I have a scar on my hand, it's about two and a half inches  along the pinky side, as if I karate chopped a piece of glass. I got it karate chopping a piece of glass. I wasn’t kunging foo, I was committing crime; naked, I was committing crimes. I’m regularly reminded of the crime because of the scar, not just because I see it but because it sometimes hurts; decades later, it still hurts. The feeling is mostly numbness—if numbness can be considered a feeling—until I accidentally hit the scar on a table's edge and a jolt of pain lights up my arm to its shoulder. Karma I guess, for the crime.

That disrobed robbery is a sinful chapter in a shameful book. I've written three books—fiction and non—and I’m writing another, then another; I made this website to help sell those books. I have several other businesses, retail rackets crawling the internet like money-grubbing grub worms (click on the SHIrT link in the menu to buy my vintage horror and music tees.) I use the money to support an art habit (making it and buying it), and to pay a San Francisco apartment rent that is beyond my midwestern comprehension, and the renovation of Pennsylvania's historic Hendel House mansion.

One of my businesses, TheFrock.com, is well known. It’s been written about in dozens of fashion magazines, VOGUE visited my apartment in 2005, they wrote an article about me and my store. I bought 8 copies of the magazine to give to my friends, I still have all eight copies. As math can prove, I have more businesses than friends. I suspect friendlessness (and incontinence) will pang the end of my life. When I’m old and dying, that regret (and a Laotian prostitute) will sit heavily on my chest. Karma I guess, for the prostitute.

Hookers aren’t cheap, buy my books.

 

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