after eight hours editing erotic poetry

snarl snarl snarl growl snarl snarl growl snarl bark bark snarl woof woof

yep, barking mad. You try editing all these wonderful works ("101 Great Erotic Poems"), some of them fantasies, some of them depictions of actual events that took place between me and the few grand ladies I have been fortunate enough to have been intimate with. It is, in its own way, as bruising as "The Compleat Panther Cycles" was...

I had a young woman the other day, unfamiliar with the backstory of TCPC, quiz me about whatever happened in the end between the original Panther and I.

Last dialogue: She called to let me know she was considering a move to Los Angeles, where I was living (this was just weeks before the young woman who was to end up being my second wife moved in with me, timing that did not escape me...) I said to her "I do not care where you live. I do not care if you live. Stay out of my life."

I heard from her one more time after that, when she sent me a ridiculously threatening email about the use of the cover of "PanthEon" in generic symbology on my website. Seems she felt that, despite the fact that I bought the self-portrait she painted (I have the cancelled check...) she should still have veto power over my use of the image. I responded to her email with a terse statement indicating that she was in the wrong, but since I was never intending to cause her any emotional distress (I seem to cause emotional distress, inadvertently, to women who try to lie me out of their biographies, owing to my public visibility) I would, this once, accede to her "request".

I then wrote the poem "Shadows in the Shade", which reflects my position that she broke the covenant between us to be civil, and thus I am no longer required to treat her, in my writings, as an object on veneration or respect.

I still haven't gone out and trashed her, indeed, she comes across quite sympathetically in my memoir. Unlike me. I come across as an idiot. The young questioner said as much.

Just thinking out loud.

Now, back to the book...damn, I wish someone were here to...well, maybe when the book comes out...