what happened.

I was too young to remember any of this. I barely remember Nixon becoming president, although I absolutely remember Ford becoming president. While I lived in the hateful, brutal version of Mississippi, I don’t remember it.

The thing I didn’t really appreciate until I was almost thirty was the herculean effort it took to change Mississippi, most done by men and women in their 20s, 30s, and 40s, people who could have their lives and careers destroyed if they didn’t stick together, but they did stick together.

Every four years, somebody would run for governor hoping to tap into whatever was left of that anger and hate and divisiveness, but almost universally, they didn’t make it very far. Mississippi, it seemed, had learned its lesson and had enough.

I assumed it would be like that forever. I can be naive. Sometimes, I can be horribly naive.

A few months ago, I wrote Bobby Delaughter and said how he was one of my personal heroes because he brought justice for the Evers family. They even made a movie about it. The guy who played Byron DeLaBeckwith seems to have more in common with the character than we realized.

There came a time when I thought it was safe for Boyd to hide away because the burning time was over, and a world at peace has no use for a great beast or poor knight. Besides that, I was so very tired. It would seem that helping fallen sparrows into their nests again can be tiring after a while.

Starting with the Unite The Right Rally in Charlottesville, then Charlie Kirk said he wouldn’t fly in an airplane if it had black pilots, then Jan 6, the Epstein files, an unprovoked war in Iran, the bombing of a girl’s school, the fire bombing of a synagogue in Jackson, two generations after the last bombing in the same synagogue.

I have to make very public and very loud statements because a candidate for governor is making statements causing a young Muslim lawyer to receive death threats. Efforts to shut down and reverse the rights of LGBTQ people are growing.

Something is growing. Something is returning.

Do you think I want to go to drag shows? Do you think I want to get in shouting matches with assholes in cowboy hats? All of these things—all of them, we thought were settled have been dug up out of the graveyard again.

There absolutely is a place in a burning world for a poor knight and a great beast, probably more of the latter than the former—but Mississippi, goddamn. I never thought we’d be here again.

Tomorrow we bury Ed King. I’ll attend the service with the full weight of knowing that everything he fought for is fighting to return resting on my shoulder.

Everything I do is so that the world I leave to the Little Bird and Liz is better than the world I was born into. I’d like to promise it, but the best I can do is say I’ll fight it till I either win or it kills me.