word play

I just want to talk to everyone. I just want to talk and ask why, when, and how, who made you that way and what does it feel like and do you like shortbread cookies or cinnamon ones, spring or fall, Pluto or Jupiter, men or women. Do you think Lolita is a sick, twisted account of a deranged old man or is it the greatest love story of all time? Do you want to travel to Peru and stay there for awhile and will you eat the lomo saltado or will you look at the waiter's weathered face and stammer out in squeaky English that you just don't understand. Do you understand?

I just want to talk to everyone. I want to know when their parents were married, and what her dress looked like, and why there were only seven people there. I want to know why my grandfather has clocks hidden all over his house, and I want to suggest on an afternoon that I should have bathed but didn't that perhaps he is afraid of time. I want to ask the bus driver how long she has been silent like that, and find out why my landlord won't look me in the eye. I want to tell the woman in front of me who shrugs away the two handles of vodka on the conveyor belt by saying, times are hard if you know what I mean, that I know what she means. Do you know what I mean?

I just want to talk to everyone, and tell them that I think spilled milk is funny, that I think everything is either funny or hopelessly tragic and that there is no in-between, that I believe in change and catastrophe but that chipped paint bothers me in a way that it shouldn't. I want to tell them that Hemingway is the worst and Tolstoy is the best, that nobody likes philosophy or bourbon or a run-on sentence even though I write that way.

I just want to talk to everyone because I write that way.