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Introduction to a Now Lost Lecture on Disposition

Amy Gerstler

This afternoon, despite the extreme heat, I hope to address those of all temperaments:
the thin and the thick blooded, wearers of polyester and leather, hyper types and
gloomsters, those with unlimited sympathies, dupes and rubes, flatterers, bright
excitable types, sulkers and drunks, brooders and the cruel, cold fish and committed
party-ers, those who believe life is a to-the-death contest of their urges pitted against
everyone else’s, kingly types who demand the rest of us bow and kneel and kiss their
rings, the kindly ones who think they know best, the threateners and frighteners,
those who know they see and feel more deeply than the common throng, those who
just want to be left alone so they can fingerpaint all day or tinker with their cars or
repair broken toasters in their spotless garages, that annointed tribe who thinks of
nothing but where their next fix is coming from, the gregarious ones and the bad
mixers, the ones who plan elaborately but never act; and the exhausting ones who
croon, “I love you, I love you....I want to stay up all night exchanging whispered
intimacies with you, till the milk is delivered and the newspaper comes thumping on
the doorstep”—the breathless ones who won’t let you get any sleep and won’t stop
talking your goddamn ear off. (yawns)



Amy Gerstler

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