My Life's Greatest Loves

My first great love was a girl. She had blondish, whitish hair with huge brown eyes that lit up the room when she walked in. Everyone was magnetized by the love she shared freely. No one could resist her charm. In fact, when I was very young, she and I would compete for attention from all in the room. Some days I won. Other days she would nuzzle up to someone and that would be the end of that. She was theirs for the rest of the day and vice versa. The minute they stopped lovin’ on her, she would look up at them with those bright brown eyes pleading for just a little more. That’s all it would take. However, there were some days when all we needed was the love we had for each other, so I’d saddle up and ride her on a tour of the house, my small white feet a stark contrast to the orange 70’s shag carpet. My first great love was our cocker spaniel named Buffy.
Consuming and producing language are the next two great loves of my life. As a child, I spent days and weeks ravenously devouring every book I could get my hands on. This lifestyle of quiet corners and solitary afternoons allowed me to make some great friends and live in completely different worlds for days on end. Stephen King and R. L. Stine were my best friends growing up. Night after night I lie awake with the lamp on, covers up to my chin, reveling in the thrill of feeling terrified. The ghastly images these two men create haunt me in my dreams, yet I slumber peacefully, feeding off the electricity pulsing from every word on every page.
I have had many friends over the years, some of my best friends including Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, and Chuck Palahniuk. Dickens immediately draws you into his world. It’s not drastic or jarring, but when you’re in, you’re in, and there’s no getting out until Dickens releases you. Faulkner and I are friends, first because he’s Southern and second because he writes really fucked up shit. If you’ve read him, you know my description is accurate. I follow him willingly along his long and winding path leading into the darkest depths of the South. I carefully navigate my way around the world he creates looking over my shoulder and around every corner waiting to run into Popeye but petrified of it him in the same breath.
Palahniuk is a beast all on his own. Like Faulkner, he writes about the most fucked up and depraved parts of humanity. His writing style is innovative, which draws readers in and illuminates the perversion in us all.
At this point in my life, I’m producing more than I ever have. I feel like the breath of life has infused my soul with every terrifying image I have ever read. These images stare at me reminding me to keep writing in search of the deepest, darkest part of my imagination that hasn’t been let out of it’s cell yet. As I saturate my pages with the most evil characters that hide in the obscure shadows of my creativity, I shudder at the mere memory of the terror that consumes the mind and body when reading some of these artists. I raise my mint julip and salute my friends that have disturbed and tormented even the toughest of minds.