I lied about having read something, having seen something, and having looked something up in the dictionary. I was supposed to tell my sister about the word "diener" - so that she could impress a surgeon - but I didn't. I was supposed to tell her about a word that starts with "s," but I didn't tell her about that one either. The word had to do with seeing white beneath someone's eyes - it sounded like "seppuku." I was supposed to mail a disk to a publisher, but I didn't. I wasn't supposed to speak about Vaunted getting a grant, and I did. I spoke about it for a long time to the aggressive man who lives across from me. My father figure - when I was 16 - was sort of a cliched character now that I think about it. He, like a cliche, died of a heroin overdose beneath a banyan tree in Kapiolani park. I wish I knew some great new slang term for heroin, but I don't. I could call it "Royce," I suppose. He pushed himself into some Royce. He once told my boyhood friend and me about how he died multiple times, and how - like a cliche - each time he hovered above his body and saw himself dead. But I read an article in the New York Times about how that sort of thing has been scientifically proven. He didn't have any kind of mystical experience - the whole thing was some kind of yet-to-be-explained article. The man who collects dead bodies in Detroit is a cliche. We like it because we are so drawn to that sort of reporting. Hey, he's never recovered a dead Asian person. Half the time, those he recovers are naked or on the toilet. But has he seen dogs pulling a person apart? I went to the Post Office today and saw a tree falling down on my way. I got a coffee in the bread shop this morning, and a man who is always there accosted me yet again. He always wants to know if I've ever read anything about General Custer. A month ago, I made the mistake of telling him I'm a close personal friend of Evan S. Connell, the author of Son of the Morning Star. Jesus is sometimes the son of the morning star, but Lucifer is sometimes called that, too. (I learned all that from reading the notes to James Joyce's Ulysses. Whenever I see Ulysses or Don Quixote or Lolita on anyone's bookshelf, first I think, "Oh, college. The usual exhausting student books." Then I think about cliches.) I can never remember who is Lucifer, who's the Devil, Mephistopheles, or Beezelbub. Evan is just about my grandfather. He took baths with my grandmother in France. My grandmother does not like it whenever I grow any kind of facial hair. She says has never cared for any kind of facial hair. The only time she ever liked it was when it was on Evan. He has some sort of mustache. Now he lives in Santa Fe and bird wathes and publishes something sloppy but named every other decade. My grandmother also took baths with Anthony Quinn and Sydney Chaplin. Quinn's calling card was a little red round of Smiling Cow cheese. My grandmother has a trail of black hair that grows from her groin to her navel. She shaved that thing for some men but not for my dead grandfather because he liked it. He is dead. Before he died, he had to have a leg removed. They also made him eat shark cartilage. The man in the bread shop is something of a cliche because he has lots of scars on his wrists. I asked him about them, and he said he has tried to kill himself numerous times. I asked him if he ever tried to lie in a warm bath after he did it. He said he did. Killing yourself like that is a cliche. Sometimes people open veins on the throats at the insides of their elbows or on the insides of their thighs. Any kind of killing - no matter how creative - is a cliche. Someone told me the story of the woman astronaut who drove 900 miles while wearing an adult diaper so she could pepper spray the rival of her imaginary lover's affections was trite or cliched. Vaunted Sharkey, another of my boyhood friends, told me he accidentally had sex with his sister when he was 8 and she was 10. That is a cliche. Writing about it now somehow seems so tired and familiar. I have often used the word "exhausted" or "exhausting." This is all so exhausting. After I mailed my application to the summer writing retreat (I'm sure I'll get in) and my friend's submission to a publisher, I spat in the bin. I spat in the street. I spat on a restaurant's window. I spat in my coffee. Yesterday I read next to a German man who re-enacts Viking stuff all over Europe and America. He has been to all the contiguous U.S. states. He was a roadie for a metal band in Oakland - I forget the name of the band - they still tour and their name starts with a "D." He was an especially cliched figure, especially when he started talking to some bearded young men about the U.S.'s diplomatic methods. The bearded young men had been in a band and had worked as roadies, too. The bearded young men had ridden boxcars and hitchhiked across the U.S. in the early 2000's. Oh, and the German Viking was doing leather work as he spoke about diplomacy. He was punching holes for silver pieces he wanted to sew onto a leather sack he probably made in West Virginia. Vaunted is a cliche, too. And the boy who sold baby scorpions to all us other boys in fourth grade.