ammit, Rettberg, you’re telling it all wrong. Those were crazy days and your memory isn’t what it used to be. Of course you don’t know that because you don’t remember when you had a memory. Would you listen to me for a second? I’m eighty-one but I ain’t dead and my mind’s as clear as a fucking bell, you toothless bastard. My mind is like a mountain pond on a windless day. And I don’t need no fucking Viagra. There’s plenty of love here at the retirement community. Women and men, we’re all well-rested, medicated, mature, and very frisky. But I digress, don’t have a fucking heart attack, okay pal? Jiminy. Anyhow, what I want people to remember is the eighties. That’s right, the nineteen eighties. When you had your B. Dalton and your Waldenbooks, and that was it. Reagan, you wanna talk about a senile bastard, that motherfucker, don’t get me started. I tell you, I’m eighty, but I lived seventy of those years back in 1999. The nineties. Fucking nineties. We lost Bukowski, Zappa, Leary, Rubin, Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Hunter S. Thompson, that loony bastard, died in that motorcycle crash. So there we were with no literature anymore. And what we did was to just put our asses out there and say: “Look at the state we’re in, is this the best we can do, America? Can we get some more writers, please?” And they loved us. Or so we thought. Rettberg? Rettberg? Wake up, you insulin-shooting skeleton, these long-distance calls cost more than Depends. Wake up! Scott. . . . ?

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