He was a traveling boy, always on a train or a boat or talking to somebody about some mountain he had just climbed. He could tell you everything--from where the river started and where it really ended to how many languages are mumbled in a corner of that bar in the big city. One day he met a girl who didn’t know a damn thing about life, and she hadn’t been anywhere, and she had kind of a country twang that made her sound stupid as hell, but she was very pretty so he slept with her anyway. He had a train to catch the next morning at noon, and they both woke up at eight, and no matter how much he tried to go back to sleep he couldn’t. So there he was in bed with a girl and there was nothing to say. She wanted to hear his stories; she begged to hear his stories. Happy to have a listening ear, he opened his big mouth and let it all go from the first time he fell off a cliff to the last time he rode a motorcycle across the desert. He showed her a picture of his mother who was a great swimmer and had gone to the Olympics, and he read her a letter from his sister who married a Russian and now had two kids. He also recited his favorite poem by Joseph Brodsky, whom he had met and shook hands with.

            The girl thought he was pretty handsome and she just ate it all up like a good little thing. He looked at those green eyes with nothing going on behind them and decided he would teach her something about the world. He would tell her about everything that was going on and what religions were huge and what the people around the world were thinking. He could wake her up and let her know what she’s missing. He could save her.

            He kissed her forehead and began to talk. For a full straight hour, as he smoked and scratched his head, he let her know just about everything that was worth a spit of the lip. He made her cry over the wars, cry over the dumb-ass politicians, and cry about the kids. He could have gone on for much longer, but the time ended. He had sex with her one more time, then got up to get dressed.

            He gave her one last kiss, pretty damn proud of himself, and left. It’s funny though because she seemed to cry the hardest with the slam of the door.