5˘ Interview with Gary Lutz
In which words were administered to Gary Lutz and his off-the-cuff responses follow.
5˘: Razor clam
GL: We were taught not to have a milkshake with seafood. I can’t remember who taught us this, or whether there might have been some science behind it. I never drank milkshakes anyway—to this day, I have never had one—but I later gave up seafood. Even that’s not correct, because the only fish I was ever given to eat was something simple like haddock, with ketchup probably already all over it.
5˘: Jettison
GL: I thought Scarlet Pimpernel was a kind of bread. I thought antipasto was the opposite of some other food. At Sunday school, the teacher and the pastor kept saying, “Thy will be done,” and I kept thinking, “Thy what will be done?”
5˘: Loo
GL: The center square of the little city where I grew up had a couple of “comfort stations.” These were belowground lavatories whose staircased entrances, sided and canopied with glass, looked like entrances to a subway or a sunken Victorian exposition. I can’t remember whether I wasn’t allowed down or just preferred holding it in.
5˘: Heirloom
GL: I must have known it was a coin collection. But these nickels and silver dollars weren’t pressed into those gloomy folders from the hobby department. I needed the candy.
5˘: Rubbing
GL: I came to it late and didn’t get a whole lot out of it.
Books by Gary Lutz:
Partial List of People to Bleach
