I, Arthur Milstein, have had a shitty life. I have found difficulty finding gainful employment. I most recently had a position carving names on gravestones, but I was dismissed owing to poor spelling. I usually spell well but not under intense pressure. My boss had the four gravestones I made mistakes on placed in the trunk of my car, and I am not strong enough to take them out. The gravestones load down my car terribly. My gas mileage is awful. My love life has been checkered, to put it charitably. For three years I was deeply in love with a woman who is a witch. She would put spells on me, making me lose control. Once she actually changed me into a duck. She made me a white Peking duck and there I was at the pond, the only white Peking duck in the entire flock. I was very embarrassed. In school, my teachers were the worst teachers who had ever lived.

I look at girls with two thoughts: do I want to go to bed with her, and can I? Unfortunately, I almost never can.

As a child I lived with my family in an apartment behind a bowling alley in Bowling Green, Ohio. In my mind, I still hear rumblings down alleys and the crash of splattering pins. It constitutes a rhythm of things. I like to mimic cats. Some people have said that I am odd, but I will tell you — everybody has a screw loose! Everybody!

My nickname is Popnose. My psyche has the peacefulness of a car horn. For several years I took a lot of LSD. I liked LSD very much. I used to go on this roller coaster called the Cyclone doing acid and breaking amyl nitrate caps — poppers — on the first crest. There was this succession of endless seconds. I felt weightless for hours.

I am told that I had the first reported human case of ich in Ohio. I lived through the 1960’s without ever making a candle. I think the nicest time is five after 12. However, I am also partial to 3:15 and 11:30. I am built like Mahatma Gandhi. I am a Cancer, the same as Admiral Farragut. I prefer paisley-patterned underwear. And I’m not ready to meet the Lord.

This fucken skunk hunter, a guy with a sports jacket decorated with mushrooms, says to me: “Get all you want on this earth.” We look at each other drooling. I call him a credit card thief. “How is the universe?” I ask him. “Stone man,” he says to me in reply, “you smell funny.”

I believe for everyone that strays someone will come to show the way. I believe that someone in the great somewhere hears every word. Every time I hear a baby cry, or touch a leaf, then I know why. I have one sweater. It has been in the Ganges. I am having a new spiritual awakening these days. I have been trying to live on 80 cents a month. Now you can live on $10 a month, perhaps $5 but 80 cents is a real trick. You should try it. Out of context and in the wrong emphasis has been the story of my life. I think in the end it all reduces to absurdity.

I would like to tell you a story. It is about our times. I am walking down the street with my friend, Isador Sanchez, and in front of us is a sign with the seven scariest words in the world. “Flying glass can disfigure or blind you,” it says. I get the shivers up and down. My friend Isador tells me, “If you’re in good physical shape — that’s the most important.”

We are doing these psilocybin mushrooms. I’m all buzzed out. I tell Isador, “I agree, health is something we always take for granted . . . unless.” Isador tells me, “If you’re not in good physical shape, nothing else counts.” Me and Isador start talking about the Fourth Century. Of all the centuries, this is the greatest, I think. I can just spend all my time getting into the Fourth Century. All of a sudden comes along this most beautiful girl. An aura of yellow and white, blue eyes staring into your mind, features that take you high, a crown of golden hair. She says, “What do you say. What do you say we buy a piece of land and start ourselves our own Communist country.”

I say, Jesus, that’s a great idea. I will be properly employed, my talents would be made the proper use of, this is great, I say. She says all you’d have to do is buy up a bunch of thousands of acres and settle it with as many people as you want and have everybody organize like Communists do, and maybe it would be part of the U.S.A. but it would be the same as Communism, except for the U.S.A. sheriffs and other government men coming around once in a while, but it would still be pretty close to Communism. I say to this girl, “Let’s get going.”

We leave Isador behind, and get on to this Trailways bus. We begin crossing Indiana, Illinois, down into Arkansas, which is really weird, and then finally to Oklahoma. It is three days on the bus and I am very unhappy. I am a chronic masturbator and thus I find sleeping on buses very uncomfortable. We get to this old ranch where the cowboys used to roam but the chick — her name is Mona, Mona Dutell — says they’ve all split to do movies in Japan. We set up shop in this old battered bunkhouse on the ranch. The first thing we do is get together letters to here and there announcing the declaration of the country of Freemania. Sure enough, two days after it was in The New York Times, the government man comes rolling down — he says he’s the greatest go cart racer in Germany — and he challenges me to a joust, sir. I say to him that he is an unprincipled opportunist, an unorganized person and exasperatingly crooked. He tells me he’s Captain Z.

I say, Capt. Z fuck off. “I wear glasses now,” I say, “but in the 4th century I was nearsighted but I didn’t have glasses to wear then because there were no glasses in the 4th century. And everything was fuzzy then.”

“So what!” exclaimed Capt. Z.

“Now everything is clear,” I say.

Mona says to Captain Z: “Do you see the light? Do you see the light? Focus on your navel, Captain Z,” says Mona.

So there’s Capt. Z thinking about his navel and all of a sudden we have our first convert. Captain Z becomes a Communist with us.

My friend Isador Sanchez also comes and Mona invites her roommate from when she was in Barnard College and we get national attention and a correspondent for Modern Maturity magazine pays us a visit, a very stunning woman. This lady is absolutely bird watcher material, her eyes pulsate with passion. We fall in love, and grab an astral plane out of America to San Juan, Puerto Rico where I am trying to make a living cooking food in a restaurant, but everything always burns.

So, it is time to wake up. It is time to rise. It is time to look in the mirror, to play canasta, to really spend time on the moon.

I tell you this: I have happy memories for every friend I’ve ever had.