I went to town to get some more beer. I hadn’t been answering my phone, even though it had rung several times. I knew it might be the lawyer, and I knew it might be Monroe, wanting me to go back to work. I had enough money to tide me over for a little while, and I didn’t want to go back to painting houses until I had to. I knew the alimony payment would have to be reckoned with before long, and that was making me nervous, and I needed something to drink while I worked. It seemed like the harder I tried, the worse things became. I wondered how other people dealt with it. I tried to bury myself in my work, forget my feelings and my shortcomings and my fears and the sick weak hangovers that accompanied a night of writing and drinking. In winter it would be too cold to paint houses and what would I do then for money? I could work for the rest of the summer and try to save a little, but there wouldn’t be any way I could save enough to pay the alimony. If I couldn’t pay it, she’d have me put in jail. But maybe I’d be able to write in jail. I hoped I would.

I went into a grocery store to get the beer. Usually I went to wherever it was the cheapest. I got beer, barbecued pigskins, Slim Jims to munch on while writing. Sometimes when the muse wouldn’t hit I had to have something to do and sometimes chewing worked. I had to have a cart to hold everything. When I got to the checkout I had to wait in line. I saw people looking at the things in my basket. I ignored them and looked instead at the covers of Cosmopolitan and The National Enquirer. Religious freaks had made them hide the Playboys and Penthouses under the counters several years before. The whole world seemed to be trying to be decent, and I seemed an indecent thing in it. I wanted titties, lots of them. I wanted to hear ZZ Top play “Legs.” I wanted to live in a house on a hill with a swimming pool and a cool back porch where my friends could listen to music after I mixed them drinks. I looked at what I wanted and then I looked at what I had. There was a great gulf between the two of them. My clothes were stained with paint, and my fingernails were dirty. I wanted my children somehow without their mother. The woman rang up my purchases and they came to $29.42, including tax.

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