I attended the University of Connecticut for two years. There I learned to think for myself. Then, some time after, I forgot. I am not sure how this transformation occurred. In fact I wonder if perhaps I found this typewriter so that I can work it out. So that once and for all I can trace the point of decay (which I can’t believe was hereditary. My parents are a little boring, but that’s not mental illness. Not yet anyway. Though I’m sure one day the psychiatric community will come up with a drug to combat repetitive storytelling and inane laughter). Here’s how I joined the army: I had been to a club and gotten tossed around the mosh pit so much I thought I maybe had broken a rib. Unlike most girls I liked mosh pits. I was into banging into people and I didn’t mind getting whacked by flailing limbs. It was like a switch got flipped in my head and I just went nuts dancing. I was what I guess you would call a punk although it was really more a lifestyle than my haircut or what we think of as punks now. To me being a punk was not caring. I was very good at not caring. There was a book we had when we were kids in which there is a boy named Pierre who says nothing but “I don’t care.” Eventually he gets eaten by a lion and burped up and then finally he cares. But I wasn’t there yet. So I just did stuff, lived with people, slept with people, hitchhiked with people. It was actually a very relaxing way to live if you compare it to my current situation. I was walking down Thirty-fourth Street in Manhattan—my couch for the night was a couple blocks away—and I saw a pair of army boots in the window of the Army Recruitment Office. I had really been wanting a pair, the hard black leather kind, but I couldn’t afford them. So I stopped to admire the ones in the window. I was still just a tiny bit drunk. I made money at a record store in those days, but not enough to buy boots, so I had to wear sneakers with my fishnet tights and that made me feel like a boob. The longer I stood there in front of the Army Recruitment Office, the more special those boots became. There was something about those boots. I mean they were special. Looking back on it, I think that what made them so special was you were allowed to kill in them. The army was in fact inviting you to kill in them should the need arise. But I didn’t see that at the time. I wasn’t really thinking. I wanted to sit down in front of someone who would tell me what to do. I wanted someone to take care of me a little, give me some advice. Oh fuck it. You want to know? I’ll tell you. I wanted free boots. So I enlisted in the army.