October 26, 2015 - 03:51
[Page 238]
“They were waiting for me after school and dragged me behind the maintenance shed. They stuck it in my mouth and said they were going to blow my brains out.” … “How you’re a whore,” he said. “And me and Ocean and Poo are proof of it.” …Then she asked, “what about Ocean? Does she get picked on, too?”
Phoenix shook his head. “The kids in her class pretty much all like her.”
“What about these older kids? You think she’s safe from them?”
“Yeah,” he said, then added, “She’s blond.”
“Right.”
[Page 154]
I have a runaway’s fear of the cops. The sight of a uniform triggers a cloaking response-recoil like a mollusk, shrink back against a wall. … I’ve tried hard to overcome this response. I don’t want my kids growing up cowed by the authority of the state. But no matter how often I assert my own authority –that of a parent, a professor, an abandoned Ph.D.-the time I spend on the street overshadows it all. When Phoenix was little, I saw his face grow cloudy at the approach of a patrol car, and even Ocean, who is afraid of nothing, fidgets in the presence of an officer of the law.
[Page 225]
“That was back in the old days. When I was naïve enough to think that history mattered.”
“It doesn’t?”
“Not on this earth.”
“What happened to you?” … “Why do you say history doesn’t matter?”
“Because it doesn’t exist. Not in the way your history teacher taught you it does. What you think of as history is just someone’s spin of a set of events. It’s only a matter of who’s more skillful at getting his version on public record.”… “Most reporters approach history retroactively. My approach is more preemptive.”