Free Riot Most Uncouth by Daniel Friedman

know,” she said. “It’s hard to discern, these days, why you do the things you do. I like to think I know you better than most, but lately, I find you opaque. Your behavior is not driven by motivations I can understand.”
    â€œAnd yet, despite the inadequacies of your own faculties of reason, your utmost concern is my educational standing,” I said.
    â€œI can’t tell if you’re trying to be clever, or if you’re evading the question.”
    â€œNo, Violet, I was not expelled. When one is possessed of my potent charm and noble birth, one gets a lot of second chances.”
    â€œNot so many chances as you might think. The Fellows are concerned about you. Your manner has become steadily more erratic since Edleston left, and since those poor reviews came in for Hours of Idleness. ”
    I swore so loudly that Violet recoiled a bit. I needed no reminder that my emergence into the pantheon of great Western poets had been met with less than universal acclaim. The Edinburgh Review, a periodical unfit for use as arse-wipe, had published a vicious attack upon my person disguised as a criticism of my poetry. They had dismissed my precocity by noting that it was unsurprising and unimpressive “that very poor verses were written by a youth,” and suggested that I “forthwith abandon poetry, and turn [my] talents … to better account.”
    â€œMy poetry has elevated me to literary celebrity, to immortality, despite the barbed quips and puerile protests of that syphilitic crowd of ewe-fuckers who call themselves the critical establishment,” I said. “They’ll get theirs soon enough; I’m working on an answer, a satire. I will eviscerate them.”
    â€œDo you really think you should be talking about eviscerating people in light of recent local events?” she asked. Everyone in town had heard about the murder by now.
    Instead of responding, I crossed my arms and sank into the pillows.
    She reached for me and caressed my neck. “I worry about you. You’ve become so thin, and you appear frail and sickly to me sometimes.”
    â€œAnd yet I find that few women complain.”
    She sighed and rolled onto her back. Even with my carnal needs thoroughly sated, I couldn’t help staring at her breasts or, indeed, at any breasts available to be gazed upon at any time, ever. “It vexes me that I must share you with others,” she said.
    â€œAnd, I suspect, if you asked your husband, he’d express similar sentiments.”
    â€œYou’re suddenly a moralist as well as an ascetic, Byron. I am not sure your charms benefit from your embrace of puritanical impulses.”
    For some reason, I decided then to tell her about my visit to the women’s rooming house, and what I’d seen there. I told her about the smell of the ripening corpse, and about how the fingers of the girl’s bloodless hands had been slightly curled, on account of their tendons drying and tightening.
    As I spoke, Violet drew herself up from her post-coital sprawl and gathered the sheets around her body.
    â€œI’d always thought your preoccupation with the macabre was a hobby or some kind of affectation,” she said. “You drink your opiates and write your poems, and you collect those grotesque trinkets, and you traipse about in monk’s robes in that grand, ruined church you own. I’ve come to enjoy the way your postures become your identity. But you’re taking this too far. To walk into that room with that corpse is a choice I cannot comprehend. This is a family’s very real tragedy. It’s not a story for you to tell about yourself. Darling, I fear you are descending into madness.”
    â€œMurderers ought to be punished for their crimes.”
    â€œBut they are punished routinely, all over Europe, without your participation. Why does this demand your involvement? What is at stake for you here?”
    â€œHow can you