WEBVTT

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[APPLAUSE]

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Clark will read first.

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We should all have
such students, huh?

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I'm going to read two stories.

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They're quite
brief, don't worry.

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[LAUGHTER]

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For the first one,
you have to imagine

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that you're living in a time
when there were actually

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cigarette smokers on airlines.

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That's the only thing
you have to bear in mind.

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"My son had graduated
from college in Oregon,

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and I was on the way back-- my
way back to my midwestern life.

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A poet had delivered
the graduation speech.

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I took pleasure in his words--

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a baby tiger, just born,
has an ox eating spirit.

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He did not mean, in the
way of successful alumni

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addressing their
sleek young graduates,

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that they should leap
upon the backs of oxen,

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though many seem to
take it that way.

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He meant for us to approach
the world respectful of variety

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and of necessity, he meant
to contrast appearance

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and appetite.

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My boy and I ate under
a tent and listened

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to the projects of the
new graduates around us,

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and to their proud parents.

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We watched the intact parental
units dance to an orchestra,

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then the older successful
men and much younger wives

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dance convincingly to the
wives' music, and we left early.

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My boy had been happy
there, had drifted

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into a countercultural
community.

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He had no project in
mind except escape

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and, though pleasant to
everyone, hated his classmates.

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A friend once said of
him, ah, Saggitarian.

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It was their nature to
be adult in childhood,

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and childish in maturity.

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He seemed to be on course,
and I wished him well.

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It was the traditional leave
taking of a father to a son--

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I have raised you, inculcated
you, educated you, warned you,

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encouraged you, sent
you every conflicting

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signal in the universe.

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You were in my arms
for a couple of years,

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in my hands for five or six,
in my house for a dozen more.

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You're bigger than me,
stronger, you can slay an ox.

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At the airport I had noticed
the woman in the waiting room.

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I sit in the smoking section
though I don't smoke.

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In general, I prefer
people who smoke,

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ox-eaters, fragile
predators like cats.

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Maureen O'Hara on a bad
day, I thought, green eyes--

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dating myself.

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like the old guys dancing
with much younger women,

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like men my age with
toddlers by the punchbowl.

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A honey-roasted blonde,
lumberjack shirt and faded

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jeans, a backpack.

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Maureen O'Hara on a bad
day, or a distracted day

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with the beacon of her
beauty slightly broken,

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is better than Maureen
O'Hara on a good day, when

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her helpless beauty could
only bear down on you.

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There would be no story if
fate had not put us together

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in 10A and 10B.

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Her name was Patty,
her husband in Richmond

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went by the name of Terry.

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And she was returning to
Richmond, a city she hated,

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from a 10 day camping trip with
six male friends from Boston

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College.

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One of them had said, 'this
is what movies are made of.'

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My Big Chill, she said,
Terry couldn't come.

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Too busy making the President's
Golden Circle, writing up

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a million dollars in policies
for the fifth straight year.

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She'd been married 10
years, with him for 13.

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Her story is racing ahead,
I want to slow it down.

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There are women who somehow
make you feel and act and talk

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better than you are, others,
much worse, even when they

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are the source of
all your inspiration.

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Patty, whom I will never see
again, was among the first.

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Two minutes with her, and I
intuited nearly everything

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about her.

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Maybe not the four children,
but the wistfulness about some

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briefly opened door, some
recent transcendence.

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You were an actor, I
said, quite confidently

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and it wasn't my intuition,
it was her actor's radiance.

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Only some soaps, she said.

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I did soaps for pay for more
acting and singing and dancing

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lessons.

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An agency sent me to
Atlanta for some Coke ads.

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Three weeks for one of those
Teach the World to Sing jobbies

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and I met Terry-- he
was in the theater then.

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He saw me in an ad and
he called the agency.

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I was thrilled.

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I acted in one of his plays.

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His father had an insurance
agency in Richmond,

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and two years later the
father died, and Terry...

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Nothing happened in
Oregon, she said.

