To the curious and indecisive friend: If you're going to straddle the fence then I would very much like to be the fence.

How we love to be the reason people do things, the more ridiculous the better. I'd like to inspire somebody artistically, what a rush that would be. To be the thoughtfully licked nib of someone's suddenly-flowing fountain pen! I don't think I have what it takes, I'm not muse material. I believe such figures are traditionally more life-affirming and emotionally expansive, animating a creative fervor rather than dampening one's very will to live. Either they possess such qualities or they are physically beautiful, or both. When you think of a muse you don't normally imagine a plain-looking, emotionally constipated shut-in with six-foot-high stacks of old newspapers crowding his musty apartment and weird stains on the wall. Dante's Beatrice was supposedly very beautiful, but then again she was also a child when he first saw her. I am not a child but I do act like one, does that count for anything? I could never inspire anyone to write poetry. Maybe a limerick or two, or some coarse bit of doggerel in the last booth at Fantasy Video out on 99.

There once was a man named Ronnie
Whose tastes ran to lissome and tawny
He longed to inspire
Occasional desire
In the exceedingly stupid and brawny

Although I am unlikely to become anyone's muse it's possible someone could inspire me in this way, susceptible as I am to romantic obsession and idiotic feelings. Someone enchanting and mysterious, alluring but unattainable, someone who instills in me a hopeless longing, a madness or frenzy the only relief for which is the pressure valve of extremely bad artistic expression.