It used to be I couldn’t leave the house without someone asking me if I’d been born again. People thought I needed saving, but I was doing just fine. Later I became a cynic, a scowler, a headphones and sunglasses isolationist. I crossed streets because of pamphleteers is what I’m saying. 

Trace this one, Charles Darwin. I got some degrees. I earned little chunks of respect here and there. I stole a few of them, too. But they stopped asking about me and my soul. I don’t have to duck them anymore. It hurts a little. Maybe that’s the great gulf they’ve been telling me about, the one I’ve been living with all my life. Probably not.

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So I’ve got this thing I’m trying where I’m cutting back the snark in my interpersonal relations. I’m also trying to go out of my way to say the kinds of things I wish people would say to me along with how I honestly feel about people in my life. Mostly I’ve come off sounding weird, I think. But I’m sleeping better at night. I’m feeling wistful instead of angry. I’m writing better, too. It's comforting, that kind of transparency.  I just want to scoop up the people around me and set them apart from the meanness and the hate that they've grown up with and put inside themselves. We could have a party out in the sun, and everybody gets a hug.  Ah shit, I think to myself, I’ve gone soft.

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You guys can all go to hell.  Imaginary Audience disbanded.