The hardships in our lives, the traumas, increased out fulfillment by setting up contrasts that illuminated more clearly our everyday joys; or perhaps I viewed them instead as test that make us stronger by teaching us to endure; or did I believe, rather, that they simply amplified what we already were, in the end making the strong stronger, the weak weaker, and the dangerous deadly?

Secrets make life more interesting. You can be in a crowded room with someone and touch them without touching, just with a look, because they know a part of you no one else knows. And whenever you’re when them, the two of you are alone, because the you they see no one else can see.

It is my passionately held belief that the right to possess property is at best a contingent one. When disparities become too great, a superior right that to life, outweighs the right to property. Ergo, the very poor have the right to steal from the very rich. Indeed, I would go so far as to say that the poor have a duty to do so, for history has shown that the inaction of the working classes perpetuates their subjugation.

You’re a bright lad; all you need is a few doors opened for you and your merits will take you far.

I pretend that I’m an anthropologist observing the rituals of some isolated tribe.

Your moral structures are but feeble attempts to come to terms with the reality of killing, and excuse us for saying so, but you really do miss your mark. When a bird takes wing and you bring your gun to your shoulder and track it and pull and send bits of metal hurtling through the air, ripping through its little feathered body, thereby causing it sufficient physical trauma to begin a process of cessation of vital bodily functions, what do you have? A moral issue? Sport? An illustration of the essential brutality of the universe and the simultaneous meaning and meaninglessness of existence? Of course not! You have a tasty morsel waiting to be seasoned and served with carrots.

My throat constris, choking me. I want to speak, but I can’t work my voice. Fingers curl, hands become blunt, Lungs half-fill, then lock, rib cage and chest now armor. I focus on the underside of his jaw. His Adam’s apple. The soft flesh there.

What happens when prices go up, and schools shut down, and hospitals run out of medicine? Then what? I’ll work twice as hard and eat half as much.

He knows I could thrash him if I wanted, and if he was going to beat me up he’d have to come with some of his father’s men. He’s here alone because he’s decided to hit me with guilt instead of hired fists.

Guilt isn’t the problem. Once you’ve started, there’s no way to stop, so there’s nothing to be guilty about. Ask yourself this: if you’re me, what do you do now? Turn yourself in to the police, so some sadistic, bare-chested Neanderthal can beat you to a pulp while you await trial? Publish a full-page apology in the newspapers? Go to Tibet and become a monk, never to be heard from again? Right: you accept that you can’t change the system, shrug, creates lots of little shell companies, and open dollar accounts on sunny islands far, far away.

I’m really not that bad. A victim of jealousy from time to time. But definitely not a hypocrite.

Now, I’m a money launderer, right? Money launders are bad, right? Bad because they take dirty money and make it look clean. Bad like Pol and Idi and Adolf and Harry and the rest of the twentieth century’s great butchers of unarmed humanity. Oh, not quite that bad? Thanks, you’re too kind.

Well, what about the guys who give out the Nobel Prize? What are they? They’re money launderers! They take the fortunes made out of dynamite, out of blowing people into bits, and make the family name of Nobel noble. And the Rhodes scholarship folks? They do the same thing: dry-clean out memories of one of the great white colonialists, of the men who didn’t let niggers and chinks like us into their clubs or their parliaments, who gunned us down in gardens when we tried to protest.

And what about the bankers of the world? What about family fortunes held in accounts that make more in interest than the income of every villager in China put together? Where did all that money come from? How much of it was dirty once, how much came from killing union leaders and making slaves build rail roads and invading countries that wanted control over their natural resources? Would you like your money starched, sir? Box or hanger? Thanks for using GloboBank. 

Many boys, probably most boys, have a first love before they fall in love with a woman. It begins the moment two boys realize they’d die for one another, that each cares more for the other than he does for himself, and it lasts usually until a second love comes on the scene, because most hearts aren’t big enough to love more than one person like that.

When I look in the mirror, when I see what’s been done to me, rage lifts my eyelids and twists my reflection. I cherish the anger, center myself in it, draw power from it, strength for my healing. Because I will heal. And then it’ll be my turn at the crease. And I won’t be gentle with my bat.

I commit her to memory.

You are to put your faith in the promises of the accused, in his fantasy that he is being framed by interests powerful enough to corrupt the professionalism of the police, wealthy enough to bribe these legions of witnesses, and malicious enough to destroy  the life of a man who is innocent of this crime as the innocent can be.