The name is Stamps. Not mine, his. Steven Stamps to be exact is the name, but folks around here, which is Tucson, A-Z, prefer calling him as Bluto on account of what he keeps in his shoe, on account of

Before I pressed the up button on the elevator, I saw my reflection in the shiny metal doors and said to myself, maybe even mouthed some of the words, Take the elevator back down and leave this building and never return.

I felt like a ghost in the green hybrid, driving slowly around Marfa in the dark. It was my first night there: Michael, the caretaker of the residency houses, who was also a painter, had picked me up at the El Paso airport that afternoon and driven me in amicable silence for three hours through the high desert until we reached the little house at 308 North Plateau Street; I remember the address (you can drag the pegman icon onto the Google map and walk around the neighborhood on Street View, floating above yourself like a ghost; I’m doing that in a separate window now) because I had to have my beta-blockers mailed there twice during the residency, pills I take to reduce the ­vigor of my heart’s contractions, and which have the para­­doxical effect of causing a minor tremor in my hand.

Earliest memory: father tripping on strewn toys, hopping with toe outraged, mother’s rolling eyes. For my father had toys himself. He once brought a traffic light home to our apartment on the thirty-somethingth floor of the tower on Columbus Avenue. 

Context is everything. Dress me up and see. I’m a carnival barker, an auctioneer, a downtown performance artist, a speaker in tongues, a senator drunk on filibuster.

The Scottish Brewer and his wife have not joined us this afternoon for our trek through the forest of Tapantí. They are protesting the mud. Boycotting the birds. Outraged by the sloppiness, the untidiness

The following was recorded on November 17, 2014, as part of the Nonfiction at the Food Court reading s­eries at the Woodcreek Plaza Mall in Northfork, New Jersey. We are grateful to Muriel Leyner, ­curator of the series, and to both members of the audience for allowing us to print a transcript of the event.

Consider mentioning, early on, that Dick Grunstein is the president and cofounder of Millipede Films and that after I script-doctored a zombie movie for him in 2012, we made a blind script deal for a project provisionally entitled Sizzle Reel.

His story, as the story of every one of us, started long before we were born. For dynasties, our town provided the imperial families their most reliable servants. Eunuchs they are called, though out of