Courage

I can't play guitar, but that doesn't matter because I'm Clint Eastwood's nephew, and I'm good, and I can prove it. I have a two-inch scar on my chin, a bar fight souvenir. I was taken hostage as a child and grew up stronger for it. You should see me eat an entire family size Papa John's pizza sometime; it's quite the sight to behold.

This German shepherd is looking at me like he knows me. He doesn't know me. He wants to tussle, and that's fine by me. That's page No. 14 in my playbook. I will swing him around over my head by his tongue like a fearsome helicopter.

I was born in Ghana; I went to school in Mali. My parents, long dead, were Irish winemakers, survivors of a terrorist plot to blow up the world. I learned to speak English when I was two, to read and write it when I was three. By age four I could also communicate fluently in German and Japanese. En outre, je parle français passable.

I have a box of tangerines, the contents of which I plan to throw from the roof of my apartment, orange grenades raining down on an urban battlefield. My fiancee is a Danish taxidermist, her brother a pugilist with knuckles the size of bottle caps. We get along nicely.

No one ever asks where I'm from or where I've been. I'm blind and my eyes are chary cigar embers. I see with my heart.