If this was a perfect world, I'd be sitting in a dingy little apartment in Philadelphia or Indianapolis or some other city that didn't give a damn about me, and I'd be hunched in a corner next to the bare radiator pouring my soul into a blues line that would move mountains. A strong relationship with someone would have just ended forcefully, the air still tingling from words that couldn't be taken back.

But this isn't a perfect world. I've never touched a guitar in my life, and the place I am now isn't as redeemingly banal as those great moribund cities, home only to sitcoms and stray cats.

This isn't a perfect world, it's sheer hell.

On Lowry mall the jugglers toss bouquets and brickbats up and down. There's a holy roller jerking his God off, spasming devotion painfully, premature as always. Beautiful people float from one end of the mall to the other, maybe making a quick duck in McD's for a hamburger and fries. The others, the not so beautiful people, don't float, they walk. Stroll. Perambulate.

If this was a perfect world, I'd be a street poet. I'd climb up on that awful iron sculpture and bare my soul to the world, drawing inspiration from the streets and the common people. Some would call me crazy, maybe some would join me, and maybe one would love me.

But there's damned few common people around, and joiners and lovers are out of season. There really are no beautiful or not-so people, they're just people, each their own definition. Each an individual. For that matter, I'm not a poet.

Like I said, it's sheer hell.

I'd like to say that So-and-so just dumped me, or that my best friend mugged my cat or terrorists killed Captain Kangaroo, but none of that happened. It's easy to begin a story with a simple line like that, where all your miseries and heartache can be neatly summed up in one little line, so the browsers and tabloid perusers can understand right away exactly what's wrong with you, and file you away in their little pigeonhole for the TV social worker to handle.

I can't say any of those things. Nothing happened; no great catharsis, no moment of fatal frission where the stork dropped a bundle of emotion onto my head at the end of a difficult labor. How do I grab you? What can I put into one line of writing that will explain it all, make instant every little pain and misery and joy and ecstasy of my life so that you will understand with complete empathy? What combination of words can get across that idea, so that you can relate to it in a flash?

Here it is:

I was born, and lived and at some point later died.

Understand now?

But that's cheating.

I'm walking around downtown, now. It's cold, bitterly cold, the kind of cold you can only find in guilty fiction. But I can feel it just the same, through my jacket and my socks. So can you. Eat up. That's good.

There are some bums sitting on a bench at the corner; if you've walked around there you've seen them. I pass them, looking away, but the light is red and cars prevent my crossing. One of the men stands up, like I knew he would when I was first walking up. His action has a sense of inevitability that I've experienced once before; I was twelve, riding my bike, and seconds before it happened I knew that the three guys walking up ahead were going to beat me up and take the bike away. I was right--chalk up another mugged liberal.

The man is still there, halfway finished standing up. He's frozen in time, waiting for my wandering attention to return to him. Now it has, and he approaches.

"Hey, if you could spare a quarter it'd help a man out."

He doesn't say, but I assume the man is himself. I already know that I'm going to give him something. I have no money, in terms of legal tender, but I do have a token from the arcade.

"I'm broke, but I got a game token."

"I could use it just the same."

I fish around in my pocket and hand him a gold token, one side stamped "Pepsi."

At this point I stop typing, and consider the alternatives. Up to now, this piece of writing has remained faithful to reality. Am I ready to make the leap into fiction? Should I try and construct a story that would get across my feelings better than this?

The man takes the coin and mumbles something.

About a year ago, back home, our house was robbed. The burglars stole a television and a VCR, and some incidental cash. About two weeks later, they struck again. In the meantime we had replaced the items with newer models. They were taken, along with my dad's shotgun and .38 revolver which had lain dormant in a closet for years.

Or so my parents thought. In fact, I committed the second robbery. I jimmied the door for appearances' sake and simply moved the items into the attic. A few days later I sold everything at pawn shops across town. The money I spent on beer and clothes. There was one thing I didn't sell, however, and that was the revolver. I kept it, and brought it to college with me, a totem of my experience. My roommate once told me that he had a premonition about us, where I murdered him in our dorm room. He asked if I were a mass murderer and I said no. "No" is all the man has time to mumble as he looks up from the game token and I pull the revolver from my jacket and squeeze the trigger in his face.

The safety is still on, and the trigger won't click. I stand there, and the police car in the road disgorges its uniformed riders and they come running over, and like I said before it's not a perfect world, it's sheer hell.