AK ’23 | Dr Knobhead, I Presume?

First thing she did was ruffle my hair, that incorrigible Yankee dickhead. I’d been extra careful that morning to get it just right. Now I was a mop-end scarecrow once again, angel-pube loofa head. God damn. I’d been thinking about how cool my entrance would be all the way there: I’d sweep up beside her, unseen, and I’d mutter some obscure literary reference, some fantastic quippy masterclass in British understatement – but no. She ruffled my hair, and after a year apart the first thing that escaped my mouth was something like:

“Dick!”

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At Home | More Scheming, Less Steaming

You wouldn’t know it – I mean, how could you know it – but I write these diaries all the time. I just never publish them. What usually happens is that I begin doing some other thing, like working or reading a book, and at that instant I am struck by inspiration, and I throw everything aside and sit down and hammer out 2000 words in an insane blur that I barely even remember. Then I sit back and crack my knuckles and read what I’ve written, and while I read my jaw gently slackens, until finally I think ‘nobody must ever discover how shit a writer I am, how inane, how poundingly mediocre my thoughts are’ and I delete them all in an orgasm of self-loathing.

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At Home | Total Inner Peace and Absolute Fucking Nirvana

Here’s a little trick to write better. Just start. Don’t worry about what’s gonna come out or where it’s headed or if it’s good or not, just start saying stuff and – look, here I go. Sometimes when I start writing I write the first thought that comes into my head. Sometimes it’s really pathetic things, or stupid things, or just bland. My teeth hurt. Wish I had darker hair on my legs. There’s a fly in my room and I want it dead – and then you just go from there.

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