1) What's on your bedside table?
It's clean right now. There are two bottles of pills, for blood pressure and depression. A clock, a lamp. A wadded tissue, an empty can of caffeine-free Diet Coke. Nail scissors. A round bit of pumice. But I painted the table when I got it and scrawled scraps of poetry across the top. Some bits:
His soul stretched tight across the skiesUnderneath the table are notebooks and things.
that fade behind a city block
or trampled by insistent feet
at four and five and six o'clock.
In San Francisco, that winter,
there was a dark little store
full of sleepy Buddhas.
The afternoon I walked in,
no one came out to greet me.
I stood among the sages
as if trying to read their thoughts.
She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves.
2) What's the geekiest part of your music collection?
I buy soundtracks--Grease, Batman, City of Angels, Forrest Gump, Pennies from Heaven, Cruel Intentions, etc. I don't know if that's geeky.
3) What do you eat when you raid the fridge at night?
I never have anything in the fridge. But when I do: pickles, cheddar cheese, olives.
4) What is your secret "guaranteed weeping" film?
Hair.
5) If you could have plastic surgery, what would you have done?
I wouldn't.
6) Do you have a completely irrational fear? If so, of what?
Many. One of them is the fear of telling people my fears on the Internet, for fear that serial killers will find me and torture me with them.
7) What is the little physical habit that gives away your insecure moments?
Shifty eyes.
8) Do you ever have to beg?
Yes. No. Maybe.
9) Do you have too many love interests?
Yeah, right.
10) Do you know anyone famous?
Almost famous. Semi-famous? Yes.
11) Describe your bed.
Two stacked mattresses, three pillows in various stages of decomposition, olive-green flannel sheets, down comforter, plaid blanket.
12) Spontaneous or plan?
I think other people should decide this for me.
13) Who should play you in a movie about your life?
Alan Cumming.
14) Do you know how to play poker?
Not really.
15) Do you like to color?
Yes. As a child I trained to become a famous concert colorist but a tragic accident with a thresher cut my dreams short.
16) How do you drive?
Very very carefully, with occasional periods of near-fatal abstraction.
17) What do you miss most about being little?
Halloween, Easter, Christmas. Summers off. Sharper thought processes. Conviction of genius.
18) Are you happy with your given name?
Like
spike21 I used to want to be called The Spike, after the ultra-cool character from that Delaney novel. Or just Spike. This was long, long before I got into BtVS. I wanted someone to give me a neat nickname; unable to attract a nickname, I felt lacking in some essential quality. Coincidentally, "Red" was one of the names I hoped someone would pick. At various times in my life, like when I moved to Seattle, I thought about reinventing myself with a new name--some permutation of my middle name, maybe. (Elizabeth.) But nothing felt quite right. Still, I like my name okay.19) What was the last song you were listening to?
Probably Kane's "Crazy in Love."
20) Have you ever been in a school play?
No.
22) Do you like yourself and believe in yourself?
Not especially.
23) Have you ever done any illegal drugs?
Acid. If I could figure out how to buy pot, I'd probably smoke it now and then. Or of course get hooked and become a pothead and get busted by the cops and go to jail, losing my job and my Internet access and beginning a long downward spiral of addiction and homelessness until I killed a man for looking at me the wrong way, thus ending up in prison, where I'd fall in love with a woman named Greta and fold sheets for ten years and become famous for my poems.
24) Do you think you're cute?
Yeah, right.
25) Do you consider yourself to be a nice person?
Not especially.