deceptions, because he is absolutely convinced everyone lies, all the time and about everything. And although he’s wrong, he’s still my favorite; fucking House, he’s wrong. No one is better than he is at diagnosing an illness, nothing gets by him, but about the lying he’s way off. I know, because for many years I worked as a market investigator for a company that made cleaning products. That was before my life burst into a hundred pieces. I liked the job and I was good at it, one of the things I most regret was losing it. I had to go door to door asking things such as How many times a week do you clean the bathroom? or, Do you wash your lingerie in the machine or by hand? or, Do you think your house is cleaner or less clean than your parents’ house? Those types of things. Maybe it sounds dull to you, Mr. Rose, but it wasn’t. People are crazy at heart, as you know, and the topic of cleaning sets off their weirdness. They come up with some surprising responses, sometimes very funny. I was happy with what I was doing, till that dreadful thing took place. It happens sometimes: everything is going well and lightning strikes and tears you apart. I’m not even thirty yet and I’ve been to hell, there and back and there again.
But as I said, in that job I found out a few things. For instance, I discovered that when people respond to a survey, generally, they more or less tell the truth. Maybe they exaggerate or play down things, but only up to point. A middle-class woman may tell you that she takes two trips a year when she only takes one. But if she goes to her mother’s house in South Carolina, she’s not going to tell you that she goes to the Ritz in Paris. That’s why, Mr. Rose, if you get inspired to write my story, it has to be as you hear it from me: I’ll tell it and you believe me. I might lie to you a little bit, exaggerate, so feel free to rein things in or delve a little deeper when you see that I skip over something. But in general you have to believe what I say. That’s our deal.
There’s a novel called The Distant World of Christina , based on the painting Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth, the American painter whom you know better than I do. Well, I found out about the painter and that portrait here in prison when I read the novel not just once, but three times. One, two, three. Three whole times from beginning to end before I met you. The author’s name is Jordan Hess and there was a picture of him on the back cover, big head with a ridiculous comb-over, all long on the sides and bald up top, should have just buzzed it all off like Andre Agassi, the divine bald. Who cares if he admitted to snorting heroin; to me he is still a god in sneakers. While I was reading that novel I told you about, The Distant World of Christina , I liked to think of Jordan Hess as Andre Agassi, even fell in love with him, I think. With Jordan Hess, not Agassi, or I should say, Hess as Agassi. I have that issue, sometimes I can’t separate fantasy from reality, maybe that’s why all this crap has happened to me. Anyway, I read that novel three times because it is one of the few that they have in the prison library. Of course, it wasn’t just because of that, but more because of what that paralyzed girl’s story meant to me, Christina, who in Wyeth’s painting drags herself on the dry meadow struggling to get to the home that glints in the distance where she can’t reach it. The artist painted the deadened legs lovingly, her hair long and black fluttering in the wind, her arms skinny. I don’t know if you remember this but my hair is long and black as well, and although you knew me when I was chubby, I’m skinny as a lizard now, like Christina or even skinnier. Her face is not completely visible in the painting because she’s mostly turned away, seated on the dry meadow in her pale pink dress. I imagined my own face on that disabled body, she paralyzed and me imprisoned, and I imagined that everything that
But as I said, in that job I found out a few things. For instance, I discovered that when people respond to a survey, generally, they more or less tell the truth. Maybe they exaggerate or play down things, but only up to point. A middle-class woman may tell you that she takes two trips a year when she only takes one. But if she goes to her mother’s house in South Carolina, she’s not going to tell you that she goes to the Ritz in Paris. That’s why, Mr. Rose, if you get inspired to write my story, it has to be as you hear it from me: I’ll tell it and you believe me. I might lie to you a little bit, exaggerate, so feel free to rein things in or delve a little deeper when you see that I skip over something. But in general you have to believe what I say. That’s our deal.
There’s a novel called The Distant World of Christina , based on the painting Christina’s World by Andrew Wyeth, the American painter whom you know better than I do. Well, I found out about the painter and that portrait here in prison when I read the novel not just once, but three times. One, two, three. Three whole times from beginning to end before I met you. The author’s name is Jordan Hess and there was a picture of him on the back cover, big head with a ridiculous comb-over, all long on the sides and bald up top, should have just buzzed it all off like Andre Agassi, the divine bald. Who cares if he admitted to snorting heroin; to me he is still a god in sneakers. While I was reading that novel I told you about, The Distant World of Christina , I liked to think of Jordan Hess as Andre Agassi, even fell in love with him, I think. With Jordan Hess, not Agassi, or I should say, Hess as Agassi. I have that issue, sometimes I can’t separate fantasy from reality, maybe that’s why all this crap has happened to me. Anyway, I read that novel three times because it is one of the few that they have in the prison library. Of course, it wasn’t just because of that, but more because of what that paralyzed girl’s story meant to me, Christina, who in Wyeth’s painting drags herself on the dry meadow struggling to get to the home that glints in the distance where she can’t reach it. The artist painted the deadened legs lovingly, her hair long and black fluttering in the wind, her arms skinny. I don’t know if you remember this but my hair is long and black as well, and although you knew me when I was chubby, I’m skinny as a lizard now, like Christina or even skinnier. Her face is not completely visible in the painting because she’s mostly turned away, seated on the dry meadow in her pale pink dress. I imagined my own face on that disabled body, she paralyzed and me imprisoned, and I imagined that everything that
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