Bluebeard

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

What a fool I would have been to let self-respect interfere with my happiness!

The darkest secret of this country, I am afraid, is that too many of its citizens imagine that they belong to a much higher civilization somewhere else. That higher civilization doesn’t have to be another country. It can be the past instead—the United States as it was before it was spoiled by immigrants and the enfranchisement of the blacks. This state of mind allows too many of us to lie and cheat and steal from the rest of us, to sell us junk and addictive poisons and corrupting entertainments. What are the rest of us, after all, but sub-human aborigines?

She had had a life. I had accumulated anecdotes. She was home. Home was somewhere I never thought I’d be.