Armadillos and Old Lace (1994)
Kinky Friedman

     I leaned the shotgun up against the wall, poured another cup of coffee, and lit up a cigar.   I sat down in the sunlit doorway of the trailer and sipped the coffee, smoked the cigar, and reflected upon the subject of loners in this world.  There've been some very good loners down through the ages.  Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Johnny Appleseed, the woman who worked with gorillas over in Africa whatever the hell her name was, even Benny Hill in the last years of his life after they cancelled his television show.  These people all knew that the majority is always wrong, and even if it isn't, who gives a damn anyway.  They knew that within is where it's at, and if nothing's happening within it doesn't really matter if your co-dependent wife throws a black-tie surprise birthday party for you and hundreds of well-wishers show up who would just as soon you'd fallen down a well.

      I liked loners.  The downside, of course, was that every serial killer who'd ever lived had also been a loner.  Well, you can't have everything.  People just tend to drive you crazy after awhile.  That's why penthouses, nunneries, sailboats, islands, and jail cells do such a booming business.   And trailers.

      I took a solitary puff on the cigar, looked up through the blue haze, and realized that I wasn't alone. 


[from Chapter 32 of Armadillos and Old Lace, by Kinky Friedman. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1994.]