I know this woman, right. Her name’s Boo. She keeps her Christmas decorations in her car and gets stoned on Ibuprofen. She can’t help it.

I laughed at her once when I was 8 - she wore this super-70s trench to pick her kid up from school - it was 1984.

I’d kill for that coat now.

She married this man. Tough guy. Loved his Harleys. Loaded….the way you are when you’re shelling out natural resources. He cheated. She left. Didn’t take a penny. She could have had a car. A hundred acre spread in the country. A few industrial strength generators…….like you do.

All she wanted was that damn coat.

She gets depressed alot. Feels smothered down. Tired. Wonders if all her friends are really as dumb as they act…or if they’re just having her on. Sometimes she asks. They look at her. Insulted.

She was just asking.

“Problem you have,” one of them said “is that you don’t watch Oprah. You’re too busy with CNN.” Boo doesnt watch CNN. “You’d learn something if you watched Oprah. She’d educate you. ”

She might. One day.

Boo says she’s old. 46. She wants to spend Christmas in New York, but wont change her hair for anyone.

She’s always at home. Unless she’s gone. Then she’s somewhere else. That’s what she says.

She hates germs. Scrubs everything with bleach and drinks vinegar. She doesn’t like Scotch but she’ll drink it too. Because she doesn’t want a man….not now.

She wears pink pastel on her lips, twice a year. The rest of the time she wears nothing..and why should she.

Boo said she wants to be a photographer. She wants to write.

I said….I do too.

Sometimes I look just like I did when I was two. This wouldn’t be a bad thing if I were two. Or ten. But I’m 28 and trying to be stunning and gorgeous and not look like a frog.

It’s this expression I have when I can’t believe what I’m hearing and wouldn’t be interested even if I could.

I wore it in all my grade school portraits when the photographer tried to make me smile by ad libbing a conversation between a stuffed rabbit and his hand; and I wore it the other evening at dinner party when my hostess, an aspiring (i.e. never wrote a thing in her life) author broke out a ‘Ten Steps To Writing a Successful Novel’ list which she comprised herself and which consisted of things like ‘never write commercially or you’ll never leave anything behind’ and ‘never be an American because they’re just not that literate’.

I’m not a rude person, but sometimes, when I really can’t believe what I’m hearing, I look like a frog. I can’t help it.

It’s taken me hella long to get this thing sorted. Five weeks of serious writing before I even knew what I was going to write about. Then I read one of those books you only read as a matter of course in high school or because you’ve joined Oprah’s Book Club and in a sudden burst are feeling all intellectual. Or because you’ve found it in a 99p bargain basement bin at Waterstone’s with only a fiver in your pocket (3.95 going toward a venti strawberry Frappuccino at a down-the-street Starbucks).

“As I Lay Dying.”

Read it when I was 15. My sophomore English teacher..what was her name….the little squat lady who wore her hair in a grey bun and thought she was a Chippewa because she made turquoise jewellery….she said I’d enjoy it. I didn’t.

If I wanted to spend time with ole Cash and Vardaman (ain’t that a name…I’ll see your Vardaman and raise you a Nannie-Bell) while they were readying for Addie’s burial, I’d just head on back to Grapevine Mountain and watch Pa dress a grave for his ‘too-cheap-to-buy-their-momma-a-decent-coffin’ second cousins to lay her in.

I thought about the same grave and the same cousins when I picked up the book two weeks ago.

Pa doesn’t build coffins. Not anymore. But he builds the graves to put them in. He does it because no one else will, and because people deserve to be laid to a real rest…in a family cemetery….where family do it all. Pa’s been doing it since he was twelve.

Last spring he buried his brother. It took five men to put the dirt back. After the coffin went in. Ten hands to do what Pa did with two.

He’ll be 69 on Saturday. He use to be a coal miner.

I enjoyed Faulkner this time. His southernness.

I know Anse. I know Cash. I know Addie. I know people having to be buried where the ground won’t move.

Sometimes it moves in the mountains.

Pa and a coffin.

I’ve got my story.

Getting to know you, getting to know me. Everyone’s making lists. I wont do the 100 things about ‘I’ because I really don’t know myself well enough for that. But I can do 25…………

1. I grew up in WV. I moved to Europe in 1998. I haven’t left yet.
2. Buffy is my real name. It always has been.
3. I can read Classical and Koine Greek.
4. I disagree with my mother just for the sake of it.
5. I have a thing for Eliza Dushku
6. I wrote my first book when i was 9. About the Aztecs and Incas.
7. I can’t sing. At all.
8. My sister really gets me.
9. I’m planning a trip to China. - We are now going to Dubai.
10. I have a love-hate relationship with Brian Sewell. Sometimes I love him. Most of the time I hate him.
11. I’ve had housemates from WV, VA, NC, NY, Mexico, Brasil, Portugal, Pakistan, Libya, France, Germany, Norway, Greece, Finland, Spain, Northern Ireland and sundry towns throughout England. I got on best with the Irish girl and the communist.
12. I sometimes have seizures. No one knows why.
13. I’ve got a huge crush on Conan O’Brien. I’m serious.

14. I’m interested in the Coptic language but never know what to do with the article when a word is both noun and name. As in Isos Pi Khristos (Isoos Pi’ekhrestos).
15. Bunches of close-together, little-tiny circles scare me. Like frog eggs or honeycombs. Often causes #12.
16. I have several university degrees. I use none of them.
17. My high school history teacher was Harshbarger. Bill.
19. I kinda sorta really did grow up around dead people.
20. I put myself through college on $1.35 an hour.
21. I obsess about my hair and teeth.
22. If I could, I would spend my life as a postgraduate and do nothing but research. I’m a nerd like that.
23. I use to be a criminologist. Victimology was my gig.
24. My pinky toe serves no purpose. It should be chopped off.
25. I could wander Rome forever.

Alright. First thing first. No vampire slayer jokes. Much as it pains me to admit - and as much as it pained certain male co-workers when they heard the firm had just hired a ‘Buffy’, and came downstairs, one by one (I’m not joking) to investigate and search out the blonde vixen - I am not Sarah Michelle Gellar. The dejected looks on their poor faces when they realised I did not have her luminous green eyes (I hate the word ‘luminous’, but its absurdity fits the situation) or her million dollar smile, (This is a rough estimate. I have no factual knowledge regarding the cost of Gellar’s teeth) struck no small blow to my ego. Still, I am separate and unique from any slayers and superstars who may, or may not, be running about somewhere in Urbandom.

What I do remains, at this point, a matter of conjecture.

I think I write, though evidence to the contrary abounds. Still, that’s what my supporters (inner circle of peoples who are either: 1) blood related, 2) afraid of me, or 3) after a cash handout) keep telling me. But how reliable are inner circles?

I use to research/study criminal behaviour in an effort to address the psychological and social problems stemming from the front and back of the matter. After seven years, I got a little depressed, and a lot tired. When my Visa ran out (I am American by birth, British by Association and Current Location) and my employment status fell away, my ‘Certain Other’ (A gentleman I like to call ‘Tall Dark and Handsome’) suggested I use the time to finish a quasi-novel I started piddling on last year. So I began…….writing. I write. Does that make me a writer? By profession - Probably not. By default (I have no other position to speak of.) - Maybe. Yes. I think so. Sounds good anyway.

I am not a vampire slayer. I am no longer a criminologist. I am a writer. A writer by default.

My name is Buffy.