realizing again how it all comes down to HIM. if we could choose our muses, I'd rid the earth of him myself. instead I'm stuck carrying his weight. I don't want it to be the rest of my life. he's humiliated but also too pleased with how it's turned out, my glory still all wrapped up in him. the uncle's smiling in the rearview mirror at the end of how I learned to drive. my eternal passenger, number flashing on the phone, ip address on the site log. maybe this book will kill him. or the next one, the next the next. it will happen. I want to say, so long as I outlive him, but I already have. girls reading my book after I'm dead--but then there he is, still beside me. because they'll read him, too.