The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 2000. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

Sometimes I'll wish that I'm that slightly creepy, intense, quiet guy in the back of the room who looks interesting but looks dangerous but looks interesting. And then I'll realize, sometimes I am that slightly creepy, intense, quiet guy in the back of the room, interesting, dangerous, interesting. I judge my life in relative terms to the rest of a large urban artistic scene, but I forget, a large urban artistic scene is, as a whole, much crazier than the rest of the world. When I hold my life up to the rest of the world, where artistic crazies don't exist, I turn out to be the artistic crazy.

There is a fine line between intense self-examination and some guy on the el waving his cock at you. There is a razor's edge between intensely high emotions of romance towards the opposite sex and stalking. I walk that thin pathway between hearing the characters of my next novel speaking their dialogue to me, and hearing the neighbor's dog tell me to go out and KILL! KILL! KILL!

I'm a dangerous person. If I'd been in high school last year I would've been in the Trenchcoat Mafia. If I'd gone to Harvard I would've been the Unabomber. I run a temperature of 99.1 degrees, all the time, because of all the energy I am constantly burning up on the inside. If you don't believe me you can feel my forehead. Or, come to think of it, that might not be such a good idea. The pen is mightier than the sword, but damn, that sword is so much more fun. The only difference between Nabokov and a child molester is a typewriter and a sense of fuckin' humor. The only difference between Ginsberg and a guy cruising teenage boys in the park is a few Pulitzer nominations. And the only difference between me and an autistic child smearing feces across the wall for his own amusement is that I have to go out and hold a day job!

So you just watch yourselves, ladies and gentlemen. I would much rather bite the hand that feeds me than lick it, and believe you me, I will kill a President to gain your love. You don't ever want to go to Kinko's with me, and if you ever see me drunk at a dinner party and I start talking about the Ameritech Corporation, do yourself a favor, stand up and walk out of the room as fast as humanly possible. Because I'm trouble and don't you forget it. I'm trouble with a capital T. I burn the candle at both ends and then use the flames to burn down your apartment. If you have any sense at all, you will keep your daughter, your money, your liquor and all sharp, pointy objects away from me. Because I am one bad motherfucker.