Why you turned into fiction...

There you are, small-sized and blinking, looking at me shyly from the 1970's, stranded miles from anything out in the country, wearing a hairy plaid shirt, and probably living in Iowa. Sorry about that. I never should have gotten mixed up with you in the first place, but it happened the way these things do. Then I found out you believe aliens are making crop circles in the corn fields and you have memories of Satanic abuse. Understand? I didn't have a choice. I had to stuff you into a short story, one set in Iowa City, since that's what I seem to write about these days.

Maybe we could have talked things over instead, but I doubt it. You thought I was pretty nuts too, since I mostly just read, watch movies, write about stuff, and talk to my cats using these different voices. Thing is, I didn't really want to find out why you pack your own rounds or why you think carrying concealed is a great idea. When you start droning on about the Masons and how they engineered the Kennedy assassination, I just want to hit you with a brick. So now you're in a hunk of fiction, a major or a minor character...I don't know yet. I'll have to keep writing, see how it goes.

It's not too bad. I put you in a commune I lived next door to for a while. It was kind of on the low-rent side as communes go...not one of those big flashy jobbers with hundreds of people who got baked everyday, had sex in the mud, went around bare-ass, and wove hammocks to pay the bills. No, you're living in a beat-up farm-house with about thirty other people and you all have fights about who's going to do the dishes. So much for the revolution, right? Even so, it's a pretty standard commune you're in, nothing to mope about. There are five or so mutts, and two are really good hippie dogs...always ready to tussle with you or chase something. There's a big box of clothes in the front room. When it's nippy out, you fish around in the carton and dig out sweater: the kind with a reindeer pattern on the front and raveling cuffs. The women there aren't all that good-looking, but they're not into being good-looking, okay? They've got other stuff on their minds, like taking care of the seven kids who run loose all day, baking a metric ton of bread, and cleaning that lid of new weed.

Personally, I feel better now that you're in a short story, even though I don't know what you'll be up to. You seem more manageable to me, and I know you'll probably be happier. Try out some of your crop-circle bullshit on the commune folks...they'll listen for sure, maybe even eagerly, all the while wearing those sweet hippie smiles. Now your gun-thing probably won't go over them, but fiction needs conflict. It'll be exciting for a while, and then something will happen, and then something else. That's how it works.