<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr">In Defense Of Those Who Harbor Terrible Ideas At Tax Time<div><p class="gmail-title" style="border: 0px; font-weight: bold; margin: 0px 0px 1.5em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 22.440000534057617px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);"><br></p><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);"><br></span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">It must have seemed like a good idea at the time.</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">Like so many others. Sleeping with that guy. </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">Not checking the address. Letting him put it in</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">without a condom just the once. Who hasn’t done</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">all that and worse, is what I was thinking,</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">driving to H&R Block to get my taxes done</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">and listening to the radio where everyone keeps talking about</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">the young black gay actor who orchestrated</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">a fake hate crime against himself. </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">It must have seemed like such a good idea to him</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">at the time, I think, clutching to my chest</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">the scattered bits of our financial life—</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">receipts and pay stubs, the record of all I’ve spent </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">on poetry contests and that workshop</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">on musical theater—enough</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">to buy a hot tub, a cheap used one, anyway,</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">on Craigslist—and that might</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">or might not be a disaster, too, you never know.</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">I’ve booked an appointment</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">with the nicest CPA in the world—Dennis—</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">who says to me, “You’re not a cookie-cutter person.</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">Don’t be ashamed of your life.” Really, he should be a therapist</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">instead of an accountant, but I hope he stays at this job forever, </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">smoothing out my crumpled 1099s, recording </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">the five hundred dollars I made coaching </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">for Poetry Out Loud, the thousand </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">from that one contest I did win, and then all the bills</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">when our old home’s ancient plumbing gave up the ghost.</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">It’s more than I can face head-on, this evidence</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">of how we live and earn and spend and waste</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">our lives, and I heard that the young man, an actor, staged the crime</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">against himself because he felt he wasn’t being paid enough—</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">though I bet he was paid more than a poet—</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">well, who isn’t? And who, in the end, doesn’t feel</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">attention must be paid? Although few would go</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">to such lengths to get it. I’ve had my share</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">of Bad Ideas, God knows, and all of them seemed Good to me</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">at the time, and so have you, I bet, and so has everyone.</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">It’s the human condition, after all, to be assailed by a million thoughts</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">a day, most of them insane—I remember I once thought</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">of becoming a dominatrix, for example—that didn’t last long,</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">then I thought maybe I’d write a play</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">about a woman who becomes a dominatrix</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">in late middle age, to pay the bills—and well, </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">you see where all this is heading. </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">I have to forgive this young man his terrible </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">idea, I have to because, in my own way, I’ve been him.</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">And while we’re at it all those others</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">whose freakazoid fancies must have seemed brilliant</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">to them for a minute, the way all our eurekas do at three a.m.—</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">gleaming like fool’s gold … haven’t we all</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">chased them like magical butterflies</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">through the meadowlands of imagination,</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">only to end up empty-handed and chagrined, </span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);">and far from home?</span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);"><br></span></font></div><div style="border: 0px; margin: 0px 0px 1.615em; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; vertical-align: baseline;"><font color="#111111"><span style="caret-color: rgb(17, 17, 17);"><span class="Apple-tab-span" style="white-space:pre"> </span>- Allison Luterman</span></font></div></div></div></div></body></html>