There’s another line in “Stanzas, Sexes, Seductions”—“I want to be unbearable”—that strikes me as exact and expressive of you as a writer.
CARSON
I remember that sentence driving at me in the dark like a glacier. I felt like a ship going toward the South Pole and then all of a sudden a glacier comes zooming out of the dark, and I just took it down. I appreciate that it’s accurate of what I both have and choose to have as my effect on people. I don’t know exactly why that’s the case.
INTERVIEWER
You once said you meant unbearable in a metaphysical sense.
CARSON
Well, yes, it couldn’t be physical, could it? Unless I went around hammering people.
INTERVIEWER
There are those days.
CARSON
With sharp objects. It’s true, that’s why I go to boxing class, to learn those skills. But that’s just, of course, shadowboxing, as they say.
INTERVIEWER
You don’t actually get to hit anyone?
CARSON
You don’t hit anyone, no.
INTERVIEWER
But you often think about hitting someone?
CARSON
In boxing class, yes. That’s why I go. It’s always a surprise who turns up, in the mind, to be hit. It’s not usually the people you expect.