WEBVTT

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"Journalist."

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This is a true story about a
journalist, and I don't care.

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A long time ago, I was assisting
a famous humanitarian-type

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professor in a course about
literary and documentary

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ethics, and this guy
Adam was enrolled.

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He wasn't in my
discussion group.

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There were like eight
groups and like 200 people

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there to listen to the
lectures, but somehow Adam

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decided he liked
me, of all people,

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and started approaching
me outside the beautifully

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repurposed soda factory
where the class met.

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He was handsome, I knew,
but for some reason

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it didn't matter to me
even though he was my age

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and had completed a degree at
a fancy university I had once

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wanted to go to.

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I wanted to go to
that university

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the same way you
imagine you want

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to be a famous actress,
when what you mean

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is that you want
to feel important.

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So we chatted a few times
I found pretty boring,

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and then he asked
if I would like to--

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I don't remember-- something.

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And I told him no, but
I was walking home.

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And if he wanted, he
could walk with me

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and hang out in the yard
while I was gardening.

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It's worth mentioning
here that I

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was one of the only
white people living

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in a neighborhood with a lot
of Black and Mexican people,

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and I was one of the only
people in the neighborhood who

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had anything to do
with the university.

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I had been told by
people in my neighborhood

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that I'm very, very white.

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Adam, too, was
white, white, white.

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So Adam took me up on my idea,
walked along home with me,

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and he was cool with my dog.

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And it turned out he knew a lot
more than I did about plants.

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He'd watch me and say this or
that while I was poking around,

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and a pattern emerged.

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After class, he'd come up to me.

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I'd say, well, I'm
doing this or that,

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usually moving things
around in my garden

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or taking the dog to the woods.

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Come along if you want,
and he started teaching me

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about plants we passed in
the woods, wild white ginger,

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rattlesnake orchids.

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He brought me clippings
from his place

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which he was having to
sell because of the divorce

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he was going through,
and he was saddest of all

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to lose all his plants.

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One afternoon, he kissed me in
the hallway near the bathroom.

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I was really angry
about that, but then I

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started wondering
what my problem was.

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He showed me a picture of his
parents in a Life magazine

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spread from the '60s.

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He said they were friends
with the Kennedys.

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He was always asking
me if I thought

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he could be a good
writer, and I said

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I thought he could
be a good journalist.

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He kept asking me, and I
kept saying the same thing

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in different ways.

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So after he kissed me and I
was so mad about it, part of me

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started wanting him
to kiss me again,

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maybe because of the
handsome part, maybe because

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of the university part, maybe
because of the Kennedys,

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or maybe the
knowledge of plants.

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And at that point,
the whole dynamic

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shifted because he was so
fucked up about his divorce,

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and I was just so
fucked up in general.

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Let's see where this is going.

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Shots rang out in the
neighborhood one day

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while I was gardening in my
yard with my dog watching,

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and my dog was killed.

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It was really crazy, caught
on video, a total media event,

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and after I made a call across
the country to this one person

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I used to be in love
with, I called Adam.

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He's the one who lifted
my dog onto my truck

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and drove us to
the woods, and he's

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the one who directed the
bush-hog in the night

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to dig a hole and shine
its headlamps while we

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moved the body.

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And he helped me cover
the plot with rocks.

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The rocks were there to
keep it from getting dug up.

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Then I didn't hear
from him, and then he

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told me in our last
telephone conversation

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that he just couldn't
take my level of pain,

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a phrase that stood out to me.

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But now he's a journalist.

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He has a nice place in the city,
and he flies all over the world

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and does stories about things
like little brown girls being

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sold into prostitution.

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He's one of those journalists
who presents every story

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without any ambiguity
at all and who

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finds stories to
tell in which there

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is no way to locate more than
one way to feel about anything.

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