At this there are a few giggles. But you don’t want the past to be taken lightly: it cost too much. It deserves respect. So now it’s time for the serious artillery.

Let me tell you about meat loaf, you say, lowering your voice, as the already pale faces around you turn ashen. Yes—meat loaf! Meat loaf, and enemas, and bulb-headed syringes used for what they called “feminine hygiene”—the three are not unconnected, you say, in a thrilling whisper.

By now the young are staring at you with fascinated horror, as if you’re about to pull off one of your legs, revealing a green and mossy amputated stump. War stories, that’s what they want—war stories, and disgusting menus. They want suffering, they want scars. Shall you tell them about pot roast?

But that might be going too far. Anyway, you’ve excited yourself enough for one evening.

IT’S NOT EASY BEING HALF-DIVINE

Helen lived down the street from me when we were growing up. We used to sell Kool-Aid off her front porch, five cents a glass, and she always had to be the one to carry the glass down the steps, eyelids lowered and with that pink bow in her hair, and mincing along like she was walking on eggs. I think she palmed a few nickels, being hardly the most honest type. I know she’s famous and all now, but quite frankly she was a pain in the butt then and still is. She used to tell the worst lies—said her dad was somebody really high up, not the Pope but close, and of course we teased her about that. Not that this so-called big shot ever showed his face.