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I don't want you to get
the wrong impression.

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But something did, I said.

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I was raped in Richmond.

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Can you imagine, living alone
in Boston and New York all

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those years, hanging out
with models and actors,

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living in Hell's Kitchen,
and I get raped in a parking

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garage in Richmond?

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I knew the name of every guy
hanging out on the stoops

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on 44th between
10th and Broadway.

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I was a soft touch, I gave
them money, I talked with them,

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I got them tickets
and some of my shows.

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They would have died for me.

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And I know she's
telling the truth,

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she is the sort that some men
would kill for, some die for,

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but Terry would kill
her if something

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had happened in Oregon.

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Defending your life,
I said, overcoming

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fear, doubt, insecurity is
what separates men from angels.

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I'd seen Wings of Desire
a few weeks earlier,

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and I saw through her with
such clarity I almost said,

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Patty it's no accident
we're sitting together.

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I am the man put here
to listen to you.

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But I'm not a man.

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I was killed in a BMW
crash two weeks ago,

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and you're my first case
since I was sent down.

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Somewhere over Utah I said, 'A
lot of men will be returning

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to their wives as dissatisfied
with their marriages as you

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are.'

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One of them had said, 'Life
has big plans for you.

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Don't close it off.'

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You love this man,
don't you, Patty.

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I want to go back to New
York, but one of these men--

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he lives in the woods,
sort of a conservationist--

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he hates the city.

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He's never married, he's
a kind of a soulmate.

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Knows the trails, knows
what to eat, what to avoid.

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I feel safe with him,
even in the woods.

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I don't feel safe in
Richmond with all my cars

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and memberships.

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He says I'm closing my life.

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I lay in his arms at night--

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nothing happened-- but
I slept in ways I've

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never slept before,
like a baby, with dreams

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I didn't want to leave.

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One day, I was taking a bath
in the river near the campsite

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and I didn't know the
men were all watching me.

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They didn't tell me till we
were sitting around the campfire

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and they started
exchanging opinions

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on how I could improve
my looks, starting

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with my hair, or
something, and then

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getting more and more
intimate, you know,

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and I'm starting to
get redder and redder.

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I mean, four kids,
and 36, I'm not

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going to turn on many
guys, especially not buck

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naked in a snow fed stream

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A true angel, perhaps,
would have kissed her then,

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or would have said
like Willie Nelson,

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if you don't want
my peaches, baby,

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then why you shake my tree?

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Or he might have given up
immortality on the spot,

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traded omniscience
and invisibility

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for mutable ecstatic
flesh, and all its agony.

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A Penthouse fell out of
one of the men's backpacks,

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why do men buy it, is
seeing pictures really

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more pleasurable
than a woman's body?

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Ever watched Dockers ads, I ask.

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Beer ads?

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It was the only
question I couldn't ask,

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I felt he was measuring those
girls against me in the river

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and I didn't measure
up, I'm all saggy,

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I've got a little
roll and Christ

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if my legs were bananas they'd
be selling at half price.

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Well, you're a man,
you've probably

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noticed it's downhill pretty
fast from my eyes, but my eyes,

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I mean they need some
shadow and all but I've

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still got a bit of it, don't I?

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Men were always in my power.

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Professors were in my power.

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God, this is awful, even
priests, all the laps

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I sat in-- we only hear about
priests and little boys,

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but believe me, the Church
isn't all that sick.

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[LAUGHTER]

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Patty, I said,
you are beautiful,

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your eyes are the color
of thin caramel glaze

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over a crisp green
apple and thoughts

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of your body rising
from the waters

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leave me aghast with pleasure.

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You still have it, you
are exactly halfway

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between my son and
me, but life doesn't

00:08:15.280 --> 00:08:17.710 align:middle line:84%
have any more big
plans for you, maybe

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only one or two
medium sized ones.

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Leap, St Patty.

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I present myself to you like
a tethered bull in a pasture.

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Rip my stupid throat out."

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[APPLAUSE]

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