I was very cautious of becoming recognizable in public. A few people knew who I was. Not many. Not well. Not on purpose. I cruised around the world on a tall sailing ship. The HMS Fantome. The Prince of Wales. Royalty will get you everything. Adolfo came around and snarled. Billy came over daily with the drugs. I knew that I was facing having to tell the TV people, sadly, but no. Half an hour a day, every day, even with all the help I would get from the station, damn, motherfucking Tim, you said no and you and Billy ruined it for everyone because obviously we were not going to physically be able to do all that TV work totally stoned into Outer Mongolia. Opportunity comes and goes. I thought television would be a riot. Music. Tap dancing. Writing novels no one reads. I was in love with Brian Neel but I never told him that. We did one photoshoot together. Very Leather. Very SM. I am so shy, it can be crippling. I wrote for Esquire under my desk.  I was writing for a local paper and carrying on and on about how modern Key West is Corporate Ordinary. I liked the funky barefoot part of it. Lost shaker of salt. Don’t look back. I kinda liked poetry night. The local gay business community hated my guts with a passion. Because I found much of Key West to be artifice itself. I reviewed plays and movies. The last straw for me was Little Mary Sunshine. I still don’t get why anyone would stage this play. The Belle of the ball thing goes so far. I was swimming naked when my edfitor stopped by. He had a camera. They often do. A few weeks ago my correspendence with the New York Times. Was published. By the New York Times. Do not ask me where. I don’t care. I don’t give a fuck. Apparently a magazine in San Francisco did the same thing. I never thought those letters would be published. Why. The old Key West only had electricity for parts of the day. I always thought that post cards and cocaine were about what wrapped it up. The real action was on the water. I had a license to carry a gun. Coke and bad luck will follow you around and it will find you at the Boca Chica. Boca Chica is where the shrimp boats dock, huh. Fisherboys let loose and let so loose you had to pull them unconscious in a bus station toilet stall. Dead as fuck. Smells like shrimp. Lime. The Boca Chica was often visited by tasteful owners of tasteful brothels in Bolivia. Sex workers moved around and sold. The Boca Chica was blood, rum, Bogart is dead, and Captain Tony had left the stage. The people who knew what the Boca Chica was about I knew two smugglers (the statute of limitations has kicked in) who retired and bought Florida. The whole stinking nine yards. I bought a sailboat. We lived on Sea Trout. I would sit at sunsets at Dick Dock and drink Retsina. Blunts. Attonement. For my sins. Oh, and mushrooms. The shrooms alone. I started writing a novel called Tales of the Island (you can’t steal a title). I went for a community addicted to cocaine (it doesn’t work with me at all). I was accused of saying fuck. I cannot believed I was accused of saying fuck but why can’t they get that it is my job to make them say the word fuck out of thin fucking Florida air. Content is no longer anything. Espcially if the content is satire. People, satire is protected speech. The Navy. Writers. Bartenders. The cutie little Debby Cakes next door was gifted a pink jeep. It’s so true. The very next day, the DEA arrived, machine guns drawn, surrounded the house, busted in, and arrested everyone. Baby Cakes went to a foster home. Mom and dad got time. Florida. Property. Tequila. Coke. Guns. Caribbean crime. Naked high up the rigging of the HMS Tall Sailing Ship Fantome. My lover, my lover, my net, my rocket ship, the engine room was wicked sweat. If you really, really, really want to shake a place upside down, write a novel. I told everyone who I found to be despicable that they were despicable. In print. In a novel that was serialized by the paper that was publishing me a Lot a Lot. Any novel can go on and on. I needed the money. I am always totally broke dryer that a tit in an arroyo and in the grit of wind. If you were looking for the conventional, sorry, I wrote Genoicide and threw it away and picked it up again in San Francisco at 729 Jones. #503. Only some people will get it and if you can’t get it, if your pussy just wants to go home, then go home. You don’t need to know. Sometimes I think Key West is San Francisco. I’m home writing. I just don’t care where it is or where anything is. I know Homo sapiens neurologically feed on boxes, prisons, organized institutions, and all I really want is to live in Canada on a remote island you can only find by canoe. And do not think I will not do it. I had to hide in the house until the day arrived that a TV consortium company that owns cable networks asked me to do a half hour show – every day, my gog – I was on another show (same studio) where we dished Key West, drugs in Key West and Flipper. I posed for artists and for art classes all over the island. No one would walk with me down Duval. Having posed nude for artists in store windows Billy and Divine came over. Glen wanted us to help him carry (he carried the cocktails) the big couch out to the pool. We could all get together full frontal hard on You Are What You Write, Charleen. You are what you write.