Twenty years ago, I began working for my current employers, the citizens of this small town. I came here to spread the gospel of semicolons and Shakespeare, of noun-pronoun agreement and Keats’ heartbreaking sonnets. Little did they know, my fellow villagers, of the odd double life I led—and still lead. In classrooms I decanted the arcane rules of commas and Baconian triplets, but in my house—during the earliest hours of the morning and late when I’d cleared the supper dishes and students’ essays from my table, I locked my doors, dropped the blinds, unplugged the phone, and pursued an undeniable love, a transgressive and wild urge that drew me to the distant towns of Moses Lake and Ephrata to purchase the requirements of this obsession, and yes, even far-off Spokane, Seattle, and Portland,
