Some men think they never forget anything but they are wrong. They always forget things and they usually only say that they never do when they have forgotten something and are being indignant about it.

That was the first time I ever saw a fresh water otter, that was in Chincoteague island. There are alligators here they say and I have never seen them. I have never eaten alligator but last night on the back porch at a birthday party a few boys went talking about alligator meat. It was a point of comparison to how eating armadillo is similar to alligator in a way, only there is the shell still there with the meat hanging off. I guess the only part of the alligator anyone is supposed to eat is the tail. Its the fleshiest bit they said. It all came about because there was a possum running across the fence right beforehand and then he climbed a thin branch into a tree in the next yard over and just stayed there forever looking at us. The boys said an armadillo is the same thing as a possum only it has armour and lives in Florida and gets run over a lot more. One of them said that a possum can travel across a river by walking under it. They just hold their breath. I asked if anyone had ever eaten turtle soup becuase my father had once eaten turtle soup and I have never eaten anything, not even duck. The one boy who brought up armadillos said no he would never eat a turtle because turtles are his spirit animal. I wonder who decides these things and how people get so funny about them. I told him about my russian tortoise Fiona Apple and how my dad had accidentally frozen to death the russian tortoise I'd had before that. He had been hibernating her through the winter. It was a honest mistake. My father grew up raising turtles. He also ate one in a soup onetime.

Just then a tall skinny rake of a guy walked onto the porch and I thought I was seeing things. I'd been in love with him once over a cup of coffee. He didn't know me but he knew my friends. I'd had to run off to class. I'd been rambling on like a crazy person, I was trying so hard to make him love me. I made an utter fool of myself when he asked me my name on the porch. He didn't remember of, course, but I did and I'd written a poem and the lines of it spilled out of my mouth before I could think better of it. I've met you before and we were outside and you were eating chocolate cake and you'd said it used to be from Costco but it wasn't anymore and I was talking about a guy who was buried with bells in his coffin because he was afraid he might be buried before he was really dead and he wanted to be able to get out again. He stopped and unfocused his eyes like he was thinking who that guy might have been and I said you couldn't think of who it was, which was also true. Then I asked one of the other boys if they had a hard bit of identification that I could use to go break into my house for a minute and grab my cigarettes. Someone gave me a sonic card and I hopped off on my bike. I had to leave immediately after that and I thought about not coming back at all but I did. I stayed and talked to everyone and had my cigarettes, thank god. And the rake looked at me sometimes but I couldn't speak to him directly after that. On the front porch he stared at me with his hands on his knees the way another man had done when I was in Italy and waiting outside the cafe for my girlfriends to finish buying icecream and wishing I had a cigarette. I was looking around at people and decided that this man with the grey hair was peculiarly attractive and he was having a conversation so I didn't think he'd notice me watching him but he did. I looked away when he noticed but had to turn back eventually and this went on for a while. I think he wasn't sure if I was watching him now or if he was watching me. Then the girls came out and we started walking over to the van one of our teachers had brought us there in and the man must have ran around behind me because he popped up ahead of me and turned around as he was walking and just stared straight at me to see if I would stare back and I did. I never saw him again. That was the way the rake looked at me on the front porch around 3 in the morning and I tried to stare back without twitching but I did twitch a few times. I still stared back for the most part and I just had to leave after that without saying goodbye.