Being able to spell wasn’t a priority, because once a word was learned there was no question as to how it should have been constructed.  This meant that vocabulary was easy- peasy, no problemo- just in case his mom had doubted that he learned anything in his Spanish 4 Tots program- and it was because of this that reading wasn’t his lifestyle as much as where he got his life, and where he got his style.  An extensive, overflowing, and almost larger-than-life vocabulary collection is what could be expected from an existence of this sort, and it’s a good thing that this is the case, because not only was that expected, it was how things were. Lots of words.  (That’s a short description of what he thought about, and also an answer to the question “What did he often think about?”) Words like “experienced” and “kindergarten”.  Although really, he thought of kindergarten and then he thought of experienced soon afterwards, and for many years after that.  It was in that order because as a child, youngster- just in case his dad thought he was being too formal- he had, of course, attended kindergarten.  Then, as a not-so-youngster, he had a feeling that everyone around him was an experienced prodigal apprentice to the study of having wild, wild sexual adventures with their significant others that were never more attractive than him, and didn’t quite fit that bill.  He got off to everything; gay things, straight things, plastic things, poetic things, noises.  He just couldn’t get off with real things,  was terrified of getting of with real things, and although he had never given anybody a hickey before, his chin rest gave him a near- permanent one lounging where his overly moisturized and always oily cheek met his neck.  Or his jaw, just in case the word count on his english essay thought he was being too descriptive.  He was, of course, always thinking.  He was thinking of words like “snack” and “measure  sixty- nine” and “sixty- nine”.  He thought of words like “pang”, which is what he felt in his gentle and elegant heart when he finished his first artistic masterpiece; it was a tin pail of graphite powder with dog food inside.  It was also what he felt in his blushing and embarrassed heart when his dog ate the dog food and died a fast, graphite induced death, which is what the veterinarian somberly called “the death of a true martyr, emphasis on the ‘art’ ”.  He had a three- subject notebook with the metal spiral always unravelling.  Once, upon wedging his hand in between his folders, he pricked the outside of his thumb and started bleeding; he thought about periods, then about vaginas in general, then got 75 percent of a boner and was too uncomfortable to stand up and ask for a band-aid.  He had sucked on the skin and his blood tasted sharp and tinny - absolutely revolting just in case he hadn’t annoyed his tutor with his exaggerations in a while - and he was worried that his teeth would look reddish after he pulled his thumb down from his overly-chapsticked-but-still -chapped-lips.