Bubblegum

by Adam Levin

How could anyone know? I’m not saying they couldn’t. I’m saying I didn’t. I’m saying I don’t and, because I don’t, I fail to imagine how others might. Yet others seemed to. They seemed to know. They seemed to think they knew what was right and what was wrong, what was good and what was bad, and what impact they made on what and who, and how to destroy the least amount of good, how to prevent the most amount of evil, how to progress toward solving the world if only everyone else would listen, and all I knew was what I liked and didn’t like, what moved me and what didn’t, what I found beautiful and what I found ugly, who I found attractive and who I found repellent, and I wasn’t very good at knowing even those things, but the point is, reader, it was nice outside, to me it felt nice, and despite my father’s letters, the news of his happiness, the thought that he might have met a lovable woman who could love him in return, the thought that he’d discovered a way of life that appealed to him among people who appealed to him and that he wouldn’t (it looked like) die too early of early retirement (which I suppose I’d been worrying about more than I’ve let on), and the news that other writers admired my books (writers I’d heard of, but hadn’t yet read, haven’t yet read), and that one of those writers had bothered to think about and misunderstand the swingset murders in a way that sounded flattering and deliberate and made Clyde proud—despite all of it, the only thing I had, out th...