I finished high school; I spent a couple of years at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga pursuing some of nothing and some of everything. I spent long enough in college that I had no excuse to leave without a degree, but that’s what happened. After a while, I just got tired of going.

For the most part, the university gave me an excuse to fall in with a snobby crowd of disaffected poets who thought I was a psychic diva because of the poetry I wrote—mostly about the three sisters and about my cousin Malachi, who rotted away in a state institution as far as I knew and cared. Oh yes, people still knew of the case. People still talked about me at least as much as they discussed the widow of the man who killed Medgar Evers. She lives near here on one of the mountains and everyone knows it. South of the Ohio River there is no such thing as old news or ancient history. Drive around downtown and look for pickup trucks with rebel flag stickers, if you don’t believe me.

Eventually I quit taking even the loosely enforced poetry workshops and sank further still down the academic totem pole by joining a small clique of slam poets. They worked out of a scuzzy bar on the south side of town, assembling their vicious rounds of bad tournament poetry to amuse or bore the meager audiences. Occasionally a local band would play before the spoken word performers took the stage, and then there would be more of a crowd for the poets to scream at.

Once upon a time, I lived for those nights when the joint would be packed and the beers would flow freely. I never did drink beer, not even the good stuff, but I could be conned into a glass or two of wine if the mood was right. It loosened me up for the show; it made me more gloriously slick and tragic.

Don’t you know it, everyone loves a lost little girl in a black corset top and leather pants. Everyone wants to save her or fuck her, not understanding that neither is necessary. But so long as she is at least a small measure beautiful, and so long as she is young, they will come to hear her. So long as she can sell the illusion that she is innocence and pain in search of defilement and rescue, she’ll have them at her feet—their eyes and teeth parted in mock blessing, their idle lust a lascivious parody of worship.

Never mind her poetry. It doesn’t have to be good.

My poetry was good, or at least it was predictably shocking, peppered with obscenities and sexual slang. Oh, all right. It might not have been that good, really, but it served my purposes. I got free booze all night anywhere I chose; and by the time I was old enough to use my real driver’s license instead of the phony one, I was plenty beautiful. I had grown into a mini-Lulu, smaller and thinner, with breasts not quite so ponderous but full enough anyway, and the same long-lashed eyes and fat lips on a fair face. In a bigger city I might not have been so special, but the valley is a small pond and the fish are easily impressed.