I learned the language of angels in a religious experience on Bourbon Street during Mardi Gras 1987. One night I had decided to walk among the heathen so that my shadow might fall upon one of them. As it happens, I came across two other Believers who offered me spiritual gifts, and I took them. Then the necklaces that had my throat bound—chains of purple and green and gold—were loosed: I broke them with my hands and crushed them underfoot. All that was left was one gaudy crucifix. As I walked back to my hotel on Canal, my eyes were caught by a band of Hare Krishnas dancing down the street. They were dancing themselves into such a frenzy that none of them noticed the child playing tambourine was vomiting on the sidewalk. She couldn’t have been more than nine. And she convulsed in the same ecstatic manner as the others danced. When she was finished, she wiped her mouth and continued playing her tambourine. The demon had left her. And I pitied her and unknowingly stepped in her vomit.

I have always found it difficult to write anything that wasn’t 100% true and accurate. This applies even to this weird little thing that I wrote in 1988 as part of a novella, my first, while I was living in California. I mean, this is really just a transcript of something that took place the previous year in New Orleans. But I keep thinking about it. And I keep repurposing it, first as part of the novella, then much later as part of an installation piece in graduate school. And here it is again.