Then he died.
Don B. is dead, and my girlfriend is gone, off to seek more interesting pastures.
I have changed religions.
There is merit in the afterlife.
I do not want to be so bad that I go to hell. Nor do I want to be so good that I strum sheep-guts to the chords of “Pennies from Heaven.” I want to spend a significant allotment of eternity in purgatory.
If I go to heaven, though, I want to have a drink with Don B., my professor, a man of refinement in literature, and good taste in women.
Internationally acclaimed novelist and critic Eric Miles Williamson was named by France’s Transfuge magazine one of the “douze grands écrivains du monde”—one of the twelve great authors of the world. His first novel, East Bay Grease, was a PEN/Hemingway finalist, and its sequel, Welcome to Oakland, was named the second-best novel of 2009 and one of the top 40 novels of the decade by the Huffington Post. Senior Editor of Boulevard, Fiction Editor of Texas Review, and Associate Editor of American Book Review, Williamson served three terms on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle. He lives in the Rio Grande Valley.
photo by Judy Marie Williamson
14 Fictional Positions Page 12
